Shadow Valley (15 page)

“Fire Ant is no ordinary man! He will not fail you.”

“What of Stillshadow?” Papa asked. “What of Sky Woman?”

Far Sigh was still frozen in place, watching Boar Tracks’s hands twitch, as if she were mired in a dream. No one moved toward him as the ground beneath his broken mouth slurred into red mud.

“Sky Woman?” Fire Ant asked. “Who is this Sky Woman?”

“What Stillshadow called the nameless one.”

The man-god blinked like a chameleon squatting on a flat rock. “What Father Mountain tells a woman, Fire Ant cannot say. He told Fire Ant to fight!

“Come with me. You have hunted zebra and antelope and pig. There is more. I will teach you to be hunters of men.”

Far Sigh jumped into the air, screaming and lifted on the screams of her people. And around her, Mama and Papa and all the others jumped and yelled and cried.

They had lost a hunt chief. The very last hunt chief. But in Boar Tracks’s place was something even more precious: a messenger from their god Himself.

Twin fires cast their living light upon the bloodied wrestling circle. Fire Ant watched the flames carefully. His brother Frog had spoken of seeing faces in the fire. Could he, now that he was reborn?

Nothing.

In his childhood, Fire Ant had almost been burned alive of fever. What
he now felt reminded him of that sensation: swollen, weightless, the world as glimpsed through a dust storm. Only instead of weakness, he felt stronger than he ever had. The
jowk
flowed within him. His
num
was more powerful than any man’s or Mk*tk’s.

Perhaps his traitor brother saw faces, but Ant saw truth. And the men who now swore to follow him saw the same truth: they must fight for their homes.

Blood boiling with excitement, Fire Ant realized he knew the way to do it.

“I know,” he said later that night, “how to put the fear into them.”

“How?” Moon Runner asked. “The Mk*tk know no fear or love, no mercy. They are not human!”

Fire Ant slammed his bloody spear on the ground. Although Boar’s corpse had been dragged away, the others could not take their eyes from the gore-smeared wrestling circle. “No! They are very human. When we outnumbered them, we slew them as readily as they killed us. I will show you. We must not merely defend our home from their attack. We must go to them, to their land, and strike at them.”

“I say they are human,” Rock Climber agreed. Ant thought Climber would be a good fighter if he allowed the
jowk
to flow through him, as it ran through his own new bones. “Human. And men want revenge. We must never forget that. The days to come hold nothing but terror and blood.
Blood.
We slaughter them, they slaughter us. Where is the end?”

“You speak like an old woman. We sweep the earth of them. Kill them. Kill their pups. Kill their women.
Then
they know us. Then they know what it means to challenge Father Mountain’s children.”

“How can you say such things?” Rock Climber asked.

Fire Ant leaned close to him, gazing into the firelight reflected in Climber’s eyes. “I speak as one already dead. You speak as one soon to be.”

Rock Climber lowered his head. “I meant no offense.”

“Then listen more than you speak.”

Without taking his eyes from the ground, the man backed away, humbled and frightened.

Fire Ant threw his shoulders back. “Will you follow me, or do I fight the Mk*tk alone?”

One at a time, two hands of hunters stood.

As anyone could see, Great Earth was smaller than Great Sky. But the dancers believed that, beneath the ground, Great Mother’s home was actually the larger.

Fire Ant and his ten hunters climbed trails until they found the terraced cluster of huts and sacred fire circles that were home to the dream dancers. Although six had originally traveled north with Stillshadow and Sky Woman, all but two, Sing Sun and Wind Willow, had returned to Great Earth.

“Tell me everything you know,” he said to Wind Willow, the eldest of the remaining dancers. She was tall and thin. Ant thought she had the saddest eyes he had ever seen.

“After Frog Hopping rescued Sky Woman from the Mk*tk,” Wind Willow said, “she told us all she could remember about her journey. She made this.”

She led him to Stillshadow’s sitting stone. It was as high as a man’s shoulders, but smaller stones to the right made a ladder so that the old woman could climb without assistance. Its base was scrawled with drawings of sun and sky and men and beasts. And on one side, etched into the stone itself, was a map.

