Davod sat over his breakfast with his hands over his face, rubbing his eyes and temples while Rock failed to get his attention.
Rock was trying to ask Davod if he wanted all of his dumplings. I couldn't blame him. They gave us smoked fish sauteed with onions, caramelized tomatoes, and dotted with specks of some herb that lent a bitter spice, and these fiery heaven puffs were balls of dough fried in orange-colored oil that were crispy on the outside, soft and fluffy on the inside. Rock had torn his dumplings in half and used them to sop up the tomato gravy on his plate until not even a streak remained. When Davod didn't answer, he looked around and saw Jame nibbling gingerly at his and asked for an extra. Jame furrowed his brow and pulled his plate into himself, guarding it with his arm.
I laughed. Then I remembered the coffee he'd bought for me and gave him two of mine. Miyani smiled up at me and gave him two from her plate as well.
Rain clattered hard outside the mess hall. The quartermaster walked in alongside the elder bearded vita'o, carrying a hammered-copper pot with a hole barely larger than a fist. With streaks of water meandering down her wrinkled, dark-green skin, she gestured for Davod and Kylen to come join her at the center along with a tall, thin Herali with an elegant grace and a wolf-clan tattoo on his shoulder, a heavy-set Na'uhui sporting a crescent moon same as hers, and another Herali with no ink but years etched into his face.
I leaned into Gino. "What's going on?"
Tobi heard me from his seat at Kylen's table and answered me with enough volume for everyone to hear. "Two units get wall duty, three go out on patrol."
I felt Miyani's hand creep up along my back, so I leaned over and closed my eyes to smell the coconut oil in her hair again. She giggled and nuzzled her face in my arm as giant Kylen pulled a small, wooden tile from the pitcher and looked at it. He held it up and nodded at Tobi. "West patrol."
Jaysa and Rolf leaned in towards one another and started to talk quietly among themselves.
Then Kylen looked at my girlfriend and smirked. "Dibs on Miyani!"
His men chuckled. Rolf leaned back and grinned, crossing his arms. She furrowed her brow and lifted her face to me, "dibzz?"
Tobi smiled wide and gave her the word, "xʊðʊ."
"Oh," she looked at Kylen and shook her head in protest. "ki'i go'ude Carthia."
The elder Pu'iyo chuckled, smiling at her. "vʌ. vʌ ki'ise. gʊ sekɪwasedu xo'i."
The wolf guy reached into the pitcher and chuckled, "Ahmi's going to be pissed."
Pu'iyo smirked. "Ahmi can kiss my ass!"
The wolf guy laughed and showed his tile to his unit across the room. "Wall duty!"
The men exhaled and relaxed. One of them shook a fist in the air triumphantly and took another bite from his plate.
Davod was next. He'd closed his eyes and rubbed his temples, then groaned and tried to shake it off, dug his hand into the pitcher, pulled out a tile, and looked at it. He didn't say anything but blinked at it slowly, not quite opening his eyes all the way.
The heavy Na'uhui captain leaned in. "North." He turned to his men, "fifty-fifty, boys!"
Miyani looked up at me. "ŋoth?"
I smiled. "ɣaze. Point for me."
She opened her mouth wide and scoffed, and I could tell she fought off a smile.
Grass runners shot across the muddy courtyard. It was me, Geraln, Ales, Faren, Rock, Northstar, Jezi, Malchuk, Borel, Gino, Jame, and our glorious captain, Davod. Kylen and his unit of Tobi, Rolf, Jaysa, Wedsen the Goloagi runaway slave, the mixed dude from Carthia, the three noobs of the Orca clan, and the rest of his unit crowded around Blue with Miyani on his back. Kylen addressed his men in Uhuida, passing a glance at her every few words, and I approached.
She turned to face me.
Blue cawed, almost like a low screech, and wrapped his neck around my body to pull me into her. She giggled and smiled wide, passing her beautiful yellow eyes up and down my face. I spoke, "just in case," and kissed her.
