The Hyena and the Hawk (Echoes of the Fall Book 3)

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

  Galethea’s eyes were so wide that Hesprec could see them clearly in the gloom. ‘Where?’

  ‘Where your kind have never gone,’ she told the Pale Shadow woman. ‘To meet the gods.’

  31

  Some of the priests had begun their rites when the moon was up – those for whom the night was more sacred than the day. The Tiger and the Owl had been working to invoke their predatory deities, trying to replicate their northern mysteries in this unfamiliar land. But then the gods were all adrift now. Perhaps any land was home to them as long as someone lit the right fires and spoke the right words.

  And Owl and Tiger both trained their priests to fight. When morning came they would form their warbands or join those of others. The night was their only chance to bring their gods near.

  The dawn brought with it a bizarre air of celebration. Maniye heard voices raised in song, the sound of rattles and drums and shouting, as though the Plague was already beaten. Only after she had lain and listened for a while did she hear the crack of desperation in the voices, the fear that drove them. Only then did the purpose of all these sounds recur to her. She had been drifting in a sea of fond thoughts, still wrapped in the body-warmth Alladai had left behind him. Now she jumped up, wincing as her wounds snagged at her in a dozen places, insistent still that she not forget the god that dealt them to her, the one god she hoped nobody was invoking right now.

  Alladai was outside, naked save for a loincloth and being painted by an old woman of his people. He was no warrior, after all. Horse would have run far, after so many of its children were killed or driven out of their wits, but perhaps he could be lured back to lend his swiftness and endurance to the fight. Maniye could not throw her arms about Alladai without spoiling the old priestess’s work, but she rested her head on the arm still clear of patterns, thoughts of strength and love passing between them silently, and then went to find Hesprec.

  Others found her first, though, following her trail through the busy camp until she became aware of feet treading her own footsteps and turned to confront them. She thought they might be enemies, but that was her own guilt speaking that had recognized their tread. They were her own people, and only in seeing them did she realize she had been avoiding them.

  Moon Eye was in the lead, the mad Wolf fighter she had left in the hands of Tecumet’s Champion, Tchoche. He had been a man of mad rages, and Tchoche’s people knew how to teach such a man control. Behind him were all the others who had gone with her to Tsokawan and fought alongside and against the River Lords at her command. Her warband had found her and they were ready for war, armoured in iron and bearing hatchets and spears.

  ‘All the world is going to fight,’ Moon Eye noted. ‘Every hand that can hold a knife will raise it against the Plague People. And we are your warband.’

  Maniye nodded soberly, looking from face to face. She felt as though she had not seen them for years, for lifetimes. They were all older than her, and yet they seemed young and earnest and fragile. They looked at her with such hope; if she was anybody’s Champion, she was theirs.

  A swift form weaved between their legs and jumped up at Maniye, and she knelt down to let Sathewe snuffle into her hand, the coyote’s cold nose and rough tongue bringing a gift of more guilt. The Crow, Feeds on Dreams, stepped forward to bring the animal back, but Maniye scratched Sathewe’s muzzle and ears because it was easier than telling the warband what they must hear.

  But the silence stretched out until the words were drawn from her. ‘I cannot lead you.’ She should tell them she was too weak for the battle; it was probably true. And yet she knew it would not have kept her from the fight, not that alone, and her warband deserved only truth. ‘Hesprec has a need for me.’

  ‘The Serpent,’ Moon Eye said doubtfully. He had spent a little time amongst the southerners and the Stone Men, both of whom held Snake in high esteem, but he was a Wolf at heart.

  ‘If we are to defeat the Plague People, it will be by following the Serpent’s back, no matter how crooked it is,’ Maniye told him, straightening up.

  ‘And yet we raise our spears.’ Moon Eye nodded, understanding.

  ‘All the Plague warriors in our world are coming,’ Maniye said softly. ‘And because our path is long and twisted, all the spears in the world must win us time to walk it.’

