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Blood and Iron

The flickering flames of the shrine lit the small circular room a dim red, the earthen walls of the hut glowing like coals. Odessa Kusa knelt on the packed dirt floor as an early morning breeze whispered against the thatch roof. A bare austerity filled the small hut, an austerity she and her father both befitted. The tight braids tied behind her neck bore no beads or cuffs or charms and she wore a sleeveless tunic of hide and dull red cotton trousers. Her father had his bare back to her as he kneeled before the altar, a red skirt around his waist all he wore. His skin was the bronze of the northern coasts and Odessa's was just a shade darker yet in the glow of sanctified fire their skin was the same burnished copper. Her father's head, freshly shaved and oiled, shined as he touched his forehead to the packed dirt in front of the shrine and rose.

An old rooster lay dead on the ground beside him, its blood soaking into the dirt. The dirt was already stained with myriad patches of dried blood. The altar of mud brick and the clay bowl of coals that made up the earthen shrine bore the stains of many years. The shrine was adorned with palm fronds fanning out behind it like a peacock. Bits of iron surrounded the bed of coals. The dull edges of old machetes and axes and knives, all of them blackened by the ever-burning fire and stained by years of offerings, glowed red as her father placed a bundle of sandalwood and ironwood twigs in the fire.

From a gourd bowl, her father poured a portion of the rooster’s blood onto the scaffolding of burning twigs. A sizzling and cracking came as if the flames were satisfied with their offering. The old rooster had made for a meager offering but they had no dogs to offer to Ogé’s hunting party. The last dog in Kalaro died two years ago. Nonetheless, Ogé seemed satisfied with the meager sacrifice. Ogé must know how bad it has gotten, she thought. Even High Gods must know about the Gray.

Her father’s voice rose and fell in hushed song as he mixed a pinch of rust and iron shavings into the bowl of blood with his fingers. He squeezed the juice of a small, unripe genna fruit into the bowl. Stirring and stirring, his chant seemed to swirl with the smoke rising from the altar. Repeating and repeating, the name Ogé the axis of the song, upon which each line revolved. “Ogé, god of iron. Ogé, god of the hunt. Ogé, in your exile, accept this offering from us.” With each repeated refrain her father chanted, anxiety wound around her chest tighter and tighter.

When the bowl of blood and iron was prepared, her father wet the edge of each blade on the altar then wiped his fingers clean on the red cloth spread on the shrine. He turned with the bowl cupped between his hands. “Come now, Odessa.”

She kneeled in front of the shrine and faced her father. They both dipped a finger in the bowl and began to paint the other’s face. Fine dots curving above their eyebrows and dragging from their lower eyelids to their cheeks. They took turns painting the other’s arms, the shape of a sun on the right shoulder and a crescent moon on the left. Thick lines of red down their arms to their hands and bands around their biceps to keep their weapons true. On her father’s bare chest, above his heart, she drew a diamond with two lines cutting through it.

The rest of the blood mixture was poured into the fire and the rooster’s organs were placed on the coals. Flames lapped greedily at the slick lumps offal. They stayed, kneeling in front of the altar. Her father chanted to Ogé, the patron of mankind, as wisps of smoke crawled along the ribs of the roof and out a hole in the center of the peak. The paint on their skin dried slowly, a deep, dark red on skin the color of burnished mahogany. Mixed with genna fruit juice, the color seeped deep into her skin. She stared at the shrine, trying to derive some strength from it, some divine blessing to alleviate the crushing pressure upon her ribs or still the quivering of her heart and the twisting in her stomach. Blood and mucus popped and sizzled in the fire. Her stomach churned and knotted.

This will be like any other hunt, she told herself. In her sixteen years, she had joined her father on countless hunts. The eldest daughter in a family devoid of sons, she had been like his second shadow since she had been able to walk. No different than hunting in the night forest. She felt as if it was her first hunt all over again but there was no excitement muddled with her nervousness and fear this time. Just like any other hunt. But it wasn’t. Watching the old rooster's guts crisp and blacken, she cursed their paltry offering. Roosters were offered to Ogé when they were going to hunt hartbeasts and red deer. Not nearly enough to bless a hunt to bring down gods of the forest.

They bowed their foreheads to the dirt and then rose to leave. Her father ducked through the doorway and she followed out the low hut, bowing her head to pass beneath the overhanging thatch. The sun rose above the mountains to the east through a pall of haze, a ball of furious red smothered in a damp, woolen gray like a coal singing the clouds and bleeding thin threads of fire into the horizon. Mist clung to the ground, heavy on sparse and brittle grass. In the shadow of the main hut and away from the shrine's heat, a slight chill prickled up her bare arms and the skin beneath half-dried paint broke out in goosebumps. Less than an hour ago, Odessa had been warm by the hearth fire, dreamlessly asleep next to her sister. Dew clung to the hide of their boots as they skirted the round wall of mudbrick to the front of their home.

