But one of the sentries, left for dead, leapt to his feet despite a jagged wound in his side and ran zigzag like a hare towards the camp. He was very fast and though Driff pursued him he had a good lead.
Leoni couldn’t understand why Ria also took off after the escaping Illimani because he was at least a hundred feet ahead of her, just a faint white blur in the pre-dawn shadows, and she’d never catch him. But then she snatched at a pouch hanging by her side, drew back her arm and threw a stone at him. Leoni lost sight of the little missile as it flew through the air. It must have whizzed right past Driff’s ear before – CLUNK! – it bounced off the back of the fleeing man’s skull and dropped him to the ground in a heap.
Driff reached him first, hatchet raised, but Ria wasn’t having it. She barged her friend aside, jerked back the Illimani’s head and cut his throat.
With the sentries disposed of and more light seeping into the sky, Leoni scouted the way forward while Ria brought up her whole force at the double as far as the boulders. From there it was about a mile to the camp but because the valley ahead took a sharp curve to the left the place wouldn’t be visible to the Illimani, even in daylight, and provided good shelter to muster for the final attack. Not until they had rounded the curve would Ria’s fighters come into view. Even so they would still have to cover at least quarter of a mile in the open before reaching the camp and a small nagging voice at the back of Leoni’s mind told her this would not be good.
She explored both sides of the valley for alternatives, but the slopes were too steep to be climbed by a large force without attracting attention. What she did find was a narrow path, angling up to the left, that a small group walking in single file might scale. Better still, the path led to the ridge directly overlooking the sector of the camp where the Illimani had kept their prisoners. Leoni remembered many of Ria’s fighters carried bows. She’d never got closer to a battle than World Of Warcraft but something told her this would be a good spot to put some archers.
She glanced to the sky. It was still more night than dawn but in half an hour – an hour at most – the sun would be above the horizon and all the advantages of darkness would be lost.
She darted down to get a closer look at the camp.
Behind it ran a fast-flowing mountain river channelled in a rocky gorge that intersected the main valley from the right. It had been a large camp, consisting of hundreds of tall conical shelters of skins stretched over wooden frames, like Native American tepees, ranged across the valley floor almost to the river’s edge. But the Illimani had burnt everything to the ground. What stood out now were the three thorn-bush stockades they’d set up amongst the ashes to hold their prisoners.
For a few moments Leoni was dizzied by the nightmare horror of it all.
The stockade at the extreme left of the group was empty, but a little beyond it was a large cleared area in which the Illimani had burnt at the stake, crucified and tortured to death several hundred men – probably the entire adult male population of the camp.
A second stockade at the extreme right of the group was crammed with young children. All were alive but milling in terror and crying out.
In the third stockade, between the other two, the bodies and body parts of a great many women lay strewn in the dust as casually as animal carcasses in an abbatoir. About a hundred still lived but Leoni saw a small group of bloodstained and filthy Illimani on the rampage amongst them – ten brutal naked men finishing off the orgy of violence that had obviously continued throughout the night. It was a horrific scene, made worse by the pitiful screams of the victims.
But something even more disturbing was happening. When Leoni had first flown over the camp, perhaps an hour before, many of the Illimani who weren’t raping and butchering women had been sprawled out, dead drunk. Now most of them were on their feet, some rubbing their heads but obviously alert and responding to an order to form up. Hundreds had already assembled in the cleared area and more were joining them every moment.
Leoni saw the warrior she thought of as Bull swaggering around, kicking and beating men who were still sleeping. His twin, Bear-Skull, had assembled a mob of twenty and now led them, knives unsheathed, to join the other murderers already at work in the women’s enclosure.
If Ria was going to attack she must do so at once, while the shadows were still deep in the last exposed quarter-mile of the valley, and before the Illimani finished their killing and marched out of the camp.
As she hurried back to Ria’s side, Leoni was conscious once again of the numbing weakness spreading like poison through her aerial body, and when she looked down at herself she saw … almost nothing.
