Which still did not come.
Eight minutes …
Nine minutes …
Was he dead?
Eaten by one of those fucking caymans?
Captured or killed by whoever was guarding Apolinar’s speedboat?
The searchers who had gone up to the lodge must return at any moment at which point, even if Matt was still alive, it would be too late for him to do anything. Leoni found she was counting the seconds, glaring into the darkness, whispering under her breath: ‘Come on, Matt! Come on! Come on!’
Chapter Seventy-One
The Naveen hunters looked wild-eyed and frantic, half mad with grief, fearful for their own safety yet spoiling for a fight. It was a wonder arrows hadn’t started flying yet.
‘Stay your hands, brothers,’ Ria called out in the Naveen tongue. ‘We are not your enemies.’ She knew the Uglies wouldn’t rush to violence but she pulsed to Driff, Bont and Ligar to lower their weapons: ‘Don’t start anything. I’m going to try to talk our way out of here.’
Ria still held her long flint knife in her hand. She sheathed it now, gestured at the smouldering remains of the camp and at the trees festooned with bodies, then at her companions: ‘We are only seven,’ she told the Naveen. ‘We did not do this!’ She indicated the woman nailed upside down, her one eye rolling, gasping her last breaths. ‘I sought to give this poor one mercy, for she is beyond saving.’
The closest of the hunters, the same man who had challenged Ria moments before, dropped to his knees in front of the dying woman, his eyes level with hers, touched her face and began to murmur to her softly. ‘My love. Who has done this to you? Where are our children?’ He reached to where her hands and wrists were nailed to the tree and his fingers fluttered over the bloodied heads of the cruel flint spikes. He looked up. Each of her legs was pinned from the knee to the foot with three big skewers that had smashed her shin bones and disjointed her ankles. The futility of any attempt to free her must have become obvious to him, and his body was racked and twisted with great sobs and groans. ‘REVENGE!’ he shouted. ‘I SHALL HAVE REVENGE!’ Then he unsheathed his knife and cut the woman’s throat, kneeling silently by her while her lifeblood drained and the last of the light seeped out of the one eye the birds had spared.
The hunter was a tall broad-shouldered man of thirty summers or thereabouts. He had a heavy black beard, a fierce hooked nose, tawny eyes like a wolf, and tanned weather-beaten skin. Now he stood and turned on Ria: ‘You!’ he hissed. ‘You speak our language. Who are you? What are you doing here? Why do you have Uglies with you?’
Ria looked around. The ring of Naveen hunters had closed tight. Some of the braves were young, nervous, lacking in experience, likely to be rash, and the seven archers were getting shaky holding their bows at full stretch. ‘Tell your men to unbend their bows,’ Ria said, ‘and then we’ll talk. If they fire on us it’ll come to a fight and everyone loses. There’s been enough dying here today.’
‘If it comes to a fight we’ll kill you all.’
‘You will. You have the numbers. But how many of your men are going to die doing it? That’s the question. And what’s the point? We’re just like you. We’ve lost loved ones to the same evil enemy who struck you here. We should join forces against him. It’s madness to fight each other.’
The hunter’s wolfish eyes stared at her for a ten count: ‘It seems this enemy has stolen our children away,’ he said. ‘Do you know why?’
‘When your men put down their bows,’ answered Ria, ‘I’ll tell you what we know.’
The hunter’s name was Aarkon. He wasn’t the only one of his band to have dead relatives nailed to the trees; they all did. Nor was he the only one whose children, or younger brothers and sisters, had disappeared. So they were all desperate to understand what had happened. But as Ria told them of the massacre of the Clan by the Illimani horde, and of how Sulpa collected children for sacrifice, their faces darkened. ‘We have to get after them,’ said Aarkon grimly, ‘We have to try and save our kids.’
‘It was a large band that smashed this camp,’ Ria reminded him. ‘Must have been hundreds of them, and the whole Illimani force numbers more than seven thousand. What can twelve of you do?’
‘We have to try …’
‘Instead of throwing your lives away, join us,’ she urged. ‘We’re going to build an army to fight them.’
