Speaking Bones, page 12
Suddenly, Ga-al snorted, flared his nostrils, and jerked up from his haunches, looking alarmed. Then he twisted his neck to stare at her, a look of terror in his pupil-less eyes.
“What is it? Another tusked tiger?” asked Théra. She looked about in alarm.
Ga-al shook his head and snorted again. No matter how much Théra stroked the base of the neck, he refused to calm down. Bending his serpentine neck back, he nudged Théra with one of his antlers, urging her to get going.
Théra complied, having learned to trust the garinafin’s ability to hear that which cannot be heard. By the time the pair returned to camp, she saw everyone was rushing about to get Alkir ready, draping the war webbing on the garinafin and strapping their supplies and gear in securely.
“I had to risk having Alkir warn you,” said Takval. “Let’s just hope that the Lyucu garinafins, even if they heard Alkir’s silent cry, can’t tell their riders.”
“They’ve found us?”
“Sighted them just beyond the ridge. I rushed back as quickly as possible. We have to get out of here now.”
“But Araten isn’t back yet!” she said, her voice cracking from fright and worry. The trusty thane was their only connection with the outside world and her only hope of finding out more news of her children.
“We’ll lose everyone if we wait any longer,” said Takval.
“What if he and his band were to return after Cudyu has taken over the valley?”
Takval said nothing. But his resolute look, the same expression he wore when he had suggested that Théra and the rest of the fleet flee while he stayed behind to fight the Lyucu city-ship, told her everything.
They have to be sacrificed to buy us more time.
Her chest felt tight and she labored to get enough air into her lungs, but she knew he was right. She had always been unwilling to make sacrifices, but by now that obstinacy had been worn down by the pain of so many lives lost because of her. She had to be more ruthless, think of the grander picture.
They took off before noon, abandoning the camp in the Foot Range that had been their home for the last few months.
* * *
They didn’t even get out of the valley before realizing that they were trapped.
The Lyucu raiding party Takval had spotted was but one small part of an overwhelming force that had encircled the valley, sealing off every exit route. No matter which way the refugees turned in their flight, they sighted teams of garinafins sneaking up on them from below, conserving lift gas by hiking through the mountainous terrain. Takval kept them flying close to the valley floor and executed tight turns, hoping that they hadn’t been sighted.
There was no choice but to land.
“We’ve been betrayed,” said Takval, his voice heavy with rage and regret.
“How?”
Takval and Théra looked at each other. The timing of the attack made the answer obvious.
“Why didn’t they attack earlier? Araten must have led them here the first time he left—”
Théra felt her blood run cold. She thought back to the conversations between her and Araten, the questions he had asked, the enigmatic expressions in response to her answers….
“O gods,” she whispered. “He was prying from me when the Wall of Storms would reopen.”
There had likely never been any attempt by Cudyu to gather shamans and diviners to calculate the time at all. Why bother doing the hard work when it was so much easier to gain her trust with news of her children, to worm into her heart through guilt and gratitude, to probe and poke and unsettle her with lies until she spilled the secret herself?
“Why?” asked Théra, swaying unsteadily from the emotional blow. “Why would Araten do this?”
“I should have been much less trusting,” said Takval, his jaw clenched. “I should have learned my lesson after Volyu’s treachery!”
There was no way to know the complexity of the human heart. Perhaps Araten had agreed to serve the Lyucu under duress, or perhaps he had done so in order to secure his position in Cudyu’s new order. Betrayal, like love, had a thousand-thousand forms.
Théra’s mind was a tangled mess, and she was surrounded by doubt on all sides, much as they were encircled by the Lyucu. What could she believe? Had everything Araten told her been false?
Almost without realizing it, she began to pray to the gods of Ukyu-Gondé. Abruptly, Takval’s self-recriminations and the curses of their Agon and Dara retinues faded from her awareness. Once more, she was on that vast plain under a vaster sky, where the air was filled with the limpid light of the numinous. Powerful storms raged across this scrubland of the interior—dancing, singing, guiding, questioning; jagged branches of defiant shrubs and ephemeral lightning flashes divided the world into a thousand-thousand chiaroscuro fragments.
