Inro pushed through the thick foliage spilling across the narrow game trail winding its way up the hill. Atop it waited the last holdouts among of Green People: the dozen-odd tribes and clans who'd plagued his efforts to unite them under the One Tribe's figurative banner. Arca walked beside him, hand resting proudly on his sword hilt. Cairin followed close behind with her ubiquitous sling draped around her throat like a rough but deadly necklace. A hundred-odd others followed behind, swearing and wrestling their large wicker shields through the tangling undergrowth and broad-leafed greenery exploding from the ground all about them.

"Sure this is right plan?" Arca said, carefully wiping sweat from his good eye so as not to disturb the Limn clay coating him. Humidity and heat did their best to baste and cook them alive.

"No," Inro said, pausing for a moment as a brightly-banded snake slide languidly across the path before them. "But we don't have enough time or manpower to keep fighting them as they wish to fight. This is our best chance to bring this to a close before the jungle chews us up or the One Tribe comes apart and devours itself."

"Big risk exchange for quick end?" Arca said.

"Done with green lands," Cairin said, swatting a fist-sized insect aside as it dove at her with its obscenely-long proboscis. "How anyone live here? In home lands we eat bugs. Here, bugs eat us."

Inro reached back and caught a drip of clay as it fell from Arca's chin. Tingles ran through his fingertips as he rubbed it between them. "Another reason to finished this quickly. That and everyone sweating their Limn off half-way through any decent battle we can find. Going through far too many jars and our caravans hauling more from the Limn beds are taking too long. No, we do this here, end this now. That or we give up on the Green Lands and integrating its people. If we do that, the Libwe and all the other tribes will think us weak and desert us or kill us. No. Either this works or I carry a couple jars of Limn down to the Cave Dweller's domain and find a way back to the Book alone."

"Not alone," Cairin said, pressing as close to his side as she could without smearing her Limn. "Cairin would go with you."

"Arca too would follow, friend," Arca said, clapping Inro on the shoulder.

Inro stopped and turned back for a moment as the jungle began to thin. Arca and Cairin looked at him with that fierce pride and protectiveness of theirs. Inro felt a ridiculous rush of emotion sabotaging him. He wiped at his eye. "Three of us against The Book if this fails then. We better make this work or I'll have you two slowing me down as I skulk about the Book trying to rebuild my Legions from scratch."

"That was tear," Cairin said, her tone mocking as she brushed a finger under Inro's eye.

"Sweat from this damned jungle," Inro said, pulling away. Arca grinned at him.

Inro shook his head and marched forward to the broad clearing they'd walked three days deep into enemy territory to reach.

Jungle cleared away to reveal a broad hilltop covered with elaborate lean-tos and many-chambered woven huts. Crude fences of gnarled trees bound with vine penned fantastically-colored, two-legged birds and many-hued lizards. Clusters of rich, multicolored fruits dangled from cut vines beside the opening to every doorway. Animals roasted on spits over smoldering communal fire pits. Impressively-carved wooden statues of highly-stylized snakes, birds, lizards, and jungle cats perched, sat, stalked, or posed, around a large wooden platform at the village center.

The whole village smelled of fruit, growth, moisture, laced with coppery undertones. Inro had smelled the same on the bodies of Green people they'd slain in combat. Something to do with their blue-green paint he'd supposed.

Several-dozen elders and warriors stood about the platform, their skin dyed a deep green. The elders wore beautiful coats of multi-colored feathers clasped with polished talons. Warriors wore vests of many-layered cloth studded with shells and bones over the swirled emerald and aqua of their paints. Streamers of thin vine twined their arms, legs, vests, and wove through their dark hair. All looked more like varieties of mythological forest spirits then men and women of flesh and blood. Their expressions ranged from hostile to grim.

As his followers spread out from the narrow trail behind them, Arca, Cairin, and Inro walked forward to meet the elders. Izbali broke forward and followed close behind, the tall Shaman as silent and intimidating as ever.

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Two older women stepped forward to face them from the Green People's ranks, their long gray hair arranged to run down their chests and legs all the way to their wrinkled knees. An older man stood with them, his beard hanging nearly as low. Hair and beard both glinted with ingots of copper, silver, and gold. They possessed perhaps ten teeth combined between the three. A Limn-smeared shaman squatted nearby, the young man as naked, silent, and brooding as Izbali.