She pushed her lips into mine, wrapping her hands behind my shoulders. For a moment she pulled away and smiled, "zhuss inkayes."
I light peck, then another, and another, until we'd made an endless rhythm of small kisses intermixed with shared giggles.
Kylen interrupted us, "alright, alright. Save some for later."
I gave her one last kiss that lasted several seconds before we pulled away.
Ude was in the unit commanded by the heavy guy with the crescent moon on his shoulder, along with more than a handful of rough-looking Herali men carrying eupin longbows. Among them, Yumi sat atop Queen's back, staring at my best friend, Davod. He stood beside Borel, a tower of muscle rippling over his bare chest bearing the still-fresh Falcon tattoo on his shoulder. He squeezed his eyes closed hard and shook his head, massaging at the bridge of his nose for a moment, and her attention was fixed. He shook his head vigorously and opened his eyes, and Yumi snapped her gaze away.
Her eyes found me and her face froze. I glanced at him ever so briefly and back to her, and she looked out the gate.
Our scout was an older woman with the dark-green skin of her Na'uhui mother and dark-green hair and eyes of her Herali father. She rode atop a gray-green vita'o that had tiny spike-looking nodes on her back and what looked like whiskers beneath her chin; she was the same woman I'd seen herding goats when I was on the roof. She also had a thumb-sized scar on her hip. "I'm Marya," she looked around at each of us, "and this is Ace. Are we ready to go?"
Most of us spoke up, "yeah!" but Davod was silent. Blue and Queen raced out across the wooden drawbridge and stopped in the middle of the field, but Marya sat still and gazed at him with her brow furrowed and her lips in a frown.
He lifted his head and met her gaze. "Mmm?"
Her eyes were wide. She shook her head and then raced out to join the other two scouts. And with that, we all filed out, across the wooden drawbridge, and out onto the open plain that separated Praying Mantis from the expanse of trees towering into the sky.
Borel, Jame, and Geraln strode alongside Davod. I had to wedge my way in to speak to him. "Yumi is looking you over."
Borel laughed. "You saw that, too?"
Davod glared at me. "Is that all you think about?"
I shrugged. "It's always about that, you know. In fact, it's never not about that."
Davod lowered his eyes and chuckled. "That was a different time."
Borel elbowed him in the side. "He's got a point, man. I could die tomorrow; am I supposed to just ignore all these gorgeous ladies?"
Jame smiled, "and Yumi, too! A man could do much, much worse."
Borel smirked hard, "I like the quiet ones—they think things."
Davod shook his head and ran his fingers across the cornrows that lined his scalp. "Thank you all, now let's…"
Geraln chuckled and elbowed me in my side. "I wonder what his dad would say." He turned to the two Kyoni and explained, "man lost his shit over him talking to this girl, Sarina. She's… you know… not Herali."
Davod stopped and glared down at Geraln. "You have no boundaries, do you?"
I slapped Davod's shoulder. "I wouldn't worry; if your old man gets too rough, Queen would… hmm. I don't know what Queen would do."
Jame giggled, "mum, dad, this is the wife. As you can see she's not like other girls, but if you give us any shit about it, this fifteen-stone lizard'll rip your throat out."
The rest of us laughed. Davod started to laugh, too, only to bow his head low and squeeze his eyes shut, massaging his temples.
Ales walked up to me with his eyes wide. "Is he alright, man?"
Geraln assured him, "he's just hungover; for him, this is normal."
Ales raised his eyebrows and pushed into me a little more, "you got to do something, man."
"Do something?" I asked. "Like what?"
Ales hushed his voice, "aren't you the bloody medic? How about, I medically order you to go back and get some rest?"
I shrugged that off, "he'll be fine."
The ground sloped up as we entered the forest. There was a clear delineation between the open plain kept clear from the tower and the jungle, that we hadn't made it twenty paces in before turning around, and trees were so thick that there was no sign a tower was there.
