Chapter 8: Blood in the Water

Content warning: This chapter contains some fairly graphic descriptions of violence.

It wasn’t even a decision that Tarek made. He simply found his hands full of Kanga’s hair and his fists striking whatever flesh they could reach. His eyes stung and the bitter tang of dead blood filled his mouth. All thought had fled his mind except for one: Kanga had to die. And so he punched and flailed and bit, feeling more like a badger than a human.

His rival was caught off-guard by his ferocity. He stumbled backward, slipping on the blood he’d spilled everywhere, and the two men went down in a heap to the floorboards. Tarek moved like a swarm of flies atop of his prone opponent, fists falling like lightning strikes. Kanga grunted, covering his face with his forearms, and Tarek was happy to thrash his exposed ribs instead. He could barely see through the haze of red dripping into his eyes, but there was no time to wipe his face. Nothing mattered except hurting the one he had hated and put up with for so long.

Surprised Kanga might have been, but he was no stranger to a fight, especially with Tarek. With his face shielded he could bide his time, taking the bruising blows to his ribs with no more reaction than a few breathy grunts. Then, when the angle was right, he jabbed his own right fist into Tarek’s nose, stunning him and breaking his momentum. Tarek saw dancing lights before his eyes as they watered profusely, and then Kanga bucked his hips and Tarek toppled to the floor.

Kanga came to his feet smiling. “Thought I’d help an old friend with his veil,” he laughed. “A little dye makes the cloth so much nicer, don’t you think?”

Their conflicts had always held the same basic shape: Kanga would lash out at him, break his things, make him look weak in front of the others, and then taunt him for being upset. Tarek usually responded with insults of his own, wittier barbs than the bigger hunter could manage, and then he’d beat Tarek a little more before going his way. But today Tarek had no words, no space inside himself for repartee or wit. The cycle was broken. I’m going to kill him. There was no rage in the thought, simply a recognition of the inevitable. This had to end.

So instead of coming up with a retort, Tarek snatched his father’s war club off the wall and swung it at his enemy. The maul was made of rockwood as long and thick as his leg, and shards of obsidian and stone were embedded all along its length. Tenoch had killed four Yura tribesmen with it during the old raids. The weapon made a whistling sound as it split the air.

Kanga fell back, his mouth an O of shock. “Hang on, little grub! Put that away!”

“No more,” Tarek hissed. “I told you, no more.” He swung the club again, driving the man toward the door. The tip of the weapon caught the tall clay pot standing next to the wall, shattering it and sending the spare arrowheads inside clattering about the room. Kanga’s eyes were wide, but Tarek hardly noticed. He stopped his momentum and jabbed the blunt end of the club into Kanga’s belly. The air went out of him in a rush, and he fell backwards through the doorway, tumbling head over heels down the ramp and into the rain and mud outside.

Tarek didn’t let up. This was no simple beating – this was where it stopped. Yaretzi wouldn’t like it that he killed someone on their wedding day. No one would like it, in fact. It didn’t matter. This was Tarek’s wedding gift to himself. He would live the rest of his life without Kanga, whose blood would spoil in the sun. The others would yell at him, but they would understand, in the end. He was a man of the Catori. None of the rest of them would have tolerated this situation for half as long as he had.

He charged down the rough-hewn boards of his house’s ramp and let the springiness in the middle launch him into the air with his father’s club held high overhead. He felt a war cry rip from his throat more than he heard it. Kanga was sprawled on the ground and cried out in fear as he saw Tarek descend. He threw himself to one side as the spiked maul buried itself in the mud where his head had been. Standing water already lay a thumb’s depth over the ground.

Kanga lashed out with a foot and caught Tarek in the back, bowling him over, and he lost his grip on the war maul. Kanga had caught the lethal intent Tarek was bringing to bear, and he responded in kind, throwing himself at his opponent before he could rise. They rolled in the mud, legs twining and hands scrabbling, each battling for any scrap of advantage. Kanga was bigger, but Tarek was more fit than his indolent rival. Kanga got a hand between their bodies and thrust it downward, grasping at the worn leather of Tarek’s loincloth, trying to grab and crush his manhood. Tarek responded by jabbing a thumb at Kanga’s eyes, twisting his hips to keep his groin out of reach.

His thumb found its mark, and Kanga roared in pain, rearing his head back, his right eye closed. He thrashed aimlessly, and it was only by the sheerest luck that one of his hands connected with Tarek’s temple. Tarek slumped to the ground, dazed, his senses spinning. Somewhere in the back of his mind he could feel Pahtl’s agitation nearby, but the otter was scared and keeping to the underbrush. He put his hands out toward the blurry mass that was Kanga, hoping he’d connect and keep his enemy close enough to prevent him from doing any real damage until he could see straight.

Again, luck was not on his side. Kanga caught both hands by the wrist and climbed on top of him, splashing in the mud and water, pinning his arms to the ground with his knees as he growled incoherent curses. Then he began to rain down heavy blows to Tarek’s face, one after the other after the other. Tarek felt his lips split under Kanga’s rock-hard knuckles, and then there was a shockingly loud snap as his nose broke. The pain was blinding. His own blood flooded his mouth, tangy and warm where the dead animal’s blood had been bitter and cold. Explosions of light burst inside his head as Kanga hit him in the eyes, the chin, the temples, and the cheeks.

