Shadows in the Cave (22 page)

Before Shonan could urge him, Fuyl let the dart fly. It
pierced the observant man’s belly, stuck out beyond, and hit another enemy in the ear.

Shouts, moans, and wails.

Shonan, Fuyl, and Kumu used the racket to run half a dozen steps and slip into the water. In a moment they were swimming downstream as quietly as possible. Shonan didn’t know whether the Brown Leaves had seen them. He didn’t care. They had struck a blow. The Brown Leaves might think the Galayis had followed the trail back toward their village and search in that direction. They might figure out the trick of going downriver and come that way. Regardless, they would come slowly and carefully—too slowly.

Shonan arched his back as he swam, stretching. Everything was right. His young companions were good men. They would get to the ocean at about dawn, sleep briefly, and run back to the village. Shonan looked forward to the run—he always felt good
doing
something. Time enough to rest at the village. And the story of their two attacks on the enemies would boost the courage of the fighting men there.

28

E
agle Aku took a predawn cruise. He saw the Brown Leaf army getting itself ready to march. He looked for Maloch, who could turn himself into the Uktena. For some reason even eagle eyes couldn’t pick out the dragon this time. He couldn’t quite think of Maloch as human, doing as Aku’s marching companions were doing, taking a morning piss, lashing gear onto their dogs, stretching stiff muscles. The Uktena wasn’t human.

Tonight the Brown Leaves will be at our last camp, tomorrow in our village
.

He winged back along the trail to his own camp but didn’t see his father, Fuyl, or Kumu. Probably they were catching some sleep, well hidden.

His own outfit was just now ready to move out on their final leg to the village. For them this would be the last, long day of carrying Salya.

Aku turned toward the sea and flapped into the wind toward home. Yes, Amaso felt like home, because Iona was there.

He wanted to see her alone, and as he came to the village, he got an idea. He lit on top of an oak snag and watched her hut. One of her sisters came out and walked toward the river
carrying gourds. So the whole family was inside. This was his chance.

He flapped to the village circle and landed atop the family hut. He put his beak to the smoke hole and said in his own voice, “Iona.”

“Aku?”

He pictured her looking around wildly.

“Iona,” he said in his crude Amaso speech, “meet me below the pine tree.”

It was the phrase they’d used dozens of times for the same place.

“Aku?” she cried out. “Are you up there?”

Before she could see his eagle face, he flew to the trees lining the river. He made the transformation to the Aku shape she knew. Soon he crept up the sand dune, jumped, grabbed her, and rolled over and over. She kept herself from shrieking. They spent a long time kissing.

As the sun reached its height, Shonan, Fuyl, and Kumu trotted into Amaso. The Galayi members of the village came running to the common to greet them. Shonan had been gone so long that many thought the Red Chief must be dead, and his strange son with him. Amaso members of the village hung back, looking for the seer, Oghi, and not seeing him.

Quickly, the stories spread. A Brown Leaf army was on the march toward Amaso. Shonan and the two young men had struck at the Brown Leaves last night and killed two or three. Some Amaso people thought that would only make the beast more angry, and they wanted to flee. By now everyone had learned to communicate, and the Galayi members
told them that Shonan would do everything that could be done. But even they looked worried.

Shonan looked around for his bird-man son and didn’t see him.
Damn, just when I could use his eagle eyes
. The Red Chief looked around the crowd. “You, Cyz, and you, Amar, pick two Amaso men you know. Go back along the trail until you meet our party coming in. If they have seen the enemy, two of you run back and tell me, the other two watch them and come back just ahead of them. If not, all four of you follow the trail until you see the Brown Leaves. They’ll probably camp at the Junction tonight. Run back and let me know for sure.”

The scouts went. Shonan, Fuyl, and Kumu lay down for naps.

Later a hand rocked the Red Chief’s shoulder. Shonan opened his eyes abruptly and looked into Oghi’s face.