There was no road to follow. I looked around for that mushroom and found it everywhere, marking the northern end of the plain beside the murky river. Bushes around us were so thick as to block our path in most directions. Then we passed into a grove of darkness with tree trunks scarcely half a foot in diameter but so numerous as to make walls like a dark maze, and many of us tripped on roots that criss-crossed the floor so thick we couldn't see the ground.
Overhead, noise filled the canopy. Chirps, growls, whistles, and grinding of insects were altogether deafening such that I couldn't tell what was where.
Then we heard that up-down-up-down-warble off to the left.
Jame, Geraln, Jezi, Malchuk, and I drew our bows and faced that direction, but a woman's voice came from behind us. "I could have shot one of you and covered my position by now."
Marya stood holding her bow in one hand, her dark skin and hair a perfect camouflage against the trees. We relaxed. A squawk called out from above. Where we'd heard the bird call, with her talons dug into a branch high in the trees was Ace. She jumped down and stepped between us, and nudged her lizard head in Marya's cheek. "This is a lesson for you: a scout and her vita'o are not glued together."
I took a deep breath and tried to shake that off. Looking around, I wasn't alone in that.
She pointed to our left, "go this way. You will find a giant boulder at the base of a hill. Summit the hill, and you will see another hill in the West with a sharp ledge on the northside about three miles away, overlooking the banks of a creek. Set up there and keep watch. If you see an enemy war party, snipe them without mercy. Count four hours past noon, then go back to the tower. Are there any questions?"
I raised my hand. "Do you have a special call for us to recognize you?"
Marya jumped onto Ace's back and smirked. "None for you, but if you hear this," she whistled a warble-warble with a down-up at the end, "that means tɪfaŋi has copied me. Feel free to kill her."
With that, they vanished into the jungle.
We all looked at Davod, who stood still for a moment and wiped his face. After a moment, he opened his eyes again and looked around at us. "What are you waiting for? Let's go."
Going where Marya had directed us, we wrestled through thick shrubs and trees that could have hid an enemy ambush party five feet from us and we'd have seen nothing. That gave way to a relatively open area with a vine that covered everything in a blanket of bright green leaves, choking out trees, fallen logs, sticks, rocks, and everything all around us while the tall trees in the upper canopy fought over remaining scraps of sky. The bulging eyes of some furry creature held like a statue watching us as we passed.
We came to a rock that had to be at least twenty yards high and covered in bright-green fuzzy moss wherever the ferns failed to grasp at the thing. Behind it, the ground rose sharply, and we ascended. Whistles overhead blended into one, making it difficult to pick out anything. The call for humans—barely audible over the noise—was directly above us as though the bird followed us through its territory. Roots dominated the ground as trees fought for what scraps of soil there were, and we managed through them as though it were a staircase.
We reached the top of the hill and tried looking to the west, but the trees on that side were so thick we could make out nothing. They weren't so dense to the north and east, and we could make out the imposing purple wall of the Terbulin ridge as it thrust into the clouds above. We could also see the telltale dark blue-gray of rain being dumped upon the hills in the distance.
"There!" Malchuk pointed. To one side, he'd found a narrow tunnel through the foliage that granted vision of another hill in the west like a giant fold of rock broken off on one side overlooking a river below.
Ales stood and stared at it. "You guys trust this lady?"
Jezi answered, "Marya is very skilled. She will not send us on this route if it is not safe from enemies."
With that, we descended the far side of the hill, using the numerous trees as hand-holds. As we made our way down a steep, muddy embankment, Davod slipped and rolled, then skidded several yards down, landing in a thicket choked with vines.
He cried out, "aaarrgh! Fuck!"
I rushed down after him, and I heard Geraln call out. "You alright, man?"
He grunted and groaned, "I'm fine."
He struggled, but managed to right himself and stand. A bright yellow vine clung to his arm as he brushed himself off, and he didn't seem to notice. I got to him and looked at the thing. He looked at it too, then ripped it from his skin and tossed it aside. He then looked down the rest of the hill, "let's go."
