Orion in the Dying Time Part 6

Kraal found his voice. "Under whose leadership?"

"...whose leadership?"

"The leader of the larger of your two tribes should be the leader of the whole. Kraal the Hunter shall be known from this night onward as Kraal the Leader."

The man's chest visibly swelled. He broke into a broad, gap-toothed grin and turned toward the other men, nodding approval at the wisdom the G.o.d displayed.

"But what about Orion?" Noch insisted.

"...Orion?" the echo repeated.

"Orion will remain among you for only a little while," came the answer. "He has other tasks to undertake, other deeds to accomplish."

My satisfaction at having conned Kraal and the others melted away. Anya was speaking the truth. We could not remain here much longer. We had other tasks ahead of us.

I watched Kraal and Noch embrace each other, watched the relieved looks on all the men's faces when they realized they would not have to fight each other. How the women would take to embracing strange men, I did not know. Nor did I particularly care. Not at that moment. I had forced these people on the first step of resistance against Set and the reptilian masters. But it was only the first step, and the immensity of the task that lay before me weighed on my shoulders like the burdens of all the world.

I made my way back to the cave I shared with Anya, achingly weary. As the moon set, that blood red star rose above the treetops, glaring balefully down at me, depressing me even further.

Anya was eager with excitement as I crawled into the cave and dropped down onto our pallet of boughs and hides.

"It worked, didn't it! I saw them embracing one another."

"You did a fine job," I told her. "You have real worshipers now-although I'm not certain how they would react if they knew they were obeying a G.o.ddess instead of a G.o.d."

Kneeling beside me, Anya said smugly, "I've had worshipers before. Phidias sculpted a marvelous statue of me for all of Athens to worship."

I nodded wearily and closed my eyes. I felt drained, demoralized, and all I wanted was to sleep. Anya and I would never be free to live as normal human beings. There would always be the Creators to pull my strings, never leaving us alone. Always a new task, a new enemy, a new time and place. But never a time and place for happiness. Not for me. Not for us.

She sensed my soul's exhaustion. Stroking my brow with her cool, smooth fingers, Anya soothed, "Sleep, my darling. Rest and sleep."

I slept. But only for the span of a few heartbeats. For I saw Set's satanic face, his red eyes burning, his sharp teeth gleaming in a devil's version of a smile.

"I told you I would send you a punishment, Orion. The hour has come."

I sat bolt upright, startling Anya.

"What is it?"

There was no need to answer. A terrified shriek split the night. From one of the caves.

I grabbed at the spear lying near the cave's entrance and dashed out onto the narrow ledge of rock that formed a natural stairway down to the canyon floor. Others were spilling out of their caves, screaming, jumping to the rocks below. Kraal's men among them, running and shrieking in absolute terror, stumbling down the rough stone steps, leaping to certain injury or death in their panic to escape...

Escape from what?

"Stay behind me," I muttered to Anya as I started climbing up the steep stairway of rock.

Reeva came screaming toward me, nearly knocking me over the edge in her wild-eyed terror. She was empty-handed. Her baby was still in the cave up above.

I clambered up the uneven stones, sensing Anya right behind me, also armed with a spear. The dreadful gloomy light of the strange star bathed the rock face with the color of dried blood, making everything look ghastly.

The cave Reeva shared with several other women looked empty, abandoned. Below us I could still hear shrieks and screams, not merely fright now, but cries of pain, of agony. Men and women running, thrashing wildly, as if trying to beat off some invisible attacker.

It was darker than h.e.l.l inside the cave, but my eyes adjusted to the minuscule light level almost instantly. I saw Reeva's baby-disappearing into the distended jaws of a huge snake.

Before I could even think I flung myself at the serpent and slashed at its head with my dagger. It coiled around my arm, but I had it at its most vulnerable, with a half-swallowed meal between its teeth. I hacked at the snake, just behind its skull. It was as thick as my leg at the thigh, and so long that its body twined almost the full circ.u.mference of the cave and still could wrap half a dozen coils around my flailing arm.