Chapter Ninety-Two
Arrayed on the stony valley floor beyond the line of huge boulders where the Illimani sentries had been killed, Ria’s entire force of more than five hundred waited for her command, while she herself stood alone, fifty paces to the fore, peering into the darkness ahead.
Though there was no thin cloud of light to announce the other girl’s presence, as there had been earlier, Ria knew that Leoni had returned to her side. She also sensed – she felt it in her own breath and heartbeat – that Leoni was in terrible danger. ‘Sister,’ she pulsed – it was the only word that did justice to the strength of the bond she felt – ‘what has happened to you?’
Leoni’s thought-voice was weak, barely audible, seeming to emanate from somewhere very far away: ‘No time to explain,’ she said. ‘I won’t be able to stay with you long. I’m going to be taken back.’ Then Ria felt a flood of words and thought-images wash over her as Leoni shared everything she’d observed during her reconnaissance – the Illimani forces mustering on the meeting ground of the Naveen camp, the pitiful condition of the surviving captives, the disposition of the stockades and the trail leading to a promising ridge that overlooked them.
As she took all this in Ria’s mood darkened. The prospect that had lured her to this place was of drunken and disorganised enemies who could be surrounded in the dark by archers and shot like fish in a pool. Instead it was close to sunrise and the five hundred Illimani she confronted were alert and would soon be on the march. These were men who had dedicated their lives to violence and fought side by side in many battles. Her men were hunters first, fighters second, and the women might be hard as flint around hearth and home but none of them knew war.
Ria thought of retreat but rejected the idea. The Illimani would pursue them and catch them before they could make good their escape, probably even before they reached their waiting non-combatants, and certainly when they did. Better by far to force the fight now while they still had surprise on their side.
All at once, so bright and obvious it dazzled her, a plan began to take shape in her mind: ‘Can I get two hundred of my archers into place to the side of the meeting ground?’ she asked Leoni. ‘Is there a chance they could approach without being seen? Is there enough cover there to hide them?’
There was no reply and Ria almost choked with frustration. She needed a clearer picture! ‘Leoni! Please! Help me.’
Again she was met by silence – and, worse, her sense of the presence of the invisible girl, so strong moments before, had now evaporated. She shifted to out-loud speech. ‘Sister, are you there?’ she asked. ‘Are you with me?’
When no answer came, Ria understood her ally had truly gone. Perhaps she had simply been snatched back into her body the way she herself had been snatched back at the end of her two journeys with the Little Teachers? But she couldn’t rid herself of the intuition that some greater danger was involved.
The intelligence Leoni could have brought in from different parts of the battlefield would have been invaluable, but Ria was ready to improvise. She had the whole plan of the fight worked out in her mind now. All she had to do was get her archers into place, and persuade two hundred proud Merell women to strip naked, and she could yet win the day.
She called Moiraig, Noro and Aranchi forward, together with Bont, Ligar, Driff, Sebittu, Grondin, Jergat and O
plimar. In less than the count of a hundred she explained her plan to them and their parts in it. Then at once, under cover of the little dark that remained, she sent Ligar, Sebittu and Jergat off with the archers, primed Bont, Grondin and Driff for their missions, and summoned the women to their task.
The sun would rise soon. The valley’s rugged sides were already emerging from the darkness in shades of black and grey all the way to the ridge line
‘Have courage,’ Ria whispered. ‘We will win.’
She was walking with Sebittu’s wife Tari amongst the two hundred Merell women she had brought up to the elbow of the valley, just a few bowshots from the destroyed Naveen camp and the Illimani. Some of the women, though not Tari herself, were trembling at the prospect of a pitched battle so Ria sought to reassure them: ‘Have courage – the spirits are with us.’
There was a commotion. A girl pushed through the ranks, and a pair of wild green eyes and a snub nose confronted her under a disordered thatch of red Merell hair.
