by Cole, Myke
‘Why’d he pick you? I mean . . . you’re a great guy and everything, I just . . .’
Dhatri laughed. ‘It’s all right, sir. I am not offended. We don’t know why naga choose their Bandhavs. They say they know when they have met the one.’
Bookbinder cocked an eyebrow. ‘Sounds very intimate.’
‘It is,’ Dhatri answered seriously. ‘It is a love like family.’
Vasuki-Kai hissed again and Dhatri translated. ‘His Highness asks if you have eggs . . . He means children, sir. He is asking after your family.’
‘Two girls,’ Bookbinder said. ‘And a wife. I miss them very much.’
‘His Highness says that family is the most important thing in life. He says very few of his people get to make families, but he has had that honor. He proudly tells you that he has had three successful clutches. This is very unusual among the naga. His Highness has ninety children.’
Bookbinder tried to sound enthusiastic. ‘You must congratulate His Highness for me.’
The single head nodded, pride evident in the regal movement. ‘His Highness asks if you have word from your family?’
‘No,’ Bookbinder said. ‘Not since we got cut off. To be honest, very little before then either.’
The head hissed empathically. ‘His Highness says that once we reach his kingdom, he will speak personally to the Raja on your behalf about putting you in contact with your family.’
Bookbinder swallowed hard, grateful for the dark as a tear tracked its way down his cheek. ‘His Highness is enormously kind,’ he husked. ‘But I’m sure he knows I must first see to the welfare of my troops.’
Dhatri nodded. ‘His Highness commends your concern for your people. He is certain the Raja will be moved by your compassion and assist. He is a merciful king.’
Bookbinder looked up, meeting the snake’s eyes firmly. ‘I dearly hope so,’ he said.
‘I dearly hope so.’
The river was wider than Bookbinder had thought. He could make out the far bank, but only just, mostly by virtue of some kind of long-necked birds congregating on the far side. Tiny insects, their vibrating wings making a sound like tinkling glass, darted to and fro in the dying rushes along the bank.
‘Well, shit,’ Bookbinder said, staring through a pair of field binoculars. ‘I don’t suppose we can go around it.’
‘Not without losing a whole lot of time,’ Sharp said.
‘And I take it we can’t ford here,’ Bookbinder said.
Sharp arched his eyebrows and said nothing.
‘Well, shit,’ Bookbinder repeated. ‘Can you bridge it?’ he asked Woon.
The major shrugged. ‘It’s a hell of a stretch, sir, but I can try.’
‘If you can, I’ll give you a . . .’ Bookbinder paused. ‘Well, I don’t have anything to give you. I’ll pat you on the back.’
‘I’ll take it,’ Woon said, making her way into the rushes. Bookbinder felt her tide gathering as she Drew, then focusing as she Bound the magic into the river mud. The river’s dark surface rippled and broke as a dripping mud bridge, wide enough to accommodate two people abreast, lifted through it, slowly making its way toward the far bank.
‘Outstanding,’ Bookbinder said.
‘Not there yet, sir,’ Woon grunted.
The bridge continued to split the river, the current washing chunks of it away before Woon formed it into arches that allowed the water to wash beneath it. It marched forward, painfully slow, until it finally reached the other side. Woon tested the surface with her toe, and her boot sank into the soft mud, coming out dripping. ‘Save that pat, sir,’ she said and redoubled her efforts. She grunted, and Bookbinder watched as the mud dried rapidly, the bridge hardening, solidifying from one end to the other.
At last, Woon sat down, removing her helmet and mopping her brow. ‘Okay . . .’ she gasped. ‘Pat . . . pat.’
Bookbinder thumped her on the shoulder. ‘Outstanding, Major.’
Woon waved at him and said nothing.
Sharp nodded to Anan, who stepped onto the bridge, SAW at the low ready. It supported the big man’s weight with all his gear easily. He nodded back at Sharp and continued across.
‘All righty,’ Bookbinder said. ‘Let’s get a move on.’ He started forward.
Sharp’s hand on his shoulder stopped him. ‘Let my boys get a look at the far bank first, sir, if you don’t mind.’
Bookbinder stopped short, embarrassed. ‘Of course, Sergeant. Good idea.’
