Shadows in the Cave (17 page)

At dawn Shonan saw nothing but the rocky point above him and an infinite ocean. Yah-Su led the way up the point, and from the top Shonan got a look across the bay at the Brown Leaf village. Their hiding place was tucked behind rocks opposite and jutting into the sea. Did Yah-Su mean for them to make their move from the ocean side? Did he have a plan?

Yah-Su signed, “Let’s watch.”

Watch was what they did all day. They saw nothing out of the ordinary—men, women, kids, dogs, people doing the ordinary tasks of life, others crossing the village common to visit friends or relatives, adolescent boys playing the ball game. Assuming they had quit searching for Shonan, the men were
mostly out hunting deer. Dried meat, parched corn, chestnuts, acorns, and seeds would get them through the winter. A few old people wouldn’t be able to chew the meat well enough to get enough nourishment, and some of them would dwindle away. That was the way of the world.

Shonan intended never to reach such a point. He wanted to die
living
, to go out in a glorious fight, all juices pumping, and then receive a warrior’s honor, quick rebirth.

Maloch came out of his house three times, wandered around, and talked to a few people. Mostly, though, he stayed inside. The smoke flagging out of the hole showed that he had a good fire and probably a cozy home. Shonan got a kick out of that idea—a dragon comfortable by the fire. Since the old stories said he was male and female at once, maybe he was having sex with himself.

Yah-Su pointed out the tide several times during the day. When it came in, some of the sandy tidal flats were covered, and the bay was deeper. Though there was an outlet, it was like a saltwater pond fed by the river at low tide and the sea at high tide. Now, at high tide, the ocean came into the bay and up the river. The stream might be hard to cross. When the tide receded, the river turned into several braids of shallow water. One of the braids fed the bay, and bay water flowed out to sea.

Shonan wondered why Yah-Su was so keen about knowing the tides. Maybe he was afraid the river would cut off their retreat.

Right after the sun came down, when the tide was all the way out, Yah-Su got very excited. He started pointing and kept signing, “Watch.” Maloch came out of his house, strode to the bay, took off his clothes, and bathed in the bay. Not only bathed but lolled, splashed, and played. Unarmed.

Shonan signed, “Every day at sunset?”

Yah-Su nodded yes.

“How long does it take him to change from a man to a dragon?”

Yah-Su signed, “Underneath he is a dragon.”

“Beneath his human skin?”

A nod yes.

Shonan considered. He considered longer. Then he said, “We’ve got the bastard.”

They watched another entire day. Shonan wanted to see everything again, soak it all up, make sure of his plan. He liked it. It was bold and decisive. Best of all, it wasn’t to be executed by the mixed bag of a war party but just two good fighters.

That night, before the moon came up, they walked upstream, found a place to tie Tagu by the river, and left him enough meat. Then they roamed the coastline in the dark looking for flotsam. Shonan wanted a hunter’s blind. Finally they found a thick log as long as two men. One on each end, since the tide was against them, they slogged their way toward the bay on foot. Before long Yah-Su snatched the log, slung it onto his shoulder, and stalked forward bearing the entire weight. They slid it into the bay well away from the outlet and crept back to their hiding place. The next tide would wipe out all tracks.

From first light on they watched the village as fish-hunting birds watch the sea. All the normal things happened, including a catch-as-catch-can ball game without the full number of players. Shonan thought it was odd that the Brown Leaves played the same game as his people, a ball thrown with long-handled rackets, very rough, a way of preparing boys for the violence of war. Though he observed scrupulously, nothing happened to change Shonan’s plan.

At midafternoon, they walked upstream behind their ridge of land. Shonan carried the one spear thrower he was familiar with, Yah-Su carried two. Shonan was confident that his single dart would do the job.

At the spot he’d picked out, they eased up to the top of the ridge and watched. Normal village activity. When the two were sure they wouldn’t be seen, they slipped down the hillside and into the river.

Yah-Su signed, “Success or failure, we stick together afterwards.”

Shonan answered, “And go to the Amaso village.”

Yah-Su pursed his mouth and gave a reluctant yes.

They floated downstream. This was the dicey part. Mostly the riverbank hid them from the village, but not always. They stayed in the water up to their eyes and floated their weapons like sticks. Where the bank got low, they turned onto their backs and floated downstream with only their noses above water. They slipped into some river cane and squatted in the dense foliage, heads above water, to get a break from floating. Shonan fingered the cane, remembering that he needed to make weapons when he got home—knives, a couple of war clubs, a couple of spears, a couple of spear throwers, even a blow gun. The damn Brown Leaves had taken all his weapons except the little blade that saved his life, the knife in the cleft of his bottom.

They floated.

The river braided, and they eased into the left-hand fork, toward the bay. This braid was closest to the village, but it was also the deepest and brought them to their prey.

Shonan motioned toward the left bank. When they beached, he signed that he was going to take a look at the town. He crawled up a short gully in the bank, raised his head behind some weeds, and peered toward the village. Everything
as usual, even another ball game. Some villagers were watching the boys play, which was good—it held their attention.

He crawled back down the gully and nodded at Yah-Su. They slipped into the water and floated on. Shonan thought,
I’ve never gotten a ride to a killing before.

Around the bend a young man stood waist-deep in the water cutting cane.

Damn!

Shonan kicked his legs silently and eased to the far side of the narrow stream. Maybe the young fellow wouldn’t look up. If he did, maybe he wouldn’t see them.

Shonan saw that Yah-Su was swimming quietly closer to the Brown Leaf. The Red Chief yearned to scream, but noise was exactly what they didn’t need.

