There was no use in wasting time. He stepped from behind the boulder in full sight of the party below, stretched wide his arms, and let out a cavernous yawn.
Instantly, the laughter and chitchat of the frolickers ceased. The soldiers stood up in the steaming waters, their naked forms glistening redly in the fading twilight, their mouths dark circles of surprise. Then, at an order from the captain, the men scampered out of the pool and began donning their clothes and picking up their weapons.
Kwasin smiled broadly and waved down at the soldiers; then he turned about, lifted his kilt, and mooned them. He stood thus only long enough to hear the soldiers’ curses, then lost no time in ascending the slope. He did not think the men carried slings, but he was uncertain.
When he reached the summit, he waited. The soldiers would have to get much closer if the Bear God’s plan was to succeed.
He grinned when he saw that, as he had hoped, the captain led the charge up the rocky incline, with the four other officers and two infantrymen just behind him. Kwasin felt relieved to discover they carried only their swords.
Finally, the captain, red-faced and panting heavily, pulled himself up onto the summit. As the man did so, Kwasin feigned a startled expression, then turned and sprinted across the plateau. He did not, however, sprint too quickly as he did not want to get too far ahead of the man.
Kwasin looked over a shoulder and saw the captain only a couple of yards behind him, with the other soldiers in a tight-knit group directly behind their superior. Then Kwasin leaped over the scattering of branches before him, swung around, and stopped.
There was a crash as the captain fell through the fragile lattice of brushwood that covered the stone-lined sacrificial opening, then the heavy thud of a body hitting the stone floor of the cave below. The other soldiers, directly on the heels of their captain, could not stop their forward momentum. Kwasin grinned like a demon at seeing their dumbfounded faces just before they tumbled as one into the black pit. Their bodies too thumped hollowly as they made a series of rapid impacts upon the cavern floor.
He bent over the hole and shouted down at the groaning men.
“That is your punishment for sealing up Old Father Nakendar and leaving him to die! May his spirit gnaw on your shinbones for all eternity!”
Kwasin remained at the edge of the hole, listening to the continued groaning and sobbing of the men below. He felt no remorse for dooming the men to die in the cave. After what the soldiers had done to the children and to the Old Father, he only regretted that they would not suffer more.
Suddenly, from somewhere deep in the cave came a hideous, moaning scream. The hair rose stiffly on the back of Kwasin’s neck and the men below began to shout out in terror.
The bloodcurdling scream came again, now nearer to the bottom of the marble shaft. Kwasin bent over the hole, trying to penetrate the darkness, his giant frame trembling. It was not every day that one heard the scream of a god.
The men were now shrieking in utter fright. Then came the sound of slashing claws and a gut-wrenching chomping of bone, followed a few moments later by complete silence.
No, the silence was not absolute. He thought, if he strained his hearing, he could just make out a faint rasping of breath. Then he saw, caught faintly in the evening’s fading light, what appeared to be the glimmer of two large, reddish eyes looking up at him.
Kwasin backed away from the hole, his heart pounding, his body covered in a cold sweat.
Half numb with shock, he stumbled back down the slope to retrieve the sacred she-bear pelt where he had left it by the boulder. Briefly, he looked for the women who had accompanied the soldiers, but they were nowhere to be found. Doubtless they had run off into the woods after hearing the hideous cry of the Old Father.
Shaken to his core by what he had seen and heard, Kwasin could not say he blamed them.
* * *
Kwasin knew he had to move fast. The sky had already darkened and he needed to get back to his camp near the village as quickly as possible. He hoped the bears had not wandered off. If they had, his plan would fail.
As he ran through the dark woods, the preposterousness of what he hoped to do made him wonder at his sanity. But it also exhilarated him. If he was able to beat the incredible odds and succeed at his intent, then his name would forever be sung in the halls of his totem. A new ritual dance would be initiated to record his great deeds for the posterity of all Bear people. They might call it the Dance of the Imprudent Giant, and he would become as legendary as Klaklaku himself.
