Leoni gripped the chain with both hands and jerked it back hard. ‘You’re an asshole,’ she hissed as he struggled for balance. ‘That’s what I say.’ She let go of the chain so that she could point the index finger of her right hand at him. She didn’t know why she felt she should do this, but as she made the gesture a surge of energy poured through her, Don Apolinar’s eyes widened and he staggered as though punched by an invisible fist.
He dropped the leash and backed off several paces. ‘So,’ he said, ‘you have the force.’ She stepped towards him and he retreated; another step towards him, another retreat. He was still speaking: ‘But you don’t know how to use it!’
He extended his free hand, flexed the fingers and closed them into a fist. At once Leoni lost all power of movement and fell sprawling on the granite flagstones. She could neither resist nor speak, yet remained fully conscious as Don Apolinar stooped down beside her and thrust his fingers deep into her brain.
Chapter Fifty-Three
The distance between the two groups was down to sixty paces and the Illimani were closing fast when Bont began his charge. Twelve against nine, but Ria intended to shorten those odds. Wincing at a fresh surge of pain from her bruised rib, she picked the brave wearing another man’s skin, empty hands and feet flapping at his wrists and ankles, and smashed his head with her first stone. Vermin! Who the fuck did these people think they were? She palmed a second stone, targeted a warrior with a necklace of dangling penises, and broke his nose in an explosion of blood. He fell to his knees, clutching his face.
A shadow appeared beside her as she reached for more stones and she saw Ligar draw his bow and fire an arrow into a man’s eye. Right away he drew and fired again, a belly shot that dropped a tough-looking brave screaming. His third arrow transfixed a brave’s naked chest, protruding a span beyond his back. Then Bont was amongst them, his double-headed axe snaking out with incredible power as he smashed his way through the survivors, hacking off one man’s head with a single blow, opening a huge fountaining wound in another’s side, backhanding the blade into the next man’s face, chopping the legs out from under another.
Screaming defiant war cries, the last three mounted a desperate attack, swarming the Clansman, pressing him hard, getting inside the reach of the axe. While Ligar was darting back and forth, searching for an angle, hesitating to shoot into the melee for fear of hitting his friend, Ria let fly with a third stone, bringing down another man. That left two, both big guys, one wearing penises in his hair, the other with a severed head tied to his waistband, grappling with Bont.
But Bont seemed energised after his healing. With a roar of fury and a tremendous explosion of raw strength he flung both attackers back, swung his axe double-handed and hammered its blade into one man’s chest. The second circled, jabbing with a long knife, but Bont slapped it aside with the flat of the axe, stepped in on him and brought the blade down with such force onto the top of his skull that the blow split open his head from crown to chin, scattering brain tissue and teeth.
As the brave crashed to the ground at his feet Bont gave a great bellow of triumph, raised the dripping axe high in the air, shook it, looked around eagerly and shouted: ‘WHO NEXT?’
At once his question was answered. A blood-spattered Illimani, mightily built, with rippling muscles and armed with an axe bigger than Bont’s, stepped out from a narrow alley and swaggered into the middle of the camp’s main thoroughfare about two hundred paces to the south. He was bald but, as though to compensate, four severed heads of Clansmen and Clanswomen, dripping gore, were suspended by their hair from his leather waistband, their open eyes glaring. The massive warrior shouted something at Bont in the jarring, grinding gutturals of the Illimani tongue, loosened his waistband letting the heads thud to the ground, raised his own axe, and began to march forward, confident and threatening. As he walked, another brave stepped forth from the side streets, and another, and another.
Ria saw they were a second scouting party, this time numbering close to forty. They marched forward in a tight mass and stopped a hundred paces away, spreading themselves out across the thoroughfare in two wide ranks.
Ligar fired an arrow, taking a warrior in the throat. Ria palmed her last two hunting stones and began to jog towards the Illimani. At eighty paces she hurled her first stone. It struck the bald brave on the dome of his forehead and bounced off with a loud clunk. He stood looking stupid, then his eyes rolled up in his head, the axe dropped from his fingers, and he fell senseless.