Anya rammed her spear into its writhing body again and again while I sawed through its spinal cord and finally cut off its head. Dropping my dagger I pried at its jaws and worked the baby free of its fangs. The baby was quite dead, already cold, its skin blue gray in the dim starlight.

"It's poisonous," I said to Anya. "Look at those fangs."

"There are others," she said.

They were still screaming outside. I rose to my feet, burning hot fury seething within me. Set's punishment, I knew. Snakes. Huge venomous snakes that come slithering silently in the darkness of night to do their work of killing. Death and terror, those were the hallmarks of our adversary.

I strode to the lip of the cave. "Up here!" I bellowed, and the rock amplified my voice into the thunder of a G.o.d. "Come up here where we can see them! Get away from the floor of the canyon."

Some obeyed. Only a few. Already I could see dead bodies stretched out on the gra.s.s, twisted among the boulders and brush that formed natural hiding places for the snakes. Up here on the rocks, at least we would be able to see them. What we could see, we could fight.

Most of the people had fled terrified into the night, their only thought to get away from the sudden silent death that struck in the shadows. A woman lay down among the stones on the floor of the canyon, broken by her panicked leap away from the caves. I could see a long writhing ghastly white snake gliding toward her, jaws spread wide, fangs glittering. She screamed and tried to scrabble away from the snake. Anya threw her spear at it and missed. The snake sank its deadly fangs into her flesh and the woman's screams rose to a hideous crescendo, then died away in a gurgling, strangling agony.

The others were stumbling, staggering up toward me, clambering up the steep stone steps to the narrow ledge where Anya and I stood. And the snakes came slithering after them, long thick bodies of deathly gray white, yellow eyes glittering, forked tongues flicking, their fangs filled with venom, their bodies gliding silently over the rocks in pursuit of their prey.

I gathered our little band on the ledge, men armed with spears and knives on the perimeter, women inside the cave. All except Anya, who stood at my shoulder, a fresh jabbing spear in one hand, a flint hand knife in the other, panting with excitement and exertion, eyes aflame with battle l.u.s.t.

The snakes attacked us. Wriggling up the stone steps, they dodged this way and that to avoid our spears, coiled up just beyond our reach, struck at us with lightning speed. We too dodged, hopping back and forth, trying to keep our bare legs from their fangs.

We fought back. We jabbed at them with our wooden spears, we turned the shafts into clubs and hammered at them. One snake began coiling around the spear Anya held, slithering up its length to get at her, driven by an intelligent sense of purpose that no serpent's brain could originate.

I shouted a warning as Anya calmly ripped the snake open with her flint knife. It reared back. I grabbed it around its bleeding throat and Anya hacked its head off. We threw the b.l.o.o.d.y remains off the ledge, down to the canyon floor below.

The fight seemed to go on for hours. Two of our men were struck and died shrieking, their limbs twisting in horrifying pain. Another was jostled off the ledge and fell screaming to the ground below. He was badly injured, and in minutes several snakes gathered around him. We heard his wailing screeches, and then he went silent forever.

Abruptly, there were no more snakes. No more live ones, at any rate. Nearly a dozen lifeless bodies twitching in their own blood at our feet. I blinked at the shambles of our battlefield. The sun had risen; its bright golden rays were shining through the trees.

Below us lay eight dead bodies, their limbs twisted, their faces horribly constricted. We went down, still warily searching for more snakes as we gathered up the bodies of the slain. Broken-armed Pirk was among them. And three of Kraal's men. And gray-bearded Noch; his return to Paradise had been brief and bitter.

All that day we scoured the canyon floor for bodies. To my surprised relief we found only two others. About noontime Kraal and three of his men came to me.

He shook his head at the bodies of the slain. "I told you, Orion," he said sadly, choking back tears of frustrated hate. "There is nothing we can do against the masters. They hunt us for their sport. They make slaves of our people. All we can do is bow down and accept."

Anya heard him. She had been kneeling among the dead bodies, not of the humans but of the snakes, dissecting one of them to search for its poison glands.

Angrily she sprang to her feet and flung the flayed body of the twenty-foot snake at Kraal. Its weight staggered him.

"All we can do is bow down?" Anya raged at him. "Timid man, we can kill kill our enemies. As they would kill us!" our enemies. As they would kill us!"

