Paragaea (29 page)

“So long as thou cook it,” Spatha said, dropping into a crouch, “whatever meat it is, that is fine with me.”

Leena slept fitfully, if at all, kept awake by the sounds of the mangrove swamps. Strange birds called from the near distance, an endless cacophony of sounds, and in the small hours of the morning a symphony of chattering began to issue from the canopy above them, which in the firelight proved to come from a band of small, lemurlike creatures that hooted and jeered at one another throughout the hours of the night.

She felt as though she had just fallen asleep when she felt herself being shaken forcefully awake. She opened her eyes on the gray predawn light, and saw Balam standing over her, a worried look on his leonine face.

“We've got a problem,” he said, fangs bared. “Several, in fact.”

Leena joined the others standing at the water's edge. The spar of land over which they'd walked the night before to reach their campground was now completely submerged, the tide rising higher as the waves lapped at the trunks of the mangrove trees.

“We're surrounded,” Spatha said, like a soldier reporting battlefront conditions to an officer. “The rising tide has cut off access to the isthmus, and the waterways surrounding us are now too wide to cross without swimming.”

“Our isthmus of yesterday is our island of this morning,” Hieronymus said philosophically.

“I
hate
swimming,” Balam said, snarling.

“I wouldn't worry too much about it,” Kakere said, and pointed to shadows prowling the waterway before them, dimly visible in the low light. The waterways, only a meter across the night before, now spanned three meters and more. “There's more of those…things…
whatever they are. You wouldn't make it more than a few lengths before they started nibbling on you.”

“Okay,” Leena said calmly. “So we can't leave by land, and we can't leave by water.” She glanced around, her gaze taking in all of her companions, looking for consent. When she didn't get it, she went on anyway. “So we just wait it out here, until the tide recedes. Worst-case scenario we could always climb into the trees, right?”

“Except,” Balam said, pointing back towards the center of their new island, “I think they are able to climb, too.” Leena looked the way he indicated, and then glanced back at the jaguar man, horrified. “Remember,” Balam continued, “that I said ‘several' problems.”

Pouring from burrows all around them, which had gone unnoticed in the dark of the previous night, came giant ants the size of overfed hummingbirds, clacking vicious mandibles, driven from their homes by the rising tide.

“Der'mo,” Leena swore, reverting to Russian.

Overhead, the lemur-creatures chattered, hurling abuse down at them, while around their feet swarmed the giant ants, which they fended off with burning brands lit from their campfire. But most of the wood in reach was damp, and only sparked and smoked weakly before extinguishing, so they could not count on the heat of the torches for long.

“We need to think of something soon,” Leena said, waving her torch at the hundreds of ants who crowded at her feet.

“Do you have any suggestions?” Hieronymus asked over his shoulder, warding off the ants with a torch in one hand, swiping off their heads with his saber in the other.

It was near full daylight now, the sun glowing ruddy gold through the branches to the east.

“Not being eaten would be a good start,” Leena said.

At that moment, there came from across the waterway the sound of voices raised, and Leena looked up to see a collection of crocodile men atop enormous flightless birds, who milled on the opposite bank. Before she'd had time to register this unexpected sight, a number of the crocodile men spurred their mounts, who crouched low momentarily and then leapt into the air, propelled across the rising waters by massive legs, their tiny wings used only for balance. The enormous birds landed squarely among the company, beaks snapping.

“I think our odds of that just worsened,” Hieronymus replied, eyeing the bird riders darkly.

Standing more than three meters tall, the enormous birds whipped their vicious, snapping beaks from side to side, trampling the giant ants underfoot, while in their saddles the crocodile men's long snouts split in toothy grins as they eyed the company hungrily.

Balam and Spatha did not wait to exchange words with the interlopers, but sprang immediately into action. Balam leapt high in the air, claws out and fangs bared, tackling one of the crocodile men around his waist and dragging him from his mount, while Spatha drew her gladius and lay about her with its blade, scoring wicked cuts at the arms and legs of the two crocodile men nearest her, taking out hunks of the bird mount's flesh as she went.

Hieronymus drew his saber, and Leena her short sword, but they hung back, watchful, as Benu and Kakere lingered behind them, their attentions still on the giant ants underfoot.