Ria was still running as more arrows from Ligar’s bow hissed past her. Two more men crumpled. A third, pierced through the eye, shrieked and clawed at his face, stumbled out of the line and fell. At forty paces, Ria brained another with her last stone. Realising how far ahead of her companions she had run, she stopped just twenty paces from the waiting Illimani and pulled the long flint knife from her belt.
With a thud of running feet, Bont appeared beside her, his axe held loosely in his huge hands. Ligar was right behind him but a glance showed Ria he was out of arrows. He laid his bow down and pulled a dagger from his belt.
Then Brindle, Oplimar and Jergat pounded up. All had armed themselves with discarded weapons. Jergat had picked up one of the short Illimani throwing spears that lay scattered about and taken a jagged-edged knife from a brave Bont had killed. Oplimar held a big war axe in his right hand and a smaller wicked-looking hatchet in his left. Brindle wielded a heavy wooden club studded with shards of razor-edged flint.
Next Vulp pushed himself into the line, his mane of long white hair hanging to his shoulders, a dagger in each hand. Bahat was with him, swarthy and bearded, swinging an axe.
Last came Rotas. His movements were stiff and dignified, but he held a heavy Clan spear tipped with a long leaf-shaped blade pointed at the Illimani phalanx.
For a frozen instant the two groups, still more than thirty against nine, eyed one another in complete silence across the narrow strip of trampled ground that separated them. Then, in the distance, from the edge of the camp where the captured children were held, a great collective chant began to rise up from the mass of the Illimani force, thousands upon thousands of rough, snarling, brutish voices all calling out in unison. And what they were saying was:
‘SUL … PA!’
‘SUL … PA!’
‘SUL … PA!’
The sound of that name, uttered like this, was spine-chilling. The Illimani braves seemed to cock their ears and listen. A blank look settled like snow over all their faces and, with a scream, they launched themselves at Ria and her companions.
Chapter Fifty-Four
This body that Leoni was in – occupying, inhabiting, maybe even possessing – was in many ways very much like a regular body, with all the normal functions. But you could do things to it that your meat body back on planet Earth couldn’t handle.
For example, what was being done to her right now as she lay paralysed on the hard stone floor of the shadowy granite chamber.
Kneeling by her shoulder, Don Apolinar was shoving his thick stubby fingers through various parts of her skull. He was moving them around inside her brain. The pain and feelings of violation were horrible. Yet she felt detached from the ordeal. It was a bit like being raped: you went numb; you blotted it out and survived.
‘You cannot hide it,’ he said after a moment. ‘I with my magic will find it.’
She just had time to think Hide what? Find what? when he placed his hands over her ears and plunged all his fingers and both thumbs into her head in a great explosion of pain.
‘Tell me where it is,’ he hissed.
‘Use your magic, douchebag! I don’t even know what you’re talking about.’
He seemed to consider, a look of greed and violent machismo crossing his face. All his fingers were still inside her head, past the second knuckle. ‘Treasure!’ he barked. ‘In your brain she buried it.’
The thick fingers probed deeper and in a flash Leoni understood.
He meant the filamen
t of crystal the Blue Angel had implanted in her left temple!
For some reason he wanted it. He called it treasure. Maybe this was the reason he’d grabbed her in the first place.
She was already fighting to suppress her memories of the surprise operation the Angel had performed on her when Don Apolinar grunted with delight and she knew he had read her mind. ‘See how easily you surrender to me,’ he boasted. ‘Like a child. You have the force yet I overwhelm you.’ His hand shot towards her temple and hovered over the exact spot where the crystal was buried. A finger went in. A thumb. ‘Oh, I am so clever,’ he crowed. ‘This is my magic, mine, that has found the treasure!’
He lunged, seemed to catch hold of something, grunted with satisfaction and pulled hard. Leoni screamed – the pain was unimaginable – and Don Apolinar giggled. ‘Yes! Yes!’ – he sounded like he was having an orgasm – ‘I will take it now!’
