IN THE MOUNTAINS OF FIRE by Dolores J. Nurss
Volume
II: Tests of Fire and Blood
Chapter 25 Creatures of the Woods
Saturday, May 16, 2708 The nip in the air
surprises me--we move rapidly towards winter.
All things being relative, of course--I think our shivers have much to
do with leaving behind the insulation of the underground. It can't get that cold in the rainforest--can
it? Now, the peaks that the enemy might
drive us to are another matter; snow tops some of them all year long. "Feel that
breeze!" Kief says
enthusiastically. "Living, moving
air! Petro keeps a cozy hole, but give
me the wide open world any day." (So
hot, so dark in this hellhole jungle!
The foliage traps in every stultifying sweat-drop bit of heat, yet the
sun hardly filters through at all.) We all wear blanket
ponchos, courtesy of Petro, for the change in the weather. When Chulan moves you sometimes catch a flash
of color; he wove the inside of hers in his brightest hues of intricate
designs, but he fashioned the outside subtly mottled, ombre yarns in camouflage
shades. He will not forget again that
her current profession involves getting shot at. Rain suddenly pelts down on
us, bringing out that heavy odor of wool.
"Enjoy it while it lasts," Lucinda says to me. "Dry season's just around the
corner." (Just the sort of dark,
dank wilderness you'd expect to crawl with wild terrorists.) "By the way," I
ask. "Do we have a destination?" "Abandoned homestead
not too far from here," she replies.
"Soil's all farmed out, but the well is good. Petro sent out word--we'll meet the rest of
my band there." “How many...no!” Machine-gun fire rattles through the
leaves and thuds into wood where we stood a fraction of a second before. I sprawl under vines with a mouthful of mud,
spitting out words just as dirty under my breath about Petro's
intelligence--heat's off, indeed! (What's
that! What'd I see!) Damn Petro, and
Shermio with him, and all fornicatin’ liars! We tunnel through the wet underbrush
like the bugs that crawl all over us, trying not to make more noise than any
other wild thing, till Lucinda whistles the bird-call for
"Freeze!" We've moved just
enough to distance ourselves from our original positions; more might give us
away with a rustle or the sudden snap of a twig. (Damn that lunatic anyway--now he's got me
seeing things in the woods.) Freeze--easy to command,
hard to do. I want to leap up and run
screaming like a flushed-out partridge ready to get shot. Instead I lie there and sweat in my poncho, feeling
painfully visible, if only they should chance to glance the wrong way. (The
rain keeps getting in my eyes—so hard to make out anything.) My front soaks up dirty water from chin to
toes, as I listen to the tramp of boots all around us, to the slash of machetes
through the vines and stalks. I smell
the bleeding sap and I feel so much fear, so much godforsaken fear...(So
much fear of those bloody-handed guerillas, Mother of God don't let me
find any of those little wood-demons, please!) Tramp, tramp, slash, tramp,
tramp, slash--I hear that everyone in the army has those expensive machetes
with automatic sharpeners in the sheaths.
Each time it comes out honed enough to cleave through bone. (I hear that wild places pose no barrier
to them; like the beasts, they move freely where they will, then pounce with
knives like fangs and claws.) And I
hear the woods fall silent save for the pattering of rain, all of the birds as
frightened as we at the wanton hacking and trampling of the living things. (And I hear they have no conscience, no
more than a jaquar would, that they revel in the blood of honest men.) Oh God, get me out of this alive! I try not to move, not to
breath, almost not to be. (They could
be hiding anywhere--behind me, above me in the branches, underfoot--anywhere!) I strain to listen, to pinpoint the precise
locations of all those boots, strain so hard it almost hurts. (I strain to see through leaves, so hard
my eyes water.) The ancients had
devices on their guns that could find you by the heat streaming off your
flesh--what if Soskia's researchers uncovered that technology, like they
rediscovered tanks? (They say that
rebels have magic, can camouflage themselves like chameleons, look like leaves,
like wood. Lieutenant calls that
superstitious nonsense, but he's not here with us, shoving through this
pestilential nightmare of a place.)
Sweet Virgin Mother of God please, please don't let them find me! (So dark...so godforsaken
dark, so...WHAT'S THAT! He's got me by
the ankle! He's...) A barrage of gunfire drills the foliage yards
away, the sound nailing me in place like hammer blows, my fear a white hot
blankness in my brain. (He's...oh. Thorns caught my pants-leg. Just thorns.) I lie there clinging to the ground, my heart
stuttering its own machine gun fire. (I
just wasted half my bullets on a thornbush--just goddam thorns in this godless
waste!) Can those boots be moving
away? Can that be? (Karol surely must've been seeing things
when he said he thought he glimpsed people moving between the trees. He almost had me convinced!) The tramping and slashing do
move slowly, slowly away from us. I
didn't know I held my breath till it sobs out of me now. (Damn you, Karol--it's one wild goose
chase after another with you, isn't it?)
I listen...listen...oh wait! Now
they turn back--don't move, whatever you do, Deirdre, not yet! (Stupid branch had to go and snag the hat
right off my head.) Okay, now they
go away again...wait...wait...(You just wait till we claw our way out of
this jungle, Karol--I'll make you pay, somehow, oh yeah, for making me
embarrass myself over that misborn thorn!)...wait...let the sounds fade all
the way to nothing till we dare to move a muscle. At last I stand and
carefully brush myself off, every move made as quietly as possible, shivering
in my sweat, my poncho dripping mud. I'd
rather have a whole troop of 'em charge at me, I think, with weapons blazing,
then wait in the shadow of rustling weeds for them to find me. You don't think so much in the heat of
battle. I flex my buzzing limbs to let
the circulation back, and we resume our march. * * * (“The boys are
stealing what?” I look up from my desk
at the florid face of the maintenance-man, standing before me cap in hand, yet
not the least bit of subservience softens those burning eyes. “Shimmies?” “Chamois,” he says;
if his moustache could bristle, it would.
