God Blood! That hurt. A weaker man would have been crippled. Now he saw the truth: most of the Ibandi were above him. He would slaughter them, every one. First, he would see the blood of those on the ground. If he could get close enough to the weaklings, he would be safe from the monkeys above. They hadn’t the heart to endanger their own!
But when he again tried to work his way through the narrow gap, Flat-Nose had to step over his brothers’ bodies. Some were dead from terrible wounds. Burn them all! The Ibandi spears were in his face again.
The Ibandi had speared four of his men to death, and rocks had crippled or killed two more. Several men rolled on the ground, dazed and in pain, although to Flat-Nose their wounds seemed slight.
Furious, he managed to stab two of the Ibandi, but by now the falling rocks had become a landslide, an avalanche. The Mk*tk had to either push their way through the gap or retreat.
This was wrong! Next to him, his cousin Strong Spear’s head swayed to the side as a jagged chunk of stone ripped a flap of his scalp away. For a moment Strong Spear stood blinking tears of blood, then he crumpled to the ground.
“Back!” Flat-Nose screamed. Spears now, falling like bamboo rain.
The Mk*tk ran back, dodging rocks as they went. The cliffs seemed to be feathered with Ibandi, who hurled rocks and cast spears with maddening accuracy.
They would retreat, regroup, and then—
What in the name of God Blood?
There, guarding the entrance to the defile, were the strangest creatures Flat-Nose had ever seen. They walked like men, but their flesh was as pale as bone. While short, they were broader than Ibandi, almost as muscular as Flat-Nose’s people.
But as odd as that was, there was worse. Magic? Wolves, or things that looked like wolves, snarled at their sides, foam dripping from their muzzles.
For a moment, awe froze Flat-Nose. He barely reacted when one of the pale men lunged like a flea jumping from a hot rock, his spear catching Stone Hand squarely in the chest.
The wolves leaped forward. When his men tried to spear them, they moved away as if they knew what the Mk*tk would do next. If they allowed themselves to be distracted by the wolves for even a moment, the arrows and rocks struck. And if they ignored the wolves, their thighs and ankles were savaged.
Rocks. Arrows. Spears. Wolves. He could not think. Desperately needed a moment to think.
The line of pale, short men stood firm. When the Mk*tk tried to rush the Ibandi, they were driven back. When he tried to retreat, the wolves and the short men attacked from the rear.
And through it all, death rained from above.
Then a rumbling from above them, and a nightmare rain of stone fell in the middle of his men, crushing them. The air filled with dust that blinded and sent his men into coughing fits. Those trapped in the middle were pounded to the ground, arms and legs and skulls splintered.
Up at the top, barely glimpsed through the dust, howling Ibandi. Hunters. Old ones. Women. Even children. Throwing and pushing stones.
Head whirling, hacking up stone dust and half blinded, Flat-Nose screamed, “Fight for God—”
And was trying to work his way forward, attempting to break through the line of wolves and short men, when night fell like a stone.
Chapter Forty-nine
When Frog, Fire Ant, T’Cori and Sister Quiet Water emerged from the back of Giraffe Kill, the sight greeting them was a thing of nightmare. Seven Ibandi sprawled dead, stabbed and broken. T’Cori’s father, Water Chant, was slain, speared through the throat. Uncle Snake’s left arm was badly gashed, but a thong tied above the wound seemed to have staunched the blood.
No one spoke as they climbed over the fallen rocks. Snake coughed. Around Frog, others hacked up rock dust.
Arms and legs protruded from beneath the stones. Frog counted ten Mk*tk, then another five, and another and another.
A few had escaped the rocks only to be speared or torn by the wolves. Three were still alive, thrashing weakly as the Vokka sawed their throats open.
T’Cori ran to them as they faced the last Mk*tk, a wounded giant with two fingers missing from his left hand. Despite his wounds the Mk*tk had put his back against the rock wall, keeping them at bay with wide swipes of his heavy spear.
