Davod was about twenty yards from where I stood. Tendrils of yellow vine wrapped all over his body with roots burrowing into his skin. His eyes were motionless black circles. Large blue ants carved out chunks of meat from his leg and carried him off in a train that disappeared into the forest.
This was my best friend. This was the same kid who'd thrown giggling Sarina into the pool beneath the waterfall farther than I could throw Guenevieve.
A black bird perched in his hair and reached down to rip a scrap of flesh from his eyeball.
He got the call to come to Carthia the same day as me and Geraln. We climbed through the pass together. He was there when I met Miyani. I still owed him thirty-five kren.
I killed him.
"Why do I need to see this?"
Pu'iyo, the old woman, quartermaster at Tower One and Miyani's teacher from long ago, gently rested a withered hand on my shoulder. "Because I can't think of a more educational consequence for your actions."
How would I explain this to Runya? How could I explain what happened to his parents?
The old lizard croaked beside us. A lone tendril of the yellow vine reached across the ground nearby. She glanced at me. "Watch this."
She knelt in the dirt, shooting her hand out to keep me at a safe distance. Then she bent down low, cupped her hands around her mouth, and exhaled at the plant. Within seconds, buds popped out of what looked like tiny scales. Tiny tendrils like yellow string reached into the air where she breathed. She looked up at me and smiled. "The peðayaŋa cultivate it, you know. They grow it around their village like a wall. Or a maze—depends on how you look at it, I suppose."
A squawk filled my ears behind us. A young burnt-orange vita'o lizard with black spots on her body emerged from the trees, gunning her throat, clicking and chirping at the old woman.
She answered, gargling her throat, whistling, and clicking her tongue. The young lizard chirped and disappeared back into the forest.
"What did she say?"
The old woman turned and started back towards the tower. "The hour grows late. She says the enemy scouts have all gone home, as should we. Remember we don't want to be out here after dark."
We walked back in silence. She glanced her yellow eyes up at me every now and then, but I couldn't accept that my best friend was gone.
He was showing off a knife he'd forged all by himself. I broke it. I didn't mean to; I was chipping some wood when the blade snapped clean. He was upset. I felt horrible. His father—who was usually pissed off at everything—told him to study the break and forge another one. After two weeks he challenged me to break that one.
The fourth one hung from my belt.
I couldn't feel. I wanted to feel something. Anger. Sadness. Remorse. Something. Instead, my heart was painfully numb.
I wanted to see Sarina more than ever. I wanted to hold her in my arms, bask in the sensation of her body breathing in and out pressed up against mine. I could hear her voice in my head. What do you want from me? It was your fault! They told you it would be months for him to get over it, and you chose not to listen.
Sometimes, Sarina, just sometimes, you might consider lying to me.
Oh, piss off. If you wanted that, you'd have imagined Guenevieve in your head. Look. You messed up; there it is. Now, what are you going to do about it?
How would I face Geraln?
We were supposed to survive Carthia together, the three of us. I let him down. I was supposed to look out for him.
And Rock, too. How could I face Northstar? If I saw Carthia again, how would I tell Kelint I got his future brother-in-law killed? And Tobi. How would I face Kylen and his men?
What was I going to do about it?
What could I do about it?
I skipped dinner and lay down in Blue's stall. Blue was gone, but the scent of Miyani lingered in the soft bedding. The coconut blossom she put in her hair, the scent of her skin.
In the adjoining stall was Queen, whose human had a growing affection for the man who fed the vine.
Night wore on.
Chatter from the mess hall blended with the chorus of insects beyond the wall.
A burst of rain filled the courtyard.
A stem jutted out from a vine that had burrowed into his mouth, with a bright yellow leaf beginning to unfold.
I tried desperately to shake that image from my mind, only to return to the alley beside the dungeon where Rock's stiffened body lay in the blood-stained grass with the knife wound clean through his heart.
I reached for Miyani, but she wasn't there.
Hot, sticky air dominated the night.
The clouds parted, and I caught a glimpse of the Wandering Star drifting lazily across the starry sky. Or I'd been dreaming.
Patches of purple filled the endlessness above me to herald the coming day. The wheel would spin, the world would keep happening. There was no stopping. Only the dead could rest.
