The Intern (The Forbidden World Book 1)

by Garry Ocean

  They got ready quickly. Threw some wet grass on the fire that already went out. They did not want to waste time on erasing all traces of their overnight camp. Valu and Gobi took the stretcher. Ron started out first, and Sith was the last in the chain. The stranger was walking a little to the side. Sith was looking at him from time to time. The stranger walked easily, producing no noise, sometimes disappearing for awhile, and then reappearing in front of them again. Sith believed himself a good hunter. He could hear the Forest. He could notice when dangerous and not-so-dangerous animals were approaching them. Whisperer taught him how to feel the rage and hostility from the beasts hiding fifty steps away. But the stranger managed to confuse him by disappearing and reappearing here and there. Right now, for example, he is walking, minding his own business, grinning at him at the distance of a long spear. Although just a moment ago he was walking in front, next to the stretcher. The boy was a little annoyed with his manner of crouching near him unexpectedly.

  The Foundling, as the hunters called him without discussing it with each other, stopped Sith with a hand wave and pointed to the knife hanging on his belt. The boy raised his eyebrows in confusion. Then the stranger touched the lianas hanging from trees, ran to the stretcher and showed with his hands as if he was tying it around. Then he pointed at the bag on Goby’s back and then at his own back. Everyone stopped and looked at him silently. He repeated his gestures again.

  “What is it?” Ron’s voice from the front was clearly annoyed. “Why did you stop?”

  “Here, the Foundling seems to be offering his help,” Valu responded for everyone. “Looks like the wants to carry Rigo on his own back.”

  Meanwhile, Nick took the knife from Sith who was still in stupor, easily climbed the tree and started to cut lianas. He cut eight of them, of about the same size, and then used three to tie Rigo’s lifeless body to the stretcher. After he made sure that the lianas were holding him tightly, he made something resembling the shoulder straps for backpacks. He did everything quickly while the four hunters silently observed him. Only when he carefully put the stretcher on his bag, everyone breathed out in relief.

  “Well, perhaps this will work,” Valu said for everyone.

  “How long will he be able to carry him like this?” Ron asked in doubt. “All right, let’s move, at least he can be of some use.”

  For some time, they were walking slowly, looking at the stranger every minute. He walked in wide strides and seemed not to have noticed the burden of a man on his back. Some time later Ron waived his hand and they picked up the pace. Everyone was a little happier now because they realized they would be able to reach the Bony Chain before dark. And from there, just one more day and they will be in the Valley.

  Sith did not envy Ron at all. The hunter would have to tell the families about the other hunters’ deaths. This was a big loss for the entire village. The death of ten tough men will be remembered for a long time and most surely connected to Sith. Of course, they will say, how come Whisperer’s student could not divert the beasts from the hungers? Why do we need him at all then? The fact that the beasts were in the hundreds is not a good consolation for the widows. Ron, of course, will honestly tell them about everything, hiding nothing. He most probably would say it was all his fault. But it won’t make it easier for Sith. The only consolation for him is that they managed to complete the assignment. The mycelium was carefully packed, pleasantly heavy weighing down his back bag. One can only hope that the Guardians will compensate them well and the families of the killed hunters will not be in need for a long time.

  The groves became fewer and farther between, the grass was not as thick as before, and in some places they could see rocks in the ground. The Bony Chain should appear on the horizon soon. Sith looked at the Foundling again. He still walked with the same long stride, not tired at all. He seemed not to be bothered in the least by the wounded hunter he was carrying on his back. “Perhaps, he is indeed one of those Rejected or Steppe Dwellers? We need to get him to Whisperer. Let them decide together with the Elder what to do with him next. But the lad is big, like a stinkh,” Sith thought, a little jealous. “We’ve been on foot for half a day, and he didn’t even lose his breath.”

