Paragaea (12 page)

While Hieronymus grappled hand to hand with Bent Nose, and Balam took on the Raiders still crowded back in the passageway, Leena turned her attentions to the three guards who had stood watch over them these last hours. They had been standing on their feet without rest or respite for much of the day, and their energy must have started to flag as time wore on.

Leena plowed into the first of the guards, knocking his crossbow unfired from his hands and sending him stumbling back into the nearest of the other two. The guards went down in a confusion of arms and legs, while Leena managed to keep her feet below her, though her head rung with the impact.

The third guard, to her good fortune, did not carry a crossbow but only a short club. Precisely the thing her military instructors had trained her to defend against. At the time, she'd harbored bitter thoughts about the uselessness of such training, sure that no one would ever attack her with a two-foot length of wood. As the guard swung the club down at her overhand, Leena reacted instinctively, and silently asked forgiveness of every drill instructor she'd cursed in her thoughts. She sidestepped, grabbed the guard's elbow, and then pinioned his arm against his side. Then, sliding her leg out and shifting the guard's weight forward, she succeeded in flipping him head first over her hip, sending him crashing into the unforgiving deckplates.

By the time she looked up, Hieronymus had knocked Bent Nose unconscious, and Balam was entertaining himself with the Raiders who remained standing in the corner of the observation lounge.

“Quickly,” Leena shouted. “It won't take long before the rest of them come to investigate.”

Hieronymus nodded a quick reply, and then bolted towards the passageway. Balam held off the rest of the Raiders, who tried to surge out of the observation lounge, while Hieronymus went aft and retrieved their arms from the closet where Bent Nose had stowed them earlier, along with their packs from their quarters and a length of stout line. His Mauser
tucked into his belt, and his cavalry saber in hand, Hieronymus stood a little straighter. Leena was forced to admit that, with her short sword in one hand and her Makarov in the other, she too felt that she stood a little taller.

With Vorin supported on Leena's arm, Balam in the lead, and Hieronymus bringing up the rear, the company made their way through the forward passageway, their packs slung on their backs. They encountered two more Raiders along the way. The first went down under Balam's claws, the second with one of Leena's bullets in his chest.

At length, they reached the open-air deck. Hieronymus unslung the coil of line from his shoulder, and went to work securing one end to the heavy, wrought-iron railing of the platform.

Balam kept his eyes on the steps leading down from the passageway, while Vorin stood gripping the leather case tightly in his arms. Leena walked to the railing and looked down. The ground was much closer than it should have been, the tops of the trees only bare meters below the gondolas.

“Chto?” Leena muttered, and then looked up to the envelope overhead.

The entry point of her errant shot had widened from a single puncture to a long fissure that ran at least a meter long. The surface of the
Rukh
's envelope looked shrunken and withered, like the skin of an old prune. The ship was losing pressure far faster than she'd anticipated.

“Bozhe moj,” Leena swore. She wheeled to face the other three. “We must hurry!”

Hieronymus nodded a silent reply, and tested the heft of the line.

“We are ready,” he shouted back. “Vorin! You are first!”

The Laxarian businessman hung back, hesitant, standing on his tiptoes to peer over the platform's edge.

“Now, damn your eyes, or we'll leave you to
their
tender mercies!” Hieronymus snapped, his expression hard.

The businessman took a heavy breath, and then crossed the platform to Hieronymus's side. Leena stepped forward, and together she and Hieronymus helped Vorin to swing one leg over the railing.

“Lower yourself with care and speed,” Leena said. “You may end up bruised and scraped, but at least you'll keep both your hands.”

Vorin glanced from Leena to Hieronymus, confused. It was only then that the two realized he'd not understood a word of the English they'd spoken.

Leena pointed down towards the ground, and said the only word of Sakrian that came to mind. “Uksalke.”

Safe.

Vorin nodded, reluctantly, and swung his other leg over the railing. He crested the railing, his hands fastened tight on the stout rope. Vorin paused, glancing with terrified eyes at the treetops whistling by just beneath him, and back up at Leena and the others waiting to follow. A Raider with a crossbow appeared at the top of the steps from the passageway, and before Balam could react the bowstring snapped and the bolt had thudded into Vorin's shoulder.

Vorin opened his eyes wide, his mouth a perfect circle of shock, and then he fell over backwards into open space as his hands lost their strength, like a tall tree felled by a lumberjack, and was gone.

With a roar, Balam took hold of the Raider before he was able to reload his crossbow. Carrying him overhead, the jaguar man crossed the platform to the railing, and then unceremoniously threw the Raider overboard, his screams torn away by the high winds.

“Bastard,” Hieronymus spat.

More Raiders appeared at the top of the steps, and from the direction of the Rim Mountains Leena could see an advance party of pterosaur-riding Sky Raiders come out to escort them in.

“I think we should be going,” Balam said, laying his clawed hands on the railing and looking over.

“You first, you great pillock,” Hieronymus said darkly. “So far as we're concerned, I think our journey is completed, successfully or no. Let's away before the bill comes due.”

