Shadows in the Cave (36 page)

Shonan went to Aku and talked briefly with him. As asked, Aku began making the change into eagle form. “The light is running out. Use what there is. Think of your wife,” Shonan said, “think of your child. Be a warrior for them.”

With the tide all the way out now, the beach made more than enough room for two hundred Brown Leaves. Shonan sneaked a look down and thought that there weren’t two hundred, not anymore. They still advanced behind that high pole. How odd. Shonan saw now that it had a snake carved into its top. He hadn’t heard of the Brown Leaves having a snake as a totem.

Before the Brown Leaves in front got near the mouth of the cave, Shonan whirled his hand above his head, the signal to fight. The first assault was to be silent.

The Amaso blow-gunners dipped the points of their darts in their small horns of poison. Their time had come—Shonan had shown them the way. They spat gusts of air through their canes and the feathered darts flew. They could only shoot the closest walkers, those within ten strides or so. Most of the darts hit flesh. The tips made only a small wound, like being hit with a thrown awl, but the attackers roared with victory. The victims wailed, knowing the poison was usually fatal. Their lives would be an hour of feeling okay, a miserable night, and death before dawn.

Kumu and the Amasos flung throwing knives. Some hit
and some did not. A few threw spears and did damage. The Brown Leaves backed away from the cliffs, toward the sea.

Fuyl hurled three darts with his spear thrower—he killed two men and wounded another in the leg. He let out the Galayi war cry—“Woh-WHO-O-O-ey! Woh-WHO-O-Oey! AI-AI-AI-AI!”

The Brown Leaves threw their spears, but their targets popped up from behind rocks and ducked back down, making elusive targets. Then the Amasos grabbed the Brown Leaf spears and hurled them back. Shonan checked the feel of one and kept it.

Quickly, the man with the crooked nose and the long pole started shouting, and the Brown Leaves retreated further toward the edge of the water, out of range of any weapon. The wounded sat down with stoic faces and began singing their death songs.

Aku could still see, but the light was fading. He hesitated. “Iona,” he whispered to himself, “Iona and the baby.” He launched into the warm, still air, floated toward the fleeing Brown Leaves. He flew landward from the cliffs, circled out to sea, and turned back unnoticed—just another eagle. He took a deep breath and dropped onto the shoulders of one of the milling warriors. He raked the fellow’s neck with talons and lifted back into the air. His next victim flailed, and when he turned his head toward Aku, the eagle man sank his beak into his foe’s eyes. Men began to yell and point. Two or three threw spears. Aku screamed his eagle war cry, flapped up, folded his wings, and dropped onto an enemy. When he saw blood running from the big vessels in the neck, he flew up and attacked another one. He surprised himself—he felt exhilarated.

A hand grabbed his right leg. He winged up but couldn’t tear loose. A knife raked fire across the bottom of his belly.

He turned and became the aggressor. He ripped the Brown Leaf’s face with his left talons. He pecked savagely at the head, the nose, the eyes, whatever he could reach.

In a moment the Brown Leaf let go and ran.

Aku flew after him. He landed on the man’s left shoulder and with his right talons ripped a bloody track across his neck.

Aku flew up and screamed. The Brown Leaves screamed back in panic. Some waved their spears, spear throwers, and canes in the air pointlessly. Others crouched below their comrades, cowering.

From the cliffs the Amaso men roared and hoo-hawed. Attacked by an eagle! Whipped by an eagle!

In the near darkness Aku swooped low, screaming. He felt a sharp jab in his left wing. A spear arced beyond him and back to the sand. A couple of his primary feathers fluttered through the still air.

He turned his head and saw a man with a crooked nose shaking his staff and yelling.

Aku whirled and launched himself straight at the man. He and half a dozen comrades scattered like frightened children.

Aku soared up, looked down at the chaos, and laughed in a human voice, a vibrant, raucous laugh.

In the last glimmer of twilight the pole was more shadow than substance. Fifty strides out onto the wide beach the top of the stick seemed to wriggle. The men atop the cliffs thought it must be an illusion, a trick of the light.

The man with the crooked nose knew exactly what it
was because he felt it. The serpent circled down the pole to his hands, from his arms down his chest, down his legs, and onto the sand. The feeling was eerie, it was savage, and it hinted of triumph. Then the coral snake crawled toward the cliffs without a word or a hiss.

The man with the crooked nose walked back as evenly as he walked forward, and with a sense of ceremony.

“They’re coming back,” said Shonan.

Aku perched on his father’s shoulder and ignored the pain in his wing. Sitting there atop his father, alongside Oghi, comrades at war—it was exhilarating.

Yes, by the light of the westering sun the Brown Leaves were traipsing toward the cliffs. The night would be a safeguard, would force a truce until morning.

“They won’t camp on the beach,” said Shonan. “The tide will come in.”

“They don’t know the tides here,” said Oghi.

Shonan nodded, understanding. “But the water won’t get more than knee-deep, right?”

“Right.”

“When?”

“After midnight.”

Shonan considered. “It might be worth something.”

That last word was torn away by a gale. As suddenly as it quieted, the winds hit again with mad fury, and impossibly, they came from the south instead of the north. Men who had been standing dived to the earth. Shonan and Oghi hit the ground and crawled behind rocks. Aku got knocked into the air. He opened his wings, felt like they were going to get torn off, folded them, hit the grass rolling, and did the fastest change into human form he’d ever made.

