TST (52 page)

The cleric screwed his handsome face up in disgust. “Convert her into what?”

“Ah c’mon, she has lovely eyes and a beautiful pearly white tooth.”

Maude turned to Tarth while the other two members of her little adventuring group were squabbling. “What do you think of our guide, Tarth?”

“In a savage land like this his kind will be the one most likely to see us through it alive, if he does not kill us himself,” Tarth replied, more coherent than usual.

“He called you cousin. Are you related?”

Tarth looked at Maude as if she had asked if he were kin to demons. “No civilized elf would ever dare be said to be related to their kind. My people have more in common with the sea elves than Kar’Rok’s primitive kind. They are brutal savages lacking in nobility, decency, and often literacy. No, his calling me cousin was his way to insult me,” Tarth informed Maude sourly.

Having gotten most of their supplies gathered the day before, Maude and her band spent the next day exploring the city and finding things to occupy their time while they waited for the day to turn.

They toured a zoo that had a menagerie of animals the likes of which they had never seen. Killer giant reptiles like the one that Tarth saw stuffed at the trading post, ten foot tall apes with huge powerful arms, and a massive hunting cat with fangs the size of daggers and weighing over a thousand pounds were just a few of the creatures on display.

A dark-skinned woman juggled torches and blew fire over the heads of the watching crowd and a man played a flute while a venomous serpent swayed in rhythm to the music.

They fo
und a portion of the city where the ramshackle homes and businesses were kept at bay by a large park and sturdy stone wall. Past the wall were opulent homes of the city’s elite, built from marble and sporting fluted columns supporting massive porticos and terraces.

Guards patrolled the streets and walls of the wealthy citizens’ part of the city. As the sun began its retreat behind the dense foliage of the jungle beyond Borne’s Landing, Maude’s Marauders returned to the inn to sleep away the rest of the night so they would wake well rested for their journey.

The grey haze of the following morning found Maude and her group approaching the west side of town. In the slowly dissipating early morning mists that always seemed to cover the ground, they saw Kar’Rok waiting for them just before the gates. His garb was not much different from what he had worn the night he met them at the inn except for the steel greaves and vambraces he wore on his arms and legs. Over his reptile scale vest, he wore a front and back plate of what looked to be dark grey bones held tightly together by steel wire. He carried a recurve bow made of a dark wood with composite strips of the same grey bone-looking material. Along with a quiver packed with long, lethal arrows, he gripped a staff with what appeared to be double edged broadsword blades, each about eighteen inches long, affixed to each end of the staff.

“Do you have everything you need?” he asked as the party approached wearing packs and leading a small but sturdy-looking burro laden with the bulk of their food, water, and equipment.

“Yes, we have everything,” Maude replied.

“No, you do not. It is impossible to have everything you need, for the jungle is full of more surprises than anyone can possibly prepare for. You can only hope that what you have will be sufficient to keep you alive. Let us depart.”

“Well if he ain’t mister sunshine,” Borik whispered to Malek as they followed the elf through the gates built into the massive wooden wall that kept the jungle’s predators at bay.

As they followed the westward road out of town, they saw groups of men and guards just starting their morning work on hacking the ever-encroaching forest further away from the city wall. Men, many of them apparently prisoners given the shackles around their ankles, chopped away at thick-stalked plants and young trees with wide rounded blades about two feet long while guards watched with loaded heavy crossbows, swords, and spears.

“How often do they have to clear away the forest growth from the walls?” Maude asked their guide.

Kar’Rok looked as though he was going to ignore the pointless question but gave in to her inquiry. “Constantly. Two groups start out from the gate and work towards each end of the wall. It takes about two weeks. By the time they finish, they must start back at the gates and repeat the process. If they work quickly the labor bosses give them a day off.”

“The jungle grows back in only two weeks?” Maude asked, amazed at such growth.

Kar’Rok nodded. “There are plants and trees within the jungle that can grow a foot or more in a little over a day given optimal conditions.”

It took less than an hour for the road, which was used mainly by foresters to bring in the heavy logs used for construction, to dwindle to little more than a path. Less than an hour after that, any sign of a trail disappeared completely. Kar’Rok pulled one of the wide blades like the ones used by the workers from a sheath on his hip and began hacking at the foliage that obstructed their passage and view ahead.  If not for Kar’Rok blazing a trail with his machete, the sea of dark green, broad-bladed leaves and plant stalks would have completely enveloped them.

Even the ever-fearless Maude was unnerved by the realization that one of those massive, thousand-pound cats could be lurking only a few feet off the trail and she would never know it was there until it made a meal out of her. So unsettled by her inability to see past the length of her arm, she actually breathed a heavy sigh of relief when the thick green sea of vegetation opened up some as they entered the hardwood forest.

The trees had thick, rippling, grey-green trunks that supported a dense canopy hundreds of feet overhead. The treetops were so thick that the jungle was thrown into a perpetual twilight. She figured it was this limited light that caused the thinning of the previously near impenetrable undergrowth.