But more than just vanity drove Kwasin on. When the Old Father had come to him in the dream, he had told Kwasin it was time to choose sides. To stand on the side of Kho, the Mother of All, and give sustenance to the great tree from which all life sprang. Or to turn his back on the Goddess and kindle the smoldering flames that were the lies and arrogance of Resu—to stand with the sungod until his blistering gaze reduced the world-tree to nothing more than a dried and blackened husk. The Bear God had told Kwasin he must either help the people of Q”okwoqo or turn against his totem brothers and sisters and slay them. According to Old Nakendar, it was because Kwasin had for so long remained a disinterested party in the conflict between Kho and Resu that his soul so greatly feared oblivion. Kwasin’s own petty goals and desires were but nothing compared to the flowering of Great Kho’s will or the sungod’s burning desire to murder his mother and former lover, the Creator and Replenisher of all things.
And so it was that Kwasin—defiler of the temple of Kho, exile from the land by order of the Voice of Kho herself—took the side of the Great Mother in the war between the deities. He now recognized the battle for Q”okwoqo for what it was—not merely a local matter, but rather the touchstone of his destiny. Perhaps in his heart he had known this all along but his head had denied it. Was this why, since his return from the Wild Lands, his mother had plagued his dreams with visions of her death? Had she been trying to send him a message from her shadowy station in Sisisken’s dark house—to urge him to stand with the Goddess against the blasphemers or risk the extinguishing of his soul as the snake that had bitten her had struck down her own life? If the nightmares now ceased, he would know.
At last he came to his camp, about a half-mile from Q”okwoqo. This was his new camp, the original having been positioned far enough away from the village that the soldiers would not detect the smoke from the training fires he lit. He had relocated here only yesterday, the site’s proximity to the village being crucial to his plan.
For a moment, his heart sank. Where were the bears? He began to think they had loped off into the forest as they were wont to do at night after their training sessions, knowing that if they had, Adythne was doomed to die at sunrise upon the altar of Resu. But then, as he searched the woods just beyond the camp’s perimeter, he saw in the dim starlight cast down between the branches seven large, dark forms upon the forest floor. He sighed with relief. The bears had not fled after all.
Now came one of the most dangerous parts of his scheme—and there were many. When he had trained with the bears, it had always been in the light of day, as his plan was to task the animals early that afternoon when the contingent’s officers were away from the village and soaking in the hot spring. He did not know how the bears would react to a disruption in their routine. Bears were for the most part diurnal. Would they follow their training in the pitch black of night? Or, when he woke them, would they revert to the untamed beasts they were at heart and attack him?
There was only one way to find out. Kwasin donned the sacred pelt of the she-bear, which he had carried with him from the spring. Quietly, at first, so as not to startle the bears, he began to sing the crude ballad he had composed to accompany the bears’ training. This he had set, rather wryly, to the tune of “Bear Mother Mistakes Her Teeth for Her Anus,” an ancient and bawdy folksong about a popular heroine of his totem.
At hearing Kwasin’s crass singing, the bears awoke, one by one, some of them huffing as they were roused.
This set Kwasin’s heart racing, as he knew the sound indicated the animals felt threatened. A few moments later, however, the huffing ceased, and he felt a great hairy body brush up friendlily against his bare thigh. He continued his singing and began dancing in the same manner as he had during the bears’ training, first in a wide orbit around the camp, and then, after the bears had begun to follow behind him, off into the forest in the direction of Q”okwoqo.
Every so often Kwasin looked back to make sure his outlandish company was still in tow. But he did not need to do so; he could hear well enough the sounds of their heavy bodies crashing through the forest. He hoped the sentries in the village would not hear them coming, but there was nothing Kwasin could do about it if they did. Perhaps the sentries would be so startled at seeing the giant and his ursine entourage emerge from the woods that they would be temporarily immobilized. It might even buy him enough time to launch his attack.
