The True History of the Strange Brigade

by Cassandra Khaw

  They gave her meat and water. She drank the water, and not being sure of what it might be, hid the meat in a gourd. She drank her honey-beer and offered a taste to Crocodile Dancer, who wrinkled her nose at the smell and refused.

  “Tell me why you took Kingasunye,” Nalangu said.

  “I did not take her. Catches Crickets took her,” Crocodile Dancer said.

  “Then tell me why Catches Crickets took her.”

  “She lost her cub. A lion killed it.”

  “And now another mother has lost her child.”

  “Did you wonder,” Crocodile Dancer said, “why Kingasunye did not cry out when she was taken? Did you wonder why she sits so happily at Catches Crickets’ side, playing with her tail like her own cub?”

  “She is very young. She does not understand the danger.”

  “No, she does not,” Crocodile Dancer said. “But we do.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Her father was one of ours, and so is she.”

  Nalangu opened her mouth, and closed it again, having nothing useful to say. No-one paid much attention to who fathered a child, so long as the father belonged to the right ol-aji, but this…

  Crocodile Dancer said, “It does not happen often that there is a cub, from such a mating, and sometimes the cub is just human. But this one has the scent of us. Last year when you built your enkang in this place, she was too young for us to be certain. And now, we are. So Catches Crickets took her.”

  “She was not hers to take.”

  “Was she not?” Said Crocodile Dancer. “Now, she seems a child like yours. And when the change comes on her, what then?”

  Nalangu looked around at the cave. Everything was strange, and dangerous; the eyes of the leopard people like burning jewels, the stink of their kills, the claw and muscle of them, their beds of rock and grass, Crocodile Dancer’s chilly amusement. This was no place for a child of the tribe, surely it was not.

  “It is my duty to take her back to her mother,” Nalangu said.

  “Then you must fight Catches Crickets. And this time I will not stop it.”

  “Then I must.” Despite the honey-beer Nalangu felt the pull of her wounds, and the weariness in her muscles, but this was her duty and she would not shirk it.

  The leopard-people pulled back from a space in the centre of the cave, in front of the fire-pit.

  The light was bad, the ground unfamiliar. But this time Nalangu knew what was coming. To watch a leopard kill and to know what it is like to be prey, these are very different things. Remember what they are, and what you are.

  She picked up her spear and her shield.

  They watched. As humans, they were very still. As leopards, their ears flickered, their tails twitched.

  Nalangu watched Catches Crickets return to leopard form. The transformation made her eyes wince and sat unpleasantly in her mind, and she wondered what such a thing felt like, especially the first time.

  “Go, then,” said Crocodile Dancer.

  Catches Crickets came in with deadly speed, straight for the throat.

  Nalangu was ready. She blocked, knocking Catches Crickets aside. The leopard came again; again, she knocked her aside. Again, and again, and again. The leopard was tireless and terribly fast.

  But she is not truly tireless. Not truly.

  Nor am I.

  Months and months of training. The dust and hard-packed dirt, Nkasiogi’s voice, saying Again. And Again. And Again.

  Loiyan’s voice, saying, Use your Eye. Do not just see, but always perceive.

  Catches Crickets was all drive and fury and fear, wanting to save this cub as she could not the one she had lost. Remember what they are, and what you are.

  The burn of claws along her arm, the hot stink of breath, one glinting fang so close to her eye she felt it brush her lashes.

  Turn and jab and block and thrust. They locked together, trembling with tension, each waiting for a moment of weakness that would leave an opening.

  A red line down the spotted hide and a roar of pain.

  Remember what they are, and what you are.

  Nalangu blocked. She jabbed. She blocked. Her wounds reopened, and she slipped in blood and fell and only just rolled out of the way; and she was back on her feet, and they were both panting, and tiring.

  And, oh, her blood sang even as it spilled, and she was alive and all her senses sharp as blades.

  She was alive because Nkasiogi had trained her.

  She was here because Loiyan had believed her.

