It was mofo hot.
The once oppressive humidity that pressed down from all sides had given way to dry, horrid, unrelenting heat. Amid the deafening canopy above where battalions of insects filled the sky with an incessant chord, leaves drooped and wilted everywhere. As though they'd been waiting their turn, fountains of deep-green palm leaves bloomed throughout the jungle floor in every direction—some barely ten feet high, others lifting up from the sticks and vines to claim their rightful place amid the highest canopy.
My team, along with the three women I was lying to, walked carefully through snapping twigs and dried leaves amid the thick smell of dust and... alcohol? Something fruity. Nocked at my bow was an arrow tipped with a red chalk-bag for Ghuni's aunt. Slung over my shoulder were the broadheads.
Just in case.
"Look! Python piss!" Kaye had the same white-yellow eyes as my girlfriend and wore the same bat's-wing tattoo on his shoulder. On the ground beside him was a mass of white, gloopy stuff that gave off a sharp, acidic bouquet.
"How much is there?" Tenae lowered his bow, ignoring the sun-dappled maze of tree branches all around us.
It was a cluster of chalky, glistening pellets, and a sheet of slime hung from a small plant in the middle of it. Gavalya, the young Tobori medic with waves of golden hair down her back, set the final nail in place. "That's got to be at least two-hundred kren."
Everyone turned their eager faces to the cache.
"Can we focus?" I snapped.
Visibility was both better and worse than it had been during rainy season. Instead of dense, green foliage in every direction, shifting shadows blurred a background of dried sticks and vines as far as a hundred yards in some directions.
There was no sign of the snake who'd left us this gift. There should have been some sign of the snake, if only a crushed plant where it had slithered through. There was nothing. In my mind's eye, every fountain of palm leaves hid an enemy soldier waiting in ambush, and we were surrounded.
"Relax, man." Haron slapped my shoulder. The bear-claw scar hid beneath the criss-cross of leather straps over his chest. "We all gettin' paid!"
"Haron, where's the snake?"
He shrugged.
A blur jumped between the trees to my left. In the time it took to raise my bow, Commander Yu'ushi's vita'o ricocheted across the branches above us.
When you grow up shooting a eupin longbow, you spend years honing the skill, training, practicing, shooting elk in the mountains or sniping wild turkeys as they soared between rock ridges, rhythms become automatic. These short bows... for a fraction of a second, my shoulder assumed I had another several inches of draw. The other thing was exit velocity. A bow with a maximum effective range of only sixty yards didn't have the same power, making it far more difficult to gauge a proper lead on the target.
You can just say you missed.
I missed.
And while my arrow struck empty air several feet behind where she flew, hers smacked into my top lip, right beside my nose. The impact sent a shock of pain so intense I forgot about the suffocating heat. "Ahhhh!"
"Shit!" My team sent a flurry of wood through the air after her, and I'm sure it made them feel productive. I, on the other hand, lost a tooth. Maybe. It wasn't supposed to wiggle that much.
God, that hurt.
Would you like some cheese with your whine? A real arrow would have smashed through the bone and shredded the back of your throat on its way down through your chest cavity.
"Alright listen up," Haron barked. "Renou, Tenae, take your squads to patrol the perimeter, make sure she don't come back. We'll gather up this shit."
"It's piss," Kaye corrected him.
"vʌ!" Sitani, the old Na'uhui woman I was lying to, grabbed Tayushi by her arm. "ki'iði gætʊθʊ'aʒʊ. samiði ðiθʊma 'asuxe."
Tayushi furrowed her brow and crossed her arms. Locks of white hair hung down both shoulders and covered her breasts. "I'm not touching that!"
Gavalya had already knelt beside the cache unfolding a sheet of waxed canvas. "It's fine; more for the rest of us."
"Why can't one of them do it?" Browsing her amber eyes among my men, Tayushi caught Rolon admiring her lush figure and offered him a smirk.
"Thei rook enemi!" Sitani scolded her. "pʊ xasesa!"
With a sharp exhale, Tayushi groaned and knelt beside the find, twisting her face up as though she were about to throw up.
If it had been a real arrow, would my team have ignored the fact I'd just been killed? My face was overcome with a terrible throbbing pain, and I had a sharp metallic taste where my tooth was about to come out.