Tarek couldn’t think right. His arms were stuck, and he wasn’t sure why. Light and dark moved in abstract patterns around him, and he could only dimly remember that he was supposed to be fighting. “Wait,” he croaked, and a hard fist buried itself in his teeth.

His mouth screamed pain at him, the front teeth tearing loose from their roots with the force of the blow. From somewhere outside the deep, dark well of his being Tarek heard a shout of pain, and the blows stopped coming.

And then he tasted it. Rich, vital, salty blood leaked between his teeth and onto his tongue, vibrating with life, with strength. It was not his own, nor was it the nasty, coagulating stuff that had been poured on him earlier. It was Kanga’s. Tarek’s limbs spasmed and thrashed as the heat of it coursed down his throat and into his center. He couldn’t see anything, couldn’t feel anything. This was a hundred times stronger than Pahtl’s blood had been, and it was glorious. Fire traced the rivers of life inside him, bringing energy, clarity, and healing. His teeth stitched themselves back into his gums, and he screamed with rapture.

He could feel the workings of Kanga’s body and the red whisper of his murderous thoughts. Tarek could see the spinning vortex of jealousy and rage that impelled the rangy hunter, and Tarek’s face lived at the center of it. A thousand little moments of conflict whirled in those waters, and he saw himself through Kanga’s eyes as a manipulative monster with greedy eyes and a tongue of obsidian. Yaretzi spun in those memories, too, but less than Tarek might have imagined. Tarek was the root of all this man’s problems and dissatisfactions, and a rich stew of anger, injustice, and longing ran through Kanga’s veins with every beat of his heart. At the center of the fetid morass of emotion glimmered a tiny, hidden crystal of forbidden desire, repressed, denied, re-shaped, but never forgotten.

The ambrosia of blood was on Tarek’s tongue now, and it wasn’t just knowledge of his enemy’s mind it gave him – it was power. His trembling stilled, and he felt Kanga rise from where he had pinned Tarek to snatch up Tenoch’s fallen war maul. Tarek could feel the man’s right hand burning with pain from slicing open his knuckles on Tarek’s teeth, but Kanga forced himself to grip the maul’s handle tight as he whipped the weapon in a vicious arc at Tarek’s head.

“Don’t,” Tarek whispered. His eyes were still closed, lips and teeth whole once more.

The club tumbled uselessly from Kanga’s suddenly nerveless fingers, but his momentum continued, and he splashed about drunkenly, a grunt of surprise escaping from his lips. He tripped over his own feet and had to leap awkwardly over Tarek’s prone body to avoid a collision. He went down with his legs tangled, growling in anger and confusion.

Tarek stood slowly, not even bothering to look at Kanga. He knew every hint of the man’s movement, and his eyes would tell him nothing he didn’t already know. He stretched and flexed, shaking his head to dispel the last of the memories of his pain. The swelling was gone from his face, and he felt as if he’d just awakened from the best night’s sleep he’d ever had. He’d been right after all: this was where it ended with Kanga. He stooped to fill his fist with the stone-studded club.

Kanga was back on his feet. He shuffled as if he wanted to charge, but Tarek could feel his fear. He’d had this fight won, and he knew it, and yet there was the man he’d just thrashed standing upright with a weapon in hand. Panic was building in Kanga’s chest, but he wasn’t letting it show on his face. Not yet. “That’s impossible,” he snarled.

“So is this,” Tarek replied. “Go stand over there.” He pointed to the edge of the clearing farthest from his house.

“You don’t tell me what to do, grub,” Kanga snapped, but his feet were moving of their own accord. Tarek felt the confusion well up in the man as he looked at his own feet, dumbfounded that they would no longer obey his orders. He grabbed at a nearby branch to stop himself and was successful for a few heartbeats.

“Let go,” Tarek said calmly, and Kanga did, resuming his course toward the treeline.

“What are you doing to me?” Kanga roared, his panic bubbling up and out of him. “What is this?”

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“It’s what you deserve,” Tarek told him. He held the war maul out in front of himself, the sharp bits of obsidian along its length glittering wetly. “Now, when I tell you, run as fast and hard as you can into my club. Do you understand?”

“I won’t! You can’t make me do this! What kind of magic is this?”

A power and certainty deeper than midnight swelled within him, and he smiled. “I think you know.”

Dread rippled through Kanga inside and out. They’d all heard the old stories. They spoke of things like this: men acting against their own will, becoming the pawns of blood magic. Tarek had always assumed those stories were false, or at the very least exaggerated. Now that he knew they weren’t, he wished he’d done this years ago.

“Please,” Kanga said through gritted teeth.

“How many times have I said exactly that to you over the years?” Tarek demanded. “Have you ever once listened?”

The tall hunter’s mouth worked soundlessly, but he had no reply.

“Do it now,” Tarek commanded.

