The Kin (52 page)

Fat Pig came. Siku was on his back. They were tired. Black Antelope came with them. They did not see him
.

Fat Pig spoke to Siku. Farj could not hear him. Siku said, “I am Siku. This is my First One. His powers are gone. Only I hear his words. We bring news. Soon the Kins go to Mambaga. They hunt the whitetail buck. You go by Beehive Waterhole. The men of my Kin sharpened their digging sticks. They set out. Now they lie in wait at the waterhole. Say to your Kin, Do not go there.”

Farj said, “This is not good. The men have rage in their hearts. They say, Ah, ah! Men of Fat Pig lie in wait for us. We go. We creep up on them from behind, softly, softly. We kill many.”

Siku said, “Do you tell the women?”

Farj said, “Some are foolish. They speak to their men. Now, wait. I think.”

He thought. He said, “We do thus and thus.”

Black Antelope heard the words of Farj. He said in his heart, This is good. Now I speak to the zebra. The men do not catch any
.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Three nights till big moon.

The attack could come on any of them, or on several more nights after. Any of those would be light enough.

What if there were demon men, already spying on the Kin's doings from further along the ridge? This is what they would have seen. All day, the bare hillside, and the occasional puff of smoke from the island, streaming away in the wind. Then, as the sun went down, two or three people coming cautiously out of the reedbed and anxiously scanning the hill for signs of danger. Apparently satisfied, they would turn and gesture, and other people—ten and ten and several more of them—would come out of the reeds, climb confidently up the hill and settle down for the night with a couple of sentries on watch.

Soon the moon would be up and the short dusk over. Now the whole western flank would be in deep shadow. So the watchers wouldn't see most of those people rise from their places and move down the hill and sideways to a different place—a place screened from the north by a fold in the ground—and settle down again there.

But two people didn't go with them. One stayed at the old sleeping place, while the second—smaller than most of the others—climbed to the ridge and vanished.

This last person could only be Ko or Shuja or Mana. Everyone else but Tinu was too large to hide under the boulder. Tinu couldn't do it because she was unable to call the signal. The three chose pebbles from Suth's closed fist to decide their order. Shuja watched the first night and saw nothing. Ko watched the second, and it was the same. So Mana watched on the night of big moon.

She came out of the reeds with the others, climbed the hill, and pretended to settle down. When Tun whispered the word, all but two moved off to their real sleeping place. Yova stayed where she was—at midnight Zara would climb the hill and take over, so that Yova could get some sleep. But Mana had to stay awake all night.

Bent low, she climbed the hill and into the moonlight. By now she knew the best route, crawling over the ridge itself along a shallow dip, down a gully beyond, and then left up the low spur that had the lookout at its top. By the time she was there the moonhawks were busy, calling from their nest site, north along the other flank, skimming over the ridge, and hovering above the moonlit slope as they searched for prey.

Moonlight is deceptive. It seems almost as bright as day, but even the heaviest, darkest day is much brighter. Under the full moon Mana could see far into the distance along the rugged flank of the promontory, dark in the silvery light. She would have expected to be able to spot the demon men, several tens of them, from a long way off as they came, however carefully they hid as they crept towards her.

But as soon as the details of the plan had been worked out, even before the four demon men had come as scouts, Suth and Var had taken Mana, Ko and Shuja up to the ridge in the moonlight and told them to watch while the two men walked away from them, making no effort to hide. In a terrifyingly short time they seemed to vanish. Only their moving shadows betrayed them, flickering over the grey rocks.

“They come this way,” Var had said, pointing north along the shoreline. “They know it.”

“Var, you are right,” Suth had said. “Few lead. They show the way. Many follow. They come by the shore. Then they climb the hill. They come here. It is above our lair. It is close. They wait. The moon goes up the sky. First it is this side. The other side is dark. Then the moon is high. It shines on the other side. Then they attack.”

