Path of the Tiger

by J M Hemmings

  ‘I ain’t no fighter,’ she murmured, pressing her knees together, gripping the edges of her chair and praying that nobody could pick up on the fear and insincerity in her voice that felt so glaringly apparent to her, ‘but I can help Jun with the computer stuff, and uh, well, work with Jun to help y’all.’

  ‘I’m honoured that some of you want to fight alongside us, but I can’t allow it,’ William said, his countenance grim. ‘Not that I’m in charge or anything, but if it’s a vote, I cannot in good conscience allow children to take up arms and kill, no matter what the cause. You can do what Jun has suggested, but as for going into battle with guns, I say no.’

  ‘I d-, don’t mean no d-, disrespect, William,’ Daekwon retorted, ‘but we ain’t k-, kids. Yeah, we teenagers, but we ain’t schoolkids no mo’. We can’t never go b-, back to what we was or who we was; them Huntsmen made d-, d-, damn sure a’ that.’

  ‘I admire your spirit, lad, I truly do, and yours too, Chloe,’ William countered, ‘but I’ve been in your shoes. I was only a few years older than you when I first went to war, and the experience changed me forever, permanently altering who I was, who I am, and not in a good way. For young people in the prime of their youth like you guys, to have fight, to have to kill other human beings, and to experience the horrors of battle and warfare … it’ll destroy you. I don’t mean to suggest that you’re weak; quite the contrary, really. Everything I’ve seen of your characters so far has impressed me tremendously, and you’re far stronger and more resilient than anyone could ever have expected you to be, under such circumstances. But … you’re beautiful too. I don’t mean that about the way you look – although you’re all lovely specimens in the looks department, hahaha, don’t get me wrong, lads and lasses – but what I’m talking about is the beauty in your hearts and souls. The beauty of youth, untainted by the worst darkness the world is capable of unleashing, and unblemished by the ugliness of violence and killing. Once you’ve stepped through that one-way door, that innocence will be gone forever … and I don’t want us to be the ones who push you across that threshold.’

  ‘Y’all ain’t doin’ no p-, pushin’,’ Daekwon said. ‘We the ones who be choosin’ to d-, do this. Look, my granddaddy, he f-, f-, fought in Vietnam when he was eighteen. A couple d-, days after his eighteenth birthday he was d-, drafted, and a couple months after that he was in the j-, j-, jungle, fightin’ fo’ his life. I’m almost as old now as he was then. He c-, came out okay, a lil’ messed up I guess, b-, but mostly okay. We ain’t got d-, drafted though, we got s-, somethin’ way worse, because the whole d-, damn country wants us d-, d-, dead. Just like my granddaddy, we been forced into a war we d-, didn’t plan on fightin’. But now that I understand what we really fightin’ fo’ – beyond just c-, clearin’ our names an’ shit – I wanna fight. I wanna put my life on the line. Because what y’all be fightin’ for, it’s worth fightin’ for, like Chloe s-, said, mo’ than anythin’. It’s worth d-, dyin’ for, an’ since my life is basically over anyway, I’m ready to d-, d-, die fo’ this cause.’

  ‘I am too,’ Chloe added, steadfast and determined.

  Jun nodded, his stony visage betraying not even the slightest trace of any emotion, positive or negative, while Paola simply stared at the floor and upped the freneticism of her fingernail gnawing.

  ‘We need all the fighters we can get, William,’ Zakaria said softly. ‘And I myself was but twelve years old when I first took the life of another man in combat. I will not say it was a pleasant experience … but it was a necessary one. Had I not killed that man, all those years ago in a dusty alley in Soba, he would have murdered me and raped my sister. And, bless her departed soul, if that had happened, and my centuries of existence were pre-emptively wiped out before they could even unfold, all of the good I have done in that time would never have been done.’

  ‘It hurts me to say this,’ Njinga said with a long, slow sigh, ‘but I agree with Zakaria. We need every soldier we can get for this fight. I hate violence as much as any of y’all, but we’ve been pushed so far into a corner that there’s only one option left: fight or die.’

  ‘Dark are the days when children must go to war,’ was all Lightning Bird murmured, clasping his hands together, his eyes staring at a spot on the floor, but focused on an agonisingly vivid memory of war and genocide, a nightmare reel of flickering red, the ragged strip of film spinning with a haunting clatter in his brain; loud and immediate were the percussive thuds of long rifles, the doom drumming peppered with the cracks of pistols and the anguished screams of the dying.