Balam snarled, and then vaulted over the railing, catching the rope
only after dropping nearly a meter in midair. He slid down, the rope held loosely between his hands and feet, and soon disappeared beyond the green foliage below.

“Now you, little sister,” Hieronymus said, moving between Leena and the Raiders advancing from the passageway.

Leena wanted to object, but a quick glance at the Raiders approaching on pterosaur-back was enough to convince her the odds were not in their favor. Tucking her short sword in her belt, and securing the Makarov in its holster, she slipped over the railing and began to descend hand over hand towards the forest below. The tree-tops rose up to meet her faster than she was climbing down. The airship had only seconds before it crashed into the trees.

The branches and trunks lashed at her, raising welts and cuts on her face and arms, stinging her eyes, filling her mouth with pine needles. She felt the line tug away hard in her hands, and she lost her grip, falling down three or more meters to the ground. She landed with a sickening thud that drove all the air from her lungs and left her dazed and unable to move on a bed of fine fallen needles, the sunlight filtering green through the canopy of trees above.

From overhead came a horrific sound, of metal screeching against metal, of trunks and branches snapping like dry bones, and Leena knew the
Rukh
was no more. But what had become of her two companions?

Through the sort of small miracle that seemed strangely common on Paragaea, neither Balam nor Leena was seriously injured in their descent, and they were able to locate one another with relative ease. They searched the surrounding area for Hieronymus, but by nearly nightfall they'd not yet found sign of him. Above the treetops, the pterosaurs of the Sky Raiders wheeled and turned, intent on revenge.

Leena and Balam were nearly set to break off their search, giving up their companion for lost, when a shadow split from the darkness surrounding them, and Hieronymus Bonaventure stood before them again.

“Don't you two have anything better to do than stand around in the dark?” Hieronymus said, walking past them and continuing towards the east. His clothes were torn to tatters, caked with dirt and stained green.

Leena and Balam glanced at one another, and then hurried to follow after him.

“We failed in our commission,” Hieronymus said, without a word of explanation. “Vorin hired us to protect him, and his body now lies scattered some miles away in this forest, possibly lost forever.”

“To be fair,” Balam said, in a dark humor, “Vorin hired us to ensure that no one removed the case from his wrist.” He paused, and then added with a mournful chuckle, “That, at least, we accomplished.”

Hero shot him a black look, and kept walking.

“What happened?” Leena asked, exasperated. “How did you escape?”

“Well,” Hieronymus answered, “once you'd shimmied down the line, the platform had dipped too near the trees for me to safely descend, and I had the remaining handful of Raiders to contend with.”

“And the escort flying in from the west,” Leena added.

“Did I? I don't think I noticed them. In any case, my sword was quick enough to keep the Raiders off me, but not enough to give me room to breathe, so in the end I had to wait until the
Rukh
was about to crash into the forest's canopy, and then I just jumped overboard onto a tree. It was touch and go, but I managed it, and climbed down to safety without breaking any important bones. Of the passengers and crew, I know nothing.”

Leena gaped, and looked over to Balam, who only treated her with a knowing and weary smile.

“You mean that you leapt from a crashing airship and caught hold of a tree on the way down?” she asked, disbelieving.

“Yes,” Hieronymus answered impatiently. “I said I didn't like heights. That doesn't mean I'm going to curl into a ball and whimper. Now come along, both of you. We're still bound for Lisbia in the north, and thanks to these damnable dragon-riders we're so far west that we've nearly twice as far to travel. Whatever Vorin carried, I damn well hope it was worth it to him.”

Leena glanced back towards the Rim Mountains, hidden by the thick forests, and the hideaway of the Sky Raiders beyond.

“There are those who perhaps should not choose to travel. Vorin seemed the sort to be happier in his own home than he ever could be anywhere else.”

“And there are those of us whose homes are denied us,” Hieronymus answered, thoughtful. “So let's get to Lisbia, and see what we can do about that, too.”

Leena took a deep breath, and sighed. She followed Hieronymus towards the east, Balam at her heels. In the forests behind them were strewn the remains of the Cloud Cutter
Rukh
, and they had long kilometers ahead before they slept.

Hieronymus, Leena, and Balam made their way through the rain forest of Altrusia. They headed roughly east, trending north, making for Lisbia, though it was now farther from them than ever before. And as far distant as they were, that the going was so slow and ponderous was all the more noisome. Leena had thought that the trees of the Western Jungle into the midst of which the Vostok 7 module had crashed were enormous, but compared to the towering giants of the Altrusian rain forest they were little more than scrub and bush.

There was very little light on the ground level. The canopy of the top branches of the massive trees, dozens of meters off the ground, blocked out virtually all sunlight, so that even at midday the trio found themselves in a gloomy, twilight world. Birds called from overhead, raucous, near-deafening calls, and monkeys chattered and hooted from the lower branches. Strange predators prowled the dark underbrush, just out of sight, rumbling low.

Some of the trees were so large that their diameter was wider than Balam was tall. Others were so encased in constricting vines, each as wide as a man's leg, that no sign of the tree itself could be seen.

