The Tropic of Serpents: A Memoir by Lady Trent (A Natural History of Dragons)

by Marie Brennan

  Of course, I still had to reach the ground alive.

  I thought longingly of my rope, left dangling above the waterfall island. I could have used its aid now. Lacking such, I faced a long and hazardous climb—one I was not at all certain I would survive.

  What did I have that might serve as a rope? My clothing, if cut apart; but I did not relish the notion of climbing naked, nor surviving in the Green Hell that way afterward. I was neither as hardy nor as resistant to disease as the Moulish. The bindings on the glider frame, but they were too thin to grip, and too firmly lashed into place. The canvas of the glider wings.

  That, clearly, was my best prospect—compared against the alternatives, which was not saying much. I would not call it ideal. I had to balance on the branches of the tree in which I had landed and use my penknife to cut through the tough, rubber-painted fabric. My harvest, such as I could collect without endangering myself, was not very large. But I had seen the Moulish use vines to support themselves when they climbed trees, wrapping them about the trunk like straps, while bracing their feet against the bark. Where the tree afforded no good branches, I could try the same.

  My descent to the forest floor was nothing short of grueling. As I said in my description of the tree-bridges, I was not much of a climber (though I was a much better one by the time I reached the ground). I slipped often, and had to rest a dozen times along the way. I strained my fingers and my ankles, scraped my left knee raw, and was stabbed by countless thorns before I thought of wrapping a length of rubberized canvas around my palms to protect them.

  The only saving grace was the chance to observe the life of the forest from this new vantage. (If you doubt that I had any care for such things when my own life was in danger, understand that it was a means of distracting myself from my peril.) Birds and insects buzzed about me, and monkeys danced through the trees. I saw a drakefly alight on a nest not ten feet away, and discovered that in addition to eating insects, they are thieves of eggs.

  I would have taken notes on this, but the light was failing me. As I neared the lowest rank of branches, I was forced to consider my situation. Should I finish my descent to the ground or not?

  I hardly relished the notion of spending the night in a tree. But I was exhausted in body and mind, which would make the remainder of the climb even more perilous; furthermore, this would be my first night in the Green Hell without the shelter of a tent or hut and the warning light of a fire to keep animals away. There were nocturnal predators in the swamp, some of which would certainly be bold enough to prey upon a lone, helpless woman.

  No, the tree it must be. I lashed myself in place with the strips of my poor, butchered Furcula, and attempted to get some rest.

  As you might imagine, this was easier said than done. I had grown accustomed to the sounds of the forest, but they seemed different when no wall, however flimsy, stood between me and the creatures making them. Furthermore, my bindings did nothing to convince my brain that I was not going to tumble off the branch if I so much as breathed too deeply. Nor could I help but think about my companions, who would have seen me go careering off over the swamp. They might have even seen me crash. The thought of their fear made my heart ache.

  How far had I gone? I had the vague sense that my course had taken me southward and east, but beyond that, I had lost all sense of distance or direction.

  My sense as a naturalist reasserted itself. I was not in the heart of the Green Hell, that wet, tangled delta. The ground beneath me was drier, which meant I must be on the slope—but not too far up it, as the vegetation was not the scrubby stuff we had camped in while first waiting for the Moulish. (“Scrubby” by the standards of Mouleen; it would have been a respectable forest, albeit fantastically overgrown, in Scirland.) And I had not been in the air so long as to come anywhere near the bay. I was therefore somewhere in the southwestern quadrant of the swamp, and if I headed west and perhaps a bit downslope, I would come once again to the Great Cataract, which was a place my companions might find me—if I did not come across any Moulish first.

  If I did not perish first. I had only a little water and food; my survival was far from assured.

  Fear of my state kept me awake long into the night, but exhaustion can trump many things. I did at last snatch a bit of sleep, and woke with a start around dawn.

  * * *

  My disorientation was profound. I did not know where I was, and felt for an instant as if I were about to fall. I clutched the branches around me, then hissed in pain at the pressure on my abused hands. Every part of my body ached; I had not felt this poorly since my bout of yellow fever. This, I realized when my heart slowed down, was the flaw in leaving the last of the climb until morning: my various injuries were all much the worse for a night spent rigid and terrified in a tree.

  But there was nothing to be done for it now. I worked my way methodically through my body, easing cramped muscles and warming stiff joints as best I could without unbinding myself from the tree. (That, I wanted to leave for as long as I could.) This done, I considered the food and water still tied to my back. Should I consume them now, for strength? Or conserve them for later?

  Before I could decide one way or another, I saw movement down below. My instant thought was predator, and I froze—but then I saw the movement had a human origin.

  I was exhausted and terrified, and did not yet have my bearings. Moreover, I had no reason to expect anyone but Moulish here, on the southern side of the Green Hell.

  “Hello! You there, down below! Oh, thank heaven you’re here. I was so worried I would—”

  The men froze, raising their spears as if to attack. Then, far too late, I took in all the details that should have warned me.

  These were not the short, slight figures of Moulish hunters. They were taller and darker of skin—nearly as dark as the Yembe. They wore fringed bands about their arms and calves, carried shields of hide stretched over a frame. And they journeyed in silence through the swamp, as the Moulish rarely do.

