War Dance

Author's note: There is a LOT of fighting in this story, though little graphic violence, and brief reference to male bisexuality. If those are concerns, this story may not be for you. It takes place in the world of While The Gods Slumber.

"The Queen of Thorns is unjustly named. No thorn was ever so cruel."

-Legendary words of (martyr) Chief Nkesi, 3109 by the Ummran calendar.

Lake Kongo, northwestern shore, 3125, Month of Great Harvest

Yafi stares across the narrow inlet, heart sinking as quickly as her toes do into the sucking black mud.

"By my thrice-damned ancestors," she swears under her breath, easing through delicate green blossoms of papyrus that teem upon the shoreline, judging the distance to the other side. She runs a hand through the short twists of her hair.

It isn't far. She could swim across the finger of water in a few minutes. But these sheltered coves and creek mouths along Lake Kongo are known for crocodiles. The beasts lie in wait for an antelope or unwary fisherman, and hide from the afternoon sun along the shaded shore.

She glances behind her. She hears them now, trying to be silent, as they track her through the forest. Given the choice, to face a croc or face Foundlings...

Yafi pulls off the brown and green wrapper she wears over one shoulder, leaving only her loincloth and a strip of cotton to cover her slight breasts. She discards two of her knives, the broad bladed machete she uses to chop through the forest, her spear, and food. She keeps just a single knife, the blowgun, and an oiled pouch for her darts and poison. She pads through the muddy stand of papyrus sedge to the water. The dying screams of Kong warriors who fought by her side that morning still echo in her mind.

At least by a croc, death will be quicker.

The enemy Kwi-Kong are close now, rattling through the underbrush behind her like a foul wind. Yafi eyes the water for lurking crocs. She mouths a prayer to the very same ancestors she profaned moments before. Taking a breath, she wades into the lake.

She takes a few slow, smooth strokes along the surface before she ducks under and kicks to lessen the splashing. Three months after the rainy season, the lake is shallow, the muddy bottom just beyond reach. She could have waded across most of the inlet.

Yafi is a strong swimmer. Her sleek form cuts through the water. She clears the papyrus stands and glides into open water. Each time she comes up for air, she glimpses the wooded shore ahead.

She is just past halfway when she spots the black scaly length on the embankment to her left. It slithers among the reeds and into the water.

What was she thinking?

At least against the men she'd have had a fighting chance.

Terror feeds her strength. Yafi kicks across. The croc has already sunk below the surface when she looks again. In her mind's eye, it shoots towards her like a fisherman's harpoon. She can already feel its jaws...

As soon as she reaches the shallows, Yafi plants her feet on the muddy bottom and lunges up under the sudden weight of streaming water. She gives no care to the noise, charging through more papyrus and up into the underbrush, dimly aware of the Kwi-Kong men on the far shore. Panting as she gains the shade and cover of the trees, Yafi peers back over the inlet.

Even from a distance, white face paint around their eyes marks them as Foundlings. Yafi has seen massive, hulking brutes amongst the regular Kwi-Kong warriors. These two are not so imposing. But according to rumor, these champions are even more lethal -- stronger than any man and fanatically loyal to their Queen.

They have found her discarded weapons. The two men argue, voices raised, gesturing with wooden shields and machetes. Though she can't make out what they say, it is clear what they dispute.

Turn back. It's too dangerous to chase me. Just let me go home again.

The croc has slipped beneath the surface. She knows how predators behave. It awaits another chance.

Even if the Foundlings hadn't seen the croc, why do they want her so badly? There are a hundred other kilombo fighters like her in these woods, all of them fleeing, dead or captive.

Whatever the reason, one of the men gazes across the water as if he could see her. He tosses his shield and beak-shaped throwing axe into the sedge, and pulls off his tunic. Soon he wears only a kilt, displaying the sculpted, painted lines of a man born to make war. His companion, short hair streaked with gray, makes one final complaint. He relents and prepares to make the crossing.

Yafi gasps in disbelief as the fools dive into the water. For a moment, she is too stunned to move. She opens her pouch to retrieve a dart and hastily scrape up the last dregs of poison from the sealed little jar.

The warriors are halfway across, in the deepest part of the channel. The top of the croc's head breaks the surface, just to their rear, death paying a visit.

