Killer of Enemies

by Joseph Bruchac

  I enter the passageway, take a few steps. Then I stop. Hally is not following. I pause and look back over my shoulder

  You coming?

  He shakes his head. A look of regret passes over his craggy features.

  Your world now. You defend it.

  But what about the last few times you stepped in to help me? I think to myself. But not to him, not after that eloquent look on his face.

  Though the walls around me are smooth, there must be some dust sifting down because I feel it irritating my eyes and have to reach my hand up to wipe them dry. As I do so, the wall starts to swing back into place, slowly blocking off my view of those I love.

  I just stand there, not protesting, not saying or thinking anything. Just breathing, readying myself to do the job for which some kind of crazy destiny seems to have chosen me.

  I just hope I have the strength to do it.

  To be Killer of Enemies.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  All Around Me

  It seems as if I’ve only walked a hundred paces, though for some reason I have found it hard to count my steps as I’ve walked along this passageway that has alternately been narrow, then wide, glowed golden, then silver. And the floor has seemed at times to be hard, then soft, rough, then smooth as ice. At times, even though the floor has looked level, I’ve felt as if I was descending, then climbing, stepping into holes that I cannot see. It’s been disquieting. Everything is strange all around me. Time and space seem all jumbled up.

  And now the passageway has ended at a blank wall.

  Great.

  Have I taken a wrong turn? I look behind me. All of the glow is gone. No gold, no silver, just deep, deep dark. Not going back that way.

  How did Hally do it? I extend my right arm and press my forefinger against the stone, which seems to give like a sponge and then . . .

  Ah! A door opens in front of me and the light of day floods in with such intensity that I am briefly blinded.

  Then my sight returns. I’m near the top of a hill, a little bowl between jumbled rocks is ahead of me. The sun is just rising in the east. More time passed in Hally’s cave than I realized. The rest of yesterday and all of last night. But how could that have been? I didn’t sleep. Or did I? I’m feeling awake and refreshed, not the least bit tired.

  I take two steps forward, feel a rush of air behind me. I turn and see that the door has closed. In fact there is no sign that any opening was ever there. Just black volcanic rock, its surface speckled with lichen, and off to one side a series of familiar looking petroglyphs. Bird-winged beings. And among them, I notice for the first time another shape—that of a very large, human-like being with long arms.

  I know where I am. Place Where Birds Flew. Just one ridge away from Haven. If I climb up that little rise behind me I’ll be able to look down over its walls. How I got here is beyond anything I can explain. The range of small mountains where Hally invited us down into his den is at least twenty miles from here. But I only took about, what, a hundred steps before reaching that door? Somehow Hally has placed me right where I need to be if I plan to confront my enemies.

  Hally, my man, you have some explaining to do when I see you again. If I live that long.

  I crawl slowly up until I can peer over the ridge top between two boulders. Good view of Haven and of the smoke rising. A lot of smoke rising! I slip my telescope out of my pack and focus it on the interior of the huge walled compound. Yup, buildings burned. Way more destruction than was inflicted by my few grenades. There’s been a hot time in the old town since we left a day and half ago. The walls are still intact, the main gate is closed, but I do not see any people visible. Just smoking rubble left in three of the four guard compounds. The guard towers and the walls are manned, but no one else is visible. Every ordinary person is probably being kept inside the residency blocs, locked down.

  That worries me. There are way more innocent people in there than there are those who want, at the very least, to kill me. What has happened to them? Has my escape with my family resulted in tragedy for people who never did harm to me?

  I can’t let potential guilt weight me down right now. Guilt is the worst thing a person can carry with them. It can lead them into foolhardy actions, putting themselves into danger because a part of them feels as if they deserve to be punished. Guilt can make you doubt yourself at the very moment when you need to proceed with certainty.

  Whatever has happened has happened, Lozen. Don’t think about that. Just put your mind on what comes next.

  Which is what?

  Locate my enemies.

  I’m not going to stand on this ridgetop to do that, though. I sit back with my shoulders against the larger of the two big standing stones. The smooth stone below me is rippled like water, holding the memory of an ocean that was here before the desert. I can smell a storm coming soon. The faint scent of ozone is in the air. A few feet in front of me, a horned toad crawls on top of a stone that is banded with white crystal. It nods at me, then crawls down the other side and disappears into a crevice.

  I hold up my hands, trusting now that my power can come to me like this. And it does. The warmth floods both my palms as if I am holding two stones that have been heated in a fire. To the east, to the south, to the west, to the north. Those are the directions in which my enemies may be found.

  How lovely. I am surrounded.

  Be logical, Lozen. There’s no way they could know you are here. You just happen to have stepped out into their midst.

  Comforting thought.

  How many men were there in each of the Ones’ little private armies? Twenty-four or so. Ninety-six in all. But I’m sure that some of them were put out of action by my grenade attack. At least a dozen. Leaving eighty-four. And there’s no way that the Ones would dispense with their own personal bodyguards, at least four of which are always kept nearby. So take away another sixteen. Sixty-eight. Then subtract the twenty it takes to fully man the towers and on the walls. Forty-eight. Lovely, only forty-eight heavily armed men to deal with.