  They were strangers, men of a people I had never seen before, and by the looks of their armament, their purpose here was not peaceful.

  You may blame me for being so slow to recognize them, and I will grant that as fair. I had seen no accurate images, only the caricatures then current in Scirling news-sheets, which were exaggerated for the purpose of whipping up support for the Nsebu colony and our alliance with Bayembe.

  They were Ikwunde warriors.

  On the other hand—and I can laugh about it now, when the event is years behind me—it took them a comically long time to spot me. They had no reason to look for a woman halfway up a tree. When one of them at last turned his gaze upward, he leapt back a full pace in shock.

  By then I was wishing I had untied myself, so I might at least have tried to hide. But I was still bound in place, and could not take back the unwise words that had drawn their attention to me. The one who had seen me pointed his spear, directing the others’ eyes, and they began to talk in quick, low voices amongst themselves.

  Their language is wholly unrelated to the Sachimbi family; I could not understand a word of it. The tone, however, and the hostile looks I received, told me their conversation was not one of pity. With fumbling fingers, I began trying to unbind myself.

  They saw the movement, and it seemed to hasten their decision. One of the men yanked the spear and shield from my spotter’s hands, giving what was clearly an order for him to climb the tree. I redoubled my efforts—to what end? Did I think I would escape them? But I had to try. Whatever these men were doing here, I wanted no involvement with it.

  I soon discovered why my spotter had looked grumpy upon being ordered after me. Ikwunde, of course, is a nation of desert and grassland; they are a herding people—or they were, before the inkosi Othaku Zam redirected their efforts toward conquering his neighbours. My spotter was as bad a climber of trees as I. He got one of his companions to give him a boost up, but then had to contend with the parasitic tree wrapped around the base of my
own, and did very poorly.

  Not that I fared much better. I got myself untied at last, but nearly fell in trying to change my position. I could not go groundward, not with that man below me, nor could I leap across to another tree like a monkey. Up once more? I could not reach the stripped frame of the Furcula, and it would not do me any good if I did.

  I was, I thought, too high for them to throw a spear at me. (I did not know how far an Ikwunde warrior can throw a spear.) Given how badly my pursuer climbed, I might simply outwait them on my branch—for surely they had pressing business elsewhere.

  But I underestimated the determination and agility of the man sent after me. He drew close below me, close enough that he would have caught my skirt, had I been wearing one. Frightened, I kicked out, trying to deflect his hand or even strike his head.

  I should not have tried. The attempt destroyed my precarious balance, and I fell.

  My panicked grab at the branch slowed me, as did the smaller vegetation I crashed through on the way down. It was brake enough that I escaped a fracture. But I landed hard, driving all the breath from my body—and even had I not, they would have been upon me before I could flee.

  The Ikwunde surrounded me. There were five of them, and very terrifying they looked, from my perspective on the ground. One barked a question at me, which of course I could not answer. He asked again, his voice growing steadily more angry, and I feared he would kill me simply for my lack of comprehension.

  I held out my hands as if they could ward off such a fate. “I am unarmed. You see? I am no threat to you. I—”

  They, I think, understood me no more than I did them. One seized the bundle on my back and wrenched it away, upending its contents onto the ground. Notebook, needle, thread; what remained of my scant rations. He picked up the notebook and began to page through it. “I am a scholar,” I said, even though I knew the words were useless. “Surely you must see. I am only here for study.”

  But it mattered naught what I was there for. The fact remained that I had seen them. Ikwunde warriors, in the Green Hell, where they had no business being.

  No more than they had business at the rivers, which was territory Bayembe supposedly controlled. But our soldiers were on guard for them there, and so I supposed it was inevitable that they should try their luck here, despite the lethal reputation of this place. I had heard nothing from the Moulish of previous attempts; this must be their first.

  There were only five of them, though, with no sign of more. Five men might be dangerous to me, or to the Moulish, but not to Bayembe. Not even these five, whose distinctive regalia I now recognized: they were Labane, some of the most elite troops the Ikwunde possessed. Chosen as young as ten, they were taken into intensive training, and lived the next twenty years in a regiment with their new brothers, according to their shared age. A Tsebane (for that is the correct form of the singular, though one never saw it in Scirling papers at the time, and rarely sees it now) cannot marry while he still serves; there is nothing in his life except loyalty to his brothers and to the inkosi, the ruler of Ikwunde. And the task to which the inkosi set him was war.

  Such men had no need of a captive. I would only slow them, threaten the secrecy of whatever they sought here. I knew, as clearly as I knew my own name, that they stayed their hands only out of confusion, that a battered, trouser-clad Scirling woman should fall out of a tree at their feet; once their confusion was satisfied or grew dull, they would kill me.

  What reason could I possibly give them for sparing me?

  Innocence would not avail. Neither would a plea to their compassion. I seized upon the only thing I could—which was my notebook, dropped in disgust just a moment before.

