“Good kill, King Jun,” said Tenga. “But don’t waste arrows on mercy shots.”
“Don’t call me that,” said Jun sharply. “I’m not a king—not yet. If you want to be respectful, my correct title is . . . oh never mind that, just call me Jun, all right?”
Tenga grinned at him, her face resembling a dark skull.
They watched the man with the arrow in his belly bleed to death. He called out piteously to his friends and tried to crawl back to the edge of the field, to the thicker cover, but he only got so far before the loss of blood made him too weak to continue. They saw one or two figures moving about, dodging quickly between thick clumps of head-high grass, well out of range of Jun’s bow. But no one came out to help the man in the black hat. His screams dwindled, faded and died.
After an hour, Jun found to his surprise that he was growing bored. He looked at Ketut; she did not seem to have moved from the spot before the big offering stone. It took Jun a few moments to find Semar, but once he had a fix on him Jun saw that the old man did not appear to have changed his position either.
“Maybe they have gone,” said Jun to Tenga. “Maybe they’ve been discouraged and have given up and gone home.”
“No. They never give up. They are just waiting for the . . .”
At that moment, three large black objects catapulted out of a clump of trees on the far side of the field and came hurtling toward the temple.
“Bear-dogs!” shouted Tenga, and to Jun’s surprise she leaped off the foundation block and went to stand half a dozen paces away before the spilled gate, taking up a wide-legged pose with the two raised parangs in her hands called The Crab that Jun recognized from his own training. Tenga stood still, directly between the split gate and the offering stone where Ketut was oblivious in her trance state.
Jun’s attention leaped back to the three bear-dogs, now fifty paces away and closing as fast as charging horses. Jun nocked, drew and loosed. He hit the foremost bear-dog in its meaty shoulder, burying the shaft deep into the muscle. It did not check the animal in the slightest. It came hurtling on forward, the bamboo shaft standing proud from its shaggy black coat, heading straight for the spilled gate. Jun loosed again; the arrow hit the animal’s hindquarters, pushing it off its line and making it stumble, but on it came. A third shaft, stuck in its ribs, caused it to howl, but by then it was bounding through the gate, knocking the thorn barricade away as if it were no more than straw.
It leaped directly at Tenga, up, up, its red jaws open, displaying huge yellow teeth—and the big woman moved to one side, neat as a temple dancer, the two parangs describing shining arcs in the air. Slice, slice, and the beast’s outstretched right forepaw, then its whole head, leaped from its flying body.
The second bear-dog was already through the gate now. Jun got one slim arrow into its hairy side, sinking the shaft in right to the fletchings. But now it was leaping at Tenga.
And the third bear-dog barrelled through the gate, saw him and angled right, directly at the big block of stone on which he was standing. Jun loosed and shot but the beast must have had bones of iron. The shaft cracked into its broad muscular chest but only sank in a few inches. The beast checked, clawed at its chest, dislodged the shaft. Yet Jun was reaching for another. The huge animal gathered itself, snarled, leaped up on the flat surface of the stone, its claws scrabbling wildly to keep a grip. It found its balance, tensed its massive muscles, opened its huge mouth wide, foam dripping from its curved yellow fangs, and gave a roar that shook the clouds . . .
And Jun put an arrow right into its open red gullet. The animal was bowled over, knocked off the stone, falling hard on its side on the grass floor of the temple. Its back legs were still kicking, long claws scything the air, bamboo protruding from its mouth. And Jun nocked, drew and punched another shaft through its hairy ribs, then slammed in another one next to that for good measure.
He looked over at Tenga. Her right shoulder was a glistening mass of blood. But the second bear-dog was lying on its back at her feet, its body hacked open in places to reveal the purplish flesh. One of the parang blades, still quivering, was sticking up proudly from the center of its chest.
Tenga was grinning through the pain. “At least we know now what’s for dinner,” she said.
Jun frowned at her.
“Bear-dogs make good eating, if you’re hungry enough,” she said, then sat down heavily.