Shonan sat up. “Is our party in already?” He meant the Galayi bearing Salya’s body.

“I ran ahead,” said Oghi. Shonan could see he was sweaty.

“What’s up?”

“I said I’d show you a surprise.”

“Okay. Is Aku here?”

“I know where he and Iona are.”

The sea turtle man waded ahead of Iona, Aku, and Shonan across the river. On the far side they were all soaked to the waist.

“Are we going to the cave?” said Iona.

“Yes.”

“I like the cave,” said Iona, “but it will be underwater now.”

Oghi started up the hillside. “When the tide’s out,” Oghi
told the others, “there’s a beach to walk. For now we use the cliff.”

The sea splashed against the foot of the palisade. Aku couldn’t tell how deep the water was. They walked several hundred paces along the top. Then Oghi led them on a path that angled down and around the corner.

“Pretty special, huh?” said Iona, grinning.

The cave entrance was shaped like an axe, wide at the bottom and pointed at the top. The base was about ten big steps wide, and sloshing with seawater.

“It’s our hideaway,” said Iona.

“Not exactly,” Oghi said, “but there’s a surprise.”

“How deep is the water?” said Shonan.

“At low tide the bottom is sand.”

“You can walk it,” said Iona.

“High tide?”

“Usually a little over a man’s knees.” He met Shonan’s skeptical gaze. “I know the tides. So did my father and grandfather.”

“How far back does it go?”

“More than a hundred steps.”

“That’s not much room for a couple of hundred people, and the mouth is too wide to defend.” Shonan looked around. “Worst of all, it’s a trap. No water, no food, no way out except into the arms of your enemies.”

“That’s the surprise. Iona, take the Red Chief you-know-where but don’t show him you-know-what.”

“Let’s go,” the girl said, tapping her feet. She had a touch of the hoyden.

“Be serious,” said Shonan.

“Oh, we are serious,” said Oghi, “and we’re also having fun. Go.”

Iona led the way, scrambling up the rocks. Shonan cast a
suspicious eye back and disappeared over the rim of the cliff.

Oghi said, “Aku, become Owl.”

Aku transformed himself, mouth to beak, arms to wings, flesh to feathers.

Oghi gave a little whoop and jumped feet first into the water. An unruly wave sluiced up onto his privates, and both of them laughed.

“Come on, Aku.”

Aku fluttered down and watched Oghi transform himself, covered by his carapace. When he stuck his turtle head out, his eyes were merry. “Let’s see this place where the sea spumes into the earth,” he said. “I’ll swim, you fly.”

Aku winged his way slowly, from outcropping to outcropping. The angled walls were rough and bumpy, with lots of places to light. Oghi swam with only the top of his back touching the surface, red-brown against the green sea.

The cave was lit in a way that seemed mystical. Near the seaward entrance, light glowed off the emerald water. In the middle was a web of shadows and reflections. Toward the back was something strange. Aku didn’t make it out until they were most of the way there. The rear of the cave was lit somehow. Oghi pulled himself with his front flippers onto a big rock there, and Aku perched beside him.

A crooked shaft gave an eerie light. Aku peered up through the curving, jagged hole but couldn’t see the sky that must be the source of the light.

“Here’s what you really need to notice,” said Oghi. He crawled across and flipper-tapped a vertical corner of rock. Aku fluttered, landed on Oghi’s carapace, and took a look. Oghi stuck his flipper straight through the corner.

Aku craned his head. It wasn’t a corner. Two walls of
rock overlapped. When you looked at them from the side, the slit was easy to spot.

“Kind of looks like the place where you came out, being born, doesn’t it?” said Oghi. “That’s our story about it. That the Amaso people emerged from the earth through this hole to the ocean, and that’s why we’ve always lived at the shore. Amaso means ‘sea.’”

Aku took a short flap through the opening, which was a weird sensation, considering Oghi’s story. He landed on an outthrust rock and looked around with his owl eyesight, excellent in the darkness.

