Entangled (60 page)

Her tone was cold and flat.

‘We found others there fleeing the same savages, but more savages had followed. They killed all the grown-ups – Jengo too, though he wasn’t fourteen summers. The rest of us they took prisoner. They made us march at night but we were too much trouble so they decided to kill us.’

Her face lit up and she turned her green gaze directly on Ria: ‘Then Ria of the Clan came out of the sky with six brave warriors.’ She waved in the direction of Bont, Ligar, Driff, Grondin, Oplimar and Jergat. ‘Ha! You should have seen them fight. They killed all the savages and saved our lives.’

Birsing stepped forward two more paces and stood right in front of Ria, looking up at her with burning eyes: ‘You’re the girl from the prophecy,’ she said. ‘I knew it when you saved us. When you came from the sky. I saw the way you killed that guard. So fast it was beautiful. I want to learn to do that.’ She reached out, took Ria’s hand and kissed it – an action that evoked a sigh from the crowd. Then she returned to Tari’s side.

‘The girl from what prophecy?’ Ria asked.

‘Birsing voices what we all believe,’ said Sebittu.

Ria gave him a blank, uncomprehending look.

‘Forgive me,’ he said. ‘You speak our language so well it’s easy to forget you don’t know our traditions. There is a prophecy of Our Lady of the Forest – passed down to us from the long-ago …’

Our Lady of the Forest.
The name by which the blue woman was known amongst the Uglies! Were the Merell too part of the web she was spinning backwards and forwards in time?

‘At first I couldn’t be sure the prophecy spoke of you,’ Sebittu continued. ‘But there’s no longer any doubt.’ His voice ringing, he began to recite:

Starting as a whisper of a few isolated voices, quickly taken up by others, and soon intoned by hundreds, the rest of the Merell joined in the recitation, the words growing louder and stronger with each new revelation until they reached a crescendo:

How or when the blue woman had planted this prophecy in the Merell’s past Ria didn’t know or care. All that mattered was to use it to her advantage.

Things were moving fast.

Sebittu dropped to one knee before her: ‘The evil one has come into our valleys,’ he said, ‘and his name is Sulpa. His forces have destroyed our camps, raped our women, stolen our children, so it cannot be an accident you appear now, out of the east, a protector of children …’

Ria looked around. All the rest of the Merell were down on their knees as well.

‘There can be no doubting the prophecy,’ said Sebittu. ‘Our Lady of the Forest has chosen you to fight the evil one. You have already offered a place of safety for my people, and I have accepted. Now I offer you in return my Merell archers at your command until Sulpa is destroyed. What do you say?’

‘I say yes.’

What other answer could there be?

Don Leoncio and the others had been moving too fast for Leoni even before they heard the dogs. Now they doubled their pace to a run. She couldn’t sustain it and after only a few moments she was bent over by the side of the trail, gasping for breath, sweat drenching her filthy clothes.

Matt stooped, put his shoulder into her waist and the next thing she knew he had picked her up in a fireman’s lift and was jogging through the jungle with her to where Leoncio and the others waited just up ahead. Then they were all off again at a run: ‘I’ll carry you as long as I can,’ Matt panted. ‘Get your breath back – you’ll need it.’

Being shouldered like a sack of potatoes and bumped up and down with every footstep was uncomfortable but beat running for a while. It gave Leoni a chance to listen to the dogs. She thought there were four of them. Two were still quite far back, two others were closer and moving fast.

Five minutes passed, Matt set her down, and Leoni put everything she had into keeping going and not being a burden. But it was no good. Her body was soft and weak, she was still reeling from the effects of last night’s Ayahuasca trip, and the sound of those dogs was turning her bowels to jelly.

Mary looked done in, too. Don Emmanuel’s normally nut-brown skin was grey and slick with sweat. Even Matt was showing signs of strain. The heat and humidity were unbelievable – it was like running in a sauna bath – and Leoni’s heart was kicking. ‘I have to stop,’ she gasped, doubling forward. ‘Can’t … can’t … I can’t …’

Without a word, hardly breaking his stride, Matt swept her up again.

He ran with her for what seemed a long time.
Strong as an ox,
she thought, but the dogs were still gaining on them. Finally, with a grunt of exhaustion, he swung her down to her feet, stepped to one side and cocked the AK-47, pointing it back along the trail.

Gasping for breath, everyone else stopped and turned. But when
Leoncio saw what was happening he hurried to Matt and laid his hand on the gun. ‘This is just dogs,’ he hissed. ‘Let’s not tell the hunters our position before we need to.’ He drew a machete from his belt, and in the same instant a brown muscular streak, some sort of pit bull/mastiff cocktail, snarling and spraying saliva, launched itself at him from the undergrowth and clamped its teeth onto his arm, bearing him to the ground.

Matt dived after the animal, thrust his knife right up its anus and twisted the blade. The brute yelped and let go of Leoncio who smashed his machete into its neck just as the second dog burst from the jungle. Still crouched low, Matt shouldered aside its leap for his throat and plunged his knife to the hilt between its ribs. It dropped to the ground, all the life gone out of it.