  ‘I have seen my kin, the Moon Eaters, ready themselves for war, while Icefoot and his priests stoke the fires and shed blood into the Wolf’s jaws,’ Moon Eye said. ‘I have seen the soldiers of the Sun River Nation,’ he spoke the southern word carefully, ‘with their stone-toothed swords, and all the people of their estuary, the Toad people and the Heron and the Capybara and the rest. Many spears there. I have seen the Eyrie with blades in their hands, and known they were not my enemies today. I have seen the Stone Men in armour that would crush slighter warriors. And the Plainsfolk! Lion and Boar, Horse and Dog! So many spears, Many Tracks. And all this to buy time?’

  ‘You know the enemy,’ Maniye said simply. ‘You have felt their Terror. Tell me then how many shields can stave it off. You have seen them take wing like insects and rain death from the sky. How many spears must we fill the air with, to bring them down?’ She knew that making them fear was exactly the wrong thing to do, but the words just cascaded from her lips.

  It was Feeds on Dreams that saved the moment, bobbing up under Moon Eye’s armpit, almost, to chirp, ‘Yes, yes, so our place is with you, still. So these winged men can come to anywhere, at any time. So we are your warband, even I, and we will stand guard over you – yes, even over the Serpent. And you will know you are safe, for how could even the Plague People defeat such heroes?’

  His grin was strained, and she thought, One more dream for him to eat, and this time it’s his own.

  ‘Of course,’ she agreed, and she saw the pride in them, that their place would be at her side. The responsibility frightened her more than the Plague People. What if this all comes to nothing?

  The answer was obvious. Then none of it matters and you won’t have long to feel the shame of it.

  They were her honour guard when she found Hesprec, who was sitting under an awning drawing lines in the dust. Galethea sat beside her looking like death. Nearby, the Eyriemen Stepped all together,Yellow Claw and his warriors thundering into the air, eclipsing the sun with their wings, circling higher and higher in the warming air. Sathewe yapped at them furiously as though it was some personal affront.

  Maniye saw the Tiger leaving, too, in the company of the Lion of the Plains. For a moment Aritchaka, their priestess, stopped and met her gaze. They had been enemies and friends in turn, back in the north. Now Aritchaka fought alongside the Wolves she so despised. The end of the world made for strange allies.

  ‘You want to go with them?’ Hesprec was abruptly at her elbow.

  ‘It would be simpler,’ Maniye agreed. ‘Why has this fallen to me, Hesprec?’

  The Serpent stepped round to face her. ‘People ask that question of priests. Most times I say it’s the will of some god. But the gods are all in disarray now. I doubt any of them have the presence of mind to will this. Perhaps it is just chance that puts you here. Perhaps being born of Tiger and Wolf, both and neither all at once, has made you someone to whom odd destinies are drawn. And don’t tell me you don’t want them; who would? All that matters is that your shoulders are strong enough to bear them.’

  ‘I have the smallest shoulders of anyone here, save you,’ Maniye pointed out.

  Hesprec shrugged. ‘Be glad the task is not mine, then. Galethea of the Pale Shadow!’

  The pallid woman started, staring up at them. The skin about her eyes and mouth was bluish. Maniye half expected to be able to see through her flesh to the bones.

  ‘I am here, Messenger,’ she said, delivering the southern title flatly. Maniye had to lean in to hear her. Beyond Hesprec’s little awning a hundred chants and instruments were clashing in appalling cacophony, each priest trying to drown out the next. The earth jumped without rhythm to the fe
et of many dancers. Sathewe huddled at Maniye’s ankles, snarling at the noise with her tail between her legs.

  ‘Sit with us, Champion,’ Hesprec invited, dropping down beside Galethea. ‘Sit and listen, for I will tell you of a land that must be as familiar to you as your northern home now. Few indeed have visited the land of the gods so many times as you.’

  Maniye tried to let herself drift, but the resounding chaos all around kept tugging at her mind, never settling into a pattern, each shout or drumbeat treading on the toes of the last. Hesprec’s hand was in hers, and she felt the connection there, the beginning of something, like a veil drawn aside just a sliver, yet not far enough that she could pass beyond. It’s her, she realized. Hesprec’s other hand was holding the Pale Shadow woman’s. Maniye could feel the hollow creature like a weight she was trying to haul. This can’t work. This is no sacred ground. This is no Stone Place, made special to the gods over generations. And she has no soul. Galethea has nothing of the gods in her. She is like an empty jar. When the Godsland calls, nothing in her will hear it.

