TREE OF LIFE BOOK II
CHAPTER 08
Five minutes later and about a mile downstream from where they were before, Julian and Nicole were now standing on the edge of a forest, beyond which was a grassy clearing, with only a few trees on it and only at the far end. Here, the stream that they had been resting by the side of earlier had fattened and grown to form a rushing river, that cut the clearing in half and then dropped over the far end of it into a chasm, about thirty yards away from where the two were standing now. The width of the chasm was another twenty yards to another clearing on the far side. A single rope joined the two sides, both ends tied off to a tree.
Leading up to the edge of the chasm were a series of boulders, easily ten tons each and about the size of small cars, that were all scattered about in a strange formation, like partitions to a haphazard maze. If you had a good sense of puzzles, you might decide to pick your way over, zigzagging between the rocks, and then edge up to the very lip of the chasm itself. You might even try to peer down into the maw and get all dizzy, first of all, and then realize you could squint and just make out the bottom of the waterfall and the pool that it formed, a good half a mile straight down the narrow chasm and into the shadows. Jagged stones lined the edge of the pool down at the bottom and more jutted out from the surface of it here and there as well. Falling down the chasm and into the pool, you would definitely break more than a few ribs.
~~~
Back at the tree line, Nicole bent her ear to the wind. She nodded. “They’re still coming. They’ll be here any minute.” She reached up and touched the locket.
Julian noticed. “Hey, maybe you should take that off and put it in a safe place.”
“And maybe you should mind your own business.” She grinned at him.
He grinned back.
She brushed her hair off her face. “How do you think he followed us?”
Julian shook his head. “I don’t know. But I knew he’d figure it out, somehow. In fact, I expected no less.” He chuckled. “Do you remember how we used to play chess?” As he talked, he unslung the pack from his shoulder and set it on the ground. He opened it.
She smiled and scoffed. “Yeah, your life and death matches. The two of you would go at it for days on end.”
“Yeah…” He removed a folded up piece of equipment from his pack.
“And that, of course, got boring real fast, so the two of you decided that you were going to play two games at the same time.”
“Yeah.” He smiled. Unfolding it here, tightening a screw there, Julian put his contraption together. It was a bow.
“And then it was three, then five, then ten…”
Julian was smiling still but he stopped her. “Come on. We gotta go.” Picking up his bow in one hand and then his pack in the other, he began leading her away. “Now this is what we’re going to do…”
~~~
Brian and his men were close. At the moment, they were still wading through the thicker part of the forest with trees all around them. Just a distance away, however, not fifty feet ahead of them, was the spot where the line of trees ended and the clearing would start. The same spot that Julian and Nicole had been standing in and talking with each other just moments before.
One of Brian’s men was at the head of the column, leading it. He gave a hand signal. All the men, all twenty of them, stopped and crouched down.
Brian strode up to the leader. He bent and spoke into his ear. “Sergeant?”
Sergeant Blackfoot whispered back, “The tracks lead here, sir. You see that bush up there?” He pointed. “Just before the trees break?”
Brian saw the one he meant. He nodded.
“I saw movement.”
The bush was about fifty feet away and just big and thick enough to hide two people behind it. If Brian had to pick a spot to conceal himself, and then wait for enemies to walk through the tree line and out into the open so he could ambush them, this was the spot he would pick. No doubt about it.
Brian straightened up. Turning, he faced his men who were crouching a distance away behind him. He began speaking to them in hand signals.
[First ten. Take your positions. Last ten. As discussed. Now.]
Nine of the men and Sergeant Blackfoot moved forward to form a front. They lifted their dart pistols, the ones loaded with Brian’s super-ethanol, and held them at the ready. Brian stayed where he was, a few paces off to the side.
Brian signalled to them again. [First volley. On my mark.]
Brian gave the command.
The men fired off their darts in a wide spread covering the entire bush and also a good twenty feet all around it.
From behind and above, arrows shot out.
The guns were hit and knocked from the men’s hands.
All at once. From all ten men. Now they were broken pistols and useless.
Brian went to turn around but shouted over his shoulder first, “Back ten!”
Brian had planned for this. The rest of his men had been facing the other way.
Now they fired off their rounds at the source of the arrows, on a perch in a tree high above them.
The sound of bowstrings.
Arrows flew.
All the darts had been intercepted in mid-air and knocked to the ground.
Arrowhead to dart-tip. All at once. All ten darts.
It took this long, but Brian was fully turned around now and glaring up into the trees.
Julian.
On a branch.
Eighty feet above with his back against the sun, piercing through a gap in the canopy, glimmering in the light. It was Peter Pan. Robin Hood. Artemis, Apollo, Lord of the hunt.
“Reload…” began Brian.
The men hadn’t waited for the command. They were already reloaded and were just lifting their guns to take aim.
This time, Brian saw how he did it.
