He saw her then, a tiny, colorful creature in her red-and-black skirt and yellow blouse. Her black hair streamed with the wind running before the lead bull as she stood to face him. Grimly Perkar doubled his fists into T'esh's reins and yanked down on them.
“Hey!” he shrieked. “Stop it. Stop it!” The stallion quit rearing, but his eyes were still frantic. Perkar took the horse's head into the crook of his arm. “Come on, boy,” he whispered. “Never forget that you are Mang! Don't forget that. Your ancestors are watching.”
T'esh was still trembling when Perkar remounted. “Come on,” he said, and then shouted, the closest approximation of a Mang war cry he could produce. The stallion spurted forward then, and when Perkar shrieked again, he put his heart into the charge, though it took him to the horns of the bull. A Mang horse, Perkar knew in his heart, would never balk if its rider was brave.
He still was not brave, but his old fatalism had seized him; his path was set, and to his knowledge there was only one way to go. Without Hezhi, all of his trails came to an end. Without Ngangata…
But it was far, far too late. Cowardice had already betrayed hope. His only ambition now was to reach them in time to die with them.
HEZHI looked up dully at the approaching mass of beasts. Her sight already told her that they were not what they seemed; stripped of the god who animated them, they were nothing more than bones. That meant nothing to her; bones could crush her as easily as real flesh and blood. She was still stunned from her fall. Moss had never had a secure hold on her, and despite his superior strength, he had also had to concentrate to keep his balking horse pointed into the stampede. The two goals had proven incompatible when Hezhi managed to swing her legs around and kick him in the face. Now she realized that she had been fortunate not to break her neck or shatter her skull in the fall.
Moss wheeled, a look of terrible distress on his face, but two arrow shafts whizzed by him, and he grimly turned instead into the skeletal cattle.
What could she do? Running was pointless. Ngangata would reach her too late, and Perkar was farther back still. If she crouched, might they run around her?
It was amazing how calm she felt. It was as if the coolness of the otherworld, the lake, had come over her. But she did not have her drum, and so that was impossible.
She frowned. Perhaps when the otherworld was manifest, already in front of her, she did not need a drum. She had a few instants to find out. Searching herself, she found no fear, but there was certainly waking anger, and there was her mare.
Help me, she said, and then she clapped her hands, once, twice, thrice. The lead bull was so close she could make out the cracked nostrils of his skull, the architecture of his skeleton beneath manifested flesh. She could see him, inside, a furnace burning gold and black. A web flowed out from him, and she knew in that instant that there were not thousands of beasts bearing down on her but only one, this one, whose horns lifted toward her.
Vaguely she saw Moss ride into the herd, uttering a shrill, ululating cry. She expected him to fall instantly, but he did not, miraculously dodging the first few beasts. Then she lost sight of him, and her universe became only one thing: the god before her. The world seemed mired in torpor, captive to inertia. Ngangata had arrived, was leaning from his saddle to scoop her up in one long arm. The bull churned toward them, black dirt spraying up from his hooves, yellow flames waxing in hollow sockets. Hezhi slapped her hands together again, and the air shattered; when she spread them apart, the lake opened between them, and the mare charged through, galloping on the surge of force from her throbbing arm. The Horse God struck the bull in the heart once and he broke stride, stumbled. Twice, and he suddenly fell. At the same instant, Hezhi reached through and tore at the strands supporting the other cattle. They shredded easily. Hezhi shouted, triumphant, as Ngangata swung her up into his lap. He pivoted his mount, and then the wall of bones struck them. Mare and riders fell, but Hezhi was laughing as they hit the earth, darkly delighted.
PERKAR saw through Harka's eyes and through his own, and he understood neither set of senses. He beheld Hezhi, standing directly before the bull, solemnly clapping her hands, as if playing some child's game. He saw the bull, bones articulated by heartstrands of black and gold, a net of such strands cast out from him to the other revenant cattle. Then something erupting from Hezhi's chest like a bolt of lightning, an erratic brilliance that struck into the bull. Ngangata reached her, lifted her up—and the herd came apart. Skulls separated from vertebrae that themselves spun out into falling streams of disks. Legs un-jointed, and ribs flew apart like rotten cages. But the bones lost none of their momentum, and so as they collapsed, still they hurtled forward, a crashing wave of black bone and dust. The wave smacked into his two friends, and they went down beneath the leading edge of it. Shouting hoarsely, Perkar bore down on T'esh, urged him ever faster toward the bizarre scene.
In the lake of bones that remained, only one set remained standing: the bull himself, stock-still.
By the time Perkar reached them, it was obvious that Hezhi and Ngangata had survived the impact. They were both on their feet, as was Ngangata's mount. Perkar dismounted, Harka drawn, and with two bounds placed himself between his companions and the Bull God.
Only then did he realize that Hezhi was chuckling. Ngangata looked dazed.
“How are you two?” Perkar asked frantically. “Are either of you hurt?”
“No,” Ngangata clipped out.
“I'm fine,” Hezhi answered, laughter subsiding. “Leave the bull to me.”
“What do you mean?”
“It's mine now,” she replied. She walked around him toward the thing. It stood shorn of the illusion of flesh, a beast of black bones and fire.
“Hezhi, don't,” Perkar commanded, moving to keep himself between the girl and the monster.
“She knows what she's doing, ” Harka said. “Though I would never have believed this. ”
“Believed what?”
Hezhi walked confidently up to the thing. She tapped it in the center of its skull, the horns reaching around her like the gathering arms of some handless giant. The skeleton collapsed, and the air shivered with flame which was quickly gone.
“What happened?” he asked Harka softly.
“She swallowed him, ” the blade answered. “Took him in. She has two gods in her damakuta now. ”
Hezhi turned to them, an insuppressible grin of triumph on her face. Behind her, the river of bones stretched off, empty of life.
Ngangata was the first to break that strange and uncomfortable moment with words.
“Where is Moss?” he asked.
RAINCASTER was dead, an artery in his neck severed by the wicked curve of the demon bird's beak. They left him on a natural table of stone for the predators to find, as was the Mang way.
Of Moss they never found any trace.
“He got away,” Perkar finally admitted. “How?”
Hezhi crinkled her forehead in thought. “I saw him ride into them and not fall.”
“It's clear enough,” Brother Horse said. “The bird, that herd—they must have been sent by the gaan, the one who dreams for the Changeling. Probably he sent Moss a dream last night, telling him what to do.” He shook his head. ”This is a powerful man, with powerful spirits at his beck.”
“One of them is now at mine” Hezhi reminded him. Brother Horse could not cloak the wonder from his eyes. He plainly believed her. A worry awoke in Perkar. He remembered her, back in Nhol, filled with power. She had laughed then, too. It had sounded much like her laugh earlier today, when she stopped the god and his ghost herd. Wasn't her power supposed to be diminished, away from the River? Was it diminished, or merely no longer under the Changeling's command? He would have to watch her even more closely than before.