After a minute or so, the desert-folk Ja’ram woke up with a start. He strained his blue arms — the same blue hue as the Breathing Sands, though darker — against the rope, twisting and yelling in his mother-tongue.
“We can’t understand you,” Alator said, stepping up to stand over him. Ja’ram, his face torn between worry and hate, squinted up at him.
“Listen here, clear-skin, if you’ve touched a hair on my brrot’er’s head I’ll —”
Alator moved aside so he could see the still, bloodied body at the base of the earth-wall, and the desert-folk’s eyes fell.
“Oh, Ba’ram, I tried to tell you that you weren’t ready . . . That’s the third Prowlerr we’ve lost this year. . . . After what happened with the Crown. . . .”
A part of me was definitely relieved he didn’t take the news worse, though I know I didn’t deserve the comfort.
That moment, Keth came to as well, first his long furry tail sprang about and reached for some of the knots, but he quickly gave up and made the same effort against the ropes as Ja’ram had done. The grey-green mottled fur over his little body (no taller than four feet) shifted and rippled as he squirmed, but to no avail. His hairless face was similar to a capuchin’s — a ridged, heavy brow sat over two large round black eyes, his nose was flat and wide, thin lips were curled up in a snarl, bearing small, sharp teeth.
Before he spoke, his massive eyes shot in all directions and his face moved about with quick twitches, before settling on me.
“You . . . fool,” he rasped, his voice high and sharp, accented something akin to — in my mind, at least — Caribbean or Pacific Islanders. He met my eyes and shrank back a little, and tried a different tact: “Killing one of us wasn’t enough, eh? Tied us up so you can eat us, eh? You like jungle flesh?”
Blinking at him and recoiling slightly at the image, I crouched next to him.
“We’re not going to eat you, you weirdo. You’re the leader, right? Anyway, as for what happened in the fight, would you have done any different to us?”
He spat and turned his head.
“You don’t know what you’ve done, messing with de Shadow Prowlers.”
“I assume that is the name of your vile operation?” Lenya snapped, not even looking down at him. She had been silent and brooding since the end of the battle. The adrenaline had bled from her like a dam breaking, and every now and then she inspected the wound on the dead desert-folk and glanced between Alator and myself with a mixture of trepidation and disgust.
Keth pursed his lips, then stuck out his little pink tongue. He wore patchwork leather armour, adorned all over with jaguar teeth and talismans crafted from bone and jungle vines.
“I bet there is a reward for their capture,” she said to me in a quiet voice. “Raik said it’s difficult gaining entry to Ith-Korr. . . .”
I was impressed.
“Here’s our ticket in,” Alator shrugged simply.
I cleared my throat and nodded.
The jungle-folk’s eyes finally settled on anger and he started spouting curses in a few different languages. Alator grabbed the rope tied around their chest and lifted them one-by-one to their feet. The rope was tied tight down to just above their knees so they couldn’t run, but swayed slightly on their feet. Then he threw the corpse over his shoulder.
“Walk,” he ordered, pushing them forwards.
Without another word, we followed the road, our pace picking up now the path was clear and solid beneath our feet. After a time, we rounded a corner and came upon the towering, twisted gates of Ith-Korr.
Thick green-painted stakes were interwoven with two-inch vines, some dead and hardened grey, some still massive and living and glowing that unnatural green. Overhead, the high city extended, the flickering lights and grey-green glow lit the vines and canopy from east to west, supporting a dozen tiers of thick wooden plank shelves, the lowest around forty yards above our heads. It resembled to me a monolithic ghostly pirate ship, suspended in the air.
“Tiki-rah! Halt!” came a bark from the gloom above us. “Declare yahselves!”
Peering up, I saw lit by the dim stars and bioluminescence two little monkey-like faces poking from behind the sharp battlements.
“I am —” Lenya started, but I cut across her.
We’ve not come this far just to be refused entry because she called one of the guards a dullard or a prick or something.
“We are travelling from Zhai-Khul, shipwrecked on the Boiling Sea a mile or so south. Beaten and bruised, while approaching your great city on the road we were beset by bandits who call themselves the Prowling Shadow —”
“De Shadow Prowlers,” hissed Keth.
If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.
“— the Shadow Prowlers. We seek to turn these miscreants over to justice, and gain entry to your fine city for rest and employment.”
The guards listened and took us in, then whispered to themselves for a moment, and one raised an arm.
With a SHUNT of metal and a heavy creaking and grinding, the gates opened slowly inwards. I motioned to my companions to wait a second and shifted from foot to foot.
I saw one of the guards disappear from the top of the wall and leap down at least ten yards to land softly on their broad, wide-spread feet. He bore a short spear in his hand, its blade was an ornate bronze version of the vines that held the city aloft, and he stepped forwards and waved us over.
“Shadow Prowlers, eh?” the guard hopped gleefully about on sprightly, slightly bowed legs, inspecting the prisoners. “Don’t know you, zorak,” he said to the desert-folk Ja’ram, then inspected the one Alator carried. “Nor de dead one — outside help, I guess.”
Then he turned to the fellow jungle-folk, who kept his head down low, trying to avoid eye-contact.
“Aha! But I recognise you, Keth! One of Skelth’s enforcers! Looks like yah luck’s run out, nata!”
He slapped him across the face and chattered out a laugh, stamping the butt of his spear into the ground.