  Ron, who was still walking in front, stopped several times and asked everyone to freeze. Something worried him. He was listening for a long time, and once even climbed a tree to look around, searching for something suspicious. Sith didn’t hear anything suspicious. The Forest was far behind. Even though he could feel the presence of some creatures hiding in the grass, they didn’t cause him to worry. They wouldn’t be brave enough to attack people at daylight.

  “The beasts are far, far behind. We only need to pass between the rotten swamps that had appeared after the last Exodus, and then we will reach the open space,” Sith thought. “There, no creature will be able to crouch to us unnoticed.” Ron must have thought the same thing, as he was not letting them slow down. Here was the last grove, the place where they had camped the first night of their journey. Sith sighed. There had been still fifteen of them then, and no one could have predicted what would happen after…

  After another thousand steps, the hunters finally came out of the grove into a wide meadow. Someone was already waiting for them there. “Southerners,” Sith thought immediately. They did not subscribe to making clothes from the silkworm threads like people from the northern villages, but were making it from the hides of beasts they killed.

  The hunters stopped. The southerners and northerners used to be enemies. A lot of times, they would fight each other. And then the Guardians interfered into the conflict and strictly divided the geographical zones for them. Ever since then, they tried to avoid each other while hunting. Especially because the Forest was big, there was enough of it for everyone.

  But this time they were obviously waiting for them. Ten armed men were standing in the middle of the meadow and looked at them sullenly. Five of them were armed with heavy and gnarly bludgeons. Four were holding short bows. This was a bad weapon. In the Forest, this weapon was useless. But here they were, standing and waiting. Arrows in the bows. Ready.

  A gray-headed man was standing in front of the southerners. A young poison-spitter was sitting on his shoulder. The creature was eyeing the hunters without blinking, hissing disgustingly from time to time. “A Sage,” Sith felt unpleasant coolness between his shoulder blades. The gray-haired man, as if hearing his thoughts, raised his hand and said loudly, “I am Ulo, the elder of the Vakh tribe. We have no desire to kill you. We only need the mycelium.”

  The hunters stood there, breathing heavily after the long and straining journey: four exhausted warriors, one of whom is still a teenager, against ten well-armed southerners. They were clearly outnumbered.

  “So go to the Mirror Lake and take it there,” Ron said calmly. He was obviously trying to buy some time by engaging them in a conversation. What bothered him during the last leg of their journey and perhaps even earlier was now taking a shape. They got into a carefully set-up trap. Now Ron was sure that there was another troop following them closely behind. And these ones had been already waiting for them here. Perhaps, for a day or two, or perhaps they planned everything even earlier. It was very much like southerners – to reap the fruits of others’ labor.

  “We have very little time, hunter,” the gray-haired man said, squinting. At this moment, Sith felt something touching his temples. He was too late to have locked his consciousness, as the gray-haired man was already pointing at him his index finger.

  “Boy, bring me your bag right here,” he ordered and noticing that Sith was hesitating, added sharply, “Don’t make me wait!”

  Ron was thinking fast. To resist meant to die. The experienced hunter realized that perfectly well. Perhaps, they’d be able to wound two or three southerners. If they get lucky, they’d send someone to follow the Departed. But his people will die for sure. He did not think about himself at that moment at all. To give them the mycelium would mean to fail the mission for
which ten of his friends gave up their lives. He could not do that either. There was one more chance, that is to start an unequal battle, distracting the vakhs thus giving a chance to Sith to run and hide. Perhaps, the boy would be able to run away from the pursuers. Then Ron will not disgrace himself. All right, it’s settled then. Just as Ron was going to give an order with a secret gesture to his warriors, he felt his temples being crushed as if they were in a vise-grip, and his muscles felt like wood. He literally could not move his fingers. The hunters were paralyzed.

  “Don’t play a hero,” the Sage smirked. “If we wanted to kill you, you’d be dead already. Why ruin good relations with the neighbors?” he added sarcastically.