Mana could only hope they were right, but it seemed the obvious plan for the demon men, approaching by the route they knew, with a few scouts in advance, massing at the top of the ridge and waiting for the moment when the moon rose just far enough to light the western slope, so that they could see their prey as they fell on them.

That was why Mana couldn't simply wait in the hiding place and give the warning from there. She wouldn't see them in time for the Kin to reach the safety of the reeds. The attack would already have begun.

So now she crouched, as she had done so often by daylight, and watched the colour of the hillside change slowly as the heavy shadows shrank towards the rocks that cast them. Above her the wind hissed and whistled between the boulders of the ridge, but down here she was in stillness. She didn't feel sleepy. She had spent the afternoon dozing on the island, and now, in the certainty of danger, terror and excitement mingled into her bloodstream, pulsed through her at each beat of her heart, and kept her intensely awake and aware. Through the thick skin of her soles she could feel the grainy surface of rock, not just as surface but as individual grains that she could have counted if she chose. And she wasn't merely seeing the moonlit hillside. Her eyes seemed to feed on it, to suck it into her, until every mottling of the long slope seemed to be part of her, a tingle at a nerve end.

A flicker of movement. She tensed. Where? Ah, not among the rocks but above them. A star had vanished for an instant as something had passed it, a moonhawk swooping across the ridge to hunt in the brightness. She watched it briefly at its work, a shadow against the lit sky, speeding out along the wind, then swinging wide, slowing, hovering with fluttering wingtips while it peered with night-seeing eyes for anything that moved below it. She saw it plummet. Above the wind's hiss she heard the light thump of the strike, and shrill squeal of the prey.

For an instant, hearing that squeal, Mana herself was the victim, cowering among these rocks, with the demon men poised to strike. Then she thought, No, they were different. The moonhawk did the thing it was made for, or it wouldn't be a moonhawk. But the demon men were people, just as she and the Kin were people. Each did the things they chose. The demon men chose to be demon men. But she, Mana, and the Kin chose to say,
No, we are not your victims
. Watching here on the hill was part of that choice.

She returned to her task, barely noticing the moonhawks any longer as they came and went. The night wore on. The moon climbed. Soon it would be high enough for its light to cross the ridge and reach the western flank. Soon, soon, surely, the attack must come, if it was coming tonight at all. Or had the demon men decided on a dawn raid? Or …

What was that? Down to her right?

No, it had been only the sudden plunge of a moonhawk, followed by …

Not a squeal, not the thump of the strike, but a light squawk, and …

Why had it caught her attention? Why that strike, when she'd long stopped paying any attention to them?

She watched the bird circle up, but this time, instead of heading for the nest site with its prey, or hovering again as it did when it missed a strike, it circled on, higher still, until she saw its spread wings actually cross the bright disk of the moon. No prey dangled from beak or talons.

Yes. That was it. She'd noticed the strike because something had been wrong with it. The hawk hadn't struck home. Even when it missed there was always the light thump of its impact with the ground. But not this time. And the squawk. Not from the victim, but from the hawk itself. A squawk of surprise. Of alarm.

What had it struck at? What quick, furtive movement? What shadow twitch, tricking it into danger? Surely it wouldn't strike at anything as big as a man. But a man crawling through a patch of shadow but allowing something, the tip of a fighting stick, a heel, a hand, to reach for a moment into moonlight?

Perhaps.

With her heart now slamming with panic, Mana stared. Where had the hawk dived? There.

So near?

She stared, but her night vision was dim for a while from looking directly at the moon. Slowly it cleared, focused on a single patch of the hillside … one low boulder …

Yes!

Barely even a glimpse, but something had moved, the tip of a larger something, a second man, perhaps, crawling behind the first. There was no time to wait for a third and make sure. They were so much nearer than she'd guessed.

Willing herself to move slowly she withdrew her head until she was completely under cover and sped back the way she had come, until she reached the top of the western slope. It was still all in deep shadow, but the line where the moonlight met the darkness lay sharp along the dead reedbed, only a few tens of paces from the shore. The steady wind hissed over her.

