The closer Ria could get her force to the prisoner enclosures before they were seen the better chance there was that her plan might succeed, so they charged in absolute silence, making the most of the deep shadows and patches of mist that shrouded this part of the valley floor. Yet the nearer they came, the more they saw of the terrible deaths the Illimani were inflicting on the helpless Naveen women still left alive in their enclosure.
‘Ligar!’ Ria pulsed as she ran, ‘Jergat! Speak to me!’ But still there came no reply and she felt a growing dread. She saw that Birsing, clutching her little dagger, was running at her left side. She gave a smile of encouragement but the girl’s face was dead white, her eyes fixed on the women’s enclosure ahead. Tari was on her right and all around and behind them, hair flying in the wind, weapons in hand, came the rest of the two hundred. They were terrified, every one of them – it was painted on their faces – but they didn’t falter.
The murders in the women’s enclosure were being organised by Sakkan – his height and his bear-skull headdress were unmistakable – and the idea seemed to be for each death to be brutal and drawn out, which was why it was all taking so long. The Illimani didn’t just want these women to die. They wanted them to die in a state of absolute horror and fear. No more than thirty braves were at the work. Here and there knots of them were hacking prisoners limb from limb with axes, or beating them to death with clubs, or hanging them from racks and skinning them alive. Some of the executioners simply darted into the thinning crowd of survivors, stabbing and slashing with spears and knives, spreading pandemonium. Ria saw Sakkan snatch up a small cowering woman and pound her down on a sharpened stake he had set into the ground. Everywhere there were blood-curdling screams and bellows.
As the edge of the sun appeared above the eastern ridge line, flooding the valley with light, Ria and her fighters streamed towards the first enclosure, raising sudden cries of hope from the crowd of children penned within and yells of alarm from the single guard left on duty. ‘Ligar!’ she pulsed again, ‘Jergat! Be ready. We are upon them.’ Then, because the time had come whether they were ready or not, she gave the signal and in unison her two hundred women yelled, at the tops of their voices, the single word of the Illimani language she had taught them – the word KHARGA! that meant ‘death’.
It sliced through the still morning air like an axe and caught the attention of the thirty Illimani in the women’s enclosure and close to five hundred more on the meeting ground, making them all look up at once in surprise.
KHARGA! KHARGA! KHARGA!
These swaggering men, Ria had calculated, would not expect to hear their own battle cry, in their own language, hurled at them by a horde of women, armed with hatchets and knives, running towards them stark naked – for she and her entire force had stripped down to their moccasins before the charge. She’d hoped the unusual spectacle of foes as naked as themselves – and women into the bargain – might gain her some small advantage.
Now she found she’d been right. The two groups of Illimani seemed to relax when they saw they were under attack by a force of less than half their numbers consisting entirely of women. With a dismissive gesture Martu sent a hundred braves jogging out of the meeting ground to support the thirty executioners in the enclosure and resumed his speech. In the same instant – at last – Ria heard Ligar’s thought-voice, faint but clear: ‘We are in place. May the spirits protect us all.’
The first flight of arrows erupted into the air out of the sector of rough gullies and hollows, overgrown with bracken and gorse, that lay between the meeting ground and the steep slope of the valley’s western side. Ria and her fighters surged past the captive children and bore down on the slaughterhouse enclosure, screaming their defiance. There the massacre of the women had stopped and the Illimani were witnessing, with obvious disbelief, the utter destruction that two hundred arrows had wrought on the detachment supposed to reinforce them. Halfway out of the meeting ground, moving in tight formation, they had been cut down in their tracks, almost every one of them; less than twenty were still on their feet.
With fierce satisfaction Ria saw a second flight of arrows start up like a flock of birds, blacken the air directly above the meeting ground and smash down into Martu’s remaining force of three hundred and fifty men. After that she lost sight of what was happening there but she was confident of Ligar and Sebittu and focused herself on the task of obliterating Sakkan and his thirty braves.
