Shadow Valley (16 page)

Fire Ant was never quite certain of what happened next.

Did he thrust? Simply raise his spear? Did the boy run onto the fire-hardened tip to suicide, or had Ant meant to slay him?

All he knew for certain was that his arm had moved, the spear was red, and the thick-boned brat lay groaning. His lifeblood streamed out across the earth.

For a moment the sight of the dying boy froze Fire Ant in place. Then he wrenched himself away and joined his men as they ran howling through the camp, their spear tips red.

After the screams of the women and old ones had died to sobs, a hand of hot-eyed Mk*tk children panted, even as they were trapped against a thorn-bush. They hissed and spit at him, betraying not the slightest trace of fear. What spirit! For a brief moment he almost admired them. They were like cornered lion cubs!

“Where are our women!” Ant called out.

Young Sparrow Flies howled in triumph. “We have found Sister Quiet Water!”

When she was brought before Ant, the dream dancer fell to her knees, clutching her savior’s thigh.

He rubbed her hair affectionately. She was an Ibandi holy woman, and he, Fire Ant, had saved her. A rush of blood in his ears and chest told him that Father Mountain was well pleased with His son. “Where is Dove?” he asked.

“She is dead,” Quiet Water said, all flesh stripped from her voice. “My sister is dead.”

“What of the children?” Moon Runner asked, panting.

Ant’s hand tensed on his spear. Why not …? a voice whispered. They stared back at him. One of them sniffled, eyes red, but they did not beg, or cry. Splendid.

Kill them
, a voice in his head whispered.
They are beasts.

But another, softer voice said:
What beasts have the courage of hunters? They are but children.

For many breaths the two voices warred within him. Then at last he decided. “There has been blood enough,” Ant said. “Tie them. Burn the huts. We go.”

Flat-Nose smelled death before he saw it: the night wind carried the scent of blood for half a day’s walk.

He and his men poked through the ashes of their homes, their faces turned to stone. The boma’s bamboo wall was half burned, the huts smashed, and the bodies of their wives and elders scattered and torn.

He himself freed the children but did not allow his heart to feel joy as they cried and gripped his legs in gratitude. No softness. None.

A search for survivors yielded two females. Sobbing, they claimed that a few more might have escaped into the brush.

After searching the ruins, the hunters sat in a circle, crouching so close that their knees touched, saying nothing until their leader chose to speak. Flat-Nose squatted and then sat, his hands gripping his knees. A dull wind stirred the curls of burnt wood.

Flat-Nose clawed at the dirt slowly, gazing into it as another man might have studied the night sky, seeking answers or counting stars. He gouged out a handful of dirt and let it run slowly between his heavy, scarred fingers. “What do we do? We burn the bodies. Unite the clans. Find the one who
killed my brother’s son.” His brother Notch-Ear had been killed by the Ibandi woman who had escaped over the stream. “We burst God Blood’s belly.”

“How?” A young hunter named Stone Hand asked.

Flat-Nose set his knuckles on the ground, grinding them against the pebbles as might a bull gorilla. “I tell you what we do. We sharpen our knives on their bones. We stick our spears up their asses.” His eyes were banked coals. “They die. All of them. None may live. We drink the last drop of their blood. War to the marrow!”

And all the night, he sang his death song, composing new and terrible verses to an already crimson saga.

While it had taken nine days to find the Mk*tk, it took only five days to return to Water boma, where the reception was joyous and the celebration mighty Fire Ant’s ten hunters gyrated around the twin fires, hooting their courage and skill to Father Mountain’s countless eyes, until their legs burned and their sweat dried.

They laughed and boasted, intertwining their arms with those of the young women, pairing off into the tall grass for a hunter’s reward.

Sparrow Flies moved closer to the fire, desperate for its warmth. Waves of cold shivered his arms and legs. “What happens to the
num
of the ones we killed?” he asked Fire Ant.

