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45 - Not A Good Death
* * *
Senesio
“Well, we must go after him, of course,” I said, then burst into motion. “Come now, the prisoner is escaping!” I wrestled with the canoe I’d ridden to shore, grabbing it by one side, then flipping it right side up. Water sloshed out, spilling into the mud.
“Eh, let him go,” Gabar said with a dismissive wave.
Small-minded as always. I fought not to let a frown slip on to my face. You’re not properly armed without a smile, I reminded myself. It’s the best weapon against friends and enemies alike.
“It’s not like the poor sap will get far before something eats him anyway,” Gabar continued.
“No. He can’t be allowed to reach the Bospurian camp before us.” Elpida winced as she rose, then strode to the water’s edge. Despite what was likely a broken rib, her eyes were locked on the distant shore. “We go after him.”
Finally, someone that spoke sense. She was a crotchety old woman to be sure, but she understood what had to be done. If we were going to have any chance of slipping into the Bospurian camp—if I was going to have any chance of stealing a skyship—we had to catch Agostos. An annoying delay, but a necessary one.
“Do you expect us to just wander around in the dark?” Maritza said, then cursed. For a lifelong sailor, she seemed awfully agitated about our quick dip in the river.
“There were terror birds on shore earlier,” Demetrias said, turning to eye the shadow-filled wall of foliage at their backs. “We’ll be easy pickings for them in the dark.”
“I agree with Demetrias,” Theo said, wringing water from her shirt. “The terror birds are just as likely to get Agostos as they are us. Why not let nature... take its course?”
“We don’t have time for this,” Elpida snapped. She dug our two mostly-dry bows and quivers from the canoe and slung one over her shoulder. “Take this.” She tossed the second bow and I snatched it from the air.
“Senesio, you’re with me. We’ll track down the prisoner,” Elpida said as she waded into the river. “Everyone else, get the canoes back together and dry out what supplies you can. With any luck, not all of the food is ruined.”
I looked at the guidemaster, waist deep in the river now, then over to the canoe I’d brought ashore.
“Not that I don’t enjoy a good swim, but why don’t we take the canoe?”
“You see any paddles?” Elpida grunted over her shoulder.
Hm. She’d a point there. They must’ve spilled into the river with everything else that hadn’t been tied down.
“See if you can’t carve out some makeshift paddles too, while we’re gone,” Elpida said, up to her neck in the water now. She leaned forward, then kicked into a swim, wincing with each stroke.
“How long do we wait for you to come back?” Theo shouted after her.
“Until we do.”
“And if you don’t?”
Elpida paused, turning slightly to glare back at the shore. “I guess that’s up to y’all to figure out.”
With that, she turned and swam toward the far shore.
The look on Theo’s face said she was far from happy with that answer, but I didn’t have time to worry about other people’s feelings. I’d a prisoner to catch, then a skyship or two to steal.
“On we go then. Suni, keep an eye out,” I said, turning toward her. Except, she wasn’t there. She was in the river.
“I’m coming too,” she said, then ducked under and kicked away.
I cursed, then hurried after her.
* * *
We found Agostos just before dawn. It was hard not to, considering the noise. A terror bird had treed the man and was making an almighty racket as it squawked and growled, trying to jump up to him.
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“These things travel in flocks, right?” I asked from our hiding spot in the brush. I scanned the nearby trees and palm fronds as I whispered, searching for any sign of movement. Surely there were more of the birds nearby. Two or three I could take, but more than that would make things interesting. I wasn’t looking to repeat the events of Clearwater Outpost.
“The bird’s an adolescent,” Suni said, frowning and leaning forward so far she was nearly out of our hiding spot. “At least, I think it is. Look at the coloring on the feathers.”
And she was right. Now that I thought about it, they were different. Brown with white flecks on the tips, and altogether fuzzier-looking than those of the birds at the outpost.
“You’re right,” Elpida said. “It is an adolescent. A young male, probably. Once they outgrow their mother’s care, they’re on their own. Either they establish a new flock or become drifters.”
Well, clearly I’d failed to do my required reading before this expedition. But I was Senesio Suleiman Nicolaou. I didn’t do required reading. I didn’t do research. My skill with a blade, charisma, and legendary good looks were all I needed. In this case, more of the former if I was going to fight the bird, but hey, it didn’t hurt to look good in the process.
I slid my sword from its sheath.
“I can take one overgrown chicken.”
“We don’t even need to do that,” Elpida said. “Just follow my lead.” And with that, she burst from the foliage, waving her arms in the air and screaming at the top of her lungs.
