Matasa shaded his eyes and scanned the horizon. He could make out the Jut, an ancient stone outcropping worn by the wind and weather. It was one of the few watering holes along the northern borders of the Aboki lands. The Great Sun was three fingers above the horizon. Soon it would be too warm to travel.
“You’re staying here,” Matasa snapped.
Finyaka glared at him. “Why?”
“Someone needs to make sure the spring is vacant.”
“We can do that together.”
“Why? Do you have friends waiting for us?”
Finyaka turned away. “You still don’t believe me.”
“No.”
“Even though I am covered in blood and carry the wise one’s armband.” Finyaka held it up.
“Yes, the story you told me is outrageous. The only part I even remotely believe is your brother killing Sinaya. He probably gave you the band as a plausible lie.”
“Rot in the darkness.” Finyaka spat at him.
Matasa started. This wasn’t like his timid cousin. Had Finyaka finally grown a backbone? Matasa grunted. “You’re staying. I can do this faster by myself.”
“Go then. See if I care.” His words were bitter. The young man slunk to a pile of broken stones and flopped down on it.
“If your friends arrive, leave with them.” Matasa shook his staff at Finyaka.
“Go choke on your own spit,” Finyaka said as Matasa headed for the Jut.
Though few but the Aboki knew of the natural water source here, it didn’t mean that unwanted guests hadn’t found it. Staff in hand, Sinaya’s bundle slung around his neck and shoulder, Matasa moved quickly and silently.
He wasn’t sure he could trust Finyaka. He was sure his young cousin had fabricated his tale, which made Matasa wonder what the truth was. Are we being followed? Does Finyaka have family waiting at the Jut? He could have told them. Nahrem knows I’m supposed to meet the wise one there. Has Finyaka sold me out? How can he side with the people who beat him?
Matasa shimmied slowly up a smaller outcropping along the wadi cliff. It offered a better view of the watering hole below the Jut. In shade most of the day, the small spring was big enough for four men to sit around. Lush sweetgrass surrounded it.
From up here, the clear spring looked cool and inviting. The shade called to Matasa. His side ached, and his joints were stiff.
He closed his eyes and tried to clear his mind. Focus, you son of a she-goat! Do you want to end up dead? He scanned the shade below the Jut again then once more for good measure. It appeared to be empty.
Matasa stayed where he was and observed the area for some time before feeling confident that it was, indeed, vacant of any guests. Satisfied, he slithered back down the outcropping and silently made his way back to Finyaka.
But Finyaka was gone. The Great Sun blind you, Finyaka! Matasa growled and stabbed the hard sandstone with his staff. Have you gone to get your conspirators, you traitor? He shouldn’t have trusted his cousin. He should have run off and left Finyaka. How could he be so stupid?
Something moved in his peripheral vision. Turning, he saw Finyaka sneaking through the broken sandstones. The young boy was carrying something in his left hand.
As Matasa raised his staff, his eyes darted around to see what lurked in the shadows. “That’s far enough, you goat-spawned traitor.”
Finyaka froze. The smaller boy slowly raised his left hand.
“Don’t move, Finyaka. Stay right where you are. Who is with you? Nahrem? Your father?” Matasa shouted.
“I’m alone, Matasa. I went to find us breakfast.” Finyaka held up a plucked sandgrouse and the sling he usually wore as a bracelet.
Matasa lowered his staff and breathed heavily. The tension was eating him from the inside. “Did you see anyone?”
“No, but I saw dried blood on one of the stones. It maybe a day old. I’m not sure what it’s from.”
Matasa grunted. “There’s fodder and kindling in the depression over there. We can cook your sandgrouse if you want.”
Finyaka shrugged as he passed Matasa. “We’ll do what you want.”
Matasa sighed. “Let’s eat and maybe get some rest.” Matasa wasn’t sure he could sleep with Finyaka on watch. He still didn’t trust his cousin.
The two made their way to the spring in silence.
The air was cool in the Jut, and the stones were soothing on his sore feet. Finyaka gathered some dry kindling and used it to start a small fire to cook the sandgrouse. He didn’t have a knife, but he knew Matasa wouldn’t part with his.
