Them Bones

Leake XVI

I jerked awake and nearly fell out of the tree. The sun was up.

The baying of the dogs was what woke us up. Took pointed east toward the rising sun. ‘Let’s go. Be careful. They’re ahead of us.’

We shimmied down the tree, the dogs getting louder to the left. We moved right and toward the sun.

As we made the next trees, I saw a line of Huastecas off to the north, moving slowly.

I still had a magazine, plus a few rounds in the carbine, and the loose ones. The damn woodpecker suit was a nuisance. My muscles were cramped. The dew was still on the grass as we pushed through. The costume was soaked. But I’d told Sun Man I’d bring it back.

My breath was already rasping in my throat, and the arrow wound from the day before was stiff and burning.

They hadn’t been after us, just making long sweeps through the ground they’d already covered, looking for strays. We knew that before we’d gone two kilometers. We slowed, became a little more cautious. Took stopped, dug around on the ground, came up with some peanut-looking things from under a dead bull nettle. They tasted like wood pulp but I ate them anyway.

We found a deep pine wood, dark and dry, and pumped through that. The sun was a slanting whiteness through the trunks. We followed it even though it ran to the south. But they would have to be in here with us to see us.

Then we hit a bayou full of cypress knees and rotten trees, crossing it as quietly as we could with muck up to our knees. I don’t want to think about the smell coming up from the water and black mud. It wore us all out. We crawled out onto the first dry land we came to, panting. I was lost.

‘We’re doing fine,’ said Took-His-Time, panting. ‘We go east until we find the River, then north or south to home. They won’t follow us closer than a day’s march out.’

‘They attacked the whole damn village four days ago,’ I reminded him.

‘That’s because they’re sneaky bastards. We’ve got plenty of warning this time. Sun Man’s madder than hell, probably got everybody east of the Mes-A-Sepa over on this side waiting for them to try it again.’ He started to sit up, then thought better of it. ‘It’s the next few hours we have to worry about.’

‘Great. It’s the next few hours I want to lie here,’ I said.

From far off came the barking of dogs.

We were up and running.

Nearly dusk. Anybody closer than a kilometer could here us breathing. Like freight train sounds. We’d seen one bunch of Huastecas going back the other way, either off shift on the chase, or with prisoners, or accompanying some noble. I didn’t have enough shots for all of them, so we kept going.

There were probably a couple of thousand of them between us and home.

As soon as it got dark, we stopped up another tree. It was by itself but was the only tree big enough to hold us both. The limbs weren’t wide. I didn’t like it. ‘I’ll listen first,’ said Took. ‘I’ll wake you up after a while.’

I closed my eyes. Next thing I knew, Took was shaking me. ‘Your turn,’ he said, and went to sleep.

I waited. I listened. I watched, although I couldn’t even see the tree we were in. The wind was cool. I shivered. It seemed like an eternity up there. I had no idea how much time passed. I tried counting, got up in the high thousands, forgot it. As soon as I started nodding, I woke Took up again.

‘I’m half asleep,’ I said. It sounded like he was rubbing his eyes. I lay back as well as I could on the limb.

I jerked awake at the same instant Took grabbed my arm.

The dogs were coming.

We ran into trees. I fell down. The dogs were louder, closer. The sun was coming up. We headed for more cypress swamps, ran through them. I grabbed a limb at the water’s edge once. It moved. I didn’t even look back as the snake fell into the water behind us.

Now we heard yelling to both sides, and a horn blowing. They were closing in on us.

Dry land, more water, then land again. We ran toward the dawn, pushed more to the north by the sound of the hunt.

‘They’re … trying … to … make us circle,’ said Took. ‘This way.’ He headed toward the sounds to the southeast. ‘I’d … rather meet men … than dogs.’

I didn’t want to meet either.

We came up onto a treed knoll, and we met both.

The Huastecas came up from behind bushes, throwing spears with their atl-atls and siccing the dogs on us. The spears were supposed to stop us so the dogs could bite out our assholes.

