Shallows of Night - 02 (38 page)

‘Toward what end?’

Moichi’s great shoulders lifted, fell.

‘Who can say? My father was an unfathomable man. Perhaps he longed to see the long-awaited prophet of my people appear within his own family.’ He spit out the dark residue of the chewed leaf, put another in his mouth. ‘My father was quite wealthy in his own way and when we were born he held dominion over a sizable piece of land.’ Screeching, a flurry of red and gold shot by above their heads. ‘But do not anticipate me, Captain, for this is no tale of the king’s two heirs, one good and the other evil. I never wished for my father’s land, just as I never craved to be a warrior. I wished only to travel, to find out what lay over the vast sea, to climb aboard the great ships with their white sails and carved figureheads, which appeared all at once over the flat horizon, bearing men from another world.

‘But I was the elder son and my responsibility was great. Our land was immense and required much attention; my tutor rode with me wherever I went to manage my family’s affairs. But ever I would reach a crest, I would turn my gaze to the shimmering sea, lying like spun silver in the sun, and wonder, as I wiped the sweat from my eyes, when I would ride those moving crests.’

Adrift in a sea of jade, Ronin listened to Moichi’s vibrant voice as he watched the slow parade of the mammoth trees, smelled the humid, fecund air. He bent and picked up a giant horned beetle, its blue-black carapace shining in the diffuse light like burnished metal. He carried it with him for a while before finally setting it down atop a low shelf of rock slanting out of the jungle’s floor.

‘One day I came across my brother fighting with the son of a neighboring farmer—a lord, you might say, though we have no word for that in our language save God. Now my brother was no coward but in that time neither was he a warrior though big and strong. His fists were like clubs and he was quick. Thus the table was turned on this boy who had sought a quick battle. Blood streamed from his nose as my brother hit him. He called for mercy and when my brother stopped, the boy pulled a hidden knife. My brother, being unfamiliar with weapons, would surely have died with the first thrust had I not intervened. I knocked my brother aside and grappled with the boy, who was strong and clever. We struggled. The boy died impaled upon his own blade.’

Beyond, in the depths of the jade ocean, the buzz of fat flies was joined by the chirruping of cicadas, a foreshadow of the quick slash of dusk.

‘My brother wished to stay. I did not. There was nought else to do, in any event. My father took me to the port city of Alara’at and with a bar of silver paid for my passage on the first ship sailing for the continent of man.’

‘How could your father let you—’

‘Our laws are quite precise, Captain, and never more so than when it comes to murder. That farmer owned quite a piece of land—’

‘But surely there was another way. Your brother—’

‘Was leagues away, as far as anyone else knew. My father would not risk the both of us being involved. As I have told you, he was a pious man and our God is an unforgiving one. It was I who struggled with the boy when he died and in truth I cannot tell you whether it was my hand or his that guided the dagger’s blade. But to my father it did not matter; my intervention caused the boy’s death and it was my responsibility to take the consequences.’

The calling of the birds, echoing softly through the high emerald gallery, haunted them as they moved, giving Moichi’s tale a spectral background.

‘And your brother—?’

They ignored the dry hiss of a giant constrictor sliding along a vine linking two branches to their right. Soon it was behind them.

‘My brother,’ said Moichi without inflection, ‘never said a word.’

Night came with a rush of soft mauve and before the deep green had completely metamorphosed into black, they had built a sputtering fire and were roasting a brace of rabbits they had caught during the day.

Already the nocturnal birds could be heard over the soft crackling, the hissing of dripping fat, their cries deeper and less shrill than their diurnal counterparts; hoarse whispers rather than shouts. The buzz of insects had died to a high whine, laced with the song of the cicadas, the silences in between, creating white noise on eardrums already used to the soundwash of the jungle.

In the distance, the whooshing of leaves and an occasional yelp followed by a guttural growl bespoke the padding of stealthy predators. An owl hooted close by and in the reflected light of the fire, Ronin saw its wide head swivel, its great round eyes blinking slowly as it peered sagely down on them from its perch among the lower branches of the tree beside which they had built the fire.

