“I have heard of your hunt for the serpent,” Tchupa said. “It will be a strange hunt.”
The warriors danced around the fire, spinning wildly and singing:
I am the sleek silver man,
who runs all alone in the moonlight.
Though the katydids sing of decay,
the earth is my drum.
my feet beat the pum-a-la, pum-a-la,
pulses of life.
I am the quicksilver man
who runs unafraid at midnight.
The wind rattles the dry grasses,
a fox barks over his back,
my heart racing within me
does not measure my life.
I am eternally running
far beyond man in the moonfall.
The sweat storming off me
gives drink to the seas.
The sigh of my passing
adds breath to the wind.
Embers of soulfire within me
shall ignite the dawn.
“If you go to hunt mammoths,” Tull said, “why do you sing of death?”
“The Hukm have all the mammoths now,” Tchupa said sadly. “To hunt for the mammoths is to hunt for our own deaths, for they will come to kill us. Still, the ivory pays well.”
“If you have prophesied correctly,” Tull said, “then perhaps next year, you and I will hunt for Craal’s warriors here together.”
Tchupa smiled grimly. “I think it more likely that they will hunt us.” He laughed, too loudly.
A Pwi man dragged a small boy into camp, gripping his arm. He whispered to the boy, and the boy pointed at Tchupa. The Pwi threw the boy at Tchupa’s feet.
“This boy says you are his father. I trust he is not a liar as well as a thief!”
“A thief?” Tchupa said in surprise. Tchupa looked at the boy. “Does he speak truly? Have you stolen something?”
The boy dared not answer.
The Pwi man held up a small silver bowl with a dragon engraved on it. “He stole this when he thought I slept. I caught him in the act!”
“Is this correct, Ixashe? Speak freely,” Tchupa said softly, with a hard edge to his voice. The child shook. He put his hands in front of his face. Tchupa was a powerful man, and the boy had no choice but to answer. “Yes. I just wanted to look at it.”
It was a lie, of course. Everyone knew it. Even Tchupa knew it. Tchupa grimaced, as if in mourning.
“My son is old enough to be judged as a man,” he said. Tchupa drew a dagger from his belt, handed it to the Pwi. “Slit the boy's throat if you like,” he said. “Or, if you are merciful, you can keep him. He is yours. Do as you wish.”
The Pwi looked guiltily at the child, then walked away. When he had left, Tchupa stood up, picked up his knife, walked slowly to the boy, and slugged him in the stomach. The boy doubled over.
“Never admit guilt!” Tchupa hissed. The boy doubled over. Tchupa flipped the knife upside down and struck the boy in his temple with the bone handle. The boy crumpled, and Tchupa kicked him a dozen times.
Tull’s stomach clenched. He could not stand by and watch a child be hurt, so he grabbed Tchupa and said, “Stop! Stop!”
Tchupa wrestled a bit, then shouted at the boy, spittle flying from his mouth: “In Craal, that man would have squashed you as if your life were less than a turd! Tomorrow, you will crawl to him and thank him for sparing your life!”
Tull could not believe his ears. A few moments ago, he thought he could see himself as an Okanjara, but now he saw that the differences truly ran deep. Never had he seen a Pwi beat a child like that. No Pwi would have offered to let a stranger slit the throat of his son—especially in front of his own eyes. The kwea of such memories would destroy a man. And Tchupa was teaching his son that it was all right to steal, as long as he did not get caught.
“Friend,” Tull said, “You missed the point. The Pwi wanted you to teach your son not to steal!”
Tchupa looked at Tull, raised his eyebrows in shock. “But perhaps someday the child will have to steal in order to stay alive. And if he must steal, he must learn to steal well!”
Tull looked Tchupa in the eye and saw that the Okanjara was truly a stranger, a man whose mind he did not want to comprehend, for it was said among the Pwi that “To understand another, you must become like him.” Tull had never lived in Craal, could not imagine a man beating his child for not stealing well.
The stories he’d heard of Thrall warriors working for slavers, of Thralls who ate human flesh, who thought it a sign of strength to endure unendurable pain—all of them could be true with a man as duplicitous as Tchupa.
