Adjaash cursed again.
The way was flooded.
She’d ridden north for around twenty minutes once she passed the border wall. That was all it took for her and Ashanji to reach the river. And when they did, it was overflowing.
Far past the now-submerged banks, the water was ankle-deep. Inside the river, the floodwaters raced down from the highlands – rapids folding and unfurling down the way. The basin was not traversable in its current state. It would take at least several days for the water to flow out to the ocean. Heror must have made it through before the water overwhelmed.
Adjaash halted Ashanji at the edge of the flow. While the horse lamented at new mud already smothering her hooves, Adjaash pondered her next course of action.
The river would circle to the south and to the east – to Mote – before it turned back to the north again. The floodwaters would make such a journey treacherous. And either way, Mote was her last resort. As long as she could, she’d avoid the Mire Lands in the far east.
The other way was through the highlands, to the northwest. She could travel up the slopes, away from the floodwaters. And then she could continue to the ridge’s edge, descend back into the woodlands, and pick up the trail by the lake farther north.
It was a sensible route on a map. But maps didn’t warn of the snarls of tree roots and snaking vines that suffocated the highland forests, or the fog that set in each morning and cloaked the land in an opaque haze, or the curtainous canopy that blocked out the light and shielded the creatures within.
Adjaash, however, had very few options.
After a moment of reluctance, Adjaash dragged the reins to the left and doubled back. She rode three-quarters of the way back to the border wall, and then she turned to the west. Soon after, she circled around and entered the forest at the foot of the mountains.
Almost immediately upon entering the tree cover, a putrid smell she recognized all too well met her nostrils. And as her eyes scanned through the wide elder trunks, she saw dozens of bodies – adorned in red cloaks and light gilded armor – dotting the forest corridors.
Adjaash grimaced, and Ashanji winced at the sights; Adjaash felt a slight hop in her horse’s step. As they cantered through the lowland trees, the aggressive buzzing of black flies dug into her ears, and the raspy hiss of a grounded vulture drew out, as the black bird picked at flesh. She dared not look down at the remains. She was used to the sight and smell by now. But that made it no more pleasant to experience.
They rode north, and the bodies began to thin. Eventually, the ground lifted into a small, steady incline. In the cool morning air, a dense fog crept down into the forest from the mountains. From the high branches of the elder trees, blue-green moss and vines wet with dew slithered down the bark. The moss pooled at the bases of the trees, where twisted networks of brown roots clasped and coiled as if tentacles, and then clustered outward, sprawling across the forest floor. Through a soft layer of organic detritus, the roots swam and sank and surfaced, like a sea monster stalking its prey.
Adjaash knew there was a mountain pass farther up the way. She’d use the open sky in the pass to re-orient herself, and then she’d skew to the north-northeast through the woods. From there, she could cut through the highlands. It would take some time to reach the ridge. But once she reached it, she’d be able to descend into the basin, with elevation on her side.
It wasn’t long before she came across more bodies, though these ones were different. She recognized them as swamp djauuls – native to the Mire Lands. ‘Pathetic’ was the word she’d heard more than once from the Tekhal riders. They were slimmer and weaker than steppe djauuls, with lighter armor – if you could even call it that. But it appeared as though they’d done the job they were tasked with here. They slowed the opposing army down.
For a moment, Adjaash felt sorrowful. She glanced down at them only for a second, and then her eyes went forward again. As she ventured up the incline, the air continued to cool – but in the humidity, she perspired a cold sweat on her skin.
Some time passed, and at last, there were no more bodies. A thin fog hovered in the air, flowing with a slow current. And in the distance, she could see a break in the trees, letting distorted daylight flow through the halls of pines and elders. She squeezed her shins to quicken her horse’s pace, eager for a brief respite from the woods.
In minutes, she reached the edge of the treeline. And it dawned on her what a short respite this would be.
The mountain pass – marked by steep rock faces, a wide clearing, and rows of pines standing alongside it – was overrun with bodies. Thousands. Layers of armor and lifeless decay superimposed over dead, chalky soil and pale grasses. Here, there was more body than ground – robes of red and green and white, armor pieces of bronze and gold all sheltering her from the grisliest of sights that hid beneath.
But this litter could not protect from the smell. For almost sixty days – a full two moons – it had pooled and wafted, and now it hovered in the air like rippling heat. And as it hit Adjaash, she swooned and nearly fell off her horse.
Adjaash gagged, and Ashanji let out a distressed neigh, stepping back toward the tree cover. Adjaash coughed to cast out the toxins, and then she masked her face with the inside of her elbow. The smell stung her eyes, inducing tears.
“Pai Shenu…” she whispered under her breath.
