While their two nonhuman companions wreaked havoc among the surprised attackers, Ehomba and Simna made a dash for the windwagon. Ducking beneath a spear thrust, Simna rolled into the legs of his a.s.sailant, bringing the startled skeleton down on top of him. Reaching up and around, he locked both hands and forearms around the skull. Much to his surprise, it was warm. Gritting his teeth, he twisted his hands and arms in opposite directions. With a snap, the neck broke and the head came away in his fingers. As the decapitated skull tried to sink its exposed, gleaming teeth into his arm, the sickened swordsman flung it as far as he could.
Ehomba leaped sideways to avoid a sword stroke and brought his right leg around the way Asab had shown him and the other young men of the village when they were of an age to learn about fighting. Its legs taken out from under it, the skeleton went down on its back. As it rolled toward him, flailing energetically but wildly with its sword, the herdsman was able to reach the wagon. Simna joined him seconds later. While Hunkapa Aub defended one side of the vehicle and Ahlitah the other, the two men scrambled for their weapons.
"Send the sharks after them!" Simna shouted as he picked up his own sword. Long knife gripped between its teeth, a skeletal soldier was attempting to scramble over the side of the wagon and into the bed. The swordsman dispatched it with a single blow that cleaved the raider from collarbone to sternum.
Cut vertically nearly in half, it fell back, clutching at itself.
"I cannot!" Ehomba fumbled among the supplies. "The magic of the sea-bone sword works only on attackers made of flesh and blood. Sharks will not attack bones. Neither will the spirit of my walking spear."
"Hoy, then take up the sky-metal sword and call down the wind from between the stars to blow them apart!" With a grunt, Simna stabbed a climbing warrior between the ribs. Since his weapon met only air, it did no damage. With a curse, the swordsman drew the weapon back and hacked sideways, beheading his adversary. That stroke had the desired effect.
"Remember, Simna, the sky-metal sword is not a shaman"s instrument, to be so casually wielded." The herdsman indicated the surrounding forest. "This place is too confining. If I were to succeed in bringing down the wind it would uproot trees and send them flying in all directions, as likely to do away with us as our attackers." He continued to busy himself in the center of the wagon.
With barely enough time to glance in his friend"s direction, Simna finally shouted in exasperation, "By Gokhoul, bruther, what are you doing?"
"Setting sail. Hold them off, my friends, hold them off!"
With the battle-tested Simna shouting orders, he and Hunkapa and the black litah did just that, giving Ehomba time to ready their vehicle. As soon as the sail was up and fully set, he called out to his companions to join him within. Simna was first back aboard, followed by Hunkapa Aub. As the wagon, under full sail, began to pick up speed, Ahlitah ran alongside, dispatching those skeletons that tried to keep pace. Any that drew near found themselves crushed between powerful jaws or knocked asunder by claw-tipped paws.
Only when the last of their jabbering, gesticulating, spear-waving pursuit had fallen too far behind to pose any threat did the big cat rejoin his companions, clearing the s.p.a.ce from ground to wagon in a single long, easy leap. Once on board he sat back and began to lick his wounds. They were minor, nothing worse than a few sc.r.a.pes and the occasional shallow cut.
"It"s nothing," he insisted in response to Ehomba"s solicitous inquiry. "I"ve taken worse from wildebeest." As the cat spoke, it groomed its face and mane with moistened paw. "One time I took a blow to the stomach from the spiked tail of a full-grown female glyptodont protecting its young. Now, that hurt." Twisting its head around, it began to lick a b.l.o.o.d.y gash on its right flank. "Made the kill anyway."
"Hoy?" Sword laid out across his knees, Simna was sitting down, his back resting against the interior wall of the wagon. The was no blood on the blade: only the acc.u.mulated white stain of powdered bone.
"I always wondered what glypto tasted like."
"Like pork." The black litah lifted its head suddenly, ears p.r.i.c.ked, listening intently. Seeing this, Simna immediately scrambled to his knees and turned to scan the dense woods through which they were racing.
"What is it? More of them in the trees? They can"t hope to run us down. As long as we have wind at our backs and clear road ahead they"ll never catch us."
"Footsteps." The litah sat still as a sculpture in obsidian, listening. On the other side of the wagon, an intent Hunkapa Aub was likewise scrutinizing the forest. "Not human. Not human skeletons, that is.
Something else."
"Something else, how?" Standing tall in the rear of the wagon, Ehomba steered them expertly down the track and past the most egregious ruts and potholes.
"Heavier," the litah explained bluntly.