A realization struck. Tull felt a bond with Tchupa, a sense of brotherhood. You can love a man, and yet hate what he does.
“I see,” Tull said. His head was spinning. He felt that he needed to leave, to have time to think about Tchupa, and perhaps advise him as a friend. But for now, it was too late, and his mind moved too slowly. He yawned as if tired, stretched. “In the morning, we will talk more, my friend.”
The small taste that he’d taken from the Okanjara’s drugs must have made him dizzy, for he staggered a bit as he ambled back to his own camp.
That night when Thor set behind the hills and the cries of jackals filled the camp as the dogs began to sneak in to nibble table scraps beside the fires, Tull still lay thinking. He could not sleep. The Okanjaras’ drugs gave him strange dreams and brought back painful memories, and the nightmares seemed too real.
He kept seeing flashes of Tchupa in his mind, Tchupa riding upon the back of a horned dragon in the night, beneath Thor’s green moon.
He heard a sudden shout. “Hukm! Hukm are upon us!”
Tull and Wisteria were lying in the giant barrel, and thus were somewhat protected. He untangled himself from Wisteria’s arms and whispered urgently, “Wait here. I’ll go I see what’s happening!”
But as he pulled off his bearskin covers, he looked out, and in the dying embers of the fires he could make out dozens of mastodons, black shadows with great curved tusks. The white of the polished tusks reflected the light of campfires. The mastodons had circled the camp.
Giants squatted atop the mastodons, and as Tull watched, the great hairy men silently urged their mounts in among the people.
The traders had naturally set up several camps—one made mostly of Pwi, another to the east for humans, and a third just to the north for the Okanjara, and so Tull was watching the mastodon men enter his own camp, a wall of flesh surrounding it. His own people began to cry out and flee.
Everywhere the Pwi shouted, “Run, run!” “The Hukm are here!” “This way!” “No, here!” They were rushing about in fear—turning first one way, and then the next.
In the darkness Tull heard sickening thuds as Hukm war clubs smashed into bodies.
Thus the Pwi die, some small part of him thought. Ever it was so. Neanderthals were tougher than humans in so many ways, so much stronger, but kwea could kill—with fears and loves that could not be mastered.
Tull spotted Phylomon beside a fire, the light playing on the back of his blue skin, desperately waving his fingers in Hukm finger language.
A great hairy Hukm, a lord with many silver bracelets, steered his mammoth close, peered down at Phylomon, and answered calmly, with slow waves of his fingers.
“Hold! Hold!” Phylomon began shouting to the Pwi, trying to keep them from running to their deaths.
Phylomon pointed toward the Okanjara camp, and the Hukm lord pointed in that direction, urging his warriors toward the new camp.
Only the two smaller moons shone, and Tull could see little by their light. A wall of mastodons raced through camp, trampling the tents. The heavy scent of wet, shaggy hair from the mammoths blended with woodsmoke.
Faint cries rose from the throats of a few women in the nearby camp, and Tull remembered that the Okanjara were all drugged, that they were helpless.
Above the cries, rose the rhythmic beating, like drums, as war clubs smacked into fle
sh.
“Leave, now!” Phylomon shouted to the Pwi, over and over. “Walk calmly. Don’t make any quick moves!”
Tull threw on his tunic. Several huge Hukm, each over eight feet tall, came loping through camp. One stopped to examine Tull as if he were a child. It sniffed at him, peered into his face, into his eyes, gripping a polished war club, and then trudged on.
It was rumored that the Hukm could see in the dark, and Tull realized that the creature had been looking for the blackening under the eyes of the Okanjara warriors. He smelled the warm coppery blood on the Hukm as it rushed past.
Scandal and Ayuvah quickly threw their bedding in the barrel. Wisteria covered herself with a bearskin.
“Stay inside,” Tull warned.
He suddenly feared for the Dryad, wondered where she might be, but spotted something pale moving deep in the shadows.
Tirilee was there hiding in the black heart of the barrel.
“Where are the oxen?” Scandal huffed. “We need to get the team of oxen!”
