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19 - Looks Worse Than It Is

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Suni

“Catch a breather here,” Elpida called from the front, and I would’ve let out a sigh of relief had I any breath left in me. Instead, I stumbled through one last wall of palmetto fronds, then collapsed in a heap.

“You okay, Suni?” Oz asked, and I gave him a nod.

“Good. Stay with the others for the moment,” he said, then slipped off into the brush, somehow looking not the slightest bit exhausted.

Meanwhile, my sweat-drenched clothes clung to me like wet rags, my sweat-soaked eyes stung with salt, and my sweat-slick skin was on fire. From the heat and exhaustion, sure, but also from a hundred little nicks and cuts. With the skyship crash and then the run, branches and thorns—and saw palmetto, worst of all—had done a fine job of turning me into a walking wound. Some of the cuts had swollen up, red and irritated, while others bled, or leaked a milky pus. None of them would cause lasting damage, I didn’t think. And, in the end, I was alive.

Everything I knew about staying alive had told me never to just crash madly through unknown jungle. But everything I knew about staying alive also told me there was a gigantic, hungry komodo back at that skyship. Considering that, running had seemed a good plan. The only plan, really. And Elpida had been leading us. She knew her stuff. This was where she’d made her career. And we hadn’t died, so that was good.

Panting, and wiping stinging sweat from my eyes, I sat up as the rest of the group stumbled into the clearing. Oz was scouting ahead, and Elpida and Senesio were already here. Sergeant Kyriakos, Theo, and Leda came next. I rattled off everyone’s name in my mind, doing an impromptu head count as they emerged from the jungle. Gabar, Demetrias, and Maritza last. Plus myself made ten of us left.

The komodo had seen to the Captain and Aristos. My stomach churned at that. Just this morning they’d been alive, with thoughts and hopes and ambitions. And now? Now they were... I could hardly think it. I’d never seen someone die before. Not other than peacefully, of old age, at least.

Blast, but I wasn’t cut out for this. Kamil had been right. And Elpida, and most recently, Theo. I was useless. Sure, I could identify a dozen different types of plants, or give the scientific name of some of the animals out here, but what did that matter? This wasn’t a research expedition. It’d been a rescue mission and now... now it was, I didn’t even know. Probably going to get us all killed, was what it was. I wasn’t a soldier. I wasn’t a guide. I was just an apprentice naturalist and, for the first time in my life, that didn’t feel very important.

In all too sharp a contrast to the rest of us, Elpida was standing straight, breathing easy. Forty years old or more and she hardly even seemed winded.

Elpida might have made it with greater ease than everyone else, but at least we had all made it, while the komodo had been distracted with... with. I didn’t dare to hope that would stay the case for long. A predator that big would require a lot of calories each day.

No one had studied komodos before. No one had even confirmed that they were anything more than rumors. There were no established guidelines for how to handle them. How to escape them. But we’d outrun it, for now, at least. Based on what I’d seen though, the beast relied heavily on smell. That implied it wasn’t an ambush predator so much as a tracker. It could still be on our trail. We need to obscure our scent, probably. We needed a...

River. It suddenly made sense why Elpida had called a stop here. We weren’t just in a clearing, we were on the edge of a wide, blackwater river.

I blinked away the sting of sweat in my eyes to get a better look. Not that it made much difference. The moment I stopped blinking the sweat was back, flowing from my forehead faster than any river. Above the jungle, in the Stormcrow, it’d been tolerable. There the air moved—was even cool on occasion. Down here the air was sticky, hot. Clung to me like a warm mist. It felt like we were running through soup.

“This’ll help.” Elpida hit me in the chest with a rag. I wiped my eyes, then my face, then my entire head with it and, for the first time, appreciated just how good dry could feel. Even as I lowered the rag, though, I could feel the sweat pooling on my forehead again.

“Thank you.” I shot her a nod, then passed the rag down the line, tossing it to Theo next.

Eyes free of sweat for the barest of moments, I gazed at the river. It looked more like mud, really. I could see the silt in it, sand and dirt and all manner of other particulates mixed in with the water. That was how the rivers were out here. Silty and filled with tannin, making the water look black and ominous.

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

“Looks worse than it is. Really just water, for the most part,” Elpida said, bending and dipping her waterskin into the brown river. “Doesn’t take too long to get past the taste, either.”

From the skyship, the jungle had always looked like a great living thing, all green plants and thriving life. From the ground it didn’t look much different. Was full of life, alright. The only problem was most of that life was trying to bite, eat, or otherwise maim us. I’d always loved nature. As it happened, I loved it just a bit less when I was bottom of its food chain.

