by O. J. Lowe
“I suspected,” he said eventually. “Let’s leave it there. I don’t pretend to understand how these things exist, but they do and that’s the end of it. Let’s just get this done. We approach on foot. Anything we come across…” He slid one of the machetes out of its sheath. “We kill. Try to get the lay of the land and then we…”
“Wouldn’t we have been better aboard the dragon for that?” Reeves asked. “Just asking.”
Wilsin ignored him. “We see if our friends are still alive, try to get them out.” He fought the urge to look at the beacon, knew it wouldn’t do much good, how long they’d be. Wouldn’t even tell them if they’d got the message. For all he knew, this might be a futile effort and they were truly alone out here. If the evac didn’t show up, they’d be dead. Not a chance there was another outcome. Nobody would ever know what happened to them.
He’d killed his first rustler less than five minutes after setting out from their landing point, had seen it stood in silence amidst the trees, the browns and greens of its body doing a job camouflaging it against the foliage. Not good enough to hide it from Reeves though, Wilsin had felt the tap from the Vedo on his shoulder, seen him point towards it. He’d followed the gesture, nodded in silent agreement. Once you knew it was there, it didn’t take much to make out the misshapen body amidst the trees, to realise that it wasn’t bark but an actual living creature. It was eerie watching it stand there, alone and uncaring, didn’t deviate from staring ahead, didn’t fidget or move, just impassive like the trees it was hiding amidst.
No hesitation. Reeves had confirmed it was alone, had examined the scene for another few moments and then held up a single finger. Mouthed the word ‘one’ to him. Wilsin would have appreciated the kjarnblade to do the job with, his machetes would have to suffice. He broke out the bushes, on the thing before it could react. Up close, it was hard to miss just how big the rustlers were, Wilsin wasn’t the shortest but it towered over him by a head. Both arms came up, tendrils snapping like whips, cutting into the dirt beneath their feet, churning earth and fallen leaves up.
Big but not the biggest opponent he’d ever faced in combat and probably not the most dangerous either. Memories of his fight months ago with Domis Di Carmine rushed through his head, he felt his adrenaline spike and he rushed forward, spinning the machetes in his grip. He leaped at it, whips an unhelpful weapon in close if you could keep inside their range. One machete flashed up, cut a tendril away as it came towards him. A squeal broke from somewhere, not that he could see a mouth. Green stained the blade, not blood but something else. The cut tendril hit the ground, twitched like a serpent for a few moments before going still. The shrieks were already threatening to grow louder and louder, Wilsin made his choice, dropped into a crouch and swung the other machete low. The blade met only token resistance as it tore through woody flesh, a spray of green gushing out. It vaguely reminded him of plant food, his mother had always loved flowers and she’d insisted on putting that bloody stuff in the water with it, all so they’d grow. Their home had resembled a greenhouse at times, she’d filled every room with them where she could. There’d been more life in that house than the people who’d lived there.
He wondered what his mother would say if she could see him fighting a huge walking plant. She’d probably be unimpressed at the way he was hacking at it, he could see her with her hands on her hips and an exasperated look on her face.
The blow had been good, the rustler fell to ruined knees, he took its head off with a third swipe and watched it bounce into the trees. Still its body twitched, he gave it a kick in hopes of subsiding it. Nothing, one of the arms even tried to move towards him, might have grabbed him had he not driven both machetes down into its exposed back, tearing deep through flesh.
It wasn’t pretty, but he’d done the job. He looked at Reeves. “Next time, you get them.”
The Vedo only gave him a smile. “Of course. As you wish. I can’t kill them all though, I want to leave some for you.” His grin grew. “Ooh are we having Unisco banter. I always heard it was the height of wit.”
Wilsin said nothing, just wiped down his blades and carried on walking.
Maybe he’d misinterpreted the situation, he thought, the closer they got to Cradle Rock. He could see it rising into the sky, a beacon to the heavens. No wonder the people of the past had flocked to this place, there was a certain sense of majesty here. The jungle couldn’t have been there back then, Fazarn had never mentioned a jungle. He was sure that he’d said it was all desert. Maybe it was one of those many inconsistencies that seemed to operate within tales of the Divines.
What was religion without a little debate? If he knew the answer to that question, he felt like he’d know the answers to even more. He stretched his arms, one machete still in his grip, the other back in a sheath. Couldn’t be far now, just a little further. When they got to the rock, there had to be answers.
Right then, he heard more shrieks, could hear them. Rustlers. They weren’t screwing about. They were hunting, tearing through the jungle, their limbs making the rustling sound he’d named them for as they brushed against their surroundings. Shrieks and cries and catcalls rippled through the jungle. Next to him, Reeves activated his kjarnblade.
“I think we might have some running to do,” the Vedo said.
“Ben… Don’t talk about it. Just do it.”
He was in motion before the words had finished coming from him, machete sheathed. Most sensible people would run away in this circumstance. The two of them had found themselves running towards it, legs pumping and desperately ignoring the heat. Neither of them wanted to die out here.
Please… Please have heard my beacon.
