Dax, Wan, and John stood with me and Ta'o. Dax had a blur of red chalk clumped up with sweat in the center of his broad, muscular chest, and Wan had been shot on the top of his shoulder.
I saw that one coming; she'd clung to a massive tree trunk high up in the canopy and caught us as we walked beneath. Had that been a real arrow, it would have cut straight through a lung, then possibly sliced through the heart on its way down through his stomach.
Segay limped with one arm draped over Gaedi's cousin-in-law Jorven's shoulder, and his other arm around Josha's. She'd nailed him right above his kneecap.
A real arrow, he'd never walk the same, if he was lucky.
Rool was carrying one of Segay's arms when she got him in the back of his thigh. Presently, the giant was being carried by Gaius Mango's Bane, and Hereim, who'd won the archery tournament.
Only Rolon, Haron, and Faris had their bows out, scanning the trees, looking up as well as out this time, while Faris didn't know how to hold his. Every time he walked past a fern, the arrowhead snagged.
Wood zipped through the trees from our right, and a chalk-tipped arrow smacked into the side of Josha the Kid's chest. "OWW! FUCK!"
He'd have had thirty seconds to contemplate his life.
Josha let go of Segay's hand and crumpled to the ground, holding his hand around the clump of red where the arrow hit him.
Dax laughed and spoke quietly. "Hurts like hell, doesn't it!"
"Shh!" Ta'o snapped. The man brought a writing tablet and a stack of paper with a clump of sharpened coal. I'd planned to observe, but Ta'o was literally taking notes.
Faris fired an arrow into the woods.
Rolon studied the area where it had come from, but didn't return fire this time.
Haron kept watch in all other directions. "Alright. Faris, you carry Segay…"
Faris, the same man who'd climbed the outer wall back at the castle, shook his head. "I'm not fucking carrying him, man."
Haron faced him. He had the four lines of a huge bear-claw scar across his ripped, muscular chest and had several inches on him. "Fucking carry him, man."
"Why don't you carry him?" Faris had a stocky build and plenty of scars and dents on his square face already.
"You can't even fucking shoot, man!" Haron was getting loud. Beside me, John nodded his chin to count out the number of seconds they spent arguing.
Rolon the alleged brown-noser stepped in. "Guys stop, man. Every time we argue, she gets an easy shot. Haven't you noticed?"
Segay grinned wide and taunted them. "Am I that bad?"
Jorven, who still carried his other arm, answered. "Of course you are, man. Did you even bathe last night?"
Segay answered. "Right after I fucked yer mum."
Jorven shook his head. "Shit, man. I been trying to wash that bitch's cunt off me my whole life. Guess you struggle with it, too?"
Haron closed his eyes to laugh. I laughed. Ta'o covered his eyes and fought hard, but a few chuckles escaped him as well. John grinned, but still counted the seconds.
And while we were laughing, another practice arrow zipped through the air and pegged Rolon angled at the center of his back. Had that been a real arrow, it would have either stuck in his spine, or sliced through his vertebrae and shredded a lung on its way out.
This was my girlfriend. Weeks before I arrived at Carthia, not even a month, she was on their side, and this was what she did.
As we came down from the mountains, when we were first learning it was possible to dump a foot of rain in under a minute, before we got our mosquito ward, she would hunt us. That time she came out of the trees and told us all 'yonim', had we come two weeks prior, she'd have shot us from the trees right then.
There were five of us. She'd have killed Davod first. Then me and Ales, not necessarily in that order, then another, and none of us would have made it to the Lake of Doom.
This was the woman I gave my virginity to, and if God were in a good mood, he would allow us an eternity to learn each other.
I saw what she was doing. She would shoot one, then go somewhere else to observe and plan her next attack. She watched the argument continue while Ta'o wrote everything down.
"I'm not fucking doing it, man." Haron shook his head.
Faris continued to stand off against Haron, and no one was watching the trees.
"Ayo," Gaius interrupted, letting go of Rool's arm. "While you two arguin, she kills another, and you still arguin! We don't move and we all dead, man. Look. Maybe wounded guy don't need two to carry him, so that makes three watchers. Who's the best shooters? Hereim?"
Haron pointed his bow at the other men. "I'm a better shot than all you fucks!"
"Jorven," Gaius turned to him, "you shoot better than me. Sergay, I got you. Faris, you help Rool."
Ta'o wrote all of that down, and Rolon joined the Army of the Dead walking behind us through the jungle. I peeked over at some of Ta'o's earlier notes.