An explosion of water engulfs one of the men. In the splashes, it is clear that the Foundling is trying to fight. The warriors' blades slash at the massive croc. But its jaws are clamped like an iron vise on the first man. It doesn't let go. It twists and thrashes in the water, tossing its prey about like a stuffed doll. The spray shines crimson in the sunlight.

The second Foundling's machete rises and falls as they struggle. Then the croc twists away, rolling along its length, dragging its catch out into the deeper waters of Lake Kongo.

The surviving Foundling starts after it, wailing with the effort. Then he seems to remember where he is. Across the inlet, two more black shapes slide into the water. With one last glance towards his companion, he veers away. He paddles the rest of the way across.

Yafi sits in the mud, bracing her back against the pale gray bark of a bushbutter tree, one leg extended, steepling the other for stability. She raises the blowgun to her lips.

The Foundling stalks out of the lake, just down the rise from where she is hidden. He is dripping, the machete in his hand streaming water and blood. He turns back to the lake, the corded muscles of his back still heaving.

She matches each of his breaths with her own. Yafi feels the crush of his pain. She picks out a bead of water that rolls down the vein of his broad neck. She relaxes completely. He turns, and their eyes meet.

In that moment, they recognize each other. Each are both, hunter and prey. Suddenly, Yafi doesn't want to do it.

But she does. One sharp breath, pure instinct. The dart shoots out. A finger-length of steel sprouts from his flesh, just above the collarbone.

His eyes widen. He lunges for her, like a wounded sable antelope, closing the distance between them with frightening speed. Yafi drops her blowgun. She leaps up into the tree, his hand grazing her ankle but unable to seize it. With practiced agility, she grabs a liana and swings around the trunk, putting it between them. She shimmies up, thighs chafing against the smooth bark. From there, she can haul herself up to a branch, and then the next.

He glares up at her, white dots along the orbital bones of his skull seeming to pulse on deep brown skin. The paint is smudged and partially washed away by the lake, but Yafi knows the markings well. He is one of the Queen's elite, a Foundling.

He drags the needle of steel from his flesh and sniffs it before tossing it away. Snatches up the blowgun and shatters it against the trunk of the tree. He pauses then, unsure. Finally, he takes off inland, forging a path through the underbrush. Before he has taken ten steps, he begins to stagger. By thirty, he collapses and stills.

*

As he sleeps, Yafi strips the kilt from his waist. He has an earthy, grassy scent, of lake water and shea butter. She cannot help but admire the solid curve of his legs. Many of the kilombo warriors are muscular, but he is well-fed. She has seen how quick he is. Briefly, she wonders what it would be like to spar with him, as she does with men and women of her kilombo, Wengu. To put him on his back and force him to submit.

He wears bands of pure Shangan gold on his wrists. She has rarely seen so much of the precious metal. The ring through her septum is plain copper. His bracers are not etched with runes, like the beads and bangles everyone wears to ward away demons. These seem purely decorative.

His skin is heated, and she flushes from the touch. She takes the bands. They are too large for her wrists, but fit nicely on her slender calves.

Once she has sliced the kilt into strips, she ties his hands behind his back. She triples the binds.

Yafi is eating from his jar of kichi when he awakens. She is glad he brought food, a water-gourd and a machete across the inlet. She didn't realize how hungry she was until she tasted the spiced dried fish, common rations for warriors of both sides. She washes it down with his water. Her grip tightens around the machete as she watches him test the bonds, straining at the strips of his kilt.

Maybe she is a fool for not killing him.

He twists his shoulders to look at her, strong jaw pressed into the leaves of the forest floor. She has left him on his belly, with his hands behind his back, and she crouches near his feet. His full lips twist in arrogant contempt. Apart from the expression, he is not unpleasant to look upon. His hair is very close-cropped, as if he shaves. His skin is lighter than hers, like aged sapele heartwood. He has fewer scars. Yafi guesses that he is her age or younger - perhaps he has seen nineteen rains.

"You should have kept running." His dialect is guttural, but she is able to understand.

"Why? You are my captive."

He snorts.

