by Caleb Fox
Even under these circumstances Shonan had a job for Oghi. He shouted into Oghi’s ear, “Make yourself a turtle, that way you won’t get blown over, and go see whether the enemy finds the cave.”
Oghi transformed himself and turtled along the top of the cliffs. At times he wondered whether the terrible winds would get underneath his shell and flip him upside down, but they didn’t. He felt good about being able to move around in the storm when no one else could.
On the beach below, the Brown Leaves surrendered to their tormentor. They fell to their knees and crawled toward the base of the cliffs, seeking shelter. It was a pitiful sight, over a hundred men on their hands and knees, inching forward like caterpillars. And the cliffs provided no respite. The wind swept straight along it, like lava rock scraping their skins.
At the far south end of the beach one man blundered into the opening of the sea cave. Since he was loyal to his comrades, he crept on hands and knees to the fellow nearest him, pulled him by the arm, and showed him the cave opening. Before long all the Brown Leaves were wombed within its protection.
It felt amazing. The air of the earth womb was perfectly still. Yet the wind, raging across its mouth, made a roaring whistle. It seemed comical, how the wind howled its threats but could not touch them. Some men laughed. Some yelled back at the wind. They gathered around Mor, their leader, and clapped each other on the back.
Just outside the entrance, seeming to be only a stone, Oghi the sea turtle watched them go back toward the emergence slit, and was afraid.
31
Maloch cared nothing for the wind. He slithered up the cliffs as easily and naturally as water flows around rocks and melds back into the river. Such an advantage, most of the time, not to be a human being. What an advantage, when the time came, to be a dragon. But now was the time to be serpentine.
He oozed onto the top of the cliffs, raised his red and yellow head, and peered around. He slinked between the wretches of the so-called Amaso army—who could call men who’d never stood up for themselves an army? They were huddled behind boulders, clutching their clothing tight against the wind and shivering like cowards.
They meant nothing to Maloch. The son of the war chief, Aku—that was the man he sought. Being prescient, Maloch knew that this man above all others was dangerous to him, the young man who could shape-shift into an owl and an eagle—what damage he’d done on the beach, destroying bodies and morale.
In the darkness of the storm and night Maloch could see almost nothing. But he could sense the warmth of human bodies, and he would smell Aku when he found him. When he did, Maloch would sink the fatal bite home. The Uktena would enjoy watching the young man, the would-be hero, gasp for breath, writhe and thrash and kick his feet in protest of the shortage, and die of parched lungs. Maloch savored his triumphs.
When Aku was dead, and only then, would Maloch permit himself to spread his poison to other Amaso men, including young Aku’s upstart father, Shonan. First things first.
At that moment Maloch would have been annoyed—more than annoyed—if he had been curled up on the lee side of a nearby boulder, the tallest on the cliffs. There a man who looked like a turtle was shouting to Aku and Shonan in a human voice, “They are going into the cave.”
The war chief thought about it. The emergence slit at the back of the cave was narrow and easy to defend. But only women and children were in there. No one would fight out here for hours, not until the sun came up, or even longer, until the winds eased off. Meanwhile, the women and children could be taken hostage. They seemed safe, but …
Shonan hated to run for safety. He argued with himself. All his warriors would have a better night in the limestone cave. Everyone would be more ready for the real fight that would come in the morning. Like the Brown Leaves, they would have the advantage of a night’s sleep.
It struck him then. He checked with Oghi, each yelling directly into the other’s ear. “When the tide comes in, the Brown Leaves will come out?”
“For sure. They don’t know how high the tide might get.”
“They’ll have to go back out into the wind.”
“Yes.”
“No place to camp there.”
Oghi laughed. “Not in knee-deep water.”
Shonan looked toward the river. Not only green leaves were being stripped off the trees, but entire limbs. “They might camp in the trees.” The winds would make it a miserable night. They might even rip trees out of the ground and drop them on the enemy. The enemy was going to have a bad night.