Her mother and sisters were waiting for them in cotton kaftans the color of storm clouds. Her mother, looking pristine even in the dimness of early morning, held her father’s spear in one hand and her infant sister Kimi cradled in the other. Her younger sister Ayana took after their mother, a pretty girl with their mother's dark skin and soft features. She held a bow almost as tall as she was and a quiver with five long arrows in it.

Ayana held the bow out to Odessa, the exterior of the black palm bow was slick and lustrous and tufts of fine swamp beaver fur puffed out at either end of the bow string. “Good luck, Dessa,” she said. Her voice was thick and husky with the tears she refused to let fall.

Odessa wanted to playfully chide her for her lack of enthusiasm but a smothering somberness hung in the morning stillness. “Thank you,” she said, taking the bow and arrows from her. Without warning, Ayana hugged her and refused to let go. A smile crept to the ends of Odessa’s lips. “I’m not going to war, you know.”

Tears soaked into the front of her tunic as Ayana pressed her face into Odessa’s shoulder. “Please don’t go.”

Odessa’s eyes watered and she hugged Ayana tightly until it felt as if great sobs would come breaking out at any moment. Then she took Ayana by the shoulders and pried her off so they could look at each other, teary eye to teary eye. “No more crying,” she said, her voice wavering. “I will be back.”

Ayana nodded, her lips still quivering. They hugged once more and then released one another so Ayana could hug her father and repeat the ordeal.

Odessa’s mother's head was wrapped in a glossy, dark patterned gele with gold hoops hanging from ears poking out below the headwrap. Those earrings had been passed down the Kusa line for generations. Odessa always thought they would look so pretty on Ayana. "Goodbye, mama," Odessa said warily. Unlike like her father, her mother was an ardent believer in the sanctity of the gods. She had been opposed to her father's plan since he first conceived it. Odessa expected cold reproach but her mother gave her a sad smile, took her in a one-armed hug, and kissed her on the forehead. “Good luck, Dessa. Don't get hurt.”

“Thank you, mama.” Odessa shifted the awkward weight of the long quiver on her back. Her father laughed as Ayana held tight to his skirt and begged him not to go. “I will bring him back in one piece,” Odessa added.

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Her mother's mouth pressed into a tight line. “You would do better to convince him to cease his foolishness.” Her mother shifted Kimi in her arms. The baby cooed and settled in her swaddling cloth. “This will only bring more hardship, you know. When men rise up against gods, no good will come of it.”

Odessa nodded. Odessa was not sure if the hunt was a good idea herself. She had her reservations. But her father was going out to hunt a god and she could not let him do it alone.

A long bleating horn rose from the eastern edge of the village and echoed through the valley. A pause and then another mournful bleat. Odessa’s father embraced her mother and gave her one last kiss. “We will come back victorious. I promise.”

Her mother held onto his forearms before he could draw them away from her waist. The hard reproach melted from her face. “Just come back alive. Please.”

Odessa could feel more tears rising within her but she blinked them away. She and her father left the wattle-fenced courtyard into the spacious dirt path running between the concentric rings of huts that made up Kalaro. They followed the path, passing the occasional empty, abandoned hut.

Through gaps in the huts, she could occasionally make out the Elder’s Lodge, a large, rectangular adobe building at the northern end of the central plaza. A few figures bustled in front of the lodge, casting glances to the east. Muddled voices in the morning quiet.

Her father took her hand and led her into an alleyway between huts. They hurried, their heads down, cutting through alleys and weaving around huts towards the eastern edge of the village. Odessa cast a furtive glance behind them, almost certain someone would be chasing after them, trying to stop them. A small part of herself almost hoping someone would be there. But there was no one.

Only a handful of huts near the eastern edge of the village were occupied anymore. Now they sat dilapidated, wide holes in thatch roofs and crumbling mudbrick walls letting the elements in. Rot and moldering decay took what the plagues and blight had not already claimed.

They took the dusty path north through the western ring of huts to join the hunting party on the path leading out of the village. Past the huts, Odessa could see the jagged, saw-toothed mountains towering far in the distance, mountains formed along the back of the world serpent when the world was still young. A long stretch of forest bristled at the base of the mountains. The Arabako Forest. Somewhere in the endless tangle of forest in the foothills of the mountains hid the patron god of the Arabako Forest, Egende.

Anxiety twisted in Odessa’s guts. The survival of the village depended on this hunt. She knew that. But it could come at the sacrifice of her mortal soul. Her reservations had come much too late.

A dozen men and women milled around the path leading out of town, in hide and mudcloth tunics and skirts of red and black. Some men were bare-chested while others, mostly those carrying spears, wore long sleeves or flowing ponchos. Beyond them stretched rolling grassland of yellow and brown and faint traces of green. At the edge of the village before the grassland took hold there were fields of bare dirt and wilted, withering plants. The spade-shaped leaves of yams curled and turned brown at the edges, fanning cassava leaves hung limply from their stems, splotches of yellow and brown eating away at the greenery. Even the weeds grew stunted, marred by disease, and poisoned by tainted earth. A pervasive dullness came from the smothering gray sky and permeated the earth. The last vapors of morning mist rose from the fields, gray wisps among the plants. The cold breath of a dying land.