"Erargh!" another man cried out through the trees, followed by another flurry of arrows. Josha's boyish voice followed. "Ahh! Ow! Ow! Ow!"
Still too young to be fighting a war, Josha staggered through the bushes holding his back at an extreme arch while Renou, Aydel, and Montus covered the jungle behind him. "Are we almost done here? Ahh! Ow!"
Tayushi wore an exaggerated wince while trying to coax a white clump onto the canvas using a long twig, only for the thing to twirl around in slime. "It's not going!"
"Mother in Heaven, just pick it up!" The skinny Tobori lady scooped the remainder of our find onto the sheet with her fingers. She rinsed her hands and eyed the folded canvas for a moment. "You can at least tie it up."
At that, the young dark-skinned woman took the corners in the tips of her fingers, bared her teeth, held her breath, and slowly pulled them together. "Eww... eww..."
Sitani, the old dark-skinned woman, took a break to inspect Josha the Kid. Dead-center on his spine was a swollen bruise surrounded by a red, chalk smudge. She turned to me and mercilessly pinched my lip, pulling on it to inspect the damage. "Eh. You'll be fine, you big baby. Just drink soup for a few weeks and don't touch it. Tayushi, can you please hurry up? We already lost two men!"
Wood streaked through the air, and another practice arrow smacked into the side of Haron's neck.
"Three men!"
"Ugh!" Haron closed his eyes and grunted, lifting his hand to rub the same spot where Miyani had shot him during that other training exercise.
Tayushi wrapped a cord many times around the neck of the canvas, sealing our prize, and gave it to Gavalya to carry in her pack. Still reeling from disgust, she dumped an entire canteen's worth of water over her fingers, only to pout her lips at the last few drops.
"Here you go, love!" Daemon's bony arse rushed in to offer his own.
"Thank you," she batted her eyelashes at him with a smile.
Ten of my men remained to make a perimeter around them, but on the plus side, we had three men ready in case a real enemy found us. I slung the short bow, handed my practice arrows to the living, and bent the six-foot longbow made of Herali eupin between my knees to slip the string into its rightful place. Haron's bow had an etching of Cougar brandishing fangs like knives with cubs playing in the background. Josha's bow was light on top with a dark etching of Falcon facing the wind, and burnt dark below with a light imprint of Falcon facing newly deceased souls in judgment. The arrows we nocked were longer, heavier, and had a compact steel point with three spring-loaded barbs that stuck out and ripped through whatever flesh they were pulled from.
We walked past crashing water somewhere beyond dense trees to our left when a peculiar chirp and whistle claimed the route ahead. There was a pile of giant boulders covered in brown moss and dried ferns with a light gray-blue vita'o with green spots along her back standing on her hind legs. A short, muscular, dark-green young woman with one blue eye and one yellow furrowed her brow and opened her eyes wide at us. "xʊ'ɪ ŋuve?"
Her boyfriend wiped sweaty globs of red chalk from the side of his neck. "Got killed. Us three."
Invisible bared her jagged, serrated teeth and hissed at him.
"Sorry!"
She croaked and hissed at him again. Ghuni stroked the scales along her mount's haunch, shook her head, and looked around.
"We at least goin' the right way, love?"
"You are dead! You don't talk!"
Like Gavalya, like Ajak, Tenae had a number branded into his skin on each arm. His rich baritone asked her in Uhuida. "*Which is the correct route?*"
Ghuni huffed and answered in Herali. "Go up the hill that way and turn right at the top. Follow the cliff until you reach Dog's Arse. There's lots of boulders on the way up, so watch out for rock vipers. And for Mother's sake try not to kill any more of you."
"It wasn't us." Josha shielded his eyes from the midday sun. "Someone was shooting at us."
Invisible gave out a string of clicks, and half my men laughed with her. Ghuni lowered her eyes and huffed. She squinted around the forest, tapped a finger to her chin, clicked with her tongue, and whistled. Invisible chirped and clicked back, and carried her down the other side of the mound.
We kept moving.
We climbed through a narrow, winding path through more piles of boulders long overtaken by mud and gnarled roots. Instead of keeping watch on the forest, Montus kept his gaze on the flap of brown-and-green tie-dyed cloth draped over Tayushi's voluptuous behind.
I may have been dead, but I still needed him to focus.
Like you focused on Miyani?
I flicked his arm.
