Speaker for the Gods, week 17

The Battle of Mahoe Kahu, part 2

The gash down Mahoe Kahu’s center was clear only when we drew close.  It was thin given the mountain’s size, maybe thirty yards from one razor-sheared wall to the other.  They were cut, not blasted or chiseled: smooth vertical faces showing off the mountain’s guts in wavering stripes.  White seabirds wheeled like angels around the pinnacles.  The shadowed road ran through the mountain for a half mile before emerging on the other side.  Thick lowland forest formed its own barricades around the kaua as we approached the opening.

Ienith’s chariot entered the gap at the head of her troops.  It was damp and cool in the passage, with thin rivulets of water dripping down.  Moss grew thick in spots where erosion had hollowed out space for it to cling.  Our force was small enough—just a few hundred men and four heavy wagons—that for a few minutes the mountain swallowed us completely.

They picked that moment to attack.  Silhouettes appeared ahead of the cart, blocking off the far portal and lining up in ranks behind it.  Heavy shields smeared with white dye came down into a barricade.  Whirling my head around, I saw our entrance was now blocked. Keone’s men must have hidden in the woods—not too many but enough to box us in.  Ienith tugged the reins to stop our chariot as shouts of dismay ran through the host.  Weapons were quickly produced and men dropped into combat stances, but no attack came. Our enemies stood fast as Ienith barked out instructions; To’mean troops rapidly lined up on each side of the formation, ready to move either way if the call came.  They’d find us hard nuts to crack in so small a space.

I started to sweat despite the damp.  I saw no way out and yet no immediate danger.  Might they use missiles from above?  Looking up, I saw nobody on the fissure’s rim and turned to the High Speaker to see an expression more perplexed than afraid.

“I don’t understand,” she mumbled, brow furrowed. “They’re just waiting.  Traps are made to close.”

“Maybe they want to talk,” I suggested, though no messengers approached.  Ienith shook her head and said nothing more.  “Can you break us out?”  I asked hopefully.

“In the field, yes.  Not here.  I’d bring down the mountain on us.  That’s why they picked this place.”  She grimaced, shook her head and groaned.  “Ka’ena.  Ka’ena could have cleared a path.  Cooked them all in their skins.”

“But you’re stronger.”

“Not with fire.  Not like him.”

Staves trotted up to the chariot.  “Milady, we’d best turn ‘round.  Turn back, fight through the line and regroup.”

“We move to join the other host,” Kapono insisted in his stilted English.

“Go out the far side and who knows what we hit?  We know what’s back.”  The Colonel glared at the herald and flicked his gaze to Ienith. “What’re we doing, milady?  I’m good for a fight but whatever you choose needs to happen now.”

She was deep in thought and barely seemed to hear him. “I need a minute.  There’s only one chance at this.”  As she said it, another voice came on the wind, its bass notes setting the bisected mountain to hum like a tuning fork.  Ienith whipped her head around, trying to divine its source. Echoing off the walls, the words piled atop each other into a formless roaring barrage: hai’oleo, unmistakable even after so many echoes. Hope leapt into my throat; the To’mean army had doubled back with High Speaker Kale!  A timely rescue to brighten our darkest hour.  But Ienith was pale; her mouth hung open and she’d dropped the ox reins.

“It’s impossible,” she said on the edge of a whisper. “Impossible.”

“We’re saved!” I insisted.  Was she being prideful?  Ashamed at her need for rescue?  There was a rumble in the Earth.  The army started to cheer; To’mean war chants sprang up and fell beneath the deluge of god-words.

Ienith, unmoved, clenched her jaw.  “We move,” she forced out.  “We need to move.”

“What’s going on?”

