The Tropic of Serpents: A Memoir by Lady Trent (A Natural History of Dragons) (31 page)

Such men had no need of a captive. I would only slow them, threaten the secrecy of whatever they sought here. I knew, as clearly as I knew my own name, that they stayed their hands only out of confusion, that a battered, trouser-clad Scirling woman should fall out of a tree at their feet; once their confusion was satisfied or grew dull, they would kill me.

What reason could I possibly give them for sparing me?

Innocence would not avail. Neither would a plea to their compassion. I seized upon the only thing I could—which was my notebook, dropped in disgust just a moment before.

When I reached out to collect it, three spears whipped down to point at me. I persevered, taking the volume in my hand and paging to a suitable sketch. This I held up for one of the Labane to see: the one I thought must be their leader, for he had ordered my pursuer up the tree. “You see this? The dragon.
Legambwa,
” I added in Moulish, for there was a greater chance they would recognize that word than the Scirling one. Belatedly, I thought to switch to that tongue, and proceeded in a mixture of it and Yembe, in the hope that some fragment or other would be familiar to my captors. “They are all over this swamp. Very dangerous. They will attack you. But I—I can show you how to avoid them. How to be safe.”

I illustrated my words with pantomime, pointing repeatedly at the swamp-wyrm sketch, then using my hand, clawlike, to suggest a draconic attack. My palm I pressed to my heart, indicating by warm and hopeful tone that I offered a way to avoid such perils.

Perhaps someone among my captors spoke a rudimentary amount of Moulish or Yembe; perhaps my pantomime was effective. Perhaps something else passed among them, during their brief conversation. I had, as some readers may recall, been caught by strange men in a foreign country once before, but on that occasion I had been able to parse their language as a dialect of Eiversch, which made communication possible, if not easy. This was as opaque to me as Draconean, and that, as much as the warlike nature of the men who had caught me, made this incident far more terrifying. I felt as if I were in the grip of yellow fever again, the world around me making no sense, and I my next breath potentially my last.

Something
persuaded them, whether it was any part of my plea or a notion of their own making. All I knew was that the one who came for me did so with a length of vine rather than a spear, and so I did not resist as he bound my hands together behind my back. Nor did I protest when he ripped apart the fabric of my bundle and used it to gag me, though I dearly wished for a drink of water before he did. I was not dead yet, and that was more than I had expected a moment ago; everything else could wait.

When they dragged me to my feet, someone worked at my wrists for a moment, and then I felt a tug on my bound arms. They had tied another length of vine to the first, making a kind of leash to prevent me from running.

As if I
could
run. You have an image, I hope, of the treacherous terrain that makes up the Green Hell; now try to imagine traversing it at speed, with your hands behind you to disrupt your balance. I would not get ten paces before I fell. I nearly fell when a Tsebane shoved me forward, but through sheer determination not to squander my reprieve, I managed to keep my feet.

They placed me in the lead, as if I were the canary whose demise would warn them of danger. I dearly wanted, once I could think straight, to lead them into just such a situation; there were predators out there, patches of sucking mud, even perilous insects that might be persuaded to attack. Unfortunately, my previous luck with such tactics notwithstanding, I could not be sure I would survive the trap myself—and besides, they did not yet trust me. Any attempt to lead them astray would result in a spear between my shoulder blades.

In order to survive, I had to prove my worth as a guide.

I therefore bent all the knowledge I had gained of the swamp to the task of impressing them. This was difficult to do, bound and gagged as I was, but I led them ostentatiously away from a thicket of underbrush whose thorns housed very unpleasant ants, then veered again, nodding my head upward, to avoid a serpent dangling from a branch.

Step by step, hazard by hazard, we proceeded into the depths of the Green Hell.

TWENTY-ONE

The safety of the Moulish—Another party—Something in my pocket—The loss of my knife—Refuge on high

I had some hope that a friend might find me. Tom, Natalie, and Faj Rawango had promised to watch from the plateau above; they, unfortunately, were on the north side of the swamp, and could not quickly reach me, the descent from that point being more or less impassable. But Yeyuama had promised to watch from the lake. He knew this place as well as I knew my own garden, and might even now be on his way toward me.

Which, I soon realized, might get him killed. One against five was terrible odds, and worse when the one is sworn to nonviolence. But surely his sharp eyes would spot the Ikwunde before they saw him? And if not, I had seen for myself how easily the Moulish could conceal themselves when they chose. Perhaps he could gather hunters to help. They had followed his lead against Velloin and Okweme—though I suspected that was because the conflict there was dragon-related. Would the camps here stir themselves to help me? We had met briefly during my first journey to the Great Cataract, but these were not the Moulish who had been a part of my larger social world these past months.

Such were my thoughts, chasing in anxious circles like a mouse trapped in a box. It was preferable to thinking about the alternatives.

Unfortunately, the Labane were driving me northeast: deeper into the swamp, but away from the lake. With each step, the chances of Yeyuama finding us decreased, and the chances of us stumbling across a Moulish camp increased. I had once likened finding them to searching for a migratory needle in a haystack, but now, with such risk attendant, I feared a needle behind every straw.

It was possible the Moulish would be safe nonetheless; they might hear the Labane before they drew near, might hide themselves before one of these warriors struck. That possibility was not one I could rely upon: to do so would be despicable, a callous abrogation of what I owed them for their shelter and aid.

I therefore had to escape.

