CHAPTER
THIRTEEN
“Please tell me exactly what your grandmothers told you.” Marty was keenly aware that he was talking to the two Speakers across gulfs of language, culture, and five thousand years of time. He tried to keep his voice neutral and he held his hands in his lap, fingers slightly curled and palms up. “About the medallion.”
He sat with François and Surjan inside one of the largest hide huts. Across an empty firepit, they faced the Godspeaker, the Tribespeaker, and Badis. All sat cross-legged.
Marty and his companions had marched directly back from the Sethians’ fortress, stopping only to drink and scan the horizon for signs of pursuit.
When they’d reached Ahuskay again it was midday. Kareem had stretched himself out on a thick bed of grass beside the lake and fallen directly asleep. Marty had collected the banker and brought the two older warriors into this conference.
“My grandmother told me that the Ametsu were sorcerers.” The Godspeaker closed his eyes and nodded slightly as he spoke. “That their hearts were linked by the amulets on their breasts. And that every Ametsu always knew where all the amulets were at all times. For this reason, it is folly to kill an Ametsu. All the others of their kind already know who the murderer is.”
“It wasn’t murder,” Surjan growled.
“And it is even greater folly to take anything belonging to the Ametsu,” the Godspeaker continued. “But especially the amulets. The Ametsu know where the amulets are at all times. They are likely already coming in numbers, to avenge their brother’s death.”
“We have learned valuable information on our journey,” Badis said. The Ahuskay warrior spoke with bowed head, and slowly. “The Ametsu are not great in number. We saw four, and when we interrogated an Ikeyu herdsman, he said that there were four of them.”
Though sometimes five or six. But the fifth could be the Ametsu the crew had already killed.
And the sixth . . . an occasional visitor?
“How many Ikeyu?” the Tribespeaker asked.
“Twenty-three,” Badis said.
“Our warriors have never fought the Ikeyu,” the Godspeaker said. “They are large, and have fierce horns. Twenty-seven monstrous warriors are more than enough to obliterate all our people.”
“We believe the Ikeyu are peaceful,” Badis said.
“The Ikeyu are herdsmen,” Surjan added. “They will not attack you.”
“And if they do?” the Godspeaker demanded.
Marty smiled. “Then we will keep our vow to defend your people.”
“Have we not behaved honorably with you?” François asked.
The Speakers looked at each other silently.
“But I don’t believe the Ametsu are coming to this village to avenge anything,” Surjan said. “I don’t think they’re aware of the death yet.”
Marty nodded. “They didn’t seem to be organizing to go anywhere.”
“They will!” the Godspeaker snapped.
“My grandmother told me a slightly different story.” The Tribespeaker spoke slowly, chewing each word before he released it. “She said the Ametsu were sorcerers, yes, and their sorcery was in their amulets. She said the amulets were second hearts, and that you could kill a sorcerer by destroying its second heart. But also, she said she had once seen a wounded Ametsu. It had broken its leg in a flood and was trapped beneath a fallen log. Grandmother saw the Ametsu and watched it from hiding. She hoped it would die and she might find something of value on its body. But it made a terrible light with its amulet.”
“Did that heal it?” Marty asked.
The Tribespeaker shook his head. “It didn’t free the Ametsu, either. But six hours later, more Ametsu arrived, and they lifted the tree and carried their wounded fellow away.”
Marty, Surjan, and François exchanged glances.
“It’s a beacon,” François said. “For remote signaling. I know how it works.”
Marty raised an eyebrow, and the Frenchman nodded his confirmation.
“So it can call for help,” Marty said.
“It can do more than that,” Surjan told them. “One of your risks when you send someone out on patrol is they get stuck and need help. So this beacon allows the Ametsu to signal. But another risk is that your patrol gets wiped out, and you don’t learn of it. So another thing you can do is arrange periodic check-ins.”
“You’re saying that maybe the Ametsu expect their travelers to report home by flashing their beacons every day,” Marty said. “And when they don’t, base camp knows something is wrong.”
“Probably it isn’t every day, or they would already have mobilized,” Surjan suggested. “So maybe it’s every three days or once a week or something. But yes, that’s how I would do it. So I think yes, they’re going to miss a signal and come out looking for the dead Sethian. And it will be sooner rather than later.”
Marty nodded, against his will.
“Did your grandmother say anything else about the light?” Surjan asked. “For instance, did she say that the Ametsu flashed the light in a pattern? Or that he pointed at the heavens in a certain direction?”
The Tribespeaker shook his head.
“We have some advantages,” François said.
