Into Eden: Pangaea - Book 1 (31 page)

“I would…like…you…to go with me,” Jesse said at last, “but you can’t. I have business further south that I must attend to. Something that I must do. It would very dangerous for you to come.”

Jesse could see the disappointment in Adah’s face.

“But when I return—and I will return—I’ll come back and get you. Then we can go to Mountain Shadows together.”

“But Jesse! Father says that if you go to Eden you’ll never return. He says that the an-nef will certainly kill you!” Tears were starting to well up in Adah’s eyes, and Jesse hated that. He had no idea what to do. Why couldn’t women be more like men? Perez didn’t cry. Not even when he sprained his ankle. Enoch didn’t cry when Jesse told him that he couldn’t come—do dogs cry, anyway? No! Enoch just threatened him. But he didn’t cry.

“Adah, I
promise
you that I’ll come back.”

Adah buried her face in her hands and turned and ran back down the street toward her house, crying, “Ooooooh!” as she went. Jesse stood there, dumbfounded.

“What did you do to her, young man?!” an old woman who was standing there said.

“Nothing! We were just talking!”

“Don’t tell me, ‘Nothing!’” She shook her finger at Jesse. “You must have said something or she wouldn’t have run away crying!”

Jesse shook his head and decided to walk the perimeter of the stockade. He turned to walk away as the old woman behind him continued to lecture him on hurting the girl’s feelings and he’d better apologize and she’d tell the girl’s father and he had no right to say whatever it was that he had said and that she’d tell him a thing or two and...

Jesse walked around the entire stockade that afternoon, fearful of what he might find when he returned to the cabin. He found Kenan sitting on the cabin’s front steps. Instead of getting up and demanding that he apologize to his daughter or throwing him out altogether, Kenan just sat on the steps, staring out into space.

“Might not want to go in there,” Kenan told Jesse.

“What’s wrong?”

“Zillah’s upset.”

“Oh,” Jesse said no more.

After a minute or two Kenan again spoke up, “In case you’re wondering, I have no idea.”

“Same here.”

Kenan glanced at the young man sitting on the step beside him and then went back to staring out into space.

Chapter 15
Into Eden

At the end of the week Perez’s ankle showed no signs of swelling, despite the fact that he hobbled around with a pronounced limp whenever Merana came into view. Enoch had urged Jesse to leave as soon as he thought that Perez was up to it.

“Better to have Perez limping a little on the mountain than for him to complicate our situation by doing who-knows-what with Merana,” Enoch had said.

“Like you can talk!” Jesse shot back. “We knew what you and Future were up to when you sneaked away to the woodshed at the Prophet’s cabin!”

“She was…lonely,” was all that Enoch replied.

Just the same, Jesse feared that Enoch was right as usual, and so they made plans to depart the next morning. They were up before the first light, and Zillah had prepared a huge breakfast for the three of them. Adah had invited Merana to attend and both girls had brought snacks and small mementos of their stay at Bastrap to remember them by. Adah had carved a small wooden pinecone on a leather lace for him to wear around his neck.

“It will remind you of Bastrap,” she said.

“Thank you. I will wear it until I return,” Jesse said, then leaned over and kissed Adah on the forehead.

Zillah frowned at this, “If you kiss a girl three times on the forehead she’s bound to you for life.”

“Then I’ll save the other two kisses for my return.”

Merana gave Perez a carved pendant similar to the one that Adah had given Jesse, only this one was in the shape of a sword. “It will keep you safe,” she told him.

“So what happens if I kiss a girl on the lips?” Perez asked.

“Her father has the right to demand your right hand on the chopping block,” Kenan answered.

Perez leaned over and gave Merana a quick peck on the forehead.

With their “Goodbyes” said and the girls shedding tears, the three still had to wait until almost nine bells before they could leave the stockade for the mountain road. Kenan had ordered that they be escorted to a place on the Pishon where they could buy passage across the river. The escort consisted of twenty men, but the men did not want to leave until the fog had lifted. Even for men accustomed to fighting werewolves, the old saying, “Fog kills” was heeded. At last they struck out, with Jared leading the way, and Jehoshaphat bringing up the rear with a small goat slung around his neck piggy-back style, its feet tied together.

“That goat for lunch?” asked Jesse.

