The Blood Tide

 

The morning wind was sweet through the tamarind and acacia trees, carrying the smell of the dawning sea.  Jaya waded through the waist-high grass, carrying her fishing net looped over her shoulder, the bare earth soft under her feet.  The birds in the trees were just beginning to waken and sing softly, though she knew the sun would soon come up over the hills behind her and they would burst into a riot of sound and motion.

She heard her younger brother, Anut, following along behind her, muttering as he pushed through the grasses in her wake.  He was shorter than she was, even though he was thirteen, and he struggled to keep up with her longer strides.  She smiled to herself.  It would not be long before he was old enough to be tattooed and named a man – let him walk behind her for a little longer.

There was a mist in the morning air, and she looked up as they came to the edge of the trees.  From here the slope down to the sea was shallow, and at the edge of the sand there was a sharp black stone that jutted up from the ground, the surface gleaming with sea spray and etched with coiled signs.  When their ancestors first came to Ulu’a, driven out of their ancient island homes by their enemies, they raised this stone as a marker.  A sign to all the Unnamed Gods that the Tau’ta would go no further.

She stopped and stood for a moment, letting Anut catch up to her.  He was carrying his own net as well as a barbed fishing spear.  She thought him too eager – the water would be too cloudy from the past night’s storm for spearing fish.

This early, just after dawn, the light from the sun was still shrouded behind the central hills of the island behind them.  The sea was an expanse of silvery motion, darkening as it extended away toward the lands of sunset, marked at the limit of her sight by the line of white breakers where the reef walled them off from the deeper realms her people had long left behind.  Once, she knew, they had sailed the seas, and had been kings in a far western land, but that had ended long ago.

She breathed in the salt air and licked her lips to taste it.  Out in the darkness, lightning still flickered as the last edge of the storm tattered away.  It had thundered and rained all night outside the longhouse, and now the air smelled clean and sharp, full of the scents of soil and opening flowers.  It was beautiful here, and yet her eyes were ever drawn to the place beyond the reef, out where the history of her clan lay, the names of places she would never see.

“What’s that, there?” Anut said, pointing down to the beach.  Jaya looked and saw something there in the fallow shore where the waves smoothed the sand.  It looked like a man, only larger, and there was something strange about the shape of it, about the sheen of the half-light on what looked like the shell of a crab.

She squinted; the light was better now, but she was still unsure.  “It looks like a dead man,” she said, but even as she spoke, she was unsure.  The hairs stirred on her arms, and she touched where the tattoo of her lineage was inked into her upper arm.  She looked up and down the beach, seeing piles of seaweed and other drifted debris left over from the storm, but nothing else.

She approached, her feet silent on the grasses, and then out onto the sands.  She knew there were sea-spirits and other creatures said to inhabit the deep.  She did not know if this was such a thing, or what she would do if it was.  She remembered the tales her grandmother told of monsters in the bottomless depths and she gripped the knife she wore at her side.

Closer, the shape was clearly like that of a man.  It had two arms and two legs and a head.  Its hair was pale and long, wet and draped limp over the face.  It had a shell on its chest and back like the shell of a crab, though Jaya thought it was made of iron.

“Don’t touch it,” Anut said, but she waved him back.  He was not a man yet, he could not give her commands.  She looked at him and saw he was afraid, and she wondered if it was as plain on her face as it was on hers.

She crouched down, and her fingers shook as she wiped the pale yellow hair back from the unseen face.  She had been prepared for some hideous monster, but the thing had the face of a kind of man.  The nose was very big and the lips were thin and it had a heavy beard.  She touched the skin and felt it was cold, but not the cold of death.  The eyelids fluttered and she jerked her hand back.  “It lives,” she said, and then she scrambled back as the thing rolled over and vomited seawater onto the wet sand.

Anut made a sound of disgust and yanked her back by her arm so that she almost fell.  She rolled and came to her feet, forgetting about her nets.  Her brother gripped his fishing spear in both hands and pointed it at the thing, watched fiercely as it rolled over and heaved up more water.  It wiped its face with a shaking hand, and Jaya realized it was half-drowned.

