BeneathCeaselessSkies Issue009

by Unknown

  I drank some water and looked at the antelope carcass, but it was swarming with flies. I dragged it away from camp, and was pleased that the activity didn’t make me feel weak or feverish again.

  I waited through the heat of the day for Mbuna, but it seemed he was truly gone this time. I gathered my things together into my pack and put my shirt on. I had seen the direction Mbuna had gone on his trips to the waterhole, and after a little while I took the drinking gourd and set off to find it.

  It was small, a half-acre pond surrounded by trees. I washed my face and refilled the gourd, my boots sinking into mud marked with thousands of animal tracks. On my way back through the trees, I noticed the melon vines and picked two melons to take with me.

  I decided to wait one more night before going after Reynold. I returned to camp, and Mbuna was waiting for me.

  He nodded as I approached, and smiled at the melons. I gave him the gourd to drink from, but when I took out my knife to cut one of the melons in two, he stopped me.

  “We need those. No water before we reach the camp.”

  “You’re going to help? We can take on the whole camp together, the two of us, if we plan it right.”

  “We’ll kill your father’s killer. That’s all. Rest first.”

  I tried to rest, but I was too excited. Finally I said, “Let’s go now. I feel fine.”

  Mbuna frowned, but he got up.

  We didn’t talk much on the way. Mbuna set a pace that seemed far too slow; when I tried to hurry us, I ended up leaving him behind. I wasn’t sure where we were, so my directions to the encampment were useless. I had to stop and wait for him to catch up.

  “It’s going to be dark by the time we get there,” I said. “We’ll have to wait for morning.”

  Mbuna looked surprised. “Why?”

  “Because he’ll be asleep.” When Mbuna’s expression didn’t alter, I said, “I won’t kill a sleeping man. I’m no coward.”

  “I know you aren’t.” He didn’t speed up.

  “Mbuna, please—I’ve waited so long. Go a little faster.”

  “A year, another year. One day.” Mbuna snorted. But he lengthened his stride.

  He made us stop after an hour to sit in the shade of a thorn tree. I didn’t want to admit it, but I was glad for the rest.

  We followed our lengthening shadows for another hour before a waterhole came into view. It was much larger than the one near Mbuna’s camp. Then I saw the rows of military tents, and my heart began to race.

  We crept within a quarter mile of the camp, and Mbuna made me rest again. “Damn you, we’re nearly there,” I snapped at him.

  “The camp won’t run away.” He handed me a melon.

  I hacked it in two with ill grace, but Mbuna was right. We crouched in the tall grass and watched the camp.

  The sky still gave light, although the sun had nearly set. Frogs and cicadas shrilled from the waterhole. I watched soldiers finishing the evening chores, and by the time I’d finished my share of the melon, the camp was quiet.

  “Now we have to wait all night,” I said, disgusted. I threw the melon rind down.

  “Come with me.”

  Mbuna crawled through the grass like a shadow. I followed more clumsily. When we reached the edge of the encampment, Mbuna whispered, “You said he leads these men. Before he sleeps, he will make sure all is well.”

  We waited again, and it wasn’t long before I saw a lone figure walking among the tents.

  I caught my breath in a hiss. I hadn’t seen Reynold since I was a boy, but I recognized him. Mbuna leaned over and whispered, “He walks like a rooster. Wait for me.”

  He changed to his lion body and began to stalk forward, step by step. “Mbuna, no,” I said. “It’s my fight.”

  He stopped and looked back at me for a moment, and his eyes caught the last of the sunlight. They gleamed green-gold. Then he settled down on his belly, and the tip of his tail twitched as he stared at Reynold.

  I stood up. My whole life had come down to this moment. I strode forward onto the trampled grass.

  Reynold saw me almost immediately. “You—state your business here,” he said, his hand going to his sword hilt.

  My father’s sword hilt. I recognized it even in the dusk light. “I’m here for my father’s sword,” I said softly. “You’ve had it long enough, murderer.”

  I’d planned the words for years, and they felt sweet to say. I drew my sword.

  Reynold drew his. Shadows filled the lines of his face and made him look far older than his years.

  I leaped at him before he’d brought his guard up, a trick I’d learned at the cost of a few scars. But my sword felt heavy, and my body didn’t have enough strength to answer my demands properly.

  Reynold hadn’t spent the last several days recovering from fever. He had probably eaten more than antelope and melons too. He drove me back toward the long grass, his teeth bared, every swing of his sword fast and sure. It was all I could do to parry his blows without falling down.

  All my plans, all my life’s work, and I hadn’t had the patience to wait until my strength returned. I’d have done better to kill Reynold in his sleep after all.

  My foot caught in the grass. I saw Reynold’s sword flash in the darkness, a killing thrust. It never landed.

  For a moment Mbuna was nothing but a shape between me and Reynold. I heard massive blows as lion paws batted Reynold back and forth like a doll. Then he was sprawled on his back, staring at the first stars with eyes that would never see anything again.

  I fell to my knees, too weak to stand. Mbuna had killed Reynold bloodlessly; no claw or tooth marks showed how he had died. From the funny way Reynold’s head lay, I guessed his neck had snapped.

  But I saw the dark gleam of blood on the grass, and realized Reynold’s sword hand was empty.

  Mbuna gave a little grunt and his tail lashed once. Reynold’s last swing had plunged the sword into the lion’s side, nearly to the hilt, but when Mbuna changed to his human body the sword fell to the ground.

  “Are you going to be all right?” I asked him. His human body appeared uninjured, but I saw the gleam of sweat on his forehead.

  He shrugged. “Take your father’s sword.”

  I picked up the sword and held it for the first time since I was a boy. Its blade was smeared with Mbuna’s blood. My father had made the sword, but Reynold had turned it into a weapon. “I don’t want it anymore.”

  “No. Keep it. Your father made it, and it is beautiful.”

  “But you might die because of it.”

  “I might die from a fever. I might die from a snakebite. I might die an old man.”

  I looked at him doubtfully—despite his words, he sounded strained. I looked at Reynold too, but felt no relief or joy. Mbuna put his hand on my shoulder and guided me away from the encampment.

  We walked slowly. “You should go home to your green fields,” he said. “Take a wife and give her children. You have been a son, and now you can be a father.”

  “I’m just a soldier. I know no trade.”

  “A soldier knows how men think.” Mbuna gave me a sideways look out of the corner of his eye. “Go to your king’s men, tell them about Daomi. Tell them to stop sending soldiers here to die.”

  I touched the hilt of my father’s sword; it hung at my side now, where it belonged. Something inside me seemed to break free and fly away, a piece of my father’s soul that I had held captive for so many years. “I’ll do it,” I said. “I’ll do what I can for Daomi.”

  “Thank you, Waters.”

  We walked almost two miles, with Mbuna leaning heavily on my shoulder by the end. “Here,” he said finally, once we’d reached a low rise. “Look how far I can see. Look how much of Daomi I can see.”

  The moon had risen and gleamed on a sea of grass, which whispered around us in the night breeze. “It’s beautiful, Mbuna,” I said.

  “Yes.” He sat down with difficulty. “Daomi will take me back,” he said, and patted the gr
ound as though it was the flank of a massive beast. “Go now. I want to be alone.”

  “Thank you, Mbuna,” I whispered, but before I’d finished speaking he had changed back to his lion body. He slumped down and the last breath left him in a sigh.

  He had both killed and died for what he wanted most in life. And he had left me with a purpose greater than revenge.

  I took my father’s sword. I went home.

  Copyright © 2009 by K.C. Shaw