“Nah..” Jehoshaphat replied. “It’s for the smuggler. Your price for passage is half a denarius each, plus a goat for the river-monsters. Kenan gives you the goat for your passage and wishes you well.”

Jared set a feverish pace. No sooner had they found themselves back on the mountain road than he began a downhill trot that made it difficult to keep up. Their descent was a rapid one. By ten bells they could feel the air getting warmer and wetter. From time to time through the trees they would catch glimpses of the great rainforest ahead. By eleven bells they were at an outcropping of rock that gave them a view of the valley below.

“As long as you stay by the tree-line,” Jared said, “you may take a look at where you are headed. But stay low, I don’t want the an-nef to see us approaching.” Jesse and Perez crawled forward and lay on their bellies on the rock, with Enoch doing a stomach-crawl behind them. The view was breath-taking. Below them was a vast rainforest that stretched out to the horizon. Above it a dense vapor shrouded the forest in low clouds, only the occasional tip of a tree could be seen. Directly below them was the Pishon River, believed to be the widest and longest in all of Pangaea, it wound its way through the jungle, fed by hundreds of tributaries. Along its banks the three could see palm and other trees crowding out into the river itself. The river directly below Jesse estimated at three-hundred paces in width. Not far to the east of them the Pishon made a sharp turn to the south, then made another “S” curve back to the east.

At the foot of the Fog Mountains they could see an-nef engaged in constructing a stone bridge from the far side of the river. The bridge had almost reached the river’s halfway point. The three watched as teams of an-nef worked with triceratops pulling carts laden with dressed stone. At the end of the bridge a wooden crane had been constructed, and it lowered the stone into the river, supervised by other an-nef from a barge that was tethered to the bridge’s pylons. As they watched, one of the an-nef, a ram-head, lost his footing on the bridge above. He plunged headlong into the river and then surfaced for a moment, floundering as he tried to make it to the barge. Above the an-nef on the bridge raced to the side. While Jesse and the others could not hear what was being said from this distance, it was clear from their motions that they were cheering their co-worker on. Not far away, however, large fins like the ones that Jesse and Enoch had seen in River Bend suddenly appeared on the surface of the water and sped to the floundering ram-head in frightening serpentine speed. Jesse thought that the fins must be three paces high. A couple of paces from the struggling ram-head the monster’s head appeared and a giant mouth brimming with sharp teeth swallowed the ram-head and then dove back beneath the surface of the water. On the bridge above and on the barge the an-nef went back to work.

“Time to go, light-skins,” Jared said from behind them. “I intend to have my men back to Bastrap by nightfall.”

The road continued its sharp descent, through switchbacks and long grades, and the temperature continued to climb. When the band was just a few hundred paces from the river’s edge, Jared cut off to the left along a trail that led through the forest. After about two miles he stopped.

“Here’s the smuggler’s tree,” he said as he tied a white cloth to a low branch. “He’ll see it and will come after the sun sets. Not safe for him before that. The other an-nef might see. Smuggling’s officially banned by Eden, but it brings in enough revenue that the an-nef officials usually look the other way—as long as the people who do the smuggling are an-nef. With humans they’d be sure to enforce the letter of the law. I hear that there’s some an-nef senators who make more money off smuggler bribes than they do selling their votes. Anyway, he’ll be here after the sun sets.”

“And what if he isn’t?” asked Jesse.

“Then may the gods have mercy on you! You’ve made a deadly enemy with that werewolf pack. I’d keep my bow strung and my swords handy—just in case. But he’ll be here.”

Before Jesse or Perez could ask another question, Jared led his band of dark-men back up the trail at a trot, leaving the goat behind.

That afternoon went miserably slow. Perez sat by the water’s edge and tossed pebbles and small sticks into the water. Jesse tried to nap, but couldn’t. Fear of the werewolves denied him sleep. Once we’re on the other side, he thought, he’d be able to relax. But not now. He thought of Adah, and he fed the goat handfuls of grass, but he was just too fearful to allow himself sleep. Enoch, on the other hand, snored away under a palm tree most of the afternoon. Just before nightfall Enoch got up, stretched, and sniffed the air.

“I can smell the werewolves,” he said matter-of-factly.

“No way!” Perez exclaimed. “How far?”