That had been the aim all along. To take captives, and exchange them for those the Queen had kidnapped. The Kong fighters had ambushed a larger force of Kwi-Kong regulars, decimating the Queen's warriors, until the Foundlings ambushed them. Yafi was one of the few that slipped through the enemy line to escape.

But the Kwi-Kong occupied the trail back to the kilombo. Each time throughout the morning and afternoon that Yafi had run back to the trail, the route to return home, she'd seen evidence that the enemy had been there. Sandal prints heading north and west, towards Wengu. That was why she'd ventured so close to the lake.

"Get up," she says, holding his sheathed machete. She has used it to cut lengths of papyrus. She hangs the green fibers over her shoulder. "I'm taking you home. If we encounter Kwi-Kong warriors, I'll kill you first. One less Foundling to terrorize my people."

He is slow to rise, having to draw his knees up under him before he can stand. She loops the handle of his gourd, refilled with water, around his hands.

At first they follow a game trail -- probably made by an okapi and her calf -- so as not to have to cut through the dense underbrush. The light dims as evening falls, birds beginning to banter and sing before they sleep in the treetops.

The Kwi-Kong walks ahead of her, ducking under low hanging vines. He is unhurried, not from pain or fatigue, she thinks, but because he has no desire to reach their destination.

"You cannot return to Wengu," he says. "Your kilombo is no more."

"You're lying."

"You will see that I tell the truth. Your people are undisciplined and foolish. You have been outmatched this day."

"Spoken by the man who swam into the crocodile's jaws."

She sees him flinch. Good. She can hurt him.

Yafi directs him off the trail, into the bush. She knows this land well. She has hunted on it since before she was old enough to use a blowgun. Kilombo crops are often raided and burned, so the villagers of Wengu rely on game and dried fish.

His only garb now is the loincloth. When she forgets what he is, she finds it pleasing to observe the curve of his backside. The muscles in his legs clench as he steps.

"What is your name?" she asks.

He shoulders through the brush. "Kuko."

Yafi wonders if the rumors were true. Did Foundlings truly not know their ancestors? How could anyone live like that? "Who are you named for?"

"The Queen names us. She is mother to us all, the only ancestor we need."

"Don't you wonder where you came from? About the woman who bore you?"

The underbrush is dense here. Kuko halts before stepping through the fronds of a cluster of ferns. "Why should I hold on to her, when she did not hold on to me?"

Yafi is silent for a while, listening to the forest. It is growing dark, but she doesn't want to drop her guard. She cannot rest until she is home.

"But how do you know that your parents abandoned you?" she asks. "Your Queen of Thorns sold my parents and thousands like them into slavery. Do you think she would not abduct children?"

"That is different. Your people were subjects of the Queen, but you chose war and law-breaking instead. Captives are taken in war."

"I chose nothing. I had seen only two rains when the war started. My parents were taken away when I was fourteen."

To this he has no answer. So she sneers, attacks where she senses weakness.

"Shall I kneel before your mother-queen and offer my allegiance? Thank her for making me a hungry orphan? I wonder how gracious she would be."

They press on as the shadows deepen. The forest comes alive again as night feeders emerge. Bats swarm overhead, black against the twilight.

"What is your name?" he asks.

She hesitates. But she loses nothing by telling him. "Yafi."

"Yafi, your kilombo is no more."

"Be silent."

"Look." He tilts his head in the direction of the west.

Yafi can't see through the trees, but she notices the faint reddish glow that reflects from it, permeating the darkening forest. At first she thinks it is a trick of light from the sunset.

But it is not the sunset.

She needs to see. Yafi motions him to one of the taller copal trees, spindly and spreading in the canopy. She unlimbers the papyrus lengths and ties several together.

"Kneel."

Kuko glares at her.

"Kneel down, or I'll make you."

He turns away from her slowly and drops to his knees. He bends over, head to the ground, presenting his bound hands. She loops and knots the papyrus around his wrists.

"Stay in that position until I come down."

He twists towards her. "What if a leopard finds me, trussed up like a meal?"

"Then I will come down." Yafi holds the other end of the makeshift rope in her teeth and begins to climb. She ties the papyrus around a lower branch and continues her ascent, glancing down at him frequently. The canopy is high, and it takes several minutes before she begins to top lower level trees. When she can see enough of the sky, she stops.

