“Our pride is in not being seen, not being known; we do what we do, and the people are safe even from knowing that they were in danger,” Loiyan said. “Nalangu, understand this. You can still refuse, but if you do, or if you fail, then the tigir will be put on you, so that you may never speak of what you know. The memory may seem like a dream that troubles you often, and it may leave you restless with your life, but you will not know why. It must be so, to keep the Sisters safe.
“If you succeed… you will face great terrors. The teeth of night will tear at you, and if you are defeated, you may lose far more than your life. This is the truth of it, bare as a bone.”
“But”—Loiyan grinned, fierce and hard, and looking at once young and full of blood and old as the moon—“if you pass the tests, you will be, with your sisters, the fence around your people. You will hear the warriors boast of their kills and their courage, and you will know that what you have faced is far worse than lions. If you pass the tests.”
“What are the tests?” Nalangu said.
“First there is training. Nkasiogi will train your hand. I will train your Eye. Are you willing?”
“Yes,” Nalangu said, joy rising in her like a flight of birds.
THE TRAINING TOOK two years, sneaked in around chores, the Sisters of Night arranging things so Nalangu’s absences from her work and the enkang were not noticed.
Loiyan taught her to see around the edges of things, to notice shadows that fell against the light, and breezes that moved against the wind, and darkness that slid up the legs of the cattle or crouched in the branches of the acacia trees, and to watch the little serval cats who could sense things people could not. Loiyan was patient and kind and utterly, utterly immovable. Nalangu worked to please her until her eyes swam and her head ached.
Nkasiogi taught her the spear and the seme, and how to fight when neither was to hand. She was impatient and unkind and just as immovable. Nalangu worked, never expecting to be praised, until even the smallest of her bones ached. On the day Nkasiogi said, “good,” Nalangu drank it down like sweet fresh milk. The next day Nkasiogi pushed her harder than ever.
One day, after two years, when training had become so much part of her life that Nalangu had almost forgotten its purpose, the enkang woke to wailing and shrieking. Loiyan came to Nalangu as she set off to milk the cows, and said, “Kingasunye Kanunga is missing. One of the others will do your milking. Come with me.”
Kingasunye was no more than two, a swift-moving little creature of great charm. Her mother, Naeku, shed slow, almost silent tears as she moved about the hut. “She was sleeping right beside me. I woke and she was gone, as though she had never been there at all.”
“You are sure it was not a leopard?” Loiyan said. That had been Nalangu’s first thought, too. Leopards were very skilled, and could take a grown man in the night without a sound.
“That is what everyone says, but there is no blood—none—and the dogs never once barked.” Naeku’s voice was low and weary, and she picked up a piece of clothing, as though to mend it, but only sat with the cloth limp in her lap.
The hut seemed very dark to Nalangu, who saw better in darkness than most people did. Even the air seemed dirty. She looked about while Loiyan talked comfortingly to Naeku.
Nalangu peered until her eyes ached. What has Naeku been burning, to make such a smoke? I can hardly see anything, certainly nothing that is out of place…
There was no curse-medicine smeared on the doorway. The hut was as clean and tidy as a hut could be, except for the air…
Stupid. Nalangu shook her head at herself, and looked again, at where the darkness in the air curled thickest, beside the bed that Naeku shared with her children.
If she had not been looking very hard, and had not been blessed with slightly more than natural eyesight, she would not have seen it.
On the floor beside the bed was the faint, blurred mark of a leopard’s paw.
She signed to Loiyan that she had found something, and they went outside to speak together.
“I am sorry, yeyo,” Nalangu said. “I thought something evil had come there, because the air was so thick and dark, but there was nothing but a leopard’s pawmark. So it seems the child was taken by a leopard, after all. I cannot explain the darkness.”
“I can,” Loiyan said. “And you were right. The one who took the child left that deception of the eyes, meaning to hide its presence, but it was too clever, and instead showed very clearly that there was something there to hide. But it did not reckon with your eyes, and your Eye, Nalangu.”