I sat in the far corner of the mess hall where the air was a battle between mighty seared onions and peppers against all-conquering coffee.
When Geraln came in, he glared at me. His chubby face, framed by a lock of dark hair on each side, betrayed no emotion. Others took their seats, our table, but he stood and glared at me. Then, without a word, he sat down with the rest of our unit.
Sofiya came in with Northstar. His tall, lanky self took up an archway as he eyed me for what felt like an eternity before joining the rest of our group.
Others came in, and no one spoke to me.
Towering Kylen fixed his emerald green eyes on me when he came in with his unit, then quietly shook his head and looked away before finding his seat.
I wanted to cry, but tears didn't come. I wanted to throw up, but my stomach refused. I wanted to do something. Anything to say I was sorry, but I had nothing.
And the world happened around me.
When Pu'iyo came in with her copper pitcher, the thick Na'uhui captain with the white crescent moon inked into his dark-green shoulder stood first, but the old woman waved him off. He looked at her confused, and she directed him to sit down.
The hall fell quiet.
She began. "We lost some good men yesterday. I've also been hearing quite a few complaints. I have decided that now would be an ideal time to shift some of you around."
Borel stood with his hand raised. "If I may?"
She nodded him forward.
"A lot of you are content to sit on those high vantage points and wait for some enemy to pass by. It's safe, relatively, but that's not what I intend to do. My unit is going to go into the jungle and meet the enemy face-to-face. At close range if need be. We're going to hunt them down, we're going to bring the fight to them. On our terms. Let me get my volunteers—no one from Chicken Clan."
After some muted laughter, Jame was first to join him.
"Count me in!" One of the noobs from Kylen's group.
Borel grinned. "Orca all the way!"
Then he looked at me expectantly.
I shrugged. "You said Orca."
He laughed and shot a knowing smile at me. "Get over here, man!"
I smiled and joined them.
Jezi raised his bow high and turned to another kid across the room. "Hey Psycho! Come on!"
Psycho was a Na'uhui kid who, like Jezi, probably lied about his age.
A man from the Wolf captain's ruffians stood. He had a gold earring and a scar along his cheek, and his patchwork clothes hid armor with years of scratches and dents. He was Herali, but his hair was cropped short and he carried a cutlass like Ales's with a worn handle. He took two steps towards us, then turned to face the captain with the Wolf tattoo and extended his middle finger at the man before joining us.
Two of the trainees joined us, one of whom had a cauliflower ear, several tiny scars around his face, and a jaw that was probably broken at some point.
A dark-green hand shot up from Miyani's friend, Ude. He spoke to the old woman in Uhuida. "What's going on?"
When she finished translating, he stood to join us along with two other Na'uhui men, one of whom had the same bat's wing tattoo.
"I'll sekiwa you!" Yumi sprawled her arms across the table behind her. Her white hair was done in two braids that hung over her shoulders and ended with glass butterfly beads dangling about her breasts. She already wore her sling, stocked full of arrows with fletchings a multitude of colors behind her back, and she looked over us with a confident smirk.
Pu'iyo counted us and looked around the room. "One more?"
There were easily a hundred men in the mess hall, and everyone was silent. After some time, the quartermaster looked us over. "Twelve should…"
"I'll join." The voice came from an older Herali man. He carried a eupin longbow with images of Bear wearing a crown etched into the wood, and he'd pulled his long dark hair through a silver ring shaped like Rattlesnake with tiny diamond-tree stones for eyes. The young guy with the cauliflower ear glanced back and forth between the hair ring and the bow. The man grinned, pointing out the Rattlesnake motif, "mum," then to the Bear etchings, "dad."
I threw a glance back at Geraln and Gino, who watched me with empty eyes as I left the mess hall with my new unit.
We gathered in the courtyard while the rest of the tower figured out what they were doing.
I did feel nervous. I trusted Miyani. I knew what she'd tried to convince everyone to do was ultimately the right course of action, and Borel saw it too, but it would bring us face-to-face with the enemy at close range.
"Damn!" The guy with the cauliflower ear looked around our group. "Orca, Bear, Rattlesnake, a Tobori, Wolf," he tapped his chest at that one. Then he paused to look me up and down, settling on the design on my bow. "Falcon?"
"Born and raised."
He grinned. "Right on, man!"