* * *
• • •
The Mbaru called for a parlay at dusk. A flat-faced, Han-looking fellow with long black hair, black boots but no visible weapons stepped out of the scrub carrying two crossed palm leaves, and even Jun knew that this was the old sign for a truce, and he beckoned him forward. The man stopped ten paces short of the temple gate, at Jun’s command, and the prince of Taman stepped out through the gate to meet him.
“So you got the better of those nasty old bear-dogs, eh?” said the Mbaru, craning his neck past Jun to look through the spilled gate where Semar was kindling a fire beside the carcass of one of the animals. Ketut was dressing the bites on Tenga’s shoulder. Her attempts to summon Dargan, Queen of the Witches, outside of the frenzy of the Hallowed Day ritual had evidently been a failure. Semar’s prayers had been ignored, too, as far as Jun could tell.
“You got all three of them, eh? You have my genuine respect, sir. Real respect. But then that mad black bitch has some experience with these beasts, eh? Killed one once with just her own bare hands. Did she ever tell you that?”
The man had a gentle, folksy, familiar voice, like a beloved uncle.
“What do you want?” said Jun. He still had the bow in his hand but no shaft nocked.
“And they are expensive, you know that, very dear animals, those old bear-dogs. My, are they pricey. You got to buy them from the sea traders, you know? And they come all the way from the black forests of Frankland. Then you gotta train them up, get the smell of slave in their snouts, keep ’em hungry but not too hungry or they just go plain wild. It all takes hard-earned cash money.”
“Tell me what you want, sir,” said Jun. “Tell me before my patience wears thin.”
“All business this evening, son, eh? Good, I do like that. So . . . we hunters are now substantially out of pocket. I just want you to know that. We are down three very expensive bear-dogs, thanks to your courage, your grit and your very fine skills with a bow. We want to recoup our money. So this is what I propose—you know we gets more for a live Runner than just a head, yes?”
Jun nodded. He could hardly believe he was having this conversation.
“Well, me and the boys—we got twenty good men out there, just so you know, and another two hounds—we think you should give yourselves up to us nice and peaceful. We’ll treat you right; we’ll take you back to the Konda, sure, but we’ll treat you real gentle on the way there. The beauty of it all is this: we get to recoup our money, by sending in live bodies, ’stead of just heads, and you—you-all don’t get anybody messing with you on the way home—none o’ that ugly raping and beating and whipping and stomping and cutting off of delicate parts, know what I mean?”
“I know what you mean,” said Jun. “And our answer is no.”
“Because we’ll get you, you know that. We got twenty men, night’s drawing on, and there’s a half company of Manchu, fifty musket men, on the trail behind us. We’ll get you-all, in time. What you got? One good man—which is you, sir—one crazy black bitch, an’ she’s wounded, an old man an’ a little girl. You like them odds?”
“I’ll make sure I pick you out personally and skewer you when you do come,” said Jun. “You’ll certainly be dead, even if you do get us. How d’you like those odds?”
“Now, friend, no need to be like that. I came here to make an honest proposal, and I’ve been more than respectful. The deal stands. Come in quiet and we’ll treat you real gentle.”
“No, thank you,” said Jun.
Jun realized something was wrong. The man had had his answer, and it had been given quite clearly, and yet he was still talking. What did he want?
“. . . and everybody was satisfied in the end. Why, they finished up their sentence at the Konda Pali and went home to their families in five short years. Five little years . . .”
“Time for you to go now,” said Jun. “No more talking.”
“I’m going, sir, I’m surely going. I just wanted to say one more—” The man stopped talking abruptly. His face changed shape. His mouth dropped open. In that instant he looked utterly terrified. “What in the name of the Seven Hells is that?” He lifted a trembling finger and pointed over Jun’s shoulder at the wall of the temple.