Immediately beyond the slit, the ground level rose and was dry. After a few steps it made a hard left turn.

“We need to show the Red Chief this part,” said Oghi. “Let’s change back to human.”

They both did.

Oghi scrambled easily up some rocks and stuck his head into the open air. He picked up a pebble, tossed it, and a half dozen steps away hit Shonan in the neck.

“Hey!”

“Hello to you, too.”

“Hah,” said Iona, “you sat right by the entrance and didn’t even spot it.”

Shonan surveyed the lay of the land from the sea to the narrow hole in the rock. “I don’t know what good this is going to do.”

“Come see.”

When all four had clambered down, Oghi climbed through the slit above the sloshing sea and his voice sounded from the other side of a solid wall. “Come on! Follow!”

They did, and stood up into utter darkness. Aku felt a bolt of panic.

They heard some scraping noises and knew what Oghi was doing. In a moment he lit a torch.

Here was a completely different kind of cave. This one had the limestone walls and muddy bottom Shonan and Aku knew from their home mountains. They didn’t recognize the rock the sea cave was made of.

“It’s a complicated cave,” Oghi said. “We don’t know how vast it might be. We have food and fresh water stored further back, enough for about one quarter moon.”

“So you hide until your enemies go away.” The edge in his voice was contempt.

“Unfortunately,” said Oghi, “we stay inside until they take everything we own and leave.”

“Yeah.” Shonan pondered. “Why don’t they come in here after you?”

“They don’t see the little entrance we just used. That’s why my great-grandfather chose this spot. Now, I have one more little surprise.” With the torch blazing, he led the way down the left-hand passage for about twenty paces. “This leads a long way and opens into much larger rooms. If you go far enough, you come to an underground river. Except for the darkness, a whole village could live here.”

“Maybe your ancestors did,” said Aku.

Oghi said, “We came onto Earth from this cave. Anyway, our enemies have never come in here. They look into the sea cave. If the tide is out, they walk up here and give up. If they didn’t, we’d kill them one by one as they squeezed through the slit.”

Iona said, “See, my father has it all worked out.”

“My great-grandfather, actually,” said Oghi.

“You’re a lot better prepared than I thought,” said Shonan. Still, there was reserve in his voice.

Aku thought,
He can’t stand the idea of hiding from his enemies
.

“And we know ways out, far up above. We can always escape.”

Shonan gave him a long look. “I guess it works.” He looked back into the passage but showed no inclination to explore it. “Let’s go.”

Oghi led the way out of the slit and up the crooked hole.

When Shonan stood in the open air, he looked all around, took in the sea, the tidal plains, and the hills. Finally he said, “When’s the next low tide?”

“It’s going out now. It will be low tomorrow afternoon.”

“In the morning, get the women and children to walk the beach and come through the sea cave into the other cave. The sooner the better.”

“All right.” Oghi spoke uncertainly.

“The men, all the men of both peoples of Amaso, will stay aboveground and fight.”

Iona flinched. Aku spoke like a man slapped in the face. “You intend to go to war against Maloch the Uktena and two hundred men?”

“You said you went to the Land Beyond the Sky Arch to learn courage.” Shonan gave him what might be called a smile. “Now’s the time to use it.”

“We may need more than you think,” said Oghi, studying the sky. They followed his gaze to sea. “That looks big.”

“I don’t understand,” said Shonan.

Oghi’s voice wavered. “Looks like a hurricane.”

29

“R
ed and yellow, kill a fellow. Red and black, poison lack.”

Maloch chanted this little ditty over and over. He adored it. He lolled it on his snake tongue before he hissed it out. “Red and yellow, kill a fellow. Red and black, poison lack.” A common rhyme for the least common of beasts, himself. He hiss-laughed.