  ‘I guess you g-, got outvoted,’ Daekwon said to William. ‘I know you d-, don’t like it, man, an’ fo’ real, I ain’t too happy about havin’ to p-, pick up a g-, g-, gun neither, but I can’t just sit back an’ let the Huntsmen get away wid’ what they d-, done to us, an’ what they d-, d-, doin’ to, to err’thing. Somebody gotta s-, stop them.’

  ‘I cannot and will not sit back while those scumbags literally destroy everything that is good and green and beautiful on this planet,’ Chloe declared, her resolve shining like a lighthouse in the night. ‘I know you’re just looking out for us William, but we’re old enough to know what we’re doing. We’re old enough to make our own decisions, and my decision is to fight those assholes with everything I’ve got.’

  Njinga’s face glowed, and she stared at Chloe with unabashed pride in her gaze.

  ‘You got spirit girl, you got heart,’ she said. ‘The rest a’ you too, all a’ you. I’m proud an’ honoured that y’all are willing to do this. I need y’all to understand, though, the risks that are involved. This ain’t no game, an’ if you die … that’s it, it’s over, forever. An’ death or serious, lifelong injury is a very, very real risk.’

  Daekwon shrugged.

  ‘They tryin’ a’ k-, kill us all anyway. Don’t matter none if we fight or r-, run. They won’t never let us b-, b-, be, an’ I don’t wanna live the rest a’ my life lookin’ over my sh-, shoulder, wonderin’ when they g-, gon’ hit me. Might as well t-, take it to ‘em, hit ‘em as hard as I can while I got the ch-, chance t’ do that.’

  ‘It’s kill or be killed,’ Chloe added. ‘And I hate, I mean hate guns and violence … but what else can we do? These people are like literal fuckin’ terminators. They won’t stop until you’re dead, until we’re dead. We can’t plead or argue or bribe or debate our way out of this situation. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but we have to fight ‘em. We have to fight the bastards.’

  ‘We will strike at them when they least expect it, in the place they least expect,’ Zakaria growled. ‘We have no strength in numbers, but we are not fighting for money and riches, as they are. We are fighting for our very lives, and for the survival of everything we hold dear. We have that on our side at least, and the element of surprise.’

  ‘How is this g-, gon’ work?’ Daekwon asked.

  ‘We’ve been communicating with fellow Rebels in Cambodia and Thailand,’ Zakaria answered. ‘Everything is now in place for our precision strike: a surprise attack against the headquarters of the Alliance, located in Bangkok. I’ll explain more about this to each of you later, when my friends and I have discussed amongst ourselves how best to put each of your volunteering efforts to use. For the moment, what we need to do is flee this country, head over to Cambodia, train intensely in the jungle for a few weeks, and then hit the Huntsmen and the Alliance traitors with everything we’ve got.’

  ‘Word,’ Daekwon said. ‘I’m d-, down fo’ ‘dat.’

  ‘Let’s get ‘em,’ Chloe said, clenching her hands into fists.

  Jun simply nodded, looking determined, and Paola added a weak ‘yeah’ to her friends’ expressions of enthusiasm.

  ‘Well, since you’re all on board,’ Zakaria said, ‘let’s start discussing details.’

  ***

  Zakaria, alone on the peak of the mountain, after having stashed a number of emergency items in a hidden crate there, stared up in awe at the night sky. On this peak, the
highest in the region, he felt as if he was a microscopic figurine in a gargantuan snow globe, with the countless specks of light all around him like luminescent fragments of artificial snow, frozen in motion against the black crystal dome of the sphere. On this moonless night the Milky Way, a concave tear of jagged, splintered lights, glittered bold and bright against the void beyond. Now that the old warrior had completed his mission, he had one last thing to do before he could retire for the night. He walked over to a nearby boulder and picked up the item he had left leaning there: his two-handed sword.

  Zakaria had no need of watch or clock to tell the time; centuries of performing this ritual had embedded the stroke of midnight into his body clock as indelibly as if his DNA had been altered. This had been his temple, his cathedral, for countless mortal lifetimes now – the open night sky, whether its velvety dome, white and silver with the angle-grinder shower of spark-stars, crowned a sandy desert, or whether the inverted bowl was a black sludge of storm clouds above a rolling ocean, streaked in dazzling flashes with blinding violet veins of lightning. Here, in this sacred place, he knelt in preparation for his communion with the divine.