  Sith had a horrible ache in his temples, but his muscles still obeyed him. Ron’s look told him what the hunter wanted him to do. Taking a deep breath, he charged toward the grove. When he had only several steps left to reach the safety of trees and bushes, one of the southerners threw a lasso at him. The weighted lasso cut through the air and, after several circles, locked itself on Sith’s feet. The boy fell into the grass clumsily, with arms wide open. The southerners all burst into laughter.

  “Bring me the bag!” the gray-haired man said, and two southerners quickly ran to Sith. He made an attempt to get up, but his cramped legs refused to obey him. “We’ve lost it!” was his last quick thought.

  The Orphius’s rays were shining right into the boy’s eyes. He could only see the dark silhouettes approaching him. Suddenly, a broad figure appeared in the southerners’ way. The Foundling! Sith had completely forgotten about him. He was saying something very quickly to them in his own language. It seemed that the southerners just wanted to push the crazy one out of their way, but the next moment they were all on the ground.

  Sith covered his eyes with his palm, protecting them from the blinding light. The vakhs got up with a roar and attacked the stranger on two sides. When Sith thought that the two bludgeons would land on the Foundling’s head at the same time, the latter made a swift move to the side. Sith heard something crack, then moans, and the southerners started to melt down. One was holding his shattered shoulder. The second was not so lucky: his tribesman cracked his skull.

  The next second, Sith heard the swish of the flying arrows. The vakhs let go of their bowstrings without waiting for the order.

  “Now we’ll all get killed,” Sith thought. He closed his eyes tightly not to see how the stranger he had met at the swamp would die. Something swished right above his head. Then he heard quiet rustle, as if the arrows landed in the bushes behind him. Sith opened his eyes just a little bit, afraid to see what he expected.

  The Foundling was still alive and seemed intact. Here he comes up to the southerners in a measured pace and gives back one of them his arrow. The Sage barks something and then all the warriors attack the stranger. Then everything happened so fast that Sith managed to maintain only some broken disjointed memories in his mind. He remembered that the stranger, as if dancing, began quickly swirl among the attackers and, catching them, laid them down one by one on the ground. Later, Sith could swear that the Foundling handled them very carefully, as if afraid that they could break their necks on impact. Everything was over in a second.

  The Foundling was standing, with his arms down, and looked at the gray-haired man silently. The latter made several steps back as the poison-spitter let out a short dense squirt. The Foundling, who clearly was not prepared for this, managed to bend away, but some of the poison seemed to have landed on his face. He covered his cheek with his hand, looking at the little creature in surprise. That very second, a short whistle cut through the air and Ron’s spear pierced the Sage’s chest.

  “Disgusting warthog!” Valu roared, rushing to the gray-haired man. “You’ve put a spell on us, you cowardly ragtag!” He clearly wanted to finish Ron’s deed, to drive his spear into the Sage as well. However, when he met the Foundling’s eyes, he stopped as if he walked into a wall. Ulo started to shake in convulsions, grabbing the spear’s staff. Coming out of his chest, Ron’s spear went all the way through his body.

  Ron carefully approached the southerners who were on the ground, and, bending over, started to feel their necks for pulse.

  “They are alive,” he stated rather than asked the Foundling, not worried at all that the latter would not understand him.

  Nick quickly nodded in response. Then he closed his eyes and put together his hands to his right cheek. He did that several times, until Ron asked, “Are they asleep?”

  “Asleep, asleep, asleep,” the stranger nodded happily and grinned again, as was his stupid habit. But then he laid eyes on the dead Sage and shut his mouth.

  Meanwhile Sith finally got his feet untied from the lasso, got up, and came up to a wounded southerner, limping. The latter was sitting in the grass, clutching the broken collarbone with his good hand. He clearly was in a horrible pain, although he tried not to show it. He was just swinging back and forth, without making a sound.

  “Ron, what should we do to them?” Goby asked the question on everyone’s mind. “Cut their throats?”

  Ron was silent for some time, looking from one hunter to the other. Then he said, “I don’t know how long they will be out.”