A shout startled both of them, and she turned to see another of the things striding along the shoreline toward them.  Upright, it was so tall it seemed like a giant.  This one had black hair, and a black beard that jutted out before it like the prow of a canoe.  In one hand it held a long, straight sword – longer than any Jaya had ever seen – and it pointed the deadly tip at them as it shouted again in a language she could not understand.

Her brother turned and pointed his spear at this new figure, and Jaya drew her knife from her side, glad of the familiar weight.  ‛Who are you?” she called out.  “What do you want here?”

Something grasped her ankle, and she jerked back and fell to the sand.  The first of the things had caught hold of her, and now it was reaching for her, pulling itself forward, spitting out water and looking at her with reddened eyes.

Jaya twisted to her side to free her other leg and kicked out, catching the thing in its face.  She felt something crunch under her blow and then it let go of her, jabbering in its impenetrable speech.  She rolled over and came to her feet, knife held ready.

The sword-wielding giant closed on them both, and Anut jabbed out with his spear to keep it back.  The sound of iron on iron rang in the morning quiet, and then the first one was on its feet.  Jaya saw a knife at its side – straight-bladed like the sword the other one used – but it made no move to draw it, and instead it came toward her with hands outstretched as though to seize her.  Blood ran down from the long nose and dripped from the trailing beard.  She saw the gleam in the pale eyes and she knew this was some kind of man, if no kind she had ever seen.

He came at her again and she remembered the fighting skills her aunt Mua had taught her, long afternoons of practice in the shade of the palm trees.  Quick, she cut the arm that reached for her and slapped it aside when he snatched it back.  She ducked in and cut across his chest, only for her blade to glance off his iron carapace.  He uttered something that sounded ugly and reached for her with his other hand.  She slipped aside and tried to trap his arm under her own, but he was too tall and shrugged her off with enormous strength.

Now his blooded fingers caught her hair and pulled her in, and she cried out and twisted away from him.  He tried to grab the wrist of her knife hand but she switched to her left and reached behind her, set the edge against the back of his knee and cut viciously.  She felt the edge bite and grate on bone, and he screamed.  The leg folded under him and they both went down on the sand.

Jaya landed on top of him and twisted, hit him in the face with her elbow and tried to pull her hair from his fist, but he wouldn’t let go.  She ground her teeth and stabbed blindly behind her with her left hand, felt the blade skitter over the iron armor, and then she stabbed lower and felt it bite.  She twisted the blade in the wound and dragged it through his flesh and he cried out.  He hit her in the head hard enough that her vision went black for a moment.

Then he was on top of her, and one hand pressed against her face and slid down to her neck.  She tucked her chin to protect herself and struggled as he groped for her knife-arm but, maddened by pain, he reached for the wrong hand, and she brought her left hand up and stabbed him in the throat.

Blood spurted out, black as tar, and then she ripped the blade across and the torrent splashed over her face.  She spat it out and struggled away from him, wiping at her eyes to clear them as he flopped and gagged on the sands behind her.  Sand stuck to her hands and her arms where the blood painted them.  She had lost her knife, and for a moment she could not think at all, her mind blank and terrible.

The clangor of iron brought her back, and she looked to see her brother backed against the black obelisk that stood at the edge of the beach.  The other giant had trapped him there, and Anut was fending him off desperately, his eyes wide with terror.  There was blood on his hand and arm and running from a gash on his head.  He saw her, and she read the frightened appeal on his face just as the giant batted the spear from his hands and impaled him through the chest.

Jaya screamed as her brother fell back against the black stone, blood pouring out of his mouth.  The giant jerked his sword free in a rush of red, and Anut crumpled, choking on his own death.  Jaya felt a surge of wrath flood through her like blood from a fire mountain, and she turned back to the dead thing behind her, hunting for her knife, but she could not see it.  Instead she saw the long knife the giant had worn but not drawn, and she caught the hilt and ripped it free, salt-rime grating on the steel as it came loose from the sheath.

She rushed at the sword-wielder, blood on her face and matting her hair.  She screamed her fury and the giant turned to face her, and she saw him step back in alarm at the sight of her.  She lunged in low and he slashed at her with that long blade, but the stroke was badly timed and she got past his guard.  She leaped onto him and locked her legs on him so he could not throw her aside.