The sky is aglow to the west, not where the sun went down, but where Wengu is. In spots, the flames are visible, outlining the

tops of distant trees.

She is only a few hours walk from her home. But the kilombo is burning. She imagines she can hear faint screams in the evening air.

Yafi stares helplessly. How could this have happened?

Only a few fighters remained at home, over one hundred having joined the dawn attack. Even so, there should have been enough to hold the palisade wall. An entire kilombo, an armed camp concealed deep in the bush, should never have been conquered.

Unless this had all been planned. Unless Queen Catamori had used her own men as bait, luring the Kong fighters into a Foundling trap, while another force took the mostly unguarded kilombo.

In her mind's eye she sees her home go up in ashes. Friends slain, elders beaten, children bound in captivity. After just one day, it is all gone. When her parents were taken, she had clung to other youths, found a place where she belonged. Wengu was full of orphans -- young, strong, nourished on rage.

She wants to go home. Maybe the Kong are still fighting. Or maybe they are all defeated. Either way, she can still inflict pain. Tear pieces of the lives of her enemies away from them, the way they have done to her.

Yafi glances down at Kuko. His back is up against the tree. She feels the vibrations. He is rubbing against the bark.

She descends swiftly, dropping expertly from limb to limb, even in the coppery gloom. Leaping to the forest floor behind him, she draws his blade.

"I should kill you right now!"

He stops chafing at his bonds, slowly turning to face her. "You're free now," he says. "You can go anywhere. You said it yourself. You didn't choose this war."

She spits. "You made it my war, Foundling."

He visibly gulps as he watches the blade.

Yafi seethes, a pot ready to boil over. She has felt this bitterness for a long time, ever since her parents vanished. But she has buried it deep.

You're free now. Free to do what? To go where?

She could keep going, return home. Death awaits there, another crocodile in the water. But it is a choice.

Or she could make another choice.

Yafi points the machete north and east, back towards Lake Kongo. She motions for him to start walking.

"Where-"

"Be silent!" she snarls.

"It is too dark, Yafi. We need to rest. I am tired, and so are you."

"To hells with what you need! I hate you, Kwi-Kong!"

Heading away from the burning kilombo, there is little light. She could stop to rest, to make a fire, but she doesn't want to take the time. Besides, fire might betray their position.

Even as Kuko stumbles ahead, she forces him on. He swears as low hanging branches hit him in the face. She can't even see well enough to know if his wrists are still tightly secured. So she keeps the machete bared and ready.

"Where are we going?" he asks again.

Along the coast there are smaller settlements, like Ilungu. Fishermen and bush traders who pay tribute to the Queen but sympathize with the kilombos. She eyes the Foundling, silhouetted ahead of her, dark shape against the darkness, blundering through the forest. Bush traders might pay coin for him, for ransom back to the Queen.

You can go anywhere.

She could go to another kilombo, one much like Wengu, to continue the war. But her past is a pile of ash. Her parents gone, the shrine to her sacred ancestors burned.

Yafi is an uprooted tree. One that stands only while leaning on other trees. Upright still, but hollowed out and crumbling. An undying husk that twists and creaks in the wind like a zumbi-animated corpse.

Demons roam the forest freely, outside of the wards of the kilombo and other human settlements. Yafi does not fear predators. She knows the animals of the bush well. She understands them. But no one understands demons. They seduce and enslave humans, seeking only to breed.

She has little protection against them, or her captive, until she reaches Ilungu.

Yafi loses track of time. She staggers through a dream forest with ghostly giants who walk on their hands.

Help me, you ancestors! Show me my path.

As she falters, Yafi trips over a buttress root. She gropes in the dark for the machete. When she gets back to her feet, she has lost Kuko. Then she finds him, another ghost in the night. But now he is following her.

She lurches ahead.

*

Yafi awakens, head cradled in an arm on a bed of drying leaves. She is hungry, her mouth is dry, and something stiff jams up against her ribs. Tight tracks of tears have dried on her cheeks. Disoriented, she wonders where she is. The sun peeks through the trees, low in the sky.

Kuko stands nearby, in the middle of the clearing, chewing on a leafy twig.