Ant traced his fingers across the drawings, feeling their power. Yes. These women were holy. Whoever had made such unspeakably beautiful drawings had been blessed by the gods. He felt their power, even now. “When my brother Frog returned with the girl, he told you all he knew.”

Wind Willow nodded. “If our stolen sisters have not moved, it might be possible to find them. Sky Woman said that Dove and Sister Quiet Water remained with the monsters. If you could bring either of them home, it would be a miracle.”

“And what if I found both?”

“Both?” Her eyes sparkled with awe. She looked at him in a new way, as if considering for the first time that he might be more than just a man. “If you could bring them home … To do such a thing, you will have to be very lucky and very clever … or beloved of Father Mountain.”

“He wants me to bring your sisters Dove and Quiet Water back to the Circle,” he said. “Now … tell me all you know.”

Fire Ant listened to the dream dancers as they told of Sky Woman’s journey. Everything she had said to them came now to him.

For men running and walking swiftly, the Mk*tk were only three or four days south. When he had learned all he needed, Ant gathered his two hands of men, descended from the mountain and walked south.

A drifting mountain of gray clouds masked the full moon. Within its pale shadows, the Mk*tk mothers and grandmothers roasted venison and yams for their men and children. Flat-Nose watched the others eat without tasting the flesh himself. He wanted hunger in his gut, gnawing like a rat.

Flat-Nose needed to speak to them, and he liked to do this when they were fed and he was hungry. Hunger was good. Hunger led to anger, which led to the killing fever.

“Your time has come,” Flat-Nose said to the young Mk*tk males clustered at his feet. “God Blood put the strength in your balls. You need but call to him. He calls to you in your enemy’s gut. Free God Blood to run in the earth, and you make the world strong. Make
yourself
strong. Your blood. Your enemy’s blood and shit on your spear. All are good. Kill to free God Blood.”

A young boy, his hair cropped at the sides so that it stood like a thin ridge of stones, jumped to his feet. “I am Wood Knife! Son of Pierce Bone. You are so strong. I will be strong, too.” The boy seemed ready to piss on himself, so pleased he was just to sit with the men.

Flat-Nose did not let the pleasure he felt touch his face. “You will be strong and brave,” he said. “Your uncles taught me to kill. All were great men, good killers. I promise: you will make God Blood smile.”

He cuffed the boy affectionately. Wood Knife yelped, but his eyes glowed with pride.

• • •

“I am tired,” Flat-Nose said, lying back on his grass mat. The thatch ceiling above him was an irritant. He wanted to be out under the sky, making his kill. But it was better to start off tomorrow, after resting. Flat-Nose hated to admit it, but he was not the spry young buck he had been ten summers past. In those days, it felt as if he could run and hunt and fight and hump from dawn to dusk, one moon to the next.

He flexed his left hand, staring at the stumps of his lost fingers, feeling numbness where once had flowed power. Sometimes, it felt as if the fingers were still there.

Ghost fingers.

He shut those thoughts away: there was still more than enough left of him to give God Blood His greatest feast.

His first wife, Hip Thorn, bowed her head. “Yes, husband. Let me feed you.”

He grunted approval. “I will have food and then sex and then sleep.” He turned to his third wife, short and skinny, kneeling in the shadows. “You will sex me,” he said.

“Yes, husband,” Dove replied, her Ibandi accent scraping at his ears.

For many moons now, Dove had lived with her Mk*tk captors in one of their scattered, extended family groups. Their clusters tended to be raggedly protected by strength of spears rather than the circled thornbushes to which she was accustomed.

As Flat-Nose’s third wife and a prize of war, Dove was a slave of some privilege. Her sister Quiet Water was held by a family a half-day distant, composed of three brothers mated to seven females. While not a wife, Water was used sexually by all three men and beaten by the women for the slightest offense.