Maloch was supremely satisfied. He had transformed himself into one of his favorite creatures, the coral snake banded red, yellow, and black, definitely the “kill the fellow” variety, where the red and yellow bands touched. Unlike the ordinary earthly examples, which he scorned, Maloch the Uktena was huge in his coral snake form. Like theirs, his venom worked by stopping the breathing of his prey. While theirs took hours to start working, his was instantaneous. He loved watching his victim’s eyes grow huge as the breath wouldn’t come, and wouldn’t and wouldn’t come—
A sky full of air, and none at all for me?
He liked to slither back and forth across the victim’s body as the lips turned blue, the body writhed, and finally went into convulsions. At this sovereign moment Maloch crawled to the face and went nose to nose with his victim, glaring directly into the poor creature’s eyes, so that the dying man could peer deeply into the
black iris, into the abyss of evil as his own vision clouded into death.

Now Maloch arrived at the top of the last hill and raised his head into a stiff breeze. Good—exhilarating. He liked it. High winds felt right. He would descend upon the village like a scourge and cleanse it. Let the winds blow away the debris.

He looked across the plains at the Amaso village. He was surveying a great banquet, and he could already taste his greatest triumph. He raised his head high. He was privileged as leader to ride coiled around a pole held overhead by one of the war leaders of the Brown Leaf army, his head swaying above its top like an emblem or a flag. But Maloch was no symbolic threat. He would crawl down from the pole and enter the fray. If women and children were foolish enough to face him, he would bite every one of them he could reach and would terrify the rest. When he faced warriors, he would return to his dragon magnificence, protected by scales of slate, and work havoc. He chuckled—
hisss!
—at his mental pictures of the warriors turning tail and running. He did not need this army to defeat these poor villagers. He could do it by himself.

Eventually, of course, he would kill Aku, the one with the seeing gift, the greatest threat in the village, though he was too childish to know it. Then he would kill Shonan, the man who had dared to attack the great Maloch. He would add their life-fires to his own. Since they were powerful men, he would make a great gain in strength. Then, like an afterthought, he would consume the body of their precious sister and daughter, destroying all trace of her anywhere in the universe. Very satisfying,
yesss
, very satisfying.

He turned his snake head slowly from southern horizon to northern horizon and back, lingering on where he knew
the village was. Whether in his snake form or as a dragon, he did not have the gift of superb eyesight, and from this distance Amaso was nothing but a smudge. But he had excellent intelligence from his scouts. The village was another quarter day’s march away, and he had overwhelmingly superior forces.

Out to sea he noticed some dirty clouds of an odd olive color. They didn’t matter. Today and perhaps tomorrow Maloch would administer a gory triumph. The flowing blood would belong to the Amaso soldiers, not his.

“Maloch?”

The speaker, Mor, was the tall man with the crooked nose who held Maloch’s staff high. This man was the son of the grand old chief whose throat Shonan had cut. Now Mor was the chief in name only. Maloch had taken all leadership for himself. He was finished with living alone in the high mountains. He liked ruling people. He liked making them bow, watching them cringe. The man who wanted his attention was no worse than most human beings, but then it was a species barely to be noticed.

“Yessss?”

Mor said, “Those clouds out there might be a storm.”

“Yessss?”

“The wind is stiff, sir. This could be a hurricane. They can be rough.”

“How rough?”

“I haven’t seen one myself, sir, but there are stories.”

Stories, nothing could be sillier than the stories of human beings. Maloch himself had spread stories among them. The creatures were easily frightened.

“What are wind and rain? We will make them help us.” Maloch had heard of big storms but had never seen one that impressed him. Until a few winters ago he had been a
mountain dweller. Human beings were afraid of the silliest things.

“Let us march,” said Maloch.

“Yes, sir,” said Mor. He had seen how quickly Maloch killed men who disagreed with him.

“We will march straight into the village,” Maloch said. “No running. We are not assailants, we are conquerors.”

The wind was rising. Strangely, it came not from the east, where the the storm prowled closer and closer, but from the north.

