“Drop anchor,” Tyrel called to his crewmen. “And ready my gig, to take our passengers ashore.” He turned to the company, and shrugged apologetically. “The draw in these waters is much too shallow for even the Acoetes Zephyrus, I'm afraid, so you'll need to go ashore in my gig”—he pointed to a small, clinker-built boat being lowered over the side—“but my crewmen will be at the oars to do the pulling, so you'll need only enjoy the ride until you're on solid ground again.”
“Gather up your things, friends,” Hieronymus said to the company, motioning them to hurry. “We need waste no more of the good captain's time than we already have.”
Balam climbed to his feet, and made for the hatchway, following Benu and Hieronymus, who'd already gone below. He stopped halfway across the deck, and glanced back at Spatha, who still lounged on the deck.
“Sekundus?” Balam called back, waving her to follow. “Are you planning on leaving your armor and arms behind?”
“Hardly,” Spatha said. “The answer is simpler. I'm not coming with thee.”
“But why?” Leena asked, halfway through the hatch.
“I've no desire to go traipsing through the underbrush, looking for some mythical forest of metal with you lot.” Spatha turned her gaze from Leena to Balam. “If thou was to come with me, Sinaa, I'm sure thou would find work as a sword for hire. There are many as would pay handsomely for thy skills.”
“I'll not abandon my friends, Sekundus,” Balam said darkly, and turned to the hatchway.
“I think I'll just stay onboard, too, if it's all the same to you,” Kakere said from the shadows of the wheelhouse.
“I'm afraid, friend Ichthyandaro,” Tyrel said, raising his hand, “that whether it is the same to them or not is irrelevant, as what matters in this instance are my desires alone. And my desire is that you all, every one of you, leave my ship at this landfall. And further, I desire that I never see a one of you again, meaning no offense.”
“What?” Spatha climbed to her feet and advanced menacingly on the captain. “What is thy meaning, Tyrel?”
“After we stop at Masjid Logos and Masjid Kirkis in the south, our course will carry us eventually northward again, back to Masjid Empor.” Tyrel gave a shrug, an unapologetic expression on his face. “I won't have you onboard when I arrive again in a port. I've stuck my neck out far enough as it is, and I won't take on any more trouble on your account, or on account of any of your company.” He crossed his arms over his chest, resting them on his ample belly. “You and yours have been the perfect passengers, Spatha Sekundus, and I know there are those in my crew who will be sorry to see you go, friend Kakere, and the bounty of the sea with you, but I've got to do what is in the ship's and the crew's best interests, and sailing any farther with escaped felons on board is in no one's interest.”
Leena turned, and climbed belowdecks. The gig was nearly lowered all the way to the water, and it would soon be time for them to leave.
The company rode to the shore in silence, the crewmen pulling at their oars, bearing them ever farther away from the dhow that had been the only refuge they'd known for long weeks. Hieronymus and Leena were in the prow, Balam and Benu in the middle, and Spatha sat in the stern next to Kakere, who was once more wrapped head to toe in his dampened robes. The Nonae muttered excoriations back at Tyrel, while Kakere peered over the gig's side at the blue waters beneath, his expression hidden in folds of damp cloth.
The gig reached a sandy spar, and two of the crewmen jumped out, to haul the gig ashore. Then, they unceremoniously tossed the company's baggage out onto the sands, and stepped aside to stand in the shade and smoke illicit weeds in clay pipes, safely out of the sight of their Meliorist captain. The company climbed gracelessly over the side, and gathered up their packs and bags, tightening their sword belts and holsters, readying themselves for their trek.
“The land seems to swell and rise,” Balam said, swaying uneasily.
“You're used to the pitch and yaw of the waves, friend,” Hieronymus said with a smile, reaching out a hand to steady the jaguar man. “Your balance has become accustomed to the sea, and it'll take a short while for you to get your land legs back beneath you.”
