Entangled (64 page)

While Ria listened to the three women’s story, with cold fury building in her heart, part of her mind had been weighing up options.

Until this moment her only thought had been to lead her patchwork ‘tribe’ of fifteen hundred refugees north-west, making a beeline for Secret Place. If the spirits were with them they would avoid Illimani scouts and war bands and she would bring them all to safety before the night was out. Even if they did encounter the foe, she had enough braves to deal with any but the largest force.

But a dizzying alternative had presented itself to her as she learnt of the horrifying aftermath of the attack on the Naveen camp, which lay nearly as far to the south-east of their present position as Secret Place lay to the north-west.

It was obvious from the women’s report that Martu and Sakkan’s five hundred weren’t going anywhere tonight. They were so sure of their own power that they’d settled down to drink themselves into a stupor and enjoy an afternoon of torture, murder and rape. They would sleep it off in the ruins of the camp they’d destroyed, amidst the stiffening corpses of the people they’d murdered, and take their captive children down-country to Sulpa tomorrow.

Except, Ria had suddenly known, she wasn’t going to allow that to happen and she had made her promise to the women. She did intend to get their kids back for them, if she could, and she wanted to give them hope. But she took the decision for other reasons.

Unless they were stopped, Martu and Sakkan were going to continue their rampage, annihilating other tribes and dragging even more children away for sacrifice. So running straight to Secret Place would simply condemn thousands more innocents to death. Sooner or later, Ria knew, she was going to have to fight the Illimani twins. It made sense to fight them now, on her terms, with the advantage of surprise.

And there was another larger issue in her mind.

Sulpa had used his forces to seize lands where there had been joy and abundance and transform them into charnel houses. Nobody had stood up to him as he destroyed their lives and ate their souls. And as misery, death and emptiness multiplied, his triumph grew. Although his ultimate target was the Uglies, whom the Illimani called the Light in the West, she knew from Driff that his former master gained power from every life he took and would keep on killing until all the people of these valleys were dead.

So far everything had been going his way.

But that was about to stop.

Martu was the demon’s favoured commander, Driff had said, perhaps soon to be given command of the whole Illimani army. And right now Martu, Sakkan and their five hundred were just half a day’s march distant.

Ria decided to kill them all.

It wasn’t easy to explain the new plan to her companions.

Driff, as she had expected, was all for it. So, with some reservations, was Sebittu. But Ligar and Bont were both concerned the battle could not be won.

Ligar had walked up and down the column, making an accurate count, and they now knew that their whole fighting force amounted to three hundred and sixty-three braves, of whom two hundred and fourteen were archers and just a hundred and forty-nine were real hand-to-hand men. So it wasn’t only that the Illimani five hundred outnumbered their total force but also that they outnumbered them by more than three to one in the front line. ‘That’s going to make a huge difference when they close with us and our arrows are useless,’ said Ligar. ‘I don’t see how we can beat them and it makes no sense to pick a fight we know we’re going to lose.’

‘We’re not going to lose,’ Ria huffed with exasperation. ‘We’re going to win. Yes, we have two hundred archers – over half of our fighters – but that doesn’t mean they can’t handle themselves in close combat. They’ve got knives, spears, clubs. They’ll know what to do if things get close up. And think of it, Ligar. Two hundred bowmen with, what, twenty arrows each? That’s four thousand arrows. There’s just five hundred Illimani and they don’t have any bows at all. If we can get your men into the right position they shouldn’t even have to do any close-up work.’

‘The Illimani don’t use bows because they don’t need them,’ Bont growled. ‘With those throwers their spears fly further than arrows. They’ll skewer the lot of us before our archers even get into range.’

Ria was trying hard not to get angry: ‘Obviously I’ve thought of that,’ she said. ‘We’ve got Moiraig, Aranchi and Noro to guide us. There’s no reason why we shouldn’t march on the Naveen camp tonight and have our archers in place before dawn. The Illimani have been drinking – they’re not expecting any attack. With a bit of luck we’ll slaughter them in their sleep.’

‘I still don’t like the numbers,’ muttered Ligar. ‘Five hundred against three hundred and sixty. It doesn’t add up.’

‘Your numbers are wrong …’

‘Well OK, five hundred against three hundred and sixty-
three
– what difference does that make?

‘You’re not understanding me. That’s the number of
men
we have but we also have close to two hundred armed Merell women we can bring to the battle. They’ll fight like wildcats.’

The arguments, partly in thought-talk, partly in out-loud speech, went back and forth until the sun was low in the sky. The Uglies had so far expressed no opinion, but at last Ria insisted.

‘It’s obvious what we have to do,’ pulsed Grondin. ‘The spirits put Martu and Sakkan into our hands for a reason. Maybe we aren’t ever going to get a chance as good as this again.’

By sunset Ligar and Bont had been won over, but a final problem still had to be solved. What was to be done with the non-combatants in the column? There were close to a thousand of them – men, women and children – and they were slow-moving, noisy and hard to hide.

To send them back to Secret Place without an escort, guided perhaps by Jergat and Oplimar, would expose them to terrible risks. But an escort big enough to ward off all potential attackers in a land riddled with unknown numbers of Illimani war bands would fatally diminish Ria’s force. Since she would need every man to beat Martu and Sakkan, it looked like nobody would be going back to Secret Place right now.

