by Maya, Tara
“Remove my strongest force from the Tor?” scoffed Vultho. “Fa!”
“I’ll hold them in reserve and attack the Blue Waters warriors from the flank.”
“Foolish plan, to make our own warriors give up the high ground and then try to attack the enemy uphill. They have arrows, rocks and spears same as we do. No. The Bear Shields stay here.”
“Agreed.” Kavio tied a colored band to the neck of his spear. “Thrano can lead them. I meant a different war group, one adept in water fighting.”
“We will not be fighting on the river!” Vultho thumped the butt of his spear on the ground. Instead of resounding impressively, like a drum, it squelched in mud, sounding like a sloppy kiss. “Besides, I forbade you to waste time teaching water fighting to the Bear Spears… wait, what different war group?”
Kavio raised his spear, and the colored pennant, into the air. Like a man rowing a boat, he stroked the air, letting the banner dive and leap. Once, twice and thrice he waved the banner, and men stepped forward from the ranks of ordinary citizens, men not yet wearing war paint, but already armed with bows and canoes strapped to their backs, in the manner of Blue Waters tribesmen.
“What is this?” Vultho demanded. “What treason is this?”
“Not treason, but the Maze Born war group,” answered Kavio. “The war group I trained secretly in the woods, behind the shield of a dalliance with a woman.”
Vultho sputtered in fury. He scanned the faces and saw a throng of men all born of Rainbow Labyrinth, permanent or temporary exiles. The Bear Spears faced off with them.
“I knew it! You snake! You traitor!” Vultho jabbed a spear at Kavio. “You are no better than cousin Zumo! You were in on this together! Warriors! Kavio is a confessed traitor! Kill him! Kill him at once!”
Six warriors lunged at Kavio. He tired of Vultho’s stupidity. With a powerful leap, he flipped through the air, over the heads of the oncoming warriors, and landed in front of Vultho, knife drawn. He pressed the blade to Vultho’s throat.
“Insult me again, and I will kill you,” Kavio said flatly.
He withdrew his knife and stepped back. The six warriors who had been ordered to kill him leaned toward him, as if they were thinking of advancing. He glared at them. They thought again.
Prudently, they backed away. Vultho fumed impotently.
“You think I would join my cousin?” Kavio asked. “You misjudge me, as ever. Yes, I used the girl to shield my meetings with the Maze Born. If I had told you the truth, Zumo would have discovered it too, and Nargono would have been forewarned. Yes, I move people as you move stones. You must bury some stones if you want to build mountains, and you must bury some secrets as well.” He turned to the older man standing behind Vultho. “Hertio! You taught me that.”
The Bear Spears all turned to watch Hertio too. He hesitated.
“Uncle,” Kavio pressed, “You gave me a home when I had none and asked me to train your army. You must have made a judgment about me then. Even if you don’t trust me, trust your own judgment. This rain is not natural. The Blue Waters have the magic of the Blue Lady on their side. The skills of the Maze Born will be needed. They only ask to prove their loyalty to you. I’ve promised them that opportunity. Let me do what I must to defend Yellow Bear.”
War Chief Vultho nearly pissed himself with rage. A vein throbbed in his purpling neck as he screeched at the Bear Shields. “Why are you hesitating? I gave you an order! Kill the traitor! Kill him! Kill him, damn you!”
The Bear Shields ignored him. They looked to Thrano, who in turn, looked to Hertio. Hertio stared hard at Kavio. Perhaps he was still wondering if the Gauntlet had weakened or embittered Kavio. Perhaps he was remembering that once Kavio’s father, now known as the Maze Zavaedi, but then known as the Skull Stomper, war leader for the Bone Whistler, had driven Yellow Bear to its knees.
“Are you certain about this, Kavio?” Hertio asked.
“Yes, Uncle.”
“I don’t even know the names of the group leaders,” Hertio grumbled. “That one there looks like a damn Initiate.”
“He is, but also a powerful Tavaedi, and he can see Blue. Sept leader, step up!” The young man bobbed forward. “This is Tamio.”