  For his altar, his idol, the object via which he channelled his focus, he held his sword out before him with straight-locked arms, its point resting on the stony ground, its blade, crossguard, grip and pommel forming a cross. His naked fingers curled around the broad blade, its sharp edges digging into his skin but not piercing it. With his vision locked on the weapon in front of him he began to pray, whispering in his mother tongue, the old language of the lost East African Kingdom of Alwa.

  ‘Great Mother, source of light, conductor of the energy of the universe and giver of life to all living beings, both in this world and others beyond our powers of perception and comprehension, I, a faithful servant of the Western Council and a bearer of the Five Flames, beseech You, hear my prayers.’

  He paused here to sigh and then inhale deeply. As he drew the crisp air into his lungs, his grip on the sword tightened.

  ‘Great Mother, as I have done countless times before, I come to You for guidance. I remain Your faithful servant, Your torch-flame against the corrupting powers of hatred, greed and malice, and my faith in Your benevolence and love remains as strong as it ever has. But…’

  He trailed off and exhaled slowly, and his grip on the blade intensified.

  ‘But when will the time of reckoning come? When? How can the forces of evil and hatred have grown so powerful that we are at the point at which their victory is almost guaranteed? Why must we face defeat after defeat, and watch our brothers and sisters fall, one by one, while the enemy grows ever stronger? How can You have watched the slaughter and destruction of all that was once good and living … watched it and done nothing!’

  Zakaria’s voice became a low, desperate whisper, and the words that crawled from his lips emerged as raspy, wrath-laden growls.

  ‘I have sacrificed everything for You. I had to abandon my brothers and sisters to be burned alive at Château de Montségur in 1244, for the sake of carrying away the most valuable treasure possessed by the Western Council … one of the great Councils who served You with undying devotion, even until the ends of their own lives at the hands of the enemy. They were Your faithful, unquestioning servants, loyal until death … who You allowed to be destroyed. And what of my brother N’Jalabenadou, the only other survivor of the massacre of the Western Council, Great Mother? His presence lingers in this world, I can feel it, but it has been many centuries since I last saw him. I yearn for his wisdom, his power, and his guidance. We need his strength now more than ever, Great Mother! I know that he is still alive, for I can feel it in my bones. Why can you not lead us to him? Why?! This is our darkest hour, and all hope seems to be lost. Surely You can see this! The forces of evil are more powerful now than they have ever been, and we, the last of Your servants, are at our weakest.’

  He breathed in slowly, filling his lungs, aware that anger was taking hold of him and doing his best to calm himself. His efforts were futile, however; a darker sort of shadow flickered across his features.

  ‘And what of me?’ he hissed. ‘Why have you seen fit to gift others of my kind with all manner of powers, while I have only the power to maim and kill? Yes, I turned my back on the Councils for a long time, but I was not the only one to have done this! And the others have fallen prey to their vices far more often than I have. William is weak in the face of temptation, yet he possesses access to a greater power than any I have ever been gifted with! And Njinga, a being who is filled with anger and vitriol, is given the ability to communicate with our animal and bird brethren! Lightning Bird can bring back mortals from the brink of death, and harness the old energy of the trees and forests, yet he never served on any of the Councils of our kind! All of them are far younger than I, and have not served You with the same tireless, unquestionable devotion that I have. Why must I, Your most faithful servant, be left with no special ability, no power, nothing to make me exceptional but the brute strength and vicious speed of movement to fight and kill? Is that all I am, all I can ever be, despite my spiritual devotion … a base brute with a talent for meting out violence? Why must this be my lot, my only gift?!’

  Tears began to condense at the corners of his single functioning eye, and one by one they inched their way down his cheek. A bitter anger fizzed on his tongue like a regurgitated, half-dissolved pill.