Dressed like civilized men: Dax, Haron, Faris, Segay, Rool, Jorven. Mountain blankets: Wan, Rolon, Hereim, John, Josha, Gaius.
To my right, I heard something shake a branch about a hundred yards out. Beneath the thick foliage overhead, a lizard's tail with a blue stripe quickly disappeared. I couldn't help but watch for more sign of her. In the darkness behind the leaves, a form moved, and I could almost see her face peeking through the shadows.
The trail continued through a thick grove of dense trees that didn't give us more visibility than our arms pushing them out would allow. We came out of that, and the trail ended perpendicular to another trail that led off in each direction. At the intersection was a seven-foot-tall statue of black slate in the form of a square with two legs and arms sticking out both sides. Vines crept along its legs and clung to the stone.
All the men looked at one another.
"Gimme that thing!" Haron snatched the map from Segay's belt.
Segay mocked him with a kissing gesture. "Go easy, you know you're my type!"
"Piss off!" Haron studied the map, then pointed to the right. "This way."
They hadn't gone two steps when an arrow zipped through a dense tree beside them—she couldn't have been ten feet away—and nailed Haron in the side of his neck. That would have been horrifying no matter the outcome.
Then I thought about it. What, strategically, would absolutely destroy them? "Stop everything! Freeze!"
Everyone looked at me. Haron rubbed the side of his neck and winced.
"OK, now hold still," I said, "I am a medic, and let me tell you what has just happened."
I directed Haron to hold still and faced Ta'o. "This is my medical opinion. The arrow pierced right through here and sliced the trachea. He's going to be coughing up blood for a while, but keep his head down for a few hours, give him a month he'll make a full recovery. Now, you can see it missed the carotid artery, right here, but if you try to pull the arrow back through, you'll rip it open and his blood will be everywhere. And I mean everywhere. It's possible to save him, but it would take you about…" I shrugged. "Twenty minutes."
The men looked at one another with their eyes wide, while Ta'o wrote all of that down in his notes. Rolon watched him write and offered a few corrections.
Behind us, John watched the men. Dax held his fingers to his chin, studying them closely, Wan examined some leaves, and Josha scanned the forest. His eyes narrowed in on a fight between two small, furry animals up in the trees while a big, black bird watched from the high canopy.
Faris looked around frantically. "We can't wait around no fucking twenty minutes, man! She'll kill us all!"
"That's the point," Segay grinned at him. "Don't you see it?"
Gaius crept low and directed Haron to pick up the practice arrow and hold it at his neck.
"I do see it," Faris nodded. "So we should get rid of the lot of them."
Haron turned and shouted at him. "Oh, piss off, man!"
"Haron!" Ta'o snapped. "You're coughing up blood. You can't speak."
"Oh." He crouched down on all fours and continued to hold the arrow at his neck while pretending to cough.
"Think about it," Faris pleaded with Hereim, Jorven, and Gaius. "This whole thing has been to slow us down, right? That means we're almost there. We only need one of us to make it to the mill, right? Let these guys go, and let's see how fast we can get there."
Segay sneered at him, still leaning his wounded leg on Jorven. "I vote no."
Rool added, "I vote no."
Haron took a pause from coughing and turned his face up. "I vote no."
Gaius Mango's Bane let go of Rool's arm and pleaded with the man. "You can't seriously consider…"
"Eh?" Faris reached down and took the arrow from Haron. Ta'o wrote down artery ripped when Faris pulled arrow.
Then he nocked it in his own bow and raised it against Segay.
"Hey!" Segay shouted and tried to raise his hands before Faris shot him in the gut.
Ta'o glanced up at me with a furrowed brow and his lips pulled taut before writing that one down. John stared at the man with one eyebrow raised.
Faris turned on him. "What you lookin at?" before nocking another arrow for Rool the Giant.
"I got it, I got it," Rool meandered back to walk among the dead. "You shot me, just write it down, we're good."
The map lay on the ground next to Haron's outstretched hand.
Hereim looked at Jorven. Gaius looked at Faris.
Faris looked among the three of them. "I'm not picking that shit up."
Hereim shook his head. "I'm not touching it!"
"Me neither," Jorven shook his head.
And they left it behind. Ta'o was writing that down when Rolon leaned in. "OK so this is the spot with the slate man, that's where they're leaving the map…"
"ŋʌvidesa," Ta'o dragged his words out. As they walked off, Haron lay perfectly still in the mud. It wasn't until the crowd of zombies passed that he got up and took the map with him.