“Did I make a mistake? Was it not a leopard’s print?”
“It was. Some leopards are not always leopards,” Loiyan said.
That meant it was one of the cat-people. Nalangu felt a cold excitement in the pit of her belly. So far in her training she had dealt with small things, little demons that spoiled meat and sent flies to bite the cattle and stones to trip the feet: tricksters and mischief-makers, nasty, but weak. Cat-people were a different matter. All the speed and strength and stealth of a leopard, and all the cunning of a human.
“Go look for the trail,” Loiyan said. “Follow it no farther than the edge of the enkang, then come to my hut.”
Nalangu did.
The creature had come into Naeku’s hut as leopard, but had left as a person—though its human footprints were slightly too wide, and with almost no heelmark, as though they walked always on the balls of their feet.
And why would they leave in that shape? It had been night, the dogs had not scented them, a leopard’s form would be far swifter and more silent, and a leopard carried both its prey and its own kittens easily in its jaws.
But leopard kittens had soft loose skin at the neck, that made such a thing easy, and when picked up in that way knew to go limp. A human child, even if picked up by its wrappings, would not be accustomed to it, might be frightened and cry out. Arms would be better… for a child the kidnapper wished to take away swiftly, silently, and still alive.
At the edge of the enkang the trail was fading, but still there. Nalangu left it reluctantly—soon it would be lost as people and cattle and dogs passed over the ground—but Loiyan had told her to come back. And what could she do, alone, and only partway through her training?
Nkasiogi and several of the other Sisters had joined Loiyan when Nalangu returned. Nkasiogi looked angry, but then the thought that the cat-people had walked into the middle of the enkang and stolen a child was enough to make anyone angry.
Nalangu told them what she had found.
“You are right,” Loiyan said. “It seems they want Kingasunye for some other purpose than food. Well,” she said, “it is time.”
The other Sisters nodded, looking solemn. Nalangu felt something gathering in the air.
“Nalangu,” Loiyan said. “This will be the first of your Great Trials, the Risking of the Flesh. You will find their lair, and you will find Kingasunye, and do what you must.”
“It is not time!” Nkasiogi said, loud enough that the chatter outside paused a moment. Loiyan frowned at her.
Nkasiogi lowered her voice, but it still rippled with fury. “She is not ready.”
“She is ready,” Loiyan said. “You were, at her age, and have you not been her teacher? Have you not prepared her well enough?”
This exchanged passed by Nalangu almost unnoticed, as her thoughts ran to sharpening her spear and gathering her provisions and whether she was afraid.
But the first thought, and the clearest, came to her in the voice of a younger girl, who had watched, from hiding, as the warriors trained with their spears to protect the cattle and the people, and that thought was Yes!
NALANGU SMEARED HERSELF with a mixture of unpleasant ingredients to disguise her scent, and filled gourds with meat and milk and salt and water, and the honey-beer infused with herbs and spices that would give her strength and help heal wounds. She wrapped the gourds so they did not rattle or slosh (it made her think of how carefully she had mov
ed, with the water on her back, the day she had learned of the Sisters), and bound fine strong rope under her shuka. She would collect her spear from its hiding-place outside the enkang.
She had been given a dose that gave her symptoms of fever, and one of the Sisters had told her mother she was taking Nalangu to another enkang, to see someone who was very skilled in medicines. If Nalangu died, everyone would be told the fever had killed her. No-one would ask to see her body, it was not the way things were done. Bodies, emptied of their spirits, had little significance.
But Nalangu knew that her mother, though she scolded and fussed, would grieve for her, and felt sorry that she could not know the truth.
The Sisters murmured advice and blessings. Nalangu felt their strength lift her up.
Loiyan said, “The leopard-people were once solitary, like ordinary leopards. But they have learned to live together. Like us, they understand that it gives them strength. Remember what they are. All of what they are. And remember all of what you are.”