Julian lobed ten arrows into the air just slightly above him. As the arrows drifted downward then, they fell into position on his bow and he shot them away, one by one, almost like the mechanism on a machine gun, but only faster. It was so fast, in fact, the arrows appeared to have been fired and hit all of their targets at the same time. So in the same instant, even before the men had a chance to fire them off, all the pistols had been knocked from the hands of the back ten and onto the ground.
“Dammit!” Brian turned his gaze back up to Julian.
Julian jumped.
The men threw what they had at him—knives and other weapons.
In the air, Julian twirled once and brushed aside the shots with his bow.
He hit ground.
And then he was off.
A punch here. A kick there. One hit per man. Nothing wasted.
Within the span of a minute, all twenty men now lay on the floor of the forest, some of them yowling, each holding a broken arm or leg.
Julian zipped over, like a butterfly, like his feet never touched the ground, to take a position at the tree line with his back to the clearing. He slung his bow over his shoulder. He wiped his arm across his brow and smiled at Brian.
~~~
Amid the sound of curses and groaning for pain, Brian turned his head this way and that to survey the scene around him. He sighed. He shook his head. Slowly, he pivoted around to face Julian. Brian smiled at his long time friend and clapped for him. “Very impressive. You’ve been practising.”
Julian took a bow.
Brian frowned. “And Nicole?”
Julian nodded. “She’s safe. I sent her ahead.”
Behind him, Brian’s now disabled company were still moaning in pain. The ones who could walk were tending to the ones who couldn’t. Wind had picked up. It got darker and looked like it was going to rain.
“You know, Brian, I must admit, I am intrigued.”
Brian nodded. He smirked. “Me too.”
Julian smiled. He crossed his arms. “You first.”
Brian chuckled. “So you dressed yourself up like one of my men and lay on the ground in the lab?”
Julian nodded. “Yes. And Nicole too.”
“Yeah, I got that part. But I wasn’t working very hard at it. To capture you, you know? You knew I had to let you go in the end?”
“Yes, I know. Just so you could follow me.”
“And you knew I would follow you.”
“Yup. I knew you’d find a way somehow.”
“But you didn’t know how, exactly.”
“Right…”
Brian tossed his head back and laughed. He strode over to a fallen trunk nearby and sat down.
Julian smiled. He picked off a blade of grass from in front of him. He put it in his mouth and began to chew on it. Overhead, the clouds had rolled in tight. Now it began to rain.
Julian spat out a bit of what he had been chewing on. “So how did you do it? How were you able to follow us?”
Brian shrugged. “Well, the easy way would have been to use some sort of tracking device. You know that.”
Julian shook his head. “But I found the shoe.”
“I knew you would. That chip wasn’t very well hidden after all. It was just in the heel…”
“I thought so too.”
“So,” said Brian, “you had to think that I must have sneaked some other electronic gizmo onto Nikki somehow, something injected or swallowed, perhaps?”
“Precisely.”
“And that’s why you anticipated for that and made yourself an e-bomb.”
“Yes.”
“To wipe out all my electronics?”
“Yes.”
Brian chuckled. “That’s good, Julian! Very neat trick, that. I didn’t know you knew how to make one…”
“An article in Popular Mechanics. It wasn’t difficult.” Julian spat out another bit of grass. “And yet you’re still here.”
“I took it upon myself to anticipate what you would have anticipated for, and got myself a tracker.”
Julian frowned. He stood still. “A ‘tracker’?”
Brian laughed. “No! Like a human tracker!” He pointed at Sergeant Blackfoot. “Pure-blooded Iroquois. He could track a mosquito…”
“Even through rain?” Interrupting Brian, Julian looked up into the raindrops, which were getting heavier. “Like Amazon rain?” He began easing backward to enter the clearing. He craned his neck back, opened his mouth and drank of the water drops falling into it.
Thunder roared overhead. The rain got heavier still.
“You mean like now?” Brian began walking forward too, following Julian into the clearing. At the same time, Brian slipped his hand into his pocket.
“Yeah, like now.” Julian stopped at about fifteen yards out, just about the middle of the clearing. “You know what I think, Brian?”
“And what’s that?” Brian stopped too, about ten yards from Julian.
“I think I know what you’re thinking.”
“You do, do you?” Brian smirked.
“You’re thinking, that this is your last chance. This is it. I have Nicole. You have no pawns left. No other holds on me. No more aces up your sleeve…”
Brian nodded along. His hand was still in his pocket.
“…oh, and no more electronics! And no more tracking from your Iroquois buddy over there either, thanks to this heavy rain, right now.” He laughed.
“Is that right?”
“That’s right.” Julian nodded. “So now what must you be thinking?” Julian crossed his arms in front of his chest. He laughed some more. “You must be thinking right now that you better not lose me, because if you lose me, this time, right here and right now—you’re going to lose me forever.”
Brian lost his smile. He nodded. “You’re right.”
In one smooth motion, Brian withdrew a dart from his pocket and launched it at Julian.
Julian knocked it away.
And the fight was begun.
~~~
A/N: The video on the right is * kind of * what I had in mind of the locale. If what you're imagining in your mind is better, then just go with that. ^__^