The Hidden Fire (Book 2) (7 page)

“It
seems to be inlaid with carvings,” said Aiyan.  “I wish we could get a closer
look.”

“We
have to come back with a canoe,” said Lerica.

“Much
longer and you won’t need one,” said Aiyan, pointing to where a large swath of
turf had been cut from the crest of the levee.  “Looks like the summer rains
washed over the dike a little.  One more wet season and this will all give
way.”

Kyric
swept his arm across the view of the ruins.  “What does finding this place
mean?” he said to Aiyan.  “Why were you drawn here?”

“I
truly do not know.  There’s no power or weird that I can feel.  Perhaps it was
a mistake.”

“I
hate to keep bringing this up,” said Lerica, “but we are a good ten or twelve miles
from the plantation.  Luckily, I’m very good at backtracking.  If we move
quickly we still have a chance to get back before dark.”

Her
eyes flashed darkly.  “You don’t want to spend the night in the Terrulan
jungle.  There are creatures that only come out after dark.  We would have to
sleep in a tree and even then we wouldn’t be safe.  I had to do it once.  It
wasn’t enjoyable, even for me.”

Aiyan
nodded, and they turned to go.  The spirit woman was standing at the tree line,
staring as before, but never looking straight at them.

“Then
again,” he said, “I’ve slept in worse places than a tree.”

She
turned and went into the forest, heading east, back towards the ocean, directly
away from the lake and its ruins.  Aiyan was determined to follow her.  Kyric
wasn’t going back without him, and Lerica wouldn’t go alone.  They pursued the
ghost.

She
led them through a grove of buttress-roots.  Here the forest seemed more alive
with bright birds and multicolored insects, and they crossed game trails that
ran every which way  It began to feel like they were on a slight downhill
grade, and Kyric wasn’t surprised when they broke through some broadleaf plants
and came to a bend in a narrow river.

The
spirit had vanished, but vaguely human shapes floated below the surface of the
river, blurry and tinted green as the gentle current pushed them past.

“Do
you see them too?” Kyric asked Aiyan.

Lerica
answered.  “We all see them.”

They
walked a course that roughly paralleled the river as it wound towards the sea. 
It widened as smaller streams joined it from the other side.  Lerica suddenly
stopped.

“I
smell fish,” she said.  “Dead fish.  A lot of them.”

“Let’s
go more carefully,” said Aiyan, lowering his voice.  “And more quietly.”

They
crept forward, intersecting a game trail that angled in from the forest and
turned to follow the river.

“I
just caught a whiff of wood smoke,” said Lerica.

Aiyan
nodded.  “So did I.”

They
nearly tiptoed down the trail now, and as they rounded a sharp curve they
surprised some creature about the size of a large dog.  It whistled as it
started and scrambled away down the trail.

All
of a sudden it fell into a wide hole with a thump, its whistle loud and
frantic.  It screamed and bayed as it thrashed uselessly.

Aiyan
ran to it drawing his sword.  He put it out of its misery with a single
thrust.  His face fell grim as he knelt beside it.

“This
is no animal trap.  We called them shoeboxes.  You make the top strong enough
so that you can cover it with dirt or leaves, and so little animals can pass
over it.  A man or a horse steps on and it collapses.  We used to glue the
leaves on so they wouldn’t blow away.”

Kyric
looked inside.  The bottom was lined with long metal spikes.  The animal,
something of a cross between a pig and a tiny horse, had been impaled through
its paws and its belly.

Aiyan
lifted his head.  “We’re in danger.”

“I
hear men coming,” whispered Lerica.

With
a finger to his lips, Aiyan led them quickly back up the game trail.  They hadn’t
gone far when he pulled up sharply, holding his arm out to stop them.  He pointed
to a thin line stretched across the trail, then to a small tree next to it that
had one springy limb pulled back.  A pallet of sharp bamboo stakes had been
lashed to its end.

“Whip
trap,” said Aiyan.  “Set for someone coming from the other direction.”  He was
quiet for a moment.

“Listen,”
he said softly, “we could be in the middle of a whole patch of traps. 
Especially along this trail.  We need to backtrack out the way we came in.  I’ll
take the lead — step
exactly
where I step.”

They
retraced their footsteps again, looking for the place they entered the trail. 
“Here it is,” said Lerica, just as a man came around the bend in the trail.