He reeled back, clawing at her with his free hand while she slashed at his face.  The sharp steel dragged across his cheek and then ripped through his eye, and he shrieked high and clear, clapping his hand over his face as the blood poured out.  He stumbled and fell and she stayed on top of him, used the momentum to stab into his cheek under his other eye, and then she leaned forward and drove the long blade into his head, feeling bone crunch under her hands.

She twisted and trapped his sword-arm with her legs, pried the weapon from his twitching fingers.  He was already dead, but she was not done.  She wrested the long blade from him and stood, swaying.  The iron armor did not guard his neck, and she hacked it through with one swing.  She would take their heads as her people had in the old days, and their carved skulls would hang from the eaves of the longhouse.  She would trap their souls forever in answer for Anut, and they would never escape her and go down to the sea of death.

Then she saw her brother’s body and all the rage flooded out of her.  She dropped the alien sword and went to him, knelt down in the bloody soil and touched his face.  He was already gone, the light in his eyes turned to dark, so that they were like stones.  His face was fixed in an expression of surprise, as though he could not believe this had happened, and for a moment neither could she.  She lifted his face and pressed her forehead to his, breathed her breath on him as if it would wake him.

When she let him go, he slumped back and lay still and loose, and she almost choked on the sudden wrench of grief.  She looked up at the standing stone and put her hand on it, leaving a bloody print on the whirling designs carved on it.  She looked down at the severed head beside her and shook her head.  What were these things?  Were they truly men?  They did not look like men, but like beasts, yet they wore clothing and wielded steel like men, and they bled and died like men.

Now she would have to go and tell her father and her brother that she had failed, and that Anut was dead.  As she thought it, she looked up and saw a column of black smoke rising over the trees, heavy and menacing in the morning sun, and she smelled it then – a smell of burning, and of cooking flesh.  Her heart pounded against the walls of her chest and she climbed to her feet, feeling a numbness in her hands.  She breathed faster and faster, and then she sprang to her feet and began to run.

o0o

When she burst from the forest at the top of the hill above the village, all she saw was smoke.  The black clouds rolled over the green grass and coiled around the tree trunks.  She saw two longhouses in flames, the reeds and thatch burning away to reveal the lodge-pole skeletons beneath.  There were bodies on the ground, each with an attending stain of blood, and she saw that some of them were of the same kind of giants who had attacked her on the beach.  Anut’s face flickered in her mind then and she felt rage again, and it was good.

Her father’s longhouse was ahead, and she saw it was undamaged.  She ran in through the door and found a huddle of people inside, old men and women, young girls, children all gathered there in the dark, away from the splash of light that came in through the doorway.  She looked for her father at his seat at the far side, but he was not there, of course he was not.  There were enemies to fight.

Then she saw his sword still hung from the pole beside his chair.  He did not usually wear it, and he must have been caught away from the longhouse.  She went to it quickly and then hesitated, knowing she was not permitted to touch it.  Distant screams decided her, and she reached up and drew the deadly blade from the feathered wooden sheath.  It felt good in her hand, a proper sword with a single edge sharp as fear and the etched vinework on the back, inlaid with gold and red copper.  The bone hilt bore the face of a serpent, or a dragon, and it felt smooth and ready in her hand.

She would bring it to him.  When she turned she saw the people staring at her, and she knew they judged her for drawing the sword of the king.  She felt the blood drying on her face and arms, and she spat into the simmering fire and went out into the sun.  Let them shudder and cringe, she would not.

Sounds of fighting came from down the hill, toward the edge of the water, and she ran that way, quickly plunged into the thick smoke and coughed as she tried to find her way.  The smell was bitter and biting, and she caught the heavy scent of burned flesh and knew it was human.  The smell of the burning dead.  She saw bodies, faces she knew, and some she could not recognize under the pall of blood and death.  Some were the bodies of the giants, and she saw with satisfaction that several had lost their heads.  They would not go to the land beyond the sunrise.  They would not go down to the sea.

She heard cracking sounds like snapping trees, and then there were screams.  She heard something whip through the branches above and slap against the palms, but she could not see anything.  Jaya wiped tears from her burning eyes and ran on, following her memory until she came down to the sea and the smoke parted, and then she saw the whole horror of the battle spread out before her.