Anan crossed the bridge slowly, raising the SAW and sighting down it as he walked. He swept the muzzle left and right, shoulders tense, as he approached the waving grass and moved several feet into it before taking a knee. After what felt like an eternity, he finally raised a hand and beckoned behind him.
Fillion jogged out onto the bridge, his posture more relaxed with Anan covering the far end. Bookbinder felt some of the tension fall out of his own shoulders. If hard men like Sharp’s operators were calm, then so was he.
There was a rumble, a huge sloshing sound, and a shadow fell across Fillion. It took Bookbinder a moment to realize that it had fallen across all of them, blanketing the bridge, the operators, both banks.
Bookbinder looked up and blinked.
An eighty-foot stretch of the river had stood, the water coursing down a concave back as wide as a mountain pass. A wedge-shaped head dripped rivulets of green water, coursing over scales in mottled shades of blue, green, and pale yellow. Eyes the size of truck tires slid toward them beneath nictitating membranes milky with algae.
Fillion took one look and bolted for the far side of the bridge where Anan had spun, raising his SAW, not bothering to fire, understanding that 5.56-millimeter ammunition would do little more than make a creature that big angry. Sharp raised his own weapon, then lowered it just as fast, turning toward Archer, who was already loading a round into the grenade launcher mounted to the underside of his carbine. Their movements were smooth, the only indication that they hadn’t dealt with creatures like this a hundred times a slight tenseness in their jaws.
The monster lunged forward, moving almost leisurely, the underside of its steam-shovel jaw driving through the bridge just behind Fillion’s boot, knocking all of Woon’s work into clods of mud as easily as a house of cards.
Anan grabbed Fillion by the handle on his body armor and dragged him back from the bank, keeping the SAW leveled at the monster with one hand. Bookbinder didn’t think it would take a lot of aiming to hit the thing, for all the good it would do. He spun toward Dhatri and froze. Both the subedar major and his Bandhav were prostrate on the riverbank. Dhatri looked ridiculous, thumping his forehead against the ground, but it was nothing compared to Vasuki-Kai, hissing madly, his heads spread out like a fan, slithering in the mud, as low as possible.
Bookbinder was about to ask what the hell they were doing when a roar turned him away from the kowtowing and back to the monster, which had backed away from the wreckage of the bridge. Its huge bulk rose, six crocodilian legs flailing in the air. Dhatri and Vasuki-Kai bowed and scraped, Sharp and his men backed away slowly, weapons raised.
Woon! Where the hell is Woon?
Bookbinder felt panic race across his gut as the giant thing came back down. He felt the instinct to cringe and raise his arms to protect himself but overrode the habit with a will. Like it or not, he was the leader of this little expedition. If Sharp and his men could be cool under fire, then so could he.
The giant creature twisted in midair, its huge torso wheeling away from the shattered bridge and slamming back into the river, its huge tail whipping over the far bank. Anan and Fillion cried out and disappeared as it covered them. The monster grunted, the sound of air brakes on a bus, and began to reluctantly slosh downriver, each step strained, as if unsure of the direction it wanted to go, slowly lowering itself into the water as it went.
Vasuki-Kai and Dhatri continued their prostrations without looking up.
‘Woon! Major Woon!’ Bookbinder shouted frantically, raci
ng toward the bank.
‘I’m okay, sir.’ Woon sloshed her way up the bank, soaked to the waist. ‘I’m more worried about them.’ She gestured to the far bank.
‘I think they’re okay, sir,’ Sharp said, sighting through his carbine’s scope. Bookbinder could see vague dark forms in the grass, moving. ‘Yeah, they’re okay,’ Sharp said.
‘That was the Makara,’ Dhatri said as he approached with Vasuki-Kai in tow, hissing. ‘The goddess of the river. We are fortunate to have escaped with our lives.’
Bookbinder frowned. ‘That thing was female?’
Dhatri ignored the question as he translated for his Bandhav. ‘His Highness says you are very fortunate to have us along with you because we knew to behave with proper reverence and supplication. Only by observing the proper custom was disaster turned aside.’
‘Thank His Highness for me,’ Bookbinder said. ‘Please excuse me for a moment.’
He moved into the longer grass down by the river’s edge, where Woon was vainly trying to dry herself, shivering in the cold. ‘Are you okay?’
‘I’ll be fine so long as I don’t freeze to death, sir.’
