North of the village the grass gave way to sand and rock in whose bleak confines only the hardiest plants could eke out an existence. Few animals lived there, and those that did had been rendered permanently mean and ill-tempered by their inhospitable surroundings. Expecting to encounter nothing specific, Ehomba was therefore prepared for anything. Where potential strife was concerned, he retained an entirely open mind.
That evening a gale rose up off the sea, indifferent and unfriendly. It blew all that night and the next day, forcing him to walk with a scarf over his face and his eyes locked nearly shut in a permanent protective squint. The harsh wind-blown grains blasted his face and scored his arms. But he was not to be so quickly defeated, and certainly not by mere weather.
“Go back to the open sea!” he yelled into the gusts more than once, raising his arms and shaking his spear at the ocean. Off to his left, the great flat green-black sweep of the Semordria roared its challenge, vast and cold. “Leave me be! I am only a man just begun on his journey, and this is not fair!”
The waves exclaimed on the shore and not even seabirds or the Soft Ones answered, but when he emerged the next morning from his makeshift shelter of blanket and driftwood, the wind had stopped. Given up, he decided with satisfaction, only to be replaced by a cousin of gentler mien.
Had he been traveling inland, the dense fog in which he now found himself enveloped would have created many problems. As long as he followed the coast, however, he could not lose his way, not even in the thickest mist. Not with the echo of the surf to guide him. If he kept it always on his left, for some distance yet it would guide him due north.
Using scraps and splinters of driftwood still dry from having been buried in the sand, he struck sparks off a convenient rock with his sky-metal sword and made a fire. Blanketed by the fog, the morning was chill. Tea and jerky were his breakfast, the tea warming him, the jerky providing his mouth with exercise in the absence of conversation. He sat huddled beneath his blanket, an island of life and warmth in the gray mist, sipping his drink and slowly chewing on the stubborn strip of dried meat. The smoke from his fire and the steam from his cup fought for space with the fog. In the mist-engulfed silence, all that could be heard beyond the dying crackle of the fire was the sound of unseen waves coming ashore on the shrouded beach.
Done with the frugal but adequate meal, he rolled his blanket tight and resecured it to the top of his pack. There was no need to scatter the ashes from the fire or douse them with water—there was little here to burn. No danger of a grass fire in the absence of grass, or of a forest fire in the absence of a forest. Orienting himself by the sound of the surf, he resumed his trek northward.
He did not know how far the impenetrable sea fog extended. No one did. For as long as the Naumkib could remember, theirs had been the northernmost settlement of the southern peoples. The perpetual fogs kept them from expanding northward, and probably kept people living to the north from moving south. He knew that he had to keep the sound of the ocean always close. Lose it, and he might wander around in the fog forever—or at least until his food ran out.
His expression set, he lengthened his stride. The fog clung damply to him as if trying to hold him back, but he pushed relentlessly forward, scattering it with sheer determination. North was where he had to go, and nothing was going to keep him from getting there.
III
THE LAND DID NOT GROW STEADILY GREENER AS HE WALKED, but it became clear that the Earth was trying harder. Pockets of brush began to appear, and then clumps of smaller, more diverse vegetation that huddled close together beneath the protection of overhanging trees. Some he recognized, like the ivory-nut palms and salt-tolerant casuarina pines, while others were new to him. There was one tree in particular, with long spreading arms, that was ripe with both nuts curved like a courtesan’s eyebrows and large purple fruit. Winged caterpillars gnawed on the round leaves, while flightless butterflies crawled along the branches in search of flowers or rotting fruit to suck.
In one grove where he stopped to drink from a small, comparatively clean pool, a troop of monkeys appeared overhead. They marched along the branch in single file, perfectly in step, following their leader. He wore a headdress made from the empty husk of a gourd. Necklaces of nuts and shells flopped against his hirsute brown chest. As was the nature of monkeys, all were armed. Several carried small bows and arrows, while the rest were equipped with tiny spears that had been whittled from hardwood sticks. There were no females or infants in the troop. Those, Ehomba knew, would be waiting back at a carefully chosen treetop bivouac for the males to return.