He turned his startled face, big forehead and all, towards me. "What?"
I raised a finger to my lips, gestured to my eyes, issued an exaggerated glare at her arse, and pointed out two thick tufts of bushes on the left. One of them had leaves with red stems thick enough to conceal three enemy soldiers, the other was one of those palm-leaf fountains growing sideways between two giant rocks that definitely might have hid an enemy sekiwa.
Montus let out a deep breath, nodded, and checked the dwindling, gnarled forest on our climb over the rocks. A small, red, snake's tail disappeared behind a boulder several feet to my left. Overhead, the sparse canopy surrendered to a blistering furnace. Ahead to my right, tucked low behind a patch of thick, dry bush, I caught a glimpse of white hair.
Maybe that's Ghuni.
A tiny window through the stems offered dark-gray scales with deep-red spots.
Maybe not.
Range was about thirty yards. The native short bows had the advantage of being small enough to stay concealed while lining up a shot, so I couldn't tell if she was poised to take me out first if I raised my bow and drew.
None of my men saw her. They passed beside a massive boulder with caked-on lichens, Ghuni's aunt on the other side. I lost her from my field of view when I joined them, but the sliver of shade was worth it.
I calculated in my mind how this was about to play out. She could leap over the top of the boulder and catch one of us mid-flight the same way she caught me. To our left, the ground was a steep drop of rocks, dead twigs, and scraggly trees—nowhere safe to land. That meant she'd planned to get her shot off and escape down the other side. Unless her plan was to shoot the first man who emerged from the boulder, then sneak around behind and take out a second while we wasted our time looking at where she used to be. Behind us were plenty of thick trees and piles of rocks to hide in.
I couldn't let this woman believe we were totally incompetent. I had to be quick. If I took too long and she had time to creep behind my men right when I loosed, that would be bad.
"Aaargh!" The cry came from ahead where Turic the Big Fat Guy doubled over, clutching his side. Behind me, I shot a thick stalk of a palm tree to the right of where the boulder ended, and was rewarded with a pop of the point burying into the wood.
Rolon, Kaye, and Vayance gathered at the front of the boulder with bows at full draw. Montus, Daemon, and Ajak surrounded the three field medics, with Daemon stealing a glance at Tayushi's bare breasts. Renou checked the direction where I'd sent my arrow and gazed at me with one eyebrow raised.
"Don't shoot broadheads at us." The woman was directly above us. Her face was a shadow with the Terrible Sun over her shoulder, and I could barely make out her eyes burning through me.
My men raised their bows, but she held up one hand to settle them. She'd slung her bow, and her other hand rested beside the cluster of knife-star thingies dangling from her belt.
The lizard she rode hissed, rolling her talons like daggers hanging down from her forelimbs. She turned her face to the side to fix one red eye with a black vertical slit on me, growling and baring her ominous teeth.
"I was just—"
I heard a knife impacting wood before my eyes could register the flick of her wrist. Inches from my left hand, one of those knife-star thingies had buried into my bow—one blade stabbed Falcon right through His eye. It shook my nerves to the core.
"I said... don't shoot broadheads at us."
Without a word, without the slightest muscle twitch in her stern face, she and her vita'o turned and disappeared down the other side of the boulder.
Haron slapped my shoulder and grinned. "Don't think you otta go shootin' broadheads at her, man."
"Yeah, man." Rolon's green eyes gaped at the saw-blade of a weapon. "Somethin' tells me she don't like that sort of thing."
My men and the three field medics passed me. I pried the saw-blade-knife thingy from my bow and struggled to find a way to hold it in my hand without grasping one of the blades.
"Lemme see that thing." Haron reached in to take it, fitting his fingers between the blades at the center of the star. Moving his wrist back and forth to get down the motion.
Then he dropped it. "Ahh!" The metal clanged on a rock by his feet. He sucked on his finger, glared at the line where it had sliced his skin, and sucked on it again.
Higher up, Tayushi slipped along a pile of large boulders and gave out a slight yelp.
Daemon offered his hand with a big smile across his face. Beside him, Montus reached his hand out for her as well.
Tayushi giggled lightly and took a hand from each of them, only to glance between them and bite her lower lip with a big smile. "Thank you so much! You guys are so helpful!"
"Of course!" Montus blushed.