They awoke at first light, adrift again within a jade jewel. It had begun to rain, as it did at least once every day, a fine oblique downpour that nevertheless seemed more like a heavy mist by the time it had filtered down to their level close to the jungle’s floor.

Moichi scattered the white ashes of the cold fire among which one ember, uncovered, still glowed dismally. It hissed briefly, then died.

They began, almost immediately, to climb, the way suddenly more broken, strewn with thick rivulets of igneous rock, shiny and bright with embedded minerals. The ferns grew higher here, great rustling fans bending under the weight of the moisture and the darting insects.

The immense trees were draped with looping vines wherever they looked now and from these natural connectors swung brown monkeys with long tails and bright curious eyes. They chittered excitedly at first sight of the intruders and the pair could hear the echoes preceding their progress. But gradually, the creatures’ indignation appeared to fade. Yet they continued to chatter among themselves, calling to each other, following the path of the two men.

Just past noon, they crested the hill whose slopes they had been climbing since early morning and by midafternoon they were aware that the character of the jungle had changed for good.

The air was denser although the light seemed to be stronger, less watery, and abruptly, they knew that the susurrus with which they had lived for so long, had altered subtlely.

They plunged onward and, quite without further warning, found themselves on the high bank of a wide, muddy river, its waters blue-green, streaked with gray.

There came a heavy splash off to their left and they saw a long scaly form heave itself into the water until only its slightly popped eyes protruded above the surface. But the creature’s image stayed in Ronin’s brain. He wondered why until, later, he saw one at closer range and recognized the ancient crocodile which Bonneduce the Last had described to him in explaining the origins of both Hynd and the little man’s Bones.

Out into the heavy sea of moist air, down the slope to the shore, ribbons of earth, rich and black, trickled after them. The atmosphere was alive with the scent of life and decay.

The rain had ceased, at least for the moment. Above them, the sky was white and the sun, bloated and diffused by the haze, nevertheless blazed down upon them. The heat was appalling after so many days in the shadows of the jungle. The river dazzled in the sunlight and they shaded their eyes, half-closing them until they became accustomed to the high-intensity glare.

They squatted at the bank and drank cautiously, lifting their heads immediately as sudden ripples became a splashing near the center of the river. A great snout reared up, purple-gray, streamered with green and brown weed. The mouth gaped wide, revealing enormous blunt teeth and a mud-streaked pink interior. There came a snorting, as of air being blown through a huge bellows. Black eyes regarded them placidly and, with a roll, the head disappeared beneath the lapping wavelets.

‘There is obviously no point in swimming it,’ said Ronin.

‘No, but ford it we must.’ The big man turned, his cinnamon skin like burnished brass in the heat and light. ‘There are many slender trees on this bank, at the lip of the jungle. Have you ever built a raft?’

They spent the better part of that day cutting down the smaller trees above the embankment. In between, they collected lengths of the weeping vines which, as Moichi had predicted, were stronger than they looked. Every so often, Ronin found himself searching the terraced trees at the verge of the jungle for movement but no monkeys showed themselves. Perhaps they had a healthy fear of the river creatures or, more likely, did not care for the noise and destruction the two men were making.

When they judged that they had enough trunks, they hacked off the tops to standardize the lengths roughly. Then they set about tying them together with the vines.

Evening fell with a tired sigh and still they worked on so that they would be ready to set out at dawn. The far shore, high, rocky, and bankless, held at its summit a continuation of the jungle. After almost an entire day in the full heat of the naked sun, Ronin found that he was grateful to be returning to the steamy protection of the vegetation.

The raft was completed before darkness fell and, after one last inspection for loose knots, they left it on the bank and climbed back into the jungle’s cluttering cover to build a fire for the night. They feasted on fish and baked tubers.

Before giving themselves to sleep, they hacked down two slender branches of resilient wood and fire-hardened their ends. ‘Poles against the current,’ Moichi said.

