Lord Tyger (20 page)

Ziipagu's head appeared just in time to draw Ras's aim from Thaigulo. He spun and released the arrow with the unthinking smoothness and accuracy born of many, many long days of practice under Yusufu's unrelenting discipline. The arrow went through Ziipagu's throat to the feathers, and Ziipagu dropped.

The arrows missed Ras, although one buried its head into the ground so close that the shaft quivered against the inside of his calf. The men yelled with dismay; some of the women screamed. Bigagi raved, when he should have been shooting. Ras shook the arrow that he had saved for Bigagi and managed, despite his dry throat, to tell him that it was intended for him and him alone.

Suddenly, Ras dropped the bow, bent down, scooped up a spear, and ran at Jabubi. Jabubi stared at him for a while; his eyes were so wide that Ras could see the whites. Then Jabubi seemed to come out of his amazement, and he aimed an arrow. Ras ran straight at him until Jabubi released the shaft, and then he leaped to one side. Jabubi's arrow went wide, but two shot by others missed Ras by an inch and by two feet. Ras resumed his charge at Jabubi, who had time to draw another arrow and fit it to his bow. But he seemed clumsy. Perhaps the thought that the Ghost-Boy was intent on him, that the Ghost-Boy had so far managed to live and to burn down the village and kill most of the men made him shake. He dropped the arrow and stooped to pick it
up, disappearing for a moment. When he straightened up, he saw the spear rushing along the downward leg of the arc at him.

He yelled and dropped the bow and arrow down along the wall into the village. He turned as if to run back down the pile of wood when he should have let his knees loose and slumped back down behind the wall. Thus, the spearhead entered through the muscle above the collarbone, and he slid on down the wood.

Ras picked up the bow and the arrow dropped by Jabubi, and he shot at Thaigulo. Thaigulo ducked. The arrow drove into the top of the pole, and its shaft broke off. Ras was breathing so heavily and his legs were so tired that he could only walk back to the chair and the weapons by its side. Bigagi shot twice at him; Ras continued to walk straight ahead. Both arrows whispered near him, but by this time he felt that he could not be stopped. Not, at least, by the Wantso. Perhaps by his own hunger, thirst, and exhaustion.

Thaigulo reappeared and shot twice also, and did not even come near Ras. Perhaps he felt as Ras did, that Ras was going to win. There was only himself and Bigagi left to fight the Ghost-Boy, and he may suddenly have felt deserted.

At that moment, the chop-chop-chop of the wings of the Bird of God came from the distance. Bigagi, Thaigulo, and Ras looked up into the sky. Then Ras looked away and took the arrow that had killed Mariyam and placed its nock on the string. He took careful aim at Bigagi, but Bigagi must have seen him out of the corner of his eye. He suddenly ceased to be a still target against the sky framed between two trees. He was gone behind the wall. Ras growled with disappointment, but waited for him to reappear.

Then the Bird was there. It flew just above the treetops and came over the river. It rose higher, stopped, and hovered. The Wantso screamed. Bigagi rose from behind the wall and shot quickly at Ras and dodged behind the wall. His arrow, too hastily launched, angled upward several feet above Ras's head.

There was a strange noise, a chatter-chatter. Chips flew from the tops of the poles behind which Bigagi had been standing. The Bird sank down, and Ras could see one of the masked angels clutching the end of two cylindrical contrivances. Fire spurted out of the end of each.

The Bird swung past the walls and then circled above the village. The chatter-chatter continued; the twin cylinders blew flame.

The Wantso women and children screamed and screamed.

Presently, there was silence. The Bird of God rose, and, flying only a few feet above the trees, which whipped in the air driven by its wings, disappeared. The chop-chop and the roar became fainter and then were gone.

Ras waited a while before opening the west gate. He swung the gates out slowly and looked out. The bodies of three women were outside the gate. They had great holes in their flesh. Blood was over them and the ground around them. The head of one woman was a shatter of bone and of flesh splashed with blood.

He stepped over and through the bodies to get to the river for a drink. By then, several large bodies of blood, like misshapen rafts, were drifting down the stream. A child, face down, floated by him as he scooped up water in his palm. His thirst washed away, he rose and painfully circled the village, starting along the south wall. Some of the Wantso lay on the ground where the
invisible stones hurled from the cylindrical weapon of the Bird had caught them as they ran for the trees; the rest floated away down the river.

While he was going by the east gate, he saw a man slip from the bushes by the river about two hundred yards away. The man was Bigagi. He shoved a dugout from the bank, jumped in, and began paddling furiously down-river, his body bent forward against the winds of terror.

Ras watched him until he was out of sight. He felt nothing at this moment except a numbed wonder that Bigagi, who was responsible for all this, should escape. And after he had searched all around the village, he was sure that Bigagi was the only Wantso not dead.

Two ravens floated down from a high branch and hopped cautiously toward a baby. Its ribs were torn away on one side, and it was half-covered by ants. The first raven began to tear at the edges of the wound; the second pecked at an open eye. Soon enough the vultures would see and would settle down out of the skies, and jackals and hyenas would come loping toward the scent. These would have a feast until the leopards arrived with night, and even then the lesser carrion eaters might continue, since surely there was enough for all, for once.