The jungle floor was still far from barren however. Massive ferns and flowering plants covered the ground but at least they could now see a score of yards ahead of them and above much of it. The jungle was a chaotic symphony of sound. Wind blew through the treetops overhead, climbing creatures jumped from branch to branch, howling warnings and mating calls to their brethren, a huge roar echoed from some enormous animal far in the distance.

Tarth was gazing at a highly fragrant flowering bush from which sprouted the deepest red blooms and was just about to pluck one of the beautiful flowers for himself.

The unexpected sound of Kar’Rok’s voice stopped the slender elf. “Do not touch that, cousin. That is called a blood rose. Its thorns are hollow and will inject a poison that will paralyze you for hours.”

“Why would a plant grow such a method of protection?” Malek asked as Tarth quickly snatched his hand away and tucked into the folds of his robes.

“It is not a protection method but one of feeding. As you lie helpless as its base, one of the jungle’s many predators or scavengers come and tears your body to shreds while you are still alive, feeling everything but unable to so much as scream. The blood rose sends tendrils up through the earth and feeds off the blood that flows from your dying body.”

The party gave an involuntary shudder as they resumed their march through the jungle, as wary now of the plant life as they were the many carnivorous animals that inhabited this untamed frontier.

An hour later, Kar’Rok called a halt. “We will camp here for the night.”

“Already? We have only been traveling a little over seven hours. There must be three hours or more before the sun sets,” Maude observed.

The elven guide turned his cold stare at Maude. “Darkness comes quickly in the jungle. With your human eyes, it would be foolhardy to continue any further today. Try to find some dry wood for a fire. It is best to keep one burning through the night.”

The adventurers were glad to drop their gear, and once a fire was going, stripped out of their armor. The padding and clothing beneath the steel was soaked with sweat. They hung the doublets and sodden clothing near the fire to dry.

“Those of you that wear the metal armor need to drink more water than you may be accustomed to from now on. I was negligent in not advising this before. Drink as much as you can now and continue to drink throughout the day or your body will fail you.”

They all did as the elf instructed and Maude turned to Kar’Rok. “I’ve been meaning to ask you. What is your armor made of?”

Kar’Rok turned a chunk of unknown flesh speared on a small stick over the fire. “It is made out of the rib and finger bones of the fleshreaver. It is a bipedal reptile as tall as a man and uses the claws on its long hind legs to disembowel its prey. They are swift, very intelligent, and their bones are nearly as strong as iron but incredibly light.”

“Do your people hunt them then?”

“It is a symbol of pride and prowess to the people of the jungle. A young warrior who kills one during his rite of manhood makes his own armor out of the bones of his kill,” the wood elf answered with pride.

“Do you live in Borne’s Landing?” Maude inquired.

Kar’Rok looked askance at the large human woman. “I could never live in an established city, especially a human one. I live in the nearby jungle where only a few can find me when I am needed.”

“Do your people live near Borne’s Landing as well?”

“Once, but they moved deeper within the jungle when humans began arriving. The sea holds little for us so they deemed it unnecessary to engage in conflict. The humans are fortunate for that.”

“So you do not live with your people then?”

“No,” came Kar’Rok’s clipped answer.

“Why did you leave them?”

“It is personal,” the elf replied curtly then turned away leaving no doubt that the conversation was over.

Maude got up and sat next to Borik.

“I’ve never seen you so chatty before, Maude,” Borik commented, raising one bushy eyebrow.

Maude narrowed her eyes at the dwarf’s insinuation. “I thought it would be important to learn more about this jungle we are traveling through.”

“Oh right, the jungle. I can see how knowing where he lives and why he left his people and such could be vitally important to our mission.”

“We should know about the person that we have entrusted our mission and possibly our lives to!” Maude hissed in aggravation.

Borik nodded his head enthusiastically. “Oh I agree, Maude. It’s just too bad he cut you off before you could ask him how he got such big muscles and just how much of his body was covered with them tattoos.”

The dwarf’s laughter was cut short as Maude knocked him backwards off the log they sat on with a vicious backhanded blow. The crushing strike caught Borik in the chest and sent him sprawling to the dirt with just his booted feet sticking up over the top of the log. Maude jumped up and stalked over to the tarp they had strung between the trees to provide shelter in case of rain while Borik’s snickering sounded behind her as she went to bed.

They were fortunate to have erected the shelters as the pounding rain found its way through the dense canopy overhead that night. Fortunately, they had brought in the clothes they had hung near the fire. It took only minutes for the rain to inundate the jungle floor and extinguish their fire. When morning came, the rainfall turned to a thick, ground-covering mist just as they had seen the morning they left Borne’s Landing.

It did not take long for the hot sun to burn away the morning fog and it once more became hot and humid. Following Kar’Rok’s advice, they drank plenty of water to keep from becoming dehydrated as sweat streamed out of every pore in an attempt to cool their armor-laden bodies. Maude thought for a moment that it might be best to go without the hot heavy armor but thought better of it when she recalled their guide’s description of the fleshreavers that stalked the jungle.

The air became thick with the scent of decaying meat. Maude and her group looked around for the carrion that must be the source. What they found however was a massive plant with a single bell-shaped flower nearly as wide as a man was tall. Borik peered at the thick liquid inside and took a sniff.