At dawn, they quit the bank and launched the raft, leaning on their poles, breaking from the shore, out onto the swirling current, the muddy water washing over the wood.

Insects buzzed, droning in the heated air. Water spiders skated across the surface of the river, black molecular dancers.

Two slothful crocodiles awoke and left the baking bank, squirming clumsily until they were far enough into the water to glide in silent concert towards the disturbance caused by the raft.

Their heads went under and Ronin called softly to Moichi, who moved from the port side, directly aft. Ronin lifted his pole out of the water, dropping it onto the raft.

He drew his blade.

With a powerful rush, the long scaled snout lifted from the depths, hinging open. The rows of razor teeth were awesome at close range.

‘You’ll have to stop their lunge,’ cautioned Moichi, ‘else their weight will capsize us.’

The great jaws snapped shut centimeters from the edge of the raft, then the beast disappeared and for moments the water appeared still. Moichi continued to pole them across.

Then the snout broke the skin of the river, already gaping wide, the short but powerful legs propelling it upward.

Ronin yelled and, planting his feet wide apart upon the rocking, unsteady surface, slashed an oblique stroke beginning up over his right shoulder. The edge of the sword bit into the oncoming head just behind the left eye, shearing through scales and flesh and bone in a yellow-white spray. The great body, balked in its upward rush, shuddered in the air, then falling, crashed heavily into the river. As it sank, the blood pumping out, a great boiling began just under the surface of the water as if the current were alive with a thousand darting predators. The river foamed.

On the slick deck of the raft, the long severed head grinned in ivory disarray.

They had saved a vine for the far shore. Making for an overhanging tree, Ronin steadied the raft while Moichi whipped the vine into the tangled foliage.

Ronin refused to relinquish his prize even on the laborious climb up the abrupt, rocky face of the far shore to the verge of the jungle high above them.

Once again enclosed within the jade shadows he bade Moichi sit while he pried at the jaws. Then, using the point of his dirk, he carefully set about extracting the crocodile’s teeth.

It was quieter here and at once they missed the friendly chattering of the monkeys and the shrill cries of the bright plumed birds. They heard the monotonous drone of the insects and, occasionally, the flap of great wings swooping over their heads, yet these sounds served only to heighten the metamorphosed character of the jungle. They felt alone again, somehow abandoned, as if they had come to the last outpost of man and now, having passed through a forbidding barrier, stood on the brink of another world.

At length Ronin had collected all the teeth and, leaving the plundered skull behind, they plunged again due west, ever deeper into the island’s hidden interior.

For a time it rained, the jungle whooshing around them with the weight of the pattering drops. Then, briefly, jade light spilled over them in complex patterns, warm and humid as honey, the temperature rising as the sun beat down out of the white crucible of the hidden sky.

It was raining again when Ronin heard Moichi’s grunt and then his whispered: ‘Over here.’

Just ahead of them, on a slight tangent from their intended path, was a carved stone obelisk.

It rose, chrysolitic, from the forest floor to just over the height of a man. It was somewhat tapered and all over its four sides were carved strange pictoglyphs, outlines of men in plumed headdresses, standing or sitting in profile. Invariably their features included a protruding forehead and a long curved nose. The obelisk was crowned by a careful carving, repeated on each of the monument’s four sides, of a grinning skull.

By late afternoon they were certain.

They were by no means expert woodsmen but they had spent many days now encased within the jade sea and they were both warriors, trained in, among other arts, the keenness of perceptions.

They had seen no other object that seemed made by the hand of man. But as the day crept along on silent swaying feet they were at length quite certain that they were not alone traveling through the jungle. They caught no glimpse of whoever watched them, yet they were never without the feeling that the dense foliage hid some beings that paralleled their path.

Still they moved ceaselessly onward, through an endless emerald dream, hot and sticky, the steamy heat palpable, almost gluey now.

At night there was little relief from the heat and they slept fitfully, dozing for short periods sitting cross-legged before the fire, coming awake with a start and a swift pulse of the heart at the sound of stealthy padding beyond the perimeter of flickering lemon light.