“Thin sheets of goat-suede. We
use them to polish the brasswork, and the silver, things like that.” I only half-listen,
writing my evaluations of the staff. I
hate to have to discipline a chaplain, but he came to service late last
Sunday—again—and it sets a bad example for the boys. “Well, then, we have goats among our livestocks
do we not? Can you make some more?” “Yes, sir. Like my father before me. But it will take time.” “Then I shall
endeavor to catch the thief. In the
meantime, do we still have some, er, shimmies left?” “Yes, sir.” “Then use the
resources we have until I can find the rest.” “Very good,
sir.” His tone does not imply that he
thinks it good at all. I hear the door
close, not looking up from my paper. I
blow the ink dry. I fight off disturbing
mental images of boys in goatskins, climbing over the walls like monkeys,
escaping off into the woods.) * * * Twilight brings a troop of
monkeys chattering all around us, swinging from branch to branch to our left
and our right, glimpses of fur whipping past and others keeping pace. They occasionally screech bloody murder, and
sometimes I'd almost swear it sounds as if they laugh. "Our honor
guard," Damien says softly, and he's not joking. "Those who went before us, who turned
coward or betrayer and let the people down, sometimes they get mercy, they
don't have to go to Hell, they just come back over and over as monkeys for a
time, till they wear out their shame." Imad flings a rock at a
passing shadow and says, "Some honor guard! I can't believe we've had so many disgraces
in our ranks--so many they make the jungle stink." "Some of them have been
monkeys for centuries," Damien replies. "Just how long,"
I ask, "has revolution smoldered in the Mountains of Fire? Alysha said..." "Alysha knows strategy
and tactics and how to keep us all alive from day to day, but she'd best leave
history to the bards." A monkey who
squats on an overhanging branch seems for a moment to nod in agreement, then
swings shrieking away. "Almost
immediately after the establishment of the Meritocracy--which was not
the first form of government practiced in The Charadoc, whatever the books may
say--good men and women slipped away to the woods and the mountains and the
desert places, to cache arms and prepare for the day when we'd all become equal
again.” I wonder if he can read, or if
he’s just heard rumors of what books say.
“And every so often we'd pick up those arms and assay their strength
against the tyranny. But the time had
not yet come." Much as I love hiking, my
body keeps telling me that I've walked enough for the day, thank you very
much--how could anybody stay in shape after what we’d just been through? But we limp on as the dark closes around
us. The monkeys peel off to nest for the
night and a chorus of frogs take over.
So weariness, not the cynicism it sounds like, tinges my voice when I
ask, "So what makes you think that the time has arrived now?" In the last, faintest gleam
of light I can barely see his smile when Damien says, "Oh, I know. I figured it out from a prophecy--in a
curse." "In a curse?" "The history books
won't tell you this, but Crystalia Atmos, the first president elected by the
Meritocracy, practiced sorcery.
Magnificent old woman, they say, the kind that doesn't try to look
young, just weaves a spell so that when you look at her you'd think that only the
old hold the secret of true beauty. She
could make you believe anything she wanted you to, at the ballot box or in the
courtroom or the bedroom, or...anywhere.
Anytime. So long as she was
there." Damien pauses to pull out a
cigarette, and we all light up from his, small orange glows in the fading
violet light. If the enemy ever wanted
to track us by smell, they could, easily--except that they, too, smoke. "I think you can see the catch. She couldn't show up everywhere that
revolution burned, all over the countryside at once. So she had to resort to other spells." He lets us think about a
government founded on sorcery and illusion as he draws on his tobacco for a
moment. "She cast a curse upon the
revolutionaries everywhere in the Charadoc, wherever they might live and breed,
cast it onto their very genes so that it would continue from generation to
generation. She said that no man will
ever lead us to victory. Then she
thought about that, and so, just for good measure, she said that no woman
would, either." "Bunk," Kief
says, and spits. "But wait--the story doesn't end
there. I'm not surprised that you never
heard it. She uttered it in secret, in a
sealed and buried place." "So how can
you..." "But unbeknownst to
her, her daughter had joined the revolution, and kin can sometimes hear the
magic utterance of kin, even if seals of doors and enchantments close off the
words to all the rest. And her daughter
had learned much of her mother's arts before she turned her back." He shook his head--a waving
ember in the dark. "She couldn't
match the old dame, of course. She
couldn't reverse the spell. But she
could add to it. She said, 'Nonetheless,
one will come to lead the revolution to victory, accursed even in the
womb, yet mightier for overcoming it, made impervious to the curses of the past. Until then we must all fight, to keep the
light unquenched, to keep the path open for this one.' She came to hide in Koboros, where people
understood her sort, and we have held her truth ever since." He pauses for a moment, blinking in wonder at
a sudden thought. “I think,” he says
slowly, “I think I might be the only one left alive to know the tale.” Kanarik said, "So when
you heard about Cyran..." "When I overheard what
patrolling troops said in derision, what others discounted as a nasty rumor to
turn us against yet another hope, I came running." His eyes water as he says in a breaking voice,
“I abandoned my post, my family, and my people, and I came running to Cyran.” He drops his cigarette and smashes it
out. “And I missed the final
massacre." Kief nods, and in a changed
voice says, "Well, you're not the only one who knows anymore." He turns to me, puts a hand on my shoulder
and I feel shivery warm all over.
"You did well, Deirdre, when you chose a bard for our
company." |
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