  “But something tells me that after what happened,” he gave a puzzled look to the Foundling and continued, “I doubt they would try to chase us. They will most probably wait for the second squad. By that time, we need to be as far away from here as possible.”

  Then Ron looked at Goby and said in a quieter tone, “Enough death for today. Ulo, however, was asking for it. I will never let anyone put a spell on me, as if I am a forest beast.”

  Then he came up to the Foundling and, looking straight into his eye, said, “I don’t know where you came form, but thank you for your help.” He pounded his chest and continued, “Friends call me Ron. You may also call me so.”

  “Nick,” the stranger pointed at his chest. He did not grin this time.

  Not wasting any time, the hunters set off on their way again. Sith, however, did stay behind for a little while. He came up to the wounded southerner and made passages with his arms around the hunter’s swollen shoulder, whispering something and taking away his pain. This should work for several hours. The southerner never said a word, but Sith could see gratitude in his eyes.

  Chapter 4

  Nick was sitting on the porch of Whisperer’s hut. He was in bad mood. He really had no reason to be happy. “There, my vacation on the Excelsior,” Nick smirked at himself for a millionth time. After he had decided to change his shuttle’s pre-loaded route, the events developed too quickly. He hardly had time to reflect on one event when another one was already happening. The situation seemed to have been developing by itself, giving him a role of an observer. Take this unexpected attack on the Valkyrie. Now Nick understood that his survival was short of miracle. The energy blast that destroyed the shuttle must have been of enormous power. To crash, like and egg shell, the Valkyrie’s force field was possible only with some wave impulse weapon. “How did it not affect the rescue capsule?” Nick cringed at the thought. He remembered that the ship’s computer threw him out with a great speed toward the planet.

  There was one more unpleasant surprise when he could have died for the second time. When he was entering the planet’s dense atmospheric layer, the anti-gravitation engines failed, which was unprecedented by itself. Knowing perfectly well how they work, Nick tried and failed to model a situation in his mind that would lead to their failure. As the natives here say, “Glory to the Departed Gods!” But in his case, the better version would be, “Glory to the Unknown Spacecraft Designer!”

  “Upon return, I will definitely find out whose bright mind had thought of equipping the seemingly safe rescue capsule with such an obsolete device as a self-ejecting parachute,” Nick thought, surprised to have caught himself thinking about his return, suggesting his inability to realistically assess his own situation. He was completely cut off from this world. In an encapsul
ated star system. The Valkyrie was dead. He was on a strange planet with no equipment or any means.

  Even Umka was acting strange lately. After the emergency landing Nick only managed to talk to her twice, briefly. According to her, there was a failure in the sub-quantum processor. Almost all wave communication channels were destabilized. As Nick understood, she was trying to reboot everything, but it seemed she was not succeeding. How could this have happened?

  Too many questions with no answers. And the native civilization was a puzzle as well. To give them credit, they have welcomed him. The people are savages, of course, but hospitable and friendly. Nick was greatly puzzled. He couldn’t establish the level of their socio-economic development. Perhaps, this was because he was trying to draw a parallel with the historical development of the Earth’s civilization? Thinking about it carefully, however, he decided it was something else. “Let’s think about everything step by step,” Nick thought again.

  The social organization here is obviously tribal. There is a division of tribes into hunters and gatherers. This fact is clearly established. However, the gatherers were not exactly gatherers, as Nick noticed. They would have fit this category easily had they not cultivated their lands. So, are they peasants-husbandmen? But no, they really are not. As it turned out (Nick managed to get that out of Sith with great difficulty), the seedlings they planted were brought by the hunters from the forest. And if you take the hunters, they are not hunters per se, not in the meaning of the word Nick would use. When Nick asked the boy which animals were edible, he could not receive a satisfactory answer. Ron’s answer was only slightly better. As it turned out, they didn’t hunt animals for food. But what they hunted them for – Nick failed to understand. Perhaps, the reason was that his native language vocabulary was still quite scarce.