ASIM_issue_54 (25 page)

Chôn had followed the scroll’s instructions and his only weapon was his
dao
rua
, a narrow jungle knife. It had been patiently honed to razor sharpness and he cut a bamboo carrying stick from the stand with two quick blows. He picked up the folded cloth that he had been sitting on in the boat, doubled it over again and put in on one shoulder. The rabbits were trussed in clusters of three, each cluster linked by rope to another so that he could loop them over front and back of the carrying stick and lift it all to his shoulder. He grunted a little at the weight and looked up at the karst cliff disappearing into the mist above him.

The beast was up there.

* * *

As soon as he passed between the Sau sentries, the jungle enveloped him. Its darkness was redolent of spices and decay. Birds called from all sides, from the scrub at his feet all the way up to the invisible canopy. He carried his knife in his free hand, steadying the rabbits with the other. The beast would not descend so far from its lair, but there could still be leopards.

The path soon steepened and the front rabbits dragged on the ground. Chôn stuck the knife into his waist sash and twisted the carrying stick sideways, resting it across his shoulders. Even though the air was still cool, sweat ran down his back. His mouth was dry and he paused every now and then to listen for a stream or rivulet, anxious for a drink, but heard none.

He had been climbing for less than an hour when the smell of burnt wood and camphor cautioned him to stop. He judged he had come up about three or four hundred metres from the river, about halfway. He put the rabbits down gently and crept forward, the silent hunter. Ten metres further up, the path levelled, opening onto a small glade surrounded by mossy boulders.

A clump of charred stumps stuck up like fingers on an arthritic hand, marking where some camphor saplings had stood, clinging to the rock. They had been struck by fire about a metre from the ground. Round patches had been burnt here and there into the moss as well.

Clearly the beast, but what was it doing so hunting so far down?

Chôn crumbled some charcoal between his fingers. The smell of camphor was still strong but he could tell that the fire had struck several days earlier. Perhaps the danger had passed.

Water was dripping from the boulders. He filled his cupped hands a dozen times and drank, pausing every now and again to listen intently. He tucked a couple of pieces of the charcoal into the folds of his sash before slipping back down the hill to take up his burden and resume the slow climb to the top, now more vigilant than ever.

Finally, the path levelled out to a plateau backed by yet another cliff that disappeared up into unbroken clouds. The signs of the beast were everywhere: here a patch of burnt timber, there scales scraped off on sharp boulder. The scroll had explained how to judge the size of a beast from the scratches left by the spines on its shoulders and flanks. He reached up over his head and felt into the deep grooves with his fingers. This one was big.

The lair was a black cave dug into the base of the limestone cliff. It was impossible to miss. The beast had ploughed wide runs radiating out in all directions through the forest. Chôn crouched behind a boulder a hundred metres back, watching the cave, the stench—of musk, urine, rotting scraps, fire—already overpowering. He did not want to approach any closer yet; as far as he knew, no trophy hunter who had come seeking to kill this beast had ever returned.

There was no sound or sign of movement within the cave and Chôn judged it was safe to move on. He edged sideways until he reached the back cliff, a couple of hundred metres from the cave and screened by trees. He put the carrying stick down and took each brace of rabbits over his head, dangling them down either side of his back, holding the ropes in his teeth to leave his hands free, and started to climb.

Once he was high enough to be safe, he abandoned stealth in favour of speed. The limestone was rotten; twice small lumps came away in his hands as he traversed towards the cave, tumbling into the undergrowth. As much as possible, he kept to the thick vines that grew up the cliff, watching for snakes, flicking off centipedes.

High on the cliff, he could no longer see the cave entrance. But once the runs converged to a point immediately below him, he knew he had come far enough. He hooked his left arm around a vine, hung out over the cave, pulled round one of the sets of bait and grabbed it with his left hand. Still holding the ropes tight in his teeth, he took his knife and sawed through the rope above his hand. He tucked the knife away and took the bait into his free hand. The rabbits were trussed with the three backbones turned outwards, protecting the soft bellies and their cargo so that they couldn’t snag open on a razored tooth or claw.