Balam grappled with one of the crocodile men, rolling back and forth across the sandy ground, the crocodile man's teeth gnashing as he bit at Balam's head and hands, Balam's claws cutting red rills into the crocodile man's warty flesh.

Spatha, meanwhile, contended with two of the crocodile men, both scored by her blade, who had climbed from their mounts and now
menaced her with long spears tipped with points of chipped black glass. One of the crocodile men thrust forward with his spear, and Spatha handily batted it to one side with her gladius; but when the other lunged forward shortly after, his own spear tip grazed Spatha's arm, glancing off the bracer covering her forearm, but drawing a wicked line from her elbow up to her shoulder, where it caught on the edge of her cuirass. Spatha swung about, but with the force of the spear thrust throwing her shoulder back, she spun out of true, and her gladius whistled harmlessly through the air, striking nothing. As the first crocodile man stepped forward, though, hands grasping and teeth snapping ferociously, Spatha quickly riposted, swinging her blade backhanded in a wide arc, and opened the crocodile man's belly from side to side.

Spatha turned from the crocodile man who now clutched his belly, endeavoring to hold blood and viscera in, and directed her attention at the other crocodile man, who advanced on her warily, with his glass-tipped spear raised. Balam, only a short distance away, still rolled in the bloodied sand with another of the crocodile men. Throughout the brief melee, another of the crocodile men, larger than any of these, had remained in the saddle, watching the proceedings with interest.

“Why aren't the others attacking?” Leena said to Hieronymus, indicating the half-dozen or so other mounted crocodile men who milled at the far side of the growing waterway. “They could cross the distance as easily as these four, and make short work of us.”

“Has it escaped your notice that Balam and Spatha Sekundus attacked first?” Hieronymus asked, raising an eyebrow.

Before Leena could respond, the air was split by the sound of bellowing laughter as the mounted crocodile man before them rumbled with amusement.

“Stand down!” the laughing crocodile man shouted in accented Sakrian, waving towards his three fellows who faced off against Balam and Spatha. “You, too, outlanders,” the crocodile man went on, an
imperious tone in his gravelly voice. “Belay your attacks. No harm will come to you, if you do no more harm to my Tannim.”

The two crocodile men before Spatha stepped back, the one lowering his spear and the other still clutching his sliced belly, while the one rolling with Balam in the sand scuttled away, to climb to his feet and go stand beside his fellows.

Balam and Spatha, uncertainly, moved to stand beside the others of their company.

“We come not to attack you,” the vicious-looking crocodile man said from atop his mount, “but to rescue you!”

He laughed again, his barrel chest shaking with the booming noise.

“Mount up, Tannim,” he ordered the three crocodile men standing before him. “Nuga, help Cheti into the saddle”—he pointed to the crocodile man holding his belly—“and we'll be away.”

The crocodile man turned to the company, and his snout split in an unsettling expression that vaguely resembled a smile.

“Climb aboard our terror birds, and we shall bear you to safety.” He pointed a talon across the waterway, where more of the mounted crocodile men waited. “When we are safely away from this shrinking sandbar, we'll introduce ourselves more properly. Yes?”

The company looked at one another, warily, and finally Hieronymus shrugged.

“I don't suppose we have much choice,” he said with a faint smile. Then he turned and in a low voice said to Leena, “Out of the frying pan, at least?”

Once they were safely on dry land, introductions were made all around. Hieronymus introduced all of the company in turn, pausing only when attempting to explain how it was that the six of them had come to
travel together. The lead crocodile man greeted them as warmly as one with such a fearsome appearance could manage.

“It is a pleasure to meet you all,” he said, “and allow me to welcome you to the lands of the Tannim. We were on a hunting expedition, to bring fresh meat home to our township for a celebration this evening, when we chanced to see your distress across the way. It is not uncommon that travelers and wayfarers will find themselves trapped by the rising or the falling of the Parousian tides, which seem often to have a mind of their own.”

“Falling tides?” Leena asked, confused. “How could one be trapped by receding water?”

“If you lived in the water,” Kakere said at her side, “you could well be trapped on a sandbar as the water beneath you rushed out unexpectedly to sea.”

“Just so, Ichthyandaro,” the leader of the Tannim said, dipping his long snout in a show of respect. “It is not uncommon to find sea-dwellers cast up on the shores of the swamps as the tide rolls out, and from time to time, we Tannim make a nice meal of them.”