Ude stepped forward with an arm proudly around each of the other two native men who'd joined him. "saŋɪwesa." The man on his left shared the bat's wing tattoo and carried a eupin bow showing a scene from Rattlesnake's Ambition. "He names Thavo." The man on his right carried a bow similar to Jaysa's, a Falcon bow from Ozaria with diamond-tree stones embedded in the wood. "He names Gozhu."
Jezi's friend, the native kid who probably lied about his age, drummed his chest, announcing himself in Herali with an accent that mirrored Ahmi's. "Carthia born and raised, bro."
The trainee with the cauliflower ear turned to the pirate-looking dude who'd flipped off his former Wolf captain. The man returned his gaze with pursed lips. "Name's Melox."
"Right on. I'm Torus." He turned to our captain. "So, we getting in a real fight today or what?"
Borel smirked. "That's the plan."
Melox didn't break his eyes from the young Wolf. "You ever kill a man?"
Torus jerked his head back and forth. "Uh… yeah."
The half-Bear-half-Rattlesnake guy chuckled at that. "Bullshit! Sargon, by the way."
The young wolf's face twitched. "I mean, I came close."
I added, "it's not the same thing."
"And you?"
Lying in the ferns, the good-looking one's head had turned to the side. My arrow stuck out from the back of his neck and buried in the mud while the fletching stuck out from his shattered mouth like a flaming tongue. He still didn't move.
Melox turned his attention to Ude. "This guy's got a few, look in his eyes." He switched to Uhuida. "How many men have you killed?"
Ude smiled and shook his head, waving off the question. "I wear this me today, if mother wills it I can have the other me back when this is all over."
Sargon chuckled and slapped Ude on the shoulder with a heavy grin. "So, A LOT then. toto."
"toto," Ude nodded with a sullen look in his yellow eyes.
And so, we set out.
Yumi and Queen raced ahead and disappeared into the jungle. We made our way quietly with bows out and arrows nocked—Jame and I carried eupin bows, along Sargon. Ude and his two friends did as well, but I'd been told they didn't have the skill to shoot three-hundred yards. Melox carried an imperial longbow the same as Malchuk's, and everyone else used the dark-colored native short bows.
We passed single-file along a beaten path between a grove of mango trees and some raised beds with tall corn stalks. Where the farm met the wilderness, Yumi awaited us. She addressed us first in Uhuida, then Herali with that clean accent. "Here is the plan. Keelin wields ten Herali bows. They will find an overlook, you will bring customers to them. Once they are open, her men will snipe them. You will block the escape."
Borel grinned, and there were nods all around. The two trainees were giddy with excitement.
We followed a narrow route through thick leaves that covered everything below our knees. I reminded the others to be careful not to disturb the foliage.
We climbed up a steep embankment with gnarled roots all about like a staircase, then came back down the other side, each of us watching out for any yellow vines.
An hour's hike brought us to a low area with patches of standing water swarming with mosquitoes. Reeds shot up from thick mud all around, and we had to slog around the side of it to climb up to some rotting, fallen trees covered in mushrooms. I made sure to point out the west-facing mushroom to the trainees, while Ude schooled them on the correct pronunciation of ŋaŋa. Overhead, that bird called out over the cacophony of chirps and whistles, the song for humans, alternating six and seven.
Then the bird called out that up-down-up-down-warble for vita'o, and Yumi came out from behind a rotted stump. She nodded her chin as she counted our number. "Wait here."
Borel asked, "how long?"
"Must find a customer." When Miyani took us out, she checked in regularly. That was her style. Yumi would stay out, hours if need be, until she found what she was looking for. And that was her style.
She turned to leave, but Sargon had a question. "Which way is Keelin's unit?"
She pointed Northeast. "Half-hour walk."
Queen bounded over a fallen tree trunk and carried Yumi into the dense jungle once more.
While half the men sat down on a large log, Borel stood with his arms crossed. "I don't like it. I feel like we're open."
All around us, piles of waterlogged, broken trees hosted shelf mushrooms, ferns, and vines, while high above in the forest canopy, the foliage permitted not a scrap of sunlight. Beyond the broken trees, thick groves of other trees dotted the forest denying visibility in all directions.
"Let's go this way."