It was no good lingering with ghosts. Shielding her face, Adjaash’s eyes rushed to the sky. The sun was just now lifting above the tree cover in the east, still hidden behind a thin white overcast. She used this along with the pass’ orientation to judge northeast. Then she started in that direction, hugging the treeline and keeping as wide a berth from the remains as possible as she went.
Soon enough, they re-entered the forest, and the smell faded. Adjaash took a deep breath out of relief. The sight had shaken even her, but here, she started to recollect herself.
To the northeast they went now. The forest, it seemed, had no end. Elder trunks and vines stretched for as far as the eye could see, and far above, roped and rugged branches scaled the canopy in low-sloping inverted arches – tributaries of soft leaves sweeping from the stalks, in forked flows of dark blue and green and teal.
Ashanji most often moved at a canter, but some parts of the forest were so thick and densely-packed with roots and vines, that she had to slow to a trot, and even a cautious walk. Through gaps in the elder trees, chilly blue light trickled down from the hidden sky, filtered through the boundless, unbreakable canopy.
At some point, Adjaash halted her horse, and they stopped to rest in a small, shaded grove with a fallen tree. It might’ve been late morning. It might’ve been noon. It might’ve been early afternoon. Adjaash had no way of knowing.
Adjaash dismounted, moccasins crunching in the leaves as she landed. She ran her hand along her horse’s mane and whispered to her. Then she glanced up, and her eyes went ahead.
By now, Adjaash had mastered the art of moving straight. It was a simple skill, but it quickly became important in a setting like this. The canopy was too high up, too dense, and too vast to see the sun. None of the normal indicators were available. She couldn’t be completely certain they were still moving northeast – but she had to trust herself. That was all she could do.
She went back to the supplies. She gave her horse food and water. And then she removed a jar of dried meat and a canteen for herself. While Ashanji stood idle, her soft tail whisking away bugs, Adjaash sat on the downed trunk, feeling the rough shingles of tree bark beneath her. She slid her feet forward in the brush.
After eating and drinking, she set the jar and canteen on the log beside her, and then she took a deep breath and listened. The forest was quiet, but it was not silent. The soft songs of katydids, hiding in the roping roots, echoed in the air. On and off again, an unseen cicada drummed its tymbals, sounding off in a high-pitched buzz that strengthened and then receded. Strengthened and then receded again. Like the tide. Somewhere in the skyward branches, there was a crow.
Adjaash took a deep breath. And in the quiet, the thought came back to her again. Like a mosquito, taunting her.
What will you do when you find Heror?
She took another deep breath – longer this time.
In a way, their personal goals weren’t so different. He would empathize with her. She knew that. The only question was: Would he give up the Sword? He didn’t seem too attached to it. From the very moment he’d taken it from its perch in the labyrinth, Heror had been unsure. At first, he had heard nothing, and felt nothing. And then, during the ritual – she remembered his face. The fear. She remembered how he’d closed his eyes. She remembered the phoenix. And then, under the cover of blindness, he fled.
But he could have dropped the Sword there. Instead, he left with it. Several times, he could’ve left it behind and gone on his way. He could’ve forgotten about it. He didn’t. She wondered why he’d kept it, if it was so troubling to him. If it had been the source of so much turmoil.
And now another thought entered her mind, ever unwelcome.
What if you decide you want to stay with him?
No. That was not an option. She couldn’t afford any more distractions.
At last, Adjaash grew aware of this boundless string of thoughts, and she broke it with a blink. Her eyes shifted about as she came back to her senses. She let out a soft sigh, and then her eyes fell on her horse, who offered her a glance.
Adjaash smiled small. She brushed a strand of silver-brown hair out of her face.
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“We’ll be in the forest for a while, Ashanji,” Adjaash said. “But don’t worry. This is the safest way with the floods.”
She leaned back on the log, stretching her arms. Then she sat up straight again. With a moccasin toe, she brushed along the ground.
“We’re heading to Pylantheum,” Adjaash went on, her voice soft.
Ashanji’s ears flopped and rose, and the jet black horse looked at Adjaash with eager eyes. Adjaash smirked and let out a small laugh.
“I know. It’s been a long time since we’ve been there. You’ll be back home again.”
Adjaash’s smile soon faded, however. The word ‘home’ came out of her mouth unconsciously. And as it did, she winced. With biting amber eyes, she stared into the distance, lost in thought for a moment longer. And then she rose to her feet, with sudden urgency.
“It’s time to go.”
This was northeast, she thought. It had to be. They followed the straight path as best they could, riding past overlapping roots and bulging trees – past lesions of moss and mushroom growths, and leafy plants that climbed and enveloped the lower trunks. As they went, the mindless call of the crickets and katydids hailed them ahead. Somewhere – perhaps along the banks of a small pond – frogs croaked.