“Tamio, you traitor!” screamed Vultho. “You will be killed too!”
“I’ll make carrion of the fish boys,” Tamio promised. He grinned nervously over his shoulder at Vultho, then stepped closer to Kavio. “Just give me a chance!”
Hertio addressed Vultho, though he pitched his words at Thrano and the Bear Shields. “Now is not the time to weaken our side by taking out a powerful war leader. I suggest we allow Kavio to sortie with his War Group.”
Vultho must have realized he could only lose face further if he continued to give orders no warrior would heed. With foul grace, he spat.
“Go, then, Kavio, you and take all the ‘Maze Born’ rats who want to die with you outside these walls.”
Kavio turned to go and the Maze Born stepped forward into their formations to follow his lead. On the way out, he paused to clasp Hertio’s arm.
“Thank you, uncle.”
“Fa! What choice did you leave me?” Hertio cuffed Kavio on the shoulder, muttering in a low rumble, “You better be as good a war leader as your father, Kavio.”
He led the Maze Born to the barricade around the Tor of the Sun. He reassured himself of the tor’s defenses. The tall, irregular tree trunks had been placed so close together that no light shone between them. On the outside, the height was three times as high as a man; on the inside, scaffolding allowed warriors to fire arrows and spears over the top down onto the hillside. The hill itself was tall and steep, and had been spiked with ankle-high sharpened stakes to trip attackers who did not come up the front ramp. The front ramp was a long, narrow earthen, embankment, which led up to a single gate in the barricade. The barrier designed to block the gate was also made of tree-trunks lashed together, and required eight strong men to be lifted into place. Because of the rain, the wood was damp and would not burn easily.
The other Tors were not as well fortified as the Tor of the Sun, but even now runners would be gathering everyone from the other settlements into this one. Fresh water wells and stores of grain and kraals with animals would even sustain the tribehold in the unlikely event of a siege. Not that the Blue Waters tribe had any skill in siege warfare.
Despite generations of war between Blue Waters and Yellow Bear, and sporadic wars between Yellow Bear and other tribes, no enemy had ever taken the Tors. No matter what their numbers, the Blue Waters warriors would lose their advantage the moment they left their canoes by the river and ran on foot uphill into a death storm of arrows.
Still, Kavio felt uneasy. He remembered the spell Rthan had set up in the mountains above the Rainbow Labyrinth. There were no mountains here, but he would toss knucklebones Rthan was up to something equally apocalyptic.
Gremo jogged up to him.
“Zavaedi! I am here. Bring on the war!”
“You remember what we discussed?”
“Yes, uncle.”
“Gather the Shunned now. All of them. Bring the infirm and the children here, but take with you all the men and any women who can fight. You know where to go, and you are the only one who can get there swiftly enough. Are you ready for this?”
Gremo nodded once. “This time I am in control.”
He lifted his arms to the sky. Feathers sprouted from his arms. His nose protruded into a beak, his toes turned into talons. The transformation re-shaped his body so elegantly that it seemed almost natural. The man molted away and the bird remained.
The huge seabird lifted into the air.
Dindi
The triple circle of megaliths loomed like a forest of stone sequoias. Dindi knew according to the law she must last three nights and three days upon the tor. The faeries would come to dance here each of those nights, and once she joined their ring—and Kavio in his lessons had made it clear that no mortal, not even he, could resist
doing so, not here, within one of the Six Directional power places of Faearth—they would dance her to her death.
If she could last the three days…
She heard the sound first, but dismissed it as more thunder. It was raining. No lightning heralded this thunder. Nor did it stop. The rumble continued to grow into a sustained wail.
The earth under her trembled.
Winds whipped around her that smelled like damp earth and rot.
The roar grew until it befit a beast the size of a mountain. The sound shook the whole hill.
Dindi looked up in shock. From upriver a huge wave, taller than any she had seen even on the ocean, crashed through the forest. The vast surge of water rushed toward her. The dark, churning spume had swallowed whole trees. Manic white foam rode the crest of a titan of darker water.