The quiet trainee stood and picked up his pack, while Sargon chuckled. "We stay here, man."
Borel insisted. "We're vulnerable. I say we find a more defensible…"
Sargon took his boot off and stretched his toes. "This place is fine. Check your feet, and relax until Yumi gets back."
"Listen," Borel insisted, "I'm the captain of this unit, and I say…"
"Somebody stuff a teat in this kid's mouth, already?" Melox looked around with a smirk. He earned some laughter for that.
While Borel's eyes gaped, Ude slapped his shoulder. "If sekɪwa say us wait, then we wait. Is OK."
Our captain froze. He looked at Jame. Jame shrugged and glanced at the veterans, none of whom gave a hint that they might follow him. He looked at the noobs. The guy with the cauliflower ear looked back and forth between our captain and the veterans, then shrugged. "They been here longer than us, man. I'm sure they know what's what."
Borel swallowed and held his breath. Every muscle in his neck was tense. He turned to me with pleading eyes.
I stood on one of the higher logs and looked around. Everywhere was broken trees, rotten and covered in ferns amid thick bush. My ears were drowned in the chirps, calls, whistles—including that bird that continuously announced our presence—and the steady grind of insects. A hundred men could have surrounded us from less than ten yards away, and we wouldn't see them. "It wouldn't hurt to set up a perimeter. Like a lookout?"
Sargon raised an eyebrow and glanced at Melox, then turned to Ude. "He wants to name a watcher. What do you say?"
Gozhu, the guy with the Ozari bow and no tattoo, looked up at me and answered. "It's a good idea. You and I will go first."
Borel looked satisfied. "Let's get two more. Psycho, and uh… Barcurel. Then we rotate."
The Orca guy who'd come from Kylen's group and Jezi's friend joined us, and we each took a direction. I found a position beneath a dense tree island. Some animal shat there recently from the smell, and there were tiny insects that insisted on going up my nose and in my eyes, but for the darkness I was practically invisible with a relatively good view.
And so I waited. Behind thick tufts of grass, beneath the dark shade of a tree that whorled itself around another tree, I sat with an arrow nocked, looking out over the forest. I tried to listen for something, some kind of indication of an approaching enemy, but that bird was directly above our party making that call for humans. I'd hoped it would get used to us and be quiet, but no.
Those tiny insects refused to leave my ears alone.
"SEKIWA!" A man screamed in blood-curdling agony, drowned out by a gargling.
Wood cut the air.
Another man cried out in pain.
Someone shouted. "RUUUUUUN!"
More wood zipped through the air.
Another scream followed by grunts of pain.
Men crashed through the woods in all directions at once.
I saw nothing.
My mind lost control of my body, and I ran.
Where I ran to, I didn't know. I jetted through ferns and plants, bush and low trees with no regard to the trail I shredded behind me, I just ran. In a terror-fueled adrenaline stupor, I jumped over fallen branches and wove between trees, before a thought punched its way into my mind. We needed to stay together.
I didn't stop running, but I looked around for others. Trees and bushes were so dense they could have been twenty feet from me, but I kept running. Without looking, without knowing anything, without a plan, I ran.
Miyani told me that in the jungle my ears would guide me better than my eyes.
I had to stop and listen.
I didn't know what, if anything, was behind me.
I ducked behind a thick shrub of a palm tree and tried to listen for something, anything above my thundering heartbeat.
A twig snapped.
Gozhu trotted carefully amid the vines, looking everywhere at once and waving his bow behind him.
I stepped out.
He faced me and drew.
He relaxed and stooped down. He ushered me to come to him.
I stepped carefully. He looked me up and down with a heavy breath and touched my skin.
I moved to speak, and he held a finger to his lips.
I nodded.
He pointed off in one direction.
We walked quietly through the underbrush with bows out, trying to face every direction at once.
"Psst!"
It came from a cavern of foliage with an entrance of darkness.
A whisper. "Come on!"
We entered.
Borel was within. His fingers shook, and his eyes skittered around the forest. He whispered. "We have to find the others."
Gozhu took a deep breath and gestured for us to listen, but his words came out frantically. "This is important guðuði. dowa go'oyaŋaʒi—"
Borel shook his head. "Slow down. Uh… ʒʌgo ɣeto."