There were twenty dogs, all sizes, shapes, from ones that looked like Dobermans crossed with giant rats down to Chihuahuas. All I saw were eyes and teeth.

I started shooting, and Took and I slammed our backs against the nearest big tree. I was on my last full magazine. Took had the spear in front of him; he got a big dog in the chest with it. I shot one or two. They came in under my fire and something clamped onto my leg. I smashed at it with the butt of the carbine. It squealed and let go.

Arrows and spears grew out of the tree behind us. I shot the two biggest dogs. Then the magazine was empty.

The Huastecas jumped up and ran for us, spears out, calling off the dogs.

I pulled the pin out of a grenade, pushed Took down and threw it at the nearest Huasteca. I saw him smile and catch it as I hit the ground.

He was turned to a fine red mist by the explosion that tore up everything in the grove.

I slammed my last magazine with six rounds in it home, and stood.

One guy was still standing, holding what was left of his stomach with what was left of his hands, eyes blank. Dead Huastecas and dogs lay everywhere. Some wounded of both kinds twitched.

Dogs were barking, getting closer, from another direction.

‘Let’s go,’ I said. I looked at Took.

He looked back at me. Half a meter of spear shaft, broken by the explosion, stuck out from his chest just below the clavicle.

‘Oh, shit!’ I eased him up, rolled him. The spear didn’t go all the way through. There was no foam on the blood yet: not a sucking chest wound. I pulled the spear shaft out slowly, twisting just a little as it grated on bone. I jerked open my first aid packet from the web beneath the costume, slapped on antiseptic and stuffed the wound bandage into the edges of the hole.

‘Hold that,’ I said. He raised his hand and pressed on the dressing. His eyes were coming back to normal.

The dogs were louder.

‘Those guys,’ said Took, ‘must have had a canoe.’ Then he lapsed back into silence.

I jumped up, ran past the carnage. The Huasteca who was still standing walked out of the clearing, paying no attention to me or his wounds. He kept going.

Over where the next water started were three dugouts. I ran back to Took and helped him up. We made it to the canoe as the first of the dogs came past the dead men.

I was pushing out. Something hot and sharp stabbed into my calf. I screamed. Tiny growling sounds came up from my legs.

I grabbed my carbine, turning.

One of the Chihuahuas had me. Its teeth were like needles. I tried to kick it away. Bigger dogs were coming. The thing was back, clamped on again. It wouldn’t let go.

I used shot number one on the Chihuahua.

Number two on one of the big dogs.

Number three on a medium-sized one that bit the stern of the canoe and tried to drag it back to shore while I paddled.

Took was paddling with one hand, using the other to hold the bloody bandage.

We put out and made it a hundred meters into the bayou, dogs swimming in long V-wakes after us.

I used shot number four on the first Huasteca who got to the canoes. He fell dead. The rest of them stayed back in the brush until we got out of sight.

Otherwise it was a beautiful spring morning.

We were put up in an alligator run with the bushes closed behind us. It was past noon. I’d used the other dressing on Took’s shoulder an hour ago. It was already soaked through. He lay in the bow of the dugout.

Occasionally we heard canoes go by, the paddles dipping in unison.

‘I hate to tell you this,’ said Took, ‘but I don’t think this bayou leads to the River. I was here once when I was a kid, before the traders, even. Unless you can carry this dugout on your shoulders, we’re going to have to leave it a few hours’ march from here.’

‘At least we can use it that far,’ I said.

Took looked at me a long time. ‘What’s keeping you going?’ he asked.

‘Well, I don’t have a spear hole in my chest, for one thing. Your outlook will improve once you get a few days’ rest and some food in you,’ I said, with a cheerfulness I didn’t feel.

‘They’re going to get us,’ he said. ‘I have the feeling.’

‘Well, maybe. I’ve still got two grenades and two shots.’

‘One for you, one for me?’ he asked.

‘I won’t like it any more than you will,’ I said.

‘It’ll be better than the slab.’

‘I meant to ask you about that.’ A bird squawked and flew away. We waited. Nothing happened.

‘Your people seemed ready enough to die in the plaza. As soon as you saw me, you got your spunk back.’