“Numbers. The high ground may be defensible.” Surjan looked at the Speakers. “If we wait for them on the ridge, is there water up there?”
The Tribespeaker nodded.
“We have another advantage,” François said. “We have the amulet.”
“If we knew how to use it,” Marty murmured.
“Not all of us get to spend our days out ahead of the crew, enjoying the scenery alone.” François grinned. “Some of us have been fiddling with alien technology as we walked instead, and learning how it worked.”
“Alien?” Surjan asked.
“Well, think about it.” François said. “These things obviously have some different kind of blood chemistry from what Earth animals have. What other thing directly converts from a solid to a gas without applying heat?”
“A mothball does.” Marty grinned.
“Exactly my point. For all we know those things we’re dealing with are made of some completely bizarre set of chemicals that are either artificially made or they came from somewhere else.” François’s eyes widened and his voice took on a more excited tone. “Holy crap, guys. Think about it. These things are just like images from Egypt’s pantheon of crazy mythology. We know it’s a myth because we’ve never uncovered an example of such a creature. Well, now we know why. These things just go poof after you kill them. Aliens, I’m telling you—it’s the only thing that makes sense. What else would you call it?”
“You can make the beacon work?” Marty asked, wanting to avoid the pointless debate on something neither of them could prove.
François nodded. “Depending on how I twist the face of this medallion, there’s several shades of light that come off of this thing, and an on-and-off switch. So I think if we stick to the shade of light that the Sethian had it set for, turn it on, and point it at the sky, that would have to be the Sethians’ distress signal.”
Marty tried to game out the possibilities in his head. “If we get the distress signal wrong—”
“Then we warn the Sethians that we have their beacon,” François said, finishing his thought. “And that’s not good.”
“You might have thought about that while you were dinking around with the medallion on the trail,” Marty pointed out.
“Yes, we all might avoid taking unnecessary risks,” Surjan said.
“I only did it in the daylight.” François sniffed.
“So we have to be prepared for the possibility that they come looking to rescue a comrade with a broken leg,” Marty said. “And also for the possibility that they come intending to crush the humans who have stolen their device.”
“Mostly, we have to be prepared for the inevitability that they will come,” Surjan said.
“And we have to be prepared to kill them.” Badis’s eyes gleamed.
“Can we count on your other warriors to help us?” Marty asked the Tribespeaker.
The Tribespeaker was slow to answer. “I have been patient. You are strange and this situation is new, and my father told me that it was almost always wise to make decisions slowly, and rely heavily on the wisdom of my ancestors. But what comes on us now is a threat my ancestors have never known. Yes, my warriors will fight with you. So will the women and the children, if need be. But know this, seer Dr. Cohen: I will hold you to your oath. You will save my people. And for every one of my people who dies, I will kill one of yours.”
Surjan growled without words.
François spread his hands. “You have never seen warriors as great as ours. We will kill the Ametsu and there will be no deaths from among your people. Thank you, Speaker for the Tribe.”
“The Tribe has spoken,” the Tribespeaker grunted.
The Speakers remained in the hut in deep discussion as the other four emerged. “Badis,” Surjan said. “Gather the warriors. We’ll need to give them instructions.”
“We’ll probably need the others, too,” François. “Maybe not to stab with spears, but I think we’re going to want to do some digging, or lay ropes, or such.”
Badis hurried away.
“You have a plan to share with us, then?” Surjan asked.
“Well, no,” François admitted. “But I’ve seen Home Alone.”
They hiked up onto the ridge to survey the land. The ridge had less grass than the surrounding plain. It was a blade of rock poking up through the dirt, carrying just enough soil to keep a thin green toupee going. Abundant boulders lay piled and tumbled about the stone. The shape of the ridge wasn’t uniform—its sides had eroded into multiple steep, short, narrow gulches, ending in cliff faces or in rugged scrambles up to the top of the ridge. Two of the gulches had springs that fed into the lake; a third spring bubbled from the stone near the top of the ridge.
Marty turned three hundred sixty degrees, examining the lay of the land and asking himself, What would Hannibal do? How would he control the battlefield? How would he fool or approach the enemy, to get exactly the battle he wanted, the battle that favored him?
He trailed his fingers through the cool flow of the spring water. “If we were worried about a rival tribe, I’d say we build a fence and rely on having our own food and water.”
“But the Sethians have laser beams,” François said. “Who knows what else they might have?”
“It’s a beacon,” Surjan growled. “Don’t get carried away.”
“If they have laser beacons,” François pointed out, “they might also have rocket-propelled grenades.”