Chôn swung the bait out by the rope and let it fall in a wide arc onto the bare rocks below. A moment later, he dropped its pair a metre to the side and, after repeating the juggle of knife and ropes, the third and fourth. Still no sign of the beast.

He clambered back across the cliff, keeping high. Another handhold gave way and a large flake of limestone clattered down the cliff face to the ground. This time, the crash was echoed by a roar from within the cave. Chôn pulled himself in close to the cliff and froze. The beast hunted by scent and movement. He should be safe up here, if he kept still. Another roar, followed by the dry scrape of claws on stone.

The beast pushed its head out of the cave, into Chôn’s field of view. It snorted, leaving twin clouds of steam hanging in the damp air, then snuffled loudly, pointing its head this way and that and emerged from the cave. It looked invincible, with every part of its huge body armoured in metallic scales and heavy spikes. The scales on its back were as big as Chôn’s palm, dark red at the shoulder, shading to black at the tip of its tail. A row of enormous spikes, serrated like teeth, ran down the beast’s spine to its hips where it split into two and continued on either side of the tail. As the beast took a step, the tail scythed menacingly from side to side.

The beast turned suddenly and looked up towards Chôn’s perch, long barbs swinging, pendulous, from either side of its mouth. Perhaps it had caught his scent? Chôn held his breath, not daring to move. The beast’s golden eyes seemed to stare straight at him, unwavering beneath long curved horns as thick as his arm. The jaws could have taken the whole of his body down to his waist in one gulp. A tiny scorpion climbed from the vine down his arm and disappeared, but Chôn didn’t flinch.

Then, as suddenly, the beast sniffed and lumbered towards the closest bait, long talons clattering on the rock, nudging it with its snout and pushing it along the dirt but not taking it. It lifted its massive head up for a moment, looking out into the broken forest, listening, before splaying its front limbs and dropping its chest down to the ground. It picked up the rabbits gently with its teeth and, in one quick movement, tossed them up until they were almost overhead, the beast’s neck drawn back. Then the head shot forward and engulfed the bait whole, the beast jerking its head and neck back until it was swallowed.

The beast made quick work of the other three baits and sniffed around for more. All the baits had been taken successfully. Chôn should have felt exultant but instead clung to the vines weak and almost nauseous with fear. The scroll said that he had to face the beast with only a knife, using a fresh pelt as a shield against the flames. But now that he understood the real nature of the beast, he could not see how he could survive. Commonsense screamed that he should abandon his quest, his pretensions. No matter that he had been given a scroll; who was he to challenge this beast?

The beast had sauntered over to a limestone pillar and scratched its back haunches, raising its offside leg to reveal its creamy belly, the rough scales rasping a cloud of white dust into the still air. It swapped sides before reversing to the edge of the forest and pissing prodigiously on the undergrowth. Even from where Chôn hung, the stench was acrid and nauseating.

Chôn’s arms began to shake. He had become sure that he would slip from the cliff to his doom, when the beast finally walked heavily back into its lair. His scroll-guide said to wait for a day or so for the rabbits to be digested. That was supposed to give him time enough to carry out the next steps of the plan. Time enough to walk into certain death.

He took some deep breaths and climbed carefully back along the cliff and down to the plateau. He followed the base of the cliff away from the cave and found something that made his heart jump with unexpected hope. A stream ran out of a narrow cleft in the cliff, filling a shallow pool. It might be a safe retreat. Looking back, Chôn could see that one of the wide runs had been cleared straight from the cave to the pond—the beast must come here to drink. He turned to explore the cleft. It was an arm-span wide at the narrowest, not enough room for the beast to squeeze past, then widened a little to a cylindrical chute a few metres across with a waterfall running down the far side. It splashed off a boulder that jutted out at head height, over a hollow big enough to hold him.

He had been unnerved by the size and evident power of the beast, but the greatest danger was the fire. He looked at the hollow appraisingly through the water and saw how it could be used to his advantage. But first, as the scroll had instructed, he would need a fresh pelt, and for that he had to catch a deer.