Jun whirled and looked where the man was pointing. He could see nothing but the last rays of the westering sun casting long shadows on the wall. A heavy weight landed on his shoulders. He reacted instinctively, reaching behind himself to shrug off the Mbaru who had seized him from behind. And stopped. He felt the chill of cold steel at his neck, a sharp blade splitting the soft skin below his jaw. And a friendly, folksy voice saying, “Hold very still now, youngster. I’ll take back your head, if I must. I’ll cut it clean off right now, if you make me do it, but I’d far rather have you walk back there on your own two feet, just for the extra money, ya know?”
Jun had never felt more of a fool. Tenga exploded out of the split gate, the two parangs in her hands, and Ketut right on her heels.
“Keep your distance, blackie. Or your pretty boyfriend loses his head.”
Tenga stopped, one of the parangs raised to strike, the other out in front. The Locust pose.
Ketut sank to the ground, closed her eyes and began to chant, a hum too low for Jun to make out. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see a score of men rising right out of the ground, or so it seemed. They were much closer now, no more than fifty paces away, and he knew then that the talkative man had deliberately held his attention so the Mbaru could creep forward unobserved.
Tenga said, “You let him go now, Willuk. Take that big knife from his throat. Let him go and you can fight me. One to one, as if you were a real man. I’ll let you keep hold of that ugly blade and, to make it properly fair, I’ll rid myself of these slashers.” She shook the pair of parangs at him.
The man, Willuk, merely laughed.
Jun’s gaze was drawn to Ketut. Her humming chant had got much louder—something was changing; her shape was becoming blurred. Was there something wrong with his eyes? There was a foul smell in the air, shit and fleshly corruption. And Ketut seemed to be growing, expanding . . .
“You put down those grass-choppers, blackie, or you won’t live till moonrise.”
“Let the boy go, Willuk,” Tenga’s voice grated.
A single musket shot rang out. Ketut gave a cry. Tenga cursed and swung round to look at Ketut, who was now slumped back against the outer wall of the temple, bleeding, then she swung back to face the oncoming Mbaru slave-hunters. One man at the front of the pack had a long gun to his shoulder, smoke trickling from the muzzle. Tenga gave a wild ululating yell and, ignoring both Jun and Willuk, she charged, running full pelt straight at the oncoming hunters, both parangs lofted.
Then for Jun it all became terribly confused. The Mbaru were hurrying forward; Tenga was madly rushing out to meet them. And suddenly there were huge, low, gray, agile shapes bounding out of the broken stones to his left, coming in from the east. Tigers. Enormous tigers, with white fur striped with black and gray, were charging into the mass of the Mbaru, their hair-raising roars ripping through the twilight. There were at least four of them, Jun saw. The first one leaped, a gray arc in the air, and landed on the nearest Mbaru, knocking him to the ground. The massive striped head went down into the prone man’s body; there was a flash of white teeth, a splash of red as the tiger’s head ripped back, tearing free a chunk of flesh. The animal swallowed.
Another tiger swiped at a passing Mbaru, its muscular paw and massive claws catching the fellow in the small of his back and sending his rag-doll body spinning away. A third tiger leaped on one of the hunters’ backs, knocking him to his knees. Jaws crunched through his skull. Elsewhere the Mbaru were running, steaming across the field of broken stones. A tiger sprang out of a clump of long grass and easily caught one of the runners, knocking him tumbling with a paw-swipe and then leaping forward to bite, its massive teeth sinking into the man’s leg as it kicked in the air.
Tenga had abruptly stopped her wild charge and was standing, quite still, staring at the tigers and their terrified, fleeing prey. One of the tigers, perhaps the biggest of them all, his white mask heavily marked with black stripes and splashed with fresh blood, looked up from the remains of the man he had been feeding on, saw Tenga standing there a dozen yards away and, abandoning his half-eaten meal, began to come toward her, creeping low on his haunches in the classic stalking gait of the cat.
Semar came sprinting out of the split gate of the temple, he flashed past Jun and Willuk, ignoring Ketut, who was slumped bloodily by the outside wall, eyes closed, mouth open; he rushed straight into the field of stones, shouting, “Not her, Raal, not her. No! She’s one of ours!”