“It flows to their god,” Fire Ant said.

Sparrow stared at the red crust on his spear. When he closed his eyes, his lids pulsed. Tonight, when he slept, his dreams would drown in blood. “To
t
he
jowk
?”

“I do not know things of this kind,” Ant said.

“Is
our jowk
the same as theirs?”

“They were not Ibandi,” Ant said.

“No. Not Ibandi. But I think that they were men.”

Fire Ant shrugged. “They did not treat ours like men.”

“Is that the measure?” Sparrow asked, a frown creasing his narrow face. “Do we now allow others to say what we are?”

Fire Ant stared straight ahead. “I dream of the dead world. I do not see Mk*tk there. They may have
num.
Perhaps
jowk.
But they are not men.”

Sparrow heard something dreadful in the darkness, a wavering blend of
hyena and human voices. He gripped his spear more tightly, grinding grit into his palm. “Something moved beyond the firelight.”

Ant stood, forcing calm into his voice. “We are ready.”

Then, as if mocking their courage, an odd sound rose from the darkness beyond the fire: inhuman voices mimicking a human chant. A pause, then … sounds of confusion. Men and women screaming in anguish, followed by a hot, wet silence.

Sparrow moistened his lips, trembling. Something
final
had happened out in the thorny dark. To the hunters who had gone off with their women. To the women who had rewarded their men.

The chant began once again. Sparrow could not understand a single word. The sound swelled. “What are they? What do they want?”

“They want us,” Old Wise Eagle said. “They know we killed their women.”

“Silence,” Fire Ant demanded.

Sister Quiet Water appeared behind him, her soft small hand against his arm. “They attack from one direction, driving their enemy. They do not surround,” she said.

“So?”

“So let me take the women and children, as many as I can, and escape through the back wall.”

Fire Ant considered, then nodded. “Yes,” he said, “as many as you can.”

“I think we die,” Wise Eagle said as she left them.

“All men die,” Ant said, “but some return.”

They gazed at him, overcome with sudden hope.

“Truth?” Sparrow asked.

Fire Ant seemed to change, grow, his aspect swollen with the weight of his intent. “It is true!” he screamed. “If you fight, if you throw your life onto your enemy’s spears, protect your women and children, Father Mountain will see. And He told me that the hunter who makes Him proud might, if he wishes, return to hold his woman and children once again. To again hunt the zebra and feel the wind on his face.”

“Do you hear?” Sparrow’s heart warmed, caught desperate fire. He stamped his spear into the dirt. “If we have heart, we hunt again!”

Some whooped and slapped each other, but Wise Eagle’s face was dour. “Soon, we will all be silent.”

“What do they want?” Sparrow asked again.

“What would
you
want if they had done what we did?”

That nightmarish gobbling sound chased the sparks up into the night. Far away, but closer now. Sparrow could see nothing save shadows and stars.

Fire Ant screamed, “Show yourselves!” His eyes were wide, almost as if he felt fear. Why? What did a man already dead have to fear from life?

A brief rustle in the shadows, and then they heard a sharp sound, a call. The shadows separated into hulking, manlike forms.

“In His name,” Sparrow whispered.

“Silence!” Fire Ant roared.

“We will soon be atop the mountain.” Rock Climber’s thick chest gleamed. He stank of fear sweat. “Father Mountain, see us. Return us to our families.” His eyes went wide. “What if our families do not live? To what do we return?”

“Stand strong!”

Then the clutching darkness vomited Mk*tk.

They charged like one horns, sudden and unstoppable. Without hesitation or fear they flew through the open gap in the boma wall, crashing through the huts and hurling speared bodies into the men’s fire.

There in the narrow shadows, Sparrow fought for his life. A Mk*tk came for him. He retreated a step, then turned with a sob and met the charge. His spear met flesh, but he was still hurled backward into the walls of the healing hut. Sticks and straw burst before the shock, their splinters stabbing him in the back and sides.

