These far-off speculations stopped him from running or fainting with fear, which he knew would be an instant trigger to his demise. They moved closer, and he froze. They touched him, held his legs and looked up into his eye, their proximity betraying a violent odour that matched their speech patterns. Suddenly, without warning, a searing pain made Ishmael scream out into the trees. A thin hardwood blade had been pushed into the Achilles tendon of his right leg; they were making sure he would not run away. The pain made him fall, and the others pinned him down while a second hobble was stabbed in. He yelled and thrashed, but there were too many of them. Their strength, smell, arms, legs and genitals flapped and fastened him, while others unsheathed more pointed sticks.
Suddenly, there was an almighty explosion, and the creature holding his leg split apart, the two halves of its upper body flying in opposite directions, leaving the tottering legs standing comically for a second or two. The arms remained connected to each piece of raw meat, spurting mud-coloured blood as they tried to hold on to the ground or crawl off. A second creature was hit in the back, and the great sound pushed his splintered ribcage out through his puzzled face; this one did not even twitch.
The creatures fled the ambush, vanishing into the undergrowth with a practised speed and agility. Ishmael rolled on the ground in agony, straining to see who or what the weapon belonged to – was it better or worse than the horrors he had just been saved from?
‘What kind of thing are you?’ barked a voice that was out of sight. ‘Don’t look around; lie still or you will bleed to death. Now, answer my question, or I will destroy you like I destroyed your little brothers.’
‘They are no brothers of mine,’ said Ishmael through clenched teeth.
‘Then what are you?’ said the booming voice, the Mars Fairfax pointing at Ishmael’s spine from behind an old oak tree.
‘I am a man with one eye.’
It seemed like a reasonable answer: that was indeed what the writhing creature appeared to be.
‘I can help you, if I trust you,’ said the voice. ‘Keep still and put your hands in front of your face where I can see them.’
‘What are you?’ grimaced Ishmael.
‘I am Williams,’ said the voice at last, ‘and I am a man with four eyes.’
Tsungali was drinking from the earthen bowl when he heard the shots. He thought he was the only one who dared fire a gun in the forest. Perhaps other hunters shared his pursuit? The sound was foreign, not like any gun he had heard before, but it had given him a clear direction, and his stalking took on a more purposeful intent.
The stinking brown blood was still drying on his arm where the thing had bled to death, his kris driven along its shoulder blade to find its heart, or its brain, or whatever else it was that had once powered the yellow demon. It had been tracking him for days; Tsungali had allowed himself the water and thrown the food away, preferring his own dried supplies. Then he had circled back on the demon and killed it from behind. It was one that his grandfather had told him of, the demons that eat hunted human flesh. Any doubts he might have had were quickly dispersed when he saw what his victim wore over its swollen cock and balls: a makeshift bowl, which on closer examination proved to be the skull cap of a man, the skin and bright red hair still attached.
Tsungali gathered some vines and tied them around the large, pointed feet of his fallen hunter, hoisting the demon up to swing in the trees and show its unseen herd that fear had entered their lives. As he did so, he saw a small movement in the creature’s armpit. He grabbed the body to stop it swinging, and took a closer look. Under each armpit was hidden a small, delicately woven spear of grass. It was attached to the skin by curved thorns that hooked it in place. Each spear contained a human eye. He cut the little cages out of their hiding place and examined them, one in each hand. Then he saw it, and the shock made him drop them: he had seen many wondrous and terrible sights, and was not easily surprised by unnatural phenomena, but this place bred things beyond the nightmares of devils.
He bent and rummaged in the low bush where the spheres had fallen, found them and again inspected them. Yes, there it was: stronger in one, but apparent in both. The irises were moving, dilating back and forth, adjusting their sights: the eyes were still alive. This was magic beyond the powers of his comprehension.
His hand was wet; he examined it and realised that one of the eyes was leaking. Placing the good one in the deepest pouch of his spell belt, he cut open the grass cage around the damaged eye and saw that one of the thorns had hooked inwards, piercing it deeply. More fluid was escaping, and the eye had started to lose its shape.
He found a flat stone and brushed it clean. Holding the eye between the forefingers of his left hand, he laid it on the rock and, taking his razor-sharp knife in his right hand, carefully slit it open, causing the rest of the fluid to soak away into the stone. Tsungali bent close enough to see the tiny muscles, working to focus the lens, and the iris, still trying to shutter the overbearing light. Their minute energies were independent and self-willed. He probed the interior with his hungry vision; he thought he saw the stub of the optic nerve twitch, but could not be sure. The fluid and the movement attracted the attentions of other watchers, and brought the hungry curiosity of a stream of black ants to the rock. Without hesitation, they continued the dissection that Tsungali had started. He watched the eye being nibbled apart and ferried away, its muscles still alive and contracting as the insects held it aloft like a great prize, dragging it backwards along the glistening black chain of their frantic bodies. A few minutes later, there was nothing left – even the stain was fought over and diminished by the porous stone and the cooking sun.
Tsungali put his hand protectively over the closed pouch; whatever its origins, he knew that he had in his possession a most valuable prize.
‘I was born this way,’ Ishmael answered with a wince.
They were on a high rock in the sun. Williams had carried him there, away from the killing fields of the anthropophagi. They talked and questioned each other as the white man worked on Ishmael’s wounds.
‘I came here from the city.’
‘Why?’ asked Williams, without looking up from his work.
‘I wanted to escape from the people and see if my origins were here.’
‘What, with those things down there?’
‘No, not them, something else. I don’t know,’ the cyclops said, catching a small movement out of the corner of his eye.
‘How long have you been here?’ Williams asked.
Ishmael noticed the bow at the same time it noticed him. It moved again. Small, muscular adjustments inside its taut form caused it to stir against the warm rocks. He barely heard his companion’s repeated question.
‘I said, how long?’ came the murmured reiteration, from somewhere below his left knee.
It must have been the sun warming it, or his pain and shock knitting together to create the illusion.
‘Answer me!’ demanded a frustrated Williams. ‘How long have you been here?!’
‘Sorry?! What?’ spluttered Ishmael.
Williams moved to the other side of the prone cyclops. ‘I said, how long have you been in the Vorrh?’
‘I don’t know. Six days? Maybe more. I have lost count.’
‘You nearly lost your life,’ said Williams.
The cyclops said nothing, but shuffled himself into a sitting position. The pain was fading and he was beginning to trust this stranger and his bag of healing plants.
‘How long have you been here?’ asked Ishmael.
‘Now that is a difficult question to answer,’ Williams answered. ‘Maybe a week. Maybe a year. Maybe much longer. I have little memory of the life I led before I entered this fearsome place. But I have been here before; of that I am certain. What lies ahead is only destiny.’