The pounding of the drums made it hard to think. She turned, wondering where she was. The other people around her stood motionless, their aims along their sides, their mouths turned down. She watched two more desperate panting women stagger down the path into their midst, one pregnant, one carrying a child in her arms. Behind them all, the drums, like something beating on the sky.
She turned her head again, looking at the ring of spears that surrounded them. The men who carried them looked no different than the men among those they had captured, except they wore leather covers over their bodies, and had their hair tied up. None of them moved, and yet they held these people in their midst like a net.
She covered her ears with her hands, looking around, thinking she would escape from here. They had known she would come here, somehow—because of the path—she would leave the path. She sidled slowly toward the edge of the crowd, where she could slip into the green trees and the shade of the forest. Then a man rushed into sight on the path, heading toward them.
He was naked, covered with dust, his hair wild. He saw them there and slid to a stop. His eyes bulged. He wheeled to run, and from either side the leather-covered men with their spears bounded forward, caught him, and flung him facedown in the dust.
Epashti’s heart hammered. Now, she thought, and looked around her. While they are fighting with him, run. But there were still leather men between her and the trees. The scuffling drew her eyes again. The newcomer had struggled up, and the two leather men caught him by the arms, and dragged him toward the other captives.
Now the spear carriers between her and the trees moved a little, their eyes on the struggle, and she thought, They will go help, and she was ready to run when they did. She turned around again to watch, and saw the newly captured man suddenly strike one of the guards down, and lunge back up the path.
The leather men gave one hoarse yell, and surged forward, all around the captives, and cast their spears, all at once. Epashti shrank down; the spears shushed in the air, like horrible birds flying by. She glanced behind her again, toward the forest. Then, in an icy fear, she looked up toward the man who had tried to escape.
He lay dead on the ground with spears jutting up out of him like swamp reeds, the blood spreading thick on the ground around him. She shut her eyes. Her belly turned over. She laid her hand on the swelling of the new baby, and even the baby was quiet.
A harsh voice sounded, one of the leather men. “Don’t try to escape. You see what will happen. Don’t be afraid. We will not harm you if you obey us. We will feed you soon. If you have children you can keep them with you.”
Someone close by Epashti gave a choked sob, and she opened her eyes, and looked, and saw a girl standing there with her finger in her teeth, and her eyes brimming. Epashti moved closer, and put her arm around her, unsure if she wanted to be comforted. Thinking she might push her off.
The girl stiffened under her touch, lowered her arm, and was still. Epashti turned her gaze again at these people now huddling together inside the circle of spears, looked for Ahanton and did not expect to see her and did not. She thought of Corban and her throat closed into a choking lump. She wanted Corban, she thought, with a desperate surge of longing, she wanted Corban. She stood closer to the unresisting, unresponding girl, drawing her nearer under her arm.
Ahanton ran, the red and blue cloak around her like a warm wing. She willed her ears not to hear the drums, and when that noise faded, she began to hear other sounds.
A gurgling voice called to her, and answering it she came to a stream, winding through the forest. Follow me, the stream chuckled at her.
She hung back. “You tried to hurt me once.”
Not this time, the water laughed, and she went along with it, sometimes running on the bank, sometimes in the shallows, and from stone to stone. The course took her toward the drum sounds but the stream called to her happily now and again and she followed it.
Then the wind came in through the trees, and breathed into her ear, They are coming.
She stopped, her skin cold, the cloak tight around her. The wind nudged her forward, and she went on a few steps, to her ankles in the cool rushing water.
A willow tree swayed its long limbs toward her, half-drowned in the stream, and sighed, Hide here. Come inside and hide.
She crept in under the branches, to where the tree sprouted out of a bank high as her head. The vast trunk bent out over the stream, its branches like green walls around her. She waded through the shallows to a tiny damp curve of beach deep in the shade of the willow. She sat there and wrapped the cloak around her, her toes in the water. In the shallow water she had just waded through, the stirred silt of her passage slowly cleared away.
Two little bumps appeared on the surface of the water, the eyes of a frog, looking at her. She put her finger to her lips. The drums were coming closer and closer and she could no longer keep them out of her ears. The eyes of the frog watched her steadily, and then suddenly vanished under the water again, and the drums were on her.
They crashed almost over her head. The stream bank behind her shuddered. The shallow water trembled and rippled. Under the deafening thunder she felt the tramping feet passing by, in lines as straight and even as the booming drumbeats. Voices called, and the forest and the stream murmured and protested, buried under the heavy monotonous ear-numbing pound of the drums.
The feet went by. The voices. The drums drew farther away. The frog’s eyes popped up above the surface of the water, and she climbed up the riverbank, and walked along through the trees. She thought of all the days she had walked to come here, all the days between her and her home.
The forest had been trampled, branches broken, all the brush flattened to the ground. She went along searching for something to eat, found mushrooms under a battered log, and some grubs; she drank from the stream. The drums had stopped, or gone away. In spite of the heat she kept Corban’s red and blue cloak wrapped around her. She saw no people, anywhere, except once, from far off, she saw a body lying on the ground beneath a tree, and smelled the blood, and went wide around it.
