There came another burst of coarse shouting, much closer now, and a chorus of children’s voices arose, crying out in fear and despair.
Ria surged to her feet with a stone in each hand.
Some of those terrified children were pleading for mercy in the language of the Clan.
‘Wake the others,’ Ria pulsed to Ligar. ‘I’m going to find out what we’re dealing with here. Remember we have thought-talk and wait – wait! – for my command.’ She was already running, swift and soundless, towards the track, darting from tree to tree. Moonlight came and went with the clouds, now bright, now dark again. Faint and pale in the east, still no more than the softest blush brushing the sky, she could sense the approach of dawn.
An immense pine had fallen here in some recent storm. Wrenched free out of a gaping crater in the earth, its huge branching root mass offered plentiful cover and a good vantage point. Returning her two throwing stones to their pouch, Ria climbed and burrowed in amongst the roots where they overhung the track.
The Illimani whose quarrel had alerted Ligar appeared out of the trees less than a hundred paces away. There were four braves in the front rank. Right behind came thirty, maybe forty children, some weeping and protesting, others glum and silent, herded into a pale formless pack. Four more Illimani flanked them, two on each side. Finally there was a rearguard, also of four.
The braves were still making a lot of noise, shouting their argument back and forth, and Ria already had the gist of it. They’d captured the children yesterday. Standing orders required they take them to Sulpa for sacrifice but many in the group resented the diversion and wanted to kill them right away.
‘They’re slowing us down too much,’ one barked. ‘There are battles to fight.’
‘We serve Sulpa,’ another reminded him.
‘We’ll serve him better by finding the Light in the West than climbing down mountains in the dark with a bunch of snivelling kids.’
‘Anyway, they’re our captives. Sulpa doesn’t even know we’ve got them. We can do what we like with them.’
Ria had heard enough. ‘To me!’ she pulsed to her companions as she unsheathed her knife. ‘To me! We have twelve to kill.’ And with the words she sent a clear mental image of where she was and what she saw. ‘Bont, Ligar. Get up ahead to take out the leaders. Grondin, Oplimar, Jergat – the rearguard is yours. No mercy. NO MERCY! Driff, take their right flank; the left is mine.’
The Illimani front rank and the foremost of the children were already passing beneath her perch. The moonlight strengthened as the clouds continued to clear, and with a pang of recognition Ria spotted Bont’s seven-year-old son Nibo and his five-year-old daughter Maura.
It could only mean one thing.
This little Illimani war band had been into the Gate of Horn, found the Clan survivors she’d seen in her vision, and massacred the adults. Bont’s Sabeth was certainly dead.
Abruptly a brave at the front called a halt. He was a short, stocky man, older than most of Sulpa’s toughs, with a wild shock of grey hair and a snoutlike snub nose. ‘Very well, lads,’ he growled, raising his voice to be heard by those at the rear. ‘I’m sick of you all complaining. Here’s as good a place as any to get rid of these snot-nosed kids.’ He drew a knife and turned on the children with an evil grin: ‘Might as well have a bit of fun while we’re at it, eh?’
Ria looked down. Directly beneath her, one of the two guards on the left flank roared with satisfaction and unslung his axe. The children wailed.
‘Ready?’ Ria pulsed to her companions.
Instantly a resounding YES came back.
‘Then hit them! Hit them now!’
Chapter Seventy-Nine
Flying out of her body, far from her own time and place, Leoni felt elated when she saw Ria had understood her warning and had run with her companions into the shelter of a little wood. Elation was replaced by turmoil when the big warrior she thought of as Bear-Skull marched into the same wood to take a shit, but he unloaded and marched out again without noticing anything.
Leoni flew over Bear-Skull’s head to his regiment, already half a mile away, and watched the five hundred men streaming down the long slope into the huge forest from which Ria had so recently emerged. They marched in a disciplined mass and looked unbeatable. Yet they were only a fraction of the much larger army she’d seen gathered round Sulpa by the river when he’d destroyed Ria’s Clan.
Where were all the rest?