  ‘It cannot be,’ she hissed. ‘I will go alone. I will open the way somehow. Hesprec—’

  ‘Patience, only patience.’ The Serpent’s words came to her despite all the mounting noise. ‘Patience, Many Tracks, for the gods are coming. Can you not hear them? There is Horse, his hooves like thunder.’ Was there thunder? Impossible to tell in all the ruckus. ‘There is Lion, striding proud, and Boar – can you not hear when he pauses to root at the earth?’ Maniye’s eyes were closed but she heard the grin in Hesprec’s voice. ‘I hear Old Crocodile drag his belly on the earth now. And here is Deer, his feet as fast and sharp as arrows.’ Perhaps the awning snapped in the wind, perhaps some late Eyrie warrior put his shadow between them and the sun, but Hesprec said, ‘There is Hawk, called from the high places because he is too proud to be left out. That thump was Toad, drawn from where he buried himself away, and even Dragon is here – how angry he is, to have to share the world with any other gods, but his people are going to shed blood today, and he would not miss it.’

  Maniye did not want to open her eyes. She did not want to see all those thin, frightened priests and hearth-keepers stepping through their rituals, telling their stories, trying to tempt back their fled gods. She wanted the picture in her mind’s eye that Hesprec was building, of the gods in their prime, in their strength, come to the aid of the people they tested and challenged and occasionally loved. The boom and rush of the rituals washed through her like a tide, like breathing, and her own breath caught when she realized it was a rhythm. If she let herself relax, if she stopped listening and only heard, there was a grand pulse that drew together every sound around her. The voice of Two Heads Talking and the stamping feet of the Deer, the dried grass rattles of the Lion, Mother’s great bellow, the solemn formalities of Old Crocodile’s priesthood, all of it blended into a single grand song that rode through the earth below her, and echoed far out across the sky. It was impossible – any moment surely it must break back down into all those clumsy human noises. And yet it pulsed and roared, ebbed and flowed, stronger and stronger until she was carried on it, until all that devotion had made this camp of fugitives the most sacred place in the world. She felt herself lifted, higher and higher, further and further from herself in that direction that she had no name for, and though there was a great weight on her arm where the clueless Pale Shadow creature clung, the current was strong enough to carry even her weight along with it.

  * * *

  Asman knew about armies and how slowly they moved, but apparently the Plague People didn’t, for their force was coming across the Plains as fast as a man could run. There was a core that laboured along on the ground, but all around them were those Plague warriors who could fly. Handfuls of them would pitch up into the air and come down a hundred yards ahead, flushing out game from the grass and all too ready to do battle with anything that might bare a tooth at them. They killed what they scared into the open – animals of any stripe and nature, because they could not tell beast from man. All were their enemies.

  Asman was with Venat and the fleetest of the Riverlanders, the first to throw themselves in the path of the enemy. It would be no easy job to inconvenience them, he knew: show a human face, and they would swarm from all sides. A charge of spearmen would be suicide, the darts would start what the Terror would end.

  So Asman had left the regimented ranks of the Sun River Nation’s army to be a final line between the great camp of refugees and the enemy, if a line even meant anything in this war, where the enemy could move about with such unnatural ease. Instead he had taken half fleet skirmishers and half archers with bows as tall as they were. A trio of other River Champions had come with him, deferring to him grudgingly because he was Kasrani.

  They had planned to pick at the main body of the enemy but that was plainly not going to work. Instead he would have to hope that the Plague People would see his people as enough of a threat to slow for, rather than just butchering them all in passing.

  ‘You’ve a better eye for this than me,’ he told one of the other Champions, a lean woman who had brought a bow of her own. ‘Have them loose as soon as a band comes in range.’

  ‘Draw,’ the woman said immediately, eyes flicking back and forth as she watched the Plague warriors cast themselves out across the grassland. A heartbeat later she spat, ‘Loose,’ and sent her own arrow on its way even as a flight of the enemy was descending. Asman would have thought they were out of range, but there was an archer’s magic to the moment, the enemy dropping down as the arrows rose to meet them. A handful of the Plague People fell, either wounded or just knocked from the air by the impact, and the rest scattered.