She stared into his eyes, dark as smoked mirrors. In this paralysed state there was nothing she could do to prevent him from ripping the crystal thread out of her brain and she felt sure he would kill her when he did. But as he tightened his grip something distracted him. He faltered, tilted his head to one side and seemed to listen.
Leoni could hear it too – the sacred melody of an icaro, muffled and indistinct. She felt Don Apolinar’s grip loosen again. Leaving her prone and helpless on the floor, he removed his fingers from her brain and surged to his feet just as the granite wall of the great chamber split open and a small tawny eagle hurtled through the gap, so fast it was a blur. It flew straight at Don Apolinar, forcing him to dive, raked his face with its talons as it passed, and landed beside Leoni. She felt a reassuring hand on her shoulder and watched, stunned, as the eagle completed its transformation into a man.
Don Emmanuel! Of course!
As suddenly as it had set in, her paralysis left her. She struggled to her feet, tearing off and throwing down the choke chain and leash that still hung around her neck.
The two men were circling, their eyes locked, and a dangerous energy crackled between them.
Don Emmanuel gestured to Leoni to stay back and she moved to obey, keeping him between herself and Don Apolinar. Although she guessed the bodies both men inhabited were like her own – avatars with capacities their bodies on Earth did not possess – she couldn’t help but feel the inequality of the contest. It wasn’t that one was old and small while the other was tall and in his prime. Such attributes meant little in these realms of endless transformation. Rather, she sensed a spectacular difference of power, a difference of force, between the older and the younger man. Hovering like a miasma about Don Apolinar was a capacity for malice, an appetite for cruelty and a lust for evil that Don Emmanuel could not match.
Both men began to shapeshift as they circled, one form merging into another in dizzying succession. Don Apolinar became a bear, a wolf, a lion, Don Emmanuel became a stag, a boa constrictor, a cayman. Too fast for the eye to follow, their shifts and changes cycled through countless different forms until suddenly they clashed in a blur of transformation. Roaring and bellowing, Don Apolinar became a tiger biting down on the neck of Don Emmanuel as a buffalo who transformed into a porcupine to break free and back into a buffalo to throw the tiger over his head. But the tiger was already changing into a great serpent that wrapped its coils around the buffalo which became a mouse that escaped and transformed into a snarling dog.
Darting around the edge of the circle, Leoni needed no second bidding to keep as far away as possible from all the various manifestations of Don Apolinar. Don Emmanuel had returned to the eagle form in which he had entered the chamber, but as he swooped and slashed she could see his strength was failing. Don Apolinar’s avatar had become a massive white jaguar, radiant with violent energy. He leapt, paws outstretched, and grappled with Don Emmanuel in flight. His claws raked a wing, spraying blood and feathers, there was a brittle crunch of broken bones and the eagle was smashed to the floor.
At once both men reverted to human form and Don Apolinar stood wide-legged in triumph, straddling the little Shipibo shaman who lay sprawled on his back, blood pumping from his chest and shoulder. His left arm was half torn from his body and grotesquely broken in three places. His eyes were wide and glassy.
‘Foolish little healer,’ sneered Don Apolinar. ‘Your magic weak, my magic strong.’ He stooped: ‘I think I kill you now, yes? Maybe cut out your heart?’
Leoni watched in a daze as Don Apolinar drew a long thin knife from a pocket of his white suit.
Chapter Fifty-Five
A club glanced off Ria’s shoulder, numbing her left arm, but she kept her balance, ducked under her attacker’s guard, drove her knife into his belly and twisted the blade as she drew it out. Two more braves were bearing down on her, their crazed blue eyes burning. She dodged between them, stabbed one, opened the other’s throat. She could see Brindle was in trouble, pressed hard by three Illimani braves. But he wasn’t asking for help. Nobody was. Bahat had fallen already. Ligar too … Ria fended off a spear, a blade sliced her arm, something heavy bashed into the side of her head and suddenly – it was as though a mountain had fallen on her – she was smashed to the ground amongst a forest of pale, hairy Illimani legs. She surged up again, stabbing blindly, but more huge blows knocked her back down and she tumbled, it seemed for ever, into darkness.
