"You fools," Ngangata grated. "You stupid, dung-eating fools! What have you done to us? What were you doing?"
Perkar gestured behind them. "Time enough to explain that later on. Right now we have more to worry about than our stupidity."
Ngangata scowled as he looked around the three, peering out at the edge of the torchlight. There was nothing there to see, but the noises were still plain enough, without Human voices to cover them.
"I see," Ngangata said, voice still flat with anger. "Perkar, you are bleeding. Is anyone else injured?"
"It isn't all my blood," Perkar said. Indeed, the wound in his shoulder was nearly closed, though it still ached worse than any pain Perkar had ever experienced. It was as if an icicle had been imbedded in him.
"Let's go then," Ngangata said, when the others had not brought any injury to his attention. "We still have some distance to travel."
The torches Ngangata and Atti carried were good ones, slow-burning and bright. The demons stayed at bay, and at last they saw true daylight grinning at them from around a bend in the tunnel. When they finally stepped back out into the sunlight—it looked like morning—Eruka fell to his knees and began to sing the Sun Woman Epic. Atti yanked him roughly to his feet.
"Not now. Not now. Now you explain where you've been to the Forest Lord, and you had better be convincing. You fools may have doomed us all." Eruka seemed more than taken aback by this; he seemed on the verge of tears. Apad, covered with dried blood, seemed hardly alive, and Perkar took one glance at the assorted colors of blood staining his own clothes.
"We should take off our armor, shouldn't we?" he said. "I mean…"
"It doesn't matter," Ngangata said. "Whatever you did— whatever you fools did—the Forest Lord already knows."
Atti gave Apad a push, to get him going down the slope toward the trail. "Hurry," he said.
"Don't push me!" Apad shrieked, suddenly coming alive. His new sword came out, danced in the sunlight. It seemed to Perkar that the sword was moving Apad's wrist, rather than the other way around. The tip flicked dangerously near Atti, whose hand went to his own blade.
"Apad!" Perkar bellowed. Then more softly, "Apad. Put that away. You don't want to kill anyone else."
Apad's eyes seemed mad, but as they focused on Perkar, they softened. A bit of puzzlement replaced the wildness there.
"Perkar? Tell them not to push me. I can't stand it."
"No one will push you, Apad. Put that sword away. It looks like it wants to kill something." He noticed, startled, that the sword had blood on it. He must have handed Apad the selfsame blade he had killed the woman with. He didn't remember doing that. In fact, he thought he remembered a different weapon, straight-bladed rather than curved. Apad had always held that curved swords were "just for butchering" while straight ones were for warriors. It seemed that he was right. Nevertheless, slowly, reluctantly, Apad put the blade away.
"Those are godswords you have," Ngangata declared, astonishment as plain as the chagrin. "Gods of heaven and mountain, what have you done?"
"Nothing good, I think." Perkar sighed.
The trip back down into the lower valley was nearly silent. Perkar wanted desperately to stop and rest, if only for a moment. They had plainly been underneath the mountain for a full day and a night. He had hardly slept the previous night. The pain in his shoulder seemed worse, and his legs were beginning to wobble beneath him. So numb did all of this make him that, try as he might, he could not conjure up any image of the coming confrontation, had no idea what he would tell the Forest Lord. When at last they came before him, it was all he could do to stay on his feet.
The Kapaka, seated on a stone, rose as the party approached. He was ashen, his face paler than his beard. Perkar almost thought he swayed when he saw them in their armor, with all the bloodstains. He closed his eyes for a long moment.
The Forest Lord loomed larger than before; he seemed, somehow, to have become a part of the enormous tree, his huge bearlike body merging imperceptibly into bark and wood. His eye, now a wide black orb, seemed as sightless as they had been in the underneath. Perkar was vividly reminded of the Wild God. So low was Balati's voice that he almost didn't understand it.
"So you see," Balati told the Kapaka, "you have lied to me. I smell the blood of a mortal woman on them. They have slain her and stolen from my treasure."
