Bones of the Past (Arhel) (11 page)

Fat Girl retired to her hiding place and told Dog Nose, “He wanted to go back across to get her. I told him we’d kill him if he did.”

Dog Nose whispered, “No! Roshi is good tagnu.” He pivoted and grabbed her shoulder. His fingers bit so deep, she felt as if they cut to the bone.

She shook him loose and rubbed her shoulder angrily. Her eyes narrowed. “That’s what I told him. I want him to believe it. A dooru could fly overhead at any time, or the Keyu could notice us and get angry at us and send a keyudakkai, or kellinks could scent us—we’ve been here too long already.”

“But would you kill him if he went back?”

Fat Girl bit her lip. “No. I don’t think so. But I don’t want him to know that.”

Then Runs Slow moved onto the bridge, and Fat Girl relaxed.

She was the big problem
, she thought.
The rest of them will be all right now.

Runs Slow kept her eyes on her brother and moved forward at a slug’s crawl. Seven-Fingered Fat Girl tensed again. Too slow, she kept thinking. Too slow. With every tiny step the little girl made forward, Fat Girl felt her muscles knot tighter.

Then there was a full-throated scream from the other side of the river. Fat Girl’s stomach soured, and her fingers clenched around the dartstick.
Ah, Keyu
, she thought.
Now we die
.

Dog Nose shifted to cover the bridge—his arrows would be more accurate across it than Fat Girl’s darts. She covered the clearing. From her position, she could no longer see the river, and the bridge.

She heard no more screams. But suddenly, Dog Nose cried, “No! Too soon! Tell her it’s too soon.”

“Tell me what’s happening!” Fat Girl yelled.

“Toes Point In is already on the bridge. Runs Slow isn’t to the middle yet—and Toes Point In is going too fast. She’s making the bridge swing—Runs Slow has stopped—she’s screaming—”

Fat Girl heard shreds of the thin child-screams above the roar of the river.

“No! Toes Point In is trying to catch Runs Slow—I think she’s going to throw her off the bridge—oh, no!—” Fat Girl heard horror in Dog Nose’s voice. She forced herself to keep watch. “What?” she whispered.

Dog Nose’s voice was ragged. “Oh, gods, oh Keyu, someone shot Toes Point In. A smallspear hit her, and she lost her hold—she’s fallen into the river. There are tagnu moving on the other side of the bridge—more than our two—”

She felt Dog Nose’s pull away from her and heard the soft hiss of his hurlstick taking flight. “That’s one,” he growled. And an instant later, “Good. She’s moving again. Faster this time.”

“Runs Slow.”

“Yah. She didn’t fall. She’s coming now, but Roshi is still out there.”

Fat Girl, who had not sincerely prayed to the gods since the gods made her tagnu, prayed then.
Anything you want of me
, she promised,
I will give you—if you will let my people live. I won’t go back to the mountain city—I’ll stay on the Paths and be tagnu forever. Just get my tagnu across the river safe.

Dog Nose let out a sigh that was almost a sob. “Runs Slow is here,” he said. An instant later, Roshi and Runs Slow were under cover with the two of them. Fat Girl detailed them to guard the Path. She turned in time to see one of the stranger tagnu fall with a hurlstick through her chest.

“Good,” she yelled. “Kill them all, Three Scars, Spotted Face!” The distant tagnu wouldn’t be able to hear her over the noise of the river, but she felt better for cheering them on. As she watched, another stranger tagnu died. Fat Girl was proud of her people—they held their positions, they did just what she’d told them to do—

The clearing on the other side of the river was still. Dead tagnu sprawled on the packed earth; Spotted Face and Three Scars were still out of sight. Long moments passed while the tagnu band waited for any sign that the enemy still lived. There was no such sign. Peace descended on the jungle, and the warmth of the sun trickled down to the places where Fat Girl and Dog Nose hid. Fat Girl relaxed. Toes Point In was lost—and the band would grieve her—but she would have lived if she had followed Fat Girl’s orders.

Finally, Spotted Face leapt out of hiding, swung onto the rope bridge and crossed to the middle easily. Three Scars took his place on the ropes and followed.

Fat Girl smiled. They moved well across the bridge, staggering their steps, avoiding swinging the rope much.

Inexplicably, Three Scars stopped moving. He hung on the rope, an expression of horror on his face. Then he crumpled slowly, and toppled from the bridge, and spun, end over end, through the air to the boulders and raging currents below. A smallspear protruded from his back.