“Halt!” he heard the leader suddenly exclaim. Instantly, the rest of the troop assumed a fighting stance. As Ehomba stepped back from the edge of the pool, shaking water from his hands, he was careful not to reach for any of his own weapons. A dozen miniature bows were already trained on him.
Using his long arms and prehensile tail, the troop leader descended from the tree in a rush of anarchic branches, until he stood confronting the herdsman. Ehomba politely took a seat, a move that reduced his great height and left him eye-to-eye with the three-foot-tall monkey. Necklaces jangling, sharpened stick in hand, the troop leader approached warily to extend a limp hand, in the manner of edified monkeys.
“I am Gomo.”
The herdsman gently enveloped the strong, limber fingers in his own. “Etjole Ehomba, of the Naumkib.”
“I do not know that tribe of men.” Overhead, the other members of the troop began to relax. Keeping their weapons close at hand, they spread out among the branches. Several began snacking on the moist, tasty leaves of the tree while others set about gathering the purple fruit, placing the dark orbs in crude sacks they carried slung over their narrow shoulders. The rest relaxed by grooming themselves or their neighbor.
Ehomba gestured loosely to the south. “I have come from down the coast, to fulfill an obligation to a man who died in my arms.”
Gomo scratched vigorously at his tailbone. “Ah! Your path is chosen for you, then.”
The herdsman nodded. “And what brings my small cousins to this place? The bounty of this tree?”
The monkey leader shook his head. “Bounty of a different kind, I hope. We are looking for help.” Straining to see behind the human, he noted the strangely tipped spear and other unusual weapons lying on the ground. “You are a warrior?”
“A herdsman. But all the men of my village are also warriors. One never knows when raiders may come out of the interior, hoping for easy plunder.” He smiled thinly. “They do not find it among the Naumkib.”
“I understand what you say about human raiders,” Gomo replied sagely. “That is a problem the People of the Trees do not have. We hold among us little that humans find of value.”
“Difficult to maintain a herd in the treetops,” Ehomba agreed. “Even a small steer or sheep would have a tough time grazing in the branches.”
“Oh-ho!” Gomo doubled over and slapped his belly. Reflecting the laughter below them, the other members of the troop joined in, their raucous chattering momentarily drowning out every other sound in the grove.
When his chest and stomach finally stilled, Gomo turned serious once more. “Half a warrior would be more help to us than none.” He scrutinized the human from head to toe with great deliberation. “And you are almost tall enough to make not a half, but two. You could help us.”
Ehomba looked past him, gazing significantly northward. “I have told you where I am bound and why. My family waits for me to return. I have no time for side trips or excursions.”
The monkey edged closer, bringing his pungent smell with him like a loose coat. “You are following the coast? North of here the trees thin once more and the country turns desolate. But inland it rapidly becomes greener, especially along the banks of the Aurisbub. That in turn flows into the great river Kohoboth. Upstream from their confluence lies the human town of Kora Keri, where one such as yourself would find rest, food, shelter, and information on the lands fart
her north that are a closed mystery to me and my people.” He sat back, one hand on his spear-stick, his long tail flicking back and forth behind him. “Of course, if you already know all this, then I am wasting my time telling you about it.”
“I did not.” It was always wise, Ehomba knew, to be honest with a monkey. Unlike their human cousins, they could be sly, but only rarely were they intentionally deceptive.
“Our forest home lines this side of the Aurisbub. If you would help us,” Gomo went on, “I myself would guide you to Kora Keri. Of course, you could continue on your way up the coast, but you would make much better time via the inland route, in the company of unlimited fresh water you would not have to carry on your back, all manner of available food, and a town for your immediate destination.”
“You are right—I would.”
“We would not ask you to stay among us more than a night or so.”
“You mean a day or so.”