“Wukkah! Haku-nai kuta rasha!” Keth hissed out. He spat on the floor at the gate guard’s feet, but with sharp reflexes, the guard leant back at his waist like a dancer and lifted his foot high out of the way, almost to his shoulder, and kept laughing.
“Good price for dis one, at least!” the guard said to me. “I’ll raise you niraki up to de city, but you owe me a half of de bounty.”
I felt Alator’s hackles raise and held up a hand to calm him.
“That’s very kind, thank you.”
“De name’s Raka, I’m off shift at dawn and yah’ll find me shortly after that at de sika joint beside de barracks.”
“We’ll find you, and deliver what we owe. Thank you, again, Raka.”
As we passed through the gates, half a dozen other jungle-folk, and a few other people of a kind I didn’t recognise, watched us from their high perch. Raka led the way, a skip in his step, half-dancing, every few paces glancing behind him and cackling again at the sight of furious Keth.
He brought us to a broad wooden platform tied with dozens of vines which disappeared into the hazy darkness above.
“Kah’ra!” he called. Then the whole platform heaved and shook as heavy gears moved above us and we were lifted from the ground. Lenya gasped and fell into me, held onto my arm as we moved quickly up into the sky. Out in the distance was a far blanket of dark, tangled trees, spotted with low mountains, all suffused with that unsettling glow. Raka winked at me and whistled as we went.
After a minute or so, the gears slowed and the vines raised us the last few feet to settle us onto one of the higher tiers of the Hanging City. Two jungle-folk on either side were turning large wheels, grunting with the effort.
Lenya straightened up and pushed me away as if she was insulted. I huffed and stepped off the platform, it shifted under my weight as I left it. Lenya let out a light squeak.
Got to admit that was fun to witness.
“Yah’ll find de Wardship barracks if you keep to dis side,” he pointed left, then jabbed a finger into the small of Lenya’s back. “Better keep holding onto him if ya don’t want to fall, de vines can be pretty ill-tempered! Suli-tah! Goodbye! Koru-nai!” Raka barked at us, then waved over to the lift workers and was lowered back down, disappearing below.
Exhausted, lagging, heavy-footed, and pushing our bounties ahead of us, we made our way in the direction he pointed and quickly found a squat, low but broad and brightly decorated building we guessed was the barracks. The vine-enclosed door was tight in the frame. I rapped on it with my knuckles.
“Sha’kri!” came a call from inside. I recognised the meaning, and pushed it open. Inside was a dark but wide-open space, low ceilinged so that Alator and I had to bend over slightly within. The walls were decorated with plaques all carved in their language and with tapestries woven with delicate vines all dyed different colours, depicting the jungle below, the sea beyond, and the skies above, so that they formed strange little windows. There were no real windows, and the inside felt a little like I was inside the jungle canopy below; the floorboards were even ever so slightly damp and humid and sagged a little underfoot. A tired-looking old jungle-folk woman with heavy grey eyebrows that hung down over both eyes sat behind a broad dark wooden desk.
“Hika’naru?” grumbled the old jungle-folk before looking up. Looking between us all, she put both hands on the desk and straightened up. “Hello, outsiders, what have we got here?”
“Two bandits of the Shadow Prowlers. They attacked us on the road.”
Her eyes widened, then she whistled and called to the side. A very tall (comparatively — maybe four foot six) jungle-folk padded lightly out of a back room. His green fur was lush and full, and he wore leather armour over it. A grey-green badge was pinned to his chest.
Wordlessly, he came over to us and beckoned the two criminals, and put a hand up to us to wait. The first thing he did was pat them both down and lay the contents of their pouches on the wooden desk, then counted out thirty-seven copper coins from their pockets.
“It’s ten for the desert-folk, twenty for Keth the Enforcer,” he walked up to me and pawed over the fingernail-sized round copper pieces.
“Thank you,” I inclined my head.
Then he lifted his head to stare into my eyes. He had the same wide, nearly perfectly circular black eyes, but with a dim amber light within them. There were a few deep, long scars on his face.
“And for your honour,” he said, and passed me the money he’d taken from them. “If they’d nothing in their pockets, you’d have been arrested yourselves — for gur’ta — for theft.”
Again, I felt Alator bristle, but remain silent. Lenya was just looking distastefully around at the peculiar ornamentation of the barracks, barely aware of the conversation.
Sixty-seven copper in total! Glad none of us had thought of going through their pockets! That makes sixty-nine in total. Nice.
“I’m Wardship Captain Paresh. Thank you for bringing these criminals to justice. Charge of rebellion, gang membership and brigandeering.” He pushed the two bandits into a room. Keth cursed and spat the whole way in, then Captain Paresh slammed the door shut behind them and locked it with a heavy key. “What are your names?”
“Talbot.”
The grey-furred jungle-folk brought out a heavy tome and flicked it open, then dipped a quill in ink and started scratching.
“Of?” Paresh asked.
“Just Talbot.”
“Talbot of Just Talbot. And you?”
“No, I —”
Whatever.
“Alator of the Solar Wheel, the Combative Flame and Prowling Beast.”
He actually introduces himself that way. This is why I usually do the talking.
“Lenya of the Hoary Gold, Princess of the Fey Plains of Aricaeëth.”
Bloody hell.
“Got it,” the old jungle-folk said, a wry amusement creeping over her face, then continued scratching for a few moments, marking some initials or symbols next to our names in her register. Then she looked up from the tome and her dark, leathery face cracked into a wide, if a bit tired, smile.
“Welcome to Ith-Korr.”