The Kapaka bowed his head. When he finally spoke, it was with a semblance of conviction, but Perkar sensed the despair behind the seeming. "Lord, these men are young. They act fool-ishly. We will return your things and make restitution for the woman."
Balati may have considered that and he may not have; his head turned from side to side with glacial slowness.
"I will give no more land to Human Beings," he said finally. "And you must leave now, before I lose patience. That is the best I can do for you. No more words from you. Take your steel out of my realm. Take the things you have stained; I care nothing for them."
Apad was suddenly in motion, sword whipping out, a mad, inarticulate shriek on his lips. What then happened Perkar had to sort out later. He remembered Ngangata seeming just to appear in Apad's path, the godsword cutting bright ribbons of light around him. Then Apad was lying on the ground, spitting blood from his mouth. Ngangata bent and carefully took the sword from where it had fallen. He seemed unscathed.
"I think I'll keep this for the moment," he said.
The Forest Lord, apparently unimpressed by any of this, turned and moved off into the forest. His bulk seemed to shiver, to break apart like a pile of leaves blown about by the wind. Each shard became a crow, a cloud of them, and they rose into the sky like a whirlwind of ashes.
Perkar flinched away from the Kapaka's gaze. The old man sat back down on his stone, lips pressed tight.
"He had agreed to give us three more valleys, boys. Three more." He closed his eyes again, put a hand to his temple.
"Kapaka," Ngangata said. "Kapaka, we had best go now."
Perkar could see the Alwat. They all looked agitated, kept glancing around themselves nervously.
"Now," the half man said.
Atti touched Ngangata's shoulder. "Couldn't we wait a moment? Until the king recovers his strength?"
Ngangata shook his head. "We are already too late, I think. The Huntress and the Raven will waken by morning if not sooner. If we are not far, far away by then, we will certainly die."
"But…" Eruka began, trailed off.
"He told us to leave," Perkar finished for him.
"Yes. But I know these gods, and I know the Forest Lord. He is never of one mind. The Huntress and the Raven will want blood for this, and they will want to hunt. Thus we should go, now, be the best prey we can be. If we are very clever and very fast we may reach someplace beyond their power before they catch us."
The Kapaka looked up at that, his eyes watery and tired. "Then we die. No place is beyond their reach, I think."
Ngangata shook his head. "No," he stated. "There is one."
Perkar patted Mang's neck sympathetically. The horse's flank heaved with exhaustion and his normally beautiful coat was foamy with sweat.
"The horses can't take much more of this," he complained.
"They have to," Ngangata called back to him.
The worst part of it was, despite the valiant exertion of the animals, they seemed to be making little progress. The hill country had no trails, and the ridges ran in the wrong direction. They spent all of their time climbing up and running down hills, picking their way around fierce thickets of brambles. Mang's coat was crisscrossed with bleeding scratches, and none of the other horses was faring any better. Miraculously the Alwat, on foot, somehow managed to keep pace with them, though the eldest rode up behind Ngangata. Perkar tried to offer Digger a ride as well, but she seemed afraid to approach Mang closely, and, after all, she might not have really understood his offer. Unaccustomed as he was to reading Alwat expressions, it seemed to him that they understood their plight better than he; even the normally frolicsome Digger seemed grim, pushing through thorns and clambering over rocky ground with little regard for the countless wounds on her body.
"Why must the Alwat flee?" Perkar asked. "Surely Balati knows they had no part in our folly."
"No. Are you deaf? I told you how the Forest Lord thinks. We were all with the Kapaka; he thinks of us all as the Kapaka. Whatever crime one of us commits, he sees that as the fault of all of us, even the Alwat. I told you this, and still you went ahead with your insane scheme."
"I didn't understand," Perkar said.
"Well, you will," Ngangata said. "And let's leave this off. We have no time to fight amongst ourselves."
"What if we split up, went our own ways? Mightn't they hunt only those of us who are actually guilty then?"