“If you think this is bad,” Leena said, grimacing, “you should try walking after being in orbit for a few hours, and see how bad your balance is then.”
When they'd finished smoking through their bowls, the crewmen returned to the gig, pushed off into the waves, and rowed back to the waiting dhow.
“Let's push ahead,” Hieronymus said, making for the tree line.
The green of the canopy, after the unbroken blue of the ocean and the sky above, was shocking to Leena's eyes. These trees, with their twisting, branching trunks, were shorter than those of the jungles and forests to the west, rising no more than ten meters from the sandy ground. The ground beneath the trees was damp, and Leena's boots squelched in the thin layer of sandy mud.
“These are mangroves,” Hieronymus said as he climbed through a gnarled twist of branches and trunks. “I saw similar in the equatorial regions of Earth, in my days in His Majesty's Navy. There'll be tidal channels and waterways throughout, making the going that much slower.”
“The sooner we get through this mess and onto solid ground,” Balam said, “the better.”
They came through a copse of trees and stood at the shores of a wide waterway that ran inland from the sea.
“I'm tired already,” moaned Kakere, his voice muffled by his damp robes.
“Thou could leave at any moment,” Spatha spat, “and save us all the burden of thy company.”
“Would that I could,” the Ichthyandaro answered, and pointed at a shadow beneath the sapphire-blue waters of the tidal channel.
“What is that?” Leena asked, coming to stand beside him.
“I'm not sure,” Kakere answered, “but it's big, and I'm willing to lay odds it would like nothing more than to eat a tasty Ichthyandaro like me. I saw a school of them coursing along beside the boat that rowed us from the ship. These waters must be teeming with them. I couldn't return to the seas here if I wanted to.” His shoulders seemed to move beneath the robes, which Leena read as a shrug. “So I've no choice but to come along, it appears.”
“Oh, blessed joy,” Spatha said, rolling her eyes. She turned to the east, and began to walk along the edge of the waterway. “Well, come along,” she called back to the company over her shoulder, her hand resting on her baldric. “The sooner we get through this mess the better, right?”
Leena glanced over at Balam and Hieronymus, who only shrugged, and then turned to follow the Nonae deeper into the mangrove swamp.
By nightfall, they'd still not reached the edge of the mangrove swamp, though they'd forded a number of narrower streams and waterways since that morning. With the light dimming to the east, they sought out the highest land they could find to make camp for the night.
“We'll just have to hope that the tide doesn't reach this high,” Hieronymus said when they'd found a likely spot, a high plateau at the end of a narrow isthmus, separated from the mainland by waterways only a meter or so across, “or at least that it comes in late enough in the day that we'll already be up and on our way when it arrives.”
“Don't the tides come in regularly with the morning light?” Leena asked. “I thought Tyrel had mentioned that.”
“Perhaps,” Benu said thoughtfully. “Though the Paragaean tides have become somewhat erratic in recent millennia. I've often thought it a result of the slow recess of the moon from the planet, and the attendant irregularity in the lunar tidal forces.” He glanced around them, where driftwood and creeping vines dotted the sandy ground beneath the twisted mangrove trees. “It might be a mistake to count on the regularity of duration or extent of the tides in this region.”
“As for me,” Balam said, yawning, “I just want to get some food in my belly, and a few hours' sleep behind my eyes. Anything else is of secondary concern.”
“So long as thou cook it,” Spatha said,
dropping into a crouch, “whatever meat it is, that is fine with me.”
Leena slept fitfully, if at all, kept awake by the sounds of the mangrove swamps. Strange birds called from the near distance, an endless cacophony of sounds, and in the small hours of the morning a symphony of chattering began to issue from the canopy above them, which in the firelight proved to come from a band of small, lemurlike creatures that hooted and jeered at one another throughout the hours of the night.
She felt as though she had just fallen asleep when she felt herself being shaken forcefully awake. She opened her eyes on the gray predawn light, and saw Balam standing over her, a worried look on his leonine face.