Nkasiogi said, “I am the one who taught you to fight; do not shame me by getting yourself killed.”
Nalangu chose her moment to slip away, and followed the trail.
SHE FOUND THE entrance to the lair in the foothills, a gap between the rocks, invisible from more than a few feet away.
For some time she lay downwind and watched, thinking.
She was one, and they were many. They knew what lay inside, and she did not.
One person alone, or with companions, could fight and kill a leopard… if they saw it coming. Most never did.
One person alone against many leopards would die.
If she died before she reached Kingasunye, the child would be lost. She had to stay alive to get her out.
Remember all they are. They are leopards, but they are also people. They are people, but they are also leopards.
There was at least one thing that both cats and people shared: curiosity.
Nalangu searched until she spotted a rock-hyrax den. It was the right time of day; soon they would be coming out to eat. She set a grass snare and waited, still as a rock among the rocks.
Eventually a small black nose appeared, then a grey-brown muzzle, a pair of eyes shiny as beads with white flashes above them, upstanding ears aquiver for every sound. The eyes passed over her, the ears did not find her, and the hyrax crept forward and into the grass snare.
It writhed and snapped as, avoiding its frantic jaws, she took one of her own necklaces and fastened it around the beast’s body, the beads and pendants glinting. She also fastened a long, strong thread around its neck, and when she had done, she crept as close as she could to the mouth of the leopard-people’s lair, tied one end of the thread to a nearby tree, and released the hyrax.
For a moment it crouched, quivering, then it darted across the front of the lair. When the thread brought it up short, it darted back again.
After a few minutes of this, Nalangu saw movement at the entrance to the lair, and soon after that a woman emerged. She was naked and moved with a leopard’s sleek, lethal grace. She watched the hyrax, her head tilted, and called over her shoulder, “Come see this. This is a very strange thing.”
“What is it?” said a voice from inside.
“It is a hyrax in a necklace!”
“Truly?”
Another woman came out and the two peered at the hyrax, grinning, and although they were in human form, Nalangu could almost see their tails twitching.
“Well, I have never seen such a thing. How did it get a necklace?”
“See how it runs about, showing off its splendid jewellery!”
They laughed, and in their laughter was a low growling note.
Nalangu waited until the hyrax was at a distance from the lair, took the end of the thread, and moved it to a tree a little further away. The hyrax ran back and forth. The leopard-women followed. And so they went until the leopard-women were a good distance from the lair. Nalangu cut the thread, and the hyrax ran, with the women running, laughing, after it. Nalangu slipped into the cave.
She stepped to one side so she would not be outlined against the entrance, and stood for a moment to let her eyes adjust. Beyond the entrance, the lair was lit only by a trickle of sunlight through cracks in the rock.
She crept deeper in. The air grew cool. The powerful smell of leopards was everywhere, but so were human smells—fire and cooked meat.
The guards—if that was what they were—would soon either realise they had been deceived, or catch the hyrax, or become bored—and then they would come back. Nalangu’s eyes, her ears, her very skin were alert to every sound and shift of the air.
Light bloomed along the wall. She could hear conversation and movement, and she tightened her grip on her spear.
The passageway began to widen out. Nalangu tucked herself behind a projection of rock and peered around it.
Before her was a wide cave. There was a fire-pit in the centre, and a hole in the roof overhead. Grass had been dragged into mounds all around, and covered with hides and bright cloth; and on them sprawled the leopard-people, in fur or in skin. She saw a woman drinking blood from a gourd as one of her own people might, and another gnawing on a raw kidney. She saw a leopard tucking a piece of hide more firmly under its mound of grass with its foot, and another with a baby that looked human—not Kingasunye, this one was barely a week old—lying sleeping against its side.
She could not see Kingasunye anywhere. There was a side-passage leading away to her left, and she crept down it. There was almost no light, she moved in a world of grey and darker grey, black and lesser black.