They came tearing out of the trees off to the left, the cavalry riding not to the rescue but intent on total destruction. There were too many to count as the windwagon, with full canvas up and traveling at top speed, negotiated one dip and curve after another in the increasingly uneven track.
Baying like a hundred xylophones all playing in concert, skeletal warriors came pounding out of the forest on skeleton mounts, waving their weapons over their bleached skulls as they sought to ride down the fleeing wagon. Naked pelvises sat astride the ivory-colored spines of horses and mules, zebras and okapis, kudu and p.r.o.nghorn. It was a charge the likes of which even an experienced horseman like Simna ibn Sind had never hoped to see, a charge from h.e.l.l.
But even as their mounted a.s.sailants bore down on the fleeing travelers, the forest was thinning out around them, giving way to more open country. A grateful Ehomba had more room in which to maneuver. No longer restricted exclusively to the narrow wagon track, he was able to utilize the windwagon not only as a vehicle to effect their escape, but as a weapon.
When a pair of high-riding, mace-swinging skeletal warriors turned their mounts toward the rattling, bouncing wagon, Ehomba adjusted the sail to angle the heavy vehicle not away from but directly toward them. The front end of the wagon slammed into the startled attackers, sending a shower of broken, splintered bone flying over the pa.s.sengers as their a.s.sailants were smashed to bits. Meanwhile, any raider that rode too close risked a blow from Hunkapa Aub"s fist, Ahlitah"s paws, or Simna ibn Sind"s sword.
Grimacing ferociously, the swordsman stood up in the unstable wagon bed to taunt their attackers. He still had his sea legs from their weeks on theGromsketter, and this especially allowed him to keep his balance.
"Come on, you offspring of b.a.s.t.a.r.d boneheads!" Gleefully, he waved his sword in expert circles.
"Here"s a tooth longer than any of yours. Come close and see how it bites! What"s the matter-afraid of dying?"
"Simna, it is not good to taunt the dead."
The swordsman threw his long-faced friend a wild-eyed glance. "Tend to your tillering, bruther, and leave me to deal with the departed. They should have stayed dead."
Emitting hollow, sinister cries, the remainder of the skeleton cavalry whipped their mounts with whips of slivered bone and closed on the windwagon. Try as they might, they could not surround it in sufficient numbers to overpower its pa.s.sengers. Every time it looked as if more than two of the attackers might have a chance to leap or climb aboard, Ehomba would steer the vehicle away from their skeletal chargers. Cut down by Simna"s flashing sword or pulverized by the strength of Ahlitah or Hunkapa Aub, their numbers were steadily reduced even as their determination was redoubled.
Compared to the horde that had partic.i.p.ated in the initial a.s.sault, few were left when the windwagon struck the brush-covered gully. It bounced once, flew into the air, struck the hard ground on the far side, and overturned. Ehomba barely had time enough to warn his companions to grab something to hang on to before he was slammed to the ground and thrown from the wagon.
Everyone but Ahlitah lay dazed and unsteady. All cat, the black litah had reacted to the imminent crash by leaping clear of the wagon, twisting his body in midair, and skidding to a stop on all fours. Snarling warningly, it took up a position in front of the overturned wagon bed as the mounted skeletons stumbled down one side of the narrow chasm and up the other.
By the time they reached the site of the crash, the wagon"s occupants had recovered their equilibrium and their weapons. With nothing left to steer, Ehomba had picked up the sky-metal sword. While it might not be time to make use of it to call down pieces of the sky or the wind from between the stars, its blade was still sharp and functional. The overturned wagon lay on its side, one wheel still spinning futilely in the air like the kicking hind leg of a dying lizard. With its solid wooden bed against their backs, they readied themselves to deal with the remaining skeletal warriors arrayed against them.
Instead, the mounted skeletons drew up in a line opposite the toppled vehicle. Weapons at the ready, they sat staring with empty eye sockets at the contentious living. Their mounts pawed with skeletal hooves at the ground, snorting through ragged-edged nostrils of varying length.
"What"s this, bruther?" Not taking his eyes from their hesitating attackers, Simna whispered to his tall companion. "What are they waiting for?"
"I do not know." Holding the sky-metal sword out in front of him, Ehomba considered the surrounding forest. Though much reduced in density, there were still too many large trees scattered nearby to chance drawing down the wind from the heavens. But if the attackers persisted, he realized that he might have to chance it. Certainly if their a.s.sailants were reinforced by others from within the deep woods, he would be left with no choice. Warmed by his hands, the sword quivered expectantly.