The skill and courage of the Labane are praised even by their enemies, but they were not foolhardy enough to travel the Green Hell in darkness. When it came time to halt, I meekly advised my captors away from what I recognized as a trail nocturnal predators would follow; this I did not only for my own safety, but to convince them of my sincere aid. We camped in as secure of a location as I could find, and I was, with reluctance, ungagged long enough to consume what remained of my own water and food. Whether they would give me any of their own the next day, I could not tell.

They bound me, of course, feet as well as hands, before sitting me against a tree and tying my body to it for good measure. One of the five kept watch, too. I had expected it, but still I cursed inwardly. How could I escape, with such measures in place?

In time I had to give up that question, for exhaustion claimed me, like falling over a cliff. In the morning my captors held a conference in which they seemed to be debating my continued use; I could scarcely breathe until one came to untie me. I would live another day. But how many more would I have?

This day proceeded much like the first, except that I did my best to guess where the Moulish might be, and to guide the Labane away from such places. This made for a fair bit of wading through inhospitable muck, but my captors could scarcely fault me for that; as far as they knew, inhospitable muck was what the Green Hell was made of. At one point I smelled a foul odor clearly recognizable as the lingering effects of a swamp-wyrm’s extraordinary breath, but the dragon itself—both fortunately and otherwise—was nowhere to be seen.

We did, however, find something else. And as wretched as it was to be a captive, a part of me is glad I had not escaped the previous night, for I would have missed my chance to learn more about what the Labane were doing in Mouleen.

I feared at first that we had come across Moulish hunters, or worse, a camp. But the sound and movement that made my captors go into ready crouches proved to have another source: a second group of Labane.

This was a group of three, but I saw that they carried extra equipment, and some of it was bloodstained. From this I guessed that their brothers had met with misfortune along the way. I cannot be glad for the death of men, even my enemies, but it reassured me that my captors would see my value as a guide. Indeed, I hoped that was what they were telling the second party, as the two exchanged information in low tones. By his gestures, it seemed the other leader was vastly annoyed at his men having gotten turned around in the swamp.

For my own part, I was busy thinking. Two groups: that made it likely there were more than two. Both of them small. None of them carrying guns, whose crack would advertise their presence for kilometers around. Everything about this arrangement spoke of stealth. I was certain now that these were scouts, looking for a path across the Green Hell.

I was no military strategist, but I knew that if they succeeded, it would mean dreadful things for the defense of Bayembe. It was more imperative than ever that I escape and warn someone.

The second group did not join our own, strengthening my belief that these were scouting parties. I wished them ill fortune and damnation in their search.
Our home will eat you,
Yeyuama had said. For the sake of those to the north, I prayed that it would.

We continued on. I stumbled often with exhaustion; the leader finally unbent enough to allow me more water, without which I believe I would have died. But the various scrapes I had taken were hot and tender, and my joints ached; I was not sure how much farther I could go. Only the prospect of escape gave me strength … but I knew that the later such escape came, the more likely I was to fail.

Oddly, it was a fall that gave me hope. I tripped over a tangled fern and landed hard on my right side—hard not only for the force of it, but for the object in my pocket that dug painfully into my hip. It was, I realized, my penknife: the same penknife I had once nicked from my brother Andrew, so many years ago, which had accompanied me faithfully ever since.

With that knife (and a bit of flexibility), I might be able to cut myself free. That was one hurdle cleared, at least potentially; and the relief of it gave me conviction that I could clear the others, too. I would need a distraction, something to divert the man keeping watch that night, and then I would need an escape route.

Both meant choosing our campsite wisely. I forced my tired mind to focus, and was rewarded with the observation that there were quite a few drakeflies about. I mentioned before that they are insectivores; from my research I knew that, for drakeflies to be present in such numbers, there must be a hive of some sort nearby, to provide a suitable concentration of potential meals.

Finding what I was looking for without being obvious about it was difficult, but at last I spotted what I had hoped for: a wasps’ nest, not too high above the ground. The wasps would ordinarily be dormant at night, but I knew—from painful experience—that they were easily disturbed.

I contrived to get my knife out of my pocket while taking care of biological necessity—the one task for which my captors unbound me, as none of them wanted the job of assisting me. (They did not, however, grant me any privacy during the process.) I kept it folded in the palm of my hand while one of them re-bound me, and breathed easier when the task was done. I was, as before, tied to a tree, and then I watched as they ate their evening meal.

They carried some rations of their own, but supplemented them with hunting as the occasion arose. (Hunting only, never gathering; I cannot blame them for fearing what plants might be poisonous, nor for distrusting the advice I tried to give them.) Earlier that day I had discovered how far a Tsebane can throw a spear, when one of them skewered a duiker at a distance I would have thought impossible. It raised the very real possibility that, in my flight, I might catch a spear between the shoulders … but I screwed my courage tight. I
must
do this thing.

This thing, however, had to wait for them to settle in for the night. The evening before, the leader had checked my bonds before bedding down; I could not risk him noticing any change. Once the camp was silent, though, with only one man keeping watch, I unfolded the knife and set to work.

The vines binding my wrists were first, and the most difficult. I cut my hands several times, and once dropped the knife—a loss that put my heart in my mouth, for what if I could not find it again? But I did, and resumed my task, feigning exhausted sleep the whole while.

The next part posed a different set of challenges. I waited, eyes closed to slits, until the watchman looked the other direction; then I slid my right shoulder (the one farthest from him) out from under the vines. Now I must be swift, for if he looked closely, he would see that I should not be able to slump so far in my bonds. With my right hand I felt about for something I could throw: a stone, a branch,
anything.