He
was dressed much like Kyric, in a plain shirt and trousers, but they were torn
and filthy, like he had been camping in the forest for a month.  He also
carried a short, heavy spear, but it was the hawk nose and jutting chin that
Kyric noticed.  The man was clearly a Syrolian.

He
was close enough to use the spear, but in his panic he dropped it and reached
for the pistol in his sash, yelling, “Over here!”

Aiyan
seized the man’s wrist with his free hand, clubbing him over the head with the flat
of his sword.  He fell backward without another word.

“I
see them,” came a distant call from the treetops.  A stalk of bamboo near Kyric’s
head exploded even as he heard the whistle and the faraway report of a musket.

“A
marksman in a tree,” said Aiyan.  “Run.”

“This
way,” said Lerica, plunging into the thick undergrowth.  She tore through the
broadleaf shrubs and Kyric ran after her.  She veered towards some
buttress-root trees where the going looked easier, and Aiyan called, “No, that’s
not the way we — ”

She
tried to leap sideways as she tripped the line, and the loop only caught one of
her legs.  A tall whip of a tree began to straighten, lifting her and pulling
her along.  Kyric watched in horror as it pulled her toward a wall of bamboo
spikes that had been hiding behind a curtain of tall brush.

She
mule kicked with her free leg and twisted, reaching out and somehow grabbing an
errant vine.  The vine held.  She bobbed and swayed on the two lines, almost
upside down.  Kyric went to her and jumped as high as he could, but didn’t come
close to reaching her.

She
drew her knife, grunting as she stretched for the rope around her ankle.  She
couldn’t quite get to it.

Aiyan
motioned to Kyric’s bow.  “See if you can cut it with an arrow.”

Kyric
unslung his bow and selected his heaviest broadhead arrow.  Much would depend on
the luck of the spin.

He
heard the breaking of brush and pounding footfalls.  The rope holding her ankle
drifted up and down.

The
shot felt true as he loosed.  It severed nearly half the strands, but not
enough to cut the rope.

Aiyan
had drawn his little pistol, and was about to take his shot at the rope when five
men burst through the bush, machetes in hand, coming at them with murder in
their eyes.  A part of Kyric’s mind calmly reasoned that this should not be
so.  Here were these Aessian men in a jungle wilderness, men who spoke the same
language as he, and they wanted to kill him without knowing who he was or what
he was doing here.  Shouldn’t they talk before deciding on violence?

Aiyan
shot the closest one in the forehead.

One
of them came at Kyric.  Holding his bow like a sword, he thrust it at the man,
nearly catching him in the eye as he twisted to the side, slashing wildly. 
Kyric ducked the machete, swinging two-handed at the man’s knee.

The
blow caught him on the shin instead, and it rang like a wooden bell.  The man
tripped, falling on Kyric and bringing them both down in a heap.  The wrestled
and rolled, Kyric trying to take away the machete while the man gouged him in
the ribs.  They rolled over a vine that looked poisonous, and Kyric pushed the
man’s face into a cluster of white flowers.

“Everyone
stand still!” a stern voice commanded.

Two
more men now stood in the clear space beneath the trees.  They were older, old
enough to have greying beards.  The skinny one with the green headband
shouldered an extra-long musket with shiny brass fittings.  The other one
carried a horse pistol in each hand.  He wore a hard leather vest with no shirt
beneath it, knee-high boots, and shark teeth bracelets.  He was well-weathered,
and well-muscled considering his age.  He looked at each of them in turn, his
eyes very hard.  He was their leader.

The
other three had surrounded Aiyan, one of them getting a deep cut on the
shoulder for his trouble.  They each took a few steps back.  Aiyan sheathed his
sword and placed his hands on his hips, staring at the two older men.

The
skinny man’s mouth fell open.  “Good Goddess.  Don’t you recognize him,
Colonel?  He’s one of the boys from the old company.  What was it we used to
call him?”

The
colonel squinted at Aiyan for a long moment, his lips parting in an excuse for
a grin.  He nodded to himself.  “It’s Candy.  I’d know him anywhere.”

Aiyan
held still, expressionless.  “Thurlun . . . and Pacey.”

Thurlun
turned to the others.  “Put your weapons away, boys.”