"No. They would kill us all, alone, individually. Our only hope, together or alone, is to reach the Changeling. They will not follow us there; the Forest Lord fears his Brother."
"But what of the Changeling?" Atti asked. "Will he treat us any better?"
"I have no idea. But I know for certain what will happen to us if we dally here."
They crossed over a ridge, and Perkar saw another line of hills in the distance. Between them and those ridges stretched a vast bottomland.
"We can make better time down there, perhaps," the Kapaka said hopefully.
Perkar couldn't answer. More than anything, he wanted rest. His clothes and armor felt like a skin of scabs, and he could not think clearly. His eyes were wooden balls, rattling aimlessly about in their sockets, his fingers continually slipping from the reins.
"We need rest, Mang," he muttered, patting the great beast's neck again, leaning his forehead down upon his mane. The rich, warm scent of the horse seemed the only real thing in the world, a smell from home, the scent of the barn. Everything else was a dream, a fumbling, nightmarish dream in which he ran and ran and never got anywhere. He kicked Mang's flanks, regretted it even as he did so, as the great heart under him strained to go just a little faster. Perkar felt his eyes blink closed, open reluctantly, blink closed again.
He was standing near the city of white stone, ankle deep in water. The water sucked and pulled at his feet. He looked down at them, saw the angry, brilliant reflection of the sun there. Immensely tired, he stripped off his armor and clothes, crouched down in the water, and then, with a sigh, lay back in it, relaxed in its insistent tugging.
When he opened his eyes again, there was the little girl, gazing at him with large, expressive black eyes. As he watched, she began to weep, and with a growing horror, he realized that her tears were red, like blood. Rivulets of it collected on her chin, cascaded down her chest, thickening, so that sheets of blood were pouring into the river at her feet. It was then that he realized that the entire river was blood, and the stench of it filled his head. He leapt up out of it, but the blood clung to him, even when he wiped at it frantically with his hands. He began to cry, but his own tears were blood, too. He began to shriek.
Perkar jerked awake, gasping, his heart hammering in his chest. It took a long moment to remember where he was, what was happening. The dream had been so vivid that it seemed more concrete than waking. A miracle that he had not fallen off of his horse. The others were ahead; Mang had taken his dozing for a break. Reluctantly Perkar urged him on.
When he caught up with the others, Apad was talking to Eruka. Perkar was a bit surprised; after recovering from Ngangata's blow, Apad had been sullen and completely silent.
"Perkar," Apad said as he trotted up. "We thought we had lost you for a moment."
"I fell asleep. I need rest."
"We all do," Apad said.
"How are you, Apad? We've been worried about you."
"I'd be better with some rest, I think," he said. "I was mad there for a while, wasn't I?"
Perkar shrugged.
"I've never killed anyone before," Apad admitted.
"Nor have I," said Perkar.
"I just can't believe…" Apad trailed off, his eyes becoming distant.
"Later," Perkar told him. "Think about it later. Right now we have to see that the Kapaka lives to reach the River."
Eruka nodded, but worry lay on his face, slumped on his shoulders. "Do you think Ngangata is right? Will the Huntress come after us?"
"I think so," Perkar said. "Ngangata knows this land, these gods. It was stupid of us to doubt him."
"I know," Apad said. "Much as I hate to admit it. If we live through this, I suppose we have him to thank for it." The tightness of Apad's mouth suggested that this observation was not one he enjoyed making. "He should give me my sword back, though. If he's right, we're going to need it."
"If any of them will listen to any of us," Perkar said. "But when the time comes, I will ask for you."
"Thank you, Perkar," Apad said. "I'm sorry for what happened. I'm sorry I killed her. It's just that I thought…"
"The Lemeyi set you to it," Eruka said. "He told us she was the Tiger Goddess, just waiting for her chance."
"The Lemeyi," Apad said dully. "It is his fault. Why did he do that?"
"I don't think the Lemeyi needs a rational reason for doing things," Perkar said, and then, after a moment: "Any more than we do."