Daemon shrugged. "It's pretty rough going through here, you know. We gotta look out, you know?"
"Oh yeah, definitely," she batted her eyelashes at him.
Gavalya rolled her eyes and scampered up the same rock with ease.
Sitani set her hands on the rock, and before she lifted her sixty-something year-old frame up, she leaned into a crevasse and spoke into the shadows where a small, bright red coil of snake hid in the cracks. "Oh, hello there."
Tenae hadn't climbed up yet. He looked to see where her attention was, only to jump back.
"You scared, man?" Haron needled him with a big grin.
Tenae fixed his pitch-black eyes on him. "You watch man die because this snake?"
Haron took a deep breath and checked the viper before climbing up with the others. Tenae went up after, only to catch a practice arrow in his side that nearly knocked him back down. Some distance to our right, a disturbance of rocks clanged together while a hail of arrows devastated the leaves hiding her previous position.
Tenae gritted his teeth; already the side of his rib cage was swollen.
While he climbed up, one of my men asked, "how much is two-hundred split sixteen ways?"
In my mind's eye, Geraln stood with his hands out as a balance, weighing survival against our other priorities. He was right. Davod, Ales, and I teased him about it, and now I was the only one left.
The top of the hill consisted of a bowl-shaped escarpment about a hundred yards wide dug out of a cliff that extended for miles in both directions.
"Hey look at this!" Aydel was shorter and slimmer than Tayushi, but that didn't stop him from studying her figure. He pulled his sweaty hair back and pointed out the ground near the top of our climb while she listened. "So you see this stone, see how porous it is here and here? Water seeped through cracks and eroded the cliffside from within, causing it to collapse into a pile of rubble. That's what we just climbed up. It probably wasn't that long ago, because none of the trees on the way up were very big, and the ground was pretty rough."
His fingers trembled.
She gave him a smile just the same. "Oh wow! I guess you know a lot about that stuff?"
"Yeah," he lowered his eyes and blushed. "You know, I bet there's tons of sinkholes up that way!"
"That sounds neat!"
The way she smiled at him, locking her yellow eyes onto his and widening her lips every time he mustered the courage to meet her gaze, the way he blushed back, he could have fallen into the yellow vine and brushed it off to follow her. If only he'd focused on not getting killed.
At the top of the cliff, where there would be tons of sinkholes, dense trees fought for scraps of ground and towered above in a maze of high branches that promised shade for my blistering shoulders. The exhausting, uneven climb beneath the Terrible Sun along a narrow path with precious little cover only to be surrounded by a ten-foot cliff on all sides meant a couple guys with eupin bows could devastate an army of thousands with impunity. The only constraining factor would be the number of arrows you had with you.
And we were smack in the middle of the target zone.
I didn't see any sign of Ghuni's aunt.
If I were her, I'd scoot around the perimeter of the bowl and pick us off.
Her bow doesn't have the range.
If I were her, but with my longbow.
Sure. Let's give the attacker an Imperial war zeppelin while we're at it.
Actually, she could hide in the trees and wait until we got close to the escarpment. We'd have to retreat to the center of the bowl to keep from getting picked off, and we'd be trapped beneath this horrid sun. She could wait us out.
That's actually ruthless.
Presently, I was dead, along with Josha, Haron, Turic, and Tenae. That left Renou as the only squad leader with Kaye, Rolon, Ajak, Vayance, Daemon, Montus, and Aydel to protect the three field medics I was lying to.
Renou pulled Montus and Rolon aside and directed the others to make a perimeter. The three huddled close together, where Renou kept his face down and didn't move a muscle beyond his lips, which themselves barely moved.
Haron and I leaned in close to hear him.
"Here's the situation. She's not going after the medics; she's taking us out instead."
"She wants to capture them," Montus answered.
"Exactly. We can use that. All we have to do is follow that cliff to Dog's Arse. Even if only two of us make it there, as long as we bring in the ladies, we'll achieve our objective."
"Move quickly, no more distractions," Rolon offered. "Keep the cliff to our right, that way she can't attack from that side."
Wood cut the sweltering air. Ajak had loosed an arrow into the trees atop the rise about forty yards to our left. Something skittered away in the bush, and he nocked another.
"Tell the others," Renou concluded. "As long as everyone knows the plan, it doesn't matter who she kills. We all know what to do. We can still win this."