There was a great ship in the bay – a monstrous thing with a host of masts and sails, taller than any ship she had ever seen or heard of.  A prow in the shape of a gilded eagle reared at the front, wings outstretched.  There were smaller boats on the shore, and even as she looked there were giants climbing into them, dragging struggling and wailing women even as they fought off the warriors who rushed after them with swords and spears.  Steel rang on steel, and the battle twisted and lashed across the white sand beach, staining it with blood.

She saw the women on the dunes above the beach hurling spears at the invaders, and she saw that the weapons – meant for hunting birds and fish – were too light to pierce the iron shells the giants wore.  She saw more of her people lying scattered on the sands, dead or wounded, and she saw her father there at the heart of the battle.  He held in his hands one of the enemy’s long, straight swords, and with it he hewed at them furiously, cutting at their exposed faces and arms, trying to stab their legs and bring them down, even as they fought to escape.

Jaya saw one of the giants brandish what looked like a club with iron fittings, and then there was a spark and a crack like a snapping branch as smoke billowed from the end of it.  Her father shouted and then drew up, frozen in place, and she saw the hole that appeared in his broad chest, blood pouring out of it and down over him.

She screamed as she saw him stagger, and then he fell to his knees.  It seemed to her that all the sound of the battle went away from her, and she ran to him, pushing aside anyone who came in her path.  An iron-clad giant rose up before her, and she struck him with her father’s sword so cleanly that she barely felt it as the blade severed his neck and sent his head spinning away, the teeth clacking and the eyes staring.

When she reached her father she knew he was already dead, she could see it in his face, and she felt so much helpless grief rise up inside her she might well drown in it.  She dropped to the sands beside him and clutched his face in her bloody hands.  “Father,” she sobbed.  “Father, I have brought your sword.  Father, arise.”  She took his limp hand and pressed the hilt of his sword into it, as though the touch of it would bring him awake, wipe away the blood and make him whole again.

There was the cracking sound again, loud enough to make her flinch, and she heard something buzz through the air near to her, and then it struck home in the body of a running warrior, and she heard the dull sound the unseen projectile made as it punched into him and sent him to the sand in a tangle of shuddering limbs.  Jaya turned and saw the giant with the club at the prow of the last boat ashore, his companions seeking to drag the craft into the water even as he used his smoke-spitting weapon to kill more of her clan.

Fury clawed at her limbs, and Jaya took up her father’s sword and rose from where he lay, slumped back in ignoble death.  She screamed her rage and then she ran at the giant, seeing his pale, blue-ringed eyes and the light gold of his hair and his beard.  He saw her, and she saw him narrow his gaze as she rushed him.

Deliberately, he threw his weapon into the boat behind him and drew his long sword to face her.  She rushed to him and then leaped low, rolling under his quick stab so she could hack at his leg.  He danced back out of the way and cut down at her, but she was up already, fury giving her speed.  She cut at him savagely, and their blades rang together quick and fierce.  They were in the surf now, wading in the cool water.

He was a better fighter than the other ones, quick and measured.  He parried her strokes and kept her back, tried to keep the sea behind him so he could not be flanked.  His companions in the boat shouted to him as they got it moving, started to row away from the shore.  She knew he would break away to escape, and she knew he would give her an opening when he did.

He feinted back, as though he were fleeing, but when she pounced he brought his blade up and nearly impaled her.  She slapped the point aside with her hand at the final moment, and it stabbed through the meat between her thumb and fingers like a lance of fire.  She cut at him desperately, but he was already rolling over the side of the boat.  She missed, cut again and caught the side of his leg, splitting the leather of his high boot and drawing bright blood.

The boat shoved away, and she was suddenly foundering in deeper water.  The giants rowed and pulled away from her, and she knew she could not catch them.  She fought back until she felt the sand under her feet again, stood there between land and sea with the sword in her hand watching the enemy withdraw to their mountain-like ship.

There were fresh shouts, and she saw canoes coming from around the north side of the island.  Her older brother Nur was returning with the fishing boats, coming to the sign of the smoke.  They rowed the outriggers swiftly, and she saw some of them had their bows ready to hand.