While she waited to bring her heaving lungs under control she listened for the next call of the moonhawk. It didn't come. Of course—the bird had been alarmed. It was shifting its hunting ground. It wouldn't call again for a while.

“Wait,” Suth had said. “Let the bird call. Call after. Then you do not call together. We know it is the signal.”

But she couldn't wait.

She cupped her hands, moistened her lips, drew a deep breath and called, as loud as she could, because she was calling directly into the wind.

Yeek-yeek-yeek-yeek
.

The call of the hunting moonhawk, made not three times but four. She and Ko and Shuja had practised it again and again down in the marshes, until even Var was satisfied that they had it true.

At once she took another breath and repeated the cry.

That was the signal, two calls, each of four shrieks. The closer the calls to each other, the closer the enemy.

They are here! They are close, close!

As the final shriek left her lips she rose and hurried to the hiding place. The demon men were already terrifyingly near, but she didn't dare run. She had to feel for each footstep in the almost pitch dark. Any noise she made would carry to them on the wind.

At last, with her heart now thundering with the tension of stealth, she crouched down by the boulder and checked by feel that everything was where she needed it. But she didn't at once slide in under the rock. She could see too little from there. Instead she laid her body down along its lower side, with her head projecting far enough beyond it to let her watch the jagged line of the ridge against the sky, paler and almost starless now as the rising moon drew nearer.

From below her she could hear nothing but the movement of the wind, though by now the sentries would have woken the sleepers on the hillside and they would all be moving stealthily through the darkness. A few of them would be climbing up to join Yova at the old lair—when the alarm came, the attackers must think that they had all been sleeping there all night, unsuspecting. The others would be creeping down to the reedbed. Most of these would immediately hurry along the hidden path to the island, but several of the men, with Tinu, would hide close by among the reeds. And Yova would be fully alert and tense, staring like Mana for the first glimpse of a movement on the skyline.

Again time passed, slow as the rising moon. Mana thought it would never reach the ridge, though the sky there now seemed almost as pale as dawn. Had she made a mistake and given a false alarm? Had the moonhawk's behaviour tricked her into seeing a movement that wasn't there?

What was that?

Not a movement, but a sound, a brief, faint scrape, barely reaching her through the wind. Wood on stone, perhaps? The trailing end of a fighting stick touching for an instant against a rock?

And now she saw a movement, a slow change on the jagged black skyline, as a head was stealthily raised to peer down the slope.

The man seemed to stay there for ever, watching what lay below him, though it was all still deep in shadow. Had he night vision, like a moonhawk? Would he see Mana herself, despite the darkness? He was so close above her.

She remembered something she had heard Suth say to Ko when he was telling him how the hunter must think while he lay in wait for his prey.
I
hide among grasses. I am grass. The buck does not see me
.

I am rock, she thought. I lie long on this hill. I am still, still.

At last the head withdrew, but Mana stayed where she was. It was too soon to give the next signal. For that she must wait until the enemy began to move down the hill, and from the hiding place she wouldn't be able to watch that happen. Would they attack immediately from the ridge as the moon rose, or would they, more likely, try to use the darkness to creep nearer to their prey?

Ah, now they came. Mana saw several of them at once, slinking over the skyline and starting down the hill. Their fighting sticks were held low at their sides. All but one, and this man moved more awkwardly. Mana could see why. He was having to hold his fighting stick two-handed because its point was weighted down by a round mass.

With a wrench in her stomach she guessed what it was. A human head. And she guessed whose.

She swallowed twice, mastering the shock of horror, and silently squirmed herself back and then sideways, feet first, into the slot beneath the boulder. She didn't drag the smaller rocks into place, because the sound was certain to betray her, and she still needed to see out. So now she lay with only the top of her head protruding from the slot. With her right hand she reached out and felt for the base of the long reed that lay there, ready for the instant. At its other end was a small cairn of rocks, carefully balanced by Tinu at the top of a sloping slab.