  One of whom is so close that I can hear his feet.

  He’s coming up the only trail that leads to this lookout. There are steep cliffs on three sides of this ridge and a sheer drop of a hundred feet just beyond the two boulders behind which I’m concealed.

  Whoever that one person is, I am fairly sure that he is clueless about the fact that I am up here.

  Ambush time.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  Civil War

  Dad used to tell me stories about the Foolish People. They were Indians like us, but so innocent and just plain stupid that they did everything wrong. For example, when the first horses showed up, the Foolish People heard from other Indians that horses were useful, that having horses would make their lives better. So, the first chance they had, they traded everything they had to buy some horses from a passing Navajo. The horses were old and sway-backed, but they didn’t mind. Now that they had horses they were sure their lives would be better. But what were they supposed to do with them? None of the Foolish People knew. They just looked at their new horses, waiting for them to make their lives better. They did that for a long time. Then, some days later, another Navajo came by.

  “What do we do with horses?” they asked.

  “You get on top of them and ride them,” he answered.

  “Oh, good.”

  So as soon as the Navajo was gone they tried getting on their horses. One of them sat on his horse backward and grabbed the horse’s tail, trying to make it move. That did not work. Another tried sitting on his animal’s neck. That horse shook him off. Finally, someone got on a horse’s back the right way. But when the horse began to move, that man fell off.

  “What can we do to stay on horses?” they asked each other.

  Then a group of Chiricahuas rode past them. They were riding hard and fast. All of them were staying on the backs of their horses.

  “I know,” one of the Foolish People said. “They must have smeared pine
pitch on their buttocks to stick themselves on the backs of their horses.”

  So that is what the Foolish People did. They all smeared their bottoms with pine pitch and then climbed on their horses. Sure enough, they stuck there. They did not fall off. They could not get off. They did not know how to steer their horses, so they were just stuck there for a long time while their horses wandered around.

  Those men got thirsty and hungry. They began to cry for help. Finally their wives found them. The wives were not as foolish as the men. They drove the horses down to the river, and when the horses swam in the water it loosened the pine pitch and the men were finally able to escape.

  °°°

  I’m thinking of the Foolish People now, I suppose, because in so many ways the men who are hunting me are like those Foolish Indians. Not because they are innocent. Every one of those guards who serve Diablita Loca and the Jester and Lady Time are men who have done bad things to other people and who behave as if they have no consciences at all. They are like the Foolish People because they do not know things that every little Apache child who was raised like my brother and my sister and me knows before they are four years old. Like how to find their way and survive in the desert with nothing more than a knife. Like how to walk quietly when there may be enemies around.

  Unlike the person whose heavy feet are thudding up the trail now. From my place of concealment, his boots are jarringly loud as they scrape on the hardpan, loosen small stones that are sent rattling by his careless steps. His rifle butt strikes against a rock as he slips. He curses under his breath.

  Ah, only three words. But enough to know that I know that voice.

  He walks right past me to climb up to the lookout point and stand silhouetted by the sky as he lifts binoculars to his eyes to scan the land below him. I rise and walk to stand behind him, each of my steps as quiet as an eagle’s feather falling to the earth.

  I never say much out loud, but this is as good a time as any.

  “Hello, Edwin,” I say in a soft voice.

  “Son of a . . . !”

  Edwin whirls, the binoculars falling from his hands, their lenses shattering on the ground. He’s trying to bring up the AK-47 which he’d slung so carelessly over his shoulder that his frantic hand cannot quite reach the stock.

  I hold up my left hand and shake my head. He freezes. Wise move, seeing as how the .357 in my right hand is pointed at his head and is only a foot away from his nose.

  I back up, motioning him to unsling the rifle, put it down, step away from it.

  He’s smart enough to do that. But then he turns to me with a wide-eyed, sincere expression on his face.

  “Lozen,” he says. “I . . . I was looking for you.”

  No duh?

  He takes a few steps toward me, coming down off the lookout point. I wait until he’s no longer visible to anyone below. Then I hold up my hand again, palm out. He stops.

  “Listen,” he says. “I was looking for you. I mean looking, not hunting.”

  Edwin’s head is heavily bruised just above his right eye from the blow of something, probably a rifle butt. He also has a small bleeding wound on the back of his right wrist and his left pant leg is torn near the knee. Maybe a result of my little grenade serenade. Or maybe from what happened afterward when I left those barracks burning. Interesting.

  Keep talking, I think. Tell me more.

  He bites his lip and looks off slightly to the side as if hearing my thought. Then he moves half a foot toward me. “I’m, I’m leaving them. See.”

  Edwin grasps his right arm where the khaki fabric is less faded than elsewhere, the place where a red armband once encircled his bicep. “I gotta get out, see. It’s gone crazy down there in Haven. They all started fighting with each other since you escaped. Diablita started it. She ordered us to attack Lady Time’s barracks. She wants to run the whole place. But they fought back and then the Jester’s guys joined in. It turned into a whole frigging civil war in no time. The only one who stayed out of it was the Dreamer. He and his men made themselves scarce.”