Surjan snorted.
Down in the village, Marty saw Gunther sitting within a circle of children, telling them some tale. Kareem still slept. Lowanna had been sitting alone at a finger of rock at the eastern end of the ridge. She now stood and made her way toward them.
“We need to burn the village,” Marty said.
“Whoa!” François raised his hands in a calming gesture. “You might be a little short on sleep there, Doctor.”
“He’s right,” Surjan said. “We need to use this ridge, there’s no other terrain for miles around. But if the village is here and intact, with no sign of villagers, it looks like a trap. If there are burned huts here and the beacon is going off, then maybe it looks like there was a battle, and the Ametsu is calling for help.” He paused. “You know there are many, many ways we can get this beacon wrong. And only one way to get it right.”
Marty took a deep breath. “Yeah. But I think they’ll come investigate, in any case. Wouldn’t you?”
“I would,” Surjan agreed.
François scratched his chin. “You’re right. We need not just a burned village, but a scene. We need bodies. To make the whole thing look real.”
“I wish we had the body of the Ametsu,” Surjan grunted. “That would look real.”
“Except they turn to oatmeal,” François pointed out.
“Well, killing anybody is out,” Marty said.
“Who said anything about killing anyone?” François grinned.
Lowanna reached them. Her eyes were sunken and her hands trembled.
“You aren’t sleeping well,” Marty said.
“I hear voices,” she said.
Marty’s heart sank. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s like you said.” She swallowed. “It’s better that everyone has all the data, right? So here’s some of the data. I’m going crazy. You can’t count on me.”
“That’s not the data,” Marty said gently. “That’s a conclusion. The data is that you hear voices, like I see visions.” Visions of an unhandsome man, with big ears and staring eyes. “You’re stressed. You’re tired. I wish I had something to help you sleep.”
“No one’s going to prescribe her an Ambien, Marty,” François said.
“Maybe the village has a little alcohol they can spare,” Marty suggested.
François frowned. “Once in a while, a bird says, ‘Hey, look at me’?”
“Constantly,” Lowanna said. “Every animal we pass. Including, yes, every bird.”
“Every animal is a lot of animals,” Marty said.
“Far more than you realize.” She fixed his eyes with her gaze. “We pass mice and snakes and little things I can’t identify, like gophers, all the time. The rest of you don’t see them. But I do. Because they talk to me.”
Marty hadn’t given much thought to Lowanna’s voices, because she hadn’t talked about it very much. Now, suddenly, he saw that hearing the voices weighed on her.
“What do they say?” Surjan asked gently.
“Redrum, redrum.” François snickered.
“Shut it!” Surjan bellowed.
François blinked and closed his mouth.
“What do they say?” Marty asked.
“Animal things,” she said. “They call us Two-Legs all the time. They ask if we’ll drop crumbs for them to eat. They warn each other to get out of our way. Or to hide from the predators.”
“What do the predators say?” Marty asked.
“The predators are silent,” Lowanna said. “At least while they’re hunting.”
“These voices,” Marty asked. “Is this why the thought of meat started making you ill?”
“Maybe,” she said. “Probably.”
“We’re all sleepless,” Marty said. “And we’re all stressed. It would be surprising if none of us were seeing and hearing things. But I don’t think you’re hallucinating.”
“She is not hallucinating,” Surjan said.
“We’re all stressed and sleepless,” François said. “And scared and confused and worse. Because we have all experienced and seen and even done things we never imagined we would. But we didn’t hallucinate the Sethian, did we? We didn’t hallucinate Dr. Cohen killing him with a karate kick.”
“Kung fu,” Marty murmured. “Kung Fu Cohen, remember?”
“Whatever. Did we hallucinate him dissolving into goo?” François pressed. “Did you hallucinate the other Sethians? The cow-headed ones, what did you call them? Hathiru?”
“They taught me the word themselves,” Marty said. “Doath did.”
“I hallucinated nothing,” Surjan said.
“Right,” François said. “Me neither. So I believe that Lowanna isn’t hearing things that aren’t there. The animals are talking to her.”
Lowanna looked down, as if embarrassed by the support.
“Agreed.” Marty nodded, immediately thinking of Dr. Dolittle. “But why? And why just her?”
“Those are great questions to ask,” Surjan said. “But maybe we should ask them after we deal with the outpost of Sethians that we’re pretty sure is going to come try to kill us.”
“Agreed,” François said. “And one more thing. All of you.”
They all looked at him.
“If you jackasses ever want to be hired by me again,” he said, “you need to learn to take a joke.”