Night came. A pine tree sang to her, Sleep here, sleep here, and she climbed from limb to limb, up into the bending, swaying top, going high above the forest, almost touching the starry sky. There she tied the ends of the cloak around the tree, curled herself into the great loose belly of the cloth, and slept.
The wind rose, and the tree began to sway, and the child cradled in the tree swayed side to side with it, sweeping back and forth through the currents of the night air, through the stream of the moonlight and the starlight, and she dreamed.
She was a frog, the one real thing, and her coat was made of many lights. The serpent was coming, was becoming, forming out of thunder and darkness; she saw him only when he moved. His seven coils twined, his jaws yawning wide. Down his throat she looked into eons. She leapt away, just as he struck, and as she sprang she gave birth to the round world like an egg, and he swallowed that down instead of her.
She leapt away, free. His head swung, following.
Over and over, through the night, he came for her, as she sat there bright as the sun; each time, as he struck, she leapt away, and left behind another world.
She woke in the gray dawn, the memory of brilliant color still in her eyes. Someone was saying her name. She looked down from the top of the tree and there, far below, looking back up at her through the branches, was her father.
She cried out, as if she gave up all her fears in a single wail. Like a bird descending she dropped from branch to branch, trailing the red and blue cloak, and fell down into Miska’s arms.
Miska sat on his heels on the peak of the hill, looking southeast. Before him lay something he had never seen before, and he could not imagine how to attack it.
Months before, he had left his home village, bringing every warrior who would follow him, more than he had ever led anywhere, away through the forest. At first he only followed the river west, but after a few days he had begun to see,
ahead of him, a red and blue ghost, like the lights of the rainbow seen through the trees, travelling along just at the limit of his vision.
He had followed it as fast as he could drive his fighters on, day after day through the forest, through mountains and over the great river, until he came to this place, and here stopped, because of what lay before him now. But he had seen the red and blue beyond it, and leaving the others behind he had gone alone in the night to find it.
Expecting to find Corban. Expecting to learn some secrets about this, how to strike something so large and so strong as this. Instead what he found was Ahanton, alone and frightened, wrapped in the red and blue cloak. And she knew nothing.
He had brought her back here, where he had left his war band, in a crease of the hills. The steep short slopes gave him some protection and also let him climb up high to see along the river plain. Now he sat on the shoulder of the hill, looking southeast, his chin on his fists.
His men were scattered on the sloping ground in the hill’s lee; Ahanton lay sleeping by the fire at the very bottom. Miska lifted his voice. “Hasei, come here.”
Hasei came up the hill, longest-sighted of the men of the Lodges; Miska beckoned him around toward him, away from the skyline. Hasei crouched down beside him, and Miska watched him look out over the river plain, and saw his face tighten. Then he himself turned to look again.
The horde of his enemies filled the whole wide open ground from the river to the foot of the hills just south of this one, laid out in line after line, like ribs, rows of people, rows of fires, on and on, until the distance swallowed them. The place churned with people moving around, stooping and rising, like some vast single, beast twitching and sprawling in the sun. He said to Hasei, squatting beside him, “How many do you think there are?”
Hasei shrugged, voiceless. His eyes looked blank, like a blind man’s.
Now again suddenly the drums began to beat; Hasei started, beside him, and Miska gripped his arm to keep him where he was. He had already noticed some of the drums, round tubs like women’s gathering baskets, standing in a little clump along this front edge of the camp. Now that they were beating again, the rise and fall of the drummers’ arms marked them out, and he saw them all across the camp, and especially a great number of them, in a curved row, down near the middle of the camp.
In this same place there also were several big huts, much bigger than his longhouse at home, set in the lines of a square. People swarmed around there. There were other things happening, what he could not make out. He tightened his grip on Hasei’s arm.
“There. That. What’s that?”
Something huge and awkward moved along through the cam toward the square of huts.
Hasei fixed his gaze on it a while, frowning, and finally shook his head. “I’m not sure. A lot of people carrying something.”
“What are they burning? There are no trees.”
Hasei sniffed the wind, and shrugged. ‘“It all just smells like bison here to me. What are we going to do now, Miska?”
“I don’t know,” Miska said. He wished the red and blue ghosts were out there somewhere, to give him some guidance, but the cloak was in his camp now, wrapped around a stick of a girl. He sank down on his hams, staring at the horde in front of him, unsure. Then, suddenly, he saw that the crawling and twitching had changed; when the drums started to beat, most of the people had stopped moving, were even sitting down in their rows, and many of the rest were gathering at the edge of the camp nearest him.
This pack of men was coming toward him, and he didn’t need Hasei’s eyes to see they carried spears.
“They’ve seen us,” he said. “Let’s get out of here.” He turned and bolted back over the hill, Hasei on his heels.
C H A P T E R F I F T E E N
Epashti’s mind felt clogged; she could not think. One among many she only went along and did what the others did. The leather men gave them food, as they had promised, and they ate; then they led them away, and all the people followed.
All day they walked through the forest, and at last they came out of the trees onto the edge of the open plain along the river. Here they were herded together with a much larger crowd, and the leather men made them sit down in lines. Leather men walked up and down past them, with their spears, calling to them, words like a terrible prayer.