She had seen ogres as tall as boulders. She had seen giants as tall as sequoias. She had seen huge stone faces rise out of the ocean.
This wave dwarfed all of them.
And it was headed right at her.
Instinctively, she ducked as the water crashed around the Tor of the Stone Hedge.
A spray of foam, grit and leaves drenched her, but the water did not top the hill. The cataclysm slammed around the hilltop on either side.
Dindi flinched at each clap of sound, as the wave slammed into the other tors deeper in the valley one after the other.
The tors became instant islands. The valley was now a lake.
Her legs quaked as she struggled to regain her balance and take in the new vista.
The tops of the trees looked like strange birds floating on the water. The other tors had also come islands.
Boats glided on the foaming surface. They did not approach Dindi’s island, but swept past her toward the Tors of the Sun and the Moon.
Despite her shock, she understood. The Blue Waters had found a way to turn the terrain into their element. Yellow Bear was in terrible peril.
And there was nothing she could do about it.
Kavio had promised to defend her against the fae. He would not come now. The magic of the corncob doll was spent. It now held only death for her, the dying memories of the Corn Maiden. The Black Arrow had held nothing but death from the start.
She had no allies, no aide, no magic. Nothing but herself.
Kavio
Kavio led the Maze Born to the river, which excited them, because they assumed he would let them take the battle to the enemy. When, instead, he led them across the ford to the forest of tall sequoia and fir, they grumbled. They did not openly resist until he ordered the men to climb the trees, one sept to a tree.
“What good are we out here in the forest, far from the battle at the tor?”
“Damn this rain, anyway!”
Kavio shut them up with a curt command and showed them how to lasso the branches of the trees to climb up. Showing them which trees to climb, he favored the sequoia. These giants were ten yards across and the lowest branches were a hundred feet off the ground, so they had to shoot the ropes tied to arrows to establish their perch.
He made them keep watch, without fires or torches, in the tree branches, in the downpour. The rain increased. The more sodden the men, the viler their invective grew. Kavio would not relent.
A slurpy, sloshy sound quieted the mutter of curses. The watchers instead began to whisper. Then even the whispers died away, and all the men felt great fear, without knowing why.
An immense groan vibrated in the air. Even Kavio could not imagine what could have produced the sound, which made the trees shiver as though at thunder, or a quake.
The groan became a roar.
The mists parted and the starlight revealed an impossibility. A huge wall of water, screaming white with churned up spume, filthy with debris, with all manner of twigs and rocks and branches, reared up like an ocean wave over their heads. Before their terrified eyes, the oncoming wave lifted an entire tree and spit it out. Then the wave hit. The river engulfed the valley.
The men scrambled higher into the trees as the waters smacked against the trunks. Smaller trees fell to the onslaught, but the huge sequoias stood their ground against the flood and wind and rain.
The river had not come alone. A flotilla of hundreds of war boats, each holding one to seven men, each lit with fae Blue light, careened in on the wave, and between the vessels, triangular dorsal fins poked up through the waters—sharks by the thousands, driven by the Merfae.
All that still stood above the waters were the tips of the trees and the tops of the tors.
Kavio, in the highest perch, whistled softly, the pre-arranged signal. The archers below him raised their bows. The archers on either side of those raised their bows in response, and so it rippled until all the odd ‘birds’ had cocked their arrows.
Another soft birdcall, and the archers released their first volley through the branches, through the rain and fog. Arrows soared in from the darkness beyond, though few hit any mark, and the defenders responded with their own volley.
The entire valley had flooded. The surface of the lake reached to the summit of the Tor of the Sun. What had once been a defensible height was now level to the surface of deep water, perfect for the Blue Waters warriors to approach in their kayaks.
Kavio sounded the conch shell, the second signal. The Maze Born took their boat-shields from their backs and tossed them into the water. They leaped into the boats and paddled swiftly to meet the enemy.
Brena
A dark figure loomed in front of Brena. She recognized the smell before the shape. Wet bear fur had a distinct aroma.