The skeleton that dismounted was neither the tallest nor the most stout of those pale white specters that were arrayed against the travelers, but it strode forward with a stiff-jointed dignity none of its demised confederates could match. With plucked feathers streaming from the gilded helmet that rocked atop its bleached skull, it approached the living. Simna"s fingers whitened on the haft of his sword and Hunkapa Aub growled deep in his throat. Ahlitah stood almost motionless, his ma.s.sive chest heaving slowly in and out with his steady breathing, ready to pounce the instant Ehomba gave the word.
Halting barely a spear length away, the skeleton placed one bony arm across its splayed rib cage-and bowed. Then it straightened, steadying the flamboyant helmet on its naked skull, and began to speak in a voice that was deeper than a whisper but not much stronger.
"You fight well." The wind carried away the last syllable of every word and the straining travelers had to listen closely to make out the meaning of each. "You put a great many of the dead to sleep, for which they are eternally grateful."
"Hoy?" Simna smiled tautly. "Come a little closer, Mr. Bones, and I"ll gladly a.s.sist you in joining them."
The white skull swiveled. Empty sockets peered into the swordsman"s living eyes. "That is not to be the way of things, master of a steel tooth."
"Then what is the way of things? Tell us." Without lowering his guard for an instant, Ehomba queried the expired but animate mediator.
Simna muttered knowingly. "Always the questioner, Etjole, even when the one replying is Death itself."
"We are not Death," the skeletal envoy explained softly. "Only dead. The difference is of significance."
With a sweep of one white-boned arm, it indicated those mounted warriors waiting patiently behind it.
"We are the Brotherhood of the Bone. This forest we claim as ours, a place of quietude and darkness in which to linger after life has given us up but before death claims us forever. Here we dwell but do not exist, occasionally taking out the frustration of being neither or either on those mortals foolish or courageous enough to dare the byways that we haunt." A chalky arm pointed in their direction.
"You are sufficiently brave to pa.s.s, but there is a problem."
"A problem?" Simna laughed humorlessly. "You send dozens of your own to try and slay us where we stand and now you say there is a "problem"?" He tossed his sword easily back and forth, swapping it from hand to hand. "Come forward, the lot of you, and we"ll show you how Simna ibn Sind and the great sorcerer Etjole Ehomba deal with their problems!"
"You might yet escape." The envoy made the confession even as it looked to their overturned wagon.
"Yet your vehicle will need time to be put right, something you cannot do while fighting us. Even as we speak, hundreds more of the Brotherhood are riding to our aid, called hither by the sounds of battle and breaking bones. If you flee right now and the wind holds, you might well outdistance them all. But if you are delayed by fighting-" This time it was the envoy"s meaning and not his speech that trailed off.
"It"s a d.a.m.ned bluff!" Simna wanted very badly to rush forward and separate the taunting skeleton"s skull from its shoulders. "Let"s finish them!"
Ehomba ignored him, straining to listen, to pierce the distant woods with hearing that was more acute than that of most men. Strive as he might, he knew that there were among his companions ears far more sensitive than his own.
"Ahlitah?"
The big cat sniffed the air even as it listened intently. After a moment, yellow eyes looked in the herdsman"s direction. "I think I hear something. It might be the wind-or it might be fleshless feet.
Hundreds of them."
"Might be, might not be-what need for speculation?" Simna took a step forward. "By Geewenwan, I say we put an end to this!"
"They are mounted and we are afoot," Ehomba sensibly pointed out. "It is a doable thing, friend Simna, but as the envoy points out, killing even the dead takes time. All of you have come this far because of me.
I will not give up your lives for a cause become yours only by accident." Lowering his sword, he approached the envoy.
An alarmed Simna looked on uneasily. "Etjole, I don"t know what you"re thinking, but don"t think it!"
Halting several feet from the skeleton, Ehomba met vacant eyes with his own speculative gaze. "You said something about us being brave enough to let pa.s.s, except there was a problem."
The bleached skull nodded slightly. "You have dispatched many from the Brotherhood and sent them on their final path to rest. Those who do so must take the place of at least one who has departed our company. If this is done willingly, then the others may live, and will be allowed to quit our presence still citizens of the world of the living."
Ehomba nodded understandingly. Behind him, Simna was growing rapidly more agitated. The herdsman continued to ignore him. "I have your word on this?"
"Here is my hand on it." Skeletal fingers reached toward him. "What remains of it."
Wrapping his own long, weathered fingers around the bare white bone, Ehomba embraced the warm, smooth grip.
"Which of you will come willingly to the Brotherhood?" The envoy was looking past him. He need not have done so.
"I will."
"What?" Behind him, Simna took a confrontational step forward. "What"s all this unG.o.dly mumbling about? Etjole, what have you promised this-this fugitive from an unhallowed grave?"
