The Vorrh

trusted was behind. Last night’s dream had coaxed him to another place, a place that no longer existed. He stopped suddenly and looked at his hands, holding Uculipsa. The old rifle with its inscriptions and dents, with its recently splintered stock, suddenly looked as tired as he. The talismans that lined his body felt heavy and sullen. His age and the strangeness of this country passed through all his protections. For the first time, he understood momentum and it stopped him in his tracks. Why was he doing this? For whom? He sat down and forgot his function. A soft footfall was approaching behind him, and for the first time in his adult life he did not hear it as fear. He stayed still and waited.
    ‘Little one!’ the old voice said. ‘Little one, why are you lost here?’
    He could not turn, but did not need to. He looked at his hands and the blue, wrinkled sheen of the skin. Behind him, his grandfather said, ‘Come home. This place is full of demons and forsaken ones; there is nothing for you here.’
    Before him, he heard voices. Williams and his companion were within easy range.
    * * *

    Their silence had become dark and uneasy. Ishmael glanced at his sullen friend apprehensively. ‘Is something wrong?’ he asked. Williams looked into the distance.
    ‘The shot was flawed,’ he said quietly. ‘The arrow curved and fell short.’
    Ishmael did not know how to respond; something in him instinctively preferred to keep the subject of the bow at a distance. In an attempt to change the subject he asked, ‘Are we walking into the core?’
    ‘In that direction. The arrow leads in that direction.’
    Ishmael looked back and forth from the slippery path to Williams’ face, trying to understand the mood and colour of the other man’s introspection.
    ‘She is struggling,’ said Williams to himself, ignoring the limping cyclops at his side. The sun was becoming strong again, and the breath of the trees was coagulating with it to make the air soupy and moist. ‘This has never happened before,’ continued the Englishman. He looked at the bow in his outstretched hand, disregarding the path beneath his feet.
    Ishmael did not understand, and the man’s mood swings were worrying him. Doubt had crawled into their relationship; the offered protection and care was threatened by Williams’ disengagement.
    ‘I think the bow wants you,’ announced Williams, and the squirm of fear in Ishmael’s gut increased to a shudder. ‘She bleeds and strains towards your hand.’
    Williams stopped dead in the track, his arm outstretched, the black bow quivering.
    Ishmael blinked at the now-terrifying object held towards him. Williams had shut his eyes against the touch, and the bow swayed slightly, as if its horizontal curve was trying to match the cyclops’ straining eyelids. Ishmael had no intention of touching the eldritch thing. ‘I don’t want this. It’s your bow, I don’t want it.’
    ‘It’s not about what you want,’ said Williams, his eyes still pressed shut. ‘Come; take her from my hands.’
    * * *

    Tsungali knew that the voices of men, like their breath, did not always live in this world alone. He knew they could pass into others, and sometimes bring back different sayings. That was what the child, Irrinipeste, was so wondrous at doing: her voice had passed into many worlds and brought great wisdom back. So, it could be the voice of his grandfather behind him; but it could also be the voice of a ghost or demon who had stolen it. If he believed, and turned to confront it, he would be lost.
    ‘Come, take my hand,’ his grandfather said.
    In that moment, he heard the echo of those words spoken above him, in the mouth of his prey. Without looking back, he looped up towards the track ahead of them, no longer caring about the noise he made in his approach.
    He crept with speed to the edge of the track and saw them in his path, unprepared and engaged in a type of bizarre Whiteman’s game. They had become silent, and the Bowman, the one he knew, held his weapon away from his body, thrusting it in the face of a smaller man.
    All this Tsungali saw in a fraction of a second. Whatever this ritual was, it had left them exposed and unprepared: the field was his. He attached the long-bladed bayonet and bolted a round into the breech, then climbed up onto the track and began to charge, head down like a bull, the blade cleaving through space towards them.
    * * *

    So intent was Williams in his self-imposed blindness