While the sky was still dark and sufficient cover remained to move a large group down the valley unseen, Ria had sent Ligar and Sebittu ahead with their mixed troop of nearly two hundred Merell and Naveen archers. They had been guided by Moiraig and Aranchi who’d said they could bring them close to the meeting ground without being seen and had proved as good as their word.
Ria had done what she could to prepare her own force for the task of breaching the thorn-bush walls of the women’s enclosure. The Illimani inside would expect them to try and enter by the gate, so that wasn’t her plan. Fifty women in five groups of ten would form scrums around the walls and everyone else would climb up over them and leap from their shoulders. There had been no opportunity to practise the manoeuvre, only to select the groups and hastily brief her whole force, but now as Ria sprinted towards the enclosure she felt proud as the women she’d selected surged forward and formed up where they should.
Ria’s knife hung in its sheath at her waist, alongside her deerskin pouch. As she jumped up onto the shoulders of the nearest scrum, with women streaming after her, she filled her hands with stone and her heart with hate and leapt over the thorn-bush stockade.
Chapter Ninety-Five
WHOOMF! Leoni was back.
Before Baiyakondi had given her the gourd of vile-tasting Ayahuasca he had sat over her for what had seemed like an age, singing a strange and mournful icaro while Ruapa had moved around enveloping her in fragrant clouds of tobacco smoke and the constant susurration of his chacapa rattle. ‘This ritual will cleanse some of the contamination that your etheric body has suffered,’ Don Leoncio explained, ‘and restore a little of your strength. We can only hope it will be enough.’
Then she drank and it seemed seconds later that her spirit soared up with the joy of a caged bird at last set free. She fixed her intent firmly, summoning Ria’s image to mind, and a tunnel of pure white light blinked open beside her. Leoni surrendered, allowing herself to be drawn into it and carried away and now, feeling her aerial body somewhat restored, she hovered thirty feet above Ria’s head.
It was full daylight, the sun was over the ridge of the valley and the entire scene was brightly lit and crystal clear as Leoni watched Ria clamber onto the shoulders of a cluster of women and leap like an acrobat into the thorn-bush stockade, strewn with bodies, where the Illimani had been raping and murdering female prisoners. The stockade formed a large square, two hundred feet on each side, and now only thirty of the women who’d been held captive still lived. Crowded screaming into a corner, they were being butchered by a tight mass of ten braves led by the monstrous figure who Leoni thought of as Bear Skull. Elsewhere within the enclosure were three smaller groups of Illimani clustered round the bloody bodies of more women – some of whom had been hung from racks and skinned alive.
But right now none of the executioners were going about their business. Many had expressions of astonished stupidity on their brutal faces as four from the group nearest to Ria charged towards her. Dozens of other women – Leoni hardly registered they were all naked – began to stream into the stockade from various points around its perimeter.
She saw Ria hurl two stones in quick succession, one with her left hand, one with her right, and two of the charging warriors fell in mid-stride as though they’d been shot. A howling mob of naked women swarmed over the other two, hacking them down with knives, cutting them to bloody shreds in seconds. Ria threw twice more, bringing two more Illimani crashing down, drew her own knife and hurled herself at a third, spilling his bowels before whirling around
with the pure joy of battle dancing in her eyes. All the action was in the physical realm – mercifully, it seemed that none of Sulpa’s aerial creatures had yet found their way here – and Leoni would not distract Ria in the midst of a fight for her life, so for the next few moments she could only watch and hope.
Across the enclosure the Illimani were being overrun by packs of armed women pouring in over the thorn-bush barriers and the prisoners had at last turned on their captors. Many of Ria’s force were killed and injured by the huge warriors but the women’s numbers were overwhelming and they could not be stopped. In seconds only Bear Skull and six of the executioners were still on their feet, clearing their way to the gate of the stockade with savage sweeps of their axes.
Through all this Leoni had been aware the battle was not confined to the enclosure. She soared high into the air to try to understand what was happening and to find a way to be useful.