He decided and hammered each word into the gale. “Tell everyone, and I mean everyone, to go up and use the hidden entrance to the back of the sea cave and slip down and into the limestone cave. Inside the cave they must be totally quiet. You and Aku lead the way.”
“Don’t worry,” said Oghi, “the sea cave is like a giant version of one of Aku’s whistles. The Brown Leaves can’t hear a thing in there, or see a thing.”
Shonan nodded. “Fine. But absolute silence, total stealth.”
As the men passed the word, they crawled one by one up the hill. They didn’t give a damn how uncomfortable it was. The thought of escaping this horrific wind, the thought of shelter, the thought of food and hot tea, the thought of their families …
At that moment the wind lashed them with a hard rain, driving them underground.
Shonan almost felt sorry for the Brown Leaves.
He brought up the rear, making sure no one was left behind. When he ducked into the half-hidden entrance, he called to the man right ahead of him. It happened to be Kumu.
“Kumu, take the first watch.”
The young man who wanted to marry Shonan’s daughter looked at his leader. He shaped his ravaged features into the pretense of a smile and said, “You trust me to take watch.” He didn’t add, After I missed the knife throw?
“Fuyl will be next. I’ll tell him to kick you out into the storm if you fall asleep.”
“I will do my duty, Red Chief.”
Shonan wondered. On this night of madness he’d have been uncertain of any of his men. Even he could barely stand up.
He lowered himself, slipped through the butt end of the sea cave like a ghost, whispered his name at the emergence slit, and stepped into a haven.
Now a stone lamp helped him see. Chalu and three other men were guarding the slit, big clubs in their hands. Oghi came walking down the passage. He said, “Let’s get some more hands and block this slit.”
Shonan looked at him blankly.
Oghi said, “Don’t question me this time. Use that slab.”
Shonan said, “We can get in and out above.”
“Yes.”
“Easily?”
“Easily enough.”
Chalu said, “Do it.”
The old chief started the lift. Grumbling, everyone helped. Finally, they levered the huge stone into position, Shonan pushing harder than anyone.
Chalu stood back and surveyed the work. “Get big rocks and pile them against the slab. Make them shoulder high.”
The soldiers gaped at him.
Shonan lashed words at them.
The men nodded and set to.
Shonan walked up the passage, which was lit by occasional stone lamps, just enough to see by. Families made hide-covered humps. The first hump he came across was Aku and Iona, wrapped in each other’s arms.
Shonan felt a sharp pang, a blade to the heart. He stood over the sleeping couple. He knew he must be beyond exhausted, beyond the defenses he always lived behind, to feel such a pang. Before he could think, he reached into a shadow
to find Meli’s hand, and grasped only emptiness. It had been years since he’d forgotten himself that way, and he was embarrassed. His eyes lingered on his son’s face at rest, his peace in Iona’s arms.
He climbed further up the passage and found his daughter sprawled in an alcove, but not asleep, or ever able to sleep. He adjusted the hides to cover her better, sat down next to her, leaned back against a rock, and
stared into the darkness.
32
Maloch watched in fascination. He followed at a distance, because the rocks were his safety, and on the grasslands he was exposed to being clubbed. Not that anyone would see him. To his eyes his enemies were only black shadows against a gray night.
It didn’t make sense. Why would people being pummeled by wind and rain move uphill? Though not worthy rivals for himself, Shonan and Chalu were better leaders than this.
The shadows disappeared into the ground, one after another.
Maloch circled around the opening, for an opening it was, and took a look. He slid to the edge. No light came out, so it was safe. He avoided the big hole the human beings needed and slicked his way through cracks and dirt holes the size of a thumb. No person would look for a dragon master in such a place.
