The Kin (55 page)

Is it safe? Have you seen any demon men?

Mana smiled and grunted reassuringly and said, “Come, I take you to Tun.” But when she started to lead the way he barked at her to wait and called to somebody among the reeds. Several more marshpeople came creeping out, men and women, all obviously very scared and anxious. One of the women offered Mana a couple of fishes as a gift, but wrinkled her nose in disgust when Mana tried to give her a few fong grubs in exchange.

Tun arrived, and led them up to the camp. More marshpeople appeared, and by dusk ten and five more of them were sitting round the fire with the Kin, and toasting their fish on its embers.

They went back down the hill to sleep among the reeds—they didn't seem to mind about the sickness—but next morning Mana was hardly awake when she heard a soft call from one of the lookouts. Five marshmen were climbing the hill. There were no women with them, but this time their whole bodies, not just their faces, were painted in brilliant colours.

“They come to fight,” said Suth. “I remember this. They came to take the crocodile head. It was ours. They said in their hearts,
These people do not give us the head. We must fight them
. But Tun gave it to them. We did not fight. Then they were painted like this.”

“Suth, do they fight us?” said Ko.

“No. This is my thought. They fight the demon men.”

The marshmen had brought no gifts this time. They exchanged greetings, and then just stood around, obviously waiting for the Kin to move on. As soon as Tun gave the signal three of them ran on ahead as scouts, while the other two fell in beside Tun. They clearly knew where they were going, so he let them lead the party at a slant across the hill until they reached a spur, which they then followed towards the summit.

It was a long and tiring climb. At last Mana saw that the scouts were beginning to move more cautiously, and when they finally disappeared over the skyline the two men walking with Tun made everyone else stop and wait until the scouts returned and signalled that it was safe to come on.

They climbed to a pass, with hills rising on either side, and wound for a while along it, until the ground began to drop away at their feet and they could look north.

Mana heard a sigh from many mouths, and then a whisper from her left. She didn't know who'd spoken, but it was her own thought. It was everyone's thought.

“These are Good Places. Good. Good.”

Oldtale

THE MAMBAGA CROSSING

Black Antelope went to the white-tail buck, the Mambaga buck. He said to them, “The rains are gone. These pastures are dry. Now you go south to new pastures, to Ragala Flat. Do you cross the river at Mambaga? Men wait for you there. They hunt you. They kill many.”

The white-tail buck said, “Black Antelope, we know the Mambaga crossing. We do not know another.”

He said, “Now I show you another way. Come.”

He led them east, and then south, to Smoke Gorge. In those days the river was full of water. At Smoke Gorge it fell over a cliff
.

The white-tail buck said, “Black Antelope, we cannot cross here. The gorge is too wide. It is too deep. The water smokes. It roars. We are afraid.”

Black Antelope struck the northern cliff with his hoof. It fell into the gorge. He leapt the gorge. He struck the southern cliff with his hoof. That too fell
.
The rocks lay across the gorge. The water was stopped
.

Still the white-tail buck were afraid. Black Antelope leapt the gorge again. He said, “Come quick. The water rises. Soon the rocks are pushed away.”

He led the white-tail buck across the rockfall. Their crossing was of this sort:

See, it is dawn. The ants leave their nest. All day they come, they go. They forage here, there. Now it is dusk. They gather to their nest. Who can count them? The ground is black with them. Through a narrow place they go into the nest. They are all gone
.

Such was the crossing of the white-tail buck. The water rose beside them. The last buck crossed. The water burst through. It pushed the rockfall away
.

The white-tail buck went south to Ragala Flat. There the grass was fresh, it was green. They were happy
.

All the Kins gathered to Mambaga. They waited for the white-tail buck. None came to the crossing
.

The men spoke to each other. They said, “Why do the buck not come? This is strange.”

