Ghostcountry's Wrath (33 page)

And then he turned a corner—and staggered back involuntarily, nearly colliding with Sandy until he got his bearings.

The spiral had spat them out at one side of a circular, open-roofed “arena” maybe a hundred feet across. The pavement was hard gray sand, the walls blank save for subtle patterns formed by the irregular stones. A pair of trees faced each other halfway around, one with black bark and red leaves, the other exactly the opposite. In spite of their unlikely coloration, Brock thought they were honey locusts.

But he had little time for dendrology just then, for directly across from him and Sandy, lounging on a series of woven mats beneath an awning made of a complex webwork of furs and feathers, were two boys. Or that's how they looked: two Native American-types, roughly Brock's own age, so he judged, and no more heavily built than he, but maybe taller (it was hard to tell at this distance, in this light, with them reclining). One had long black hair secured into a forelock with a large white bead and seemed to be wearing no more than a loincloth made of what looked like black leather. He also had uncannily ruddy skin.

The other was harder to assess in the gloom, possibly because his skin appeared to be dead black. Only his orange-red hair, shaved on the sides and greased up into something like a Mohawk, his scarlet loincloth, and discs of some shiny metal at his ears and on his chest made him visible at all.

But Brock observed all that unconsciously, for bare instants after he saw the boys, he saw what occupied their attention. “Oh, crap,” he said, and gulped, nudging Sandy—unnecessarily, probably, given how rigid she had suddenly become.
“Oh Jesus!”

For, sprawled between the boys, having their ears scratched like household pets, were two panthers—one larger and darker, the other smaller and more tawny, its fur still (though not surprisingly, given the unlikely humidity) slightly sheened with damp.

“Looks like we've found 'em,” Brock muttered.

“And more than we wanted,” Sandy added with a sigh. Then, as she took a deep breath and squared her shoulders: “Well, we can let 'em have the initiative or take it ourselves.” And with that, she retrieved Calvin's atasi, wrapped the handle in what was left of her T-shirt (to avoid pollution, Brock assumed), and strode across the arena, straight toward the boys.

*

Brock had never liked staring contests—mostly because he always lost them. And he liked the present one no better. Sandy was older than he, dammit; they ought to be looking at her! Instead, utterly silent, they were gazing intently at him with storm-dark eyes that were so damnably piercing they looked as if lightning flashed there: bright spots in a thunderous gloom.

And he didn't know what to do! Precedent in his own World said visitors should wait to be acknowledged, that to speak out of turn could be rude, even fatal. But suppose these lean healthy lads had some other worldview? Suppose they held to a system that said higher life forms did not address lower ones?

And so they remained, locked in impass four yards apart, as Brock became ever more nervous and impatient, which made it harder to think clearly by the second. But then, finally, the larger panther shook itself from the loose grip of the ruddy boy and padded over to rub itself against Sandy's legs. She reached down automatically and scratched behind its ears. A sideways glance showed a gleam of tears.

The abandoned lad lifted an eyebrow at his companion, then looked back at Brock. “It is the way of Fatchasigo and Ito speak only to warriors,” he said at last, his voice light but authoritive. “Is one of you a warrior? Or both? Or neither?”

“Actually, we speak to everyone
but
warriors,” the darker one corrected with a sly smirk. “Yet no one of faint heart could reach here, in which case my twin should not have spoken at all. And in either event, we could not tell which of you
was
the warrior. One of you is almost a man. Certainly he is old enough to know the arts of war. Yet—”

“Yet the atasi is in the hands of the woman,” the ruddy boy interrupted. “And a beast of great medicine chooses to stand beside her, and so we are confounded.”

“And more so because those to whom we speak most commonly are dead, and you are not,” the dark twin added.

“Are you then magicians?”

Brock exchanged wary glances with Sandy and nodded for her to speak. She grimaced, cleared her throat, and began. “
Siyu,
warriors—and if you are worthy of more exhalted titles, forgive me their omission, but I am unfamiliar with the customs of this place.”

“The dead come from many quarters,” the red twin replied. “Ignorance, though undesirable, is not unknown, in both the dead and the living.”

Sandy paused to allow the other his say, but he remained silent. “Greetings, then. My name is Sandy Fairfax, and in my own place I am esteemed…if not a wisewoman, at least one wise in certain ways of the world.”

“Wisdom is
always
to be respected,” the dark boy acknowledged, with another smirk.

“But are you also a
warrior
?”
his brother persisted.

Sandy gnawed her lip. “I am skilled at certain forms of combat.”

“Can you use that weapon?”

Sandy glanced down automatically. “I never have.”

“But it seems a fine one!” the red twin exclaimed. “Indeed, the workmanship looks familiar. Let me see it.”

She hesitated, then extended the weapon, handle first, toward him.

He studied it for a moment, then passed it to his companion, who did likewise before handing it back. “It is the work of our father's brother,” the red twin acknowledged. “How did you come by it?”

Again Sandy exchanged glances with Brock. “He gave it to a friend of ours, who…left it in my keeping.”

The dark twin's eyes narrowed. “And when was this?”

“Before…we passed the edge of the sky vault.” Both sets of eyes widened abruptly.

“You came
that
way…in
those
bodies? Only the dead are fleet enough for that—or beasts.”

The panther that was Calvin growled.

“You have never told us whether or not you are magicians,” the red twin noted. “Again I ask: are you?”

Sandy scowled uncomfortably. “We know something of the ways of magic—a very little.”

“Do you know how to change shape?”