As if the komodo hadn’t been enough of a welcome, I knew there were other predators to worry about. Predators whose names mothers would use to scare their children into obedience back in Lekarsos. But the beasts weren’t the only issue—even the plants were hostile. Vines wrapped and tangled, seeming to reach for passing victims, while saw palmetto cropped up every few paces, big waxy fronds blocking any chance of seeing ahead, and their namesake branches itching to tear into poorly-placed shins. And then there were the insects. Driven into a frenzy at the prospect of skin unprotected by thick fur or armored scales, our presence had caused them to swarm and feast, biting us every few steps.

I slapped at a gnat on my neck and my palm came away wet, the remains of the insect smashed in with the blood it’d been drinking from me moments before. I’d always felt bad about killing anything and, as I looked down at the poor, crushed little thing, I felt the regular old guilt. It needed to eat to live, just like I did. Just like... the komodo did. A shudder went through me at the thought.

Something came crashing through the brush at the edge of the clearing and I suddenly realized how unarmed I was. I scooped up a tree branch and raised it high just as Oz pushed through the last patch of foliage.

Oz. Not a predator. Thank the ancestors.

“Give me some good news,” Elpida said to him.

“Nothing much down or upriver. Just more jungle on one side, river on the other. Oh, but a massive pirarucu came up to breathe, a little ways down. Must’ve been long as I am tall.” He had his arms wide, stretched out to show the size of the thing.

“Fords, Oz, fords.” Elpida snapped her fingers at him. “Focus.”

“Right.” He shook the smile from his face. “Ah, didn’t see any good fords. Pretty much the same up and downriver. This crossing’s good as any.”

“Crossing?” Leda stood straight, her breathing noticeably calmer than everyone else. Apparently her athletic looks were well deserved.

“You want us to swim that?” Leda said, jabbing a finger at the sluggish, brown water.

“Unless you’ve a canoe in that pack of yours,” Elpida said, nodding towards the backpack Leda had carried from the wreck of the Stormcrow. Next, she kicked her own bag. “Wasn’t room in mine for one, believe it or not. What about you, Oz?”

“We were supposed to bring canoes?” He looked confused. “No one told me.”

Elpida looked back to Leda and shrugged. “Looks like we’re swimming, then.”

Leda opened her mouth to protest again, but Sergeant Kyriakos silenced her with a look.

“It’s not your place to question the guidemaster.” He turned to face Elpida. “That being said, Leda has a point. I’ve heard stories of the creatures in the water out here. Would it not be safer to follow the river back to the coast?”

“Come now, sergeant. After a run like that you can’t tell me you’re not itching for a refreshing swim?” Senesio said, elbowing him jovially. “Wash some of this mud and blood off, get our clothing back to something resembling respectable. Besides, there’s nothing in that river I can’t handle.”

Alligators, goliath tigerfish, water moccasins. A few things Senesio probably couldn’t handle popped into my head, but there didn’t seem to be much a point in scaring everyone with that information.

Sergeant Kyriakos ignored Senesio anyway, eyes locked on Elpida. “Why not follow the river to the coast?”

Elpida took a swig from her flask. “The river’ll get us back eventually, sure. But the komodo will catch us long before that. When that mouth-on-legs shows up, I think we’ll all be happier on the far side of the river.”

Sergeant Kyriakos hiked a thumb over his shoulder. “It’ll have to follow us through all that first.”

“What, the run?” Oz frowned. “That was to buy time, not lose the big fella. Odds are he’s already following our scent.”

The sergeant swallowed hard. “You’re sure?”

“Never known a predator to abandon an easy meal,” Elpida said. “But who knows, there’s a first time for everything, right? We can stay here and find out, if you’d like.”

“Without the ballistae from the Stormcrow, we’d have a difficult time bringing the brute down, but we could use the treetops to our advantage... ” Senesio began, trailing off as if he was actually considering the idea. Hold up, wait. He was. He actually was.

“No disrespect meant, sergeant, but I’m with the guidemaster,” Theo said, stepping forward.

“Understood,” Sergeant Kyriakos said, then turned to the last member of his unit who hadn’t given an opinion.

“Gabar?”

“So this is a democracy now?” The big man laughed. “Shit, thought I joined the army. But if we’re voting, yeah. I’ll do the river. Could use a bath anyway.”

“I would prefer not to be eaten, all things considered,” Demetrias said.

I nodded in agreement. Crossing the river wasn’t an exciting prospect by any means, but the still-hungry komodo following our scent provided surprising amounts of motivation.

“Fair enough, then.” Sergeant Kyriakos looked at Elpida. “Lead on, guidemaster.”

“Swords, knives, food, and anything else that can’t get wet stays in the air, above your heads. Follow my lead, and we might be able to wade all the way across. If you feel anything nipping at your legs, well... ” She waved the thought away. “You’ll be fine.”