She had hoped that as they went, the paths would widen. But in fact, the opposite was occurring. The forest started to constrict around them as they rode – vines and roots and streams of moss converging into a conglomerate of matter, as the dark deepened in the low-lying shade. Even the trunks of the ancient trees began to cluster, gaps narrowing to near shoulder-width. Ashanji slowed to a tired stroll, while Adjaash’s hands sank around the reins.
Time ticked onward. A blue glow reappeared in the distance, and it seemed as though the forest would soon be widening again. But up ahead, a dense snarl of vines and bushes splayed in front of the northeast path, blocking the way and letting only slivers of light through. Adjaash halted her horse here, and she glanced left to right.
There was no clear path forward in either direction. The forest was extremely dense here. But the tangle of vines was not too thick. The light sneaking past it made this clear. If she used her daggers, she might be able to carve a path through the vines before long.
“Stay here, Ashanji,” Adjaash instructed as she dismounted, before grumbling to herself: “Not like there’s anywhere else to go in this fucking jungle…”
Her moccasins hit the ground and she brushed her braid over her shoulder. She stepped toward the tangle and unsheathed one of her daggers. She grabbed one of the vines near the wide end of the stalk. She started to cut through it, when Ashanji let out a small whimper. Adjaash glanced back over her shoulder.
“Don’t worry, Ashanji,” Adjaash reassured her horse. “I’ll be quick.”
With a saw-like motion, she sliced through the first vine, and it fell to the ground, slumping in the dirt and leaves as fibers of damp twining hung from the cut. Now she cut another, and another – until soon, she could feel the space opening up.
While Ashanji stayed behind, Adjaash kept pressing forward. The tangle was perhaps twenty feet wide from end to end. She focused on the higher vines, and stepped over lower ones that snaked along the ground. As she sliced through the forest’s tendrils, the shade started to give way to more cool blue light, and on the other side of the mass, she could see a wider path for them to pick up, lined by bushes and trees and rocks.
She was almost halfway through now, and the sight of the clearing made her quicken her pace. As she chopped the vines one by one, they tumbled and fell, and now the light of midday poured through – still dimmed and distorted, but brighter than it had been.
After catching her breath for a moment, Adjaash sawed through the last high vine, and at last, the way was clear. She stepped into the clearing, and out of the thick tree cover, she felt a welcoming breeze. She looked up. The canopy was thinner here, and directly above, she could see streaks of stratus and stratocumulus clouds striping the sunlit sky.
She relaxed – until she heard something.
Silence.
Even in this open area, the way was lined by towering trees and shrubs and thickets. And yet, there was nothing. The crickets and katydids had gone quiet. The coughs of the frogs were gone. There were no calls and caws of birds above. Nothing. Even the wind, it seemed, had suddenly gone still.
And in the silence, her heart spoke in a drumbeat.
She took a sudden step back and widened her stance, and ripped the other dagger from beneath her poncho. Her eyes darted from tree to tree, scaling down to the bushes and thickets lining the grass – until she saw them: A pair of yellow cougar eyes, staring out at her from the shadows.
As soon as she saw it, the cougar stepped out of the bushes, brush crinkling beneath a heavy paw. It flared its fangs and snarled at her. The fear in Adjaash’s mind told her to step back, but she brushed it away and stood her ground. She widened her arms and shouted: “Heyyy!!”
She shouted several times – voice carrying through the trees – and she tried to make herself larger, but the cougar did not flinch. It took another step and lowered, as if readying to pounce. A mindless, drawling growl escaped its jaw, along with a trail of foamy saliva. Now Adjaash pulled her daggers close and re-entered her stance.
And then it lunged.
Adjaash flared out her knives and was about to counter, when a rush of wind sped by on her right, and Ashanji charged past her. The black horse met the cougar’s advance and barreled into the beast, ducking her head and throwing the mountain lion onto its back.
“Ashanji, no!” Adjaash shouted, her voice rising. “Get back!!”
The horse did not listen. She reared and kicked, screeching angrily, as the cougar climbed back to its feet. The cougar jolted to the right and snarled, then flashed a claw-tipped paw and swiped at the horse. Ashanji bucked and kicked, while the cougar circled her – front claws lashing about in a frenzy. A forceful kick met the cougar’s face. A claw slashed the horse’s left haunch, and the horse shrunk against the trees, whining in pain.
“No!!”
The cougar growled and was about to lunge toward Ashanji – beady eyes trained on the horse’s neck – when Adjaash whipped a dagger with rapid speed. The dagger passed just in front of the cougar’s head, and now the cougar fixed its attention on the girl.
Enraged, the cougar bounded toward Adjaash, paws furiously scraping up dirt and grass as it ran. Just as she got her hands up, it lunged again. She blocked her face and neck with her arms and tried to stab at the beast’s neck with her remaining dagger, but a claw sank into her left wrist, and she staggered.