With only four of them walking unencumbered, they made good ground. We still had Hereim who won the archery tournament, Jorven Gaedi's cousin-in-law, Faris who'd climbed the outer wall, and Gaius Mango's Bane.
Things were quiet for a while. I heard no sign of her for over half an hour. The trail led the men through a patch of dense trees with thousands of wiry roots dangling to the ground and it was completely dark. Huge, dark-green leaves of some vine crept along the ground. After Ta'o and John both tripped on hidden roots and nearly fell over, the rest of us slowed down. When they came out the other side, they looked around.
"Where's the trail?"
In the shade of some tree not too far off, hidden in the sun's glare, something moved around. An arrow zipped out from that spot and pegged Faris on top of his thigh. He would still be able to move somewhat.
"Fuck me!" he screamed and rubbed the spot.
The other three gathered around him and looked at one another.
Jorven looked Faris dead in his face. "We leave him behind. I found the trail. This way." Gaius and Hereim nodded to one another, and they raced on.
While Ta'o wrote that down, Dax spoke up. "What happens to Faris?"
I shrugged. "Something will eat him."
Ta'o wrote that down. Rolon read over his shoulder and inserted a few comments of his own.
They went far. The trail grew narrow to where it was hardly a few snapped twigs overgrown with vines. The men crossed a sea of leaves that felt like it had no trail whatsoever until they came to a man made of copper plates tied to pipes with twine. The man was about five feet tall, tarnished green, and stood in the center of a circle with a bed of bright red rocks with large boulders around the border all beneath one carefully-manicured tree.
The trail circled the shrine and went down to the left, and up to the right.
The three men looked at one another. "Who's got the map?"
"I thought you picked it up."
"Right here," Haron held it out for them.
"No," Ta'o stopped him. "You're dead. You left the map with his body back there."
Hereim's eyes went wide with shock. "We have to go all the way back there?"
"Look," Jorven pointed out. "It's a salt mill. That way looks like it goes down into a swamp, this way goes into the mountains. Let's go."
As the men continued on, Ta'o gestured to Haron for the map. Haron brought it over, and Ta'o wrote something down. Rolon leaned over his shoulder quietly; Ta'o had stopped writing in Herali and switched to the tall, vertical Uhuida script.
Hereim, Jorven, and Gaius rushed up the hill and followed the trail as it dipped down and crossed over a bridge made of mud and sticks over a creek at the bottom of a ravine. As they started up on the other side, high up on the right, those crickets quieted for a split second before an arrow shrieked through the air and caught Jorven in the side of his calf.
"Fuck! Shit! Bitchass cunt poxy pile of shit motherfucker!" and he hopped up and down on one leg, rubbing the spot with one hand.
Segay wedged his way between Rolon and Ta'o and spoke low. "Make sure you get all of that down, now. I can repeat it if you like; I've got perfect memory. He said…"
Ta'o grinned and wrote as Segay narrated.
"Now what?" Hereim looked at Gaius.
"Fuck!" Jorven continued to rub his calf.
Gaius strained a grimace across his lips and took hold of Jorven's arm while turning to Hereim. "Come on. You keep watch."
And Hereim walked ahead of them with two fingers on his bow string.
They walked through sticks and mud, and the trail grew too steep for Gaius to carry Jorven alone, so they both carried him. No one remained to watch the forest. By the time the route leveled off, both Gaius and Hereim were drenched in sweat and exhausted, and the trail disappeared.
Completely.
After taking a minute to breathe, Hereim stood amid dark shadows of tall trees and looked around. Beyond ten yards in all directions, the brush was so thick she could have been hiding anywhere. Gaius looked around as well and shook his head in frustration.
Jorven the Profane may have been injured, but he could still track. "Shadows coming down this way, that way is north. Mountains are that way."
After several strides, they found a deep trough of standing water swarming with mosquitoes, and the trail continued on the other side.
The siren bird called out that up-down-up-down-warble about seventy yards to our left.
"That bird!" Jorven warned the others. "She's over there!"
Marya taught us that trick. While everyone else looked left, I looked right. John saw me, and he looked right as well.
She sat on a branch high up in the trees half concealed in branches and leaves, and she waved at us with a big smile.
John's eyebrows popped.
Then she jumped down. While she fell, Blue leaped across and caught her on his back, and she fired another shot mid-flight before disappearing into the trees.
"At this point, she's just showing off," I whispered.
John chuckled and shook his head.
Hereim arched his back and cried. On the back of his sweaty shirt was a red smudge right at his heart. That was the same shot that killed Gozhu.
