‘But not us …’ Murk prompted.
The warlord gave an amused half-smile. ‘Do not be deceived, Shaduwam. The jungle will eat you just as readily. Even if you are invaders.’
‘Eat?’ Murk answered. ‘You make it sound as if it were some sort of a huge beast …’
‘It is.’
‘Oroth-en and I were discussing boats,’ Yusen cut in, impatient.
‘Yes?’
‘They don’t have enough.’ Yusen held Murk’s gaze, his expression
flat
, as he added, ‘And it would take a very long time to make more. Many days.’
Murk understood the man’s meaning and gave a small answering nod.
And in the meantime feeding us would consume everything these people have
.
‘What is your advice, cadre?’ Yusen asked, his words very slow and solemn.
Sheeit. We are in formal crisis-of-command mode now
. He rubbed his slick greasy forehead and winced as the night chittering of the insects suddenly grated on his nerves. They were returning to full blasting force now that the clearing was quiet.
Gods, I’m tired. Only a few hours of the night left. What to do? Every option has its problems. Best to cut our losses, I say
. ‘I advise heading back to the coast. We build our own craft then skirt around the shore to the west.’
Oroth-en held out his open hands. ‘You may stay with us, of course – but it would be difficult.’
Yusen shook his head. ‘Our thanks, but we are too many for you to take in. You hardly have enough as it is.’
‘The land will provide. We will forage more widely.’
‘I am sure you are capable. But we would not trouble you so.’ The ex-officer squinted aside. ‘No. We’ll head southwest. I understand there’s a borderland there. A cordillera. We’ll trace it south. Stay under cover.’
Murk nodded curtly.
There we have it. The man’s done his job – made a command decision. Glad I’m not the one to have to
. He saluted. ‘Seventh Army, yes?’
Yusen’s answering salute was more of a dismissal. ‘We’ll head out tomorrow.’
Murk gave a grin. ‘Aye, aye,’ and headed off in search of Sour. He looked all over through the trampled stands of grasses of the meadow but found him nowhere. He came across mercenaries lying asleep here and there, wounded men and women sitting up in pain, and their guards plus the local warriors keeping watch on the jungle verge. Where had the fool got to, he wondered, when a spear haft across his chest halted him once more and a great tall familiar figure smothered him in a hug and lifted him from his feet.
‘Ha! Returned from the depths of the jungle, I see. Alone you treated with our wild kin, hey? Who else could do such a brave thing!’
Murk pushed himself free of the embrace. ‘Yes. Hello, Ursa.’
She stamped the butt of the spear to the ground. ‘Hello? Is that all
Ursa
gets from her man? You will give me much more later, yes?’ and she cuffed him, almost knocking him from his feet.
‘Absolutely. Looking forward to it,’ he murmured, then, louder, ‘I’m searching for my partner, Sour. Seen him?’
She wrinkled her broad nose. ‘The smelly fellow? Yes. Headed off with the scouts.’
Murk was surprised. ‘What’s he doing?’
She waved her irritation. ‘Asking a lot of foolish questions.’
‘Ah. Well. I will see you later then.’ He began backing away.
‘Yes! Till then!’
‘Right.’
As he walked away he heard her shouting to her comrades: ‘All alone he went! What a man! Who else would dare such a thing? Did I not choose well?’ He hung his head and felt his shoulders falling. Mercenaries nearby offered merciless grins. Some blew noisy kisses.
Then he ran into Burastan. The Seven Cities woman wore only her loose silk shirt and linen trousers. Her long dark hair hung dishevelled down over her shoulders and her arm was tightly wrapped. She seemed to glower at him, frowning. Annoyed, he snapped, ‘What are you looking at?’
‘Just trying to figure out what she sees.’
He pushed past her. ‘Thanks a lot.’ He happened to glance back and saw her still watching after him.
What in the Abyss? Maybe it’s as they say: there’s nothing that interests a woman more than another woman’s interest
.
He sat down in a nook of two roots of a tall wide tree. What the locals called a strangler fig. Here he sat, unable to sleep, and dawn was just a few hours away in any case.