Where the entryway came into the open, at the very back of the sea cave, a guard stood tapping a club against the palm of one hand. He was a young man whose lips didn’t quite close, pushed open by a tooth that stood a quarter sideways in his mouth. Maloch felt a spurt of revulsion. It was unnatural. Why did human beings have these faults? The women he chose for the sacrifice, the ones whose life-fire flamed along with his own—they were perfect. Except, of course, for the serious fault that afflicted all human beings. They wanted to be good, and thought others wanted to be good. Maloch himself wanted to be evil, in fact perfectly evil, as well as perfectly strong, perfectly powerful, perfectly dominant. Goodness was a silly choice, entertained by no other species. It was also a fatal ideal, one that made people the weaklings they were. The life-fire should be taken from every one of them. They did not deserve to be its bearers.
Maloch figured out easily how to slip by the sentry. What else were stony crevices and dirt passages for? When he could look up at the soldier, he slithered down the last few feet of the hidey-hole and stopped, puzzled.
He waited a short while and snaked a score of human paces toward some human beings he could smell. They turned out to be his own soldiers, bivouaced this far toward the back of the sea cave. So where were the Amasos going? Strange doings, tricky doings. And if they were slipping down the hidey-hole, they were passing within steps of his soldiers. They got away with it only because of the absolute darkness of the cave and the extraordinary whistling effect the wind made blowing over its mouth.
Maloch peered toward the sea end of the cave and saw nothing. If the tide eventually piddled in, his soldiers would have plenty of time to splash their way out.
He coiled up and waited at the bottom of the hidey-hole. But not much was happening, and Maloch was easily bored. He decided to take a chance. He flicked a pebble with his tail and hit the guard on the leg.
The man whirled.
Maloch said, “Hey!”
It was no risk, really. In the whistle of the wind the sentry probably wouldn’t even recognize the sound as a voice, certainly wouldn’t recognize the word.
But he did step carefully down the passage. In the dark he almost put a foot on Maloch—That would have been worth your life, dolt!—but the serpent oozed out of the way. And the guard disappeared.
Wild with curiosity, Maloch slid after him, taking care to rub along what seemed to be a solid rock wall. And then it wasn’t solid. In fact, two walls overlapped here without touching, leaving a slender space wide enough for most people.
Maloch turned along with this wall and eased around two corners.
Immediately in front of him stood the sentry, the old chief, and three men armed with clubs. Beyond them, up a hall, occasional stone lamps lit a soft way among sleeping figures.
I have found their hiding place!
He coiled and slithered back the way he came. Maloch was undoubtedly fast enough to defeat any attacker, but why risk getting bashed by a lucky swing?
I have found their hiding place!
Always good to know people’s secrets, even if he didn’t yet see how to use them.
Maloch reversed his track along the wall and through the trick opening. The young man with the crooked tooth followed, unknowing. Not that he could see anything in the darkness, including the serpent.
Maloch considered. His bias, in general, was to distribute death and destruction simply for the sake of being evil. That was his nature, and he liked it. He considered for a moment, though he wasn’t customarily judicious. If he left this young fool dead, the next sentry would be alarmed. He might call Shonan. With the help of a lamp the war chief might find the bite, or might not. Even if he did, he wouldn’t be able to figure what serpent could kill so quickly, and he would not suspect Maloch. The Uktena preferred tearing people apart with the power of his jaws and ripping their flesh with his huge teeth. He was not a creature to be subtle.
At that moment the old chief, Chalu, suddenly stepped through the slit and climbed up. “Kumu,” he said, “you’ve been on duty long enough. I’ll take the watch for a while.”
“But …”
“Kumu, obey orders.”
The young man left. The old chief started to raise his head into the air, realized how violent the storm still was, and sat down.
How delicious. The enemy’s chief, so easy. So the serpent slithered close, coiled, eyed the tender flesh between Chalu’s ankle and heel, and sank his teeth there.
The chief shouted and swept his club in that direction, though he was much too slow. He stomped around a little, cursing, which no one heard over the great whistle of the sea cave. Then he began to gasp, next to wheeze. He fell down, clawing the air, as though to stuff it down his gullet.