Down the passages came stinks and breezes and purring and growls and then, unmistakably, the giggling of a small child. Nalangu moved towards the sound, seeing firelight glimmer on the wall.
A small cave, lined with hides and grass. A fire, a smokehole. And Kingasunye, quite unharmed, playing with the tail of a she-leopard with a torn ear who lay curled about her.
The leopard leapt to her feet, snarling, putting herself between Nalangu and the child. Kingasunye, disturbed, wailed and clutched at the leopard’s leg, and in that moment’s distraction Nalangu could have speared it, but something stayed her hand.
A change in the air behind her brushed warning across her skin and sent her diving out of the way as another leopard, silent as smoke, leapt from the passageway for her throat.
She spun and stabbed, and the leopard slid out of the way of her spear, and came again, and Nalangu ducked, feeling its hot breath on her shoulder, and stabbed, and a claw scored her side, and her blade struck nothing but the wall, and she dropped the spear—no use in such close quarters—and grabbed her seme, and heard the roar of pain and fury as it met its mark, and she and the leopard danced their deadly dance and the firelight flickered and now there were others, not fighting but only leaning against the walls of the cave, watching, some as leopards and some with everything about them human but their bright, green-golden eyes.
In the brief glances Nalangu dared to snatch, she could not see any of them moving towards the fight, though all of them were watching.
There was no time to think of grief, or regret, or failure, or how she would get the child out. There was no time to feel the pain of her wound—or the next, or the next.
There was only time to move and stab and slash and dance.
Blood was running down her shoulders and breast, and she was tiring, but her opponent, too, was tiring, its fur streaked dark with blood, its mouth panting meaty gasps.
It leapt again, so close its fur brushed her. She went down onto one knee, rolling aside, back up. The leopard slammed into the wall, grunted, turned, and her seme grazed its side.
“Enough!” The voice cut between them like a blade.
The leopard dropped back, snarling. Nalangu almost went after it, but pulled back. She was alone, blood-sticky, exhaustion and pain surging. Her opponent collapsed to the ground. Others surrounded it, licking its wounds, bringing water.
&n
bsp; Kingasunye was bawling. Where the she-leopard with the torn ear had been was now a woman, still with a torn ear, glaring at Nalangu, holding the little girl tight in her arms.
“A good fight.” It was the voice that had said enough. A woman, tall and straight, with a great thick scar running below her breasts like a rope around her ribs.
“It scared the little one,” said torn-ear, in a growl.
“But it did not scare her,” said the tall one, looking at Nalangu with her head cocked.
“I did not have time to be scared,” Nalangu said, trying not to sway. “Give me the girl.”
“Bring water, and binding,” the scarred one said. “She is interesting.”
“Will you let me take the girl?” Nalangu said.
The woman said, “If your wounds are not treated you will die. Perhaps even if they are. What we bite often dies.”
“Will you give her to me, or not?” Nalangu said.
“Bind your wounds,” the leopard-woman said. “Eat with us. I am Crocodile Dancer; there, I make you a gift of my name. Now look to yourself, and drink water, or you will die, and that would not be interesting.”
“She cannot have her!” said torn-ear. Human, she was lean and strong. Her stomach bore the marks of pregnancy and her breasts were milk-heavy. She clutched Kingasunye to her so that she squirmed.
Crocodile Dancer did not answer her. Others came with water and bindings and Nalangu treated her wounds as best she could, salting water to wash them with and keeping the pain behind her teeth, while they watched her with their green-golden eyes.
Crocodile Dancer sniffed at the gourd. “Why do you salt the water?”
“It cleans the wound better,” Nalangu said, “and it is less likely to fester. Now you know what you did not before. I have made you a gift.”
Crocodile Dancer smiled. “Here, you have missed one,” she said, and washed and dressed a wound on Nalangu’s back that she could not reach herself, and Nalangu sat feeling the sure movements of the leopard-woman’s hands and considered how strange her life had become.
The True History of the Strange Brigade Page 11