“MOVE!” She screamed in Kane at her nearest officer.  “The mountain’s breaking—run!”  Ienith crouched to pick up the reins, found and cracked them. Hollering at the oxen, she lurched the ka’a forward.  Dust and stones rained from on high as the To’mean force broke into flank speed.  Staves leapt aboard, blue irises aglow with Sun as he looked up for falling boulders. Unlucky men shrieked under stone strikes.  Some made no sound as they fell.  Some held up their shields for protection, others dropping the weight to run faster on suddenly unsteady ground.  Sand and grit jumped in the air with the tremors, pitched up by the roadway now warping like a leather belt.  The oxen’s fearful bellows could barely be heard amidst tectonic rumbles.  Ienith kept the beasts running with a quick bark of hai’oleo from her throat, wrapping the reins around her wrists to crack them harder.  The chariot reached full speed.  Panicked soldiers tried to board us and while none could grab hold, more than a few fell beneath the wheels.  Ienith cringed but pushed us towards the swelling column of blue sky.

Mahoe Kahu’s highest reaches broke first . Black stone boulders the size of houses sloughed off the most central walls to crash straight down on the road. Explosions of sound and dust obscured everything behind us.  Most of Ienith’s army was gone, crushed or soon to be, left behind as we careened around piles of debris.  The crashing only grew louder, overwhelming the god-words bringing down the mountain. Sheer walls crumbled on themselves, moving from the high point at the cone’s center towards its outer reaches. Death chewed up the road behind us. The exit loomed ahead; we’d have easily made it easily if not for Keone’s men.  Having dropped back to save themselves from the avalanche, they still blocked the road with shields out.  Only four of us stood in the chariot: myself with the machete, Kapono with his spear, Staves with his rapiers, and Ienith with the strength of gods. At least saving us wouldn’t fall to me.

“Do something!” Staves hollered in the High Speaker’s ear.  “We can’t stop to fight, it has to be you!”  She grimaced and bit her lip, focused on the treacherous road and unsure. Even knowing her so little I saw the fear: a very peculiar fear, high up in her brain, not of death nor pain, nothing so simple—that imp in her mind, Failure, taking any of a hundred forms. Any course she took was more likely than not to end badly.

So I gave her the kick she needed: gripped her shoulder, leaned in and screamed “KILL THOSE FUCKERS” into her ear.  It’s not something I’d usually say, but in that moment Ienith needed brutal simplicity. The chariot had slowed somewhat to wheel around boulders; Mahoe Kahu kept collapsing behind us.  We had perhaps ten seconds to the barricade.  Their white-painted shields banged the ground in challenge like incisors gnashing.  Arrows whizzed overhead, forcing our heads down but blessedly overshooting.

Ienith’s face suddenly cleared; she had her solution.  Swiftly exchanging the reins for her herald’s spear, she took an instant to weigh it in her hand before drawing it to her lips: a smallish model, a four-foot haft capped with viciously sharp obsidian.  She whispered to the black glass.  Mahoe Kahu’s dying groans echoed from behind, our enemies’ war cries from the front.  Their own spears jutted between the shields, their whole weight braced to take the oxen’s blow no matter the cost.  We were so close I could see their clenched teeth.  The High Speaker kissed her weapon softly and the prayer was done.

In a single fluid motion, so fast you couldn’t blinked, Ienith drew back her long brown arm and fired.  Launched overhand from her shoulder, it screamed over the animals’ heads faster than any human throw.  White light flared from the head for just an instant before it struck the first shield. Light is faster than sound, but my ears heard the explosion before my dazzled eyes could interpret it.  The shockwave blew men into the air screaming, nearly knocked me off my feet and threw up a cloud of black smoke into which the chariot plunged.  We lurched sideways and back again as Staves let out vile curses.  Suddenly we found ourselves in the clear.  Missiles fell feebly behind us, the road swelled in front and lush forests loomed on either side.  Just a small force opposed us now, perhaps fifty men.  They’d been waiting on the hai’oleo from afar; my stomach dropped and I understood Ienith’s dread. If Keone wielded—or had found one who could wield—To’mea’s greatest weapon, the war’s whole balance had changed.