There was a rattle like stone and the invaders dragged up their great iron anchor.  Jaya saw men climbing in the rigging and unfurling sails big enough to shelter under, and she felt a kind of wonder at the size of that ship, at the power it possessed.  The eagle prow gleamed as it turned like a dragon in the water, sails billowing out, and then, as the canoes approached, there was a sound like thunder and a great cloud of smoke.  Something slashed the water like stones and two canoes were torn apart, the men flailing in water turned red with blood.

Jaya watched the canoes turn aside, and then she watched the invaders go, dragging their smaller boats up with ropes as the great ship made headway.  They had taken some women of the Tau’ta, and she heard them screaming for help from the ship.  Her limbs cried out to follow them, to kill all the giants and cast their bodies into the waters to be devoured by the Unnamed Gods, but she knew if she followed she would be taken, or killed, and so she did not go.  She only watched until the enemy ship vanished around the headland, and there was only smoke and the smell of the dead.

o0o

They gathered the bodies for burning.  The count included her father – the king – and his younger son, Anut, and Jaya worked with the other women to wrap and dress the bodies, covering them in fragrant leaves and flower petals.  All gathered there were twenty-two dead, and seven more girls who could not be found and were thought to have been carried away by the invaders.  The thought of it made Jaya feel so sickened and angry she could scarcely eat or rest.

The men worked hard to gather enough wood for the great pyre on the beach.  Jaya’s brother, Nur, would be the new king, but for now he worked cutting logs alongside the others.  The people did not sing at their work, they did not speak or joke or laugh.  Silence lay over the village alongside the smell of the burning, and the smell of death.

By night they had done what had to be done, and they gathered on the shore, all the Tau’ta in their scores, standing with their clans, their sons and fathers and mothers and daughters.  All together, they could see the empty places made where the dead or the taken were no more, and it dragged at them like a weight.  They chanted their old chants, calling out to the Unnamed Gods as they did not do, save when the cruelty of life was too much to bear.  The Tau’ta had given up their gods when they were driven out of their ancient kingdom, and they no longer spoke their names.

Jaya knew their shapes, and she closed her eyes, seeing them behind her eyelids.  The Shark God, the Serpent God, the Tiger Goddess, and the Sea Dragon.  That had been the oath of the old ones who came to Ulu’a – they would not invoke their gods, and so the Tau’ta would be forgotten by the outer world, and dwell here in their island, safe from harm.

But now that promise was ruined, and Jaya looked at the dismembered bodies of the giants where they smoldered in the bonfires.  They had taken the heads, and soon they would be fleshed and carved and make skull trophies to hang from the longhouses.  Jaya had taken three herself, and now she felt the gazes on her as they intoned their funeral songs.  Now she was a warrior.  She had killed while her brother had not.  Nur had arrived too late to join the battle, but now the custom said he must be king.  The people were troubled by it.

Nur lit the pyres and the dead blazed up, the resins of the leaves and bark turning the flames crimson as they devoured.  Young girls gathered up baskets of flowers and cast them into the upward wind so they were carried out over the water and settled on the slow night waves.

When the chanting and singing was done the Tau’ta filtered away, wandering into the dark as though lost in their own homeland.  There should have been comfort in ritual, but no ritual could heal a wound like this.  Jaya stood on the shore and the waves came and washed cool over her feet, and the moon began to come up, low and red and immense.

Nur came and stood beside her, but they did not look at one another.  “It is not right that Anut should die so young,” he said.

“It is not,” she said.  “He died brave, as a warrior should.  Father would be proud of him.”

“But perhaps not proud of me, or you,” he said.  “I could not protect our people, you could not save our brother.”

“I could not,” she said, her voice almost choking inside her, and she glanced at her older sibling, seeing his proud face fixed in lines of anger and mourning.  “I am sorry.”  She clenched her left hand to make her wound hurt, feeling the bandage tight within her fist.

Her brother said nothing else, only turned away and left her there, alone.  She watched the waves glimmer in the moonlight, dotted with petals beneath the smoke of the pyres.  She closed her eyes and wished for her father and brother to find their way across the waters, beyond the sunrise to where the waves were sweet and covered in flowers, down the long way to the sea of the dead.