“They’ve scattered,” Phylomon shouted, and suddenly the blue man stood beside Tull, throwing his own bedding on the wagon. “Leave them for now. The Hukm will not harm them. We can come back for them later!”
The men began pushing the wagon away from camp as quickly as possible.
A Pwi woman ran in front of them, and a huge dark form met her in the darkness. There was the whistling sound of a club swinging through the air, and the woman skittered sideways.
“Keep moving!” Phylomon shouted, “Keep moving! You cannot save them. The Okanjara chose their own fate.”
For a solid fifteen minutes, that is exactly what they did, pushing and pulling the wagon at a near run.
Tull pushed so hard that he stumbled, his mind numb.
The Okanjara’s drugs were still affecting him, and he raced as if in nightmare, as if he might push the wagon forever.
He heard the Okanjara’s cries, and children wailing. War clubs pounded relentlessly, and mammoths trumpeted.
In his mind, the images of Phylomon killing slavers and the Hukm killing the Okanjara all roiled together.
Death follows me, wherever I go, Tull thought.
Death was like a tyrant bird, trailing a pteranodon, dogging it relentlessly.
And then he realized, No, death is not trailing me. It has come for everyone else. Justice is coming to the world.
For a moment more, he held the image of a tyrant bird, and then imagined himself as that bird.
They stopped by a small pond to wait for sunrise, and in the cool morning air Tull listened. Behind the constant chitter of gray squirrels and the cackle of magpies, he thought he could still make out distant screams. With each turn of the wagon wheels, he imagined he could hear the dull thud of a club smashing into flesh.
They set their blankets out, and while Phylomon stood and looked over the pool, his brow furrowed into a frown.
“Are we cowards for running?” Ayuvah asked.
Phylomon sighed. “We could not have saved them,” he said at last. “I could have killed a few Hukm in my time, but there was no fighting them in the dark. The Okanjara were fools to kill mammoths from the sacred herds.”
“Still, to leave just them …” Tull said, and trailed away. He felt a kinship to the Okanjara. “The children were innocent. To leave them feels like … murder.”
“Not murder. Self-preservation,” Scandal chimed in. Don’t let it rub you wrong. We ran because we were afraid, and we had a right to fear. I only wish we had found the damned team of oxen. Shall we go back and look for them?”
“Not yet,” Phylomon answered.
“We’ve a better chance of finding them if we go now,” Scandal said. “They’ll be running all day.”
“The Hukm have not finished their work,” Phylomon answered.
If the Hukm only want to beat the Okanjaras to death, their work should not take long, Tull thought.
So, they waited.
Scandal did not make breakfast, for none could have stomached it. Instead, he made tea. Within an hour they heard real screams—not the half-imagined cries Tull thought he’d heard all morning, but shouts of pain so loud that even at a distance of over a mile, the squirrels fell silent and the birds left their songs.
The Hukm were making an example of their victims.
The women busied themselves re-packing the blankets and furs that had been thrown into the wagon.
“What’s this?” Wisteria asked, picking up Tull’s sword of Benbow glass.
“Something I got from the glass trader’s wagon,” Tull said feebly.
“I feel dirty,” Wisteria said, throwing it back into the wagon.
She and Tirilee went to the pool to wash themselves, hidden by a screen of cattails and willows. Red-winged blackbirds and meadowlarks flew about in the reeds.
The women stayed down at the pool all morning and the men waited, lost in private thoughts. Tull envied the women—drowning those cries with clean water.
At noon the screams of pain ended. When they had been silent for a full twenty minutes, Tull and Ayuvah climbed a great sprawling oak, searched the land south, toward Frowning Idols. A line of sixty mammoths left the camp, heading northwest, and the smoke billowed at the Idols, but Tull could see no sign of any standing tents.
“They’re leaving,” he shouted down to the others.
Scandal said, “Then let’s get the women and go see if we can find the oxen.”
Tull suddenly realized that the women had been gone a long time—too long. Ayuvah and Scandal realized it at the same moment, and the four men looked at one another, then began shouting as they raced down to the pond.
Tull remembered how the Okanjara had asked for the women, had sought to purchase them if even for a night.