A stone-faced Fire Ant used his sling, and the giant slumped to his knees, bleeding from his forehead. The Vokka held his arms and lifted him so that the wolves had access to his throat.
T’Cori leapt up. “No!” she screamed. “He is their leader, Flat-Nose, and he is mine!”
Sister Quiet Water had appeared behind her, seemingly from nowhere at all. She could not take her eyes off the helpless Mk*tk. She said nothing, just staggered to him and stood over him, looking down as if staring into an abyss. No one spoke. No one moved.
A chunk of rock the size of Flat-Nose’s head lay half buried in the ground. She stooped and wrapped her arms around it, tugging without effect.
Now, finally, she turned to T’Cori and spoke. “Help me,” she said.
T’Cori looked at Frog, who shrugged. This made sense. No one had more right to end this Mk*tk than the two dancers.
A handful of gravel rolled down the embankment above them. Frog shaded his eyes against the sun to see two hunters carrying Stillshadow down to the valley floor. They waited silently until she arrived. The old dream dancer rolled onto her side and then managed to push herself up on one elbow.
She gargled something none of them could hear, then gathered herself, cleared her throat and began again. She raised her hands. “Are my daughters alive?”
“We are here, Mother,” T’Cori said.
“We live, Mother,” Quiet Water said.
“Would you kill him? Would you rid yourself of demons?” the old woman asked.
“Yes,” T’Cori said. She sounded as if she’d swallowed a coal.
“He is the one who ripped you from your place?”
T’Cori swallowed loudly enough for Frog to hear. “Yes,” she said.
“You would take your num back from him?”
“Yes,” T’Cori said again, unable to tear her eyes from the unconscious Mk*tk.
“You would have your children, and their children, be safe for ten tens of generations?”
T’Cori did not answer. No answer was necessary.
“Then,” Stillshadow said, “you cannot kill a helpless man. He is no hunter now. Now, he is nothing more than an animal. To take your power back, you must defeat a human being. You must take him as he took you.”
T’Cori’s shoulders sagged. She stared at Stillshadow in disbelief. “It is not possible.”
Then the hunters helped Stillshadow sit upright, and to them she seemed as weightless as an armload of dead leaves. Only her eyes burned with life.
T’Cori sucked in a chestful of air. The tip of her pink tongue moistened her lips, and she gazed at Flat-Nose hungrily.
Beside her, Quiet Water made a low, hungry sound.
“Mother,” T’Cori said, “give me dream tea. I will remember the lion dances. I can do this.”
“Please, Stillshadow,” Sister Quiet Water pled. “Help us. We need dance tea. Make our feet swift.”
Stillshadow shook her ancient head. “No. The teacher plants are strong. But if you think your strength comes from them, you lie to yourself. Strength must come from within you.” She slapped her hands against her lower stomach. “You are not mere flesh and bone. You are that from which flesh and bone is spun. At the very most, teacher plants can point the way to the jowk. If you are to do this thing, you must do it from your womb.” She touched her seventh eye. “For this generation, and the generations to come. Are you willing to try?”
T’Cori’s gaze would have melted rock. The corners of her mouth lifted, but Frog would never have called her expression a smile.
Frog helped drag the helpless Flat-Nose to a weeping wattle tree, binding him upright to its twisted, swaybacked trunk. When the Mk*tk finally awoke, his arms and legs were lashed far apart. He strug
gled. Frog had personally tied those bonds tight enough to cut the skin. Given time, his hands would die from lack of blood.
He hoped they had time.
Flat-Nose struggled against the leather thongs until his shoulder wound oozed and his torn scalp bled. Flat-Nose thrashed and screamed, and then, at last, only panted and glared at them.
His eyes locked with Frog’s. I would kill you, they promised. And I will, given any chance at all.
“We’ll never know,” Frog said to him. He did not know what Stillshadow had in mind, but he was quite certain that it did not include giving this monster a chance to kill any more Ibandi. Ever.
The women formed a circle and began to drum.