This morning seemed no different from the others: awaken before dawn, prepare food and wait until her man had eaten before satisfying her own growling belly. But the endless routine was interrupted when Quiet Water appeared in the boma doorway following two of the hulking brothers who shared her. Come to join Flat-Nose, no doubt.

They had seen each other few times in the last moons. Quiet Water was Dove’s height, but had always had a placid, peaceful nature that reflected her name. Now Quiet seemed no longer a living thing. Her eyes were like cold stones. “Dove,” Quiet Water said, “I have not seen you since Fish
moon. I wish I did not see you now. It would be better for you to be dead.”

Dove shook her head, feeling nothing but pity for her sister. “You do not change. If you do not, you will die soon. Remember Fawn Blossom?” she asked. “Can you still see T’Cori’s face? Our sisters could not change.” Fawn Blossom had perished in a crocodile’s jaws. Their nameless sister had killed a Mk*tk hunter and then jumped into the same river, had screamed as she was swept away across the waterfall. What had happened to her? Dove did not know and could not allow herself to ask that question. To such questions, there were no comforting answers.

“What would you have me do?” Quiet Water asked.

“Give in to them,” Dove said. “Since I did, Flat-Nose has not hurt me. I gather, cook, sex and sleep. Life is not bad.”

She gazed out toward the northern horizon. Somewhere lost in the misty distance was Great Earth. In former years, the sight had gladdened her. Now, her heart was a stone.

“How can you say this?” Quiet Water whispered.

“What else am I to say? Our men did not rescue me. They did not save you. Where are they?” She raised her hands and shrugged. “Where is Father Mountain? I have learned something,” she said, “a great truth. Would you hear it?”

Quiet Water said nothing. Dove leaned close. “God Blood’s hate is stronger than Great Mother’s love.”

If Dove had brandished a knife, Quiet Water could not have retreated more rapidly. “Blasphemy! And a lie. Our men hurt them,” she said. “You saw it. Not all returned, and the ones who did missed fingers and arms and eyes. I could smell it. Our men scared them.”

“That is your own stink you smell. The Ibandi are not ‘my men.’” Dove said. “The Mk*tk fear nothing.”

“What are you saying?”

“That Flat-Nose is my man,” Dove said defiantly. “And he is the strongest man in all the world. He could kill three Ibandi. Four.”

Quiet Water paused, as if listening to the rush of blood in her ears. Then she wrapped her arms around Dove.

After a stiff hesitation, Dove returned the embrace. “I thought you would be angry. Why do you hold me?” Dove asked.

“Because there is a last time for everything,” Water whispered. “Her bones still walk above the ground, but the sister I loved is dead.”

Then, having no other words to speak, Quiet Water turned her back and walked away.

• • •

By the fifth day, Fire Ant had led his two hands of hunters deeply into Mk*tk territory Now, every shadow had teeth. Their courage was dulled, no longer the sharp blade it had been while safe within the Circle. Then, the raid had seemed a splendid adventure. Now, they crept like mice at night and slept during the day. On the eighth night after leaving Great Earth, they spied the campfire of a Mk*tk hunting party and skirted it with great care.

On the ninth day, they edged up a rise and peered down on a cluster of ragged huts around an untidy central fire pit.

They watched as the Mk*tk males cuffed their wives and children affectionately, then marched off single file.

Not a war party
, Fire Ant reckoned.
They hunt four-legged, not two.

Concealed behind brush and the ridge itself, they scouted and whispered until the day was gone, and their plans were made. “Kill the women and grandfathers!” Fire Ant said. “Kill the children, if they interfere.”

“Children?” Moon Runner asked. His fleshy face, his voice, everything about him seemed repulsed.

Ant hawked and spit in the direction of Great Sky. “Maggots make flies,” he replied.

The first wide-boned Mk*tk woman, caught crawling from her lean-to, barely had time to scream before Fire Ant clubbed her down.

A Mk*tk girl, wearing a thin leather strap to pull back her thorny bush of hair, stood behind a boy with the same flat nose and broad ugly face. The boy ran up to Ant screaming gibberish.