  ‘We did everything You wanted, everything we thought You wanted, my brothers and sisters and I of the Western Council. And yet you allowed the Catholic Church and their crusader army, led by Huntsmen lords and their lackey knights, to besiege us, to starve us out. And then, in the end, when we knew we could not win, the Council sent me and N’Jalabenadou out with the one treasure our order possessed: Your Grail. We snuck through their lines by the darkness of a moonless night, but we watched from the hills as they took the castle in the days that followed. And we watched helplessly as our friends, our brothers, our sisters, and our teachers, who had walked the Earth since the dawn of time, were burned alive in that monstrous bonfire … that hellfire. We watched as the Huntsmen tore down our fortress and defiled and destroyed everything we had worked over centuries to build. And … and … You let it happen! You let us be written out of history, as if we had not existed at all! You let your most faithful, pious and peace-loving servants be tortured, humiliated degraded and murdered!’

  His words now came through gritted teeth, and flecks of spittle flew at irregular intervals from his lips, while his meaty hands quivered with intensity as they squeezed the sword blade in a python’s throttling grip.

  ‘You gave me a gift, oh yes, you gave me a gift all right … the gift of pain. Of bitterness. Of unending wrath, to fuel my sword-arm through the centuries. Yet that was the only thing I didn’t want! Why couldn’t I have been a martyr, along with all of my brothers and sisters? Why did I have to live, while they were allowed to shed their flesh-prisons, their cages of meat and bone, while my suffering soul remains trapped in this scarred body of mine? And why, why have You not given me the peace and enlightenment that You gave to so many others of my kind? Why couldn’t You see fit to bestow on me the same gifts of wisdom and power You have given to others, others who have only served You with a fraction of the dedication that I have? Is this some drawn-out test of faith? Why must You do this?! Have I not spent enough time proving my faith again and again? Why, why, why have You not given me anything?! You cannot blame me, and nor can You blame N’Jalabenadou, for turning away from the Councils and striking out a path of our own. Not after what happened to our brothers and sisters of the Western Council. What You allowed to happen to them! Yet even when N’Jalabenadou and I and a few others started our own faction, we were always, always loyal, above anything else, to You. We simply interpreted Your teachings in a … different … way to the way the Councils did. But everything we did, everything we believed, it was all for You, Great Mother.’

  Tears were rolling down his cheeks, and t
he steel edge of the blade was biting into his hands and fingers. His prayer, however, only became even more fervent.

  ‘I speak to You, Great Spirit, I pray to You, I pray with such zeal and dedication, yet all I get in return is silence. Silence! Hollow silence, and this unending pain and emptiness! How much longer will You test me?! How much longer must I prove my faith to You before I receive a reward?! Those of us who serve You, who serve the Light, we are few and we are weak, so very weak … yet those who serve the powers of darkness are many, and they have grown strong, almost to the point of invincibility. It plants seeds in my mind sometimes, seeds of … seeds of things of which I do not – cannot – speak. But there is … temptation … yes, temptation…’

  He bowed his head and knelt in silence for a while, breathing heavily and sweating from the intensity of his concentration and exertion.

  ‘Forgive me my doubts and my sins,’ he muttered eventually. ‘Forgive me, Great Spirit, Mother of Light and Giver of Life. I am always … Your faithful servant.’

  When he stood up, still trembling slightly from the vociferousness of his tirade, he felt a liquid warmth pooling between his fingers. He looked down and saw the darkness of blood shading his hands; in the delirium of his prayer, he had throttled his sword blade to the point at which the steel had fought back. He stared emotionlessly at the blood for a while, wiped his hands off on the front of his black trousers, sheathed the sword and then turned around and trudged listlessly into the night forest.

  ***

  Lightning Bird wandered barefoot through the trees, as he always did; the vast web of interconnected life in this forest provided him with nourishing energy with every step he took, his feet like the deep roots of an ancient tree, slowly and continuously drawing water from the ground. A gentle breeze whispered its susurrus hiss through the pine and spruce needles, and rippled with playful abandon through the shaman’s long jet-black hair, which hung loose about his shoulders and glowed like a halo in the rich gold shafts of late afternoon sunlight that cut through the spaces between trees. The light wind danced along the surface of his black and red plaid shirt, and then scuttled over the surface of his loose jeans before splitting off into a hundred wayward zephyrs and dissipating into the cool air. Lightning Bird laughed as the dancing current of air left him, and stretched his arms out to either side to allow the last breath of the breeze to trickle its gleeful effervescence along his sleeves, and to bask in the soothing warmth of the fading sunshine. Then, smiling and content in his solitude, he continued his stroll, feeling a greater and greater sense of deep contentment and latent power with every footfall on the soft carpet of moss, soil and dead leaves.