Rhythmic shudders in the chariot’s base suggested wheel damage, but Kapono managed to keep us on course.  An arrow shaft jutted out just above his left collarbone, the tip sunk in the meat of his upper back.  Blood ran down his bare chest and he ground his teeth in pain.  Ienith lay curled on the chariot’s floor with hands over her face. I reached to take the reins from the wounded man, but he shrugged me off.  “Look to her,” he said stonily in Kane.  Dropping down beside her, I asked what was wrong.

“My eyes,” she managed, “I can’t see.”  She looked up at me, her eyes undamaged but rolling in her head.  “It’s only shapes.”

I turned to Staves, who chewed his lip and looked more concerned than I’d yet seen him.  “Nothing wrong with her eyes, so it might get better.  I don’t know.”

“It’s magic, it doesn’t have to makesense.  But she’d better shape up quick.  Not much left in these things,” he said, tossing a scornful hand at the oxen. They hauled at the battered chariot with every fiber, most badly hurt in one way or another.  A crack sounded beneath our feet and the cart dropped six inches.  “Axle!” Staves cried as I stumbled and caught myself on the chariot’s lip.

The herald yanked the reins to the left, pulling us off to the Great Road’s north shoulder as we ground down slower.  Dense forest offered itself as our only exit and as we halted half the oxen collapsed.  Depleted and bleeding from terrible spear wounds, they were finished.  Staves leapt out first while Kapono helped me carry Ienith between our shoulders.  He used his right side to support her, sweating through the pain of the arrow in his left.  With her arm over my left shoulder and the satchel’s strap over my right, I took a last look back at the wreckage.

Mahoe Kahu still stood, in a fashion, collapsed from twins to a single ruined mass.  The northern half had fallen in on the cleft and buried it beneath a thousand tons of rock. Though sections of the southern wall stayed intact, Keone’s hai’oleo blocked the Great Road completely.  The mountain’s south half had fared well, supporting its fallen twin like Auntie Hina’s mammoth arms had cradled her fallen husband.  Dust rose a half mile into the air, pushed gently inland by the sea breeze.  Keone’s men were scattered and confused by Ienith’s spell and its smoky aftermath, but already they regrouped.  Our wreckage chariot would be obvious.

“Solid score of ‘em after us,” Staves noted as we pulled Ienith into the jungle.  High trees with dark leaves formed the darkest cover since the pine forest days before.  Criss-crossing roots ran at ground level, their knuckles rising a few inches over the damp soil and sour dead leaves.

“We can drop a few in here—tight spaces, and all that.  Maybe put the others off their nerve,” Staves suggested.

“Angry Kane don’t just slink away,” I countered.  “And we should assume there are more.  We should try and lose them in the forest.”

The Colonel sighed and spit, still offering no help with Ienith.  She seemed to be recovering, now supporting most of her own weight.  Eyes blinked rapidly, tracking the trees we passed.  “Not with you lot, I s’pose.  One’s deaf, one’s blind…and there’s nothing wrong with you, Ashur, but you’re fucking useless in a fight.”

“Got a gun?”  I was defensive.

“Wouldn’t be here, now, would I?  I’d be ruling my own island of savages!  Not these lot, ones that ain’t seen magic.  So I’ve only got to shoot it off once, you know, and spend the next twenty years waving it around.  ‘Bring me a drink!’”

Our pursuers tromped through the jungle, shouting grim threats in Kane. It’s such a kind language; even a threat to wear one’s ears as a necklace can’t sound too vicious.  We did our best to leave a light trail and soon their calls came from a wide fan behind us.  “They’ve spread out,” I noted to Staves, who nodded and kept his pleased expression.  He was more comfortable here with his swords than on Ienith’s chariot.  And who knew?  He might yet get his fight.

“Find a stone,” Ienith said in Kane as we pulled her higher.

“A stone.  What kind?” I spoke in her ear.

“Big.  Bigger the better.  And water.”

“We can’t stop right now, ipo.” The sweet name felt strange to say but I hoped it would calm her.  Kapono pointed to our left, where the ground fell away into a narrow gully.  A fast-moving stream had carved it out, carrying dozens of large stones with it and laying them down over centuries as a smooth conduit. None truly rose to the level of “boulder,” and none would hide us.  If one of Keone’s men came along we’d be utterly exposed.