Spotted Face screamed as a red spot appeared on his chest, and became a thin red line that coursed down his chest and belly. Another red spot bloomed beside it. Dog Nose, hurlstick ready, searched the far shore with frantic eyes, looking for the assassin. Seven-Fingered Fat Girl watched the far cliff, too.

The boy pulled himself the last few steps across the rope, then fell to the ground. He lay there, gasping, with tears in his eyes. Two long, red-fletched smallspears pierced his back.

Fat Girl ran to his side, keeping cover between herself and the invisible killer. She stroked Spotted Face’s hair.

He lay very still, gasping for air. Blood bubbled from his lips, and his skin was white and sweat-slick. “I’m sorry, Fat Girl,” he mumbled. “I didn’t see them.”

“No one saw them,” she told him. “They kept still and waited until you were helpless on the bridge. You did the best you could.”

He nodded, seemingly satisfied with that, then closed his eyes. He gasped several more times, then stopped.

Tears streaked Fat Girl’s cheeks.
But you could have saved them!
she raged silently at the gods.
Foul Keyu, you could have saved my tagnu—but you didn’t. You let them die instead. I swear, I will be death to you now!
Her fingers clenched into fists.

On the other side of the river, drums thundered to life. “Come to vengeance,” they rumbled. “Kellinks-Fear-Us Band, answer our call.”

Dog Nose and Seven-Fingered Fat Girl exchanged frantic glances. Kellinks-Fear-Us was a big band that split into several smaller units. They took pleasure in their viciousness; they stole territory; they ranged over more of the jungle than any other band. Fat Girl had lost people to them before. Four Winds Band was doomed unless she could figure out some way to stop them.

At her gesture, the remains of her band ran to her side behind the rock that anchored the bridge and clustered around her. They were all crying. “They’ll have more tagnu here soon,” Seven-Fingered Fat Girl whispered. “If any of their band is already on this side of the river, very soon. Three of us plus Runs Slow won’t be able to win if Kellinks-Fear-Us Band is already here. But if they aren’t, we have to stop them, or at least slow them down.”

“How?” Laughs Like A Roshi wiped tears from his eyes and sniffled.

Fat Girl took a deep breath to calm the racing of her heart. “We have to cut the rope.”

Dog Nose and Roshi stared at her, stunned. “But we can’t,” Dog Nose said. “The Paths are sacred to the Keyu. If we destroy a bridge on one, the Keyu will hunt us down and slaughter us.”

“Maybe.” Fat Girl nodded and grimly pulled the stone knife Dog Nose had made for her from its place at her hip. “But if we leave the bridge, the other tagnu will kill us for sure.”

“You are our fat,” Dog Nose said, and rested one hand on her shoulder. “I will cut the rope with you.”

Roshi nodded. “For Runs Slow—so will I.”

Runs Slow looked at the other three. “I have a knife, too. I will help.”

Fat Girl sawed on the bottom rope. “I don’t think I have any more good fat,” she said. “But we still have to cut the rope.”

Runs Slow cut with her. “I got scared,” she whispered to Fat Girl. “The water was so loud, and I was afraid I would fall. I’m s-s-sorry.” She stopped cutting at the rope and sobbed, covering her eyes with small fists.

Fat Girl kept sawing away at the rope. She made headway, as did the two boys working on the upper rope. She tried to ignore Runs Slow’s anguish, but as hard as she tried, she couldn’t keep blaming the child for the deaths of the three tagnu. “It wasn’t all your fault,” she finally said. “You’re too little to be tagnu.”

“I didn’t have a Tree-Naming,” Runs Slow admitted. “Mama and Papa wouldn’t let my big sister go to be Tree-Named. So the priests took all of us away from them. They said my sister was sharsha. They made me tagnu.”

Fat Girl stared at the little girl. “What happened to your parents?” She couldn’t imagine anyone defying the priests or the Keyu.

“I don’t know. The priests were really angry. Do you think they did bad things to Mama and Papa?”

Fat Girl was almost certain they had, but she didn’t want to say so. “Probably not. Maybe the priests don’t do things to big people. Just to kids.”

Runs Slow looked thoughtfully at her hands, then nodded. “Maybe.”

The boys were nearly through their rope. Only a few strands held it in place.

“Stop,” Seven-Fingered Fat Girl told them. “Leave it that way.”

She sawed on her own rope until it was equally frayed. “Maybe one of them will die when they try to cross it,” she said. “Let’s run, while we still have time.”