She prayed for clarity, and she felt, rather than heard, the deep rumbling of distant thunder. The truth tumbled into her heart like drops of life-giving rain.
“Tanto and Rokiri are all right!” said Théra, gasping as she emerged from that other plane of consciousness. “As are the rest of the children.”
Takval and the others looked at her, confused.
“Don’t you see?” she said. “If Cudyu had actually managed to get his hands on our children, there would have been no need for this ruse. They could have captured us and extracted whatever they needed from us by threatening harm to them. The only reason they resorted to the gambit with Araten is because Toof and Radia succeeded in their plot.”
Hope flared once more in everyone’s heart.
But it was short-lived.
“How can we possibly stop the invasion fleet now that they know when to launch it?” Théra asked in anguish.
Çami, Tipo, and the other Dara fighters looked at one another helplessly. Had all their sacrifices and plans come to naught because of her carelessness?
“The tolyusa blooms in the heart of winter,” said Takval. “When things look the worst is also when our fortunes will start to turn. I promise you that if we get out of this alive, we won’t stop until we’re in Taten and their city-ships are in flames.”
* * *
The sun was lower in the west. It was almost time for Araten and his raiding party to attack.
Earlier in the day, he had sighted Takval and Théra’s band at their camp down in the valley, right where he had left them. Rather than launching an attack right away, he had ordered the party to wait until hunting parties approaching from the other sides had completely sealed off all routes of escape.
All afternoon, he had kept his garinafins out of sight, resting in the shade of a low ridge in the valley. He knew that it was Takval’s habit to perform daily patrols. Hopefully, he would catch Takval’s garinafins after they had already used up some of their lift gas while his were at their strongest. Sure, the Lyucu garinafins vastly outnumbered the two garinafins under Takval’s command; it was still best to minimize the risk.
His caution was a reflection of his master’s approach. Cudyu was by nature suspicious, and he became even more paranoid after being deceived by Toof and Radia. Even after all Araten had done for the Lyucu cause in Kiri Valley, the Lyucu pékyu didn’t trust the Agon defector completely. Though Araten had come up with the whole plot to trick Théra into yielding up the information Cudyu wanted, Cudyu nonetheless opted to hold Araten’s family as hostages to ensure his loyalty. The scars on Araten’s body, which had helped to buy Théra’s trust, had been inflicted by Cudyu to impress upon Araten the reality of his threats.
Araten sighed. When Théra had unwittingly given up the secret, he had almost blurted out the truth—the shame of abusing her trust was so great. But he had survived that bout of erupting conscience without doing anything foolish. Betrayal, once committed, led only to more betrayals. There was no middle path.
He tried to tell himself that he really had no choice. How could Takval and Théra believe it was possible to defy the might of Cudyu, the greatest pékyu the scrublands had ever seen? After the destruction of the base in Kiri Valley, Cudyu’s sway over the Agon tribes was even more absolute than Tenryo’s had been.
Araten had no interest in sharing the fate of the other captives from Kiri Valley, now relegated to hard labor in Taten. Indeed, if one thought about it, he was acting in the best interests of the Agon by capturing the pretender pékyu and his barbarian bride—it was the only way to bring about peace, to give his people a chance to survive, albeit as slaves. (It was, of course, also a way for him and his followers to prove their loyalty to Cudyu and perhaps become full-fledged Lyucu, but he preferred to think of himself in a more selfless and heroic mode.)
Only half of the sun peeked above the mountains in the west now. He gestured for his warriors to ready the garinafins and strap themselves into battle positions. It was time to end this.
“After our victory today,” he whispered to his band, “maybe all of you will be promoted to naros-votan.”
“And we should all congratulate you on your imminent adoption into the Tasaricu clan!” one of his followers simpered.
“May it please the pékyu,” he said, smiling back.
