The kwea unmade him.
The Mastodon Man sniffed the air, saw Ayuvah lying under the door. He hunched forward, and in doing so knocked down a section of wall. He looked at the stones on the floor, then grabbed Ayuvah’s shoulder, shook him, lifted him like a doll and swatted his head against the stones, splattering blood and white ooze across the room. Behind him, Tull heard children screaming, dozens of children, shrieking in the night.
“Pin you to the wall!” the Mastodon Man said in Jenks’s voice. “You can’t escape!”
Tull heard the words clearly. He’d never felt such fear while watching the water in Denai, not when the serpents leapt for him. He’d only felt it the night Little Chaa was killed, and he knew his father’s words were true: Tull was a Thrall, pinned in this spot by fear.
A child tried to run past the Mastodon Man. The beast scooped it up, took a bite.
Tull saw the shadow of another child running; the little humans were trying to escape the hut.
“Adjonai!” Tull shouted, for he suddenly saw that the god had come in disguise.
The Mastodon Man grunted and stepped backward into the night. Tull jumped to his feet, swung his sword in an arc, and rushed forward. The Mastodon Man reached out, took Tull by the shoulder and threw him face-first against the wall.
Tull stood a half second, stunned by the blow, and felt giant hands on the nape of his neck.
The Mastodon Man spun him in the air, pulled Tull forward, and the beast opened its mouth, showing four-inch canines. It leaned forward to bite Tull’s throat.
Tull swung his sword up between them, shoving it with all his might, cleaving Mastodon Man’s jaws so that the blade embedded in its face.
Blood spurted from a ragged hole in the beast’s mouth.
The Mastodon Man roared, threw Tull to the far side of the room, turned and put its knuckles to the snow and rushed from the building. Tull raced after it, and found his bloody sword in the snow by the door.
The Mastodon Man headed for the cover of the brush downhill, ran a dozen yards and then foundered in the snow. It tried to crawl away, looking for all the world like a wounded child struggling to crawl in a bed with white sheets.
Tull ran forward and slashed it across the kidneys, and the creature lay dying, its legs spasming.
Tull breathed out, his soul cloud fogging the air. He whirled around, searching for signs of danger, or more Mastodon Men.
A gray bird sat in its oak and watched him, unblinking.
Tull surveyed the damage. The door and a corner of the building had fallen. They hadn’t been proof against a beast of such size. Two little humans were trampled, and several others stood stunned by the enormity of the Mastodon Man.
There was not much left of Ayuvah. His skull was punctured, his brains spattered upon the ground. The hollow of his cranium had filled with blood the way a bowl left outside will fill with rainwater. The red blood darkened his orange hair.
Tull looked at the mess in shock, for it had happened in less than a minute, and then he began stacking rocks, making the house proof against the cold.
Waves of grief washed over him as he worked, and Tull was amazed at their power, for the grief he felt for Ayuvah was as strong as the grief he’d felt for Wisteria.
I will finish this house, and then I will sit down to die, Tull thought. Yet he worked in the cold. “When love fails you, and you are filled with pain, you can still be moved by devotion,” Ayuvah had said. Tull stacked the rocks mindlessly. The task seemed so ordinary, so common. He was a drudge, placing stones one upon another. A drudge once again, fit for nothing else. If he were in Smilodon Bay, he’d be hauling wood for some human. He filled the cracks with snow, making the building airtight.
He smelled something burning, noticed that the leg of ox needed turning. He cranked it, realized dimly that the smell of cooking meat had lured the Mastodon Man to the building. I should have seen the danger.
Tull pushed the door back in place, in order to keep out the cold, keep out the night. Some holes can never be filled, he thought. The holes left in a man’s life when he loses family.
The little humans stood around the room, naked, gaping at Ayuvah. Some wept openly, and Tull realized what a shock this must have been. Over the past two weeks, Ayuvah had been the provider to these people. Now their god was dead. Tull sat in the dirt beside Ayuvah, and held his brother’s hand.