But Kwasin did not need to worry about being heard. Even before he reached the village, the sound of great revelry came to him through the trees. The jubilant shouting, laughter, clapping, and singing was loud enough to cover any noise made by the bears, and also of such volume that he began to worry it would disrupt the spell he had succeeded in casting over the animals with his song and the movements of the ritual dance. The soldiers must have been celebrating Adythne’s coming execution upon the altar of Resu at sunrise.
By the time Kwasin and his companions arrived at the edge of the village clearing, the deep throoming of drums had erupted from inside the surrounding thorn boma. Kwasin tried to calm the bears as best he could with both song and gentle cooings, but his hairy cohorts were obviously upset by the noise and celebratory fires within the village. Knowing he had little time before the animals became so agitated that they would either turn on him or break for the woods, Kwasin went into action.
He began by removing himself a short distance from the bears and laying upon the ground a half-dozen torches saturated with the fat of an antelope he had speared a few days earlier. He had carried these from his camp in the same antelope-hide sack Adythne had used to hold the sacred she-bear pelt. Out of the same bag he removed tinder, a flint, and a piece of iron; the latter he had stolen from a farmer’s hut on his journey across the island. Crouching on the ground, he struck flint against iron until the tinder caught a spark and smoldered into flame. He dipped one torch, then another, into the burning tinder. Then, having gathered up the unlit torches in an arm and holding the two burning ones in his other hand, he ran boldly into the clearing and stopped directly before the gate, in full sight of the sentry stationed atop the newly constructed watchtower.
The sentry stood up on the narrow platform on which he had been squatting and looked down at Kwasin, surprise apparent on his long face. For a moment, the man seemed too startled to act, but then he cried down at the revelers below. No one, however, seemed to be able to hear him over the drums and raucous clamor of the festivities.
Kwasin couldn’t have hoped for better circumstances. While the man yelled down trying to catch the attention of the oblivious celebrants, Kwasin cast one of the burning torches at the wall of the thorn boma just to the left of the iron-reinforced gate. Thanks to a lack of rain over the past few days, the wall bloomed almost instantly with fire. He lit another torch with the one remaining in his hand and threw it onto the wall to the right of the gate, grinning wickedly as it caught fire just as quickly as his first throw. A third torch went flaming into the village where he judged the hall of the Klakordeth was situated. Although it pained him deeply to set fire to the sacred lodge of his Bear brothers, he had earlier reconnoitered the camp and discovered the soldiers were using it as a barracks. He suspected many of these would be celebrating in the hall and hoped he might trap a great number of them in the burning building.
He lit the fourth torch and hurtled it over the gate at the watchtower just as a soldier carrying a sling mounted the narrow deck and joined the sentry at the tower’s top. Though the torch disappeared from view as it fell behind the top of the fifteen-foot-tall gate, Kwasin knew it must have landed and ignited the dry wood of the tower when the two men hastily abandoned the platform and began climbing down. Before passing from sight, the slinger paused and shook his fist angrily at Kwasin.
Quickly, Kwasin ignited the remaining torch and began whirling it in wide circles in unison with the torch already burning in his hand. He did this following the same motions he had employed in his training sessions with the bears over the past few days, having gotten the idea from the priestess Adythne, who had told him the bears had been taught to jump through hoops of fire during the annual festival days of Kho-wu. As he whirled the torches, Kwasin sang, with all the passionate gusto he could summon, his crude, part-improvised lyrics to the tune of the ancient folksong about Bear Mother.
Parbho, who in his mistress’s absence seemed to have taken a special liking to Kwasin, was the first of the bears to emerge from the woods. He bounded up to Kwasin and stood up on his hind legs, as he had been taught to do, just as the bronze-plated wooden gate swung open. Behind the open gate, two dozen panicked-looking soldiers and villagers were stampeding forward. At the sight of the growling, upright bear that confronted them, those in front screamed and tried to turn back into the unbridled exodus pouring from the gate. Then all hell let loose as Parbho’s dark-furred friends gamboled out of the woods and followed their brother’s example, rearing up on their hind legs directly before the mass of fleeing, panic-stricken humans. Still bellowing his bawdy song, Kwasin swung both of the burning torches simultaneously forward in the direction of the gate. This was the motion he had used to signal the bears during their training sessions to charge forward and leap between two blazing practice fires.