It was after dawn that Sour emerged from the jungle verge accompanied by a gaggle of Oroth-en’s scouts. The mercenaries were already up building cookfires, readying equipment and changing bindings on wounds. Murk pushed himself up on to his numb tingling legs, stamped them, and headed over.
‘Where were you, dammit?’ he demanded, storming up. Then he paused, startled, as his partner turned to him. Gone was his rotting corroded helmet. His greasy curly mop of hair was pulled back and tied. And his face was painted in an approximation of the locals’ tattooing. Murk looked him up and down, unable to contain a sneer. ‘What’s all this? You’re no local.’
The man blinked his bulging mismatched eyes. ‘No. But these folks know what they’re doin’ so I figure—’
‘Well don’t. Everyone’s going to laugh at you and you’ll make us look like idiots. Now wash all that off.’
Sour’s pleased expression dropped and he kicked at the dirt. ‘I think it’s kinda like camouflage, their tattooing ’n’ all,’ he said, his head lowered. ‘I think it could help us, you know.’
‘You just look like a play-acting fool.’
Now Sour twisted his mud-caked fingers together, picking at the dried dirt. ‘I was just thinking that since they get by maybe we should look at how they do things, you know. Like their medicines!’ He shot a quick glance up. ‘You should see what they got out here. It’s amazing! They say there’s this one flower, and if you …’
He trailed off. Murk was shaking his head in obvious disapproval. ‘What’s got into you, Sour? You don’t sound like the man I used to know.’ He raised his hands. ‘Okay. Fine. So they’re new and different and interesting. That doesn’t mean you have to go all gushing puppy-eyed on them.’
‘I wasn’t …’
But Murk wasn’t looking at him any longer. Another figure had emerged from the verdant ocean-green of the hanging leaves. A smeared mixture of the ochre-red soil merged with the thick grey-green of clay covered the man from head to foot. Beneath this layer he wore only a light leather hauberk and a hanging skirt of loose cloth that fell to his knees. Leather swathing wound round his calves down to leather sandals. Twinned long-knives hung on two belts round his waist, and he carried a spear that was nothing more than a stripped branch. This he stamped into the ground as he halted before them. The twig clenched between his teeth slowly lowered.
‘What?’ the man grunted, and moved on past.
Sour was fairly hugging himself in suppressed glee. ‘You was sayin’?’ he prompted.
‘Nothing,’ Murk snapped, and he walked away.
* * *
A river stopped their eastward advance. They came upon it suddenly – as one comes across everything suddenly in the deep jungle. Pushing aside wide leaves, Hanu nearly pitched forward down the steep cliff of its shore in a repeat of his plunge into the sinkhole. As it was, he pulled himself back by grasping handholds of the thick leaves and wrenching the brush and nearby trunks. This set off an explosion of startled birds that spread their squawking and squalling alarm in all directions.
Among the dispersing storm Saeng glimpsed crimson longtailed parrots that glided across the river, a gyring flock of brilliant emerald parakeets, and many sunbirds with their bright gold breasts. A shower of flower petals followed the birds’ sudden flight. They floated down to cover Hanu’s glittering armour in a layer of even more intense sapphire blue and creamy gold.
‘
Sunbirds!
’ Hanu sent to her, pointing. Saeng nodded and covered a smile at the image of a yakshaka warrior decked out like a giddy child during the spring festival of Light. ‘
Didn’t Mother say those birds were sacred to the old Sun worship?
’
Saeng lost her smile. She shrugged her impatience. ‘They’re everywhere. Anyway,’ she gestured angrily to the sluggish course of the river, ‘how’re we going to get across
that?
’
‘
I don’t know
.’
Saeng agreed with the wariness she heard in her brother’s thoughts. She knew that others were not afraid of water, but her people were taught to avoid it as treacherous and the carrier of disease and sickness. She didn’t know anyone who could swim. As to boats or canoes – she’d never even seen one. And Hanu, well, he’d sink like a stone.
‘
I suppose
,’ Hanu continued, ‘
we trace the shore and hope to find a village. They might have canoes
.’