The battlefield followed the curve of the valley, bounded by the river that ran behind the destroyed camp, and thus formed roughly the shape of a crescent. The ‘horn’ that curved to Leoni’s right contained the three thorn-bush stockades, with the children’s enclosure furthest down the valley in the direction from which Ria and her fighters had come. Now they saw the Illimani fully occupied with the attack and no longer watching them, some of the older children had forced open the gate of their prison and overwhelmed the lone guard.
The women’s enclosure came next, a scene of utter carnage and horror. Having fought their way out, leaving a trail of women’s bodies behind, Bear Skull and his gang of six were now reinforced by twenty more Illimani, some pierced by arrows, who came pounding round the corner of the final – empty – stockade that formed the rough centre point of the battlefield.
Tracking to her left from there, into the other horn of the crescent, Leoni saw the newcomers were the survivors of a bigger group sent to rescue Bear Skull. Bristling with arrows, eighty of them lay dead or crippled in a compact mass between the empty stockade and the wide cleared area a few hundred feet beyond it where the male prisoners had been tortured to death the night before. It seemed that Bull and the main Illimani force had formed up there, only to be caught in the same devastating ambush. More than half the warriors were down, many with multiple arrow wounds, but the two hundred or so who were still in the fight had unslung their atlatls and now sent a black wall of spears whirring back towards the archers. Within seconds the Illimani had launched two more volleys and then, yelling with fury, a hundred of them charged the archers’ positions in the rough land near the side of the valley.
The archers didn’t run. Many had been hit by spears but those who remained now burst from the cover of thorn bushes, fired one more withering volley, then laid down their bows and charged the advancing Illimani, brandishing axes and knives. The two groups were of roughly equal size and they met with a frightful clash at the edge of the cleared ground across a front hundreds of feet long. A desperate and frenzied fight to the death began.
Behind them, Bull and the other hundred Illimani had charged in the opposite direction and were now smashing Ria’s women aside to reach the beleaguered defensive circle formed by Bear Skull and his warriors. But before the two forces could join up – there were still a hundred feet between them – the women seemed to panic and Leoni watched in horror as they broke and ran.
Chapter Ninety-Six
Ria hung to the rear of the wild flight from the Illimani. A throng of sweating braves roared battle cries right behind her, as her force of women, bloody and battered – more than fifty had already fallen – pounded back down the valley, taking losses every step of the way.
Their flight, like their naked attack, was a ruse. The Illimani enjoyed hunting and terrorising people so much, and were so accustomed to victory, that Ria hoped they wouldn’t even suspect they were being lured into a trap. Besides, they had every reason to believe they were dealing only with women and a good number of archers. Nothing could have led them to guess she’d held almost a hundred and fifty fighting men in reserve. They were under Bont’s command, hidden just ahead around the elbow of the bend, with Driff, Grondin and Oplimar stiffening the front line.
Since the ability to use thought-talk had returned, even if reduced in strength, it had become much easier for Ria to get things done the way she wanted. As the battle developed she’d repeatedly pulsed to Bont to hold his men back – she’d sensed his eagerness – but it looked like the time had come at last. The first ranks of the women had already reached the bend and she herself was almost upon it.
‘Now!’ she pulsed. ‘Now!’ Bont’s warriors surged out and smashed into the flank of the Illimani pack, catching them perfectly off guard and spreading mayhem. Ria whirled round, dodged between a pair of pursuing braves and hurled her last stone at Martu, hitting him full in the brow and dropping him to his knees. Oplimar ran up, snatched off his horn headdress, and dashed his brains out with a single blow of his club.
It was the same all across the elbow of the valley. Outnumbered and overmatched, the Illimani were smashed down and ground into the dirt. Ria saw Grondin and Bont in the thick of it, striking out left and right with their huge war-axes, both spattered from head to foot in enemy blood. But every man of every tribe played his part and the women, having lured the Illimani here, now turned on them and teemed over their fallen and injured, knives and cleavers flashing.
Ria saw that Driff had found Sakkan, the smaller man’s slim build and tomahawks at first seeming puny against the giant warrior swinging a big double-headed axe.