After noon, the sky began to darken. A thunderhead gathered above the mountain, and cold, wet wind began to bluster down, bending the trees. Leaves flapped their pale undersides, and it seemed to Perkar as if they weren't leaves at all, but thousands of white moths, clinging to dead branches. Ravens flew above, croaking their dire songs, ebony harbingers of the storm.
"The hunt has begun," Ngangata said grimly. "We still have far to go."
They redoubled their speed, and Perkar was again surprised at what Mang was willing to give him; though he could feel the animal shuddering, he broke from canter to gallop as they beat recklessly across the open floor of the bottomland. Perkar tried to calculate how far they had to go to the next line of hills. Engaged in that, he heard the first, faint howling. Wolves, and many of them, singing their hunger.
Thunder cracked above, but to Perkar's ear it sounded more like the croak of a giant raven.
By the time they reached the hills, the howling of the wolves had taken on an exultant tone, a fierce anticipation.
"Maybe we should just stop, make a stand," Perkar shouted up to Ngangata. "After all, we have the godswords."
"That is the Forest Lord's hunt," Ngangata bellowed. "He can call every god and beast in this land. You cannot slay them all, Perkar. It would only give them sport."
"They will catch us anyway!"
"Over these hills is the basin where the Changeling flows. We must cross those hills."
Perkar set his teeth. Eruka was pale, frightened. Apad—Apad looked grim.
They forded a stream, stopped just long enough for the horses to wet their mouths. Ngangata reached back to the bundle on his saddle. He took his bow and strung it; Atti did the same. Perkar watched helplessly. He could string his bow, of course, but if he tried to fire it from horseback he would certainly fall off.
Ngangata slid the godsword he had taken from Apad from his saddle. He scowled at it.
"Apad," he called, and tossed the sheathed weapon to the man. Apad caught it, bowed his head in acknowledgment and thanks.
"Piraku around and about you, Ngangata," he said softly.
Ngangata nodded back. "Don't let the horses fill their bellies," he told them all. "They won't be able to run."
Mang stumbled often as they hurried up the steep slope. Once both front legs collapsed, and he nearly rolled over Perkar trying to get back up. Perkar dismounted and ran holding the reins of the trembling beast. Slower, that put him back with the Alwat, who were at last beginning to straggle. They were running in a tight little group, the slightly larger males on the outside, cane spears in hand. Perkar got a glance at their feet; their deerskin shoes were in tatters, and the flesh within was bruised and bleeding.
The ground steepened a bit more and, worse, became gravelly. The horses slipped on it, and for that matter so did Perkar. The wolves were close now; Mang shivered nervously at their scent, but was otherwise brave. Glancing back down the slope, Perkar made out a gray shape coursing toward the base of the hills—and then another and another. And then, through a break in the trees, the hunt itself.
More wolves than he could count swarmed through the forest, but they suddenly seemed the least of their worries, for with them came the Huntress. Her face was too small to read at this distance, but Perkar could see her eyes flashing green fire. Her antlers were black, and in one hand she carried a recurved bow of bone. She was seated atop a lion, but it must have been the Lion Master, for it was three times the size of any lion Perkar had ever seen, golden but striped with black. It was female, maneless, a Huntress, too.
Karak, the Raven God, sat on the shoulder of the Huntress. In their train came more beasts: tigers with long fangs, boars the size of cattle. Many of these creatures also had riders, feral-looking men who were surely not men. They wore the skins of bears, and Perkar suspected that they were more of the Mountain Gods, ones he did not know.
Perkar realized that he had been staring, paralyzed. It was Digger, tugging frantically at his sleeve, who broke the spell.
The hill sloped more gently, after that, and he remounted. Wolves were actually loping on their flanks now, but they seemed only to be pacing them, herding them perhaps. Ngangata stood in his saddle; now and then, he loosed an arrow. Each shot was rewarded by an animal howl of pain.
Perkar drew his sword. "You gave me vision when I needed it," he said to it. "What can you give me now?"