“No.” Gomo brooded on troubles unseen. “Our travails strike us at night, when we are at our weakest.”
The herdsman sighed. “What is your trouble, Gomo, that you need the services of a warrior?”
Learned, limpid eyes looked up at him. “We are plagued, man, by a flock of slelves.”
Ehomba nodded knowingly. “I have seen them, but they do not bother our flocks.”
“No. They would not. Man and his weapons and warlike ways they shun, but of the People of the Trees they have no fear.” Bitterness sharpened his words. “They come among us at night and steal our food. Several times now they have tried to take some of our children. The females are frantic, and we are all weary from lack of sleep. Sooner or later the slelves will wear us down, and then there will be tragedy instead of inconvenience.” Too proud to beg, he lowered his voice.
“We cannot offer you gold or silver, Ehomba. Those are man-things and we do not keep them. I can promise only guidance, and gratefulness. I will understand if your obligation weighs too heavily on you to let you detour even a little from your predetermined path.”
Ehomba considered the request, and the monkey seated solemnly before him. After a moment he rose abruptly, using his spear to lever himself upward. Startled, the members of the troop leaped about in a sudden, mad fit to regain their weapons. Their leader hastened to calm them.
“Peace! The man has something to say!”
Tilting back his head, the lanky herdsman peered up at the slim bodies within the branches. “Nothing is predetermined. I will help you—if I can.”
His response inaugurated an even greater racket than before among the members of the troop. They leaped joyously from branch to branch, flung handfuls of leaves into the air, and did somersaults on narrow tree limbs without a single spill. When they began to quiet down, Gomo rejoined them, scampering up a trunk and swinging himself effortlessly back into the branches.
“This way, friend Ehomba.” From his perch he used his spear-stick to point northeastward. “It is not far to the Aurisbub, and we need to hurry. In order to look for help, we had to leave the females and young in the care of juveniles and silverhairs. They will be wishing anxiously for us to return.”
Ehomba nodded as he followed along below, occasionally glancing up into the branches to check the troop’s direction. “Just don’t expect me to travel through the trees. I am no monkey.”
“No,” Gomo agreed sadly. “Your kind has lost that ability and that freedom. We feel badly for the tribe of men.”
Although the vegetation grew steadily denser as they moved inland away from the coast, there were still places where the troop was forced to drop to the ground and walk upright. Out of the trees, they were at their most vulnerable, and their alertness was correspondingly heightened. At such times they tended to shed their monkey bravado and cluster closer to the tall, well-armed human.
Once, they saw a patrolling leopard. A reversed female, her yellow spots were prominent against her black body. She only glanced in their direction. Of more concern was the herd of hairy elephants that lumbered past close on their southern flank. But despite the presence of young among them, the elephants, hot within their woolly coats, were interested only in reaching the river and assuaging their thirst. A couple of matriarchs bellowed in the troop’s direction, raising both trunk and curving tusks, but did not swerve from their course. The troop paused briefly to let the herd get well ahead. It would not do to stumble into the migrating behemoths in the middle of the night.
The members of the troop shared their meager rations with the man in their midst, and he accepted the nuts and berries and fruit more out of politeness than necessity. Still, it was good to be able to conserve his own stores. One never knew when the future might prove less accommodating.
Eventually a line of taller trees appeared ahead, stretching unbroken from south to north. Birds and small dragons and squeaking pipperils flocked above it while rodents mowed the shorter grasses in long, disciplined ranks. Unlike the barren coast, this was clearly a region of abundance.
“Yonder lies the Aurisbub,” Gomo told him as his troop broke into a gamboling trot. “We are a little south of where we should be. When we strike the river we will turn north, and soon I will be back in the bosom of my family.”
“I wish I could say the same.” Mirhanja’s warmth was already a too-distant memory.
“I am no seer, Ehomba, and so cannot prophesy the end of your journey. But by traveling along the Aurisbub to the Kohoboth and then to Kora Keri, I can predict that you will achieve it sooner.” He slipped a long, lanky arm around the human’s thighs. “Come now. We are close to friendly faces and places.”