The first one came into sight, the blaster rifle came up from his back, he put a trio of shots straight through its centre mess, watched as Reeves swept into the inside and hacked it into three pieces with minimal effort. More were starting to filter through the trees, shuffling green shapes coming into view, he fired again and again, only when they were in his immediate path and soon his muscles ached from the assault of the rifle thumping against his shoulder, the vibrations reverberating up through his forearms. It clicked on empty and he tossed it aside, pumped his legs again. Sweat poured down him, his palms thick with it. He drew a machete, hacked at the neck of another, gripped the hilt so hard he thought his knuckles were going to crack. Lukonium bit through green-brown skin with a crunch, another head went flying and he shoved past it, felt something sharp catch his arm, something wet and warm dripping down it immediately. He tried to put it out of his mind, ignore the sharp burst of pain.
Behind him, Reeves ducked and dived, wielded his blade like a surgeon as he landed blows that cut anything near him into pieces. Bisecting them didn’t appear to kill them instantly but it’d do for now.
Compromise or kill. Either worked.
Reeves could run, he had to give him that, easily keeping pace with him despite the humidity clinging to them. Wilsin’s heart kept thumping, he fought for breath and the urge to keep on running.
This had been a bad idea in retrospect. Maybe they should have via the sky. Running and fighting was never as easy as it looked, especially not if they had to fight their way out of here as well, not an unlikely proposition. Death had always been close, he knew he could feel it reaching for him, a bony hand ready to tap him on the shoulder.
Or was it? He could see the edges of the clearing up ahead, could see the light breaking through. Cradle Rock loomed high over their heads, they had to be close now. So close. If he reached out, he might well be able to touch it. Reeves could see it too, Wilsin could hear his breathing, could see the sweat covering his face as he redoubled his pace. Running for your life had never taken on such a succinct meaning as this. Yet, were they? He allowed himself a glance back, saw the rustlers were lingering. Amidst the jumble of his thoughts, he considered it interesting.
Why?
Had he not been so consumed with getting ahead, he might have considered what they wer
e hanging back from. What up ahead was keeping them back? As it were, his thoughts were more preoccupied with relief. Imminent death was no longer an option. He let out a choked gasp of relief, slowed his run to a jog for the last hundred feet and then they were through the last bastion of trees into the clearing.
His first thought was to turn around and sprint back into the jungle, quickly realised the futility of that thought as they turned to look at him. Not one rustler, not a dozen, not even a hundred.
Thousands. Easily. A thousand eyeless faces turned to stare at him and Reeves as one, not really seeing, definitely not blinking but clearly looking at them the way a curious cat idly considered a mouse. They looked at them like they were food. Prey. An inconsequence.
“David,” Reeves said, his voice strangely neutral given the circumstances. At least he hadn’t screamed. That really would have put a dampener on the situation. “Tell me you had a plan for something like this.”
“I had a plan for something like this,” Wilsin said. It was what he wanted to hear after all, no point denying someone a crumb of comfort right before they were both horribly killed. “Don’t worry about it. It’s going to be over very shortly.”
“Not comforting.”
He smiled weakly, unhooked his second blaster rifle. He’d die with a weapon in his hand, kept it pointed at them with one hand on the grip, the other going to his summoner. Might as well go all out. The spirits might be the turning point. The difference between dying quickly and surviving that little bit longer. When your only choice was dying now or later, it was a pretty sorry shit show.
They hadn’t attacked though. Rather the opposite. In front of them, the rustlers were moving out of the way, parting to reveal a single unbroken path of grass ahead, leading out into the midst of their bodies
“I think they want us to go that way,” Reeves said, voicing the thought Wilsin had already been considering. “Right into the middle of them.”
“Easier to kill us when we can’t run,” Wilsin said. “When we’ve got nowhere to go.”
“They could easily kill us with this many regardless whether we run or not,” Reeves pointed out. “It’s not too much of a stretch. They could throw dozens at us; never mind hundreds and we’d be overwhelmed quickly.”
He was right, Wilsin had to admit. They were already in the killing field, might as well walk a bit further. The rustlers clearly wanted them to do it for some reason, maybe it would be okay.
Maybe. There was theoretically a chance of that happening. He might as well delay the inevitable for as long as possible.
Wilsin lowered his weapon and took the first step onto the path. The rustlers were barely feet away from him, close enough to smell their pollinated odour. Wild flowers and jungle mud. Reeves had replaced his weapon on his belt, strode along like he didn’t have any sort of care. Maybe he had a plan.
He was really starting to hate the word maybe.
About the time he’d started to lose count of how many they’d passed, the path started to widen out into a clearing within the bodies, something very strange already underway as they approached, roots and knots of grass rising from the earth, twisting and contorting into an unusual shape. Wilsin watched them continue to work their form until slowly it took the appearance of something he could recognise, thorns and jungle flowers resting atop a carpet of weeds to add decoration. He’d seen it all now, he figured. Who’d have thought that whatever this whole thing was, it’d form its own damn chair.
Not just any chair admittedly. When you saw the stories about the kings of old, it was like it’d seen all of those and set out to top them. A throne fit for a ruler. All these things looked alike, he didn’t know how they considered which of them was the leader. Maybe they didn’t have a ruler. Was that so unusual? They looked like plants after all and plants didn’t really have leaders. They weren’t sentient, the idea was ridiculous.