Phylomon and Scandal were camped down by the boat still. Tull realized that he would need to go tell them what had happened, but right now, he didn’t have the heart to do it.
As he sat, he recalled Ayuvah’s final conversation, the doll he had made for Sava, how he had wanted it wrapped.
The blood of the Spirit Walkers must run strong in the family, Tull reasoned, for Ayuvah was nervous before his death. Certainly, he must have had a premonition. Or had it been more?
Ayuvah had trained himself to hunt by scent. Even Tull had smelled the creature just before the attack. Couldn’t Ayuvah have smelled the Mastodon Man? Yet he’d sat by the door and let himself be killed.
Outside, lightning flashed in the sky, sometimes easing off during the night, other times renewing in fury. The wind drove through chinks in the stone walls, and Tull got up and packed dirt from the floor into the cracks. He wanted the room to be warm.
He turned the ox’s leg through the night, and let the fire burn low. Finally, in spite of the wind howling outside the door, the room warmed.
Tull sat crossed-legged, and grief shook him. At times he would sit, thinking of nothing at all, and would realize he was remembering something stupid, like the time Ayuvah went on his first egg raid and gave an egg to Etanai, hoping that with the gift he could seduce her.
She’d lured him into her father’s Hogan, undressed him, and then ran screaming from the hogan with Ayuvah’s clothes in hand so that everyone would see.
Eventually, Tull smelled the air turn chill at the approach of dawn, though the sky was blackened by thick clouds. Tull got up and set a new fire to warm the hut, and laid the leg of ox aside, for it was fully cooked.
He recalled that Ayuvah had wanted sturgeon for breakfast, but the water would be too murky to see them. Surely, with the clouds so thick, it would be too dark to fish.
Tull bolted up straight. With the water so murky, he would not be able to see the fish. The fish would be forced to feed on the bottom.
A strange sensation engulfed Tull, a feeling that even the Pwi could not have named, a feeling that he had suddenly stepped in stride with destiny.
“You must capture the serpents. Only you,” Chaa had said. “If I told you the way, you would try too quickly. Timing is all-important. You would die in the attempt. Yet when the time comes, you must act quickly. And you must act as a Man of the Pwi.”
Ayuvah had known that this thought would strike Tull now. Ayuvah had spent his life to ensure it. Tull considered. Ayuvah took a Spirit Walk at Seven Ogre River. He lied when he said he’d failed. He threw his life away so that I would understand this, at this moment! The serpents are feeding deeply today!
Tull went to his pack and put on his otter-skin boots, a cap of wolf hide, and over his long winter shirt he wore the blood-red cape of the Blade Kin. Though the weather was frigid, he kept the clothing light so he could swim if the boat overturned. He did not want to hasten, yet he knew he must get their boat in the water before sunrise, lest a serpent spot it.
He cut a portion of the roast and ate it, placed a small bit in his bag. A Man of the Pwi would trust his game, would trust that the animals would give themselves to him. Ayuvah would never have hunted with much food on him, for it only ensured that game would withhold themselves from him.
Tull did not know what to take in the way of rope or equipment, so he decided to travel light, with only a sack to hold eggs and a rope to tie himself to his boat with, and then he stepped out into the storm.
He did not run to the beach, he walked, and found Scandal’s and Phylomon’s little tent covered with
snow. Out in the water, logs had washed down swollen rivers from the mountains, and now the waves pounded them against the rocky shore, sounding like thunder as each breaker rolled in. The continual boom, boom, shook the ground.
Phylomon and Scandal did not hear Tull’s feet crunch in the snow as he passed, as he untied the boat.
The water felt icy cold as he stepped. High tide was coming in. Tull stood by the boat.
He grieved for Ayuvah, that his brother had died to bring him to this moment. He grieved for Wisteria and for Little Chaa. Three dead, and Tull knew that Chaa was suffering at home, that Chaa’s wife and children must be torn by grief.
Tull considered whether he should hunt the serpents, for he knew that only an evil man would hunt when his heart was not right. Was he doing this out of devotion for the Pwi or to assuage his own pain? He did not know. Grief was upon him; he sought the House of Dust.