With a shriek that cut through the hiss of the rain, Kanga rushed headlong toward him. Tarek merely held the maul steady with both hands. His rival’s head connected with a meaty thud, and he dropped to the deepening water. Tarek looked down at him without pity. One of the stone shards from the club had torn loose a chunk from his cheek, and it bled heavily. Another had pierced him near the hairline, and a steady rivulet of blood poured across his forehead and into his ear. The blood mixed with the water around him. Tarek took a deep breath. He felt powerful. His head swam as if he’d had four horns of tuber beer, but his hands felt steady.

He cast the maul aside and straddled Kanga, kneeling on the man’s arms and sitting on his stomach as Kanga had done to him just a handful of moments before, in another lifetime. He balled his fists, and they felt like mallets of stone. I need to do this with my own hands. And so he did, punching the insensate hunter over and over and over. He heard laughing and realized it was his own.

His hands were smeared with Kanga’s blood, and he lifted them to the sky, reveling in knowing that the man could never hurt him again. A heavy drop of red ran from his fist onto his wrist, and he licked it instinctively. A fresh jolt of magic coursed through him, and suddenly he needed more. He craved it.

He wiped what he could from Kanga’s face as the man wept, his features swollen and torn. He brought great gobbets of the stuff to his mouth and crammed it in, sucking on his fingers. Still not enough!

Abandoning his hands, he leaned down and bit Kanga where shoulder met neck, grinding his teeth against the resisting skin until he felt it tear and give way. Fresh dribbles of the living elixir poured onto his tongue, and he growled, sucking at the flow with all his strength. Kanga began to wail, struggling against the human leech attached to his skin.

Tarek closed his eyes and reveled in the taste of blood. With every new drop came more awareness of Kanga, and his memories flashed before Tarek’s inner sight as he fed. He saw the first time they’d met as children. Kanga had been kind to the younger boy that day, showing Tarek his favorite berry patch to collect from. Kanga’s mother had beaten him with a spoon that night for spending time with the cripple boy, and the next day Kanga found the berry bush stripped bare. The only option had been to find Tarek and punch him in the mouth, but the Song-deaf boy never learned. Over and over their interactions played, and Tarek marveled at seeing himself through another’s eyes. Kanga thinks I’m the awful one. The one who takes, who lies, who steals. He thinks he’s a good man. Had his mouth not been busy, Tarek would have laughed at the ridiculousness of it.

He saw the first time Kanga had carved a little deer from wood, thinking Yaretzi must certainly prefer him over the devious little cripple boy. She accepted it with a solemn face and thanked him, and he’d known he would have her – only to see his figurine in the hands of some four-year-old child a few days later as the brat buried it in the mud. Dozens of tiny rejections piled themselves up moon after moon, year after year, and Tarek was all wrapped up in those too, as the quick-tongued, handsome liar who’d stolen the affection of the one woman who could silence that tiny, forbidden voice inside him.

Thoughts, emotions, and memories belonging to another man coiled in Tarek’s belly, and still he worried at Kanga’s neck with his teeth like a panther. Suddenly he realized someone was calling his name. They had been for some time, actually, but the sound had been no more than the hiss of the rain in his ear. They were shaking him, too.

He pulled free of his prey and snarled, giving the intruder a powerful shove. A child’s cry brought him back to himself, and he saw Tavi sprawled in the mud, his eyes wide and tears mingling with the rain.

“Tarek, you’ve got to stop,” he sobbed. “They’re here!”

Jerking upright, Tarek cast wildly about himself. Tribe members had heard screams over the sound of the rain, and now they huddled along the treeline around his house, all staring at him in frozen horror. Even the men, brave hunters like Kirima and Gwatemoc, were shocked into stillness. Tarek took stock of the moment and saw himself as they saw him. His hands were bright red with smeared blood, and more of the stuff was spattered on his chest, the rain cutting clean tracks through it. His face was painted dark, and a beard of scarlet stained his mouth and chin. Kanga lay still and silent beneath him. If Tarek hadn’t known every last thing about him, he would have thought the man was dead.

He looked back up to the whispering, weeping crowd, and Yaretzi was there. Her quiet composure was shattered, and her mouth hung open in disbelief. Tarek felt his heart clench within him, and shame flooded him as fiercely as vigor had previously. Getting shakily to his feet, he held out a hand toward her, and she flinche even though five body-lengths separated them. I look like a monster.

Unable to bear the gaze of the woman he’d meant to marry today, he wheeled about only to find his mother on her knees in the water on the other side of the clearing, one hand over her mouth to stifle her own sobs, eyes closed against the horror that was her eldest son. That was when Tarek realized: No. I am a monster.

That was why, when he heard his father’s hoarse shouting and saw the man splashing toward him, he did nothing. Tenoch met his son with fists swinging, and Tarek went down, welcoming the pain blossoming once again in his skull. It was his just due.

“No!” Tenoch screamed as he hit Tarek again and again. “Not my son! Not my son!”

Sorry, tata. Sorry, Yar. I’m so sorry.

The fists kept coming, and the world went black.

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