The explosion of joy that greeted the appearance of the troop was something to see. Females and young came pouring, tumbling out of a clutch of trees that grew close to the river, setting up a din that had to be heard to be believed. The acrobatics the herdsman had witnessed earlier were as nothing compared to the circus that now ensued. The scene of reunion was one of utter and unrestrained monkey mania.
When families had been reunited and juveniles and oldsters relieved of their duties as guardians, Gomo introduced him to the members of his own family circle. For the rest of the day and on into evening, he was forced to tolerate the attentions of two incredibly energetic, playful youngsters. They clambered all over him despite periodic admonitions from their parents to cease and desist. For the young monkeys, it was as if a wondrous perambulating, talking jungle gym had wandered into their midst, exclusively for their enjoyment. At Gomo’s urging, Ehomba would smack them off his head or shoulders when their antics grew too distracting. But he could not bring himself to do it often. They were small, innocent, brown bundles of pure unadulterated fun. The thought that if something was not done they might become food for marauding slelves was a sobering one.
There was very little moon that night as Ehomba sat in the crook of the orange-pod tree looking out at the silvered river and listening to Gomo chatter on beside him. Nearby, he could see monkey families settling down for the night, females clutching their infants close to their breasts, juveniles piled one atop the other, males sleepily doing their best to stay alert and on guard. In keeping with the beauty and tranquillity of the surroundings, it should have been a setting of pastoral contentment. Instead, unspoken threat saturated the air with tension.
“They always come from there.” Gomo pointed. “From across the river. They must live in the taller trees on that side.”
“At least you can see them coming.” Years of standing watch over flocks day in and day out had sharpened Ehomba’s night vision to the point where it was far more sensitive than that of the average person. Something flapped slowly as it made its way downstream, and he tensed momentarily before unbending: It was only a perffus, dragging the surface of the river for fish with its hooked wingtips as it glided along silently above the water. As he followed its progress, the flier’s right wingtip suddenly dipped and jerked as it lanced a bug-hunting fish just below the gills. Quickly transferring the catch
to its beak, it flapped mightily to straighten out and regain altitude. The last Ehomba saw of it was a flash of silver from the unlucky fish as predator and prey disappeared into the trees on the far bank.
But the movement there did not cease. Instead, it multiplied as a dark mass emerged from the wall of forest. It grew larger as it drew nearer, and in doing so resolved itself into individual shapes.
Gomo sounded the alarm. Half asleep, terrified females and infants were herded into the largest trees, where the bigger branches would offer some protection. Armed males gathered to protect them, while a strike force of the best fighters clustered around their leader. They would attempt to ward off the attackers before they could harry the more vulnerable members of the troop. The tribe’s cries of panic and agitated chattering roused every animal along the river.
Ehomba clutched his spear firmly as he hunched down next to Gomo. The air around him was thick with the musky odor of the troop, but he hardly noticed it. As a herdsman, he had lived around and among animals all his life, and their smells did not bother him.
“It’s them,” Gomo murmured unnecessarily as he gestured with his spear-stick. “Why won’t they just leave us alone?”
“You are easy prey.” Ehomba seemed to become one with the tree, hardly moving. “I can see several problems with your defense already.”
The troop leader’s eyebrows lifted. A lesser individual might have construed the human’s observation as an insult, but the desperate Gomo could not afford the luxury of indignity. “Is that so? What, for example?”
“No time. Tell you later.”
In the absence of moonlight it was impossible to count the number of attacking slelves. They were more than a handful and less than a horde. Within moments they were in among the trees, diving at the troop, trying to reach the unarmed females with their infants. The monkeys screamed defiance, jabbing at the night fliers with their spear-sticks, firing feathered arrows at the dark shapes that darted between the branches. In the feeble light it was almost impossible to take proper aim at a target.
Carnivores of Darkness and Light: Journeys of the Catechist, Book 1 Page 3