Speaker for the Gods, week 11

The Battle of Kaleikaumaka, part 1

Iokepa had returned to camp, skulking back through the jungle by moonlight and feel. Birds slept, but the whirring of countless insects sent up enough noise to cover his footsteps. Kimo’s scouts stood fingering their weapons, itching to hear the plans and nervous about Kaleikaumaka’s proximity. The town waited below, its lower level dark, the torches on the bluff shining like islands in a vast empty sea. Wind slithered like a clutch of snakes up the valley, stirring the fluid forest canopy in hissing currents I heard more than saw.

“Boys,” Kimo addressed those assembled in Kane, “pack up your gear. We march in two hours and fight when dawn breaks. A sign will come, two short calls from a pu hui—“ I didn’t know the word and that snag ruined my on-the-fly translation. Kimo spoke too fast; I never caught up. “Ua mau ke ea,” he called, raising his hands as though in prayer.

“o ka ‘Aina, i ka Pono” the troops responded softly so their voices wouldn’t carry. The moment was done—they dispersed to gather their belongings. Iokepa had one last exchange with Kimo before he came over to see me—tired but happy for his exertions.

“No problems getting back? Family safe?” I asked in English.

“Speaker Ka’ena’s watching out for a whole kauaof men, I could slip in and out no problems. But he’s got one kaua coming soon.”

“How many men does your father have, with his friends?”

“Twenty for sure, and another ten they think.” Sixteen scouts with twenty partisans should be enough—I doubted Ka’ena had more than a dozen guards. The Speaker himself that gave me pause; someone with even a fraction of Ienith’s strength could easily swing the battle.

“How many on the other side?”

“Speaker’s only got eight koali’i but there are some haoles too, just showed up yesterday.”

“Where the hell did they come from?”

“Doesn’t matter. They won’t be able to stand against Ioane.” His chest swelled with filial pride.

“I assume they’ve got a plan for the Speaker.”

“Cut his fucking throat, that’s what you do.”

“What can he do?”

“Huh?”

“Hai’oleo. What can he do?”

“He’s a Speaker. He talks business, cleanse the forest, tell the lahui what’s what.”

He was confident and for all I knew had good reason to be. I knew almost nothing about the town, the situation, the coming battle. For a man who couldn’t fight it was almost irrelevant.

“When the fighting starts, be sure you hang back with me. We want to get you back safe to your father.”

“Ka almost killed me when I slipped in the door, he grabbed me so hard.” My friend screwed up his mouth and blinked a few times before continuing. “It was different, how he looked when I told him what we’d done. Like I finally counted those fuckin’ cowries right.”

“You did a good job. He’s right to be proud.”

“Anyone coulda done it.”

“Well, they didn’t. You did. No one gets credit for what they could’ve done.” I shrugged and then remembered something. “Oh, Kimo mentioned a signal but I lost him at ‘pa hui.’ What’s the signal?”

“Somebody blows a conch; that’s pa hui. Two long calls.” Io said through a mouthful of sweet mealy cornbread. “You ask a lot of questions.”

“It’s been said before and it’s always been true.”

“Well, since you always got questions, I wanna ask something.”

“Shoot.”

“Why’re you here, man? Why come to the islands? I know the story you told, but you never met no King Keone.” I clenched my teeth to keep my face from showing anything. “It’s your skin, brother: white like melia, new red burn on your neck. You’ve been on the islands a week at the most. So I know what you said, but if we’re going into a real fight together I want to know what’s true.”

I felt sick over the heap of lies I’d told him. “Looking for a treasure,” I said. “That’s what I told Kimo. That there was a treasure and Keone hired me to find it. It’s for myself, though, for someone across the ocean who’ll pay me to bring it back. Things went wrong, the pig gored me. There’s nothing in Noio Koha, I was just trying to get east. Because I thought the treasure might be east.” I passed a hand through my hair, looked to the young man’s face and was surprised to see mirth, not betrayal.

He laughed out loud and slapped one pudgy hand on his knee. “Treasure? On To’mea? Gold and jewels? You’re Ashur the Pirate?”

“Not the worst guess. There is a boat—very old, from before the Calamity. You know what that is?” He didn’t, though like most sensitive folks he had an inkling—the vague sense that how things are isn’t how they always were. “It’s not really important. Haoles from very long ago—I mean ancient, before the Speakers—they built a boat and hid it on To’mea. Something I need is inside the boat.”