“We've got a problem,” he said, fangs bared. “Several, in fact.”
Leena joined the others standing at the water's edge. The spar of land over which they'd walked the night before to reach their campground was now completely submerged, the tide rising higher as the waves lapped at the trunks of the mangrove trees.
“We're surrounded,” Spatha said, like a soldier reporting battlefront conditions to an officer. “The rising tide has cut off access to the isthmus, and the waterways surrounding us are now too wide to cross without swimming.”
“Our isthmus of yesterday is our island of this morning,” Hieronymus said philosophically.
“I hate swimming,” Balam said, snarling.
“I wouldn't worry too much about it,” Kakere said, and pointed to shadows prowling the waterway before them, dimly visible in the low light. The waterways, only a meter across the night before, now spanned three meters and more. “There's more of those…things…whatever they are. You wouldn't make it more than a few lengths before they started nibbling on you.”
“Okay,” Leena said calmly. “So we can't leave by land, and we can't leave by water.” She glanced around, her gaze taking in all of her companions, looking for consent. When she didn't get it, she went on anyway. “So we just wait it out here, until the tide recedes. Worst-case scenario we could always climb into the trees, right?”
“Except,” Balam said, pointing back towards the center of their new island, “I think they are able to climb, too.” Leena looked the way he indicated, and then glanced back at the jaguar man, horrified. “Remember,” Balam continued, “that I said ‘several' problems.”
Pouring from burrows all around them, which had gone unnoticed in the dark of the previous night, came giant ants the size of overfed hummingbirds, clacking vicious mandibles, driven from their homes by the rising tide.
“Der'mo,” Leena swore, reverting to Russian.
Overhead, the lemur-creatures chattered, hurling abuse down at them, while around their feet swarmed the giant ants, which they fended off with burning brands lit from their campfire. But most of the wood in reach was damp, and only sparked and smoked weakly before extinguishing, so they could not count on the heat of the torches for long.
“We need to think of something soon,” Leena said, waving her torch at the hundreds of ants who crowded at her feet.
“Do you have any suggestions?” Hieronymus asked over his shoulder, warding off the ants with a torch in one hand, swiping off their heads with his saber in the other.
It was near full daylight now, the sun glowing ruddy gold through the branches to the east.
“Not being eaten would be a good start,” Leena said.
At that moment, there came from across the waterway the sound of voices raised, and Leena looked up to see a collection of crocodile men atop enormous flightless birds, who milled on the opposite bank. Before she'd had time to register this unexpected sight, a number of the crocodile men spurred their mounts, who crouched low momentarily and then leapt into the air, propelled across the rising waters by massive legs, their tiny wings used only for balance. The enormous birds landed squarely among the company, beaks snapping.
“I think our odds of that just worsened,” Hieronymus replied, eyeing the bird riders darkly.
Standing more than three meters tall, the enormous birds whipped their vicious, snapping beaks from side to side, trampling the giant ants underfoot, while in their saddles the crocodile men's long snouts split in toothy grins as they eyed the company hungrily.
Balam and Spatha did not wait to exchange words with the interlopers, but sprang immediately into action. Balam leapt high in the air, claws out and fangs bared, tackling one of the crocodile men around his waist and dragging him from his mount, while Spatha drew her gladius and lay about her with its blade, scoring wicked cuts at the arms and legs of the two crocodile men nearest her, taking out hunks of the bird mount's flesh as she went.
Hieronymus drew his saber, and Leena her short sword, but they hung back, watchful, as Benu and Kakere lingered behind them, their attentions still on the giant ants underfoot.
Balam grappled with one of the crocodile men, rolling back and forth across the sandy ground, the crocodile man's teeth gnashing as he bit at Balam's head and hands, Balam's claws cutting red rills into the crocodile man's warty flesh.