  Edwin gestures back over his shoulder toward Haven, taking another small step in my direction as he does so. He looks off to one side, his cheek twitching violently. Another symptom of the far-gone Chain user.

  “When it was all done, the troops who survived had all gone over to Diablita. Then she ordered just about all of us who could still walk and carry a gun to find you. She even came along herself. She says she plans to drink your blood before the day is over. That’s how hot she is for you, Lozen. That’s what started it all. She was the only one of the four who wanted to go out and hunt you down right away and when the others didn’t agree she ordered us to attack them.”

  Edwin has taken yet another step toward me. He is staring right at me now, looking into my eyes to show how sincere he is in the story he’s spinning for me.

  Liar, liar, pants on fire.

  People trying to deceive you will do that, stare you straight in the face with full eye contact. But they also look off to one side first as Edwin just did. He’s probably not lying about the conflict that took place. I can believe that, just as I can believe that all of those troops out looking for me are now in the service of the craziest and most evil of the Ones. What I do not believe is that Edwin is jumping ship. Or that he wants to help me.

  My disbelief in his sincerity is strengthened by the fact that I am picking up his thoughts now.

  “You know I’ve always liked you, Lozen.”

  As much as I like a frigging rattlesnake.

  “I want to help you.”

  Help you over the edge of that frigging cliff after I . . .

  The rest of his sadistically pornographic thought is lost as he throws a lightning-fast kick at my gun. It’s a nicely conceived move, an inside crescent intended to send the .357 spinning away to the side.

  I can’t help but admire his technique, despite the fact that my own quick backstep and half turn has resulted in his connecting with nothing but open air.

  Hand bones tend to break when making percussive contact with the dense bones of the skull. Especially a skull as thick as his.

  That’s why I deliver a hard open-palm strike with my left hand to the side of Edwin’s head. Hand cupped to blow out the ear drum.

  It sends him staggering to the side and down to one knee. Not a knock-out blow, but enough to stun and discourage most attackers.

  Edwin, though, is not smart enough to know when he should quit.

  “Bitch!” he half-sobs.

  Then, instead of raising his hands in defeat he hurls the rock he grasped as he went down.

  I didn’t expect that. And whether it is luck or skill on his part, that stone hits me in my right wrist. My .357 is sent spinning after all. It goes off as it lands.

  BLAM!

  I don’t think that stray round has hit me. I don’t know because Edwin’s surprisingly fast bull rush at me has just taken me off my feet. We roll around on the ground and it takes all my training to react.

  “AAARRHHH!”

  Edwin is roaring, trying to bite me, clawing at my eyes. I get my hands up to protect my face, use my elbows to fend off his attack. It helps that my arms are as long as his. And my strength is still matching his, even with all the steroids he’s injected and the adrenalin now rushing through his veins. I manage to get to my side, thrust one leg and then the other between us. I grasp his wrists, dig both feet into his hips. I roll to my back, pulling him toward me, launching him over my head to land on his back six feet behind me with a heavy thud.

  I roll quickly to my feet and turn to face him. He’s already on his feet. No surprise. I didn’t expect that to stop him. I can smell the rank odor of Chain in his sweat. Chain really kicks in under stress.

  I reach for my belt to try to slide out the hidden blade I have sheathed in there. But there’s not time enough for that. His eyes blood red, Edwin is leaping at me like a tiger. He’s pulled a long, razor-bladed knife from a calf sheath.

>   The objective of the gentle art of aikido, Uncle Chatto taught me, is to deflect the energy of an enemy’s attack. You are at the center of a circle, and that which seeks to strike will flow past you even faster.

  And that is what Edwin does as I grasp his wrist and shoulder, turn and throw. He flies past me.

  Way past me.

  Right over the cliff edge ten feet behind me.

  It is a high enough drop for his final scream to last long enough for me to count. One and one pony, two and one pony, three and one pony . . .

  And then the sickening sound like an egg dropped on concrete as his head meets the rocks below.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  Another Trail

  I don’t look over the edge of the cliff to see what is all too visible in my mind’s eye. He was a vicious creep the whole time I knew him and, until a few seconds ago, an enemy trying to take my life. But I am not happy to have caused his demise. And I can no longer say I’ve never killed another human being in hand-to-hand combat.

  When Child of Water and Killer of Enemies finished destroying nearly all—but not all—of the monsters that threatened human life in that long ago time, they did not feel the thrill of victory. What they felt was sickness. Taking lives is a precarious job, one that can end up polluting your spirit and burning your heart. When you touch the enemy in battle, it unbalances you. The Hero Twins would have died if it had not been for the healing ceremonies that were used to restore their balance, to cool their interior, to soothe their spirits, to clean the dust of death from their vision.

  I am going to need such a ceremony.

  But not yet. Not yet.

  I check myself for injuries. That stray round from the .357 seems to have missed me. I’ve suffered nothing more than a few bruises and scratches on my cheek from Edwin’s nails. I walk over and pick up my gun, check it out. No dirt in the barrel, everything in working order.