"Hold still," I insisted, "let me look at you."
"I'm fine," he snapped. From there, we carefully managed our descent.
We reached the bottom of the hill, where a small creek murmured over the rocks just beneath more leaves of untold shrubs within a deep crevasse. A massive log had fallen to bridge the way, and we assembled around it on one side.
Faren's voice came from behind me. "You don't look so good, man."
Davod held one hand to his head with his other hand out as if grasping for something. As though he hadn't registered Faren talking to him, he shook his head and nearly fell over. I rested my hand on his shoulder and tried to will his gaze to meet mine. Instead he said, "I don't feel so good."
He had mud and scratches all over his skin, so I washed him off with my canteen. Where that vine had clung to his arm, a line of tiny welts had raised up with small puncture wounds. His breath was quick and shallow, he seemed dizzy, and when I looked at his face, he couldn't focus on me. "We have to get you back to the tower."
All the men looked at me. Jame protested, "Marya's expecting us on that ridge. She's probably planning to push an enemy war party through there—If we're not there to pick 'em off, she'll be in deep trouble."
Davod sat down and slumped over, burying his face in his hands. Faren shook his head, "Caleb's right. Something's seriously wrong with him. We need to get him back to the tower, and we need to go right now."
Borel looked around and nodded. "Alright. Jame, Geraln you can shoot, Malchuk, Jezi, you can shoot, and Northstar, you all come with me to that ridge. Ales, Faren, Rock, Gino, you guys help Caleb bring this drunk back home."
Ales crossed his arms, "and who put you in charge?"
I snarled at him, "there's no time to argue. Help me get him up."
Gino stood back, studying the hillside. "It looks like if we go up that way and zigzag through there, it should be much easier."
And so half the men in our unit stepped out onto the log en route to our lookout while Rock and Ales got under Davod's shoulders to bring him to stand. I looked closely at his face, and his pupils had dilated. A lot.
Davod stood, carefully, and we walked following the route that Gino and Faren had planned for us up the hillside. After the first zig, Davod seemed to regain some of his strength, though he was unusually slow and blinked an awful lot. More than a few times he had to reach out to some woody stem to keep upright, until we came to the thicket he'd fallen into some ten feet away. There, he stopped.
"Come on, man," we urged him.
But he didn't move. Instead he stood upright and gazed at the place with a blank expression. Down below, the water tumbling over rocks set a baseline for the chorus of chirps overhead, and the trees rustled from a gust of wind above, and Davod refused to move from that spot.
"Hello?" I looked into his face, but his attention was fixed.
"It's that vine," he said.
"Yeah," I nodded. "We need to get you back to the tower, right now. Come on."
I pushed my hand into his cheek and turned him to face me directly, and he finally broke his gaze. Then with a laborious nod, he agreed, and we ascended the hillside.
We'd got about halfway up when he spoke again. "I feel strange."
Ales answered from behind him, "well you're walking better."
"No," Davod said. "Something's happening, I can feel it."
Faren asked him to elaborate. "What's it feel like, man?"
"Like everything is in color, and I can hear the colors." Davod stopped again and took a deep breath, looking around at each of us and smiling. "I really think we should go back and take a closer look at that vine."
I glanced at Gino. He returned my look and shook his head, pursing his lips. He answered Davod, "later. Right now we have to hurry."
We reached the top of the hill. I figured that Borel's half of our unit wouldn't have had time to get to the ridge by then, so I didn't bother to look. Faren and Gino looked like they could have used a break, but Davod walked around spritely, with more pep than he'd had all morning. He stretched his huge arms out and rolled his neck around, glancing at each of us and smiling wide. Then he called out to us, "we going? Come on!"
He made to lead us, but then he started towards where we'd just come up rather than the direction of the tower.
Rock pointed the other way, "is being this way."
"Oh," Davod laughed.