Spatha, meanwhile, contended with two of the crocodile men, both scored by her blade, who had climbed from their mounts and now menaced her with long spears tipped with points of chipped black glass. One of the crocodile men thrust forward with his spear, and Spatha handily batted it to one side with her gladius; but when the other lunged forward shortly after, his own spear tip grazed Spatha's arm, glancing off the bracer covering her forearm, but drawing a wicked line from her elbow up to her shoulder, where it caught on the edge of her cuirass. Spatha swung about, but with the force of the spear thrust throwing her shoulder back, she spun out of true, and her gladius whistled harmlessly through the air, striking nothing. As the first crocodile man stepped forward, though, hands grasping and teeth snapping ferociously, Spatha quickly riposted, swinging her blade backhanded in a wide arc, and opened the crocodile man's belly from side to side.
Spatha turned from the crocodile man who now clutched his belly, endeavoring to hold blood and viscera in, and directed her attention at the other crocodile man, who advanced on her warily, with his glass-tipped spear raised. Balam, only a short distance away, still rolled in the bloodied sand with another of the crocodile men. Throughout the brief melee, another of the crocodile men, larger than any of these, had remained in the saddle, watching the proceedings with interest.
“Why aren't the others attacking?” Leena said to Hieronymus, indicating the half-dozen or so other mounted crocodile men who milled at the far side of the growing waterway. “They could cross the distance as easily as these four, and make short work of us.”
“Has it escaped your notice that Balam and Spatha Sekundus attacked first?” Hieronymus asked, raising an eyebrow.
Before Leena could respond, the air was split by the sound of bellowing laughter as the mounted crocodile man before them rumbled with amusement.
“Stand down!” the laughing crocodile man shouted in accented Sakrian, waving towards his three fellows who faced off against Balam and Spatha. “You, too, outlanders,” the crocodile man went on, an imperious tone in his gravelly voice. “Belay your attacks. No harm will come to you, if you do no more harm to my Tannim.”
The two crocodile men before Spatha stepped back, the one lowering his spear and the other still clutching his sliced belly, while the one rolling with Balam in the sand scuttled away, to climb to his feet and go stand beside his fellows.
Balam and Spatha, uncertainly, moved to stand beside the others of their company.
“We come not to attack you,” the vicious-looking crocodile man said from atop his mount, “but to rescue you!”
He laughed again, his barrel chest shaking with the booming noise.
“Mount up, Tannim,” he ordered the three crocodile men standing before him. “Nuga, help Cheti into the saddle”—he pointed to the crocodile man holding his belly—“and we'll be away.”
The crocodile man turned to the company, and his snout split in an unsettling expression that vaguely resembled a smile.
The company looked at one another, warily, and finally Hieronymus shrugged.
“I don't suppose we have much choice,” he said with a faint smile. Then he turned and in a low voice said to Leena, “Out of the frying pan, at least?”
Once they were safely on dry land, introductions were made all around. Hieronymus introduced all of the company in turn, pausing only when attempting to explain how it was that the six of them had come to travel together. The lead crocodile man greeted them as warmly as one with such a fearsome appearance could manage.
“It is a pleasure to meet you all,” he said, “and allow me to welcome you to the lands of the Tannim. We were on a hunting expedition, to bring fresh meat home to our township for a celebration this evening, when we chanced to see your distress across the way. It is not uncommon that travelers and wayfarers will find themselves trapped by the rising or the falling of the Parousian tides, which seem often to have a mind of their own.”
“Falling tides?” Leena asked, confused. “How could one be trapped by receding water?”
“If you lived in the water,” Kakere said at her side, “you could well be trapped on a sandbar as the water beneath you rushed out unexpectedly to sea.”
“Just so, Ichthyandaro,” the leader of the Tannim said, dipping his long snout in a show of respect. “It is not uncommon to find sea-dwellers cast up on the shores of the swamps as the tide rolls out, and from time to time, we Tannim make a nice meal of them.”
The Tannim behind their leader snickered from atop their mounts, but if Kakere took offense at the comment, his reaction was hidden beneath the folds of his robes.
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