Ras sat down in the mud of the bank. Except for the croaking of ravens and occasional flapping of wings and the cries of far-off birds, it was silent. He felt as empty as the silence. The mouths of the Wantso would never speak again. The only sound in them would be the buzz of flies, and then after a while even the flies would be gone.

He remembered that he had listened to the Wantso with
such delight, as he hid in the bushes. He remembered exciting and interesting and funny conversations with Wilida, Fuwitha, Bigagi, and others. What a noise the villagers had made, the voices of men, women, children, and babies spiraling up like smoke from the jungle to the sky! Surely, Igziyabher must have sniffed the smoke of human voices; surely, He must have savored it, just as His son, hidden in the bushes, savored it.

Now, he had no one to talk to except Bigagi, no one anywhere in the world. And he could not talk with Bigagi. He must kill Bigagi. His hatred was gone. He did not even hate Bigagi any more. But he would have to kill Bigagi. If the desire for vengeance seemed gone, duty still remained.

He thought of Igziyabher. He was protecting His son. He had seen the fire in the village and He had sent angels in the Bird to rescue His son. For this, Ras was not grateful. He could have taken care of the men by himself, even if he was wounded and surrounded. Moreover, Bigagi would not then have escaped. Nor would the women and children have been killed. He could have become chief of the Wantso, and, after he had explained to the women why he had had to kill their men, he would have taken the women as wives. They would have had to accept him as a man, not a ghost, because he would have been the only man left to protect them, hunt for them, and bed them.

Or was that a dream that would have quickly died when a woman stabbed him as he slept? Perhaps the women would never have forgiven him for what he did, even if he could have done nothing else and it was the fault of the men that he had had to kill them. Perhaps he dreamed falsely. He would never know.

He rose and drank again from the river. Now, as if the
river water had given him fluid for tears, he wept. He wept for Mariyam and Yusufu, for Wilida, for the dead women and children, and, even, though he did not understand why, for the dead men and for Bigagi.

Most of all, it seemed to him, he was weeping for himself.

The others, except Bigagi, were past grief and pain. Ras was the unlucky one, because only he could grieve, and he had nothing left but grief.

After a while, his sorrow-twisted body could squeeze out no more tears, and the gash in his head reminded him that he was alive. He wanted to get rid of the pain, but he did not wish to do it by dying. Not even in the bottommost pain of sorrow had he really wanted to join the dead.

He washed the wound in his head and then, seeing that the blood had started again, repacked the wound with mud. He picked up some arrows the Wantso had dropped and swam the river, holding the quiver and bow above the water. His goal was a tree nest, where he would sleep tonight, or try to sleep, and tomorrow he would hunt for food.

Halfway to the nest, he had to sit down to rest with his back against a tree trunk. His muscles were quivering, and he felt dizzy and weak. It was then that he heard a rustle in the bushes, and he saw a white face looking at him through leaves. Hair shone yellow in the sunlight.

10

THE YELLOW-HAIRED ANGEL--OR DEMON

The angel--or demon--from the stiff-winged bird had come out with empty hands from the bushes. She was smiling; her teeth were even and white. She looked eerie, she was so pale, and her nose was so thin and high-bridged and her lips were so thin! Her eyes were as gray as the blade of his knife. Her body was clothed much as the body of the angel that had fallen from the burning Bird of God. The soft, brown material was so loose that he would not have known she was a woman, except that it was tight enough around the chest to hint at large, well-rounded breasts. Her feet and legs from the calf down were covered with cured hide of an animal. She wore a belt with two sheaths. One held a knife and the other contained a device of iron.

She helped him to the tree that held the nest and followed him after he had painfully and weakly climbed up the tree. She inspected his wound, cluck-clucked, and then took a bag out of a bulging pocket. She poured a whitish powder over the gash in his scalp.

Her speech was gibberish. Ras shook his head at her and closed his eyes. If she meant harm, she could have captured or killed him. Moreover, the iron device seemed to him to be responsible for the death of the man who had floated down out of the flaming Bird. He was sure that it carried the same kind of death that the twin cylinders in the Bird had spat at the Wantso. Undoubtedly, she had killed Wiviki.

He woke sometime during the night to find her sitting by his side. The moon was just coming up, so he could see her smile at him. He could also see that she was very tired, and, judging from the gurgling and rumbling of her stomach, very hungry. She spoke softly, and, though he did not understand her this time either, it seemed to him that she was using a different language. In Amharic, he asked her for her name. She said something in what he was certain was yet another language. Then he went back to sleep.

Ras recovered rapidly. Within six days, he was able to run with all his usual vigor. By then he had become accustomed to her white skin and squeezed-in features and yellow hair. He was even beginning to think that he might some day find them attractive. Moreover, when he watched her take a bath in the river on the seventh day, he got an erection. She was thinner than Wilida and longer-legged, but her breasts were almost as large and quite as firm--to the eye, anyway. Her pubic hair was reddish-brown, a color he found stimulating.

He left his cover behind a bush and joined her. She was startled and backed away until the water was up to her neck. He wondered about that, but if she wanted to do it in the water and standing up, for some peculiar reason, he would co-operate. He
started to wade toward her, while checking again to make sure that no crocodiles were near. But she left the water and hurriedly put on her clothes.

When he came out of the water, he was confronted with the iron device. She spoke harshly while she pointed its open end at him. Ras, remembering what had happened to Wiviki, came no closer. Grinning, he stood before her and made thrusting motions with his hips.