The preachers ran, trying to maintain the direction the assassin had led them in. The light was waning. The orange tint of evening was quickly fading into nothingness. Mustafa was surviving on adrenaline alone. There was nothing left in him in the name of energy. Even the adrenaline only managed to keep him on his feet. Covering the distance was solely on Soleiman's shoulders. His own bruises, though of less significance as compared to his companion's, were causing problems. They knew that if they were destined to leave the green hell alive, this was the opening. There came larger trees and puddles that wasted their time, forcing them to take detours. They maintained the direction. It took more time than they wanted to spare but they had to. Mustafa let out groans which Soleiman heard and offered to give him a minute. Mustafa refused every time. They limped on. The forest was silent. The birds had called it a day and had started to return to their homes.
The silence was broken by a distant war cry. The preachers looked back to see the origin of the noise. The voice was too distant for the maker to be visible but the venom in the shriek was unmistakable. The Shaman had decided to track them down himself. It ran a surge of panic in the preachers. The absence of the clip-clops of the hooves indicated that the maniac had resorted to chase them down on foot. They tried to increase their pace but to no avail. Mustafa was in too much pain and dragging him quicker needed more strength which Soleiman lacked at the moment. Mustafa decided that he was going to need to endure some pain if they were to survive. He tried to move his legs, let out a loud growl and started limping, putting both his legs on the ground. Soleiman prevented too much burden on the wounded leg by sharing his weight. It added to their pace. The voice was getting closer and closer but there was still no visual. They didn't mind. The preachers reached a dead end, a ditch with what looked like quicksand at the bottom. They limped around it. The thicker trees and thorny bushes prevented them from maintaining their direction. It forced them to deviate to their left. They lacked choices so they decided to go with the only walkable path. They followed the path to its limit and faced another dead end. This one was a dense wall of thick trees which forced them to turn further left. They complied.
The Shaman was furious. He ran into the woods head first. Whenever faced with a branch or bush blocking his way, he chopped it away with his sword. He kept hurling abuses at the preachers. He blamed them for all that had happened in the past few days. Almost all of his apprentices were dead. Only a handful remained that had stayed back at the temple. The warriors were wiped out. He didn't know if any had stayed behind. The war dogs were all gone. As soon as he was done with the preachers, he was going to plan the most creative of endings for the Boa. He kept running and finding more things to chop out of his way. He knew what direction they would go from there. Only one path led out of the woods. If they walked in some other way, they would keep running in circles for days and judging by the state of the other runner, they didn't have much time.
Mustafa had finally had enough. He asked for water. Soleiman pulled the bottle out of his bag and offered it to him. He chugged recklessly. As he put the bottle off his mouth to breath, they heard the yells coming from far too close. He dropped the bottle and tried to run again. Soleiman came to his aid. They ran into another dead end. This one a field of bushes offering inch long thorns. They walked clear of it and resumed their journey on the only available direction. After a while that path ended as well. The path divided into three several ways. All three paths were walled on either side with tall and dense trees that blocked the vision into the other paths. It was a one-way ticket. The preachers had to stop and decide, on a slog, which one to walk on. Soleiman heard the growing intensity of the yells and felt his eyes tear up. All hope had been abandoned. He hesitantly decided to enter the path in the middle and started walking towards it. As he entered the middle path, Soleiman heard a whisper calling out his name from the path on the right. He asked Mustafa if he heard it too but he was too faded to notice anything. Soleiman decided to abandon the middle one and came back to the entrance. He heard the voice again. He walked into the path on the right. After a few meters, the path became unnavigable. The walls had vanished and the trees became too scattered to point out a singular way. The growing shouts and cries of the Shaman kept hammering their heads. The only other sound that they could hear was their own heartbeats. As soon as he slowed down to try and figure it out, he heard another whisper from straight ahead, a little bit to the left. He continued to follow the voice. Even if it was a hallucination, it didn't matter to Soleiman. At least he had some reason to do what he did. It took another whisper to lead them into a path that had light at the end of it. He was in euphoria. He shared what he saw with his companion who was equally ecstatic but too drained to express it. Like moths to a lamp, the runners unknowingly sped towards the light. The voice of the Shaman had come close enough for the escapees to make out what he had been yelling at them. They weren't fluent in the language but the words weren't hospitable. They looked back to see and they finally caught a glimpse. The maniac was quickly gaining on them. He could be seen throwing slashes on whatever came in front of them without decreasing his speed a bit. The preachers gasped and gave the run their everything. Fear numbed their pain. The Shaman was only dozens of feet away from them but so were they from the light. He shouted more frantically as he came closer to them. They could hear the swishes of his sword and the thuds as it struck down branches that obstructed his way. Soleiman took on the most of Mustafa's weight on his shoulder and gave it his all. The feet felt like miles. The maniac didn't let one breath go without a deafening cry. Soleiman felt his back let out cracking sounds. He started shouting to muffle his pain. He finally reached the end of the green. There were hills and plains that looked like abandoned farms. There was a barbed wire fence just ahead of him. The dusk was swiftly approaching. The hills seemed more gray than green. As soon as he got out in the open, he let some of Mustafa's weight go back to him and continued. The Shaman had followed them out of the woods and was just a few feet away. Soleiman and Mustafa were expecting a slash at the back. They heard a faint thudding noise from the distance, followed by a splat from behind them. The war cries of the Shaman had finally come to a halt. Suddenly the day felt alive with the birds tweeting and the sound of the trees being shaken by the wind. The preachers stopped and looked back. The Shaman lied spread eagle on the ground with his leg trembling. It took them a moment to see the red mark on his forehead. The movement in his boy stopped and he was soon lying in a pool of his own blood.
The preachers were astonished but relieved none the less. They scaled the fence and moved toward the hills through the plain, still stealing a glace or two behind them to look for more followers. A silhouette of a man, running through the tall wild weeds, waved to them with both of his hands up in the air. As the preachers walked closer to it, Soleiman recognized the bearded man. Yaqoob Khan had stepped in at the perfect time. Soleiman performed sajdah and thanked the God and Mustafa tried to follow but his leg wouldn't bend so he just looked up at the sky and said a prayer. Yaqoob smiled ear to ear and Soleiman returned it. As they neared one another, they grabbed each other in a bear hug. Mustafa was not familiar with the man but the way Soleiman hugged him, told him that he was a friend and the long barrel of the rifle peeking from behind his back, told him that he was the reason the Shaman didn't last long out in the open. When the two were done with each other, Yaqoob walked to Mustafa and greeted him. Soleiman introduced them to each other.
"How?", Soleiman finally asked.
"I just arrived here. My jeep is behind that hill. I was surveying the entrances of the forest with my binoculars when I saw some movement and I found you without even going in", Yaqoob responded with a shrug.
"But how did you escape that hell?", Yaqoob inquired visibly confused. Soleiman didn't know how to tell him so he just shrugged and Yaqoob didn't mind. Yaqoob saw the state that both the preachers were in. "Enough talk. Come on. You guys need to get looked at", he said and gestured them to follow him. They followed him to where he parked his jeep. On the way, Soleiman turned to take one last look at the forest and saw a familiar man wearing a black dress and a long coat, clutching a black bible with one hand and waving him goodbye with the other.