I nodded at the herald.  “We’re not doing better for water and stone.”

“Awful idea,” opined the Colonel.  “Best to keep moving until someone catches us.  Kill him.  Repeat ‘til the first bit stops happening.”

“I need the stream,” the High Speaker croaked, which settled the matter. Staves slipped behind a tree above the gully to keep watch while Kapono and I took her down.  We lowered Ienith to her knees on the bank and let her breathe. The High Speaker dropped her face into the water, resting her skull against the stony bottom.  Bubbles rose as she steadily exhaled and her hair flowed like sea grass.

After a long minute underwater, Ienith picked her face up, blinked, and looked back at us with a weak smile.  She scooped water into her mouth for a long drink before getting slowly to her feet.  Kapono was there in a flash to steady her, but she patted his chest warmly: no need. Worry filled her face at the sight of his arrow wound.

“Get down,” she told him.  Kapono dropped to a knee and clasped a hand to the sticky spot on his shoulder, so the shaft stuck out between his fingers.  He set his teeth and let out a whine as Ienith snapped it off.  Three inches remained outside the skin, marking the head for later surgery.  Kapono’s heaving chest slowed as she kissed his glistening scalp.

“I’m glad you’re okay,” I said to Ienith, approaching at last.

“The water soothes and the stone heals.  Pele asks a heavy price from those who aren’t favored.”

I didn’t ask her to explain and we’d taken long enough.  “Gonna fill the skins,” I said, hauling them out of my satchel.

She shook her head.  “Not here. You’ll get sick.  We can find water higher up.  ”

“But you just—“

“It’s just a little and I grew up with it, when the fish came in small and we couldn’t pay the wai kalepa.  You wait for now.”  As she spoke a long, low whistle came from Colonel Staves’ direction.  He’d spied movement

“How fast can you move?” I asked

“Faster than you and your leg.”

“My leg’s not so bad.”

“Then let’s find out!” she exclaimed, and brushed my cheek with a hand before hustling up the embankment on all fours.  I followed with Kapono and Staves met us at the top.  Shadows flitted between the grey trees, fast dark forms rushing past green foliage and tiny blue flowers wherever sunlight reigned. High yelps propagated through the forest.

“Ilio,” Ienith murmured.  We pushed hard uphill, not quite running but rather jogging gingerly over roots and around trees.

“We’re heading northeast,” I said to the others, begging an explanation without asking.  Staves shrugged.

“If I remember, there’s a river on the other side of the hill,” Ienith said through heavy breathing.  “Feeding the farmland.  We can use it to drop our scent, then hide in the fields.”

“I don’t think we can make it that far.”  We had neither miles of space nor hours of time.  “We’re going to fight sooner or later.  If we get some distance and pick the right spot, it’ll only be a few of them.”

“Hate killing dogs,” groaned Staves.  I looked quizzically at him; a soft spot in the hard man?  “They don’t care if you gut ‘em,” he explained.  “Men are scared, trying not to get hit.  So you can get in and out clean.  A dog’ll take one in the belly just for a chomp on your wrist.  They always get something.”  That was more like the Colonel.

“What happened at the mountain?” I asked Ienith.  We hadn’t even discussed it in the last half-hour’s panic.

“It was hai’oleo.”

I sighed impatiently.  “Yes, clearly.  But only the Speakers should have it.  Square that circle for us.”

“I can’t tell you anything because I don’t understand.  I need to think.  And I can’t think when I’m running from insects!” she seethed.

“Not to presume anything, but can’t you just wipe them out?”  I asked earnestly.  Staves brightened at the thought.

The High Speaker shook her head and set her jaw. “Fighting a man takes precise tools: a spear, the Colonel’s swords, the lash of fire.  Water, earth and sky are blunt tools for shaping large events.  I asked a great boon from Pele and in her kindness she answered.  Only the shameless would ask again.  When again I speak Ku’s words, Keone will know my fury.  Ienith Pele’iwa does not play games she cannot win.”