“You have the knife; you dress the sandgrouse.” He plunked the bird down on the stones by his cousin and went to get water.
Matasa grunted but picked up the carcass and began preparing it for the fire.
Finyaka picked a sweetgrass shoot and chewed on it, enjoying its sugary flavour. It put a much-needed smile on his face. He bent to scoop up some water and froze. There were a lot of dark stains on those tall green shoots. Finyaka touched one and confirmed it was dried blood. It was maybe a day old.
“Matasa, we have trouble.” Finyaka gestured to the grass.
“Your family is coming?”
“Give it a rest. There’s dried blood on the sweetgrass.”
Matasa looked up from the grouse he was butchering. “How much?”
“A lot.”
Matasa put the sandgrouse down and crossed to the spring. He had a knife in his hands still. The older boy examined the grass and swore.
“Human?” Matasa asked as he examined the area around the spring.
“Hard to say.”
“There’s a trail here. It’s not regular.” Matasa followed the trail back to path leading down to the spring from the sandstone above.
Finyaka cupped his hands and drank from the cool, sweet spring.
“Do you see one or two trails?”
“One.” Matasa scratched his head. “We should search the area and make sure we are alone. I’d like to find out what left all that blood behind.”
“So would I. Do you think it might be one of the missing goats?”
Matasa pondered the question, then shook his head. “I doubt it. We’re too far north. The goats would never have made it this far.”
“What about the hounds?”
Matasa paled. “It’s possible. They have a large territory.”
Finyaka looked about the depression. There were many places to lie in wait. “How about we refill the skins and get moving?”
Matasa went to the fire at the back of the depression. “Not a bad idea.”
A hound leaped out from a small shadowed niche in the rocks and tackled Matasa. She was weak from blood loss, but she still hit him hard enough to over-balance him. The two wrestled on the ground, but the hound was winning.
Finyaka put a stone to his sling and loosed it. The hound yelped as the stone skipped off its head. Finyaka recognized the animal. She had a large, weeping wound in her side where he had stabbed her with his broken staff, and it was bleeding on Matasa. The former alpha had collapsed on top of him.
Matasa lay unmoving beneath the hound.
Please let him be alive, Finyaka prayed.
The hound wasn’t moving either, but she wasn’t dead yet. Finyaka pitied it. In a day, it had gone from alpha to bleeding to death on his unconscious cousin. Everything it knew was gone.
Matasa groaned. Finyaka lowered his sling and imagined moving the slowly waking hound with his will. He pictured the hound bounding up the path and leaving them alone. As he focused on that image, the animal whined. That intelligence was still there, along with a new look, fear.
Finyaka dropped the sling. He was making the beast afraid. Memories of Nahrem’s beatings rolled over him. He fell to his knees and threw up.
Matasa groaned again from the weight of the hound, pinning him. The hound looked at his cousin then at Finyaka. Finyaka forced himself to rise. Matasa was in danger. He needed to help his cousin. He released his emotions like he had before
and used them to lift the hound off his cousin. Finyaka set her down gently on the path away from Matasa.
As soon as her feet touched the stone, she fell in a heap on her side. Finyaka pitied her. He examined his cousin and found a swelling bump on the side of his head. Beside Matasa lay a bundle. Finyaka opened it and removed one of the wise woman’s healing balms. He felt a pang of sorrow for her. She wouldn’t approve of what he was about to do, but he needed to do it.
Finyaka hummed softly as he applied the balm to the bump on his cousin’s head then approached the hound. He thought of the calm he used to feel around Matasa. The hound’s breathing slowed and became more regular. Finyaka stood a stride length away. She watched him, and they stayed like that for some time; each staring at the other.
“Finyaka?” Matasa sounded far away.
“Quiet, cousin. You’ll startle her.” Finyaka hummed as he thought calm thoughts. The hound relaxed, and Matasa snored.
Finyaka was now a hand’s breadth from the hound. She lay there watching him, resigned to her fate. He opened the healing package, took out the balm and rubbed it into her tense side as he hummed and projected calm thoughts to her.