Tull stood beside the boat; watching the water gave him a chill. He could see nothing beneath the waves. A great serpent could be hiding there, waiting for Tull to put the boat in, and Tull would not see her.
These mothers gave birth to the serpents that tried to eat me at Denai.
Out at sea, he heard a serpent roar as she rose. Tull smiled. These serpents could take my boat in their mouths and carry me forty feet into the air before they crushed me in their jaws.
At least she was far away. He took the silver mast off the boat, carried it high on the shore, then shoved the boat into the water and pushed out to sea.
***
Chapter 39: Serpent Catch
Tull stood in back of the boat and paddled out cautiously with its single oar. The logs pounded against the rocks, and he steered between them as quietly as possible, for he wanted to be seen as a log floating upon the water, nothing more.
Had he raised the small sail, even to quarter-mast, and skipped across the water, the serpents would have heard the water slapping the hull.
He put the prow into the waves and paddled softly, patiently, feeling his way out to sea. The sun was just rising, yet clouds so obscured it that he could not see the island clearly, only snow upon its rocky hills.
Tull had seen Phylomon’s map so often that he knew where to hunt. There was a peak with a craggy V of split rock. Only one serpent guarded her eggs there, and it seemed a safe place to begin. He set his sights upon the peak, steered toward it.
The fierce wind blew from the west and carried him off course, so that he set his sights for a second hill, a spot less desirable than the first, since three serpents frequented the bay. It would be a good spot to hunt eggs. It was also a good spot to get killed.
Lightning flashed on the horizon, moving toward him.
Tull paddled quietly, steadily, and saw that he might be blown past this bay, too—and he looked in vain for a suitable landing space beyond it. There were too many rocks.
Over the next half an hour, the sky lightened so that he could see the clouds well, could see the snowy hills. Though the wind blew strong and the spray of saltwater stung his eyes, he had only a mile to travel to make it to the rocky island, and he was halfway there. Lightning began flashing above him in earnest.
He hurried, hoping to make it to the bay before the lightning showed him to a serpent, and he listened for water slapping the hull of his boat.
He focused on the bay, intent upon the sounds of water, when he heard a serpent’s voice beneath him, the great booming howl.
Tull gulped, saw tall waves rushing up, so he spun his prow to hit them head on. He topped a wave, sat at the peak a moment, and a serpent sounded beneath him and struck.
The bow surged under him, and he fell forward, grabbing the gunwales. The boat slid backward, down the wave. Lightning flashed overhead, and the serpent screamed.
A vast giant rose from the water, blotting the sky. She wrenched her head from side to side, bellowing, until her scream filled the darkness. Water rained down, and the wave she’d formed as she rose nearly capsized the boat. Tull froze, waited to die.
Did she see me? Tull wondered. Or did she rise only because she is driven mad by pain?
The great serpent splashed down, and Tull stood holding the gunwales, heart hammering. With an ocean surrounding him, his throat felt dry. He turned and looked behind, tried to turn the boat back to the mainland, but the island was closer.
If she has seen me, I need to get to the island!
He spun his tiny boat in a circle, held his breath. He wiggled his fingers upon the wet oar, trying to get some circulation, and watched the cold steam come from his mouth. Soul clouds, the Pwi called them. As long as steam issued from his mouth, he was still alive. Timing is all-important, Chaa had told him. But what should he do?
Tull watched the water, waiting for the great mother, and dread filled him, the kwea of his night in Denai. The slapping of the whitecaps became the slapping of serpent bellies as they leapt. His memory conjured ghosts of men, hanging above the water, bleeding themselves away.
Timing is all-important. The serpent had missed him by half a second. Had he been at the bottom of the wave, the boat would have capsized when the serpent struck. Instead, the beast had shoved him away. Could this have been what Chaa meant? Timing? He sang to himself softly,
The sun has finally fallen, beneath the stars, beyond the sand,
and I hear the Darkness conjuring dream images again,
Darkness brings peace to those who seek it, scatters wisdom where it can
For Darkness is lover to the poet, the dreamer, and the solitary man.