Leoni hurled herself upwards, thousands of feet into the sky.
In all directions, near and far, rose ominous pillars of smoke, and in the distance, like ants swarming, she could just make out another long column of marching men. Who could doubt the Illimani were everywhere, in huge numbers, killing everyone they could find?
When the last of Bear-Skull’s regiment had disappeared into the forest, Ria emerged from her hiding place with her companions and Leoni watched them scrambling up the slope in the opposite direction. Ahead, beyond the ridge line, lay the tough, wild country out of which the Illimani had marched – a landscape filled with hummocks and deep hollows but tending ever upwards, criss-crossed by streams and dotted with small forests, the terrain growing steeper and more savage mile after mile. In the far distance it merged into the foothills of a range of jagged snow-capped mountains.
The only sure thing was that there would be more Illimani in there somewhere.
Leoni was already darting forward to search them out for Ria when a tunnel of light, unexpected and unwelcome, swirling and pulsing, blinked open in the sky beside her. An enormous force was already drawing her in. She struggled against it but couldn’t fight it and her last glimpse, looking back and down at the vanishing landscape of the past, was of Ria walking resolute and unafraid into danger.
Leoni felt her consciousness plunging back into the warm breathing mass of her meat body, unstoppable as a diver entering the water from the high board. No! Too soon! Too soon! A wave of fear, regret and pain washed over her. Deserting Ria now, leaving her unprotected in that deadly wilderness, felt like a terrible betrayal.
But then Leoni began choking and coughing, all her senses alert.
A speedboat was approaching, the snarling industrial roar of its outboard tearing the quiet night air of the jungle to shreds.
Leoni was still seated upright on the little bench she’d used for the session. Leoncio was standing beside her with one hand between her shoulder blades, the other holding a glowing censer releasing clouds of astringent smoke into her nostrils. She coughed and spluttered again. This was what had brought her back! As her head cleared of the residual giddiness and disorientation of the journey Leoncio whisked the censer away and helped her to her feet.
The sound of the speedboat’s engine was closer. ‘We have to run,’ said Leoncio. ‘Into the jungle! Mary has your backpack …’
‘But why? What?’
‘Your demon has found us. He’s more powerful than I guessed. His people are here. We’re leaving immediately.’
Bannerman was on his knees on the floor of the maloca, reorganising his knapsack. He’d thrown out most of the clothing, a towel, books, a pair of shoes, and was stuffing in a flashlight, a compass, a Swiss Army knife, a lightweight waterproof, and multiple packages and tubes of medicines from a box that had travelled with them in the boat. Mary had a row of 32-ounce Nalgenes lined up and was filling them with purified water from one of the big plastic barrels they’d brought from the lodge. Don Esteban was packing dried fish, strips of beef jerky, and bunches of plantains into a shoulder bag. Matt was just a shadow down by the creek where the moon, now low in the sky, picked out the metallic glint of the AK-47.
Suddenly he came charging back. ‘There’s more than one boat,’ he announced. ‘Could be two. Maybe even three … We’re out of time.’ The beams of spotlights became visible, juddering and shaking, cutting through the night, and Leoni understood that their pursuers were already on the creek, coming in fast along the other side of the last switc
hback.
Mary had finished with the water bottles, handing two to each of them. Leoncio led the way, Matt took up the rear, and with Bannerman still fumbling with his knapsack they fled into the jungle.
Stumbling, almost losing her balance, Leoni still found the presence of mind to check the luminous hands of her Rolex as she ran. It was just after three a.m. Less than three hours of darkness remained, and the moon was still bright. Way too bright. Back at the creek the macho roar of the speedboats’ engines fell silent. She heard men shouting – there were so many – and saw their flashlight beams lancing through the trees.
Leoncio was up ahead, leading the way, but if there was a trail Leoni couldn’t see it. She was wearing denim jeans and a pair of good walking boots which kept the worst of the undergrowth from tearing her legs and feet to shreds, but her short-sleeved cotton shirt did nothing to protect her upper body and arms which were soon covered in painful scrapes and scratches.
