half was left. Some of them half-eaten, some of them drained of blood, and drained empty. And this man he cried, and this man he wailed, and this man he cursed the silence of the gods, then cursed them too. And this man, he buried them, but could not bury the one made of spirits, for though they could not kill her, the killing ground made her go mad and she roams all the way to the sand sea, groaning a spirit song. And this man fell to his knees nine times in great grief, and profound dismay, and magnificent sorrow. And this man, after season upon season of grief, let that grief sink, and harden, and turn into rage, which sunk, and hardened, and turned into purpose. For he knew who the boy came with, or who came with the boy. He knew it was the beast whose brother the Leopard killed, though the beast came and took his revenge on him. He said to his friend, All these deaths are on your hands. And he sharpened his axes and dipped his knives in viper spit, and he set out for the Mweru, for that is where the boy came from and that is where he would go back to. Here is truth, the man did not think on this very long, for he was still beyond thought. Here is deeper truth. He would kill the boy and whoever protected him, and the bat and whoever stood in his way. He knew nothing of the ways of bats, but knew the ways of boys, and all boys make their way home to their mothers.
This man rode one horse into the dirt, another one into the sand, one into bush, and one right into the Mweru. The night was open in all the lands, and outside the lands was the infantry. Who knows how many were lazy from food, or asleep? He came upon them, rode through them with a torch in his hand, kicking over pots and trampling one soldier, and they hurled spears and missed, and searched for arrows but were too tired or too drunk and shot at each other, and when a few roused themselves enough to grab spear, and bow, and clubs, they saw where he was headed, and stopped. For if death seems so sweet to him, who are we to stop him, one of them must have said.
And what did this man wear other than rage and sadness? He rode the horse through the harsh soil of the Mweru, lighter than sand and thicker than mud, past springs that would boil off man flesh and stank of sulfur. Past fields where nothing grew and underfoot old bones of men cracked and broke. One of those lands where the sun never rose. He came upon a lake of black, brown, and gray that ate away at the shore and he rode around it, for who knew what creature lived in there? He wanted to shout at the lake that he would take any monster that came out for delaying him, but rode around.
The ten nameless tunnels of the Mweru. Like ten overturned urns of the gods. His horse stood outside one, as high as four hundred paces upon four hundred, or higher, taller than a battlefield, taller than a lake was wide, so high that the roof vanished in shadow and fog. And wide as a field as well. At the mouth of the tunnels, his horse was an ant and he was less. The farthest tunnel had the widest mouth, beside it a tunnel that was the tallest, but the entrance smaller than a man standing on another’s shoulder. Beside it, a tunnel just as tall, the entrance sunken in to the earth so he could ride the horse straight in. Beside that, a tunnel not much higher than the horse. And so on. But each tunnel rose much higher than their openings, and more than toppled urns, they looked like giant worms asleep or felled. On the walls at the base of the tunnels, copper or rust, fashioned by divine blacksmiths, or someone else. Or iron, or brass, burned together in some craft only the gods know. On the outside walls of the tunnels, sheets of metal, in rust and in shine, from ground to sky.
A screech. Birds with tails, and thick feet, and thick-skin wings. Moss and brown grass overrun the ceiling of every tunnel, joining them together. Bad growth hiding