“Interesting,” Reeves said.
“You ever seen the Kjarn manipulated like that?” Wilsin asked out the corner of his mouth, the hope that a positive answer would come his way heavy in his soul. He needed a win. Any win. If they were dealing with some powerful Vedo, that’d be grand. He could put a label on it, maybe not a neat one but he could deal. This… This was too far into the unknown.
He was to be disappointed as Reeves shook his head. “Never. I might be able to do it if I trained for decades. Now though? No chance.”
It wasn’t a denial. He’d take that.
“I don’t think so,” the Vedo added, shattering his hopes with four simple words. “It feels off. Weird. Like nothing I’ve felt before. Sorry,” he added, a little limply. “Can’t help you.”
“You know, it’s rude to whisper amongst yourselves.”
Wilsin stiffened up, saw the figure move out from the crowd, gliding effortlessly through the rustlers. To say that it was a rustler like them was an understatement, bigger, heavier, greener and with a crown of cherillo berries dangling from the circlet of branches around his head. It was a he, Wilsin realised with surprise, some part of him looked almost human but for the moss-green skin and the cracked bark covering his limbs. Unlike the rest of the rustlers, he had a face, eyes and a nose and a mouth slashed into the wood but moving regardless. Though the eyes were empty, they gave the impression that they could see right through the two of them. He didn’t want to lock his gaze on them
Plus, that voice. There was something about it that resonated with him, ever so slightly, and that unsettled him. He couldn’t place the face or the voice, he hadn’t met many giant plant men in the past so to say he felt unsettled was an understatement.
“That’s better,” the plant-man said, his lips moving in sync with his words. Wilsin wondered if he had vocal chords, if they were also fashioned of wood. A strange thought but it made him smile and Divines knew he needed some of that. “Now we can have a pleasant chat.”
He was taller than the rest of the rustlers, towered a good few feet above the largest of them and they bowed their heads as he passed them by, faces low in deference. He barely gave them a glance, stepped over to his throne and lowered himself into it, the wood and the vines creaking under his weight. Wilsin didn’t want to think about how much a body like that might weigh. The strange thing was, he didn’t look cumbersome. He looked graceful and lethal at the same time, like an ice panther, floated across the grass rather than walking. His legs were thick, finished at the end into four-taloned feet.
“Dare I ask who you are?” Reeves asked, letting both hands fall to his side. Wilsin saw out the corner of his eye that his fingers were flexing near the hilt of his kjarnblade, he still had his own weapon in hand even if it wasn’t levelled at the huge plant-man.
“And yet I know who you both are, Master Benjamin Reeves of the Vedo. You’ve killed a great number of my people here in this jungle, not a mean feat I admit but a particularly tiresome path that you chose to walk.” Reeves looked like he wasn’t too fussed by the way it had tossed his name about, yet Wilsin saw the flicker in his eyes. Unisco always wanted you to notice the little things. The little things were the true difference in the kingdoms, pick up enough of the little details and you got a glimpse of the bigger picture.
“Yet your crimes are naught in comparison to that of Unisco Agent David Peter Wilsin next to you,” the plant-man said. “Do you know who I am, David? Do you know who I was?
As familiar as the figure felt to him, Wilsin had to shake his head. He couldn’t place him, he said as much and at least the figure looked mollified in part.
“I admire your honesty, much as my heart swings one way to the next in debate over whether to permit you to live or not.” The huge rustler leaned forward, Wilsin could have sworn the mouth was contorted into a smile. “I suppose you could say that I’m their king and these are my people.” He threw out a bare arm flecked with brown, gestured to the area around them, his smile growing. “Before I was their king, I suppose you could say I’m someone you tried to kill.”
Chapter Twenty-Two. King of the Plants.
“Some enemies are easier to vanquish than others. Some deaths you never hear about and always their expiration leaves you wondering. Then there are those you think dead, only for them to reappear when the moment is at its least opportune.”
Brendan King in a lecture to the cadets at Iaku academy some years ago.
Wilsin blinked. Those words he hadn’t expected, took him moment to wrap his mind around them, consider the full weight behind them and work out their value. The chances were that it could be the truth. He’d been a Unisco agent for a long time and though he’d never actively sought to end a life, triggers had been pulled. People had died. He was still here. If it came to a choice between them and him, he would continue to pull those triggers. Self-preservation might sound like a dirty word, but it was a guiding light for every living thing in the kingdoms. You exist, you carry on, survive before you die.
“I don’t remember you,” he repeated, not entirely sure whether it was the best approach to take. The plant-man looked impassive, his carved face hard to read. He might be angry, he might be impassive, he might feel nothing at all. “I’ve seen a lot of faces in this life.”
“What you mean is that you’ve sent a lot of men to their deaths,” the plant-man said. “I can emphasise though. That’s the nature of being a king. You have their lives in your hands. They are theirs to do what you want with. You can keep them alive, you can send them to their death, you can make them dance or you can maim and mutilate them at your pleasure.”