The
one with the cut shoulder only raised his machete higher.  “But he killed Marto!”

“Of
course he did,” Thurlun said cheerfully, “he’s a killer.  The best killer I’ve
ever seen.  Could have killed you if he had wanted to.  The night he got his
nickname he gutted two enemy officers just to get their peppermint sticks.”  He
almost smacked his lips.  “Damn but I’m glad to see you, Candy.”

Aiyan
returned the smile with only a little insolence.  “So we’re not your
prisoners?”  He nodded at the horse pistols still leveled at him.

“Well,”
said Thurlun, “I’ll have to disarm you until I hear your story.  But what I
really want is for you to come and work for me again — seems we have an opening. 
And by the way, the vine that the girl has hold of is starting to slip, so if you
want her without punctures you’d best unbuckle that sword belt.”

Thurlun’s
men each carried a short length of rope with a knotted end, tucked in their
sashes.  They used these to bind the three of them, tying their hands behind their
backs.  When one of them searched Lerica for hidden weapons he let his hands
stray, and she kicked him in the knee.

“You
bitch,” he cried, reaching back to slap her.

“Serves
you right,” said Thurlun, leveling one pistol at the man.  He froze in mid-swing.

“Don’t
forget you swore an oath along with me and everyone else,” continued Thurlun. 
“No drunkenness or messing with any woman, slave or free, till this job is
done.”  He held up the pistol.  “I will enforce this by simple means.”

They
marched single file to a camp by the river.  Thurlun carried Aiyan’s sword. 
Twice they left the trail to go around a trap, and each time Kyric spied a
folded palm leaf with a twig thrust through it.

They
have to mark them, he thought. 
There’s so many traps out here that they can’t
remember them all.

The
camp was far more than a camp.  It was a makeshift fishing factory.  A wide
strip of ground had been cleared of underbrush, and a dozen men worked at the
riverbank, most of them hauling in a long heavy net while two others manned a
small dingy, spreading a second net across the river.  Several teams of three
men each picked the catch off the net with large hooks at the end of eight-foot
poles.  The nets were strung loosely with wide openings, and they held few small
fish, the catch being mostly rays along with some lakka.  All the men were
Terrulans, and all of them were naked save for native loincloths.  Then Kyric
noticed that each one had been fitted with a set of leg irons.

They
had a ray off the net, and it was hauled up the bank to a row of rough-cut
tables where teams of men and women waited with little handsaws and some other
tools.  Unlike the prisoners at the river, they all wore leather aprons that
stretched from the neck to the knees, but like them, they too were shackled at
the ankles.

Thurlun
led them past this, past a tree where a guard sat on a platform in the treetop,
a musket across his knee, and past a lagoon that came in from a small lake to
the north, narrowing the high ground to a strip about half a furlong wide between
the lake and the river.  Several small islands rested in the lagoon, one only
about thirty feet out.  Kyric saw a couple of women on this island.  They
seemed to be cooking beneath a thatched awning stretched across a clump of
trees.  He tried to imagined what this place looked like in the dry season, the
waters pulled back, the river narrow, the islands only shallow knolls.

They
stopped in front of some stick and mud huts — two short ones and a long one
that was much like the one in Kyric’s dream — but it turned out to be the
barracks of the machete men, not the slave house.  Above the odor of fish guts
and urine, the place had another stink.  A putrid smell, as if it were all
rotting away.

Thurlun
turned to his men.  “Guppy, find a needle and sew up Harlon’s shoulder. 
Tebble, take a couple of slaves and bury Marto, but not too close to camp.  Do
it right and bury him deep, but do it quick — we only have a couple of hours of
daylight.  And be careful with the slaves.  I have damn too few as it is.”

He
handed Aiyan’s sword to the last one.  “Ral, you stay here.”

He
hooked his oversized pistols into some cording on his vest and set two stools
beneath a tall canopy tree.  Another crude platform had been built about
halfway to the top, and slinging his musket, Pacey climbed up to take his place
there.  Ral tied Kyric and Lerica to a nearby post and stood guard over them. 
Aiyan was set on one stool and Thurlun sat on the other, taking a long drink
from a wine skin.

He
looked at Aiyan.  “Well?”