‘Well, get into some dry clothes. I promise not to look while you get changed.’ He cast a quick glance over his shoulder, to where Dhatri and Vasuki-Kai chatted animatedly. ‘You Whispered that thing away, didn’t you?’
Woon nodded, smiling. ‘Never thought it’d come in handy before today, sir.’
‘Do me a favor, don’t go mentioning that to our foreign partners, okay?’
Woon’s smile faded. ‘Okay, sir.’
Bookbinder tapped his temple. ‘Diplomacy.’
‘Stuff of kings, sir. What now?’
‘Now you dry off. Then you make us another bridge.’
They were clear of the woods beyond the river in a few hours. Bookbinder felt relief as they pushed out of the shadows and strange sounds. The Source was an unmapped, alien landscape. Could a brush against a flower petal give him a sickness that would kill him overnight? Was there some beast crouching in the branches overhead, waiting to spring on them? The FOB, for all its austerity, suddenly felt like the height of civilization.
The landscape beyond the woods returned to the endless sea of waving saw-toothed grass. A horned serpent’s head rose above the grass, regarding them silently as they trekked past, joined a moment later by a second. Sharp sighted down his carbine at it, but Vasuki-Kai slapped the barrel down with an angry hiss. Sharp nodded, not needing Dhatri to translate the naga’s affinity for snakes of any kind.
After a full day’s march, Bookbinder became convinced that he smelled smoke. The odor strengthened as they marched over the next day, and he noted Vasuki-Kai’s many tongues unfurling to taste the air with greater and greater frequency. The naga began to look agitated and conversed with Dhatri in hushed tones.
‘Smell that?’ Bookbinder asked Sharp.
‘Yes, sir. Forest fire. Maybe a grass fire. But I don’t feel any heat. Must not be close enough yet.’
‘No,’ Bookbinder said. ‘This smells like . . . other stuff burning. Maybe rubber? Metal?’
Sharp’s eyes narrowed slightly. ‘You’re right.’ He made a wide circle, sighting through his carbine’s scope. ‘Nothing.’
The smell worsened as they pressed on. At last it was so thick that Bookbinder began to cough. The air become hazy.
‘Sir’ – Dhatri tugged on his elbow – ‘we have to stop.’
‘Why?’
Dhatri pointed off to his left. ‘We need to go in this direction.’
Bookbinder looked at Sharp, and the sergeant shook his head.
‘That’s not the way we’re headed,’ Bookbinder said.
‘I know, sir, but His Highness informs me that we are heading into very dangerous territory, and we will need to go around it.’
Bookbinder sighed. ‘How far is this detour?’
Dhatri turned to Vasuki-Kai and asked a question in Hindi. The naga replied with a burst of hissing. ‘His Highness says approximately two weeks on foot.’
‘Dhatri, you know the FOB doesn’t have that kind of time. I told Crucible a month, and we’ve already burned a quarter of that. Now, what’s the problem?’
Vasuki-Kai gesticulated, but Dhatri put a hand on his elbow. ‘The Naga Raajya have a mortal enemy in the agni danav, whose own Raajya lies some distance from them. The agni danav are terrible monsters. I have seen them with my own eyes, sir.’
Bookbinder shook his head. Just when he thought he was coming to grips with the Source’s strangeness, something like this came along.
‘Their territory must have expanded since we last came to the FOB,’ Dhatri went on. ‘His Highness is very troubled by this. We had hoped to skirt the Agni Danav Raajya, but I think that is not possible now. We must go around.’
‘How can you know this?’ Bookbinder asked.
‘His Highness’s senses are keener than mine,’ Dhatri said, indicating the naga’s many flicking tongues. ‘But even a human nose can smell the damage from here. The agni danav only suffer that which does not burn to live.’
Bookbinder turned to Woon and Sharp. ‘Well?’
Sharp shrugged. ‘Not my call, sir.’
Woon nodded. ‘Sir, two weeks could make the difference between holding on and not holding on.’
‘Sharp? I want your input here,’ Bookbinder said.
‘I’m not in the habit of going around dangerous spots, sir.’
Bookbinder turned back to Dhatri. ‘I need your honest, bottom-line, no-bullshit assessment, Subedar Major. What are we walking into here? Is this going to be tough? Or is it suicide?’