Rejoining his companions, Ehomba put both hands on the swordsman"s shoulders. Inclining his head slightly, he stared hard and evenly into the smaller man"s eyes.
Dropping his hands from the other man"s arms, Ehomba looked up at the hulking, hirsute form of Hunkapa Aub. "What about you? Do you believe in me, my hairy friend?"
"Hunkapa-believe in Etjole." The broad figure replied slowly and solemnly, his response tinged with uncertainty over what was to come.
"And you, Ahlitah? What about you?" The herdsman gazed affectionately at the big cat.
It yawned. "Do what you will. If you die, I go home. If you live, I continue with you. Only one thing I know for sure: I"m sick of the taste of marrow. So do something."
"I will." Turning back to the swordsman, the tall southerner smiled rea.s.suringly. "No matter what happens, no matter what you see here, you must promise to continue the journey westward away from this place. Watch, friend Simna. Watch, and trust me."
"Trust you? Trust you to do what? Etjole ..."
The swordsman reached for his friend but was unable to restrain him. After placing the sky-metal sword in Hunkapa"s hand, a resigned Ehomba walked back to confront the expectant envoy. Halting before the skeletal warrior, the herdsman nodded once. "I am ready."
"Simna, do you still believe I am a mighty sorcerer?"
"Yes-but you"ve always denied it. I know your way with words. What trick of sophistry are you playing now?" The swordsman eyed his friend warily.
The envoy made a gesture and started to raise his sword. Ehomba lifted a hand to forestall the first cut.
"Hold! I will save you the trouble."
Standing between the living and the dead, the herdsman parted his jaws to form a wide oval-an oval that grew large, and then larger still. It was impossible for any human mouth to open so wide. Even among the mounted skeletons there was a stirring at the sight. Among all the onlookers only Simna ibn Sind and the black litah were not shocked by the gape of the herdsman"s expanding maw, for they had seen Ehomba do something similar before.
No human could part its jaws so wide-but Etjole Ehomba was more than human. He was also eromakasi. There was no darkness to eat here, no threatening eromakadi to consume. But that did not prevent him from making use of his remarkable oral abilities. Wider still stretched his jaws and lips.
Then, with a delicacy of step and perfect aplomb, his skeleton emerged from the container of his body, stepping out from within through the accommodating aperture of the herdsman"s unnaturally distended mouth.
X.
Like a prosperous merchant discarding a favorite dressing gown, Etjole Ehomba"s skeleton continued to slip free of his clothing and skin until it stood, white and glistening, before the silent, approving envoy.
When the last lingering flesh had been sloughed off, the mounted warriors vented a cadaverous cheer, waving their weapons in the air and reining their a.s.sorted skeletal mounts up on their hind legs in celebration.
"No!" Sword upraised, a horrified Simna rushed forward-only to fall hard as something tripped him.
Looking down, he saw, staring back at him from amid the pile of attire and skin and muscle that had moments before cloaked his companion in the garb of life, the face of his good friend. Though unnaturally flaccid and flattened in the absence of its usual st.u.r.dy frame, it was smiling rea.s.suringly.
"Calm yourself, Simna. Did I not tell you to trust me?"
Shocked, the swordsman scrabbled back on hands and knees. "Etjole, is it you? Are you alive?"
"Alive but limp. As a wet rag, like the saying goes. Lift me up, my friend. I want to see what is happening."
Placing a hesitant arm beneath the flattened head, Simna fought down the queasiness in his gut as he raised the soft, slightly rubbery remnant of his friend and held it where it could face their former a.s.sailants.
Having turned away from the living, Ehomba"s expelled skeleton was following the envoy to the line of waiting skeletal mounts. There the envoy swung himself up onto the bare-boned back of a once n.o.ble but now wholly desiccated steed and reached down. Taking the proffered hand, the tall, slim skeleton that had just walked away from its owner leaped up onto the exposed spine.
With a final salute, the grisly members of the Brotherhood turned and, pa.s.sing in review in double file, trotted away, leaving the living to their own devices. Slack as a sack of beans, Ehomba watched them and a part of him go.
"I hope it can hang on for a while. The Naumkib are not known for their horsemanship."
"It wouldn"t matter anyway, bruther." Simna followed the line of mounted skeletons as they disappeared into the trees. "No amount of practice could prepare one for riding saddleless astride bare bone." He looked down at his friend. "Why have you done this?"
"To put them off." The eyes that stared back up at him sank deeply into the limp, unsupported flesh.
"Ahlitah was right. I could hear the approaching hundreds also."
"But the sky-metal sword! You could have tried to use it."