They reached the lake, and the morning wind had blown all the algae to the west side. In the floating algae, Tull saw paths that the women had formed as they swam.
The women were gone. After a bit, they found the women’s clothes ground into the mud by heavy feet. Phylomon knelt and studied the distinctive crisscross pattern left by moccasins woven from sage bark. “Okanjara.”
Chapter 22: House of Dust
The men ran back to the wagon, retrieved their weapons and battle gear. Following the Okanjara was not hard. The recent rains had left the ground soggy, and the prints were deep. The tracks led along a winding stream, lined with willow thickets, back to Frowning Idols.
A half mile from the camp, Phylomon strung his bow and the party began stalking in earnest. They soon found themselves bellying through the tall summer grass.
Three Okanjara milled outside a makeshift tent, faces painted in skull masks—a woman, a young warrior, and Tchupa. Tull heard a baby crying. The adults kept their eyes downcast. Tchupa kicked the ground, turning over broken bits of pottery. If the three were guilty of kidnapping the women, they did not act like it. They had no guards. Instead, they picked through the remains of the camp, gathering their scattered belongings. Yet their footprints led directly to camp.
Dead bodies lay everywhere—men, women, children—bashed again and again with heavy war clubs until the bodies were pulped to nothing but tangled flesh and protruding bones. The Hukm had been thorough in their destruction, breaking bowls and pots, smashing weapons and ripping tents—even the ox team the party so desperately needed lay crushed. The wagon belonging to the ivory hunter seemed to be the lone exception—it appeared to be merely overturned. But as he got close, Tull saw a man nailed to the bottom of the wagon, the ivory trader himself, Tull assumed, but he had been completely skinned, showing only white fat and pink flesh. Other than the area behind the wagon and behind the idols, there was no place for anyone to hide.
If only we could see into the tent, Tull thought, to see if the women are guarded. As they edged closer, the grass was so trampled by mammoths that Tull could not go forward and still maintain cover. He listened a moment, heard the child cry. The others edged up beside him.
The Okanjara were talking softly, and a small wind blew away from them. Tull could not catch their words.
The woman walked into the tent and brought out the baby. Its cries seemed to double in volume. It was the child Tull had delivered, wrapped in the red blanket he’d put around it the night before, his right arm strapped down.
Tchupa held the child up as if to display it, then set it on the grass and stomped its head.
The child’s cries ceased.
Tull found himself rushing forward, a shout of outrage ringing from his throat. He pulled his sword of Benbow glass, swung it in an arc over his head.
Tchupa looked up, pulled his kutow, and when Tull reached the big man, Tull swung.
Tchupa made the mistake of trying to parry the blow, and from his training over the past two weeks, Tull knew to throw his weight into it, to bash through the parry. Tull’s blade sliced through Tchupa’s wooden weapon, continued through his shoulder, spilling out bits of lung. Tchupa's eyes widened in surprise.
“Why?” Tull shouted, but the Neanderthal sank to the ground, dead.
Phylomon and Ayuvah rushed up beside Tull. The young Okanjara warrior had his spear at ready, and Phylomon knocked it to the ground.
“We had nothing to feed the child,” the woman explained. “It would have died slowly.”
The young warrior smirked at Tull. “We waited until we knew you were watching, so you could see what you had done. If you’ve come for your women, you can have what’s left of them—in there.” He pointed to the tent.
Through the tent’s open flaps, Tull could see Wisteria and Tirilee sprawled naked on the ground, flies crawling on them. Their eyes were glazed. Tirilee moaned, and the flies rose from her, then settled again on her belly. Tull looked back to the young warrior with his painted skull face, uncomprehending.
The young warrior said to Phylomon. “Everyone says that you are a great man, and we hoped you would someday throw down the Slave Lords. You could have saved us from the Hukm. But because of your cowardice, our families are dead!” the warrior said as if reasoning with a fool. “Now we will seek the House of Dust. But even if we live, we have been forever robbed of peace. So, in return,” the man gestured with his hands as if he were bestowing a gift, “may you be forever robbed of peace!”
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