The four remaining members of Four Winds Band took off, running south and west, off the Paths. The sounds of the wild river faded and disappeared, and the other noises of the jungle replaced them.

“They’ll wait,” Fat Girl said suddenly, while they ran. “They’ll—wait because we might still—be there. Won’t want to—be the first to—cross the bridge.”

“Easy targets—” Roshi said, and his eyes were dark with pain.

Fat Girl bared her teeth in a not-smile. “Yah.”

“How long—will they wait?” Roshi asked.

Dog Nose snorted. “Not long enough.”

As if to prove him right, the drums roared to life again. “Bridge destroyed, bridge destroyed—” they raged, over and over. Then the drums fell silent.

Ominously, the jungle hushed. The animals froze and flattened; the air stilled. Fat Girl felt the jungle grow somehow darker, though no clouds covered the sun. Bad things were about to happen. Every particle of air, every leaf on every tree, every hovie hidden in its stump-hole, shivered with the presentiment.

“Faster,” Seven-Fingered Fat Girl urged her tagnu. Unreasoning fear crushed her. Her heart bludgeoned against her ribs; her throat constricted until she feared the air in the jungle was gone. “Run faster,” she croaked.

All four tagnu broke from their steady lope into panicky, headlong flight. They wouldn’t be able to keep it up, Fat Girl thought, and at the same time forced herself to run even faster. The fear had a life of its own—it came from outside of her, and drove her. She could not argue with it, could not reason herself out of it. So she flew, raced, galloped.

Low thunder rolled through the jungle; the voices of the Keyu called out their promises of vengeance. “You who violated our Path, know that you will die,” they thrummed. “You cannot escape us—the enmity of your gods is forever.”

“Faster,” Fat Girl urged.

Laughs Like A Roshi controlled his own panic long enough to stop and pull his sister onto his back. She wrapped her legs around his waist and clutched at his neck like a drowning swimmer. With his added burden, he began to fall behind.

Fat Girl heard low, muttering murmurs off to one side. Then a soft cough, a bark, quick hisses that came from behind her and in front of her—something flapped its wings and shrieked high overhead.

Now we die
. She didn’t say it out loud—she didn’t have the breath. She veered in the one direction from which no predator sounds came. Dog Nose followed her; Roshi ran a bit to one side.

The sounds kept coming from behind her and to her right and in front of her, no matter how much she turned. Her fear grew with the abrupt realization that the jungle was driving her, forcing her to run toward its destination instead of her own.
No!
she thought.
No! She might die, but she would not die easily.
She readied her dartstick and veered back toward the peknu lands. She would face her attackers—not flee them. Not this time.

Dog Nose matched her, both in speed and direction. He pulled out his dagger.

Roshi followed them, but fell further behind.

The animal noises stayed in front of Fat Girl and behind her and at her sides, but never grew any closer. She squinted, trying to make out the moving forms of the hunting beasts she knew had to be there, but in the moderate underbrush, she could not see anything that moved.

The tagnu came over the top of a slight hill, and in front of them the underbrush grew suddenly thicker. Fat Girl looked for a way through—directly in front of them, the thicket became abruptly and viciously impassable. Gleaming thorns tangled and wrapped over each other. She veered west.

Roshi screamed.

The scream was awful—a lost soul, mournful, dying animal plea for mercy—pain made human, begging for release. That scream jerked Fat Girl to a complete stop more effectively than all the thorns in the world could have. She looked back.

The boy was wrapped, from foot to neck, in glistening green vines. He lay on the ground, struggling weakly against the tentacles. His sister stood just out of reach of the vines, her hands pressed to her mouth. She was filthy, covered with humus and dead leaves. Fat Girl could see where Roshi had thrown the girl. The furrow in the jungle floor where she’d landed was clear as a fresh scar.

Seven-Fingered Fat Girl looked at Laughs Like A Roshi, then at Runs Slow, and then at Dog Nose. She started back toward Roshi as a slow walk, clutching her dartstick.

“Get Runs Slow,” she told Dog Nose. “Go west; south and west as soon as you can. Don’t—don’t stop. Don’t look back. Run. I’ll catch up with you if I can.”

Dog Nose bit his lip and nodded. He ran to Runs Slow, pulled her away from the place where her brother lay, and carried her, kicking and screaming, off into the jungle.

Fat Girl walked as near as she dared to Roshi and the myed vine that trapped him. He looked up at her, his eyes glazed with pain. She looked at him; looked at her dartstick.