Abruptly, two shadows swooped low overhead, heading westward. The gusts from beating wings made him wince and duck down.
“Garinafins! Garinafins away!” shouted his followers.
He looked up and cursed. Takval and Théra must have seen him and waited until this moment to seize the initiative.
Araten had to admire the princess and the pékyu for their boldness. They had most likely crept up on him all afternoon, intending to catch him by surprise. Instead of making a useless last stand in the valley, the rebels were hoping to prey on the would-be predator, breaking through the encirclement and finding refuge in the descending night.
“After them!”
His raiding party scrambled. Soon, four garinafins with full crews took off in hot pursuit of the two rebel garinafins. Many of Araten’s riders were Lyucu, placed under his command for the nonce. He was uncertain whether they would obey his orders diligently, considering that he was just a surrendered Agon, his loyalty in question. Fortunately, his own crew was mostly made up of other Agon who had surrendered to Cudyu alongside him. They shared his fate and would do whatever he demanded of them.
Although Alkir and Ga-al were heavily laden with people and goods, they seemed to speed through the air with unusual ease. Slowly, they pulled away from the pursuing garinafins. Considering that Ga-al was too old to even be considered a proper war mount, the feat was astonishing and confused Araten.
The sun had almost dipped below the horizon, and once darkness descended, there was a real possibility that the rebels could get away.
Terror gripped Araten’s heart. He had begged to be allowed to lead a band of garinafins in this final assault in the hope of seizing Takval and Théra personally and gaining more glory. But now that Takval had picked him as the soft spot in the encirclement, he would be held responsible if they escaped. The paranoid Cudyu might even believe Araten was like Toof and Radia….
No… NO!
He shouted into his bone trumpet, urging his mount to fly harder and faster. But the garinafin’s breathing was already labored.
Time for desperate measures.
He turned around and gave the prearranged signal to one of his riders.
The woman scrambled out of her harness, crawled over the netting until she was next to him. “Are you certain, votan?” she shouted into his ear.
He nodded vigorously.
The woman crawled past him and climbed out on the long, sinuous neck of the garinafin. The war beast, trained by the Lyucu to be absolutely obedient, did not react at this unusual maneuver. Once the woman was perched between the antlers, she used twisted sinew to bind herself securely in place. Then she took off a pouch from her back, and carefully poured the contents over the eyelids of the garinafin.
Araten turned around to make sure all his crew were secure in their harnesses. They were about to experience some flight turbulence.
The woman capped the pouch and held on.
The garinafin screamed. The skin over its eyelids bubbled and hissed, and a faint smoke rose from the wounded flesh. It whipped its head around in agony, wings flapping madly.
Concentrated gash cactus juice was occasionally used by the Lyucu as a weapon or torture device. When applied to the sensitive eyelids of the garinafins, it caused unbelievable pain. If given in combination with tolyusa, it could drive war mounts into sustained bouts of frenzy during which they ignored their injuries and exhaustion and performed physical feats far beyond their normal endurance. Of course, they often died after such induced mania, completely drained.
Wounding or killing a Lyucu war garinafin this way would surely draw Cudyu’s wrath; his only hope was to capture Takval and Théra to make up for it.
As Araten’s crew held on, their mount burst through the air, leaving the other pursuing garinafins far behind. Breath rasping, heart thundering, it flapped its wings with crazed strength, paying no heed to the damage it was doing to its delicate tissues.
Gradually, it gained on the two escaping Agon garinafins.
Straining against the buffeting wind, Araten’s crew launched slingshot missiles and spears against the fleeing riders huddled on their mounts, their skull helmets bowed. A fire breath attack was out of the question, as the goal was to capture the rebels alive. Several of the missiles struck true, and Araten’s crew cheered. The struck Agon riders flopped and convulsed, but did not otherwise react. Araten hoped the strikes weren’t fatal. He had given explicit orders to avoid the heads.
The Lyucu riders ducked as their garinafin swept past the enemy, ready for returning shots. But strangely, Takval and Théra’s crew didn’t fire back.