As the sun peaked and fell, T’Cori and Quiet Water danced. Stillshadow sat upright, refusing to allow anyone to help or support her as she sang endlessly of rocks and earth, of birth and death, the changing of seasons and the creation of all things.
T’Cori and Quiet Water twirled and stamped. The men brought their drums and slapped palms against the membranes. The hollow, booming calls echoed against the valley walls.
Their Vokka friends joined as well, their voices and simple hollow-log drums calling rhythm with the others.
Frog danced in place, feeling the drumbeats burning through him, taking him into the song itself. He tried to feel his way to its heart. What was this song? What was this ceremony? He didn’t know, but he felt his thoughts sucked away like bubbles into a whirlpool.
In a strange way, even the screams of the lashed Mk*tk captive blended into the same song, until the members of three tribes filled Shadow Valley’s bowl with their screams and calls and music.
And in the middle of it were the two dancing women. Exhausted, Frog and the other male dancers fell to the side, but T’Cori and Quiet Water danced on, as if guided by something beyond their own strength and will.
Dizzy and sick with fatigue, Frog feared for his mate.
Surely this, on top of everything else that had happened, was too much. Surely …
But as T’Cori staggered, and almost fell, something was happening. As her body grew weaker, Stillshadow, even without sight, seemed to sense every misstep. When T’Cori fell to her knees, dripping sweat into the sand, Still-shadow’s voice rose with scorn, driving her student upright once again.
When Quiet Water vomited in exhaustion, Stillshadow mocked her weakness, commanded her to stand once again.
As the sky darkened and the infinite eyes of Father Mountain and Great Mother opened in the sky above them, T’Cori seemed to molt, shedding her human aspect.
This was not the woman that he loved. Quiet Water was not the kind healer they had known. It was as if the two women were empty shells and now something very different was emerging from within.
If he believed in such things, Frog would have said he was peering through their flesh into the living fire within.
The Vokka wolves howled along to the drumbeats, as if recognizing T’Cori and Quiet Water as their own.
And all the time Flat-Nose watched them, his arms suspended above him. As T’Cori gained strength where there should have been none, as Quiet Water lost her air of injured desperation and became a woman of fire, something grew in Flat-Nose’s face, something that Frog had never seen before.
Could the wrinkle between the hooded eyes be fear?
What did the old woman see? In her blindness, did her inner vision ignore the flesh? And if so, what did she see in T’Cori’s num- field? In Quiet Water’s?
In Flat-Nose’s?
Just past midnight, without any signal, the drummers ceased to play and the singers silenced their voices. The two women, eyes dilated and sweat dried, stood panting, staring blindly into the darkness. Their hands were crooked like claws.
“Cut him down,” Stillshadow said. “Give him his spear.”
“No!” Frog shook himself out of his own trance, unable to believe what he had just heard. He had supposed that T’Cori might stab a bound Mk*tk in some bloody ritual of vengeance. Freed, even an unarmed Mk*tk would be an insane risk. But armed? Before he could leap to her defense, three Ibandi jumped upon him, threw him to the ground and held him there.
T’Cori turned, and her eyes met his with an impact like a blow beneath his heart. For an instant, he saw something else in her … or she was something else. His eyes had betrayed him, were telling his mind something impossible. He could not see her body, just her head, her head grown as large as her body had been, almost as if it had been carved from a boulder.
He blinked, and she was once again the woman he loved.
“Give Flat-Nose his spear,” she said. The voice from his woman’s lips seemed not her own. It seemed …
It could not be, but it seemed …
He looked over at Stillshadow, who sat staring at T’Cori, lips curled into a small, dry smile as they moved continuously, saying things that no one in this world could hear.
Fire Ant sawed the leather thongs on Flat-Nose’s right arm. The Mk*tk snarled as his wrist came free, and Ant dared not loosen his left. Nor did he need to: Flat-Nose ripped the left thong free, and then those on his ankles. He flexed his left hand, pausing to stare at the stumps of his missing fingers.