After Finyaka administered the healing balm, he backed slowly away from the hound and checked on his cousin again. Matasa was sleeping soundly.
Finyaka picked up Matasa’s knife and finished preparing the sandgrouse. Soon, it lay on the small, smokeless fire; its juices sizzling in the flames. Neither the hound nor Matasa had moved much, though he had checked on both multiple times. Finyaka still wasn’t sure why he was wasting time on the hound. She reminds me of me. She’s beaten, abandoned, and in desperate need of someone to help her. Finyaka looked at the beast with new eyes.
When the sandgrouse was ready, Finyaka woke Matasa and the hound.
“By the Light!” Matasa scampered away from the wounded hound, then emptied his stomach all over the stones. He fell to his knees, holding his head, and moaned.
Finyaka rushed to his side but kept an eye on the hound as he applied some more of the healing balm to bring down the swelling. “Here, chew on this.” He handed his cousin a black root. “You banged your head when the hound hit you.”
“Is it dead?” Matasa squinted at the hound.
“No, I’m healing it.” Finyaka put the balm away.
“What!” Matasa tried to stand, but Finyaka pushed him down. Surprisingly, the older boy acquiesced.
“It’s okay, Matasa. Watch.” Finyaka tore a leg off the now-cooked sandgrouse and hummed as he slowly approached the hound. She let him come. Finyaka tossed the leg, and she caught and devoured it.
Matasa’s jaw dropped open. “How did you do that?”
“I don’t know.” Finyaka shrugged. “I thought of being calm and began humming like Sinaya did. The hound has been like this ever since.”
Finyaka cut a piece of the sandgrouse and handed it to Matasa. “Eat.”
The older boy took the meat and obliged.
Finyaka ate as well, cutting up the bird and distributing it between himself, Matasa, and the hound. When the carcass had been picked clean, there was a marked improvement in both his patients. Finyaka was awed by the wise woman’s healing balm.
The wounds on the hound’s side had already started to scab over. Matasa’s bump had receded, and his cousin was looking better.
Matasa opened his bundle to inventory its contents while the hound reclined nearby, watching everything they did. Finyaka had spent his youth hearing the horror stories about the ghost hounds. They were brutal hunters that appeared from nowhere to ravage the herd and then disappear as suddenly as they’d arrived.
The hound’s ears went up, and she sniffed the air and snarled. Finyaka looked around, but he couldn’t see anything along the lip of the depression.
“What is it?” Matasa reached for Sinaya’s staff.
Finyaka shook his head. “I’m not sure.”
The hound stood on wobbly legs, gave one deep-throated growl then vanished. She was gone.
Finyaka looked at Matasa in surprise, but his cousin just shrugged. A scream echoed throughout the depression. Matasa rose, staff in hand. Beside him, Finyaka readied his sling. It had been a man’s voice they’d heard.
“Your family?” asked Matasa, but there was no accusation in his voice.
“Possibly. They could have made it here during the night. We did.”
Matasa nodded.
Another scream, this one further away, was followed by shouts and curses.
“The hound maybe?” Matasa’s hands tightened on the staff.
Finyaka shrugged. As unlikely as it seemed, that made the most sense.
Something whizzed by his ear and ricocheted off the stones nearby. Finyaka searched for the source of that projectile until one of the men from the village stepped out of hiding. That man was from his village. He was one of his father’s cronies; a sour drunk named Kadarash. The man aimed with a second stone.
“Tsimunuu! That goat licker is here with that half-child of yours.”
Finyaka threw his stone. It smacked into the man’s knee, and the drunk toppled from view.
Matasa growled. “I wonder how many of them there are?”
Finyaka shrugged. “I wish there were none.”
Finyaka had changed. Matasa wasn’t sure when it had happened, but his cousin had matured. Even his demeanour had changed. Yesterday, he was a timid boy, beaten and broken by his abusive father and older brothers. Now though, Finyaka was something else.
“We’ll be trapped if we stay here. We need to get out of here.” Matasa scanned the rim for a way out or some sign of Tsimunuu and his cronies.