Shonan had to shout to explain the battle plan to the men squatting around him. The Galayis just nodded their acceptance. The Amaso men murmured among themselves, unable to believe that they were going to fight back. It would have been rude to speak up, but the winds whipped their mutterings out to sea anyway.

Chalu, their venerable chief, rose and stood next to Shonan. He cupped his hands and called into the gale, “Pay attention. Get ready. This man is our war chief now. It’s a good plan.” He brandished a fist. “It’s about time we fought.”

A few men chorused under their breath to their neighbors, “About time.”

Many more men whispered to each other, “Why?” Since the time of Oghi’s great-grandfather, when enemies threatened, all the Amaso people, men included, had simply taken refuge in the limestone cave, up behind the sea cave, and waited until their foes left. True, they had losses. No family ever got all its belongings into the cave, and the marauders walked away with whatever they could grab. Stomping around, unable to find their prey, they got frustrated and even took children’s toys and threw them into the river. And they
destroyed the huts. But since the dwellings were only made of brush, who cared? So these men were thinking,
Why are we going to fight now?

Chalu raised his fist again. “We have good news. Our spies say that Maloch is not with their army.”

Some of the men cheered lustily, some sardonically. Shonan smiled to himself at this foolishness.

“What next?” came a voice from the rear.

Shonan gave them all a hard look and summed things up in a commanding tone. “My job is to think and then lead. Yours is to join in and fight. So let’s get ready.”

Getting up, the men looked at their women and children trekking toward the entrance to the sea cave, carrying all the belongings they could. Then most of the men retired to their huts to make medicine to get psychic strength for this afternoon’s fight. They said prayers and sang songs. They tied feathers into their hair. They fixed headresses onto their heads or shoulders, carcasses of small animals like ravens and foxes, the entire heads of bears and buffalo, emblems of their animal guides. The preparations were meticulous and time-consuming. When they were ready, they would finish helping everyone and carrying everything into the cave.

Shonan said to Aku, “Take care of Salya.” Fuyl and Kumu volunteered to help him, and Iona insisted on carrying one corner of the hide.

Aku looked at the dead body—
body
was the awful reality. Somehow Salya had become the center point that his life circled around.
What I am doing is right, but will it ever end?

The four of them hoisted the hide bearing his sister. Aku looked at Iona holding a front corner.
I have a woman and child. I want a life
. Yet he could not picture a life without his twin, Salya.

They trundled out of the village and across the flats, then
staggered through the knee-deep braids of the stream. With Oghi’s help the move had been planned while the tide was ebbing, halfway out. As they approached the corner of the cliffs on the far side, Aku looked up and saw the sea turtle man standing on the rim, leaning forward into the wind and wrapped in a hide, looking out to sea. Aku followed Oghi’s gaze and saw dark, sick-looking clouds pushing across gray ocean, ever closer.

The four got better grips on the hide bearing Salya and made their way along the beach below the cliffs. At this tide the strip of sand beach was narrow, and occasional run-ups of seawater sloshed at their ankles.

Cave mouth. Into the mystic half-light. A hundred strides—it took the hide-bearers two hundred footsteps—along the sand to the emergence slit. They walked awkwardly up the steep, narrow uphill passage and then along a flat that seemed to go forever. “I like this place,” said Aku. That was a relief, because his fingers were at their bitter end.

“You’ll like this even better,” Iona. “Most of the people will camp here,” she said, indicating a great hall just ahead. She led them across the room, past a spot where Aku heard water trickling, and into a kind of alcove with a low ceiling. A small forest of slender stone pillars, like the trunks of birch trees, separated this space from the large space, as though holding the floor and ceiling apart. “Beautiful,” said Aku. Here Salya could rest deep in the cave, safe, and in a way honored.

After they set his twin down, Aku lifted her hand and kissed it. He’d gotten used to the awful coolness of her flesh.