  ‘And loose,’ the archer Champion said, quiet but confident, and for a moment they were harassing the enemy with arrows like rain and the Plague warriors were simply running around like mad insects. Then they came together and regained their senses, and they were up in the air again, swooping down to answer the arrows with the swift singing of their darts.

  The plan had been for Asman’s people to split off into groups to deny the enemy any one main target, but some of them just stood, staring horrified at the descending Plague People. Some of the archers stayed in place, aiming for one last strike against the fast-moving targets, while at the end of the line a whole clump of his skirmishers were rooted to the spot staring in horror at the advancing foe, so that the Plague warriors veered away to stoop on them. Asman Stepped and ran along the line, human for a breath at a time so he could shout orders. He was hoping to salvage the fighting but it collapsed before he ever got there. The darts struck down a dozen soldiers in a heartbeat, then a dozen more, and he saw the terrible moment when his people’s nerve broke and the Terror struck them. Abruptly the grasslands were strewn with crocodiles and lizards, utterly out of their element and easy game for the enemy.

  He saw one of the other Champions race in – an old man who had retired when Asman was just a child. He leapt into the air, his fighting shape still young, snagging a swooping Plague Man with his hooked claws and slamming the creature to earth. Moments later that fighting lizard was stumbling, blood written across the quills of his hide as the darts found him. Champions were proof against the Terror, but not against death. Death won every battle.

  The archer Champion had kept pace with him, chivvying their people into falling back. Now she cried out, ‘Smoke!’

  Asman’s head jerked up, looking towards the main body of the Plague advance. The haze in the air was not the dun of dust, but tinted blue and grey. Venat’s people had been busy doing what the Dragon did best.

  The grassland was not dry enough for a true inferno – it was not the season and the dew had been heavy. Still, Asman imagined the Dragon himself standing behind Venat’s firestarters and breathing out, sending the wind rushing towards the core of the Plague People, and along with it a building wave of flame.

  The Plague warriors above must have seen it, because they broke off their at
tack to swing back towards their own people.

  But still: Be safe, he thought to Venat, and then he was shouting orders again, rallying the soldiers he still had, pulling them back.

  He saw the Plague People break before the fire – a seeming chaos he knew contained a deeper order. A little flame would not drive them away.

  But we have won some few heartbeats of time.

  The archer Champion found him again in the retreat. ‘Kasrani, go back to the spears. I will remind them of our arrows again.’

  ‘Not yet,’ Asman said, while considering his best move, until Venat and some of his people charged up, black heavyset lizards flailing through the grass and Stepping into brutish, sand-coloured men, laughing at the chaos they had wrought.

  There were fewer Dragon warriors in his warband than there had been, but Asman asked no questions: scattered, dead or lost to the Terror, it mattered little right now.

  One of the archers called out, ‘They’re coming this way,’ and Asman saw the sky to the east was busy with human-seeming forms.

  ‘Go back, Kasrani,’ the other Champion told him, and then she was running off at an angle with her archers, hoping to catch the enemy in the flank. Except the enemy had no flanks, an army that could swirl like mist and flow like water.

  ‘Where’s the rest?’ Venat demanded. ‘We’re not it, are we?’

  Asman tried to remember what the plan had been, mind momentarily blank. Given the choice he would be out there getting his claws bloody, not here giving orders. ‘Tchoche,’ he recalled. Tchoche and the Lion had a plan.

  Reshappa of the Lion was dead behind the eyes, Tchoche had observed. Perhaps that made her the best person to lead the fight against the Plague People here. He could not imagine the Terror touching whatever lived inside her now. She had been fighting the enemy since Where the Fords Meet. The Plainsfolk told many stories about how Lion was lazy, how Lion loved a fight with the numbers in his favour. Since the Plague had come to the Plains, though, none had fought more than Lion’s children. The stories about them were born from a resentment of their strength and domination of the land; they had the most to lose when a stronger enemy came.