The man took a deep breath. He put his trembling fingers out and tried to steady them.
An arrowhead punched out from his chest. Blood splattered all over Borel's face. Gozhu winced hard and fell over.
I drew, hoping to see where it came from.
Our man twitched. Blood gushed from his body. His life faded fast. Borel crashed through the bush and ran off.
I was a shit for leaving a man to die alone, but if either of us had any hope for survival, we needed to stay together. Anyone caught alone in the jungle was as good as dead.
I followed Borel's messy trail through more trees, a haphazard route to nowhere, and I heard that call again for vita'o off to my left. I tucked quickly behind a rotted stump and pointed my arrow in that direction. I saw nothing and heard nothing.
So I carefully crept out from my spot, keeping my eyes to where I'd heard that call, until I heard it behind me.
I whipped around as fast as I could. Again I drew, and again I saw nothing.
Think.
I followed Borel's trail down a ravine and across a small creek, and climbed up the other side.
That call again behind me.
Again I drew, trying to keep one eye where I stepped and another on the dense forest.
Borel crouched beside a small, beaten patch of grass. He was on his knees and shaking hard.
He looked up at me with tears cutting a path through the blood smeared over his face.
"Shhh," I lowered myself and sat with him.
He nodded vigorously.
Then that call again, not thirty yards from us.
The man carried his bow, but he hadn't nocked an arrow.
His eyes caught something.
In a clearing about twenty yards from us, not one, but three enemy sekiwa.
One of them had a coiled snake tattoo on her shoulder. Her vita'o was midnight black with white, opaline eyes—she was the same one who walked me and Renou back to Carthia the day he fell into that foot trap.
The other two wore the jaguar of the Sewu'oni. One was much older and rode a vita'o of deep green with black stripes, while the other was around Yumi's age riding a bright yellow lizard with beige spots.
The older woman directed the others with her hands and did most of the talking while the other two mostly nodded, and the three vita'o sniffed the air around them.
I had a clean shot. I could take one out easily, but the other two would have me before I could nock a second arrow. Borel wasn't a good shot in the practice yard, and presently his hands shook so bad if he'd aimed for the forest he'd miss.
Then the woman with the coiled snake looked directly at us and smirked.
"SHIT!"
Something hard slammed into my back. My kidney. My neck was jerked hard from a strap being ripped from me, and by the time I hit the ground, Borel ran off with my medical kit.
I staggered to my knees, fully expecting to be impaled within the next minute, but when I looked, the enemy scouts were gone. I listened for that bird and heard nothing.
No call for human, either.
I looked around, desperate to see something in the trees, anything that might show me where my enemy hid, but saw nothing.
I hated him.
I wanted to get a hold of his throat and squeeze the life from him so badly, but we needed to find the others and stick together.
City kid that he was, Borel left a trail that screamed to my eyes. Beyond footprints in the mud, he was absolutely careless in breaking twigs, snapping off leaves, and leaving hand prints on rotted logs.
He hadn't gone far.
I caught up to him at the bottom of a gentle slope just before a tiny creek. I peeked through a gap in the trees and saw him about twenty yards ahead of me, lying on his back and surrounded by large birds with white-and-red feathers.
His body was covered in cuts and gashes, and blood poured out from his face where one of his eyes used to be. One bird had pulled its head from a hole in his chest with a scrap of flesh dripping blood in its beak. Another perched on his knees and ripped flesh from his thigh. Borel tried to swat one of the birds away, but it dodged his hand while two more crept in and pinched his arm in their beaks, ripping off another strip of meat from him. His screams were muted in his weakened state, and he tried to push himself away with one foot in the mud, but went nowhere. Another bird perched on his groin, reached down, and ripped his intestine from his gut, tugging it from his body like a noodle. Borel tried to grab his intestine back, only for another bird to grip it in its beak, and the two played tug-o-war with his entrails.
I thought maybe I could save him. I raised my bow, and four more birds descended from the trees. The man turned his face towards me with horror in his remaining eye. Another bird tore a strip of meat from his big chin.
I froze. I couldn't stand to watch, and I couldn't look away.
In a flash, a blur of an orange, spotted cat zoomed in. A jaguar. Snatched one bird by the neck and dragged it off. The rest of them ignored that and continued the feast.
This was the Jungle.