“They’ll know that.” Finyaka fitted another rock to his sling.
Another scream came from somewhere, but it was hard to tell where since the sound reverberated off the stones around them. The hound was proving to be an unlikely ally.
Matasa gathered his small bundle and slung it across his body while scanning the lip of the depression. He glanced at Finyaka and noticed his cousin was wearing Sinaya’s gold band. It had a blue gem. “She’d be proud of you,” Matasa said.
Finyaka shot him a small smile. “I hope we don’t see her again too soon.”
Matasa understood and agreed with that statement. “I have everything, tell me when you want to flee.”
“Finyaka!” roared a voice from outside the depression.
Finyaka froze. It was his father.
“Listen here, Doe. Give us that poor excuse for a man, Matasa, and we’ll go easy on you. Defy me boy, and it will be the last thing you’ll do.”
Finyaka shivered, but his jaw was set, and his eyes burned with fury. “Rot in the darkness, you abusive piece of goat excrement. You want Matasa, you’ll have to go through me.” Finyaka closed his eyes for a moment, and Matasa felt calmness wash over him.
Another scream sounded closer now. Finyaka smiled. “Me and my friends,” he amended.
Another slung stone careened past them, catching the edge of Matasa’s ear. He grimaced from the sting but stood his ground.
“Now!” shouted Finyaka as he bolted for the rear path.
What if we're surrounded? Matasa swore and followed his cousin as another stone clipped his shoulder, bruising it.
As they ran up the path, a man appeared, staff in hand.
Finyaka yelled, “Move aside!”
The man, Jurda, stepped aside in surprise. Matasa drove his staff into the man’s gut as they passed, and he crumpled to the ground.
“Keep moving!” shouted Finyaka.
Another stone ricocheted off a nearby stone as another scream sounded in the distance, followed by a painful yowl.
What was that? Did they kill the hound? How many are there? Matasa wondered.
They ran, weaving around giant sandstones, and the projectiles whizzing by them. Every so often, one struck home and left a bruise behind, but they kept running.
Matasa knew if the men were less hung over he and Matasa would b
e dead by now. He glanced backward over his shoulder at the five men now giving chase: Finyaka’s father, two of his cronies, and Finyaka’s two remaining brothers. Tsimunuu and his cronies carried staffs. They let the brothers use their slings to wear them down. But Finyaka's brothers had to stop to use them because of the broken ground.
Matasa followed his lithe cousin around the broken sandstone columns of the wadi. They were starting to put some distance between themselves and their pursuers until Finyaka’s foot caught on a chunk of stone by a large debris pile he was preparing to vault over. It unbalanced him, and he fell.
Matasa spun to avoid his cousin and lost his footing on the loose stones. He crashed to the hard wadi’s ground. By the time he rose, the lead they had gained was gone.
Finyaka rolled over and winced. A deep laceration in his right shoulder leaked blood down his arm, and more blood flowed from a wound on his forehead.
Meanwhile, their five pursuers spread out.
“Toss me your sling.” Matasa shifted his staff to his left hand and grabbed the loaded sling from Finyaka. He whirled it about his head and let it go. The rock skipped and shattered near Tsimunuu.
The older man laughed. “I can’t wait to skin you, boy. I don’t know what you had that old witch do to my Nahrem, but I’ll see it done thrice fold to you.”
“I killed Nahrem.” Finyaka stood by Matasa.
The five pursuers laughed so hard they doubled over. Matasa quickly reloaded his sling and let fly another stone. It collided with Basyuda, one of Tsimunuu’s cronies. The man toppled from sight, stunned by the blow.
That sobered the remaining men up, and they scattered to take cover. Matasa and Finyaka did the same.
“How’s your arm?” Matasa asked as he hunkered down next to his cousin.
“Useless. It’s throbbing, and I need to stop the bleeding.” Finyaka tore a strip from his dusty sarong and pressed it to the wound.
“I’m not sure what happened to your hound.” Matasa crouched beside his cousin.
Magic Underground: The Complete Collection (Magic Underground Anthologies Book 4) Page 21