Now the cougar drove its hind legs and shoved Adjaash back, and she slid back into a tree. Blood seeped from the puncture in her wrist, and pain shot up her forearm, but still she clenched down on the cougar’s coat – her other arm locked in a struggle.
With her left hand, she held its jaw away. And with her right, she tried to creep the dagger ever closer, shaking against the beast’s strength. The cougar’s razor teeth gnashed and reached for her face, as saliva frothed and dribbled down.
For a moment, they were deadlocked. But Adjaash’s strength began to win out. She pressed the dagger toward the cougar’s neck – closer, closer – until the cougar lashed toward her right hand with a fearsome bite, trying to catch it from the side.
Adjaash only had a split second to dodge the attack by sliding to the right, and as the cougar lurched away, its claw tore free from her left wrist. A cry of pain leaked from her mouth, but she didn’t lose her composure. She circled the tree at the edge of the clearing now, as the cougar stalked her – mirroring her movements.
With a small break, Adjaash tried to catch her breath. But it wasn’t long until the cougar started to close in. It was about to cut her off, when Ashanji came from the other end of the clearing. The horse rushed around the cougar, then flanked it from the left. Before the cougar could react, the horse ducked its head again and kicked out with its front legs, driving the animal into the ground.
Adjaash took this as her opportunity. While the cougar was down, she sprinted back into the clearing and scrambled onto its back. And just before it was able to stand again, she looped her dagger beneath its neck and sliced across it, tearing its throat open.
The cougar let out a frantic squeal, as blood poured onto the ground. And as Adjaash rolled off of its back into the grass, the cougar staggered ahead into the woods, leaving a trail of red as it went. It wasn’t long before its voice died out.
Adjaash’s breath slowed, but her pulse still raced. She sat in the dirt for a spell, calming herself. As she did, Ashanji approached her. The horse paced beside the girl and murmured a greeting. Above the horse’s back leg, Adjaash could see the cut the cougar left. It was bloody, but it was shallow.
“You stupid horse,” Adjaash scoffed in pain. “You should’ve let me handle that. I had it.”
Adjaash glanced down at her left wrist. Blood was seeping out quicker than she preferred. She let out a strained sigh, and then she blinked, and her brow lightened. She glanced at her horse and offered a weak smile.
“… but thank you.”
Now Adjaash stood. She went to the other end of the clearing and picked up her other dagger. She had trouble closing her left hand, and so she picked it up with her right, sheathing both knives. Then she turned back toward her horse, jostling her wrist to try and shake away the throbbing pain.
Adjaash first grabbed a canteen, and then she opened the medical pack and pulled out the silk. She used a bit of water to wash Ashanji’s wound, and then she patched it with a band of silk, before wrapping around the top of the leg several times. As she did, blood dripped past her fingers, down into the brush. She took a deep breath, and wrapped her horse’s wound one more time. Then she turned to her own.
First, she washed her cut, just as she’d done with Ashanji. As she poured water over her wrist, it mixed with the blood and flowed to the ground in streams of red. As soon as she stopped, she could see blood seeping out again.
Silk alone wouldn’t do it; she needed something tight to stop the bleeding. She dug into another pack now, until she pulled out a blanket. She’d originally packed it for comfort, but there was already a tear from when she’d made a makeshift bandage for Heror in the desert. She forced a feeble laugh as she unrolled it.
“Certainly won’t be using this anymore…”
She stepped on one end of the blanket to keep it taut, and then she tore another strip off it with her right hand. And then, she sat down and carefully looped the strip around her left wrist. Once she was around, she pinched the bottom of the strip against her leg, while with her right hand, she carefully coaxed it into a knot. It took a couple tries, but eventually, she was able to pull it through, and then she tightened it.
As the knot tightened just below the cut, Adjaash gritted her teeth in pain. Her wrist tingled and prickled sharply now – but as she looked down, she saw that the bleeding had begun to slow.
At last, Adjaash closed her eyes, and her pulse seemed to calm. After a slow exhale, she opened her eyes and rose to her feet, and then she walked back to her horse. She stowed her supplies, and then she mounted again, grabbing both sides of the reins with her right hand, while her left hung at her side.
It took her a moment to reorient herself again. She glanced over her shoulder and saw the tangle, all of its crossing vines cut away. Up above, through thin sheets of white, the sun was near its peak. Ahead, the forest stretched ever onward. With her internal compass, she found what she hoped was northeast.
“Alright…”
Adjaash took another deep breath.
“It’ll get dark faster in the woods,” she thought to herself. “We only have a few more hours…”
Now she patted her horse’s mane. And one last wave of resolute ferocity twitched across her face, before it disappeared.
“Let’s go, Ashanji.”