Then she ran into something solid, smacking her forehead very hard, and fell with a stifled scream into a heap of brushwood teeming with biting insects which swarmed into her hair and clothes. Bannerman, who’d been right behind her, rushed to her side, whispering soothing words: ‘Hush, Leoni, hush, I’m here. Don’t be afraid.’ He took her hand, supported her back and was hauling her to her feet when gunfire broke out from the direction of the creek.
Suddenly – horror – bullets were whipping and buzzing through the trees all around them. Leoni screamed again as something plucked at her arm, Bannerman grunted, an awful sound, and slumped forward against her, a dead weight bearing her down.
Chapter Eighty
Ria slithered out of the knot of upended roots she’d hidden in, fell onto the guard’s back, wrapped her thighs around his waist for purchase and sliced her blade through the big artery in his neck. With a fountain of blood gushing up from him he dropped his axe, staggered and crashed to the ground. She crouched over his heaving body, looking left and right.
There’d been two guards on this flank. Where was the second one? Distracted by screaming stampeding kids Ria caught his sudden charge out of the corner of her eye and avoided a wild spear thrust. She palmed a stone, threw herself sideways in a somersault, and ducked into the shadows beside the track.
She heard shouts and blows from the front and rear of the column, and a chorus of screams, but there was nothing to be done about that. The brave with the spear lunged at her, panting and cursing as she squirmed and wriggled away from him. She dived into thick bushes, feeling thorns tear her skin, twisted her body to escape another vicious lunge, forced her way ahead and burst out the other side. Right behind her the Illimani had become tangled in the briars and his forward rush had stopped. He struggled and freed himself but by then Ria was thirty paces away behind a tree, and ready.
The moon gave her a good look at the shaggy, murderous savage. He stopped twenty paces from her, charged at a bush and thrust his spear into it. He glared and charged again, spearing another bush. But it was obvious he’d lost her and he turned back, suddenly wary, towards the track where the sounds of fighting had now died away. Ria heard Driff ’s thought-voice, and Grondin’s, inside in her head, both filled with concern, trying to locate her. ‘I live,’ she pulsed and stepped from behind the tree.
‘Hey, shitface,’ she said softly in Illimani.
The brave whirled and she saw him register the flint knife she held, glinting in the moonlight. He seemed to realise for the first time that he confronted a girl, bared his filed teeth in a scornful sneer, and charged. As she hurled her stone left-handed to strike him between the eyes a cloud blew across the moon. She heard a heavy clunk but knew she’d missed the kill when the roaring Illimani smashed into her in the sudden darkness, knocked her to the ground with his full weight and crashed down on top of her in a tangle of knees, hard muscle and bad smells. Ria felt the shaft of his spear trapped under her body – good! – but the brave was all over her, thrusting at her like a lover. He got his powerful hands round her throat, bore down on her windpipe and lifted his upper body to increase his leverage. His fingers tightened but she’d held on to the knife and as the moon reappeared she stabbed the long blade into his hot, sweaty armpit, found the soft unprotected spot there and pushed upward so hard the point erupted through the top of his shoulder. He screeched and spat blood but didn’t let go and when she twisted the knife and jerked it out to stab him again he took his left hand off her throat and grabbed her wrist. He continued to strangle her with his right hand, his big thumb grinding into her larynx, so Ria didn’t much mind the indignity of being rescued when Driff came flying out of the darkness and killed him.
Everyone had played their parts, it seemed, and all twelve of the Illimani were dead. But were more following? Did more lie in their path? When she and her companions had numbered only seven, Ria reflected, they could move fast and hide in an instant. Now, with close to forty children to bring back to Secret Place, they would be slow, unwieldy and very easy to see.
As Ria walked back to the scene of the ambush with Driff she saw Bont clutching his little son Nibo and his daughter Maura in great bear-hugs of joy, whooping and cheering with relief. Through the openness of thought-talk, she shared the deep pain and distress he struggled hard to hide at the certain news that Sabeth was gone.