Aarkon cast his eye over Ria’s motley gang of Uglies and humans. ‘An army to fight thousands?’ His tone was close to mockery. ‘Led by a mere girl?’
Ria ignored him. ‘Yes. An army to fight thousands. Why not? We’ll build it not just from one tribe but from many. Uglies. Humans. Naveen. Clan. Merell. It doesn’t matter. The only way we’re going to win is to put old hatreds aside.’
Before nightfall the two groups had separated, Aarkon and his men following the trail of the Illimani raiders, Ria and her companions continuing their journey towards the Gate of Horn. ‘If our plans work out we’ll be back this way in two days,’ Ria told Aarkon. ‘If you change your mind and decide to join us – even if you just need a place of safe refuge – wait for us then.’
The moon was close to full, providing more light than they needed for marching despite the rough terrain, and with the effects of the recent healings still coursing through their bodies they were filled with energy. Ria was between Bont and Ligar. Driff, Grondin, Jergat and Oplimar were in single file behind them.
‘Where are you getting all these languages from?’ Bont asked.
‘What languages?’ Ria’s tone was innocent.
‘You know, you’re talking Illimani to Driff, you’re talking Naveen to Aarkon. What’s happening?’ He wrinkled his brow. ‘Feels like witchcraft to me.’
‘If it’s witchcraft I want some,’ Ligar exclaimed. ‘Imagine the opportunity to be charming in twenty languages.’
‘It’s a gift,’ said Ria. She wasn’t in the mood to discuss what had happened to her yet. ‘It’s useful. That’s all there is to it.’
She fell back behind her Clansmen. Since the destruction of her people, she loved and valued Bont and Ligar all the more, but still they could be maddening.
For a long while they marched in silence through a landscape of rolling hills. Then they were over a ridge line, with the moon setting behind them and heading down the long slope of a valley.
Below they heard the high-pitched scream of a woman in terror.
Chapter Seventy-Two
Leoni saw Matt’s signal – three brief flashes from the Maglite he’d carried with him in a waterproof pouch.
There it was again: flash, flash, flash.
Don Emmanuel slipped the mooring rope free of the branch and ran forward to join Bannerman at the oars. Within seconds, aided by the strong current, they had reached the jetty.
‘Hi,’ said Matt. ‘What kept you?’ He was still dripping with water, standing on the side of the speedboat with a canvas bag in his arms. He passed the bag over to Bannerman and jumped after it himself. ‘I think we’d better be going now,’ he said. They all heard gruff male voices and saw the blink of torches on the path from the lodge.
‘But their boat,’ Leoni objected. ‘I thought you were going to scupper it.’
‘I have scuppered it.’
‘It doesn’t look very scuppered to me.’
‘Trust me, it’s not going anywhere.’
There was a choking cough followed by an ear-splitting roar as Mary fired up the big outboard and pointed the riverboat out into the current. At almost the same moment the moon surged from behind a scudding cloudbank and lit up the whole scene bright as day.
Five big men, with Apolinar in the lead, were pounding towards them.
Shit! Guns!
Suddenly the Yamaha’s two hundred horses felt way too few to Leoni. They seemed to dawdle by the jetty. For a moment it looked like Apolinar might make a leap for it but slowly the distance widened.
Bullets spattered into the water around them and some hit the boat
, tearing into it like a jackhammer. But someone was firing from the boat as well! Leoni had her head down but risked a look and saw it was Matt, crouched at the back next to Mary, armed with an automatic rifle – where had that come from? – and spraying bullets at the shore. The firing from that direction ceased, the clouds blew across the moon again and the night’s darkness swallowed them up.
Matt stopped firing. Mary was holding the outboard on full throttle.
Then, back at the jetty, someone flipped all the speedboat’s spotlights on. Its twin engines burst into life and it shot out into the river.
‘Is that what you call scuppered?’ Leoni yelled at Matt.
He didn’t reply. Just for a second he looked unsure of himself.