Again, Parbho was the first to obey. He came down on all fours and bounded toward the gate at frightening speed. The soldiers and villagers tried to break to either side of the charging bear, but many were knocked to the ground and trampled by their terrified comrades. Others went down beneath the clawed feet of the eight-hundred-pound animal.
One man, an older fellow in priestly robes, kept his cool and stood to one side of the gate, shouting at Parbho in an authoritative tone to stay. He must have been one of the bears’ trainers or was mimicking commands he had witnessed other trainers use with the animals. It was a valiant effort, Kwasin thought, but too late. Already Parbho was past the man and leaping between the burning walls into the village. And behind him, one after another, came the other bears.
Two soldiers broke from the chaotic mass of screaming fleers and ran directly for Kwasin, who threw his remaining torches in their faces. The action bought Kwasin enough time to unsling his ax from his shoulder and smash both of their skulls with a single swing of his weapon. Then he ran, roaring, his ax whirling, through the throng of frightened humans, following the last bear through the flame-ringed gate.
Inside the village walls chaos met him. Tongues of reddish-orange fire licked the night sky above the watchtower and totem hall. Hysterical villagers stood outside the hall shrieking frantic prayers at the deities to save those trapped inside. Though dark smoke billowed from the windows and doorways, a few of these ran heedlessly into the burning building after loved ones they believed to be inside. The bears were in a frenzy now; if they recognized any of the villagers who had once trained and fed them, they did not show it. The spirit guides were angry, and many lay dead or horribly mauled beneath their great fangs and claws.
Suddenly, the wind gusted from the west and the flames from the hall of the Klakordeth swept out over the gulf separating the building from the village’s stockaded quarter. Kwasin swore. The faithful of Kho who had resisted the invading soldiers were still penned up in the stockade. Almost instantly, the cedar poles that walled in the prisoners—baked dry from the recent hot spell—began crackling with rapidly spreading flames.
Kwasin made for the stockade but found himself confronted on all sides by panicked villagers and soldiers. He roar
ed like a demon and swung his ax in an attempt to clear a path before him. The tactic worked to some degree, as many in the mob fell back before his mad charge. He must have made a terrible figure, he thought—a seven-foot-tall giant, cutting down his foes with his glittering ax and dressed in the sacred pelt, the snout of the dead she-bear jutting up behind his head like some dreadful cowl. Still, some of the soldiers tried to take him on, and one of these succeeded in slicing a nasty wound in Kwasin’s thigh before the giant’s great iron ax swept down and crushed the man’s face.
The deeper into the village Kwasin passed, however, the fewer foes he found in his way, until, at last, he stood before the roaring inferno that was the stockade. Desperate shouts to unlock the gate came from the prisoners on the other side of the wall. Kwasin yelled back that he was trying to get them out, but that the stockade’s gate, along with the entire wall, was afire and he’d have to find another way. This did not stop the frantic pleading.
Great waves of sweltering heat singed the hair on Kwasin’s arms and chest as he stalked up and down the fiery wall, looking for an opening in the flames. Finally, he stopped where the wall burned most furiously. There he stood for some time, peering into the blaze, trying to see how much of the wood in that section had been burned out. It was not easy to tell, but now the wind had shifted again and was sweeping the flames back into the pen where the prisoners were trapped. They would not survive much longer.
Again, he swore. Then, drawing the sacred pelt protectively over his head and torso, he barreled headlong into the hellish conflagration.
Kwasin choked on the dense, sickeningly sweet cedar smoke as he crashed heavily into half-charred timbers. The wall held, though it had buckled under the impact of his ax, which he had swung before him as he ran. He roared as the sacred pelt burned and crackled, the flames searing his back and shoulders. He fought to breathe.
Again, he swung his ax. This time, the burned-out cedar posts splintered. Screaming wrathful obscenities at Klykwo, the goddess of fire, Kwasin shouldered his way through to the other side of the wall.