Entangled (67 page)

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 Oplimar. 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.

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 understand! 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.’

The closer Ria could get her force to the prisoner enclosures before they were seen the better chance there was that her plan might succeed, so they charged in absolute silence, making the most of the deep shadows and patches of mist that shrouded this part of the valley floor. Yet the nearer they came, the more they saw of the terrible deaths the Illimani were inflicting on the helpless Naveen women still left alive in their enclosure.

‘Ligar!’
Ria pulsed as she ran,
‘Jergat! Speak to me!’
But still there came no reply and she felt a growing dread. She saw that Birsing, clutching her little dagger, was running at her left side. She gave a smile of encouragement but the girl’s face was dead white, her eyes fixed on the women’s enclosure ahead. Tari was on her right and all around and behind them, hair flying in the wind, weapons in hand, came the rest of the two hundred. They were terrified, every one of them – it was painted on their faces – but they didn’t falter.

The murders in the women’s enclosure were being organised by Sakkan – his height and his bear-skull headdress were unmistakable – and the idea seemed to be for each death to be brutal and drawn out, which was why it was all taking so long. The Illimani didn’t just want these women to die. They wanted them to die in a state of absolute horror and fear. No more than thirty braves were at the work. Here and there knots of them were hacking prisoners limb from limb with axes, or beating them to death with clubs, or hanging them from racks and skinning them alive. Some of the executioners simply darted into the thinning crowd of survivors, stabbing and slashing with spears and knives, spreading pandemonium. Ria saw Sakkan snatch up a small cowering woman and pound her down on a sharpened stake he had set into the ground. Everywhere there were blood-curdling screams and bellows.