One of the women began to speak their trilling, fast dialect of the tribal language Arca spoke. After weeks of interrogating captured prisoners, negotiating alliances with the few Green People tribes willing to join them, and acting as liaison between Inro and the Green People guides and warriors they'd integrated after conquering them, Arca's ear for language promoted him to their interpreter. At least, after their last volunteer from a Green People tribe that had 'joined' them led them into an ambush.

Arca spoke haltingly, half-listening as the woman's unending wash of meaningless words jangled on Inro's nerves. "Elder woman says they speak for all the Green People who remain. They know the Foreigner and the One Tribe has suffered greatly since their invasion. Many death to poison, swamp-sickness, ambushes, and traps. They also know many of the Lizard Hunters hate this place of death and disease. They hold much longing for open stretches of rock lands. Freedom from the entrapping jungle."

"Not all of our people who went missing were killed, it would seem," Inro mused.

"Green People tortures more clever than Lizard Hunters," Cairin said. "Make captives eat berries that tear veils between them and dark spirits. Let dark things in to devour minds. Eat dreams. Or bind them and set burrow-wasps on their flesh to lay eggs in them. Hatchlings eat their way out. Only takes one captured to talk, no matter how bravely others died."

Inro nodded grimly.

"In spite of this, they respect strength of Inro, potency of Limn, and courage of One Tribe warriors," Arca continued. "They no longer would fight such strength, but join it. Share in triumphs. Join all the One Tribe in conquer of all the world."

Cairin and Inro exchanged a troubled glance before turning back.

"And what do they ask in return?" Inro said, keeping the skepticism from his voice only with difficulty.

"Only for they three to have voice for Green Peoples in Inro and Arca's councils. Share use of Limn for battles. Nothing else."

Inro exhaled a held breath, his faint hope crashing away. "Tell them we accept and invite the Green Peoples into the One Tribe. They three will act as their voice and the others will stand as equals to the Lizard Hunters in the Tribe."

As Arca translated, Arca turned to Cairin. She leaned in as though to brush something from the gleaming steel of Inro's breastplate, whispering low in his ear even though the jungle savages spoke not a word of Ebonese. "It is trap?"

"Undoubtedly. Send Izbali to warn our warriors in case the runners we send are ambushed. Taboo will keep them from interfering with her. Or at least we can hope."

"Yes, but will she do this? Shaman supposed to stay away from tribe fight and argue."

"I think she wants what we do," he said, glancing at the lean, enigmatic woman. She stared back, her expression flat as always. "And we've no other hope if our runners don't get through."

The Green People broke out into ululating cries and shrill whistles as danced about, swirling and beating against vibrantly-painted hide drums. Those ten teeth emerged as the elders grinned, gesturing the representatives of the One Tribe towards the platform upon which young, paint-clad young women set broad leaves heaped with fruits, tubers, and skewers of roasted meat.

"Cairin not trust place Elders want us sit," Cairin said, eying it suspiciously as they walked towards it. She whistled to summon the leaders among the followers accompanying them. As said Lizard Hunters jogged forwards, half-a-dozen young boys and girls who'd been with them slipped off into the jungle. If any of the Green People noticed their departure, they gave no sign.

After a quick set of orders from Arca and Cairin, the rest of the One Tribe joined in the celebration. Their faked enthusiasm quickly revealed itself as far more transparent than the locals' seemingly-genuine joy. Most Lizard Hunters were brave, strong, ferocious, and fearless. Subtle and cunning, however, lay far outside the realm of qualities they valued.

"Inro trusts those elders' truthfulness as much as their chewing ability," Inro said, trying to make his survey of the crude platform subtle. "They're not engineers, so rigging it to collapse into spiked pits seems far beyond them. I have the distinct feeling that those dense rolls of dried brambles packed underneath it are there for flammability not decoration. We climb on top, get drunk on fruit wine, sleep with nubile young Green People, and wake up to our throats being slit as the platform catches fire around us."

"This is how Cairin would do it," she said, nodding with a mixture of approval and disgust as she walked away to talk to Izbali.

"We need to find some pretext to refuse that won't offend them. Come up with some Lizard Hunter superstition about standing on false ground or the like," Inro said as he turned to Arca. "Warn everyone against eating or drinking anything. Given their proclivity for such things, I'd imagine half of it is poisoned and the rest drugged."

Arca immediately jogged off, feigning a delighted smile as he patted warriors on the back, clasped arms with them, and pounded their chests. Another reason Inro liked him so much: he managed to retain all the best qualities of the Lizard Hunters but also caught on to subtlety and ruse in a way few of his fellows could match.