Even under these circumstances Shonan had a job for Oghi. He shouted into Oghi’s ear, “Make yourself a turtle, that way you won’t get blown over, and go see whether the enemy finds the cave.”

Oghi transformed himself and turtled along the top of the cliffs. At times he wondered whether the terrible winds would get underneath his shell and flip him upside down, but they didn’t. He felt good about being able to move around in the storm when no one else could.

On the beach below, the Brown Leaves surrendered to their tormentor. They fell to their knees and crawled toward the base of the cliffs, seeking shelter. It was a pitiful sight, over a hundred men on their hands and knees, inching forward like caterpillars. And the cliffs provided no respite. The wind swept straight along it, like lava rock scraping their skins.

At the far south end of the beach one man blundered into the opening of the sea cave. Since he was loyal to his comrades, he crept on hands and knees to the fellow nearest him, pulled him by the arm, and showed him the cave opening. Before long all the Brown Leaves were wombed within its protection.

It felt amazing. The air of the earth womb was perfectly still. Yet the wind, raging across its mouth, made a roaring whistle. It seemed comical, how the wind howled its threats but could not touch them. Some men laughed. Some yelled back at the wind. They gathered around Mor, their leader, and clapped each other on the back.

Just outside the entrance, seeming to be only a stone, Oghi the sea turtle watched them go back toward the emergence slit, and was afraid.

Maloch cared nothing for the wind. He slithered up the cliffs as easily and naturally as water flows around rocks and melds back into the river. Such an advantage, most of the time, not to be a human being. What an advantage, when the time came, to be a dragon. But now was the time to be serpentine.

He oozed onto the top of the cliffs, raised his red and yellow head, and peered around. He slinked between the wretches of the so-called Amaso army—who could call men who’d never stood up for themselves an army? They were huddled behind boulders, clutching their clothing tight against the wind and shivering like cowards.

They meant nothing to Maloch. The son of the war chief, Aku—that was the man he sought. Being prescient, Maloch knew that this man above all others was dangerous to him, the young man who could shape-shift into an owl and an eagle—what damage he’d done on the beach, destroying bodies and morale.

In the darkness of the storm and night Maloch could see almost nothing. But he could sense the warmth of human bodies, and he would smell Aku when he found him. When he did, Maloch would sink the fatal bite home. The Uktena would enjoy watching the young man, the would-be hero,
gasp for breath, writhe and thrash and kick his feet in protest of the shortage, and die of parched lungs. Maloch savored his triumphs.

When Aku was dead, and only then, would Maloch permit himself to spread his poison to other Amaso men, including young Aku’s upstart father, Shonan. First things first.

At that moment Maloch would have been annoyed—more than annoyed—if he had been curled up on the lee side of a nearby boulder, the tallest on the cliffs. There a man who looked like a turtle was shouting to Aku and Shonan in a human voice, “They
are
going into the cave.”

The war chief thought about it. The emergence slit at the back of the cave was narrow and easy to defend. But only women and children were in there. No one would fight out here for hours, not until the sun came up, or even longer, until the winds eased off. Meanwhile, the women and children could be taken hostage. They seemed safe, but …

Shonan hated to run for safety. He argued with himself. All his warriors would have a better night in the limestone cave. Everyone would be more ready for the real fight that would come in the morning. Like the Brown Leaves, they would have the advantage of a night’s sleep.

It struck him then. He checked with Oghi, each yelling directly into the other’s ear. “When the tide comes in, the Brown Leaves will come out?”

“For sure. They don’t know how high the tide might get.”

“They’ll have to go back out into the wind.”

“Yes.”

“No place to camp there.”

Oghi laughed. “Not in knee-deep water.”

Shonan looked toward the river. Not only green leaves were being stripped off the trees, but entire limbs. “They
might camp in the trees.” The winds would make it a miserable night. They might even rip trees out of the ground and drop them on the enemy. The enemy was going to have a bad night.

He decided and hammered each word into the gale. “Tell everyone, and I mean everyone, to go up and use the hidden entrance to the back of the sea cave and slip down and into the limestone cave. Inside the cave they must be
totally
quiet. You and Aku lead the way.”

“Don’t worry,” said Oghi, “the sea cave is like a giant version of one of Aku’s whistles. The Brown Leaves can’t hear a thing in there, or see a thing.”

Shonan nodded. “Fine. But absolute silence, total stealth.”

As the men passed the word, they crawled one by one up the hill. They didn’t give a damn how uncomfortable it was. The thought of escaping this horrific wind, the thought of shelter, the thought of food and hot tea, the thought of their families …

At that moment the wind lashed them with a hard rain, driving them underground.

Shonan almost felt sorry for the Brown Leaves.

He brought up the rear, making sure no one was left behind. When he ducked into the half-hidden entrance, he called to the man right ahead of him. It happened to be Kumu.

“Kumu, take the first watch.”

The young man who wanted to marry Shonan’s daughter looked at his leader. He shaped his ravaged features into the pretense of a smile and said, “You trust me to take watch.” He didn’t add,
After I missed the knife throw?

“Fuyl will be next. I’ll tell him to kick you out into the storm if you fall asleep.”

“I will do my duty, Red Chief.”

Shonan wondered. On this night of madness he’d have been uncertain of any of his men. Even he could barely stand up.