Then the four of them set in to helping the refugees as much as they could. They carried frightened children through the river. Though most could have waded at this low tide, the children were terrified by the howling winds. Babies bawled, children wept, even adolescents quailed. Aku
could barely hear their plaints above the gale, even when they were right in his ear.

Aku didn’t try to understand anything, he just labored, carrying kids, calling comforting words over the gale, putting them in the arms of their relatives on the far side. This was his assignment from his father, and he was glad of it. A few men joined him and Iona, but most were still in their huts, making medicine. Aku wondered how many of the Amaso men had ever been in a fight. Not that he had much experience himself.

Finally, after too long a time, all the women and children had crossed the river. For some reason scores of them huddled on the far bank, beneath the cliffs, partly out of the wind. Aku herded them on toward the sea cave. People stumbled up the narrow beach, struggling to balance against the wind. Occasionally a gust knocked some of them down, or they splashed into the lapping sea. Most of them wandered slowly, in mute passivity. Children whimpered and wept, mothers carried them or shooed them along. Men and young women made ferries of belongings across the river.
Walk, walk
, thought Aku,
hurry, hurry
. “Not far!” he yelled over the wind. Five hundred paces along the narrow beach to the cave, a hundred steps penetrating the innards of the earth, and through the emergence slit to safety.

Though the cliffs protected the beach in part, Aku thought the winds would drive him mad. He and Iona made countless trips herding people, then carrying possessions. Finally Aku thought Iona had had enough. When they turned into the cave and out of the wind, he said to her, “It’s time. Take a load through the slit and don’t come back.”

“I can still help.”

“You are carrying our child!” He pointed toward the
emergence opening. “If I have to go back there and hold you down, I will.”

Iona went.

As Aku pushed back out into the wind, the rains hit—and
hit
was what they did. They pelted all the men packing the belongings to shelter. Aku bit his lip and shouldered goods across the braids of the stream, over and over and over. Stagger across the river, stagger along the sand, keep going somehow to the entrance of the sea cave and then the slit, and hand the goods into arms waiting in the limestone cave. Aku had never worked harder in his life.

He made his mind up. The people would have clothes, hides, dried food, cooking utensils, cloth, knives, awls, and other possessions to resume their lives when the troubles passed. If they passed.

All the adult women remembered well what it was like, having your town pillaged by an attacking army. The older ones remembered having Amaso torn to pieces by the rage of a hurricane. With both threatening, they were all a-babble. Aku heard tatters of their conversation when he handed goods through, but he paid no attention, just turned around and packed over another load. Every time he got back to the village and ducked into a hut to get belongings, he wondered whether he would find Maloch waiting in the shadows with an evil grin. He wondered if Maloch would transform himself into the shape of a hut. Aku hesitated before going in.

When he came out of the sea cave and across the beach to the river one more time, he saw his father signaling for him to come to the ledge that cut the cliffs halfway up. A quick scramble and Aku stood between his father and Oghi near a dozen fighting men. Another dozen squatted down on top, their backs to the wind.

“The enemy is almost to the village,” his father said.

“Father,” said Aku, “I want to fight.”

“You will,” Shonan said with a lopsided smile. He pointed straight up. “Can you fly in these winds?”

Aku felt a spritz of happiness. His father was acknowledging his value as an eagle. “Not a chance,” Aku said.

“I’m going to the village to fight now,” said Shonan. His voice gleamed with pleasure. Before Aku could protest, he said, “Your turn will come, and it will be the big fight. Stay with Fuyl and Kumu.” Aku hadn’t seen them on the ledge until now. “They know what to do. Anything you can add, do it.”

Aku was relieved that his father didn’t say his son was no good with weapons.

“Everybody,” called Shonan. Only the dozen men nearby could hear him. “We’ve caught some luck. You know about Maloch’s diamond eye that blinds attackers. In this rain it may not work, or it won’t be so bright.”