I watched for a fraction of a moment, then shrugged and followed suit.
Suni joined us.
“Gahhharh!”
The bird turned to look at us three screaming, apparently insane humans, then let out one frightened squawk and sprinted into the brush.
“And don’t come back!” Suni shouted, chasing the bird an extra few steps, before stopping and chuckling to herself.
Elpida took a moment to catch her breath, one hand over her injured rib. I turned toward the treed prisoner. He was clutching a branch halfway up the tree, the rope that’d bound his wrists now gone.
“Alright, you’ve had your fun. I can never fault a daring escape attempt, but we’ve caught you. The rules of good manners dictate you should come down now.”
Agostos only clutched the branch tighter and shook his head. He’d a bruise or two on his face, and his hands and forearms were a mess of inflamed, red scratches. From sprinting through the jungle at night, then scrambling up a tree, no doubt.
“Don’t be like that,” I said. “There’s no reason we can’t be civil about this.”
Beneath the branch Agostos was clinging to there was a thick patch of brush. Not saw palmetto or thin, rough-barked pine trees like I’d grown used to seeing in the Far Wild, but thick, spongy-looking ferns. They’d make for a nice, soft landing. A breeze passed through and I caught the faint scent of something sickly sweet. Just some plant, probably.
“Stop wasting our time and get down here,” Elpida growled. She raised her bow, then nocked an arrow to its string. “No one’s coming to save you.”
Even as she spoke, though, a shadow slipped over the canopy. The weak light of dawn was blocked out by a dense, roughly rectangular shape, flying not a hundred paces to the east.
A skyship. Well that was inconvenient. Apparently, Agostos had seen it too.
“Help!” he shouted, waving a hand up at the ship. “Help! I’m down here!”
“No, no, no!” I shouted back. “None of that!”
Elpida’s only response was the thrum of her bowstring.
The arrow caught Agostos in the stomach and drove the air from his lungs.
“Umph.”
He tipped backward, then fell from the tree and landed in the thick patch of brush. Or, I had expected him to land in the brush. Instead, he fell through it.
“What?” I frowned at the hole the man had punched through the ferns.
As I looked closer, though, I realized they weren’t ferns at all. Or not normal ferns, at least. Moving forward a pace, I could see they were all connected, almost like a great web of vines. And then they moved.
“Oh. That’s not good,” Suni said as a frown crawled over her face. “It’s a swallowing plant.”
The plant was nestled in a sinkhole. The pit was maybe ten paces deep, give or take. Great big leaves, each as broad as the side of a house, covered the walls of the pit. And, at its bottom, lay Agostos, half-submerged in a thick, viscous liquid. The plant’s digestive fluid.
Groaning, Agostos tried to lift himself up. The sickly-sweet smelling liquid clung to him, stretching as he pulled, then snapping him back down into the acidic goop.
He groaned, but the sound was more a gurgle than anything, the thick fluid caught in his mouth and throat. Probably it burned like hell. There weren’t many things that made me shudder, but this was one of them.
“Ancestors above,” Suni said. “Poor man.”
“He would’ve brought that skyship down on us.” Elpida’s eyes were on the canopy. The rectangular silhouette of the ship’s hull was moving away now, apparently not having heard Agostos’ cries. She looked back down at our one-time prisoner, then turned to leave. “He chose his fate. Let’s go. It’s a long hike back to the river, and now we have to find the Bospurian camp on our own.”
I had wished an untimely end or two on my enemies—and delivered more than a few of them myself—but this? Digested alive over a period of days? This was not a good death.
“Come on,” Elpida insisted again. “If he’s lucky he’ll suffocate soon. There’s nothing we can do now.”
As I watched, the leaves of the swallowing plant lifted from the walls of the pit and folded inward.
Agostos’ garbled scream rose up from the pit as he lifted his head and fought against the acidic mucus dissolving him.
“You’re not going to do anything?” Suni snapped at me. I made to shrug back but she was already in motion, snatching the bow from my shoulder and an arrow with it. She nocked it, smooth as a practiced ranger, and took aim.
The bowstring thrummed and the arrow struck Agostos in the shoulder.
“Blast.”
She reached out for another arrow and I offered up the quiver now, intrigued. Suni loosed again. This time it caught Agostos in the neck. He gasped as it hit, then let out a long, wheezing breath and collapsed face down.
Suni let out her own long breath, then shook her head.
“No one deserves that death,” she said, then tossed the bow back to me and strode past. As she left, the leaves of the swallowing plant settled in place, smothering Agostos’ now still form.