A feeling of dread grew in Araten’s heart. Something was very wrong. Based on what he knew of Takval’s personality, he had expected the pékyu to engage him with Alkir, thereby buying more time for Ga-al to escape with his wife and their followers. But the two garinafins weren’t even swerving to avoid the missiles and continued to fly side by side, making no attempt to separate or counterattack. Indeed, they took no evasive maneuvers at all, apparently intent on outrunning the pursuit by speed alone.
Tamping down his unease, he guided his frenzied mount to race ahead of the two fleeing garinafins, heading them off as the rest of the raiding party caught up. His slingshot scouts pelted the Agon riders with missiles as they overtook the fliers, hoping to disable as many as possible without killing any outright.
The barrage seemed to have an effect. The rebel garinafins turned sharply to avoid injury, but didn’t put up much of a fight. Corralled by Araten’s frenzied mount’s superior speed, the rebels were soon surrounded by the four Lyucu garinafins. After a few warning fire breaths from the Lyucu, the refugee mounts were forced to land.
As soon as his own garinafin landed, Araten scrambled down the webbing, dropping the rest of the way when he was below the garinafin’s shoulders. Paying no attention to the agonized groans of the wounded garinafin—its eyelids had been completely burned away by the acid, and it was unlikely to live through the night—he ran toward Ga-al, his war club raised and ready. Other riders climbed down and joined him, racing to seize the prisoners.
The three uninjured Lyucu garinafins growled threateningly, and the two captured garinafins moaned in terror. They cowered, adopting the submissive stance of garinafins whose riders had given up all resistance.
Araten whistled loudly.
His old mount turned to him and lowed in recognition.
Araten’s heart leapt with joy. Perhaps Takval had been unable to put up much resistance because Ga-al refused to obey him! Ga-al, though also brutally raised in the Lyucu manner, had been assigned to him for a few months, and maybe that was enough time for a bond to form.
He skidded to a stop next to the heaving masses of Ga-al and Alkir, his mouth agape as he saw the riders on the back of the two garinafins clearly for the first time in the darkening twilight.
All the riders drooped lifelessly in the webbing. Not a single skull helmet was moving.
Araten recovered and scrambled up Alkir’s webbing until he reached the pilot’s saddle. He grabbed the man by the shoulder and turned him around. After a moment of stunned silence, Araten cursed and laughed, though the noise betrayed no mirth, only a profound sadness and resignation.
Instead of a muscled shoulder, his fingers were wrapped around a crooked branch clad in animal skin; instead of Takval’s face, he was staring into the hollow sockets of a deer skull.
None of the riders on the garinafin were real. They were human-shaped frames made from lightweight branches and sticks, covered in furs and pelts. Empty animal skulls served as heads.
No wonder the fleeing garinafins had moved as though they carried no weight; no wonder the riders hadn’t reacted when shot; no wonder the war beasts hadn’t put up any fight.
He looked up and saw that Ga-al had curled his sinuous neck around to look at him. In those pupil-less eyes, Araten saw hints of emotions that should be beyond the ken of such a dumb beast: pity and mockery.
Araten laughed and laughed. As tears streamed down his face, he ignored his followers’ pleas for direction.
There was nothing else to do. His fate was sealed. The other Lyucu hunting parties would soon converge on this spot, and then he would have to face Cudyu’s judgment. Even if he were endowed with a hundred mouths and a thousand tongues, he would never be able to convince Cudyu that he hadn’t been in on Takval’s scheme, that he hadn’t helped the Agon pékyu escape through this devious trick. Despite his repeated betrayals and all the lives he had sacrificed for his own ambition and his family’s welfare, he was about to die as a loyal member of the Agon rebellion.
He laughed, though the hacks were indistinguishable from sobs. The gods sure liked to play jokes.
After a very long and circuitous journey, he was about to see his true character revealed in the merciless, cold gaze of Cudyu Roatan.