Past Bont, the other children they’d saved were still milling on the track. With a few exceptions, they had the look of a pathetic panic-stricken herd. None had more than eleven summers, half had yet to reach seven, most were bruised and battered from multiple falls after the forced night-march, and several were close to collapse. All had seen their elders murdered. Some were so browbeaten and brutalised they cowered at the slightest movement. Some wept and called out for dead parents. Others were wide-eyed, shocked and silent.
Including Nibo and Maura, only eight were of the Clan. The other twenty-eight were from various local and some more distant tribes – mostly the Merell and the Naveen, but also a smattering from the Ree, the Jicaque, the Spearjig, and even the Kosh. Ria moved amongst them in the rising dawn light, speaking to them in their own languages, ruffling this one’s hair, resting a cheering hand on that one’s shoulder, even drawing hesitant smiles from a few.
All told much the same story: a narrow escape from Illimani raiders deep in their homelands, followed by terrified flight, mostly in small family groups, to what they’d thought was the safety of the Gate of Horn. There, one by one, they’d been hunted down – the adults slaughtered and the children rounded up for sacrifice – by the war party of a dozen braves that Ria and her companions had just destroyed.
Had they seen anything, Ria asked, to make them suspect other Illimani war parties had been in the area and might be heading this way? None of them could answer. They did not know. But many looked back with fear in the direction from which they had come.
Ria’s first instinct was to run.
Now.
But it was obvious the children were too tired, hungry and confused for that. They wouldn’t get far on the long march to Secret Place unless she got some food and some courage into them. It was a gamble but Ria ordered the whole group off the track, away from the splayed bodies of the Illimani and into the rocky outcrop where she and her companions had spent the night. With full daylight coming on fast, a new fire was lit and a good breakfast made of the supplies of fresh meat – rabbit, wildfowl and a side of hog – that the Illimani had been forcing the children to carry for them.
Although they had seen the Uglies fight to save them from the Illimani, most of the kids were suspicious of these strange-looking creatures who featured so often as ogres and monsters in scare stories told by their parents. But Ria summoned Jergat and Oplimar into their midst and soon the whole group began to calm down. There was something kindly and sympathetic about Oplimar that transcended language, and his bushy red beard, wrinkled leathery features and twinkling eyes gave him a comical air. Jergat, lean and slight for an Ugly, had an innocent sense of fun. He sat
on the ground amongst a group of the smaller children and allowed them to prod and poke at him and pull his matted hair. It wasn’t long before he had a little Naveen boy and a girl of the Spearjig on his shoulders.
While they ate, and the Uglies provided gentle healing to the most damaged, Ria studied the few children who stood out, who didn’t look defeated, who still had some fight in them. She settled on four who she thought would serve her purpose. This was to marshal and organise the others and keep them moving through at least the two days – quite possibly three – that it would take them to reach Secret Place. Such a trek would have been difficult for the younger children at any time. But now they had Illimani war parties to contend with as well – including at least one entire troop of five hundred under the leadership of Martu and Sakkan, roaming these parts looking for trouble.
Darza, a boy of nine, was of the Clan. Ria had not known his family well but she remembered him as a plucky little brat always getting into fights with older children who tormented him on account of a livid birthmark covering the entire left side of his face. He was small-boned and quite delicate, with a calm, serious manner. He didn’t seem in the least bit afraid.
Then there was the Naveen boy Entu, aged ten but as heavily built as a teenager. His domed head had recently been shaved, no doubt to clear lice, giving him a strange stubbly appearance, but his strength would be an asset and she’d seen he was gentle with the younger children.
Birsing, a tall fierce-faced eleven-year-old of the Merell, had the thick red hair, green eyes and pale freckled skin typical of her people. Right after the fight she’d spoken in a rush in a high, clear voice, saying something Ria hadn’t been able to understand very well. Something baffling about a prophecy. Then she’d clammed up tight and said no more. Her green eyes stared out with hostility and rage at everyone. Ria liked the look of her.
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