  Nalangu could see Kingasunye watching the fight, her eyes wide and afraid, and were they tingeing gold already?

  She knew how the girl moved, lithe and quick, not like a toddling child still finding its feet, but like a leopard-cub. And where, back home, was her Loiyan? Where was her Nkasiogi?

  Nalangu looked into the green-gold eyes of the leopardess, so hot and furious, she felt the desperation of the coming lunge—I must finish this, now—and Nalangu twisted and took her spear in both hands and swerved and spun and the shaft of her spear was across the leopard’s throat and she pulled.

  And Catches Crickets writhed and choked and heaved her shoulders and tried to rub Nalangu off against the rock, and she clung on with hands and thighs and feet, and finally Catches Crickets dropped to the floor, and Nalangu with her, rolling so she was on top.

  She extracted her spear, stood, backed away, holding it ready. Catches Crickets lay limp.

  Kingasunye, wailing, ran across the floor and flung herself on the body. An ear flicked, the tail twitched.

  “You have not killed her,” Crocodile Dancer said.

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  Nalangu said, “If I take the child back to my enkang, what will happen?”

  “If she is lucky,” Crocodile Dancer said, “when your people begin to realise what she is, they will kill her quickly. If she is not lucky, they will try to drive the leopard from her with fire and iron, with pain and terror, and when that fails, they will kill her.”

  Nalangu said, “Give her foster-mother some of this”—she held out the gourd of herbed honey-beer—“and make her drink it, even if she spits. It will help her heal. And when the child is old enough, tell her that her birth-mother is Naetu Kanunga. She has a right to know that.”

  She picked up her spear, and turned away.

  “You have earned the right to take her,” Crocodile Dancer said.

  “Yes,” Nalangu said. “But I will not.”

  Crocodile Dancer tilted her head. “A gift for a gift. What would you have?”

  “Keep your people from our cattle. And your men from our women.”

  “I will do what I can,” Crocodile Dancer said. “May you always catch what you hunt.”

  “And so may you,” Nalangu said.

  She felt their eyes on her back as she walked out into the night, but when she reached the entrance, and looked behind her, there was no-one there. The crack in the rock might have been no more than the lair of a rock-hyrax; or of nothing at all.

  She did not want to go back to the enkang—and face Loiyan—and because she did not want to, she put up her chin and straightened her back and walked as fast as her injuries would let her, and went into the enkang by the secret way, so no-one would see her injuries and question her, and she took her spear, to hold onto it a little longer.

  “I did not bring her back,” she said, in the dark hut smelling of herbs, where the light gleamed on Loiyan’s beads and teeth and eyes. “I could not. I have failed.” And she knelt down and held up her spear in her two hands, for Loiyan to take from her, and her heart ached at it.

  “Put down your spear and tell me,” Loiyan said.

  So Nalangu told her. And afterwards Loiyan re-dressed her wounds and gave her stronger medicine to drink, and told her to rest, and went away.

  Soon after, she came back with Nkasiogi, who scowled and said, “Well, you are not dead, at least. Don’t lie too long without stretching, or your muscle
s will stiffen. Oh, don’t look so miserable, I am not going to make you train for a few days.”

  Nalangu blinked and looked from one to another.

  “You did what was right,” Loiyan said. “The trial was of your sense as well as your strength—they always are. You passed.”

  “What of Naeku? What of her grief?” Nalangu said.

  “What would her grief be, if you brought the child back to suffer and die for what she is? Naeku must live with loss, and you must live with the knowledge she is denied. Even the right decision does not come shadowless like a bright noonday. Always you must choose, and with every choice made another is lost.”

  Loiyan laid a hand on Nalangu’s head. “Now you must rest and grow strong, and when you are well, we will begin to prepare you for the Risking of the Soul.”

  NALANGU SAT WITH her spear across her knees, smelling the herb-thick smoke and the bitter fumes of the brew she would soon drink, breathing steadily, trying to calm her mind.