The Tannim behind their leader snickered from atop their mounts, but if Kakere took offense at the comment, his reaction was hidden beneath the folds of his robes.

“In any event, I am Sebek, and these here with me are the elite riders of the terror birds, handpicked from my township to join me on this hunt.”

The company looked around them uneasily, as on their mounts the ferocious-looking Tannim towered full meters above them.

“You look stricken, my friends,” Sebek said, chuckling. “You act as though you have never seen a Tannim before.” He turned to Balam, waving his arm expansively. “Come, my metaman brother, surely you are familiar with your crocodile cousins?”

“I know of your people, Sebek,” Balam said guardedly, “but I have never met one of the Tannim in person.”

“I visited the townships of the Tannim,” Benu said, raising his hand, “if that's of any assistance. But that was many centuries ago, and then only briefly.”

“Well,” Sebek said, clapping his hands. “Whatever your feelings at our initial meeting, know that we Tannim are no threat to you. We are always glad to see outlanders, as our remote townships so seldom get visitors. And I was so impressed by the martial displays of your Sinaa and his woman on the sandbar that I would like to welcome you to our township as honored guests at our fete this very evening.”

“I am
no
one's woman,” Spatha said, glowering beneath her knitted brows.

“Charming,” Sebek said, teeth bared in a crocodilian smile.

The morning journey through the mangrove swamp was almost like a strange, fevered dream. Each of the company rode pillion behind one of the Tannim, atop the massive terror birds. With their long necks and powerful legs, the birds were able to cover distance with an alarming speed, even over such difficult and irregular terrain as that found in the mangrove swamp. The long strides of the terror birds produced a kind of rocking motion that lulled the riders into a torpor, but when combined with the heat of the morning and the piquant smell of the fresh kill strapped before each rider's saddle, the result was a kind of unsettling miasma that clouded the thoughts and left one feeling uneasy.

They came upon the Tannim township where the mangrove swamp met the dry land of the coastal plains. It was a small village of low, round-topped structures, none standing more than four or five meters tall, arranged in a semicircular arc around a central clearing, in which the preparations for the night's festivities were already under way. The townspeople were surprised to see their hunters arrive with visitors as
well as fresh meat, but not alarmed, and they welcomed the company with open arms.

Once they had recovered from the torpor of their morning ride, the company quickly found their footing, and soon discovered that their hosts were not nearly so alarming as their ferocious mien might suggest. For all their terrifying appearance, they were a boisterous, affable people, and the company was quickly put at their ease. Soon even Spatha was lounging in the plaza, sipping on fermented fruit juices and laughing at the hunting stories of their Tannim hosts. Kakere, for his part, eyed the spirits with obvious thirst, but managed to forbear.

Leena had cause to doubt their good fortune. There had been, in her experiences traveling across the face of Paragaea, no unalloyed joys, and she found that she invariably expected some adversity to follow close on the heels of any fortuitous turn. With the fall of night, though, the fete began, and still the sky had not fallen in on them, and Leena began to relax. Perhaps this night would be an exception to the rule, and they would pass a few relaxing hours in the company of these pleasant folks, and then continue on to their goal rested and rejuvenated.

Then, when the main course had been served and consumed—some kind of large river rodent, similar to a capybara—Sebek called for the night's entertainment to be brought forth, and a pair of Tannim rushed into the darkness, to return a short while later with a wheeled platform, on which rested a dolphin. Its fins and flukes were cropped back, and its back was covered in crisscrossed white scar tissue, and only the buckets of water its handlers dumped onto it from time to time kept it from dehydrating completely.

The dolphin, it transpired, had been trained to perform tricks on command. And so, in response to orders from its handlers, the dolphin rose up on its belly, or jabbed its snout comically in the air in a mock duel with one of its handlers, or else barked out a rough semblance to a popular Tannim folk tune through its blowhole. The performance
lasted for the better part of an hour, while the dolphin quietly whimpered between each trick, moaning piteously.

The Tannim clattered their teeth—their form of applause—uproariously at every cavorting move of the dolphin, while the company looked on somewhat uncomfortably, whispering to one another behind their hands, except for Kakere, who sat in stock silence, eyes smoldering behind the folds of his damp robes.