Kraal goggled at her. No woman had ever spoken so harshly to him before. I doubt that any man had.

Seething like the enraged G.o.ddess she was, Anya advanced on Kraal, flint knife in hand. He backed away from her.

"The G.o.d called you Kraal the Leader," Anya taunted. "But this morning you look more like Kraal the Coward! Is that the name you want?"

"No... of course not..."

"Then stop crying like a woman and start acting like a leader. Gather all all the bands of people together and, together, we will fight the masters and kill them all!" the bands of people together and, together, we will fight the masters and kill them all!"

Kraal's knees actually buckled. "All the tribes...?"

Several of the other men had gathered around us by now. One of them said, "We must ask the G.o.d who speaks about this."

"Yes," I agreed swiftly. "Tonight. The G.o.d only speaks after the sun goes down."

Anya's lips twitched in a barely suppressed grin. We both knew what the G.o.d would say.

Chapter 9.

Thus we began uniting the tribes of Paradise.

Once Kraal got over the shock of the snakes' attack and heard Anya's G.o.d-voice telling him that it was his destiny to resist the masters in all their forms and might, he actually began to develop into Kraal the Leader. And our people began to learn how to defend themselves.

Months pa.s.sed, marked by the rhythmically changing face of the moon. We left the place of the G.o.d-who-speaks and moved even deeper into the forest that seemed to stretch all the way across Africa from the Red Sea to the Atlantic. It extended southward, according to the tales we heard, evolving gradually into the tropical rain forest that covered much of the rest of the continent.

Each time we met another tribe we tried to convince them that they should work with us to resist the masters. Most tribal leaders resisted, instead, the idea of doing anything new, anything that would incur the terrible wrath of the fearsome dragons who raided their homes from time to time.

We showed them the skulls of the snakes we had slain. We told stories about my fight against the dragon. Anya developed into a real priestess, falling into trances whenever it was necessary to speak with the voice of a G.o.d. She also showed the women how to gather grains and bake bread, how to make medicines from the juices of leaves and roots. I showed the men how to make better tools and weapons.

I found, stored in my memory, the knowledge of cold-working soft metals such as copper and gold. Gold, as always, was extremely rare, although we found one tribe where the chief's women hung nuggets of gold from their earlobes for adornment. I showed them how to beat the soft shining metal into crescents and circles, the best I could do with the primitive stone hammers available. Yet it pleased the women very much. I became an admired man, which helped us to convince the chief to join our movement.

In several scattered places we found lumps of copper lying on the ground, partially buried in gra.s.s and dirt. These I cold-worked into slim blades and arrowheads, sharp but brittle. I taught the hunters how to anneal their copper implements by heating them and then quenching them in cold water. That made them less brittle without sacrificing their sharpness.

As the months wore on we developed stone molds for shaping arrowheads and axes, knives and spear points, awls and sc.r.a.pers. When I recognized layers of rock bearing copper ore, I taught them how to build a forge of stones and make the fire hotter with a bellows made from a goat's bladder. Then we could smelt the metal out of the rock and go on to make more and better tools. And weapons. Instead of Orion the Hunter I was filling the role of Hephaestus, blacksmith of the G.o.ds. But it was during those months that human tools and weapons gleamed for the first time with metal edges.

While most of the tribal elders we met were just as stubborn as Kraal had been, many of the younger men eagerly took up our challenge to resist the devilish masters. We won their loyalty with appeals to their courage, with new metal-edged weapons, and with the oldest commodity of all-women.

Every tribe had young women who needed husbands and young men who wanted wives. Often the unmarried men formed raiding parties to steal women from neighboring tribes. This usually started blood feuds that could last for generations.

Under Anya's tutelage we created a veritable marriage bureau, bringing news of available mates from one tribe to another. Primitive though these men and women were in technology and social organization, they were no fools. They soon recognized that an arranged marriage, where both families willingly gave their consent, was preferable to raiding and stealing-and the constant threat of retaliation.