He conjured an image of Chaa’s little hogan, of Fava beside the fire as she rubbed his shoulders, and he imagined venison cooking on the fire, rum heating in a silver mug as the light danced upon it. All this is only a week away, he thought, and he put his back into it and rowed into the bay.
That day, he searched the rocks along shore. He knew what to look for—eggs—serpent eggs, attached to rocks. But he’d never seen serpent eggs before, didn’t know what they looked like. He imagined the leathery eggs he’d collected in Hotland. Phylomon had said they would be large, that each sack would be tan with perhaps twenty eggs to a clutch.
As the tide lowered, the water dropped eighty feet. All day, Tull scurried over boulders thick with cockles and slimy with seaweed. Orange sea snails were abundant on the rocks, along with purple and tan starfish, green and brown anemones.
Gulls ran along the rocks, picking at snails, cracking tiny hermit crabs in their bills.
Tull could see where the ancient lava had met the water, could see how it had filled the bay yet formed two fingers of rock out in the water.
Part of the bay was shallow—filled with basalt, while the water out along the two fingers was deep—too deep to drain even in the lowest tide, so he hunted the best he could. He was at it less than an hour before the great mothers spotted him, and they rose out in the deep water at the mouth of the bay, rolling on the waves, jaws gaping. Blood streamed from their gills. Barnacles crusted their heavy brows. Rage gleamed in their red eyes.
When the tide began to flow back in, Tull was forced to go high upon the shore and lie under his overturned boat for protection from the wind. The snow stopped falling, and it became painfully cold.
He looked back to the mainland at sunset, saw a great fire roaring. He wondered briefly why Phylomon would waste so much wood, then realized it was Ayuvah’s funeral pyre. Tull watched the smoke rise black and almost straight into the air.
He stayed under his boat that night and tried to get his body heat to dry his clothing. Hunger gnawed his belly.
At sunrise he had two hours of low tides, and he scampered over the rocks. The sharp white barnacles ripped his otter-skin moccasins, so he scrabbled on all fours, and soon his feet bled.
He found a large snow crab hiding behind a boulder, and he pulled off its legs and stuffed them in his shirt, but he did not find the eggs.
They’ll be at the mouth of the bay, where the water deepens, he thought. Yet the wa
ter at the mouth of the bay was too deep, and he could see no way to reach them.
At noon, he climbed out upon the rocky point, looked at the black basalt at the base of the water and ate the crab legs raw.
If he leapt, he’d have fallen almost straight down into the depths, and he could see how the bay was filled with sand while the water was deep here at the point. In two days, the water had not gotten low enough for him to walk out there. He looked to the mainland and saw Phylomon standing in the snow, on his own rocks. Tull took off his red cape and waved it in the air, and Phylomon waved his hand in return, called to him. Tull could not make out his words.
Tull looked down into the water again, and in its depths, he saw rocks that he had not noticed before. For a moment, they seemed to rise, as if they would come out of the water, and then he saw that they were not floating rocks at all, but the body of a serpent, a great mother whose scales had turned the black of basalt, who lay coiled at the base of the cliff, wedged in the rocks like an eel. She hid underwater, watching him.
I’m close to her eggs, he realized, a thrill rising along his back.
At evening, he searched during low tide, and found nothing. Chaa had promised him that he could succeed, yet he was cold and hungry, and he could not find the eggs.
Tull sat that night, and watched the stars in the cold. What am I missing? he wondered, and he opened himself, hoping for Chaa to answer.
In the night, as Tull lay shivering under his boat, he dreamed that he scrambled among the rocks over a bed of dark-green kelp, and he walked over cockles that twisted and cracked under his feet, sputtering as the water stored in their shells was forced outward.
It was dawn, and a thick morning fog rolled in, a heavy fog that would not let him see a hundred feet out to sea.
Serpent Catch: Book Two of the Serpent Catch Series Page 23