Farj had a daughter, Rimi. Her mate was Nos. He was Crocodile. Farj went to him. He said, “Nos, mate of my daughter, hear me, Farj. I am old. I have seen many things. This I have not seen. Always the white-tail buck come to Mambaga. At this season they come. Now they do not come. Why is this? I, Farj, say this. I am Snake. Our men swore the War Oath. Anger is in their hearts. The men of Fat Pig swore the War Oath. Anger is in their hearts also. The white-tail buck smell this anger. They are afraid. They do not come.”

Nos said, “Farj, you are right. I speak to the other Kins. I tell them your words.”

All the men listened. They said, “Nos is right. Farj is right.”

They went to the men of Snake and of Fat Pig. They said, “Stop this war, this foolishness.”

The men of Snake and of Fat Pig answered, “We cannot stop it. We have sworn the War Oath.”

The men of the Kins said, “Our young men do not come to you. They do not say, We choose your daughters for mates. Your young men come to us. We say to them, Our daughters do not choose you for mates. First you end this war.”

The men of Snake answered, “Let Fat Pig end the war first. Let them unswear the War Oath. Let them give us Mott. We kill him. Then we unswear the War Oath. We give them Ziul.”

The men of Fat Pig answered in the same way. Both said, “We do not do it first. We do not lose face.”

The women said, “You are fools.” They did not laugh
.

Farj and Siku listened to this talk. They told it to Snake and to Fat Pig
.

Fat Pig and Snake said, “The men are ripe berries. They are ready. Farj, you are old, you are wise. What do we do now?”

Farj thought. He said, “Now we do thus and thus.”

CHAPTER NINE

It was as if they had come into a different world. Behind them lay the long dry hillside and the pass—rocks, gravel, clumps of harsh grass, thorny, stunted bushes scattered here and there, all brown and burnt and weary, even after the rains. A world that was almost dead.

But here, so short a distance to the north, was a world of life, green slopes where deer could browse, wide-branched trees with cool shade beneath them, birds answering and calling, vines, bushes, smells of sap and pollen, the hum of honey bees, movement of creatures in the mottled shadows—good earth, good air, good foraging, good hunting—one immense Good Place spread out below them.

A thought came to Mana. She couldn't quite put it into words. Suth was standing beside her.

“Suth,” she whispered. “The demon men … They had this … all this … Why?”

Why had they left this wonderful valley to hunt and kill, not animals for food, but men, to cut their heads off and carry them away as …? As what? What did they want them for? Could their First One be really a demon? Did it tell them this was what they must do to please it? That was too ghastly to imagine.

Suth seemed to understand her stammerings. He frowned, shaking his head.

“Mana, I do not know,” he said. “It is strange, strange.”

Tun, of course, set lookouts, and the rest of the Kin started to forage. This wasn't what the marshmen wanted. They waited for a while, and then tried to persuade Tun to move on. When they realized he wasn't going to, they were unhappy, but hung around a little longer, grunting and gesturing and touching each other, and then went off down the hill, moving warily and holding their fishing sticks ready for fighting.

The Kin worked cheerfully, finding all they wanted, nuts and fruit and roots, grubs and birds' eggs. It had been well after midday when they'd started, and they hadn't had their usual rest, but the air was cooler at this height, and the excitement and pleasure of exploring this new home buoyed them up. Late in the afternoon Mana heard the shouts of hunters, and a little later Net and Nar appeared, triumphantly carrying the body of a large anteater they had surprised and killed.

By then they'd harvested more than enough, so Tun led them back up to the pass and found a good hollow for their lair. The night would be cold up here, but it was safer to sleep in the open, with lookouts on watch, than it would have been lower down, with so much cover for any enemy or wild beast to use to creep up on them.

In the dusk the five marshmen returned. With them came a woman, who looked just like one of the marshwomen. She had a girl baby.

The marshmen were in high spirits. They'd arrived making gestures of triumph, punching the air with their fists. Two of them carried skulls, which they laid carefully down a little way from the fire. Then they proudly showed their fishing sticks to Tun and the other men.

“What is this?” whispered Moru, watching from the women's side of the fire.

“I smell blood,” said Noli. “I think they kill people.”

Mana too had smelt the unmistakable odour, but hadn't guessed what creature it might belong to.