Enoch sniffed again. “Hard to tell. But still a great distance. Perhaps a couple of miles. The smells of the forest make it difficult to separate a single species this far away. This is not the desert. Besides, it’s almost dark. Our rescue will be here soon.”

Just then the goat began to bleat.

“He smells them, too,” Enoch informed them.

As night fell a fog rolled over the river, but there was still no sign of the smuggler. In the distance to the north of them they could hear a werewolf howl.

“Let’s get out of here,” Perez said, “before they find us!”

“No.” Jesse replied. “We wait. The smuggler will come.”

“Oh yeah? And how can you be so sure? Those dark people could have just left us out here to be…” Perez was interrupted as another werewolf howled, this one closer and to the west.

“Jesse’s right. We have to wait,” said Enoch. “Besides, if I can smell them, then they have already smelled us. They know where we are.”

Another werewolf howled. This one was on their east, up the road from where they had come.

“They’ve got us hemmed in like before,” said Jesse. “The river’s on one side and they’re approaching from the other three sides. I don’t like this. Enoch, can you tell how close that they are now?”

Again Enoch sniffed the air. “Much closer than before. Perhaps a mile away. They are traveling fast.”

“Oh man!” Perez exclaimed as he began to pace back and forth under the palm. “Oh man! Oh man! What are we going to do?!”

“We wait.” Jesse said again, and then began to pray silently to the gods that they would be delivered. No sooner had he finished praying, then he could hear the sound of splashing in the river. At first he thought that it was one of the river monsters, but then he realized that the sound was rhythmic, synchronized splashes. Men at oars! He thought. In a moment a boat appeared from the fog over the river. It was large, big enough to carry several men or even a couple of horses. At the oars were four bull-heads, stripped bare to the waist, their muscular arms working the oars against the flow. As the boat was about to touch shore they reversed their rowing and one of them in the front stood up and shoved a gangplank over the side.

“Hurry it up!” he yelled. “Those aren’t sheepdogs that you hear howling! They’re werewolves and man’s their favorite meal!”

Jesse grabbed his bow, pack and the bound goat and ran up the plank into the boat behind Perez and Enoch, nearly stumbling over half a goat laying on the boat’s floor.

“Where are your horses?” the lead bull-head demanded.

“No horses!” Jesse replied. “Just us! Let’s get out of here while we can!”

The bull-head shook his head, then pulled the gangplank back in.

“We must hurry!” yelled Enoch. “The werewolves are very close! I can smell it!”

The bull-heads stopped and stared at Enoch.

“C’on now!” the lead bull-head said. “We’ll worry about the talking dog later. Let’s get out of here!”

The bull-head then pushed the boat away from shore with a long pole as the others turned it around and headed back out into the river. The boat wasn’t ten paces from shore when glowing red eyes gathered at the spot that they had just been. Two of the werewolves stood up and one of them began to yell.

“Don’t worry, humans! We’ll be waiting for you! Your dark friends and an-nef buddies can’t protect you forever! I can hardly wait until…”

The werewolf was stopped in mid-sentence as an arrow sunk into its chest. It fell into the river and a great splashing commotion ensued as Jesse released another arrow. He struck the second werewolf that was standing and it and the rest of the pack disappeared back into the darkness.

“We’ll be ready for you!” Jesse yelled at the retreating pack.

“Gee,” Enoch remarked, “you’re starting to sound like me!”

“Guess I won’t need the rest of the goat,” the lead bull-head remarked, then added, “What’s with the dog?”

“He’s a spirit-host,” Jesse explained. “You’ve heard of spirit-hosts before?”

“Yar,” the bull-head replied, “old Sodom’s full of ‘em. A fearful lot. We should throw ‘em overboard.”

“No!” Jesse shot back. “He’s with us.” Enoch began to growl.

“Well, if he stays on the boat, he pays like the rest!”

“Fair enough,” said Jesse, and produced three denari for their fare.

“The name’s Jakar,” the lead-bull-head said, extending one huge hand.

“Jesse. And this is my brother Perez and my uncle Enoch.”

“Uncle? No wonder you don’t want to toss ‘em over the side. Could make for a rift in the family. There’s some things that you need to know, Jesse,” Jakar continued, “killing werewolves is good enough practice, but the real danger’s yet to come.”