“We
had arranged to sail to Baskillia with this trader captain.  He had told us
that he needed to deliver some cargo to a coffee plantation before we sailed
east.  When we got there, the plantation owner had some important friends who
demanded passage to Ularra, and he started waving papers at the captain and
using words like contract and lawsuit.  So the captain says he has to take
them, and that he has to dump us here for a week or two to make room for them.”

“So
you decided to take a stroll in the jungle?”

“The
plantation owner — “ Aiyan began.

“What
is his name?” demanded Thurlun.

“Dorigano.”

Thurlun
nodded.  He had already known the name.

“Dorigano,”
Aiyan continued, “wasn’t very hospitable, and we were getting bored, so I asked
his native overseer about the hunting around here.  He says forget hunting — that
there’s this magnificent ruined city out in the jungle.  He didn’t tell me
there was a lake around it.”

“There’s
a land bridge on the other side,” Thurlun said.  “Probably underwater right
now.  No need to bother with it.  The Baskillians picked it clean a long time
ago.”

He
stood and paced a circle around Aiyan.  It was clear to Kyric that he was a man
used to getting the lie.

“I
notice that you haven’t any camping gear.”

“We
weren’t planning to spend the night.  The overseer made it seem like it was
only a couple of miles away.  We were speaking in Cor’el, and I guess I
misunderstood.”

Thurlun
placed one foot on the stool and leaned against his knee.  “Your story’s plausible,
if not very likely.  If you’re telling the truth, I know that Dorigano won’t
come looking for you.  Hell, he and his boys have never gone more than a
hundred paces into the jungle.  What do you think the trader captain will do if
he comes back and you’re not there?”

“He
already has my money.  He’ll just sail on to Baskillia without us.”

Kyric
looked at Lerica.  Aiyan was trying to convince this man that no one in the
world would come looking for them.  Her eyes were wide and dark and he felt he
could read her thoughts there.  She understood.  She wouldn’t give it away.

“So
what’s going on here?” Aiyan asked casually, gazing out at the camp.  “I know
that you’re not simply fishing.”

“But
we are,” said Thurlun with a smile.  “We are fishing.  Wait till you hear this,
Candy.  There’s this type of ray that breeds only in these rivers.”

“The
angel ray?”

“Yes. 
Do you know why they call them that?  They have this little circle of bone on
top of their heads.  The halo, you see.  When the females get ripe, their halos
swell up and get a little spongy.”  He took another drink.

“The
Baskillian governor during the sugar days, one Count Yastikan, he deems himself
some kind of naturalist, and he gets fascinated by the breeding rays.  He cuts
them apart to see what they’re made of.  After a while he declares that the
halos are medicinal if cut from the ray when swollen.”

His
smile got bigger and he almost chuckled.  “So
now
, some of the high
aristocracy in Baskillia — and I’m talking ties to the Imperial family here —
have got the idea that the halos from the breeding females will cure everything
from limp dick to consumption.  It’s rumored that it has magical properties,
and they are willing to pay an unbelievable amount of gold for one.”

Aiyan
nodded.  “But they can’t risk getting caught violating the treaty, so they hire
foreigners.  They must be paying you very well to believe that you’ll keep
their secret.”

“I’m
getting better than paid,” Thurlun said.  “I’m a full partner in this venture.”

“So
why all the Terrulans?  Why not bring your own Baskillian slaves?”

“They
wouldn’t last.  You see, when it comes to the angel rays there’s a catch — if
you will pardon my pun.  When they die, the halo shrivels up, and that’s worth
nothing.  So you have to saw them off while the ray is still alive.  And if you
think they thrash hard when pulled out of the water, you should see them on the
table.  That venom they ooze just flies everywhere.  You get a little on you
and it makes you sick, more than a little and you die, and it doesn’t matter if
you wash it off quickly.  And then there’s those that get stung by the tail. 
They die fast.

“I
need a sixty-man crew to get the best yield from this river, but I can barely
maintain forty.  Between the rays, the lakka, the crocodiles, and the tree with
the purple figs — they smell like honey, but don’t even touch the purple figs —
between all this, and the ones who make a run for it and get killed by the
man-traps, I’m losing two or three slaves a day.  A big croc tipped the dingy
this morning and killed my best net-layers.