Tenae glanced at me with half his lips curled into a smirk. Haron huffed and nodded as well. I felt proud. I also felt both sides of my face for comparison, and yes, my lip was definitely swollen. Just touching it sent a sharp stabbing pain across my face. I held my tooth in place with my tongue; that thing was definitely probably coming out.
Holding that six-bladed star-knife-thing in my hand, I had a growing urge to throw it at something.
Renou found a narrow gap in the cliffside with enough solid handholds and strong roots to reach the top and arranged his men in an arc to keep watch on the forest above. Then, this same man who broke into tears climbing a similar face on our way to the Lake of Doom, slung his bow, and scurried up the cliff like it was nothing. Once up, he swept the perimeter and took position before calling for Kaye and Ajak to follow. That put our three best short-bowers at the top of the escarpment, with two to keep watch while he anchored a rope for everyone else to climb up.
"Go on, love," Daemon invited Tayushi to go up next.
"Thank you!" She took the rope and climbed up.
Daemon and Montus watched her from below, only to grab the rope in unison. "I'm next."
"I was next."
"I was here first, man..."
Sitani swept them both aside and, ignoring the rope, stepped up a series of rocks and roots like a ladder.
"You know, you're my type." From the Army of the Dead, Turic had opened his thoughts to Gavalya, the skinny alabaster-skinned medic. Her dark-green eyes bulged wide at his sudden revelation, and when she said nothing back, he shrugged and turned to the side. "I'm just sayin'. I mean... you know... just sayin' is all. You're my type. I just wanted to say that."
Gavalya nodded with slow deliberation and followed the old woman up.
When it was Turic's turn, he tugged at the rope as if unsure it would support his massive body weight. But, with an extended bout of grunts, strains, and a stream of sweat dropping beneath him, he wrestled himself up. At the top, he sat down and allowed the sweat to pour down his skin, lowered his face into his hands, and his whole body lifted up and down with every breath.
Haron grabbed the rope, and I couldn't help myself. "You going to use the rope, man?"
He gazed at me for a moment, let go of the rope with a hearty chuckle, and climbed up easily.
"You take too long." Tenae followed, though I couldn't tell if he was any faster.
We passed along the top of the cliff beyond the old rock slide where the tallest trees in the jungle were some twenty feet below us. Rolling hills reached into the distance. To the North, the towering heights of the Terbulin mountains shimmered in the heat like a wall of rock that faded into the distant mist, and all around us the forest was filled with the incessant chord of insects grinding below a melody of birds in the high trees.
Renou led his team along the rock ridge with trees on the left that were considerably more dense with lush green foliage.
A flurry of wood cut the air, and a hail of practice arrows fell upon the remnant of my team.
Renou caught two on his side.
Vayance cried out and slapped a hand over his thigh.
Montus took one in the side of his cheek.
Ajak sent an arrow into the trees and was rewarded with a shriek, only for another volley to catch the center of his chest along with two more for Daemon.
"This way!" Rolon tried to cover the three women to usher them back the other direction while Kaye fired an arrow into the trees.
More arrows came out at the remnant of my team until we were utterly wiped out.
"Gotcha!" From the trees, four Herali men emerged, all carrying short bows and wearing big smiles. Two of them surveyed the ruins with arrows nocked while one stood back, arms crossed, and pride etched into his face. "Tyus, you owe that guy a beer, man."
Tyus had a red splotch at the side of his hip and a grin for Ajak.
Behind us, a squawk rose above the forest. Commander Yu'ushi sat astride her vita'o, and next to them, Invisible had a red splotch on the side of her neck.
"I'm sorry." Ghuni had one in the center of her belly.
The proud man offered his hand to the three field medics. "Captain Zarin, at your service. We'll take you from here."
Another of the new men had pulled his hair into a silver Rattlesnake pin. He had a line of scar across one of his chiseled arms and sidled up to the curvy Na'uhui woman, lifting her hand with a twinkle in his eye. "I'm Sharif. And you are?"
"Tayushi." She pursed her lips and batted her eyelashes at him.
Walking under the watchful eyes of our vanquishers, holding that saw-blade thing in my hand, we passed a large, thick tree to our left some twenty feet out. I reeled back and launched the weapon. It sliced a gash across my thumb knuckle, and the metal clanged against the bark and fell harmlessly to the ground.