The speedboat was quick. It had already halved their lead and was tearing up behind them with all its lights ablaze. Leoni found herself cowering, anticipating the next hail of bullets, when the powerful thrum of the twin engines faltered and the pursuing vessel slowed and wallowed, its spotlights flickering first at the sky, then at the jungle, then back at the water, missing them by a hundred feet. Hoo-ray, Leoni started to whoop, but the cheer died in her throat as she heard the engines roar again. The speedboat steadied and surged forward under full power, then faltered a second time, notably lower in the water, its lights still not finding them. There were three loud bangs, the engines picked up, faltered a third time, and failed.
‘Sorry,’ said Matt. ‘That took a little longer than I expected.’
Gunfire erupted from the men on the other vessel but the current was sweeping them downstream, they didn’t seem to be able to traverse their lights, and the bullets went wide in the darkness.
Leoni half stood to get a clearer view. With Mary keeping the riverboat on full throttle and heading upstream, the distance was widening fast.
‘I’d say we’re out of range,’ Matt announced. ‘Anyway, they’ve got other worries.’
As he spoke the moon found a hole in the clouds and Leoni saw that Don Apolinar’s boat was sinking. The men had clustered together at the prow, the only part still above water. One of them fired again before they all went under.
Leoni looked at Matt. ‘I see what you mean about scuppered,’ she admitted.
The automatic rifle was an AK-47, Matt said, adding without further explanation: ‘I took it off the guy who was guarding the speedboat.’
Leoni pointed at the canvas bag: ‘What’s in there?’
Matt lifted it and placed it in her lap. It was heavy and clunked when she set it down. She opened it and saw four curved ammunition clips for the AK-47 and two chunky pistols. ‘Hmm. Quite an arsenal.’
‘Well … I thought it might come in useful.’
Mary was behind them, holding the outboard’s throttle handle, no longer racing the engine but keeping up a steady, mile-eating pace. ‘You nearly got us killed back there, Matt,’ she complained.
Bannerman had been sitting on the bench beside Leoni, lost in his own thoughts, but now he spoke up: ‘I don’t agree,’ he said. ‘It’s just as likely Matt saved us all from getting killed. If he hadn’t done this we’d still have men with guns after us in a much faster boat.’
Mary seemed to think about it. ‘You’re right,’ she said. She turned to Matt: ‘I’m sorry. That was … ungrateful of me. You were very brave. It’s just this has all been so sudden. And now guns, you know? Boats being sunk. There’s a good chance some of Don Apolinar’s gang have drowned. It’s all turned very heavy.’
Several times through the night Matt and Bannerman relieved Mary at the outboard, and by dawn they were fifty miles further south on the Amazon’s vast tributary, the Ucayali.
It was hard not to feel threatened here, Leoni thought, knowing what lay beneath the surface of the muddy waters, the caymans, the bull sharks, the piranhas, the giant anacondas – a seething underworld of monsters from which they were separated only by the flimsy hull of the boat.
They stopped at a riverside Shipibo village. The few dozen single-roomed homes were simple rectangular structures, raised two feet above the ground on stilts, with roofs of thatched banana leaf, but they were led by a crowd of giggling children directly to a larger communal maloca. It too had a raised floor, and its walls of coconut matting had been rolled up to admit cooling breezes from the river.
Everyone seemed to know Don Emmanuel and gathered round the visitors in a curious, friendly press. Leoni’s thick blonde hair came in for particular attention and half the village wanted to shake her hand as though she was some sort of celebrity. A breakfast of roast river turtle and ducks’ eggs, neither of which Leoni could bring herself to eat, was prepared for them, but she accepted a plate of bananas and a tin mug of hot sweet tea and felt much refreshed.
An hour later they were heading south again towards the Shipibo heartland through a vastness of trees and rivers, interminably branching and subdividing, a waterworld lost in an immensity. Yes, it was hard not to feel threatened here – and not only because of the monsters that lurked beneath the surface. The scale of everything was so grand – the miles-wide river, the endless sky, and the presence of nature so lush, so green and so abundant it took Leoni’s breath away. But there was also a much smaller-scale, down-home simplicity about the countless hamlets and villages that lined both banks: miniature communities, sometimes of just a few families, all seemingly living in harmony with their environment, as at home in this world, Leoni thought, as she was amidst skyscrapers and traffic jams.