As darkness fell around them Ria asked her companions to marshal the column and she led the way towards the south-east and the Illimani.

Her people trusted her but what she was about to attempt could cost all of them their lives.

Leoni spun out of the tunnel of light that had swept her from the Amazon jungle and was back in Ria’s time, out of body in her transparent aerial form, flying very fast about fifty feet above the ground.

It was night. There was a big moon in the sky. And down below her, walking by its light, a huge column of people clad in simple plaids and skins were hiking into rough country. They were all ages, young and old, men and women, and hundreds of children. Many of the men were armed with crude weapons – spears and arrows tipped with flint, axes, knives, wooden clubs. Amongst the rearguard Leoni recognised three big Neanderthals who she’d seen with Ria before. And right at the front was Ria herself.

What had happened in the time they’d been apart to put her at the head of such a vast enterprise? Leoni was about to swoop down and try to speak to her when she noticed a flutter of movement just above the other girl.

She edged closer.

There it was again – very strange – as though a small piece of the night had rippled.

Closer still.

Another flutter.

Then the picture became clear. Flying a few inches above Ria’s tousled head, as invisible to the physical eye as Leoni herself – and hard to detect even with her enhanced out-of-body senses – was one of Sulpa’s monstrous little winged creatures.

Leoni glided up behind it, pinched its neck between her forefinger and thumb and plucked it, struggling, out of the air. It was about the size of a large bat and its repulsive gargoyle body, though transparent like her own, was scaly, hard and muscular to the touch. Its hind legs squirmed as it tried to rake her with its clawed feet and it beat at her hand with its leathery wings. Its blood-coloured eyes swivelled towards
her and it bared its needle-sharp teeth but she tightened her grip, grasped its head with her free hand and decapitated it with a vicious twist.

The creature dissolved into smoke, losing substance faster than a punctured balloon, and disappeared.

Gotcha!

But Leoni’s moment of elation didn’t last.

Some instinct made her look up.

There was a second creature about ten feet above, peering down at her. She caught the baleful red glint of its eyes as it shot away and she went right after it. But it was fast and agile and very hard to see against the background of the night.

With desperate sideways glances Leoni sought a landmark she could remember – there, a big old oak tree split by lightning – then put all else from her mind as she fought to keep the creature in sight. They wove through forests, across a lake, over hills and into valleys, sometimes hugging the contours of the ground, sometimes soaring up to the heights, as miles of country sped by beneath them.

They were never separated by much more or less than thirty feet and, try as she might, Leoni couldn’t close the gap. Whenever she put on an extra burst of speed Sulpa’s little gargoyle would sense it, peer over its shoulder, its eyes glinting red, and increase its own speed by the same amount.

Leoni wasn’t sure how far they travelled like this – she guessed a hundred miles – or how she would find her way back to Ria amongst these savage hills and glens. Then she began to see armed men below her. At first there weren’t too many of them, just little groups of three or five, all naked. But as she followed the creature out of the mouth of a valley and into the wide moonlit plain that lay beyond she found herself gazing down at a gigantic assembly of thousands of Illimani warriors, all armed to the teeth and standing in disciplined ranks as though awaiting an order to march.

The creature slowed to a stop and seemed to taunt her – perhaps it was feeling confident now that it was so near to its master – and Leoni struck at once, flinging herself at it in a last explosive effort.

WHACK! For a second she had it by the edge of one flapping wing, but it writhed away and sped off.

She went after it again – it was slower now she’d harmed it – and
they were thirty feet in the air, streaking towards the front ranks of the army less than five hundred feet away, when she saw Sulpa. The moon was bright, but he had been concealed in shadow amongst his men. Now his beautiful body, his long flowing hair and his malice were all unmistakable as he took three graceful steps forward and stared right at her.

Leaving the little creature to alight on his shoulder and whisper in his ear, Leoni whirled in the air and shot away.

But it was too late. A dark cloud, boiling and agitated, surged out of Sulpa, out of his skin, out of his eyes, out of his mouth, and Leoni looked back to see it consisted of hundreds of his creatures, bat wings flapping, red eyes gleaming like laser spots in the dark.

He thrust his hands forward, fingers extended, and the cloud surged skywards and began to flow towards her.

Leoni paid attention to her direction of flight – back the way she had come, back to find that lightning-struck oak where she’d last seen Ria.

But her first concern was speed and escape.

Until now she’d only encountered Sulpa’s little monsters in ones and twos. Though foul, they were quite small and easy to kill – if you could catch them.

But being pursued by a whole pack of them was quite another matter.

They were as non-physical as she was; yet if she could bash their smoky brains out and tear off their heads then what would they be able to do to
her
when they overtook her and swarmed her aerial body?

This wasn’t the land where everything is known, nor Don Apolinar’s dungeon, where consciousness was clothed in alternate physical forms. If the body you inhabited in such realms was destroyed, the Blue Angel had said, your soul was carried off to another domain. She had called it ‘the Between’. You could get lost there for eternity. Or with skill you could find your way out and back to your body on Earth.

Was it the same deal if your aerial body was destroyed? Was it simply another form in which your soul was expressed – in some sense disposable like the avatars in the land where everything is known?