Chương 21: B1 Chapter 20

The third warrior appeared between the trees ahead of me, visible only for a heartbeat before the trunk swallowed him again. I'd seen enough. A face and a spear, exactly where neither should have been.

"Fuck." He'd gotten around me. I abandoned the trail and dragged myself beneath a tangle of thorny vines. The opening barely cleared my shoulders, and hooked thorns scraped my arms as I forced myself through. The warrior ahead gave a sharp whistle, his companion answered from behind with two quick clicks, and a moment later I heard running followed by a burst of swearing. The man on my trail had reached the vines. He couldn't come through the way I had.

His body was too large, leaving him with the slower choice of climbing over them. The third warrior was already changing direction somewhere ahead. Branches cracked as he forced his way back toward me, adjusting to where I'd gone instead of continuing toward where he'd expected me to be. They were learning. I pulled myself around the base of a thick-rooted tree and found another narrow opening between two trunks. My body fit through without much trouble. A grown man carrying a spear wouldn't.

The third warrior appeared behind me as I squeezed between them. He lunged. The spearpoint punched through the leaves beside my face, scraping my cheek before burying itself in the earth. When he pulled, the shaft caught between the trunks. I grabbed it. He yanked hard enough to slide my entire body toward him through the mud. The mistake became obvious immediately. He had two good legs, two good arms, and more than enough strength to drag me back through the gap. I released the shaft.

His own force ripped the spear backward, throwing him off balance and slamming one shoulder against the tree. I used the moment to put as much distance between us as my body allowed. His roar followed me through the brush. The second warrior had found another way around the vines and was coming from farther uphill. Behind both men, another signal sounded from the leader, noticeably closer than before. He'd entered the jungle. The terrain changed as I descended.

The slope grew steeper, with roots exposed by years of rainwater running toward the river. Some rose high enough that I had to climb them with my arms, while others formed narrow hollows filled with rotten leaves and black water. A fallen palm lay across the slope. I squeezed underneath, dead fronds scraping my back and catching around the wounded shoulder. The hardened dragon's blood pulled painfully against the torn flesh beneath it, but the seal held.

One of the warriors reached the palm behind me and tried to climb over rather than squeeze underneath. The rotten trunk shifted beneath his weight, and his footing disappeared. His body struck the ground hard enough that I felt the impact through my hands. I kept going. Thorn vines grew thicker farther down the slope. I knew which ones hooked backward and which only scratched, allowing me to weave around the worst of them without slowing much. My pursuers lacked that advantage.

A shout behind me turned into a curse. I glanced over my shoulder and saw a vine stretched tight against one warrior's forearm. He ripped himself free, leaving skin behind on the thorns, and continued downhill with blood running along his arm. This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there. That frightened me more than the injury seemed to bother him. The sounds from the village had faded without me noticing. My father's voice was gone.

Makua's roar had disappeared beneath the distance, and the screaming and clash of weapons had become faint enough that the jungle was beginning to swallow them. Something about that felt wrong. I had gone too far from the village. The realization lasted only a moment before I understood the truth. They'd brought me this far. I glanced uphill. One warrior descended directly behind me, blood running from the torn skin of his arm. The other moved farther to my left, still trying to reach the ground ahead of me.

Their leader followed both. His long-handled axe rested across one shoulder as he walked down the slope at an almost leisurely pace. There was no rush in him. He passed the body beneath the wasp nest without even glancing at his fallen warrior. All of his attention remained farther downhill. The two surviving warriors had stopped pursuing me like men trying to make a quick kill. Their positions kept forcing me in the same direction.

One pressured me from behind while the other denied every route back toward the village. They were herding me. The coca might have been why that realization produced less fear than it should have, or maybe there was simply no room left inside me for more. I spat the bitter leaves into the dirt.

"Shit." Even to me, the word sounded strangely calm. The closest warrior came around the roots behind me. I threw the blowgun at his face. The wooden tube struck his cheek with a hollow crack, making him flinch and turn his head. That tiny reaction was all I needed. When he knocked the blowgun aside and raised his spear, I rolled downhill beneath the point and caught his ankle with my good hand. He hadn't expected much strength from someone crawling. His foot ripped out from beneath him.

He crashed onto one knee, and a second pull brought his chest down against the trail. Before he could recover, I drove my knife into the back of his leg just above the knee. The blade met resistance before sliding through. He screamed. I ripped it sideways through muscle and pulled it free as blood poured across my hand. His leg kicked violently, catching me in the ribs hard enough to empty my lungs. He twisted around and swung. I dropped beneath his fist.

The other warrior came through the brush before I could do anything else. His spear appeared first. I rolled. My wounded shoulder struck the ground. Everything became white. The hardened dragon's blood split across the wound, and fresh heat flooded underneath the broken seal. For several heartbeats, sight and sound disappeared. I knew I was moving only because the world kept hitting me. Earth, roots, leaves and stone battered my body as I rolled down the slope.

Something sharp tore across my back, my bad leg twisted beneath me, and I couldn't tell whether the crack I heard came from a branch or somewhere inside my own body. A tree stopped me. Sound rushed back with the wounded warrior screaming uphill and his companion shouting somewhere closer. A spear struck the trunk above my head and buried itself in the bark. I reached automatically for my knife. My hand found mud. The knife was gone.

The warrior whose leg I'd opened tried to stand farther uphill, but the damaged limb folded beneath him. He caught himself and began dragging his body downhill instead. The other was already coming around the tree. Farther back, their leader continued his steady descent, observing what his men were doing rather than joining them. My hand searched the ground beside me until my fingers closed around a stone. It would have to do. The warrior rounded the tree and raised his spear. I threw the rock into his face.

It struck above his eye and snapped his head aside. Blood immediately ran across his brow as I caught a root and hauled myself around the trunk. His spear struck the bark where my neck had been. He cursed and tried to tear it free. The blade had lodged deeply enough to hold. I used the time he gave me, pulling myself from one root to the next while my knee pushed and the bad leg dragged behind. Then the jungle around me became familiar. I slowed.

The trail had brought us below the village toward the old hunting ground near the river. I'd hunted here since I was small, long before I was allowed to go alone and before my back broke. My father had brought me here. I remembered following in his footprints when both of my legs still obeyed me. He'd taught me where the ground stayed firm after rain, which vines could support a man's weight, and which would tear free the moment someone trusted them.

He'd pressed my fingers into tracks in the mud and made me tell him what had passed. Peccary. Tapir. Jaguar. Man. The memories were everywhere now that I recognized the ground. I knew where water collected beneath leaves deep enough to hide a hole and where thorn vines grew thick enough to catch skin. I knew the fallen trees that created passages too narrow for long weapons, the trunks that had rotted from the inside, and the slopes that gave way when the river rose.

Farther downhill, the river had eaten beneath one section of bank until nothing remained below the surface except roots and empty space. The Bone Jaw had no reason to know any of that. They'd seen my bad legs, my wounded shoulder, and the cripple dragging himself through the mud. They'd spent the entire pursuit driving me farther from anyone who might help. I looked uphill. The warrior with the bloody brow was still fighting to free his spear.

His wounded companion dragged himself downhill one armful of earth at a time. Behind them came the leader. Then I looked at the jungle. A laugh almost escaped me. I'd spent the entire chase trying to get away. Prey tried to get away. I wasn't prey.