‘When you’re heading for the slab, in the chief city of your enemies, you might as well go as befits a man or a woman. When your god comes to rescue you, you fight.’

‘But it was just me in the woodpecker outfit, you knew that.’

‘I knew that, and you knew that, said Took. ‘But the Woodpecker God also knew that.’

‘And he approved?’

‘I don’t know whether he did or not, but he let you do it,’ said Took. Then he grimaced in pain.

‘As soon as we get past the Huastecas, I’ll give you something for the pain. It’ll make you feel like you’re flying. But if I give it to you now, you’ll be unconscious for a day. I can carry you when we’re past them, but not while they’re around.’

‘We’ll put out at nightfall,’ said Took-His-Time. ‘Go north, then east. When we get to the magnolias, we have to leave the canoe and go overland again. We should pass the last Meshicas before midnight.’

He lay back in the boat, nodding, jerking awake, sleeping fitfully. The sun crawled like a bright slug across the sky.

Feet pounded by on the bank once. The alligator came back, smelled us, and crashed back out of his run.

The sun dropped, then it was night.

We pushed the canoe back out into the water and set off through the magnolia-scented night.

‘Home is that way,’ said Took, pointing. I couldn’t see where he meant. ‘We’ll join the path we followed to go to the Flower War last month, remember?’

‘How far?’

‘All night. Then home.’

I turned and hugged him, careful of his shoulder. We were using rags ripped from my shirt to stop the bleeding now.

‘We’re going to make it,’ I said. ‘I can feel it.’

‘The night is long, Yaz,’ he said.

Right on cue an arrow whizzed by, then the darkness was full of Huastec whoops and hollers.

There were five or six of them and I got them with my last fragmentation grenade. I didn’t kill them all, just put them out of commission. That woke up everybody, though. The night filled with sounds after the echo of the explosion died.

‘Which way are we going?’ I asked Took. I’d pushed him down into the boat, and his shoulder was bleeding again.

‘That way.’ He pointed. The wind was blowing about thirty degrees off that direction from our backs, gusting.

‘They’ll be between us and home, won’t they?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then let’s give them something to worry about besides us. Stay down.’

I took out my last grenade, a Wooly Pete. I waded to shore, walked a few meters into the open space ahead. I went to a position about twenty meters from where the grass and underbrush were thickest. I pulled the pin and threw the white phosphorus grenade that way, ran ten meters and jumped behind a tree.

WP grenades are so heavy you can only throw them twenty meters but they have a splash radius of thirty.

A firestorm bloomed on the night. I saw the bones of my hand through the skin, it was so bright. I hoped Huastecas for kilometers around had been looking right at it; they’d be blind till morning.

The fire climbed up trees, over grass, along the ground in a great red-orange and white wall. In no time it was a hundred meters wide and growing, pushed by the churning wind.

‘Don’t mess with the Woodpecker God,’ I said to myself.

‘Wow!’ said Took, who was up and watching from the canoe. The curtain of flames marched off toward the east, crowning trees, lapping at their trunks.

‘Let’s go home,’ I said.

We found the trail at the same time the Huastecas found us.

They were to our left, the fire was to the right in a blazing arc a couple of kilometers long. The air was filled with escaping birds. The woods glinted with animal eyes, stopping and bounding away.

The Huastecas yelled. We saw them by the light of the flames. They saw us the same way. There were a dozen of them half a kilometer away.

‘Can you breathe smoke?’ I asked Took-His-Time.

‘Maybe.’

We ran for the fire, met deer coming out the other way. Before we even got close, smoke and hot air seared our lungs. An arrow flew by, its feathers bursting into flames as it ricocheted from a burning limb.

‘They won’t follow us in here,’ I said.

Took slowed, jumped some embers, slipped, fell into a smoking bush. The air was filled with cinders; burning leaves coaled into my cheeks as I bent over him.

Now there was froth on the blood from his wound. I took out the morphine injector, put it into his arm, and punched.

He went to sleep.