Jun felt the arm around his neck loosen its grip a little, and the blade come slightly away from his skin. He reached back, grasped Willuk’s right elbow with his left hand, seized his right shoulder with his right hand, put his right hip out, twisted his back and pulled.
Willuk shot over his shoulder and crashed to the floor, the heavy hunting knife spinning from his grasp. The man sat up groggily, breathless, stunned. Jun bent, scooped up the long blade in a hammer grip and slammed it into the fallen hunter’s waist on the left without the slightest hesitation. He punched the sharp steel into the man’s belly, right up to the hilt, then standing over the man, he ripped the blade all the way across to Willuk’s right hip, eviscerating him in one hard, grunting swipe, and causing the man’s glistening, bloody guts to dump out across his own thighs. Willuk screamed, gasped once and screamed again and again.
Jun stood tall over his victim, the bloody knife in his right hand. The last light was fading from the day. The other Mbaru were in full flight. He saw the last disappear into a stand of scrubby trees, swallowed up by the green. The field was littered with the bodies of those who had not run, half a dozen at least. Semar was standing placidly beside an astonished Tenga and the biggest of the great tigers, the little man resting his old hand familiarly on the giant carnivore’s soft gray head.
CHAPTER 33
It was not even noon and Katerina already wanted to call the whole expedition off, to halt and huddle up in a rocky hollow out of the sun and quietly expire.
She had never expected the march to be this hard. The ravines on the western side of Barat Cordillera were brutally steep, almost vertical, the soft volcanic rock carved into deep V-shapes by ancient rivers and streams. In order to advance, the column had to make its way carefully down to the bottom of each gully, each man watching his step on the friable, gray rock that was likely to slip and slide under his boots, and then clamber up the other side, using his hands as often as not, to reach the opposite ridge.
It was like climbing down a long and treacherous ladder and then climbing up another equally unreliable, shifting one. Up and down, up and down, hour after hour. Katerina had never hurt quite so much in her life. All the muscles in her legs, back and behind were screaming after they had traversed only six ravines. In terms of forward direction of travel, she estimated that they were managing to advance less than five hundred paces every hour. At this rate—if they ever actually got there—they would arrive at the Gates of Stone sometime after noon tomorrow. And that would be too late. The three ships were no
w at anchor in Loku Bay, awaiting her arrival at dawn tomorrow morning and the firing of the colored rockets to indicate that the assault on the Green and Red Forts had been successful. When dawn broke the next day, if there were no signal rockets, Colonel Wang would dutifully weigh anchor and depart, heading back to Ashjavat where he would march the Legion home to the Celestial Republic. Just as she had ordered him to do. By the time she got to the Gates of Stone, tomorrow afternoon, her three ships and the rest of her Legion would be long gone. Perhaps just about visible as flecks of white on the western horizon.
How could she have been so stupid? It was arrogance, sheer arrogance, to think that she knew better than the greatest military minds in the world. The conventional wisdom was that these ravines on the western side of the Barat Cordillera were impassable to an infantry force of any size—it was the reason why the Federation did not bother to guard against an attack from here—and conventional wisdom, as was often the case, turned out to be correct.
After two grueling hours, they stopped to take water. She stood on the ridge they had just climbed and looked back at the way they had come. She could clearly see the camping ground where they had spent the night after the sweat-drenched day in the jungle: it was not even a mile away. She could see a leather bucket abandoned by some careless Ostrakan gunner lying beside the stream where she had washed her face this morning.
For the first time in many weeks Katerina felt like weeping. Was she mad even to attempt this impossible task? Was she merely leading her Legionnaires, her Ostrakans, the Niho knights—and Ari, too—on a long and appallingly punishing road to certain death?
She looked at her favored Niho bodyguard, standing at her elbow and looking backward over the same dispiriting vista of last night’s camping ground. He did not look any the worse for wear after half a morning of extreme hard labor. He looked cool and fresh, alert even. The sunlight reflecting off the planes of his tanned face. His blue eyes glowing like jewels. His presence gave her strength, calmed her soul. They were not dead yet. And if they died in this desperate attempt to reach the Gates of Stone, so be it.
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