Ant threw his spear into the soil at the Mk*tk’s feet. Flat-Nose stared at it, slow to comprehend. Then he wrenched it from the ground. Frog recoiled from the sound, struggled again against the hands pressing him into the ground.
Hot, stinging tears flowed into the soil beneath his face. He blinked until his vision cleared. If this was the death of love, he wished to burn the vision into his soul.
He longed to know what hell was, because when he rose, he was going to kill Stillshadow. If that was not enough to damn his soul, he could not imagine what was.
The air seemed to crackle, as if it was on fire.
The Mk*tk watched in confusion as T’Cori and Quiet Water grasped a spear, and advanced upon him. Incredulous, his mouth hanging half open dumbly, he watched. Not until Quiet Water drew blood from his ribs was he even able to move.
T’Cori watched her body without controlling it. She felt as if that physical shell was a child’s plaything, controlled by some force she had never really known. Something that had always known her.
Flat-Nose was stronger, faster, more skilled, more savage than any Ibandi male. And it did not matter.
She felt no fear, only a kind of hazed curiosity, as if she viewed everything through smoke, while her body went its own way.
How strange.
She saw Flat-Nose’s arm stab and sweep at Quiet Water in a blur that looked a bit like what happened if she stared at the sun and then closed her eyes, watching the orange disk against the blackness.
Real-unreal.
Blink.
The slashing swipe had not happened yet. She moved before he did, but her spear reached him as his motion commenced, exposing his armpit.
She saw him lash that spear back toward her, saw Quiet Water respond, dancing, dancing. Lunging.
She blinked.
No. It had not happened yet. Her body ducked as a slashing blow clef the air above her head. Flat-Nose roared with pain.
Quiet Water’s spear had struck home.
Flat-Nose stepped back, rubbed his left hand against his ribs, and then stared at it. His blood felt sticky as he smeared it between his fingers. He had seen his blood before, many times. Why was this time different?
He had felt fear before. All men did. It was a natural thing. But what he felt now was very different. Fear and shame. He could not die like this. Not like this.
These were women. Just women. This could not be happening. Their spears were not poisoned, but his limbs felt as if they were filled with stones.
Anger could kill fear. This he had always known. This he had learned from his father and grandfather, almost before he could walk.
He found the anger and let it consume him.
Screaming, he sprang at them.
It was a nightmare. No matter how
swiftly he moved, he could not touch them. It was like trying to spear smoke. It was not that they were so fast … the women simply were not there when he struck. If he focused his attention upon one, the other stabbed. If he turned, in the moment his attention flickered, the other spear was in his thigh or ribs or gouging his neck.
He swung and kicked. The women were like willows, bending and twisting out of the way. They nicked his tendons.
His right heel bled. His shoulder was gashed almost to the bone.
Throwing caution to the winds he charged the smaller woman, the one who had killed his brother and jumped into the river. He would destroy her, even if the other one stabbed him in the back. He could survive a wound from one of these women. Then, with only one enemy to defeat, he could turn all his rage upon her.
Even if she killed him from behind, such a coward’s blow would not diminish him in the eyes of the mighty God Blood.
But the small one melted away in front of him. When he charged, she knelt, bracing the butt of her weapon upon the ground, the point threatened his groin.
Screaming frustration, he skidded on his heels and blocked it, but even before his arm swept down hers was rising, as if she had known what he was going to do even before he did it, stabbing him so deeply in the upper arm that as he reared back, it wrenched the spear from her hand.
Desperate now, Flat-Nose pulled her spear out of his flesh. Blood pulsed from the wound. His hand was numb. He opened and closed it, but it had no strength.
Pain!
The larger one had just smashed a stone into the back of his head, and was ducking even as he spun to strike.
Pain!
The small one had a new spear, and his right leg, speared three times now, was finally buckling.
Another stone, this one to the side of his head, and he staggered, the night exploding with stars that burned like suns.
He groaned, turning toward the larger woman, and the smaller one smashed the other side of his head. Suddenly, he no longer possessed the strength even to raise his arms.
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