But Driff was agile and fearless, darting in under his opponent’s blows to cut him with his blades, opening dripping wounds between his ribs, gashing his thighs and shoulders, driving him to madness. In an explosion of rage, Sakkan charged him, sweating, his massive chest heaving, but Driff slipped aside and cut him again as he pounded past, leaving a slab of bloody flesh flapping loose from his back.
In a circle around them, as the last of the Illimani were dispatched, Ria’s fighters, men and women, began to gather to watch. But she could not spare them for this. Not yet. ‘Finish him, Driff!’ she pulsed. ‘The battle isn’t over.’
Driff didn’t seem to hear her. He was laughing at Sakkan, shouting insults at him, and now he lunged forward again under a sweep of the axe, leapt into the air and dislodged the bear-skull headdress, sending it rolling. With a roar the big man swung wildly but was over-committed to the blow and stumbled when he missed. Instantly Driff was on him. He hammered his first hatchet – CRUNCH! – between the vertebrae at the base of his enemy’s thick neck and buried the second – SMACK! – in the top of his skull.
‘Finished!’ he pulsed to Ria who was already leading the charge back towards the camp, leaving behind a battlefield strewn with Illimani dead.
So great was the advantage of surprise that only a handful of Bont’s men fell in the ambush, and a hundred of the Merell women were still able to fight, so it was a large force that Ria took back down the valley to relieve the hard-pressed archers. More than half of them still lived, and they were locked in hand-to-hand combat with the Illimani all along the far side of the meeting ground where it gave way to uncleared land filled with gorse and bracken.
The distance between Ria’s force and the battle on the meeting ground was closing fast. Urging her fighters to a charge, she led them straight across the curve of the valley and the whole mass thundered between the empty thorn-bush stockades to their right and the escaped children who had gathered in the shade of a copse of bushes and small trees along the valley side to the left. A ragged cheer went up from the children and, ahead, there came an immediate change in the character of the battle as the Illimani – who had the upper hand – discovered they were doomed.
Some ran at once, seeking cover and escape through the gorse.
Others, turning to face the new threat, were struck down from behind.
A few of them regrouped and attempted to form defensive circles but broke under the massive
force and numbers of Ria’s attack and were cut to pieces. Many of the rest, scattered in ones and twos along the battlefront, attempted to surrender, and many of the fallen had been injured but were not dead. ‘What shall we do with them?’ asked Bont
‘Kill them all,’ said Ria. ‘That’s the only thing we came here to do.’
While Bont gave the orders for execution squads to comb the battlefield and sent other men to hunt down runaways, Ligar and Sebittu walked up arm in arm. They were both covered in blood – mostly not their own, as they themselves had survived the thick of the fight with only minor injuries. ‘I owe you an apology,’ Ligar said to Ria as he embraced her. ‘I didn’t think we could do this, I tried to talk you out of it, but I couldn’t have been more wrong. You’ve won us a fantastic victory here! A fantastic victory! It’s the stuff of legend – a legend, by the way, in which I myself plan to be remembered as Ligar the Great. I think that will suit me well. Or perhaps Ligar the Slayer?’ He gestured to the battlefield where more than half of the dead, lying in thick heaps, had been killed by arrows.
Sebittu was more serious – as well he might be, Ria thought, since many of his archers had died in this fight. She wondered if he would upbraid her for not reinforcing him sooner. But instead he fell on one knee before her, which made her feel uncomfortable.
Men and women, some Merell, some from other tribes, were gathering round. Amongst them Ria’s heart leapt to see Birsing. Still clutching her little flint knife, she was covered in cuts and bruises but there was joy in her eyes.
Sebittu raised his voice: ‘Hail to Ria,’ he declaimed, ‘the harbinger of the light. After such a victory none may doubt who you are. The foe has run proudly through our valleys scattering us to the four directions, but you have united the tribes to stop him... Triumph is yours this day, Ria. You have bloodied the evil one.’
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