"Fuck me!" Gaius roared out.
Gaius," Jorven limped with his arm around the man's shoulder. "Leave me."
"What?" he furrowed his brow.
"We lost, man. Just run ahead as far as you can go. We'll need every yard we can get against tomorrow's group."
Gaius passed his green eyes among the dead. They all encouraged him, so he sprinted.
He raced along the trail. We kept pace as he darted through. The route widened as it wrapped around a grove of coconut trees on the right with low bushes bearing bright red berries gobbling up the scraps of sunlight from above. Gaius kept running until Blue stepped out and tagged him with his snout.
"Arghhhhh!" Gaius cried, then lay down on his back while Blue snapped his jaws. His head held still while his body moved around. He squawked, then tickled Gaius in his belly. The man fought off a laugh while Blue pretended to chew and take another bite.
John crept close to offer Gaius a hand. Blue hissed at him and took another bite.
The men laughed and looked at one another nervously. "Now what?"
"You come!" Miyani stood in a narrow, cavernous tunnel through low bush beneath rows of tall coconut trees.
We all followed her in. The tunnel was perfect for her, but the rest of us had to duck down low. Wan lifted a cluster of bright red berries as we walked past. "What are these?"
"Is coffee. Almost ripe; is dry season that we harvest."
Deep within the grove, she led us to a small clearing with low grass all over the ground. She had a pack of blankets waiting for us and sacks with bread, and baskets of cheese and fruits.
The shade from the overbearing sun was perfect. Segay asked around for a rope. Rool had one in his pack, and Segay pulled down coconuts for everyone. Blue hopped excitedly from one foot to the other watching the coconuts come down. He held his in his wide-open jaws and tilted it upside down, allowing the juice to flow into his mouth and all over his lizard face.
Miyani sat on my lap. Her skin against my chest, her legs in mine, I was getting a reaction. She wiggled her hips to squeeze my erection between our bodies and turned to kiss my lips.
"Alright gentlemen," Ta'o turned to a fresh sheet of paper. "Each of you is entitled to one question. It can be any question. If you try to influence anyone else's question, you will forfeit your own. Who's first?"
"I got one," Haron stepped forward with a question for Blue. "What's your weakness?"
Blue was positioning his jaws around his second coconut. He chirped and cawed. Miyani lowered her face and pinched her nose in her fingers, shaking her head.
"What'd he say?"
She let out a breath. "He say long, lean legs."
The men laughed. Miyani shook her head and smiled. Then after everyone calmed down I added, "he can't see as well. In the dark, he can see way better than us, but in daylight he struggles if you're not moving. He can hear OK, he can smell as well as any hound, but daytime vision isn't his strong sense."
"I have one," John looked at Miyani while spreading speckled cheese sauce over a bread crisp. "How do you pick out your targets?"
Her muscular legs fit perfectly in my lap, with her knee in the pit of mine. "Always captain first," she said. "Also Herali bow. Is more like, uh…" she looked at Ta'o and finished her statement.
He translated for her. "She says she knows that if you carry a eupin bow, you're more likely to have wilderness skills. So she picks those guys off first. If she sees fighting in the group, they die in the jungle. Every time. So she looks for the peacemakers and targets them next. Anyone who looks like they're going to show strong leadership, or if I think they can see me in the jungle, they go down."
"My turn," Faris sat on a red-and-white patterned blanket with his back leaned up against a coconut tree, chewing on a cluster of small, solid-green fruits and looking at me. "What'd you do to get her?"
Hereim and Rolon protested. "Come on, man, seriously?"
"Silence," Ta'o raised a finger. "It's his question. Attempt to influence, and you will forfeit yours. This is your last warning. And to answer the question," he smirked, "he broke every rule there is."
"I did not!" I protested. I turned to her. "I didn't break every rule."
"Yes you break." She kissed me with a smile. I kissed her back.
She kissed me back.
I kissed her back. "Not every rule."
The men watched us and glanced among each other. She kissed me again. "Yes you break!"
"Next question," Ta'o called.
Wan raised his hand next. "Is this what it's really like out there?"
She and I looked at one another. Her eyes were like the sunrise. Her lips, her smile, nothing could compare.
She turned to Ta'o, who translated for her. "She says if she manages to kill their sekɪwa and they're far from the nearest fortress, she would absolutely go after them like this. She says because none of you can hear the jungle, she's taking far more risks than normal. She says if she were facing veterans who can hear the jungle, she wouldn't get close enough to take a shot."