"I tend your wounds," the voice in his ear said. Perkar reached up to his shoulder. Indeed, the pain had gone out of it, and to his astonishment the skin had already closed in a little pucker over the puncture. Only the hole in his armor assured him that he had not been dreaming when the demon stabbed him.
"I took the poison from you, too," the sword assured him.
"Poison?"
"The wound was full of poison."
"Can you kill gods? Can you kill the Huntress and the Raven?"
"I am a weapon. Of my own volition I can kill nothing. Wielded by the right hand I can certainly kill a god. But I make you no quicker or stronger than you ever were, no more skillful."
"You did something to my vision, made me see danger…"
"There is that. I can draw your gaze to where it needs to be."
"Can you draw my gaze to where I must strike, to kill a god?"
"Yes. But a god cannot be killed with one blow. You must sever the cords that hold their hearts, and that is not easily done. Gods have heartstrings like metal, and they must be severed one stroke at a time."
"How many of these strings?"
"Seven is the usual number."
Perkar wondered if the sword could close his wounds fast enough to allow him to fight the Huntress. He asked it that.
"I heal your wounds by strengthening the mortal strings of your heart with my own. A god will see this and begin severing mine. When I am cut away from your heart, I can no longer heal you and you will die."
"You make me equal to a god?"
The voice in his ear clucked, and Perkar realized that it was laughing.
"Not equal to a Mountain Goddess. She would always be faster than you and stronger than you, cut your heartstrings like horsehair. Perhaps if you came upon her asleep …"
"She is not asleep. She has the hunt with her."
"Well, then, I wonder who shall carry me next."
Ahead, Ngangata and Atti both loosed arrows nearly simultaneously. One final scramble and they reached the top of the ridge, Perkar and the Alwat last. He looked back, the way they had come. The hillside was not heavily forested; the rocks gave purchase only to tough, scrubby plants. Perkar could see the hunt as a vast rustling, like an ant bed stirred up. The Huntress was in sight below them. Atti fitted an arrow to his bow and loosed it.
Perkar held his breath as the shaft arced down. Ngangata fired, as well. The goddess jerked as Atti's arrow slid into her chest, nearly fell from her mount when Ngangata's took her in the shoulder. Perkar saw her teeth flash in a horrible, predatory smile, and then her own bow was bending.
The next instant Atti reeled from his saddle, his throat neatly pierced by a black-feathered shaft. Perkar watched in horror as the red-haired man thrashed about on the ground.
"Over!" Ngangata howled. "Over the ridge!"
"Get Atti!" the Kapaka ordered.
"He is already dead!" Ngangata answered. Indeed, Atti still seemed alive, though his thrashing was already feeble. The shaft had passed through the great artery in his neck, and his blood was a fountain. Perkar urged Mang on, over the ridge. Ngangata, Eruka, and the Kapaka had already crossed.
A vast basin spread out below them, the hollow into which all of the surrounding hills and mountains bled their waters. In the crease of it was a gorge, the bottom of which they could not see at this angle. Nevertheless, there could be no doubt that it was the River, the Changeling. There was also no doubt that it was too far away. Perkar had once had a nightmare about being deep underwater, holding his breath, able to see the surface but with the sure knowledge he would never reach it. It was the same here. The slopes and floor of the basin were mostly bare, smooth stone, open ground that their horses could traverse quickly. But their horses were tired, and the hunt was strong, was gaining on them too quickly. It might be a close chase, but the certainty that they would not make it clenched Perkar's heart like a fist.
Sunlight leaked through the clouds, casting mottled golden light on the gorge. He was not too tired to see the irony in the situation—his first view of his great enemy, and yet at the moment the Changeling represented salvation.
All of the party except Apad and the Alwat were already ahead of him, threading down the slope. He looked back, fearing to see Apad shot. He wasn't; he was close behind Perkar. The Alwat, however, had halted. They were gathered in a little clump, their spears bristling out like the quills of a hedgehog.
"What are they doing?" Perkar asked—rhetorically, for Ngangata was too far ahead to hear.