“And
there’s more and more coming in, the way we’re feeding them.  But what am I to
do?  We don’t have time to bury everything that dies around here, and it stinks
enough as it is.”  This last part he said to himself, as if he had forgotten
that Aiyan was there.

“You
have to keep replacing your loses,” said Aiyan, “so you go on a slave hunt from
time to time.”

“Almost
constantly.  I have a handful of men from the sugar days — hardened jungle
fighters.  They’re upriver right now.”

“Only
a handful?  How do they get away with it?  The Baskillians had to land
companies of marines.  Even the Enari could slaughter a few slave hunters.  Any
tribe could.”

Thurlun
smiled again.  “Not the
Ilven
.  They don’t fight.  The only thing
keeping us from bringing in a herd of them is that we can’t find their main
village.”

“That’s
strange, coming from
Tle Espide’s
expert trackers, the men who
fearlessly stalk the night.  Why haven’t you, ah,
questioned
one of them
to find out.”

Thurlun
smile fell away.  “We did.  Tortured one of them to death right in front of his
woman.  Neither one would tell.  They kept saying that they couldn’t tell, kept
saying that you either knew the way or you didn’t.”

Thurlun
pushed the thought away and took another drink.  “So you can see how I could
use another man with field experience — more slaves, more halos.”  He glanced
at Kyric and Lerica.  “Who are the two kids?”

“They
are my assistants.  They each possess a special talent.  Despite his youth,
Kyric is an expert with the longbow.”

“And
the girl?”

There
was only a little irony in Aiyan’s voice.  “She’s a cat burglar.”

Thurlun
sat down and leaned forward.  “Sounds like they would make excellent guards for
the slaves.  Here’s the deal I’m offering you:  The three of you work for me till
the end of the season — that’s sixty days — and when the ship comes to pick us
up, I pay you nine hundred kandars.  How you split that with the other two is
your own business.”

Kyric
blinked hard.  It would have taken him five years as a day cook to earn that
much money.

“For
guarding slaves,” said Aiyan.

“Yes,”
said Thurlun.  “At least that’s what the kids would do.  I want you to command
the slave takers and try to find the main Ilven village.”

When
Aiyan remained silent, Thurlun said, “Alright.  I’ll give you a bonus of two
kandars per slave taken.  Considering that I’m going to need around a hundred
and fifty more before this is over, that’s not bad.”

Excellent
, thought
Kyric.  He could see Aiyan’s plan.  They would agree to work for Thurlun, maybe
learn the location of some of the traps, then they would slip away in a day or
two.  They could steal the dingy and head upriver faster than anyone could
follow, and they wouldn’t have to worry about the man traps.  Yes, that was a
good idea.  Once they got back to the Dorigano estate and Captain Lyzuga
returned, they would arm everyone and sail up this river. 
Calico
mounted a swivel gun on each side.

Aiyan
stood.  “I have one more question for you,” he said, his face hard and his eyes
smoldering.  “How did you come to this?  What could you have possibly suffered
to bring you so low?”

Thurlun
leapt to his feet, placing one hand on a pistol.  “What?”

“The
Colonel Thurlun that I knew was a killer, but he had a cause.  The Jakavians
were on our soil, killing our people.  That man was hard, and he was imperfect,
but he would never have been a slaver. 
What happened to you?
”

“Don’t
you remember, Candy?  You were there.  You heard what they accused us of — war
crimes!  All trumped up by agents of the war financiers because while making a
profit from war was good, making even more was better.”

Aiyan
spoke quietly now.  “The Doge didn’t like the way we killed officers in their
sleep.”

“As
I recall, your parents were sleeping when the Jakavians killed them.”

He
reached for his wine skin then decided against it.  “They didn’t just cheat us
out of our war pay.  They ruined my career.  After Sevdin, I couldn’t get a
commission even in Drendusia.”

Aiyan
looked across the camp.  “So it comes to this?”

“After
Aleria, yes.  They wanted me there, you see, when the situation got hot.  They
needed a man of my talents, a guerilla captain who understood that kind of
warfare better than any of them.  I changed the nature of the fighting,
alright.  And I wisely made them pay each month in advance, because the moment
the natives started talking peace the militia disarmed us and put us on a
ship.  Said I was dangerous, a loose cannon.  And I won their Goddess-damned
war for them.”