Birsing!
‘What are you doing here?’ Ria demanded. ‘You’re supposed to be with the kids.’
‘I followed you,’ said the eleven-year-old. ‘I don’t want to hide in the forest. I want to fight the evil one. I want to kill the Illimani.’ Her face was covered in freckles and she clutched a little flint dagger, more a toy than a weapon, in her small white fist.
Ria considered sending her back but decided not to. Birsing’s arrival like this, so full of fighting spirit, was an omen. An excellent omen. ‘If you want to fight these bastards then I won’t stop you,’ she said. She took the girl’s fist between her own hands, still clenching the dagger: ‘See you blacken that pretty blade in Illimani blood.’
Birsing grinned: ‘We’re going to beat them, aren’t we? I can feel it.’
‘We’re going to fucking destroy them.’
Tari and Ria walked on.’ ‘Do you really believe that?’ Tari whispered. ‘Will we truly win?’
‘I’m certain of it,’ Ria answered. They had reached the curve of the valley, and she would show no weakness now. But the truth, despite the beauty of her plan, was that her confidence had begun to ebb.
She glanced up to the valley sides again. The light had risen enough to reveal the silver threads of a dozen descending streams and she knew it was time – past time – to mount the attack. What held her in check was Ligar and Jergat who had been out of contact, stubbornly unreachable by thought-voice, since she had sent them on their missions. This was worrying, and weird. Were they too far away for thought-talk to carry? Were they dead? Were they prisoners? Without word from them, or Leoni to confirm they were in position, Ria knew she was taking a terrible risk.
But to do nothing now was out of the question.
‘Wait,’ she told Tari. ‘Bring them forward on my signal.’ Stooping, she jogged twenty paces ahead, took cover behind a gorse bush and looked long and hard at the camp.
It was closer than she had imagined, a great deep crescent-shaped scar of burnt-out tepees following the continuing left curve of the valley, bounded on the far side by a rushing river and on the near side sprawling across the valley floor almost to the foot of the ridge line. There, Ria very much hoped, Jergat and twenty of the best Naveen archers had already been guided into position by Noro who claimed to know the track Leoni had found. Again she pulsed a message to Jergat, and again she got no reply.
Amongst the ashes of the tepees she saw the three bulky thorn-bush pens the Illimani had built to hold their prisoners. The pen nearest to her, on the right side of the row, was filled with children and nursing mothers and their cries of terror were awful to hear. Next to it, as Leoni had described, a pen containing only women seethed with furious activity, where thirty Illimani braves were running amok and blood-curdling screams left no doubt that a mass slaughter was under way.
Ria hated to stand by and let this happen but a mistake now would be fatal for her whole force and there was still no contact with Jergat and Ligar.
The third enclosure was furthest from her and empty. Beyond it, in the camp’s extensive meeting ground, she could see the mass of the Illimani – hundreds of warriors formed up in disciplined ranks amidst burnt-out bonfires and the piled corpses of their victims. Although the camp was large, and the meeting ground was far away, she recognised the tall figure of Martu with his headdress of aurochs horns. He seemed to be making a speech to his warriors.
‘Keep talking,’ Ria whispered. With luck their leader’s words of wisdom, and the slaughter of the women, would occupy the Illimani for a little longer. Patches of morning mist had risen to cover parts of the valley floor and there were still some areas of deep shadow that greatly served her purpose.
She beckoned to Tari, who at once led the little army of women forward. Ria looked them over, reminded them to keep total silence until she gave the signal, nodded in friendship to those she’d talked with, and ruffled Birsing’s hair. Then she raised her fist above her head and led the charge down the valley.
As she ran they all ran in a pack alongside her, teeth bared, faces set, and it was good to be alive and in such company.
The sun touched the hilltops. Ria felt the cool morning breeze on her skin and heard the distant screech of a golden eagle.
It was another excellent omen.