The young cutter got a piece he wanted and raised up. He put one end on the river bottom to measure it. Just right, his own height. He put it to his mouth to blow through it. Then, terribly, he swung the cane upriver, as though to shoot at something there.

Two steps away the cutter saw the face of a beast in the water. He screamed.

The beast rose up hugely—now the young man’s lungs froze—and plunged a knife deep into his chest.

Shonan swam like the devil for the village side of the river. He scrambled up and looked.

No one was disturbed or excited. The ball game was in full swing, and some spectators were cheering. As Shonan watched, one team scored a goal. The players tucked their rackets under their arms and talked idly with each other.

We got away with it.

Shonan looked back toward Yah-Su. The buffalo man had heaved the cutter’s body onto the bank. Unless someone
found it this afternoon—unlikely—the high tide would probably take it to sea tonight.

Yah-Su himself was already back in position, floating downstream. Shonan followed suit.

When they came into the bay, at first they couldn’t find the log. Then they saw it, beached on the sand, probably by tidal action. They swam to it—nothing to do except take the risk—and pulled it into the bay.

Communicating by nods, they decided to swim the log very slowly, so that an observer wouldn’t realize it was moving, to some reeds on the village side of the bay. This was close to where Maloch customarily undressed and came into the water. The tide was sucking water out to sea, so the movement of the log from the reeds toward the middle would look natural. This was the way Shonan planned it. Silently, he thanked his comrade for showing him how the tides worked.

Nothing to do but wait.

Some fighters hated this part. Shonan loved it. He taught his young men—would have taught Aku if the boy had let him—how to be patient. Patience was one of the warrior’s critical skills. To be still, to be quiet, to observe. To watch all day if necessary, in a relaxed but alert way. If you were still enough in mind and body, the creatures of the forest ceased to notice you. The birds started singing again, the rabbits foraged, the deer browsed, everything went back to normal.

Then, when your enemy came, he would have no warning, no signs.

The quality yoked to patience was readiness. Shonan crouched in the reeds, head behind the log, ready.

The bay fell into shadow, and deeper shadow. The light faded to almost nothing. Just as Shonan was deciding the bastard had decided to skip his daily bath, Maloch came over the dune. He took off his clothes—
That disguise of human
skin is stupid!
—and clomped into the water. Shonan noticed what he had forgotten, how huge the dragon’s hind legs were—how huge the man-monster was.

Fear trilled up and down him. He looked sideways at Yah-Su. He was sure the buffalo man knew as well as he did that when you’re scared, use that feeling to propel yourself.

A quick glance and the two killers began to push the log toward the monster, at the speed a nearby leaf was floating toward the sea.

Wait for twenty paces. All I have to do is get the spear thrower ready, stand up, and I will kill you.

Maloch first dipped himself several times. In this shallow water, at ebb tide, he had to lie down to get all of his body into the water at the same time. Once he lay underwater for several seconds, then raised up and shook himself like a dog. He was like a dog playing in the water. A monster dog.

Down to forty paces.

Maloch began to cavort. He splashed water on himself with his hands. He kicked the water in every direction, yelling on every kick.

Down to thirty paces. Poor light. Breath hard to get.

Suddenly Maloch did a stroke like a dolphin, or maybe a serpent monster, straight toward them.

Twenty paces.

Both men got their weapons ready.

Ten paces. Is he charging us?

No, the angle was off to the side.

Still ten, still about ten.

Suddenly, Maloch turned and his chest faced straight toward Shonan.
Better than anything I hoped for.

Shonan hurled his dart with all his strength, straight into the chest.

It hung there for an instant and dropped into the water. The human skin ripped, and green scale showed underneath.

Maloch roared, and his face began to change. Immediately, a diamond shone on his forehead, but in the twilight it didn’t reflect enough light to blind anyone.

Yah-Su threw his dart like storm winds fling a heavy branch of a tree. It rammed its way between the monster’s teeth and into the roof of its mouth—a sure death shot.

Maloch bit the dart and broke it like a toothpick. He launched himself through the air at Yah-Su.

Yah-Su dived to the side.

Shonan jumped onto the serpent monster’s neck, drew his knife, and stabbed furiously, over and over, at the beast’s heart.

Maloch roared at every blow. He tried to reach for Shonan, but his little arms wouldn’t reach far enough backward.

Maloch writhed and shook violently. Shonan flew back a dozen paces and splashed into the water on his butt.

Yah-Su gripped his second dart and hurled it as far down Maloch’s gullet as he could. Then he yelled, “Run!”

They waded, splashed, and ran. At the far end of the bay, where the river entered, Shonan looked back. The serpent monster was walking back toward the village, pulling at the dart with his puny arms, unable to jerk it out of his throat.

They hadn’t killed it. Shonan wasn’t even sure they’d hurt it.

The owl man Aku flew for four straight nights—across tidal plains, through the hilly piedmont, and toward the distant Galayi Range. No human being could have kept up. He followed the big river upstream, and up, and up, all the way to the base of the Galayi Mountains, which his people believed to be the center of Turtle Island.

He flew over Equani and over his home village, Tusca. Three generations ago his hero-ancestor Zeya, the Hungry One, had defeated a Tusca army of overwhelming numbers here, using his marvelous power as a shape-shifter. Then he restored the village of his enemies, a humanitarian act that made his memory live forever.

And there Aku was born and raised. His lifelong friends and members of his family still lived in the huts below. Part of him wanted to drift onto a branch, change into the form everyone knew him by, and walk into the town. He would eat a good breakfast, catch up on the news, hug his women relatives, and slap the shoulders of his uncles, cousins, and the comrades of his youth.