I pushed a few more strips of cloth into the wound, picked him up and put him over my shoulders in a fireman’s carry. I walked with my burden through the ragged towers of flame that closed us in on every side.

Trees groaned and fell, spouting sparks, throwing fiery branches onto others. A smoking owl flew by. A raccoon ran into a hedge of fire. Smoke curled up from underfoot.

The world was orange, red, smoky. Feathers on the woodpecker costume began to singe and curl. I stepped on something live; I think it bit me. I staggered into cul-de-sacs of heat and fire, and back out again.

I walked until the bottom of the costume floated up around my waist.

I was surprised to find myself in water.

I carried Took for a long, long time. I was numb now, my lungs were burned, my legs had lost all feeling. I couldn’t feel anything under them either. I slogged on through the water.

All the animals were there. Every bit of high ground was filled with eyes reflecting the fires, from the ground up to the tops of small trees.

Snakes and alligators swam by in the red-gold glare, bumping into my legs, backing off and going around. Something huge blotted out the light from the fire on one side, then was gone before I could see what it was.

The deeper I went into the swamp, the stranger it became. The glow was from both sides now. The fire had ringed or crossed the bayou somehow. Mist sprang up. I could no longer see the water, just a moving curtain two meters high in front of me. Overhead, the stars were obscured by roiling patches of smoke.

It got cold in spite of the fire. My teeth began to chatter. I was so tired I was trying to nod off as I walked. Things flitted in and out of my vision. I would jerk fully awake and they would be gone.

There was a third smudge of light ahead; when the mists cleared for a few seconds I could see a blood-red moon with a bite out of it hanging in the east, like a half-closed rabbit’s eye.

I was carrying Took now between cypress knees and stumps, thick and close-growing. The mists closed in again. I knew I was okay as I walked toward the glow that was the moonrise.

I entered shallower water. Took was an iron weight across my back. I moved him, shifting him only a few centimeters. I was too tired to put him down and try again.

‘Isn’t he heavy?’ asked a voice, long and low and booming through the mists.

‘He’s not heavy,’ I said, ‘he’s my brother.’

The moon was gone. There was a shadow before me on the water, black and long.

I looked up. A gigantic cypress tree stood before me. It had a limb halfway up that grew straight out from the trunk.

I looked down again, quick as I could. There was something on the limb, something half as big as the tree, something that blotted out the moonlight and threw the shadow over me and half the clearing.

‘Who are you to wear the raiment of a god?’ asked the voice. ‘You do not believe!’

My mouth wouldn’t work.

‘WHO ARE YOU?’ it asked again. The long crested shadow before me turned, as if its great eye were scrutinizing me.

‘I believe now,’ I said. ‘I believe in this!’

‘You have burned my woods!’ it said, its voice edging upward. ‘The lightning can burn my woods. Whole nations of men can burn my woods. One man cannot burn my forests!’

The shadow moved menacingly. I jumped backwards. Took whimpered.

‘No more,’ I said. ‘Never again.’

The shadow moved left and right as if surveying the damage all around.

‘I didn’t mean to burn your forests,’ I said. ‘I’m bringing Took-His-Time home. I’m bringing the raiment back to the temple. I’ll never touch it again as long as I live.’

‘Easy for you to say,’ said the dooming voice. It was quiet a moment.

‘Tell them all,’ it began, and its voice had changed, ‘tell them all a great judgment has come on them, and that I can’t help them any more.

‘All the gods are going tonight. We will not be back. Tell them they are on their own, tell them …’ And here the voice changed again, became a little less godlike, ‘tell them Hamboon Bokulla was right, he and the others. Tell them Death is God now; he is alive, he is walking. Tell them, Yazoo, that I wish them well.’

The great shadow lifted from the water. The moon came back. The sound of flapping wings, huge, close, grew lower, farther away to the west, was gone.

I heard its cry from far off, once, twice, sounding like ‘Good god, good god.’

‘Good God!’ I yelled. ‘Good God!’

The sun was coming up. The fire was dying all around. I pulled Took from my left shoulder to change him to the other.

He was dead.