Gaius Mango's Bane slurped the last few drops from his coconut, tossed it into the weeds, and wiped his chin. "Why was I last?"
Some of the other men chuckled.
"Ayo," his face almost looked offended. "Am I just the least formidable among the whole unit? Seriously, I want to know."
Dax chuckled. "Can we focus on winning the next round, maybe?"
Ta'o cut him off. "That's attempting to influence. You forfeit your question."
"What?" Dax looked at him incredulously.
"Yeah, man," Segay looked up at him with a sly grin. "You're telling us what to ask!" Then he looked at my girlfriend. "How do we win this?"
"Hold on," Jorven raised a hand. "It was Gaius the Unformidable's question."
"Ayo!" Gaius covered his face in his hands and looked down, shaking with laughter.
She laughed and shrugged. "After time, I choose is closest. You tired a lot, I no need shoot. Jungle eat you. And for you," she faced Segay. "You listen. You see is good, but need listen at jungle."
"How…" Hereim started to ask, but she held up one finger and closed her eyes.
We all watched her for a moment. Without opening her eyes, she pointed behind her, deeper into the coconut trees. "Is harvest work that way," then she pointed across from me, "Shoyi that way." Beyond the grove was a steep cliff of giant boulders that looked as they'd been stacked, with trees and vines growing out from the gaps some fifty feet high. She raised her hand to point towards the top of it. "Up there something dead."
Haron narrowed his eyes at her. "You can hear all that?"
"Yes," she nodded.
"Wait," Hereim glanced at Haron. "It's my turn. How far can you shoot with that thing?"
She glanced at her bow on the ground before me. "I shoot, usually twenty, thirty yard. Maybe fifty very far away, but after waste arrow.
"Who hasn't asked theirs yet?"
Ta'o looked at his tablet. "Rolon, Rool, Jorven, and Josha."
Josha went next. His boyish, somber face pointed at me. "Is this how your friends were killed?"
Everyone looked at me. I wasn't prepared for that. "Um…" I swallowed. "We scattered. That's the worst thing you can do. We should have stayed together as a group. Alone out there, she could come at you from any angle, or just watch you walk into a thirty-foot python. Or beneath a jaguar. Or mokeso. Or those vudufifida birds. You go…"
"fɪða means bird, Caleb." Ta'o corrected me. " You might as well say vudu bird bird."
"My point is, together, you can keep an eye out for her, watch every side at once, but alone," I showed them the scar below my knee. "A dog tried to rip my leg off while that snake was crushing me."
"My go," Rool raised his hand and put down a bread roll he'd torn open and stuffed full of cheese. "Sorry Dax," and he turned to Haron. "Did you talk to Shoyi earlier or something?"
Haron's eyebrows went up and he smiled. "Nah, man. I'd seen her around, same as you all. That's it."
"And you had no interaction before that? She just walked up, and…"
"Yep." Haron stretched his arms out and grinned.
Ta'o smirked and looked at his paper. "Rolon, and Jorven?"
Rolon's hand shot up. "Something you said earlier. When we go out, we're going to have our own scout… uh… se?"
"se-kɪ-wa," I sounded it out for him.
John repeated it along with half the men, emphasizing the first syllable and correcting the middle, kɪ, as in kick.
"Right," Rolon nodded. "We get one of you looking out for us?"
Miyani tried in Herali. "Is sometimes. It, eh…" and she explained it to Ta'o instead.
"She says sekɪwa are the game masters, and you guys are like pieces they move around the board." Ta'o's eyes went wide at the next part. "She says there's a dirty secret they won't tell you: how your sekɪwa wields you depends on how expendable you make yourself to be."
Ta'o turned to Jorven. "Last question."
Jorven thought for a moment, then looked up at me with a gleam in his eyes. "Can I get my question after she leaves?"
We all looked at one another. Ta'o shrugged, and as we finished lunch, she mounted Blue, leaned in to kiss my lips, and he carried her off through the coffee trees. Jorven waited a minute and checked through the leaves and branches before asking, "I want you to captain for us on the way back. Show us how it's done."
I nodded and turned to Ta'o. They all agreed.
Haron handed me the map.
That made me laugh. Did I want to hold such a thing? "How about you keep it?"
He folded it carefully and tucked it well-hidden in his belt.
"Alright," I started. "Bows out, everyone. Look high, look low, and listen out for anything."
With the entire group resurrected, we made our way out through the tunnel and out onto the trail when something hard smacked into the center of my chest, leaving a smudge of red chalk. Damn that hurt!