Groaning, he rolled up and tried to stand, dizzy and half blinded by a torn scalp.

He blinked away a doubled world and stared out through the hole in the wall.
Fire and blood.

Those were the only words that rang in his mind.

Although there were three Ibandi for every one of their brutish foes, they were hard put not to stab one another in the dark, and their enemies used their confusion and uncertainty against them.

There was no mercy or hesitation. There was only screaming, and slaughter.

Fire and blood.

“Back! Back!” Fire Ant screamed. Although he and the men at his side had managed to kill two of the monsters, it was easy to see that his people were breaking.

In the moonlight, blood ran black, and before long all who survived were slick with it.

Fire Ant knew that he must take bold action, or all was lost. If he could only show his people that they were great, that they were beloved in Father
Mountain’s eyes, they might stand up to these beasts, who killed from darkness, and finally be free.

And then his chance appeared. The largest Mk*tk appeared before him, an elephant with the first two fingers missing from his left hand. His scarred tree trunk of a chest heaved with kill fever.

The monster charged him, seeking to overwhelm with sheer power, only to be nicked again and again by Fire Ant’s spear point.

Ho!
In a fog as thick and cloying as honey, Ant watched his spear move, almost as if it possessed its own mind. He drew a line of blood from the giant’s side, then barely evaded a backhand swipe of a bloody spear that might have crushed his ribs.

He was Fire Ant! He wounded his enemy at the belly and just above the knee, and began singing a little tune to himself, timing his thrusts to his song.

Then, to his surprise the giant stepped back, smearing at the blood with his fingers. Ant had never seen a Mk*tk pause once the killing had begun. Something odd sizzled in the hooded eyes.

Curiosity.
Without question, the giant was puzzling through something. Until that moment, Ant had not been certain these creatures thought at all.

Then with insane speed the monster lunged directly at Fire Ant’s spear tip. At the very last moment he twisted aside, scoring along Ant’s upper ribs.

Two of Ant’s men hurled themselves between their chief and the monster. As they struggled with their foe, Ant rubbed his hands along his wound and stared at the blood on his hand.

Something strange boiled through his veins, emotions Ant thought buried with his first body. Could that be … fear? But how could a dead man feel such a thing?

“We die!” Rock Climber wailed.

“Stand! Stand!” Fire Ant backed away from the giant Mk*tk, confused by his own confusion. The monster killed one Ibandi, then another took his place. They tumbled out of sight into the shadows, lost in the howling confusion. “We kill them here or die!”

The night’s darkness beckoned. A lone thought fluttered through his mind, brief and bleak as a dying butterfly.
What have I done?

“They seek our softness,” he called. “They would kill the women and children!”

Despite his quavering knees, Wise Eagle sneered at Ant. “As we sought theirs.
You
did this! We trusted you, and you brought us death! We die. Our children die.”

Fire Ant balled his hand and struck the hunter to the ground. But even as Eagle fell, Ant’s own mind echoed the words.

Wise Eagle rose from the dirt, spitting blood. He held his spear high, squinting into the darkness. Eagle opened his mouth, but before he could say a word the air in front of him blurred. A spear buried itself in his belly, driving him off his feet and back against the boma wall. His hands clutched at the shaft, staring at it as if wondering how such a curious thing had come to be.

Fire Ant smelled blood and shit, and his own stomach rolled.

Eagle’s woman snatched her round-bellied son from the ground and screamed, “Run!”

The boy had seen no more than seven summers. He fled only a hand of steps before he was clubbed down like an antelope, then hacked to death in the shadows.

There were fewer battles now, only slaughter. The Ibandi no longer outnumbered their attackers. The unequal contest had become no contest at all.

The shadows were distorted by thick-limbed spearmen hunched over a splintered boma’s whimpering survivors. Watery screams peaked and troughed with the sigh of knife against skin. And then, finally, even that yielded to the wet whisper of flesh torn from bone.