  Yet again, she had taken the medicine to give her symptoms of fever, and had been whisked away to the secret hut of the Sisters.

  Yet again, she wondered if she would ever go home.

  It had been two seasons, between the last Trial and this one. She had trained until her spear and shield felt like extensions of her limbs. She had trained until the smallest breath of the other world sang in her ears like a lion’s roar. She had learned the nature of every type of demon the Sisters had ever encountered, and some that were only rumours.

  She was still not sure it was enough.

  Loiyan, Nkasiogi, and five more Sisters of Night sat around her. They would guard the way, if she failed, in case any of the demons decided to try and follow her trail back to the upper world.

  The Sisters, seen together, had a look about them that was almost like a family, though not in their features. It was in the way they moved, the way they spoke, the threads of understanding that bound them together in word and gesture. They were the hide and stitching and frame of a shield, strong against all that threatened the people.

  If Nalangu succeeded, she would be bound together with them, to stand against darkness. If she failed… but she would not think of failure. Thinking of it would make her weak.

  “Once you drink, it will be very quick,” Loiyan said. “You will land hard and sudden, and the demons will scent your spirit and come fast. Be ready.”

  Nalangu grasped her shield and her spear, feeling the shape of them, familiar as the lines of her palm. If she did not know them well enough, remember them well enough, she would be unarmed when she faced the demons, and they would tear her soul to shreds and gulp it down, and her body would die.

  Even armed, that was a good possibility.

  If she survived, she would gain the knowledge the demons guarded. She would see visions that would help her protect her people. She would return as one of the Sisters of Night.

  There could be no bargaining, though the demons would attempt it. There could be no compromise, though they would lie and promise it. There would be only success, or failure.

  And she would get only one chance.

  The drink was thick and bitter. Her tongue curled at it, her throat tried to close. She gulped it down.

  “Close your eyes, and lie back,” Loiyan said.

  She did. The blanket beneath her was soft and thick. Nalangu wondered briefly who had woven it, and if they knew how it would be used.

  The women began to hum, a low tune that was simple on the surface and complex underneath. Nalangu found herself trying to follow its harmonies, tease one individual voice out from the others. There was Nkasiogi, her tones rich and sweet, as different from her acrid words as possible, yet unmistakably hers.

  Nkasiogi’s voice became a thread, shining silver, among the other threads, a complex plait of light and colour, leading into the dark. Nalangu pulled away after it…

  The separation from her physical self was sudden and soft as the tearing of tender meat. The very ease of it was somehow horrible. Nalangu tried to ignore the feeling that half of her was hanging in tatters over the void, and followed the voices, the shining interwoven thread, down and down and down.

  Her descent sped, now she was falling, tumbling over and over, spilling helplessly into the dark. Where are my spear and shield?

  She grasped them, and they became themselves, solid in her hands, the moment before she hit the ground with a jarring force that almost tore them out of her grip.

  Nalangu bounced upright. The landscape around her was all dimness and smokes and sullen glows, like the aftermath of a bush fire.

  The first shape came at her with such terrible speed that she only just got her shield up and her spear in front of her in time; the blade of the spear was scarlet in the dimness, the colour of courage and blood. It sank into shadowy substance that coiled and grasped at it.

  The demon shrieked inside her head, the noise clawing at her mind. It moved with slick uncanny speed, pulling itself away from the spear, but she could see it was wounded. Darkness seeped from it, vaporising as it flowed. Again she stabbed, and the demon writhed and howled and was gone, but her senses spun her about and there was another, this one more substantial, its matter shifting and bulking to suggest muscles, fangs, claws. It had many eyes scattered about it, some as blank and glittering as the eyes of locusts and others horribly human. It gibbered as she sank the blade into it, the sound creeping over her soul like an infection, and faded away.

  There were more.

  There were things that crawled and things that skittered and things that stank like dead flesh. There were things that giggled like children and promised her horrors that she would always remember even if she never found the words to describe them. There were things that sang sweet harmonies, and promised her glories that made her ache with longing, even as she knew they were lies.