“Brena,” said the she-bear. “Are you ready?”
It was that simple, in the end. Brena knew what the Golden Lady was really asking. And strangely, all of Brena’s earlier fears and reservations fell away. She squared her shoulders. “Yes, my Lady. I will be your Henchwoman.”
“The others will not come unless you invite them yourself,” said the bear. “You must summon them.”
“Surely the Brundorfae are not in danger from the flooding?”
“It is not we who are in danger, but you,” she said. “I wish you to be my Henchwoman, my human champion, to aide me and my people. But to ask so dire a thing of you, my people and I must be willing to defend you in our turn, if your need is great. The rain hides other foes, both human and fae. Touch my fur.”
Brena touched the sleek fur cape of the Golden Lady, as she shifted back to her bear form. Light shimmered around Brena and she saw shapes jumping down from the sky, dim ghostly creatures with spears and knives. She had never seen any fae like them.
“What are they?”
“Blue fae. Just the beginning. More will come. By yourselves, you will never defeat them, for most of you cannot see them. But we can. We can fight them for you, while you fight the humans.”
“It’s the Blue Waters tribe, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“What do I do, Golden Lady?”
“Ride upon my back, and together we will summon the Brundorfae.”
Brena climbed onto her back. She could have sworn that the bear had been dripping wet, but now the fur seemed dry. More, she herself had most definitely been sopping, but now she felt warm and dry and none of the rain touched her. She had no time to ask about this, because the bear bounded away, jumping across the water without touching the surface, toward the woods.
Rthan
Rthan paddled a two-man canoe, but he paddled alone. The other occupant was a small girl, fiercely radiant blue. Though the Blue Lady still vaguely resembled his daughter, she no longer looked entirely human, for below her navel she had sloughed her legs in favor of a fish tail, which, long, scaled, sinuous, dipped in the water, to spur the kayak to supernatural speed and agility. Her flag of dark sapphire hair unfurled in the wind. She leaned forward over the boat, to grip the prow with both hands, panting with eagerness.
Because of his long absence, Rthan had been removed as war leader, so he had no men answering to him
in this battle. He was glad, for he did not envy the responsibility. He would be answerable only for his own kills, and to his Lady.
Thus far the plan had unfolded beautifully. The dance to hex the weather unleashed a storm designed to untangle the Raft. The crotchety crunch of old logs, rocks and dirt had finally disintegrated, which in turn unleashed the mass of dammed up water. The swell whoosed downstream, uprooting trees and flinging boulders as it gushed, like a giant throwing a tantrum.
The Blue Waters flotilla surfed the tidal wave into the valley. Here their turbulent ride gentled, as the waters flooded the fields and thus dissipated their force. The moonless night showed no evidence of war preparations on the part of Yellow Bear. Rthan began to believe, for the first time, that the Blue Waters clans had succeeded in taking their enemy by surprise.
A volley of arrows, from trees too tall to be completely submerged, pricked his hope. Darkness blinded both sides, so it was hard to say how many enemy archers there were, or how many casualties they caused. The archers blew counch shells, to call their tribesmen to war.
It would do them no good, Rthan told himself, because Yellow Bear had lost their primary advantage. Their impregnable towers of earth were now friendly islands to welcome pillage by the army of Blue Waters. The defenders had ringed their tall hill with pointed spikes, quills on a porcupine. In the predawn gloom, the guards in the bomas, the crow’s nests, set to watch for the enemy, had no chance to see anything but rain and darkness.
The flotilla surrounded the tallest and largest, the Tor of the Sun. The water had risen to within a few feet of the palisade. Rthan could hear an unseen warrior on the other side cough. The Blue Waters warriors used bone grappling hooks and lassos to pull down the spikes of the palisade. With the earth softened by the waters, their work was easy. Just before dawn, huge sharpened tree trunks forming the palisade sank and toppled over – and splashed. The strange knocking sounds vexed the Yellow Bear lookouts, who called for torches to try to see what made it, but no torch could stay lit in the fierce wind and rain.