Chapter 10: What a Father Does

Tarek wanted to care about dying, especially for Mamah and Tavi, but his options were limited. His vision had gone totally dark, and the only thing he could feel was the crushing band at his throat. He reached his mind toward Pahtl, but the otter was nowhere near. Tarek couldn’t blame him. He was just an animal – what could he have done? None of it mattered, anyway. His thoughts were coming slow and thick now, and he realized he’d stopped struggling.

He heard garbled shouts and screams from a great distance, as if they’d shoved his head underwater instead of hanging him from a tree. The rope biting at his neck vibrated suddenly in a way it hadn’t before, and he focused on the sensation. He couldn’t see anything except a dim blur, but the vibrations became jerky, sharp, and uneven. He wondered dimly if the hunters were playing some morbid game, making him dance on the rope before he died.

And then all sense of weight disappeared, and his body crashed down into the water. The coldness enveloping his blood-hot head shocked him back to full awareness, and he thrashed, trying to sort out up from down. Just as his heels thumped into the mud, someone jerked on his bound wrists, yanking him upright. His bonds were severed a moment later, and Tarek clawed at his throat, trying to loosen the guaro rope that was killing him. He wedged a finger underneath the cord and pulled with all his flagging strength, heedless of the pain in his skin and neck bones. The tough, water-soaked fibers finally slipped a handswidth, and he sucked in the sweetest breath of air he’d ever tasted.

Someone slapped him in the face, and his eyes cleared. His father Tenoch stood before him, teeth bared in a growl. “Cut them loose,” he ordered, thrusting an obsidian knife into Tarek’s hand. “Do it now!” Then he charged away, his long spear in hand, laying about himself with the blunt end like a staff, knocking the stumbling hunters onto their rear ends in the water again. He had a thick jute sack Tarek had never seen before strapped across his back. The older folk and the children were all shrieking, and several other men were sloshing through the water toward their homes, presumably to fetch weapons. Zuma was bellowing at the top of his lungs, but no one was listening, and he seemed unwilling to take up arms himself. Strange. He’s no coward.

All this Tarek saw in the span of five heartbeats before his father’s command penetrated into his thoughts. Mamah! Tavi! Turning, he saw them both struggling to their knees in the water. His tata must have bowled over the hunters holding their ropes too. Tarek could see one man – Arlukee, maybe? – thrashing through the water on hands and knees, trying to recover the rope to hoist Tavi back into the air. That first. Tarek stumbled over to his brother and sawed through the length of rope between his neck and the tree branch. It was the work of mere moments to loosen the noose and cut his hands free. Hearing Tavi gasp and sob was nearly as wonderful as having breath himself.

He turned to his mother, but Arlukee barreled into him, and they both went down in the water, the knife tumbling from his fist. Tarek struggled and kicked, but he was still weak and disoriented. His head went under and he sucked in water. His already aching lungs convulsed, but Arlukee’s grip was strong. Mamah! She still can’t breathe!

Then he heard his captor roar with pain, and the man let Tarek loose. He burst to the surface, coughing and choking. Tavi was dancing away from the shouting hunter as best he could in the water, red droplets slinging from the tip of the knife he’d snatched from the water. “Sorry, sorry!” he kept saying.

Tarek’s mouth watered at the sight of red on the blade and all thought disappeared, but by the time he was able to wrench the leather-wrapped hilt from his brother’s hand, the rain had washed it clean. A snarl formed on his lips, and he suddenly wanted to hit Tavi in the face. When he turned, his gaze fell on his still-struggling mother.

Shock and shame filled Tarek as he rushed to her side. He dug his fingers under the loop of rope cutting off her breath, and as soon as he’d pulled it far enough away to be safe, he slipped the blade underneath. In one, two, three saws of the knife she was free. She coughed and swore the entire time he was cutting the bonds on her hands and helping her to her feet.

“You have to go!” Tenoch yelled. Four of the hunters had regained their feet and were menacing him. They seemed hesitant to charge in, and Tarek recalled his father’s old stories of how many Yura hunters he’d killed in the raids a decade before. No doubt Gwatemoc and the others were remembering the same thing.

“Go now!” Tenoch screamed, sweeping his spear at the hunters, scattering water in its wake.

“Stop this, Tenoch!” thundered Zuma. “You know it’s hopeless.”

In response, Tenoch pulled the jute bag from his back, opened its mouth, and swept it through the air while holding the bottom corner. Thick coils of something like rope splashed into the water, and the hunters paused at the sheer strangeness of the action.

Then the ropes uncoiled and started swimming. Tenoch had just thrown some two dozen full-grown ashmouth vipers into the midst of the villagers. The hunters stumbled back, cursing, and women swept up their children, dashing for their huts as best they could. An ashmouth viper was to be feared at any time, but with the rains falling, they would seek dryness and warmth, and now that could only be found in the Catori’s stilted homes.

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One of the snakes swam toward Tavi, and Mecumsta tore the knife from Tarek’s hand, slashing at the creature. It wiggled away in the water, apparently unhurt. Tenoch might be trying to save them, but snakes were not like arrows – they went where they pleased.

The hunters facing Tenoch kept their heads, nudging nearby snakes away from themselves with spear hafts and splashes of water without giving ground. Shad and several others were trying to edge around him to reach Tarek, his mother, and his brother, and Tarek realized that despite his father’s best efforts, they would all be dead or hanging again within two hundred heartbeats unless something changed.

They’re going to kill me one way or the other. What does it matter if I use the blood magic again? The thought had sickened him mere moments ago, but the rude shock of nearly dying melded with his fury at having his family threatened to change his mind completely. “Kanga!” he cried. “Come out!”

Again he had the sensation of vibration in the deepest pieces of himself, and his dim sense of Kanga resting in the healer’s tent flared with sudden fear and anger. A moment later Kanga’s head emerged from the distant tent, a mere suggestion of a man through the downpour, and Tarek was grateful he couldn’t see the bruises and bites he’d inflicted on the man.

“Protect us!” Tarek ordered. “Fight them!”

Kanga’s despairing cry cut through the shouts and screams of milling hunters and retreating families, but he bulled into the fray without hesitation, knocking down Gwatemoc and Kirima from behind before snatching a spear from another man and laying about himself with wild abandon. Hunters who had stood stoic before venomous serpents recoiled and ran from the blood-magicked man, and Tarek began to hope that his family might live to escape.

A harsh cry drew Tarek’s eye, and he turned to find his father and Shad dancing through the water an arm’s length apart, each gripping one end of a pole. His mother screamed hoarsely, and Tarek saw that one end of the pole was lodged in his father’s ribs.

“Go!” Tenoch screamed. “Please!”

“Boys, go!” Mecumsta said even as she dashed to her husband’s side. She grappled with Shad’s spear, and the point slid free from Tenoch’s side. He clutched at the wound and fell to his knees. Mecumsta charged at Shad, ignoring the snakes that still bobbed and writhed in the water.

Tenoch looked to Tarek, rage in his eyes. “This is for him,” he gasped. “Don’t let my boy die, you hear? Do this one thing right and go!”

“Tata, no!” Tavi wailed, his voice hoarse and broken from the hanging.

Tarek caught him by the wrist as the boy tried to charge toward their father. Mecumsta was clawing at Shad’s face, and Kirima was reaching for her. Asapa clubbed Kanga from behind as he battled with three other men, and Tarek felt his rival’s mind sliding muzzily back towards unconsciousness. Blood was seeping from between Tenoch’s fingers. I can’t save them all.

Meeting his father’s eyes, he gave a nod, latched more firmly onto Tavi’s arm, and ran away.

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