  There were more, and more: an endless, dreadful horde of them. She fought and fought, her mind, her spear, her limbs, her soul, all one, all resisting, and weakening, and wearying.

  Suddenly there was a space. Nalangu leaned on her spear, panting, knowing this was only her mind’s vision, but feeling every searing breath, every welt and rip and aching muscle and poisoned barb sunk in her cringing flesh. Every lie and promise and twisted thought that wrenched and sickened her weary spirit.

  They must be gathering their forces for another attack. She searched for the thread of the women’s voices, that multi-coloured shining rope, and wondered if she would ever find her way back, or if the Sisters would—with regret, with sorrow, yes, but without a choice—leave her here to be ripped into screaming shreds that might survive in suffering for dreadful ages.

  The thread, her guide home, turned and shone and sang in the darkness.

  And suddenly she could hear Nkasiogi’s voice, rising clear from the rest. “Enough,” she said. “They are finished. You have done well. Come back now.”

  Oh, she wanted to, so very badly. She had never felt so tired and sore and near to broken. “But I have not had the vision,” she whispered.

  “No, that is a great pity, but you have fought well, and it has been decided that you do not need to have the vision to be accepted as one of the Sisters of Night. The vision can wait.”

  To go back, to rest, safe and honoured with her beloved Sisters.She stretched out her hand, to touch the strands, and the voice said, “You have fought the best of all, you have no more to learn. Come back, and lead us.”

  And Nalangu snatched her hand away, and for all her weariness, laughed. “Crawl away, demon,” she said. “The Sisters have no leader, the Sisters are one. And there is always more to learn.” And she thought what Nkasiogi would think of her voice being made to say these words, and laughed even harder, and some of her strength returned to her.

  The voice spat and swore terrible curses, and Nalangu grinned and gripped her spear tightly and was ready when the demon came.

  It was the strongest yet, dreadful in its speed and its absolute fur
y and its utter violence. It tore at her until she cried out, taking great mouthfuls of the flesh of her spirit body, sinking its fangs into her mind, but she would not yield. It had tried to make her falter—had tried to avoid this fight—and that meant it feared her. She hacked at its shifting limbs and stabbed the reeking, shadowy mass of its flesh, until its poisonous ichors spilled and ran and its curses weakened, until it turned and fled. But it cried out to her one final time. “You have won your vision, warrior. I hope it pleases you well.” And, cursing and laughing, it was gone into the smokes and glooms.

  And then Nalangu heard a strange ripping sound, like something tearing open, that was at once quiet and profound, and the gloom around her lightened and shifted and became daylight.

  But what daylight was this? Dull and grey, and as full of smoke as the demon-realm. She stood on a wide path, covered in small round stones half-buried in the ground. It ran ahead, straight as a spear-haft, ending abruptly at a wall, built of regular red stones, smeared with black. To either side were buildings, like canyon walls, absurdly tall.

  “Keep your eyes open,” someone said. It was a white man, paler than a lion’s pelt, only the second one she had ever seen. He was not speaking Maa, yet she understood him. And she understood his name was Frank, a name cold and sharp as himself. “It came down here.”

  “This is too good a place for a trap,” Nalangu said. And she was not speaking Maa, either.

  “But there’s nowhere it could have gone,” said another man, huddled in a great thick wrap. His name was Archimedes.

  “Coal cellar,” said a woman—Gracie, she is Gracie—pointing. “Look.”

  Nalangu could see where she was pointing, a small round opening set in the ground, rimmed with metal. Smeared on its rim was some thick gleaming stuff. Spoor.

  “How the devil could it fit in there?” said Archimedes. “And how are we supposed to follow it?”

  “Don’t look at me,” said Gracie, “that thing looks tighter than a duck’s never-you-mind.”

  Nalangu, impatient, and aware that her feet in their heavy boots were going numb with the cold, said, “The cellar belongs to that house. I am going to knock on the door.”