Maloch stayed to the very end, enjoying the spectacle.
33
It began as wind. It aroused itself far out on the water-everywhere, farther away even than the width of the world, from this very shore to the mountains that held the people’s villages, and beyond them to the rolling hills where the Tree of Life and Death marked the western boundary of all the lands the Galayi knew. For all this distance and more, the wind whisked along the surface of the sea and urged the waters toward the shore. The mischief-maker was friction—the rubbing of the wind raised the water into waves, and then into higher swells, and finally into great troughs and summits that frothed with anger.
Imagine a man holding one end of a long rope in his hand. The rest of it, perhaps as long as ten men are tall, stretches away from him on the ground. The man raises his hand high, readying to unleash power, and then he slashes the cord down. It reacts like a whip—the energy runs through it, sending a curling wave from one end to the other.
On a gargantuan scale, a similar energy was gathering itself far out on the ocean, the child of the hurricane. It sailed as the storm winds blew, straight toward the Amaso people and the Brown Leaf warriors. In its magnificence, in its splendid power, it thought of human beings no more than does an earthquake.
Oghi lay awake and wondered whether the great surge of seawater would come. Only his great-grandfather had been caught in the midst of a hurricane, so Oghi had no more than memories of childhood tales as guides. Oghi no longer told the Amaso his stories, because people thought them the waggings of the tongues of foolish old men. He knew the Brown Leaves had no experience of such a monster wave, either. They lived on a well-protected bay and behind a row of barrier islands.
From time to time Oghi trembled. This wave, if it came, would coincide with high tide, and then …
In the sea cave the Brown Leaves were beginning to feel the incoming tide. It sloshed up the sandy floor of the cave and made them uncomfortable enough to get up and start trudging outside, grumbling as they went. They were weary of the whistle-roar, and getting soaked made their tempers worse. Outside the winds were stiff, but not as horrific as the ones that followed the period of utter calm, the blasts that chased them into the cave in the first place. The first soldiers outside looked at each other and smiled grimly. Which was worse, that damn racket or these bludgeoning winds? It was a toss-up.
Now back in his dragon form, Maloch positioned himself o
n top of the cliffs just above the entrance and yelled to his fighters as they emerged. “Go to the end of the beach,” he bellowed, “then double back onto the top of the cliffs. Tomorrow we’ll hold the high ground.” The soldiers staggered forward into the wind, thinking they might pay attention to him and they might not.
Maloch had his battle plan. Surely the Amaso fighters would not try to lift themselves one by one out of the hidey-hole. If they did, his men would accept the invitation to cut them down one at a time. If the Amasos came charging out of the sea cave onto the beach, his men would reverse their luck and show them how it felt to be on the beach in heavy fire from above.
Maloch the Uktena was in high dudgeon.
About half of his army had dragged itself out of the cave when the wave hit.
Its crest smashed the top of the cliffs. Half the army went topsy-turvy back into the cave, churning head over heels in the turbulent waters, with no idea which direction air might be. It didn’t matter, because the surging sea filled the tube of the cave completely.
The men already on the beach got slammed into the cliffs, though only spray broke over the lip.
In the cave and among the rocks, rattlesnakes and copperheads eeled out of their dens, desperate for air. Wildly, they fanged everything that moved.
On the beach Mor was lifted like a chip of bark and slammed crooked nose first into the cliffs. His nose, facial bones, and skull all cracked like a hammered nut.
The man next to him flew into the rocks with his other end first. His pelvis shattered, and splinters of the bones cut his guts to pieces.
Maloch was knocked backward by the foamy top of the wave, but managed to scramble away from the rage of tons of seawater.
To the north the waves bashed their way up the river, reversing the flow. It roared across the tidal plains, tearing bushes and all but the biggest trees out of the ground. It whisked away the Amaso huts like leaves, leaving no signs even of where people’s homes had stood. The flood charged all the way to the inland hills, deposited every kind of flotsam there, and slowly receded toward its oceanic home.