Chapter Ninety-Three
Leoni hated the fact that she’d been swept away from Ria, without warning, at the vital moment.
Except, of course, there had been warnings – the growing weakness, the spreading numbness, the gossamer lightness of her aerial body following the attack of Sulpa’s creatures.
Leoni’s eyes blinked open, but she didn’t move. She was lying on her back. Four beings were hunched around her but their shapes were indistinct and above them, from a dark vault, beams of dazzling celestial light shone down.
‘The wanderer has returned,’ said a familiar voice.
Don Leoncio’s voice!
And in a flash Leoni realised she had returned to her body, the celestial lights were nothing more than the sun streaming through the smoke holes in the roof of the maloca, and the beings hunched over her were Matt and Don Leoncio on her left and the two Tarahanua shamans, Ruapa and Baiyakondi, on her right.
She sat up: ‘I can’t leave Ria where she is,’ she said clutching Leoncio’s sleeve. ‘You’ve got to give me more Ayahuasca. I have to get back to her right now.’
He placed the palm of one warm, dry hand on her brow as though testing her temperature. ‘I don’t think so,’ he said after a few moments.
‘What do you mean, you don’t think so?’
‘You have suffered a very grave psychic attack,’ he replied. ‘Am I correct?’
Leoni shrugged: ‘I suppose you could call it that.’ She described how Sulpa’s creatures had swarmed over her and how she had broken free. She had no doubt that her aerial body had been damaged in the encounter and that some vital energy had been drained.
‘If you hadn’t escaped when you did,’ said Leoncio, ‘you would certainly have been killed.’ He breathed out emphatically through his nose: ‘That’s what happens when the etheric energy structure that you call your aerial body is destroyed. First your physical body falls into a deep coma, respiration and heartbeat slow, brain activity ceases. Within a space of hours – in some rare cases days – you are dead.’
‘And your soul? What happens to your soul?’
Leoncio wrinkled his brows: ‘The worst possible fate. Your soul is taken to the underworld, and from there it can never return.’
Leoni shivered. She didn’t want to know about the underworld. ‘Sounds bad,’ she said.
‘Very bad. Much worse than you can imagine.’ Leoncio rested a sympathetic hand on her shoulder: ‘And it would be madness now, with your subtle energies so utterly depleted, to venture at once out of the shelter of the flesh. You must wait – you must restore yourself – before you attempt such a thing again.’
Leoni shook her head: ‘You don’t understan
d! I can’t wait.’ She had raised her voice: ‘I left Ria in the middle of a battle with the Illimani. I was her eyes and ears, Leoncio! She can’t beat them without me.’
His features, already set in an expression of intense concentration, seemed to betray some inner conflict, but at last he said: ‘I will not stop you if this is something you are called to do.’
‘I am called! Yes. Definitely.’
‘But if you decide on this course of action,’ Leoncio continued, ‘you must understand what you face. A single psychic assault from the least of the demon’s servants will send you to the underworld. Game over, Leoni. Game over for ever! Are you sure you want to risk that?’
Leoni thought about it.
She was very much tempted not to go back, and especially not in her present weakened condition. But she was also amazed and overawed by Ria, and in love with her for her beauty and style and courage and sheer balls.
Her sister in time? Yes, truly. It felt like they’d been separated at birth and had just found each other again.
More than that, the way they’d worked together to destroy the sentries and put Ria’s desperate battle plan into action had, Leoni realised, been the most amazing and exhilarating experience of her life – bar none. All barriers and differences had evaporated and in those moments of danger and fear they had shared a complete understanding.
So there was no way, no way at all, she would turn her back on her now.
‘This is something I have to do,’ she told Leoncio. ‘I understand the risks, but I’m going through with it. I’ve never been more sure of anything in my life.’
Leoni turned to Matt and put her arms around his neck. ‘Just hold me,’ she said. ‘Just hold me for a little while before I go.’
Chapter Ninety-Four