Don Leoncio’s arm was cut and bleeding, Mary was white as a sheet. Don Emmanuel looked close to collapse and was being tended by Esteban.

Leoni figured the first two dogs had been let loose for whatever mischief they could do – and they’d done enough – but back down the trail the second two were still baying, choking against the leash, and she could now also hear the distant excited shouts of the hunters.

Because surrender wasn’t going to be an option with Jack involved, and they were all going to die, she wanted to apologise to Mary: ‘I’m sorry you got dragged into this,’ she said.

The older woman surprised her. ‘It’s not your fault. We’re all adults here. I’m sorry I reacted the way I did when you told me about John.’ She stepped closer and embraced Leoni: ‘This whole thing. It’s an amazing experience. I wouldn’t miss it for the world.’

Still nobody had moved. ‘Come on!’ said Leoncio. ‘This way!’ And he plunged off the faint trail they’d been following and led them straight into dense jungle, hacking through the clinging vines and thorns.

‘The river’s about five hundred feet over there,’ he explained.

‘The river?’ Leoni didn’t see why that was useful.

‘Tributary of the Ucayali. If we can get across it we’ll be safe.’

‘How do we get across it?’

‘Swim.’

Behind, the dogs bayed.

* * *

Five hundred feet is a long way in virgin jungle and just as they reached the river’s high bank, overgrown with palms, a tremendous hue and cry from their pursuers told Leoni the bodies of the dogs must have been found. There was an instant of delay and then the hunt surged towards the river. Crouching down, facing back the way they had come, Matt seemed to have been waiting for this. He fired a long burst from the AK-47, ejected the empty clip, locked a new one into place and fired again.

‘In the water,’ yelled Leoncio, barely audible above the rapid rattle of the assault rifle. ‘Ditch your packs. Hold on to each other.’

Leoni looked down at the muddy swirling river, wide as a football pitch, undercutting the bank fifteen feet below.
Monsters,
she thought.
It’s full of monsters. I can’t get in there.
She saw Esteban and Emmanuel jump and realised bullets were flying out towards her from the jungle. There was a whiz and a slap. She felt heat part her hair and a gush of blood poured down into her eyes from her scalp. She put up her hand, fearing that her brains had been blown out, like Bannerman’s, but found instead a shallow bleeding groove running diagonally across the top of her skull. With a yelp she dumped her pack, grabbed Mary’s hand and they jumped together from the bank, hitting the water with a tremendous splash.

At once the current swept them out towards the midstream where Esteban was keeping Don Emmanuel afloat. A few seconds behind, Don Leoncio hit the water and swam to join them. Matt was the last. Still standing on the bank, he fired a final long burst back into the jungle, threw down the AK-47 and his pack, and jumped in.

A second later a huge tawny mastiff with jaws like a steel trap came flying off the bank, hit the water and swam after him, fast as an otter, gaining on him. Leoni was still holding on to Mary’s hand and the two of them were treading water, watching hypnotised and aghast, but just before the dog got its teeth into Matt he rolled, pulling a pistol out of his belt, and –
Bam! Bam!
– shot the animal twice in the head.

As it sank beneath the surface without even a yelp there was a muffled scream. Mary’s hand was torn from Leoni’s grasp, and there was a tremendous agitation in the water. Turning in horror, Leoni saw the older woman had been seized in the jaws of a massive black cayman. It shook her from side to side the way a terrier shakes a rat.

Of the thousand Merell who came out of the forest with Sebittu, most were either too old, too young or had been too badly wounded in previous skirmishes with the Illimani to be any use if it came to a fight. Still, Ria counted a hundred and eighty-seven able-bodied braves amongst them – a credible force. All were armed with the usual assortment of spears, clubs, maces, axes, hatchets and knives, but the real prize was that a hundred and nine of them also carried powerful hunting bows and quivers full of arrows.

It wasn’t enough to beat Martu and Sakkan – nowhere near enough – but Ria hoped the presence of so many archers might at least make the Illimani think twice before attacking. She put Ligar in charge of them and gave Bont command of the other seventy-eight. Communication was going to be difficult, perhaps dangerously so, but for the vital decisions she needed people who’d fought by her side before. Besides, Ligar already knew a little Merell, and there were Merell in both groups who could speak enough of the Clan language to pass orders on. The arrangement would have to work.

Then there were the women. Again, there were many who were injured, ancient or infirm, but with Tari assisting her Ria selected close to two hundred who were able-bodied and had them stand to one side. Being Merell, all of them were already armed with some weapon or other. Their job now, Ria told them, was to be the last line of defence for the children and the elderly. She placed Tari in charge of them.

With half of his men and ten of Ligar’s archers Bont would march at the head of the column with Sebittu, Driff and Ria. Grondin, Oplimar and Jergat volunteered for the rearguard. Ria assigned the rest of Bont’s men, along with ten more archers, to join them there and divided the remaining archers under Ligar’s command to protect the flanks. The column could close up or spread out, depending on the terrain, but this would be the general disposition. Relays of the fastest
runners were sent out ahead to scout the route for danger and unforeseen obstacles.