She fell asleep, lulled by the steady motion of the boat and the river slapping against its sides, until, without warning, she found herself sitting on the end of a dusty double bed in a shabbily furnished and dimly lit room. Could have been in a low-budget motel. She knew she was dreaming but it all seemed very real somehow.
There was an old-fashioned television set against the back wall. Grey static was fizzing across its screen.
And a voice came out of it.
A whisper.
‘Kill yourself, Leoni,’ the voice urged. ‘Do it now.’
‘But I don’t want to,’ she protested. ‘I want to live!’
The voice hissed and crackled: ‘It’s too late for that. You must kill yourself. The sooner the better. It’s the only way.’
Leoni saw this was true. She didn’t want to die but obviously there was no alternative. She knew it was absolutely inevitable. ‘How shall I do it?’ she sobbed.
‘Don’t worry about that,’ whispered the voice. ‘I will guide you.’
At once Leoni snapped wide awake, gasping and cursing, her heart pounding, engulfed by horror. Matt was beside her, holding on to her, something he’d been doing quite a bit since last night and to which she had no objections. Mary, Bannerman and Don Emmanuel all stared at her with expressions of concern as she shook her head to clear it. She looked around to get her bearings. While she’d slept they had at some point left the mainstream of the river and were now motoring very slowly along some side branch with steep muddy banks surmounted by thick overarching trees. There was less than an hour until sunset, somehow a whole day had passed and – SHIT! – there was another person on the boat, up front at the prow.
Leoni jumped in her seat: ‘Who’s that?’
‘He’s Don Emmanuel’s nephew,’ Matt reassured her. ‘His name is Don Esteban. We picked him up at his village an hour ago; you were still sleeping like the dead.’ He hesitated as she winced at the simile. ‘He’s guiding us to the homestead of a big-time Shipibo shaman who hopefully will help us.’ He hesitated again: ‘Look, I don’t want to worry you but you need to know this …’
‘Need to know what?’ Leoni demanded. She could sense the bad news coming her way.
‘Less than two hours before we got there Esteban’s village was visited by a fast boat full of gringos. Very bad guys. Muy peligrosos. They had mestizo guides with them and they were looking for us.’
Chapter Seventy-Three
The woman started screaming again, shattering the night with a longdra
wn-out series of shrieks and sobs. A man was yelling alongside her. His voice was hoarse and desperate, pleading and threatening at the same time, and although Ria was still too far away to make out what he was saying the tone of fear was unmistakable.
‘Wait,’ she said. She stopped walking and everyone else slowed to a halt around her, Grondin and Driff to her left, Bont and Ligar with Oplimar and Jergat to her right. Another heart-rending scream rose out of the valley, reached a crescendo and died away into whimpers and moans. There came a burst of raucous male laughter – three, maybe four men. It wasn’t a nice sound.
‘We’ve got two choices,’ said Ria. ‘We can walk away from this or we can try to do something about it. I want to do something about it.’
‘It’s none of our business.’ Bont sounded belligerent. ‘We already wasted the best part of half the day with the Naveen. It was you who told me Sabeth and the kids are still alive. I just want to get up to Gate of Horn and bring them back.’
‘I can understand that, Bont, but think. Suppose that woman being tortured down there was Sabeth? Suppose some folks came by who could help her? But suppose they said to themselves “That’s none of our business, we don’t have the time”, and walked away? How would you feel about that?’
Bont screwed up his small eyes in discomfort: ‘I’d want to kill them …’
‘Exactly! Which means you know it’s wrong for us to walk away now.’
Ria turned to the Uglies: ‘Walk or help?’
‘We must help if we can,’ pulsed Grondin. ‘Evil is here now, in our valleys. We’ve got to fight it.’
More screams and another burst of rasping laughter rose up from the floor of the valley. ‘If the laughers are Illimani,’ said Ligar quietly, ‘then I’m for killing them all. They sound like hyenas. Besides’ – he unslung his bow and attached the string by touch while gazing intently down the valley – ‘I’m not one to turn my back on a woman in trouble.’
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