When Odessa and her father reached the hunting party, low murmurs were running through the clustered groups and a nervous tension kept them moving, shifting from side to side as they whispered, speaking only to keep the silence at bay.

All but one man was affected by the tense, solemn atmosphere. Ubiko, Odessa’s uncle on her mother’s side, broke off from one of the clusters as they approached, a short throwing spear across his shoulder and a long boar spear in the other. A kudu horn hung from a rawhide strip at his shoulder. “Good day for a hunt, no?” he asked with a wide grin.

Odessa smiled but her father’s face was stony, his eyes glancing down at the horn at Ubiko’s waist. “What’s so good about it?” he asked.

“Are you blind, my friend?” Ubiko gestured to the sun over the horizon, obscured by a thick gray haze. “The sun is shining. The air is clean. You can barely smell the burn pits today. The perfect day to kill a god!”

“You shame us all.” Her father’s face cracked, a grin peeking through the facade of stony rebuke. “Put your mask on and hide that shameful grin.”

Ubiko leaned on his long, boar spear. “Shameful? I think it more shameful to be sulking like a bunch of whipped children on the cusp of the hunt of a lifetime. Man’s triumph over the divine!”

“One day your blasphemy will catch up to you, Ubiko.”

Ubiko grinned. “Hasn’t happened yet.”

Her father shook his head. Odessa smiled, alleviating some of the heavy solemnity weighing upon her. Ubiko had joined her and her father on many hunts and many family dinners. His grin eased the tension twisting her guts, making it easier to breathe.

Behind them, a goat-drawn cart rattled along the road toward them. “I suppose it’s time to go,” her father said.

“No one’s to send us off?” Ubiko asked.

“I’m surprised no one is here to stop us. Especially since someone thought it wise to wake the entire village with their bellowing.”

Ubiko smiled sheepishly. “I thought you may have slept too late.” He looked toward the path to the inner plaza, the goat-drawn cart drawing near. “I had expected the Elders to come at least though. Or the ka-man. The ka-man should most certainly be here.”

Her father frowned. “They’d rather ignore what must be done. Rather shut themselves in their homes than face reality. They are content with empty tradition and empty stomachs.”

“Come now,” Ubiko said. “Let’s show them the error in their ways, no? Let’s show them all they are missing! Unblighted forest, fertile farmland, and plenty of lively game. We’ll come back heroes! God killers! What man can say they have killed a god?”

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” her father said, then walked past the clusters of hunters to the head of the hunting party. Odessa and Ubiko followed. Her father, the progenitor of the god hunt, took the lead. The hunters left the village on a thin strip of dirt between fields. Far across the valley the foothills rose, the glistening green of unblighted trees swaying in the breeze. Foothills swept up the plain, the roots of the hulking Ejo Mountains that dominated the horizon from north to south. Above the glittering greenery, through gaps in the thick, dull cloud cover, Odessa could make out the sweep of crumbling ribs and bone floating high above, caught in orbit beyond the heavens. The skeleton of some nameless, bygone god, dead eons ago. Borne from the void of Cosmos before the universe had even formed.

Ubiko nudged her elbow as they walked. “Awfully big bow. You sure you can draw that thing?”

Odessa scowled, barely restraining her smile. “Start running and I’ll show you.”

Ubiko feigned hurt. “You would put an arrow in your old uncle?”

“Not if you run fast.”

The hunting party passed the edge of the sparse fields into thick grasses. At the head of the group, her father slowed. “Masks on, everyone.”

Odessa untied the loose knot and took the clay mask from her belt. A mask, bone white, in the shape of a skull. Tying the rawhide behind her head, the mask pressed against her skin and squashed her nose. Missing a bottom jaw, her mouth was exposed beneath a row of clay teeth. Her lips were pressed tight, only loosening to let her breath out in long, wavering exhalations. No more smiles. The unease and solemn, sullen gravity of the hunt weighed unbearably on her shoulders. She felt sick.

A dozen men and women, dressed in tunics and ponchos and wearing masks like skulls, marched away from Kalaro. Carrying long spears of polished ironwood and footlong spearheads with barbed crossbars or short throwing spears with leaf-shaped heads or bows with limbs like outstretched wings, they approached the forested foothills in silence. Hide-swaddled feet padded along the overgrown path. Hooves crunching upon dirt. Carts rattling along behind them. The mountains loomed upon high, a majesty and supremacy about them undisturbed by the approach of the blasphemous hunters. Heedless to all, the mountains stood impassive.

Today, the hunters would make themselves known to a cruelly indifferent world. Humanity would not go blithely and quietly to oblivion as the gods wallowed in the muck and mire of their rotted dominion. The worldly gods, the Low Gods, were oblivious to the suffering of man. But man, the infantile race borne of earth, of dirt and mud, would not only survive the coming Gray, they would thrive. They would usurp the gods with blood and sanctified iron.