Down we climbed over the roots beneath the darkness overhead when he stopped again, holding up a finger. "Wait." He then looked around, studied the hill down and up and concluded, "we're going the wrong way."
I assured him, "it's this way, man."
"No," he looked longingly up the hill. "No. The vine is this way. Come on."
He began to step, and I took hold of his arm. "We're not going back to the vine right now. Maybe later. Something's definitely not right, and we need to get you back to the tower."
"I feel fine. Better than fine, you have no idea. You all need to experience this! It's like I'm becoming one with the soul of the universe. Come. I remember where it was."
"Davod, no, man. Ales was right; you should have gone back for rest earlier…"
"I'm fine," he smiled wide, but by then his pupils had dilated so that his eyes were black circles with only a thin green rim about. "You don't understand," he insisted. "That vine will show you things. I can… I can feel the jungle. It wants me to be a part of it. You don't understand…"
Ales's eyes bulged, "you've gone mad!"
Davod laughed that off, "I'm not mad. Come, you all need to touch this vine."
"Later," I insisted, "first I need the herbalist to look you over back at the tower. Let's go…"
Davod looked confused. "But the vine is this way?"
Faren stepped up and tapped his arm. "Nah, man, it's this way."
"Oh," Davod nodded and allowed Faren and Gino to lead us down the hill. Ales, Rock, and I walked behind him. We hadn't made it ten yards when he tried to turn around, "are you sure? I thought we'd come this way before!"
"We're sure, man."
"You really should touch the vine."
Rock nodded. "We touch. We wanting touch. Go this way," he pointed down the hill.
We came to the giant boulder covered in moss, and Davod stopped. I stepped close to him and rested my hand on his shoulder, and he turned around as if he were about to run. Then he saw the three of us blocking him and smiled nervously.
"Come on," I urged him.
Davod breathed in deep, shook his head vigorously, then nodded. "Yeah. Yeah. OK."
When we reached the field where everything was covered in a blanket of bright green leaves beneath a sparse canopy, Davod stopped and looked around. "No, no, no! This is the wrong vine. It needs to be the yellow one!"
I stepped close to him, but he jumped back and unsheathed his sword. All of us backed away from him. My eyes couldn't go wider from the shock of it, and he glared at each of us, waving his blade about. "We need to go back to that vine."
By this point I could do little more than freeze. The prospect of an enemy hiding in the trees had removed so far from my mind we could have been surrounded and I wouldn't have had a clue. My best friend had pulled a sword on me, over this of all things. "Calm down, man."
Davod shook his head at me and frowned, pointing his blade at me as he spoke. "You don't understand. You need to experience the vine, or you'll never understand."
"We knowing," Rock insisted.
"No, you don't," Davod scowled and pointed his sword at him.
But Rock smiled. "Vine is being at Tower. Is why we going there."
Davod furrowed his brow. "What?"
Gino shrugged. "Wait, you didn't know that?"
Davod shook his head and pointed his sword at Gino. "No, no. You're lying."
Faren chimed in, too. "It's true. You know those giant pots behind the mill? You didn't see the vine growing in those pots?"
My slow-arse took far too long to understand the game, but I did eventually figure it out. "Oh, is that what that was? It did look familiar."
"Yeah," Faren nodded at me. "Pu'iyo said it's a special cultivar, way better than the one he touched."
I could see Davod struggling to put the pieces together.
Rock shook his head and added, "is being the so good this. I cannot waiting!"
Davod passed his eyes between us one by one, his lips fixed in confusion. "This is a deception; you're all trying to deceive me."
Faren finally nailed him down. "Ask Ales, man, you know he never lies about anything."
Davod glared at Ales. We all faced him in sheer expectation. Ales shook his head and lowered his eyes. "I didn't want to tell ya, man, we was afraid how you'd react if ya knew we was doing the vine. But yeah, we're all itching to get back to the tower."
At that, Davod sheathed his sword and grinned. "Well what are we waiting for?"