Dhatri turned to Vasuki-Kai, and Bookbinder stopped him with a hand on his shoulder. ‘Um, I don’t suppose you’d mind making that question a bit more polite before you translate?’
Dhatri smiled, then spoke to his Bandhav for a long time. At last, he turned back.
‘His Highness says he has fought the agni danav before and defeated them. He is confident in my safety because I am his Bandhav and so, his blood. But he cannot speak for you though he does not doubt your courage.’
Bookbinder looked back at Sharp and Woon. ‘We’ll be fine, sir,’ they said in near-perfect synchronicity, then looked at each other in surprise and laughed.
Bookbinder turned back to Dhatri. ‘No detour. We press on.’
After another few hours, the landscape began to change. The grass slowly gave up its green, ceding first to pale yellow and, finally, to withered brown. The stink of brimstone became overpowering, choking them until Sharp removed cloths from his backpack, soaked them in water, and passed them around. Tied over the nose and mouth, they made the trip bearable, but only just. They squinted through air becoming thick with gray smoke, first warm and finally hot. At last, all vegetation petered out, and they found themselves crunching across ground dusted with fine, gray ash. Within moments, it covered them from head to foot.
What the hell did I just get us into? Bookbinder considered turning back, and again decided against it. The FOB didn’t have time. Bookbinder had told Crucible it would take them roughly a month. The loss of two weeks to a detour would leave his XO way beyond that window. They hadn’t come out here to be comfortable. They’d come out here to save lives, at the expense of their own, if necessary.
A blue flash lit through the smoke before him. Bookbinder stopped, putting his hand on Sharp’s arm. The sergeant raised a fist and signaled a halt, then sighted down his carbine into the smoking haze. ‘What is it, sir?’
‘I thought . . . I could have sworn . . . there it is again!’ Bookbinder pointed at another bright blue flash, then another alongside it. ‘You see that?’
‘I see it, sir. Wait here.’ Sharp pushed into the smoke, disappearing for a few agonizing moments. Then his voice came drifting back to Bookbinder. ‘I think you should come take a look at this, sir.’
Bookbinder walked into the smoke. Sharp materialized, standing beside the source of the blue glow.
It was a lizard, its thick, mottled skin softly emanating dull blue light, mysteriously free of the ash dust that coated the rest of them. ‘There’s a bunch of ’em around, sir,’ Sharp said. ‘They don’t seem scared, but they won’t let me get close either.’
Bookbinder took a step toward the creature and leaned down, extending a hand before jerking it suddenly back. The lizard scuttled away, skittish at his closeness.
‘Jesus, Sergeant. It’s cold. The air around it is freezing.’
‘Yeah,’ Sharp said. ‘I noticed that. Must be how they survive in this. I haven’t seen anything else alive.’
‘Well, I’m going to call that a good thing,’ Bookbinder said. ‘Let’s take a rest, grab some chow before we move on.’
They did their best, gathering around a chest-high boulder that was the sole marker on the otherwise featureless landscape. The ash dust got into their rapidly dwindling supply of MREs the moment they opened them, and they raced to get the food in their mouths once they’d rinsed it off with the water in the portable bladders on their backs. They sweated in the oppressive heat, tugging at the collars on their body armor. ‘Feels like we’re sitting too close to a campfire,’ Woon said.
Bookbinder put his MRE on his pack and stood up. ‘I’ve got an idea about that. Get clear of this rock.’
‘Sir?’ Woon asked as the group gave the boulder a wide berth.
‘Just trust me.’ He strode out to where more blue flashes indicated the presence of the ubiquitous lizards. He stood beside one and Drew his magic, Binding it to the weak but chilly current he felt washing off one of them. Once he felt his own being suffused with it, he turned and sighted the boulder, Binding it hard. The rock shook gently, then turned blue, the ridge tinged with white frost.
Bookbinder trotted back over, holding his hands over it, feeling the cold air wash over him. He sighed. ‘That’s more like it.’
He looked at the rest of the group, all eyeing him with wide-eyed amazement.
‘I thought you were a Latent Grenade.’ Woon’s eyes narrowed. ‘The boomers . . . the things you use to clean the water. I know what . . . your magic is now.’
Bookbinder cocked an eyebrow. ‘Life’s full of surprises,’ he said. ‘Grab some cold, and we’ll get a move on.’