“Don’t be afraid. No one will harm you. We will feed you and take you to shelter. Families will stay together. If you have children you won’t be separated from them. We are going to take care of you. Sit down and stay calm. Listen for instructions. Don’t be afraid—”
They let the people go to the creek to drink, and brought baskets of food among them. There was plenty of food. The thin girl sat beside Epashti and cried. Epashti put some of the food before her, even took her hand, and put a piece of maz cake into it, but the girl only cried. Finally Epashti took her hand and held it and said nothing.
The girl’s weeping dragged at her. Everything around her pulled her down. As far as she looked, which was not far, since she was sitting on the ground, the lines of people stretched away. The baby paddled its feet against the inside of her belly and she put her hand there. In her memory there rose the sound of the spears flying, the sight of the spears sticking up in a thicket. She felt the spears slicing through her into the baby.
She thought, These people have enough to eat. Maybe if I stay with them, I can keep the baby. She caught her breath, ashamed she even thought of this horrible bargain. She sobbed, her fingers tight around the girl’s hand.
The girl turned to her. “Don’t cry,” she said, wiping her eyes. “Please don’t cry too.”
Epashti straightened herself, lifting her head up, but something in her gaped open and words poured out. “I’ve lost my husband. I can’t find my daughter.”
The girl leaned against her shoulder. “I left my baby with my mother, in the village.” She gave another great sob. “They say nothing is left of the village, they burned it all.” Epashti put her arm around her. The guard was walking past, his spear on his shoulder. The land under her was pounded dust, without even a blade of grass. The trees around them had been stripped of branches. She felt no power in this ground, nothing she could ask for help.
Still, as long as she kept hold of the thin girl she felt better, and she could think. She began to wonder what would happen to them next. In any case, these leather men were feeding them, and she would tell them the thin girl was her sister and they could stay together. She drew the girl closer to her, looking around her at the other women, wondering which others she could talk to, where they had been captured, what their names were.
The thin girl was named Leilee.
It was late afternoon; there was thunder in the west, and clouds billowed up across the sky, gray as boulders underneath. Before the sun went down, they were given three more cakes, and jugs of water passed along the lines. Leilee said little, slept with her head in Epashti’s lap, wakened to sit slumped listlessly with her head down. The heat of the day lingered well into the evening, the air thick and close, and along the horizon lightning flickered constantly like ghost hands reaching down. Epashti wished for her pack, her herbs, her comb; she thought of Ahanton, alone, probably afraid, probably hungry, and put her hand over her mouth and squeezed her eyes shut.
Corban, she thought. Where are you?
She slept fitfully, lying on the ground, unable to get comfortable around the growing baby. At dawn, the drums woke her, beating slowly and steadily. The leather men came around again with more cakes.
“You see how Tok Pakal loves you,” they said. “All night long the thunder gods roamed around the sky but he protected you from them.”
Epashti thought she should save some of her cake, but looking around she saw nothing else to eat; the whole land was barren here, it seemed, and even the sky looked dusty. She could not help herself, she stuffed all the cake into her mouth, she saved nothing.
A leather man shouted, and they all stood, and the guards led
them forward, in their files, past a heap of sacks. All across the valley, she saw, looking, other files like hers walked past other heaps of sacks; her skin prickled up, she felt an intolerable pressure in the back of her head. She clenched her fists, bit her teeth together, afraid of what they would do to her for screaming. My name is Epashti, she thought. My name is Epashti.
Leilee clung to her. “Don’t say anything. Do what they say. Epashti, please.”
Epashti remembered pleading like this with Corban, which had done no good. The girl turned forward again, trudging along ahead of her. As each of the captives went by the heap, the guards put one of the sacks on her shoulders. Epashti stooped under the weight, and trudged away, in her file, after the stooped burdened back of Leilee, ahead of her.
Halfway through the day the sky turned black and the thunder banged overhead, and rain drenched them. Afterward, the leather men came by, saying, “You must be very wicked, for see how Tok Pakal has punished you.”
When they caught him on the hillside, Corban’s captors tied his hands together, and led him along with them by a rope. They went to no city, no camp, only walked along after the drums. Fortunately they had been standing sentry all night and were tired also, and stopped as often as possible to rest, and he slept whenever they did.
When they marched they went along through a forest still swaying and groaning from some enormous passage. Even on the steep hillsides the brush was ripped up and smashed flat, young trees broken off near the ground, the grown trees scraped, bark gashed and branches snapped, the ground itself torn in deep ruts.
As they moved along he noticed that other people marched with them, visible on all sides through the stripped forest, many toiling along with bundles on their backs. Once, through the scattered trees, he saw up ahead of him something high and square, much taller than a man, lurching along like a weird ship.
He didn’t try to talk to the men guarding him Halfway through the afternoon they stopped, and they gave Corban some of their food and it was maz. The drums beat on and on ahead of them, like giant footsteps. Toward evening, so exhausted he could barely see, he stumbled after them into a camp at the edge of the river plain, and dropped down where they put him and slept.
The Serpent Dreamer Page 14