“What is it?”

“I honestly don’t know.” I saw him smirking and felt self-conscious. “There are hints. It doesn’t even really matter. I’ll be paid for what I find. Finding the ship is the hard part.”

“And all this for money.”

“Yeah. The war’s just making my life difficult, same as your dad.”

“That’s it, huh? You really got nothing better to do then mix yourself up in someone else’s war? That’s sad, Ashur. Real sad,” he wheezed between giggles.

I drank a whole skin of water on my back against a stone, clearing my mind and filling my body with fluids I expected to need later. Sweating and bleeding dried a man out. Left to my own I’d have hidden up there all night, moved out in the morning and scurried east quick as the crutch allowed. But Kimo and Io expected me to go. As Keone’s agent, how could I do otherwise? I would wield my machete into battle, limping gamely at the rear.

We moved down the slope towards Kaleikaumaka, dawn’s pale flower just blooming at our backs. There was barely enough light to see the trail, though I was the only one who truly struggled. Io helped me along where roots grabbed at my crutch. In time the men ahead stopped, and all eighteen of us took position to wait. The bluff’s stockade lay a quarter-mile away, its dying torches and dark mountain lumber clear between the jungle’s trees. The first morning birds and our own steady breathing were the only sounds as we waited for Ioane’s call. Men shifted to more comfortable positions and whispered amongst themselves as tension pooled. A cold dewdrop splattered on my neck, so sudden I nearly yelped from the shock. My reflexive twitch eased our nerves; Iokepa covered his mouth to stifle a giggle.

Suddenly a great flash froze the world into silent witness. The Speaker’s hut in the upper compound blossomed into a fireball, blown to splinters, my dazzled eyes searching for any sense in these events—and then the sound hit, a great whooshing thunderclap trailing screams and hot wind in its wake. We watched in mute horror as debris climbed, hung, fell on the village. Once the blast faded a new plume of fire rose to replace it, brighter and more coherent than the smoldering around it, rising thirty feet into the sky and holding steady. There were words on the wind, deeper and rougher than Ienith’s hai’oleo. Speaker Ka’ena was on the warpath.

Weapons came out at the sight of the plume, far too late to act on it. Kimo had collected himself and now barked orders to his kiu. Io stood transfixed with shock, the light in his eyes shattered, mouth opening and closing like a fish’s. The Molokai took him about the shoulders, rushing us both towards the agreed meeting spot.

“Keep moving, kid,” I implored Iokepa, and winced. I hate when kid slips out.

“My ka,” is all he could say.

“You’re dad’s a strong man. He’s alive.” It was possible. Light broke over the Halawa valley but the gibbous moon still lorded over us like a bloated god of war. “This is home. Your people are dying. We’re going to go save them.” His face took a determined look and he started running independent of his handlers. I still held my crutch but couldn’t use it, carried along instead by soldiers’ rough hands.

Battle sounded out clearly before our party reached the village tree line: death and agony audible while we slapped our way through banana fronds. At last we cleared the outermost homesteads and stepped into an open cluster of huts comprising the village proper. I took up position just inside a doorway while the soldiers pushed ahead. Small children whimpered inside, their parents and an older sister shushing them, smartly staying put. Ahead, simply garbed village partisans fought a pitched battle with two dozen armored Koali’i and haole. The white men stood out for their red armbands inscribed with a symbol I knew from recent memory: a crouched snarling cat, claws bared. Tthe Royal Red Tigers defended Kaleikaumaka, though at the moment I couldn’t spot Colonel Staves. Combat raged in every open space. Weapons of wood, stone, glass and heavy shells splintered on the mercenaries’ steel but tore their flesh just tasting it. The wai kalepa fought like animals, standing out for their lack of bright colors, their want of crested helms.

Kimo screamed and charged, picking out the haoles as obvious targets. His men followed snarling and whooping. I stayed back with Io; nobody stayed to watch us. My companion stared wide-eyed into my face, seeking guidance.

“You want me to run go first?” I asked. “You’ll be waiting a while.”

He cast his face down, embarrassed. “I don’t know what to do.”

“About what?”

“About any of this!” Raising his spear with a poor angle and a worse grip, the lad broke my heart. I wanted to advise him, deliver a rousing speech and give Kaleikaumaka the hero she needed. But of course, things don’t work like that. Neither glory nor victory awaited him on the fight’s far side. The path east lay empty and I could easily to fill my stores from the baggage left at the ridgetop.