  When I reached out to collect it, three spears whipped down to point at me. I persevered, taking the volume in my hand and paging to a suitable sketch. This I held up for one of the Labane to see: the one I thought must be their leader, for he had ordered my pursuer up the tree. “You see this? The dragon. Legambwa,” I added in Moulish, for there was a greater chance they would recognize that word than the Scirling one. Belatedly, I thought to switch to that tongue, and proceeded in a mixture of it and Yembe, in the hope that some fragment or other would be familiar to my captors. “They are all over this swamp. Very dangerous. They will attack you. But I—I can show you how to avoid them. How to be safe.”

  I illustrated my words with pantomime, pointing repeatedly at the swamp-wyrm sketch, then using my hand, clawlike, to suggest a draconic attack. My palm I pressed to my heart, indicating by warm and hopeful tone that I offered a way to avoid such perils.

  Perhaps someone among my captors spoke a rudimentary amount of Moulish or Yembe; perhaps my pantomime was effective. Perhaps something else passed among them, during their brief conversation. I had, as some readers may recall, been caught by strange men in a foreign country once before, but on that occasion I had been able to parse their language as a dialect of Eiversch, which made communication possible, if not easy. This was as opaque to me as Draconean, and that, as much as the warlike nature of the men who had caught me, made this incident far more terrifying. I felt as if I were in the grip of yellow fever again, the world around me making no sense, and I my next breath potentially my last.

  Something persuaded them, whether it was any part of my plea or a notion of their own making. All I knew was that the one who came for me did so with a length of vine rather than a spear, and so I did not resist as he bound my hands together behind my back. Nor did I protest when he ripped apart the fabric of my bundle and used it to gag me, though I dearly wished for a drink of water before he did. I was not dead yet, and that was more than I had expected a moment ago; everything else could wait.

  When they dragged me to my feet, someone worked at my wrists for a moment, and then I felt a tug on my bound arms. They had tied another length of vine to the first, making a kind of leash to prevent me from running.

  As if I could run. You have an image, I hope, of the treacherous terrain that makes up the Green Hell; now try to imagine traversing it at speed, with your hands behind you to disrupt your balance. I would not get ten paces before I fell. I nearly fell when a Tsebane shoved me forward, but through sheer determination not to squander my reprieve, I managed to keep my feet.

  They placed me in the lead, as if I were the canary whose demise would warn them of danger. I dearly wanted, once I could think straight, to lead them into just such a situation; there were predators out there, patches of sucking mud, even perilous insects that might be persuaded to attack. Unfortunately, my previous luck with such tactics notwithstanding, I could not be sure I would survive the trap myself—and besides, they did not yet trust me. Any attempt to lead them astray would result in a spear between my shoulder blades.

  In order to survive, I had to prove my worth as a guide.

  I therefore bent all the knowledge I had gained of the swamp to the task of impressing them. This was difficult to do, bound and gagged as I was, but I led them ostentatiously away from a thicket of underbrush whose thorns housed very unpleasant ants, then veered again, nodding my head upward, to avoid a serpent dangling from a branch.

  Step by step, hazard by hazard, we proceeded into the depths of the Green Hell.

  TWENTY-ONE

  The safety of the Moulish—Another party—Something in my pocket—The loss of my knife—Refuge on high

  I had some hope that a friend might find me. Tom, Natalie, and Faj Rawango had promised to watch from the plateau above; they, unfortunately, were on the north side of the swamp, and could not quickly reach me, the descent from that point being more or less impassable. But Yeyuama had promised to watch from the lake. He knew this place as well as I knew my own garden, and might even now be on his way toward me.

  Which, I soon realized, might get him killed. One against five was terrible odds, and worse when the one is sworn to nonviolence. But surely his sharp eyes would spot the Ikwunde before they saw him? And if not, I had seen for myself how easily the Moulish cou
ld conceal themselves when they chose. Perhaps he could gather hunters to help. They had followed his lead against Velloin and Okweme—though I suspected that was because the conflict there was dragon-related. Would the camps here stir themselves to help me? We had met briefly during my first journey to the Great Cataract, but these were not the Moulish who had been a part of my larger social world these past months.

  Such were my thoughts, chasing in anxious circles like a mouse trapped in a box. It was preferable to thinking about the alternatives.

  Unfortunately, the Labane were driving me northeast: deeper into the swamp, but away from the lake. With each step, the chances of Yeyuama finding us decreased, and the chances of us stumbling across a Moulish camp increased. I had once likened finding them to searching for a migratory needle in a haystack, but now, with such risk attendant, I feared a needle behind every straw.

  It was possible the Moulish would be safe nonetheless; they might hear the Labane before they drew near, might hide themselves before one of these warriors struck. That possibility was not one I could rely upon: to do so would be despicable, a callous abrogation of what I owed them for their shelter and aid.

  I therefore had to escape.

  The skill and courage of the Labane are praised even by their enemies, but they were not foolhardy enough to travel the Green Hell in darkness. When it came time to halt, I meekly advised my captors away from what I recognized as a trail nocturnal predators would follow; this I did not only for my own safety, but to convince them of my sincere aid. We camped in as secure of a location as I could find, and I was, with reluctance, ungagged long enough to consume what remained of my own water and food. Whether they would give me any of their own the next day, I could not tell.