* * *

Chôn descended quickly, reaching a saddle between two karst mountains where the forest opened onto a series of swampy glades. The signs of deer were everywhere. He chose one of the smallest glades, where the forest was dense on all sides. There was a single well-used path into it, perfect for an ambush or a simple trap. But it was too broad for a snare and he had no bow or arrows.

He stood for a moment before a stand of young bamboo, lost in thought, before taking the camphor charcoal from his sash. He crumbled it and rubbed it over his palms. It would help to disguise his scent. He cut a dozen narrow bamboo sticks, each as thick as his thumb and a little longer than his arm and sharpened their ends to a point. He would have liked to harden the points in a fire, but time was short. Then, he cut two longer poles and some lengths of vine.

He took them back to where the path entered the glade and tied the two poles to trees on either side, so that they formed a diagonal cross, barring the path. Then he stuck the sharpened sticks into the soft earth of the path, all in a group a pace further into the jungle, tilted at an angle so they pointed back to the glade. Finally, he stepped back over the poles and crossed the glade. He found a good climbing tree at the far edge of the forest and clambered up.

* * *

Hunting by ambush is a game of patience and Chôn was well suited to it; he had a peaceful soul. He quietened his breathing and thought of nothing. He felt the tree move gently beneath him, heard the jungle noises return to normal as the birds forgot his intrusion, smelt the earth of the swamp and the aromatic charcoal on his hands, watched as breezes swirled through the grass and rippled the water. Chôn became the forest. Time no longer flowed.

After an hour, or maybe two, a deer came down the path to drink and to nibble the longer grass in the clearing. It pushed past the embedded sticks, paused at the crossed poles and lifted its head to scent for danger. But the glade was still and empty. With an agile movement, it jumped over the poles and moved to the water’s edge.

Chôn dropped from the tree, and started to run towards the deer, splashing as noisily as possible. The deer spun round, white scut flaring up. It accelerated back towards the path, sending a shower of earth flying from its hooves. It leapt over the poles from a couple of metres back. Airborne, it could not avoid the cluster of sharpened sticks. Momentum and weight impaled it and it was dead by the time Chôn ran up behind.

He dragged the deer back into the open before returning to the water to drink deeply and wash. The light was starting to fade. The prospect of night in the forest, possibly being stalked by leopards, warranted careful preparations. He took the second areca nut from his pouch and set it on a rock in the water. He found some small white flowers and arranged them around, then squatted quietly in front of the make-shift shrine, giving thanks that all had gone well, that he was still alive. Finally, he rose and returned to the deer.

Chôn dragged it through the water and manhandled it up into the tree where he had lain in wait, jamming it into a fork high above the ground. He knew that it might still attract leopards, but this was better than leaving it at his feet. He took two tin bells from his sash, unwound the ribbons that had muffled the clappers, and tied them to the deer’s shanks.

The deer had been heavy and he was breathing hard when he got back to ground. He had not eaten all day and now took two strips of dried meat from his pouch, leaving it dangling almost empty round his neck. As the night drew down, he found a place without ants where he could sit with his back to a tree and settled to chew and rest, setting the two bamboo poles by his side.

He thought of Lo-an. Perhaps she had walked down to consult a fortune teller and would know that he was still alive. Maybe she already knew whether he would survive tomorrow. Chôn pushed the thought aside. He had studied the scroll and it had been right to tell him to bring only a knife. If he had brought more weapons he might have challenged the beast at its lair and been killed for his impertinence.

The scroll would surely guide him to success. He would take the prize and hurry back down the river to where it met the sea, to the Emperor’s palace. He would be rewarded with many gold coins—ten five-tien coins for certain, perhaps even twenty. He would be rich beyond the dreams of his neighbours. And he would not only be rich, he would be a hero as well. A hero anyone would be proud to have as a son-in-law.

He nodded in satisfaction at this anticipated triumph, checked for the bamboo poles at his side and then, with one hand on his knife, thought through the scroll’s instructions and warnings one last time.