BeneathCeaselessSkies Issue007 Page 5

  He changed to his lion body and began to stalk forward, step by step. “Mbuna, no,” I said. “It’s my fight.”

  He stopped and looked back at me for a moment, and his eyes caught the last of the sunlight. They gleamed green-gold. Then he settled down on his belly, and the tip of his tail twitched as he stared at Reynold.

  I stood up. My whole life had come down to this moment. I strode forward onto the trampled grass.

  Reynold saw me almost immediately. “You—state your business here,” he said, his hand going to his sword hilt.

  My father’s sword hilt. I recognized it even in the dusk light. “I’m here for my father’s sword,” I said softly. “You’ve had it long enough, murderer.”

  I’d planned the words for years, and they felt sweet to say. I drew my sword.

  Reynold drew his. Shadows filled the lines of his face and made him look far older than his years.

  I leaped at him before he’d brought his guard up, a trick I’d learned at the cost of a few scars. But my sword felt heavy, and my body didn’t have enough strength to answer my demands properly.

  Reynold hadn’t spent the last several days recovering from fever. He had probably eaten more than antelope and melons too. He drove me back toward the long grass, his teeth bared, every swing of his sword fast and sure. It was all I could do to parry his blows without falling down.

  All my plans, all my life’s work, and I hadn’t had the patience to wait until my strength returned. I’d have done better to kill Reynold in his sleep after all.

  My foot caught in the grass. I saw Reynold’s sword flash in the darkness, a killing thrust. It never landed.

  For a moment Mbuna was nothing but a shape between me and Reynold. I heard massive blows as lion paws batted Reynold back and forth like a doll. Then he was sprawled on his back, staring at the first stars with eyes that would never see anything again.

  I fell to my knees, too weak to stand. Mbuna had killed Reynold bloodlessly; no claw or tooth marks showed how he had died. From the funny way Reynold’s head lay, I guessed his neck had snapped.

  But I saw the dark gleam of blood on the grass, and realized Reynold’s sword hand was empty.

  Mbuna gave a little grunt and his tail lashed once. Reynold’s last swing had plunged the sword into the lion’s side, nearly to the hilt, but when Mbuna changed to his human body the sword fell to the ground.

  “Are you going to be all right?” I asked him. His human body appeared uninjured, but I saw the gleam of sweat on his forehead.

  He shrugged. “Take your father’s sword.”

  I picked up the sword and held it for the first time since I was a boy. Its blade was smeared with Mbuna’s blood. My father had made the sword, but Reynold had turned it into a weapon. “I don’t want it anymore.”

  “No. Keep it. Your father made it, and it is beautiful.”

  “But you might die because of it.”

  “I might die from a fever. I might die from a snakebite. I might die an old man.”

  I looked at him doubtfully—despite his words, he sounded strained. I looked at Reynold too, but felt no relief or joy. Mbuna put his hand on my shoulder and guided me away from the encampment.

  We walked slowly. “You should go home to your green fields,” he said. “Take a wife and give her children. You have been a son, and now you can be a father.”

  “I’m just a soldier. I know no trade.”

  “A soldier knows how men think.” Mbuna gave me a sideways look out of the corner of his eye. “Go to your king’s men, tell them about Daomi. Tell them to stop sending soldiers here to die.”

  I touched the hilt of my father’s sword; it hung at my side now, where it belonged. Something inside me seemed to break free and fly away, a piece of my father’s soul that I had held captive for so many years. “I’ll do it,” I said. “I’ll do what I can for Daomi.”

  “Thank you, Waters.”

  We walked almost two miles, with Mbuna leaning heavily on my shoulder by the end. “Here,” he said finally, once we’d reached a low rise. “Look how far I can see. Look how much of Daomi I can see.”

  The moon had risen and gleamed on a sea of grass, which whispered around us in the night breeze. “It’s beautiful, Mbuna,” I said.

  “Yes.” He sat down with difficulty. “Daomi will take me back,” he said, and patted the ground as though it was the flank of a massive beast. “Go now. I want to be alone.”

  “Thank you, Mbuna,” I whispered, but before I’d finished speaking he had changed back to his lion body. He slumped down and the last breath left him in a sigh.

  He had both killed and died for what he wanted most in life. And he had left me with a purpose greater than revenge.

  I took my father’s sword. I went home.

  Copyright © 2009 by K.C. Shaw