"Picking where they are going to die," Apad said. He grinned, suddenly, fiercely, the first such expression Perkar had seen on his face for some time. He held up the sword Perkar had chosen him, the one that had slain the woman. It was shimmering, colored like a rainbow. Perkar hadn't seen it do that before.
"There was a trick to it," Apad confided. "I'm glad I didn't learn it earlier, or I would have killed Ngangata. I was wrong about him."
"We all were," Perkar said. "Come on."
Apad glanced back at the Alwat. Digger was watching them, her expression unreadable.
"Good-bye, Perkar," Apad said. "Remember me to my family." He turned his horse and in an instant plunged back over the crest of the hill, back the way they had come.
For a second Perkar was paralyzed; then, with a shriek, he, too, wheeled his horse. With their weapons, he and Apad could make a fight of it, could slow the Huntress for an instant or two at least; give the Kapaka more time to reach the River. This mess was his fault as much as Apad's. He felt a brief flare of guilt, for he was probably dooming Mang, as well, but that was as it must be.
He plunged down the slope behind Apad, heedless. It seemed almost as if their horses were falling rather than running, so great was their speed. When he whooped, Apad turned once and grinned at him. About that time, Perkar felt a terrific flash of pain in his chest. He looked down, gape-mouthed, at the arrow standing there.
"One heartstring gone," the sword told him. Perkar slumped forward in the saddle, spit blood out of his mouth. It hurt terribly to breathe. Mang continued his plummet, however, and they tore through a slash of scrub; there, just below the steepest part of the cliff, the Huntress was following their progress with the tip of another arrow.
Apad did not slow his horse or take it down the switchback trail they had made coming up. Instead, shrieking like a madman, he urged his horse straight down, so that the poor beast bolted out into space. He seemed poised there for an instant; the shaft loosed by the Huntress seemed to float lazily up at him, before it lodged in the airborne horse. Then Apad and his mount slammed into the Huntress and the lion she rode, the horse shrieking piteously. Karak squawked and took to the air, just as the Huntress went down beneath Apad and his horse.
Perkar had too little strength to challenge Mang to the same feat, though the pain in his chest was already fading somewhat. Mang charged down the switchback; when Perkar reached the fray he could see that Apad had not only rolled clear of the tangle of horse and lion, but was setting about him among the feral-looking riders. He was shivering like his sword, dancing wildly with more skill than Apad had ever before demonstrated. Even as Perkar watched, one of the Bear-Men sank to his knees, decapitated, his blood a golden spray from his neck.
"He's carrying Madedge," the voice said in Perkar's ears. It sounded jubilant. "Madedge can fight!"
Perkar wasn't paying attention anymore. Mang died underneath him, sprouting a dozen arrows. Perkar took another in the ribs and two more glanced from his hauberk, but now his anger was on him. Even as Mang stumbled he was leaping from his saddle. A wolf died instantly, cloven by the jade blade, and Perkar let the weapon guide his eyes, prioritize his attacks. Next was one of the Bear-Men. Perkar parried a spear thrust and impaled him. Wrenching the sword out, he pushed on.
"That didn't kill him," the sword informed him.
Perkar didn't care. "Huntress!" he shrieked. "Fight me!" He slashed at wolves, fighting toward the Huntress. She had regained her feet, wielding a long, bright-pointed spear. Her smile was one of satisfaction, even of joy.
Perkar saw Apad die; Karak, the Crow God, lighted on him, one black claw on each shoulder, slashed down with his razor-sharp beak. Apad's head split like a seed.
Perkar stumbled as a wolf bit into his leg; he cut it, but it did not let go, and then his head snapped around to face the greater danger: the lion. It was favoring one leg, probably from the impact of Apad's horse. Still, it leapt, snarling, and Perkar sheared into its skull even as the weight of the beast hit him. Distantly he felt his belly split open, heard the mail tear. More pain followed, from too many places to keep track of. The last thing he saw was the Huntress standing over him, her spear flashing down toward his throat.