The canvas-covered truck had traveled for three days across the hardpack, and beneath a lazing day’s merciless sun. It was old, and rickety, a gas-driven relic capable of no more than forty miles an hour, bumping and jostling every foot of the way along a road that was maintained too rarely.
There was method to the apparent madness of Five Songs: the air, and the rails, and the seas were swept constantly, but the caravan routes across the great grasslands in PanAfrica’s north country were the continent’s lifelines, and had been for a thousand years. There were too many small merchants, too many trade routes to monitor. For those who spoke Swahili, the path was open wide.
Aubry’s eyes were cold, his hands firm upon the wheel. On the dash before him was the small tracer device handed him by Go. Its digital display read 17 K. Not far now.
In the truck bed behind him were a dozen men, registered as general workers. The entire truck was one of thousands carrying human machinery from one village, one township, one province to another, seeking a place where the work might be more plentiful, the salaries a fraction higher. The men knew no explicit details of his mission, but were allied with Five Songs. They had sworn to fight and die at its call. They were of a dozen tribes and, through them, connected to other committed men and women. Sometimes, when the truck’s engine quieted a bit, he could hear them singing.
Death songs? They came to him, in the language of his people, floating on the wind. The three-quarter moon cast protean shadows upon the land, sharp darkness and cold light that transformed the landscape into a thing of dream. He felt cool, and at peace, and within himself.
Beside him, Tanesha was quiet. She had been silent for over a hundred miles, lost in her own thoughts, no energy to waste on talk. Her hair was tightly braided in ceremonial rows. She carried a gourd filled with smalls rocks and seeds, and shook it occasionally, as she hummed and chanted to herself.
She seemed so calm.
Mountains that had been distant slumbering beasts loomed up now, revealed as insensate tumbles of black rock, cairn upon cairn heaped on each other like broken building blocks. The earth beneath the truck grew rougher. The truck’s ancient suspension groaned in the attempt to level the ride.
Tanesha raised her hand. Flat, short-nailed fingers together. Aubry braked the truck. He turned and looked through the slit in the back of the truck, beneath the canvas. It smelled of old, burnt oil. The night wind carried the dust of a long, weary day.
The digital display read 1 K.
She turned to him. “This is the place,” she said. “Once, long ago, this too was our territory. This was our land, before we were driven to the Iron Mountains. Before we chose to make our stand. This is where they will come. You must go. And you alone. We will wait.”
“Thank you, Tanesha. For everything.”
“You are certain about this thing?”
Aubry smelled the night. The night was clean, and taut. Dawn was coming. Even if he couldn’t smell it. It was coming. “Yes,” he said. “I am.”
She nodded. Aubry climbed out of the car, and headed up into the rocks, and began to climb hard, his body working like a perfect machine.
There is more than emotion. There is more than body. There is the thing called spirit.
There was a cave up ahead, one of a network of old mines, and he knew what would wait for him within, in a circle of blood.
He paused in the mouth of the mine, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the darkness.
He smelled them before he saw them, smelled their heat, sensed their … energy. There, squatting like so many machines, so many primal animals waiting for him, for something, to come out of the darkness and join them, were what remained of the Six.
They watched him. Two were male, one female. All were naked. The males balanced their heads on thick, sinewy necks. The female’s body was more slender, her body fat low, her breasts carried high upon solid muscle. The impression of fluid power was unmistakable. Their skin was heavily tattooed. Both males had shaved heads. The female wore densely knit corn-rows. Male scalps were graven with keloid scars. Their brows were plucked clean.
“Welcome, brother,” the female said. “I am San. These are my brothers Roku and Ni. It is time for us to speak.”