“Iokepa,” I said gently, placing a hand on his shoulder, “I’m going to leave.” Kimo had a Red Tiger on his spear like a fish. The poor man’s mouth gaped open and his hands flopped feebly at the bloody shaft sticking out of him. The scout captain swung him around, his dying form a shield against other opponents. A partisan lost an arm and a head in two quick swipes from a steel falchion.

“That’s what it is,” I impressed upon Iokepa. “That’s all it is. I’m leaving.”

His eyes were stuck to the carnage. “I can’t.”

“That’s okay. Find your dad, your uncle and aunt. Tell them thank you. But now I have to go.” I hoisted myself up on the crutch and pulled the satchel around to my stomach.

At first Io looked stricken, but steel suddenly alloyed behind his eyes. “Thanks, kaukini Ashur. You helped my family.”

“You did too, and I know you’ll do more. Stay safe, Io. Just stay alive, all right?”

He nodded sullenly. I clasped his hand, warm and soft compared to my calloused mitts, and embraced that rare commodity in my long travels: a true friend. We separated and I turned to the jungle yawning cool and dark. With an effort I tuned out the sounds of battle behind. I focused on peace and freedom ahead, the blades of grass leaving dewy streaks on my boots. Dawn reared over the valley wall, baby-fresh pink light sticking everywhere it touched. The village’s marble-smooth waterfall was a flat plane of fire. Bird-of-paradise flowers stuck out their blue tongues from orange bills glowing so bright I could scarcely look.

The Speaker’s voice held me up. Guttural words shook every part of my insides, careening through the air in invisible phonetic shapes. Light grew in the village, separate from the Sun, beamed from a source somewhere behind the buildings. It was moving now, rushing from right to left, and finally I saw the source: a wave of living fire rushing around the village’s periphery, birthing at every step of its way a six-foot wall of flames. The wave rounded a bend to charge straight for me. At a sprint I might have cleared its path, but my left leg wouldn’t allow so much as a jog. So I backpedaled, cursing as the demon rushed past with a whoosh and the crackle of ozone: a head-sized sphere of energy igniting the grass beneath it. I looked back to Io, who’d fallen to the ground in shock shielding his face from the furnace-heat. Ka’ena had erected a wall of fire around the entire village.

Wails of fear issued from Kaleikaumaka’s huts, the cowering villagers doubting their decision to stay. Undergrowth withered in clouds of steam. Small ranks of flame marched out from the wall like soldier ants. I hobbled back to Io’s hiding spot and grabbed his shoulder to stand him upright. We scurried around the huts, staying out of the melee’s sight until we rounded a basalt cistern the size of a house. Water-cooled stone offered a welcome break from the fire’s murderous heat.

Panicked at Ka’ena’s sorcery, troops from both sides had stopped fighting and separated.  Heaving with exhaustion, sweat slickened, they waved gore-crusted weapons with eyes on the spreading fire.  Twenty bodies lay in an ankle-deep wallow of volcanic dirt and blackening blood. Shouting from the bluff told the Red Tigers to retreat, rallied them by the stockade’s dirt ramp.  Kimo stalked ahead of his surviving men in the pit below, his beard matted with others’ blood.  Ten surviving kiu stood with around twenty partisans.  The defenders, outnumbered two to one, still held the high ground. Ka’ena’s hai’oleo subsided, though whispers like aftershocks bounced around the valley.  Sunlight turned the rising smoke to gold.  On the ground, that same smoke grew thick and sent stinging tears ran down my cheeks.  I refrained from wiping my eyes—it only made the pain worse, as Io learned with a hissing noise.

The Speaker appeared from the stockade, pushing a water truck ahead of him on his way to the ramp.  Colonel Staves walked a step behind, his crimson jacket immaculate, face clean-shaven. Ka’ena was naked, his gaunt chest and sinewy flanks clad only in soot, his beard and hair burned away in patches. Even from a hundred yards off his crazed black eyes pierced your mind.  “Sathaat kuruk!” He spat, rending the air like a thunderclap.  The ruined cinders of his hut—now sprinkled over the ramp—glowed suddenly with new fire as the onlookers cried out.  Terrified faces peeked from doors and windows around Kaleikaumaka; parents herded their children from the thatched buildings into open spaces.  They looked to flee but the Speaker’s magic hemmed them in. Ka’ena spoke in Kane with a force and palpable will that impressed even this ignorant novice.