“Not…
how,
precisely, but we have…means to do that.”

“And was that fine beast beside you always a beast?”

She shook her head. “He was a man—a warrior of the Ani-Yunwiya. He was learning to be an…
adewehi,
I think the word is.”

“And this other creature?”

“A…woman born of both worlds but truly part of neither.”

Both twins looked troubled. “Why came you here, then?” the dark one demanded.

“Here?” Sandy echoed. “We came
here
to find our friends who were tricked into shifting shape and led astray by…someone who proved unreliable. I would rather not speak of what brought us to Usunhiyi until our friends return to their proper bodies.”

Again dark eyes narrowed. “Ah, so you would cheat us of our pets! But they are such fine creatures, of rare and marvelous kind.”

“They're people,” Sandy shot back furiously. “You can't make pets out of people!”

“I see no people!” the dark twin snapped.

Sandy's face was set. “Nevertheless, they are.”

“Will you fight for them, then?” the red twin inquired.

“If I have to.”

“She cannot!” a third voice inserted, so close to a growl it was almost incomprehensible. Brock started, so did Sandy. But theirs was nothing to the reaction of the twins, each of whom flung himself a body length away from what was no longer—entirely—a tawny panther. Okacha was drying—finally. And as she did, her human form was returning.

The twins recovered their composure quickly—probably so as not to lose face. “Who are
you
?”
the dark one spat at the uncertain shape between him and his brother.

“I am called Okacha,” came the growl, though the face was now more human than feline. “My grandmother many mothers back was the child of a woman of the Muscogee and a
Wikatcha
.”

“And why should this woman not fight us?” asked the dark boy.

“Because my nose tells me that she is in that condition which renders her unfit for the company of men.”

The twins exchanged troubled grimaces. “Well, we are not polluted yet, though that atasi may be, if it not be purified. But that is for its owner to decide.”

“And he cannot decide in that shape,” Okacha noted from where she was dragging clothes out of the pack Sandy had passed to her.

“Therefore—”

“The boy must fight one of us.”

Brock looked first at Sandy, then at Okacha, as a cold, sick dread awoke in him. “H-how do you
mean
fight?” he stammered.

“Ah, so you
do
have a tongue,” the dark twin chuckled. “I was wondering if you intended to let these women speak for you all day. But to answer your question, the best fights are between those who are most equal. Therefore, we will fight you in whatever form you choose. Ourselves, we are good at all.”

“Does this have to be a…
fight
fight?” Brock managed.

“Are you a coward?”

Brock took a deep breath and shifted his weight. “No! But… Well, I mean, could it be a game? Or gambling?”

“It could be a
ball
game,” the red twin admitted.

Brock felt his heart flip-flop. Why hadn't he kept his mouth shut? Board games he was decent at; he won more than he lost at poker, and was hell on wheels in a video arcade. But the rest…well, he was in decent shape, but hardly an athlete. And from everything he'd read, southeastern Indian ball games were definitely designed for those in A-1 condition. Shoot, the only ball games
he'd
ever played were grammar school softball and the bit of cricket he'd picked up in self-defense during the year he'd just spent in England.

“You don't seem eager to accept our challenge,” the dark twin noted with a wicked grin. “Perhaps you
are
a coward.”

Brock tried to keep his shoulders straight and his face calm, though his nerves were in tatters. “I don't know
how
to play your kind of ball game,” he gritted. “Besides, isn't it usually played with big teams?”

“It is,” the red twin acknowledged. “So what I had thought was that you could take turns shooting at the goal, while the other tries to prevent it—and the one who hits it most out of, say, ten tries is the winner.”

“Or five in a row,” the dark twin added.

Brock scowled. “Yeah, but that gives you all the advantage, seeing as how I've never played before.”

“True,” the red twin admitted. “Is there a ball game
you
know that we do not? If you were to play our game and then yours—”

“And a third to break any tie,” the dark twin broke in.

“Then that would be fair all the way around.”

Brock's scowl deepened. “The only ball games I know involve someone throwing a ball and the other trying to hit it.”

“Which works perfectly!” Red cried. “In ours, you try to hit a stick with a ball; in yours, a ball with a stick!”

Brock stared at the war club dubiously, noting that it was roughly the right length and width, and flat on one side. “I suppose I
could
use that for a cricket bat.”

“Well,” the dark twin announced with a malicious smile, pointedly ignoring the women, “I think we should get to it. Do you want to begin, brother? Or shall I?”

*

Tattoos.

For some stupid reason, all Brock could think of, as he faced the dark twin in the center of the sand-paved arena, was tattoos.

Even at the relatively short distance that had separated them during the audience that had led to this godforsaken duel, the boy's skin had seemed black. Here, though, without the sheltering awning and at no more than an arm's length separation, he could see that what he had taken for inborn pigmentation was in fact an intricacy of angular black tattoos that covered every visible surface of the boy's body, including even his eyelids and the complex curves in his ears. What skin showed through, in hair-thin spaces behind the patterns, would have looked copper-red—had it not also had a tendency, very faintly, to glow like metal hot from a forge. Otherwise, save for his loincloth, the boy was bare.

Excepting his jeans, and much against his will, Brock was too—and not happy about it, partly because of the cool damp air, and partly because it only emphasized his opponent's superior condition. The dark boy's spare muscles were clean-cut and firm; his soft-edged and a touch flabby. On the plus side, they were close to a height, and not that far off weight-wise, except that the dark boy, being more muscular, was undoubtedly stronger.