‘You can’t cross that! You’d sink … wouldn’t you?’
He edged back from the shore and started pushing his way south, clearing her a path. ‘
Can’t be helped
.’
Saeng followed, picking her way through the serrated knife-sharp edges of the broad leaves. ‘Hanu,’ she asked after a while, ‘in all that time,’
cruel gods – twelve years! Has it truly been that long?
‘was there anyone for you? A girlfriend? Perhaps even … a wife?’
He paused in his heaving aside of the thick brush. In his broad armoured back, hunched now, she read an aching sadness. Ancestors knew what emotions might have overcome her should she have dared to touch upon his thoughts. As it was, an image flashed across her mind of searing hot metal and, bewildering to her, an even more painful sense of burning shame. He turned to her, sap running in thick clots down his armoured arms, his helmed head lowered.
‘
We are not allowed such things
,’ he finally communicated, allowing only a tight sliver of a channel from his thoughts. ‘
Our loyalty is to be absolute
.’
‘Yet you … deserted.’
‘
They were too late. I had already pledged my loyalty
.’
Something in that frank declaration disturbed Saeng and she backed away. ‘To … me?’
Perhaps it was the closeness of their linked thoughts, but he seemed to understand her unease and he swept an armoured hand between them as if to diffuse her disquiet. ‘
As your guardian, Saeng. You yourself conspired in this, yes?
’
Yes, poor Hanu, I did. What choice did you ever have? There, you have found it. My true distress. You have spoken it. My guilt in your bindings. If not for them you never would have …
But she could not continue. Could not say it even to herself. And so she turned away to fiercely wipe her eyes, her lips clenched against sobs that tore at her throat.
Oh, Hanu! What have I done to you
…
Yet her brother continued, unaware. ‘
All those nights, Saeng. Watching. Guarding you. After a time I saw hints of the passing spirits as they came to you. So many! The Nak-ta all pledging their service and loyalty … to you. I knew then that you were special. That the most important thing for me would be to somehow serve as well. And I know now what you were, are, to them. And to me
.’
Terrible gods, give me the strength!
Saeng forced herself round to face her brother – she owed him that. She pulled the back of her hand across her eyes to clear them and stammered, her voice almost strangled with emotion, ‘And that is?’
‘
Our priestess, Saeng. The Priestess of Light come again
.’
‘No.’
‘
What else?
’ He swept his heavy arms wide. ‘
Is all this for naught? This upheaval? A great change is pending – I heard it whispered among the Thaumaturgs. They fear some rising power. Could this not be you?
’
She backed away in earnest now, shaking her head. ‘I do not seek power.’
‘
Whether you seek it or not, it is on its way. Best be prepared then, yes?
’
‘Best listen to the lad,’ a new voice snarled down upon them and they started, peering about. Hanu’s broad yataghan whispered from its oiled wood sheath. Then Saeng spotted the source among a dense tangle of hanging lianas: some sort of long-limbed golden-haired creature peering down with its glittering tiny black eyes. ‘Who are you?’ she demanded, lifting her chin.
With startling speed the creature descended hand over hand to settle with a heavy thump. It straightened its hunched shaggy back to stand fully as tall as the towering Hanu, then stretched extraordinarily long hairy arms and exposed yellow fangs in a grin. It reminded her of a monstrous gibbon.
‘Listen to the freak,’ it said and jerked a thumb at Hanu.
Caught utterly surprised, Saeng almost choked out a laugh. This
thing
calls Hanu a freak?
Remembering her prior encounter with these children of the Queen of Witches, Saeng found her courage and kept her gaze steady. ‘What do you want?’
‘I have come all the way down to the profane earth to give you warning.’
‘Warning? About what?’
‘This.’ And the creature thrust out one impossibly long arm to slam Hanu in the chest, sending him flying backwards into the brush. With his other arm he reached out to wrap a long-fingered hand round Saeng’s arm and dragged her close. A flip and he now had her leg and he dangled her in the air before his grinning face. ‘What would you do, child, were I to do this to you?’