Having little else to do but walk, Leena insisted that Hieronymus and Balam drill her on the Sakrian dialect. She'd very nearly come to a bad end on the
Rukh
because she could not communicate effectively with Vorin, and since she could not reasonably expect all the sentient beings of Paragaea to learn English—or, better yet, Russian, though she longed to hear again her native tongue—she would have to learn the lingua franca.

So, as they walked, Hieronymus and Balam would point out items that they passed, asking Leena to repeat the name for each in Sakrian. After the first day of traveling, Leena had said the words “barad” and “sedet” and “kenet”—or
tree
and
plant
and
rock
—more times than she could count; and while she sorely wished that she'd had occasion to say “kones”—
sky
—they'd had no hint of blue above them since the
Rukh
went down.

Several days into the Altrusian forest, they came upon a small dinosaur lying at the top of a slight rise, its brains dashed out. It was no bigger than a large dog, with small grasping hands and a long neck, and from its relatively diminutive size and its physiology, Leena assumed it was some sort of plant eater. It was laid out on the forest floor, arms and legs splayed, neck stretched out before it, pointing downwards on the slight slope. But where the head should have been, the neck instead flattened out and terminated in a large, spreading pool of red and gray gore, dotted with tiny flakes of bone fragments. Otherwise, the body was untouched.

The company was immediately put on the defensive. From the looks of the red ruin that had once been the dinosaur's head, they could see the kill was very fresh. It didn't look like the work of another animal. A predator would not have left a kill uneaten, if it could
somehow contrive to demolish its prey's skull in this fashion; moreover, the trees were too closely placed for an animal large enough to crush the dinosaur's head underfoot to pass by, and there was no sign that a beast of sufficient size to cause the damage had come this way.

Without warning, they heard a crashing, branches snapping, followed quickly by a sudden thunderous thud from a few meters away, as though a cannonball had been fired directly at the ground. Leaving the ruined form of the dinosaur behind, they rushed towards the sound. Lying in a slight cavity in the leafy mold underfoot was a large, spherical shape, the size of a cannonball but made of wood or some other type of vegetable matter.

“Another airship?” Leena said, looking up with trepidation. “Some kind of bombardment?”

“No airship could possibly detect our presence, or that of any other target,” Hieronymus said, shaking his head. “Not this far beneath the thick canopy overhead.”

Balam prodded the round object with an outstretched claw, and then straightened up, bristling. “It is a seedpod.”

Hieronymus and Leena looked up at the towering treetops overhead.

“Another like it must have fallen from the tree back there,” Hieronymus said, jerking a thumb over his shoulder, “and struck the dinosaur. Because of the slight rise, the seedpod must have rolled downhill and out of sight by the time we arrived.”

From a short distance off came the sound of more crashing, more branches snapping and breaking, and the thunderous sound of another seedpod cannoning into the ground.

Leena shivered, her hands tightening into fists. “I don't want to be beneath the next one of those to fall.”

“I agree,” Hieronymus said hurriedly, as Balam nodded his assent.

Doubling their speed, they hurried their way through the forest, heading always north and east, Lisbia somewhere in the far, unthinkable distance.

A week further on, having luckily moved out of the zone of the seeding giants into another region of the forest, Leena's command of Sakrian language improving by leaps and bounds, they finally came to the edge of the twilit world.

The company approached a break in the rain forest, clear sky visible overhead, and the tallest trees in the near vicinity a much more manageable height, no more than a dozen meters. Leena luxuriated in the warm sunlight, glad to leave behind the twilight, if only for a short while.

After walking between the copses of trees for the better part of an hour, through the sun-dappled clearings, they came upon a small stream, a tributary of one of the greater rivers that divided the Altrusian forests. When fording the stream, Leena was surprised to discover that it was paved, the streambed lined with ancient cobblestones.

“What culture would have paved such a thing?” Leena asked, pointing out the neatly fitted stones to Hieronymus and Balam. “And for what purpose?”

“Paragaea is a much more ancient world than Earth,” Hieronymus reminded her, regarding the paved stream. “And its landscape is littered with things of unbelievable antiquity, whose origins no man can guess. What is more, the very ground beneath our feet often holds hidden secrets: the ruins of civilizations, peoples, and cities long forgotten.” Hieronymus looked up and down the course of the stream, rubbing his hands together thoughtfully. “I doubt there is any untrammeled wilderness on the face of Paragaea. Every stretch of jungle and forest is just what the wilderness has been able to reclaim from civilization.”

“The struggle is not yet through.” Balam pointed ahead, to the far side of the narrow stream. “It would appear the wilderness has not yet swallowed whole whatever culture once thrived here.”

A few hundred meters from the far bank of the stream, its edges
and details obscured by centuries' growth of vine and lichens, stood the ruined sculpture of a coiled serpent. It was easily hundreds of meters from side to side, standing a dozen meters tall, and before closer examination Leena had initially taken it for a hill rising before them, not something fashioned by hands.