As consciousness seeped back Ria found a powerful grip fastened in her hair, dragging her body bumping and jolting over the ground. Her head pounded and her ears rang where she’d been clubbed. She blinked because her eyes were full of blood. Somehow she got a hand to her face, cleared her vision. A tall young Illimani was dragging her towards the meeting ground, tugging so hard on her hair that her scalp was about to tear free of her skull. She could see her flint knife tucked into his waistband beside a bouncing severed head, a cluster of penises and other grotesque trophies.
As the brave hauled her between two of the huge wooden posts that encircled the meeting ground she reached up her hands, seized his thick forearm, plunged her nails deep into his flesh, and threw all her weight against him. He stumbled in surprise, loosening his grip on her hair, and she was on him at once. With a howl she snatched her knife from his waistband and stabbed him in the groin, sawing the blade upwards before jerking it free. He fell screaming beneath her and she felt mad joy stirring in her heart. Where was the next Illimani to kill? Then a big knuckly fist struck her full in the face and she was flat on her back on the ground again, unable to resist as her knife was wrested from her grasp, ears ringing, flashing lights dancing before her eyes.
Ria peered up, blinking through more blood, feeling dizzy and sick, and saw Grigo, flanked by Illimani braves, standing over her holding the knife.
She was still too dazed to fight back as he stooped and cut her leggings away from her hips, leaving her naked from the waist down. ‘You’re part of my prize,’ he explained, as he shoved her knife into his belt. ‘Lord Sulpa gave you to me.’ His face darkened: ‘But I guess you don’t get what that means.’ He leaned closer, dribbling spit, grabbed her hair and forced her onto her face, thrusting a knee between her thighs. ‘It means I finally get to fuck you, you BITCH. After that I’m going to burn you with your friends.’
Turning her head, Ria saw, with a leap of hope, that her companions were not dead. They were being herded together close to the bonfire at the centre of the meeting ground. Brindle was bleeding heavily from a head wound and Bont was carrying him like a child in his massive arms. Bahat was on the ground in a pool of blood. He moved, so he was alive. But he looked done for. Ligar was also hurt. Vulp, Rotas, Oplimar and Jergat were in better shape but all had taken savage beatings.
Grigo clamped his right hand onto the back of Ria’s neck. She could feel him squirming on top of her, his knee jammed up tightly between her buttocks, as he tried to unbelt his leggings. But it seemed he needed two hands for that and he let go of her neck again. She didn’t know why she found it funny but suddenly she was laughing and shrieking
her defiance: ‘What’s the matter, Grigo? Can’t you find your prick?’
She raised her head.
A ring of Illimani braves, naked but for the weapons they carried and the ever-present spear-throwers slung across their backs, had gathered round to shout what sounded like encouragement to Grigo in their harsh, growly language. He grunted, punched the back of her head, and finally tugged down his belt and leggings with both hands, exposing a pale, floppy penis. ‘Look at that!’ Ria cackled through waves of giddiness and nausea. ‘You can’t even get it up’ – and her laughter spread to the five braves encircling them, driving Grigo into a frenzy.
WHACK! His fist smashed into the back of her head again and she crumpled. Her face was turned to the side when she hit the ground and her eyes were open. Grigo was preoccupied with his limp, stinking cock – Ria could actually smell it from this close – and the Illimani were having too much fun watching, so she alone saw Driff, naked as the rest of his tribe, loping towards them with a tomahawk in each hand. He strode right through the ring of braves and, before anyone took notice, stepped in on Grigo, chopped one of the hatchets deep into his face and kicked him away from Ria as he tugged the blade clear.
At first the Illimani didn’t react – as though betrayal by one of their own was impossible even to contemplate. Driff charged them, his face pale, and in a heartbeat three of them went down, screaming and spouting blood. Two more surged forward to take their place but also fell under his hatchets. By then he’d lost the advantage of surprise and more braves converged on him from the larger group guarding the prisoners beside the bonfire. A spear pierced his side, a club glanced off his head and it seemed he must be overwhelmed.