Despite the fearsome stories some men like to tell about human savagery and l.u.s.t, despite the cynical boasts of the Golden One about how he built ferocity into his creation of h.o.m.o sapiens, human beings have always chosen cooperation over compet.i.tion when they had the choice. By giving the tribes the chance to extend ties of kinship we extended ties of loyalty.

Even shy Reeva found herself a new mate: Kraal himself. Since her baby had been killed by the snakes Reeva had seemed to become even more withdrawn, quieter, brooding, almost morose. Then one bright morning Kraal told me that Reeva had agreed to be his wife. His gap-toothed grin was a joy to see.

Yet I felt uneasy. I asked Anya about it, and she shrugged.

"Reeva seeks protection," she told me. "If she can't have it from you, she'll get it from the next most powerful male available."

"Protection?" I wondered. "Or power?"

Anya looked at me thoughtfully. "Power? I hadn't considered that."

It was a happy time for Anya and me. Despite the lurking threat of Set and his monsters we lived together joyfully in Paradise. Each day was fresh and new, each night was a pleasure of loving pa.s.sion. We felt that we were accomplishing something important, helping these struggling tribes to defend themselves against true evil. Time became meaningless for us. We had our cause, we had our work, and we had each other. What more could we ask of Paradise?

After seven months of constant travel through the forest of Paradise, we had built up a loose alliance of several dozen tribes under the nominal leadership of Kraal. Most of the people of those tribes went on living exactly as they had before we met them-except that they now had new tools, new foods, new mates, new ideas stirring them. Only a few young men or women from any single tribe actually traveled with us.

Had we done enough?

I knew that we had not. All through those long months we did not see a dreaded giant snake or dragon. Each time I looked up through the leafy trees I saw only the sky, empty except for clouds. No pterosaurs seeking us. Yet I felt deep within me that Set knew exactly where we were, day by day. Knew precisely what we were doing. With the absolute certainty of inbuilt instinct I realized that Set was preparing to smash us.

How and when I did not know. It dawned on me that I had better find out.

That night Kraal's wandering band camped in a parklike glade beneath lofty pine trees. Their trunks rose straight and tall as the pillars of a cathedral. The ground beneath them was bare of gra.s.s but covered with a thick, soft, scented layer of pine needles. We spread our hides and robes and prepared for sleep.

There were about forty of us who roamed the forest of Paradise under Kraal's nominal leadership, offering metal tools and medicines, knowledge and marriageable young men and women in exchange for loyalty and the promise to resist the reptilian masters when next they raided.

A ma.s.sive gray boulder sat at one end of the glade, gray and imperturbable in the last golden rays of the setting sun. I glanced at Anya, then turned and asked Kraal to follow us up to its top.

We scrabbled up from one rock to another until we stood atop the big boulder, looking down on the others as they huddled in small groups around their cooking fires.

"If the dragons come again to steal slaves for Set," I asked, "how will we be able to bring all the tribes together to fight against them?"

Kraal made a sighing, grunting sound, his way of showing that he was thinking hard. Anya remained silent.

"When we hunt deer or goats," I mused, "we send men out into the brush to search for the game we seek. But what can we do when the dragons come hunting for us?"

Kraal swiftly saw where I was leading. "We could pick men to go to the edge of Paradise and watch for the dragons' approach!"

Anya nodded encouragement to him.

"That would take many men," I said. "And we would need fast runners to carry the news from one group to another."

Thus we created the idea of scouts and messengers, and began training men and women for such duties. We wanted youngsters who were fleet of foot, but not so foolhardy that they would try to attack a dragon by themselves-or so flighty that they would report dragons when they saw nothing more than clouds on the horizon.

After a few weeks of training I myself took the first group of scouts northward, toward the edge of Paradise, where the forest merged with the broad treeless savannah that would eventually become the Sahara.

Anya wanted to come with me but I convinced her that she was needed more at Kraal's side, helping him to win more tribes over to our cause, teaching the women the arts of healing and baking.

"I don't want to leave Kraal entirely alone," I said, "without either one of us close by him."

Anya's eyes widened slightly. "You don't trust him?"

It was the first time that I realized so. "It's not a matter of trust, exactly. What we're doing is new to Kraal-new to all of them. One of us should be at his side at all times. Just in case."