“Who is this woman?” said Shuja. “Do the marshmen kill her mate? Do they take her? She is not sad.”

The woman had come to sit with them opposite the men, and as Shuja had said looked dazed, but not unhappy. She ate without seeming to notice what she was doing, and kept her eyes fixed on one of the marshmen the other side of the fire.

“I say this,” said Chogi decisively. “These were not always marshmen. The marshmen were their friends. But these lived here. These Places were theirs. Then demon men came. They killed men, they took women. These men fled into the marsh. The marshmen said,
Be with us. Learn our ways
. They did this. Now we kill many demon men. These men say in their hearts,
We go back to our own Places. We find our women. We see a demon man. We kill him.”

“Chogi, you are right,” said Yova.

“Why do they bring skulls?” asked Bodu.

“A demon man kills their friends,” suggested Moru. “He takes their heads. Now these men kill him. They take the heads back. This is good.”

They discussed the idea to and fro for a while, but Mana was still thinking about the demon men. She could understand what the marshmen seemed to have done. That was revenge. It was dreadful too, but it was people stuff. What the demon men did was different.

Did that mean they weren't people, after all? No, she knew in her heart they were. It was being people that was the worst thing about them. If they'd been just people-shaped animals, they'd still have been terrifying, but it would have been a different sort of terror. The demon men were men, like good, strong Tun and Suth, like excitable Net, like gentle Tor—that was what made the difference. And that was why Mana carried a wound in her spirit, because she had killed one of them.

One day, perhaps, she would understand. Moonhawk had told her to wait. So Moonhawk had known that Mana's wound was a real wound. She'd known that the demon men were people, or she wouldn't have said that.

The Kin slept by the fire, huddled in piles for warmth. The marshmen and the woman they'd found, and her baby, made another pile of their own. In the morning they exchanged goodbyes and the marshmen headed off back to the marsh, while the Kin went down into the valley to explore further.

This time they moved faster, with scouts in advance, only stopping to forage if they came to a specially rich area. They found a small stream, splashing from boulder to boulder, and drank its clean, fresh water, but didn't trouble to fill their gourds.

They were following the stream, spread out in a loose line either side of it, when Mana saw Tor, scouting in front of her, crouch and peer ahead, at the same time making a quick downward gesture with his left hand. Instantly she ducked into the cover of the nearest bush. When she looked to left and right the rest of the Kin seemed to have vanished, apart from Tinu, crouching on the other side of the same bush.

They waited while Tor and Net crept out of sight.

Before long Tor returned and beckoned them on, but then made the same downward gesture as before—
Come. Keep low
. Everyone rose from their hiding places and stole forward.

They reached the rim of a dip, halted and looked down. The bank was short but steep. Below her Mana saw what she instantly recognized as someone's regular lair. There was a dead fire with a large mound of ashes heaped up from steady burning over many days, a stack of branches for fuel, a trampled patch of earth, a flat boulder with drifts of seedhusks round it, and so on. The only unfamiliar thing was a pair of posts driven into the ground on either side of the trail that led on down the hill.

A body lay face down beside the fire. Its skin was very dark grey, faintly tinged with purple, and streaked with blood from several small, deep wounds.

Mana heard a mutter beside her. Bodu.

“The marshmen killed him. They used fishing sticks.”

Yes, a speared fish had a hole like that in its side. Chogi had been right in her guess last night. The body wasn't that of a demon man, though. It was too small. He'd been a boy—about Mana's own age, she guessed. A demon boy.

With a heavy sigh she bowed her head and turned away. Why? And why in this beautiful place, this lair by the tumbling stream …?

She couldn't bear to stay there, but crept off, with the tears beginning to stream down her face for the dead boy. She wept for him as she had wept for Kern. For the moment it was the same death.

She stole quietly on through the haze of tears, letting her feet choose the path. She knew that this was wrong of her, bad, allowing herself to lose sight of the others in this unfamiliar place with its unknown dangers. But she needed to be alone, to endure her grief without anybody speaking to her, trying to comfort her. She wasn't ready for that.