Sky Pirates

by Liesel Schwarz

  But what about when she had to go ashore? The thought niggled. Would she not simply be placing everyone within a half-mile radius in danger? Had not enough people died because of her?

  A twig snapped.

  Elle looked up and peered into the lush darkness around her. Something was out there. She could feel its strangeness in the air.

  Everything went eerily silent. It was as if the very jungle that surrounded them was holding its breath. It was here. She could feel it in the hum of aether that surrounded her.

  As silently as she could, she moved so she was crouching. Then she took Dashwood’s revolver up in one hand and the blade in the other. She gripped them tight for courage, measuring the weight of the weapons. Then she rose to meet the danger. It was time to face the monster Patrice had sent for her.

  Slowly she walked toward the edge of the camp. Her feet barely made a sound on the soft ground.

  Outside the light cast by the fire, it was so dark that sight was almost useless, but Elle held firm. She listened. Instinctively her nostrils flared as she took deep breaths of warm night air. Something was watching her. She could feel its eyes following her every step.

  “Come on, you bastard. I am sick and tired of all these games. Let’s have you then. You and me, what do you say?” she whispered. There was no need to speak louder, for she was sure the creature could hear her heart as it pounded in her chest.

  There was a soft rustle to her left and she swiveled round to meet it, but there was nothing.

  “Come on!” she said a little louder. “Enough with the skulking. Come out and fight like a man. Or a beast. Or whatever kind of mongrel you are.”

  Those are brave words. Brave but foolish for someone so helpless.

  The voice came out of the dark to her right. Elle turned quickly and her breath caught in her throat. From the darkness, the massive black hound stepped forward. His yellow eyes glowed in the light of the fire.

  “I am not afraid of you, dog. And I am not afraid to die. So either you do what you have to do right now, or leave this place and never bother me again.”

  The matter is not that simple, Pythia. You know it is not.

  “Oh yes it is. I’ll not have you bother innocent people who have no stake in this battle any longer. Enough is enough. You and I are having it out right here. Right now!” She did not bother to speak softly. She doubted it would matter anyway, because she had a feeling things would be over soon.

  The hound let out a soft menacing growl and pounced.

  Elle managed to fire a shot before the creature got to her, but the bullet seemed to go wide.

  The weight of him knocked Elle to the ground and she dropped the blade as she fought to keep his massive snapping jaws from her. Round and round they rolled, kicking up a dust cloud filled with snarls and spit.

  The creature locked one of its jaws round Elle’s forearm and bit down.

  Elle squealed in pain as its sharp teeth sliced through skin. She could feel its teeth touching the bone, deep inside her arm.

  Holding the beast off with one of its sets of jaws around her arm, she reached back and punched the creature in the center of its other face. Her fist connected with the soft, sensitive wet part of its nose and she felt the bones of her knuckles give as it connected.

  The hound let out a yelp of pain and shook his head, but the other set of jaws held her firmly. Slowly, he started dragging Elle away from the fire. As it went, it sneezed and shook its head to assuage its smarting nose.

  She panicked. She could not allow this creature to drag her off into the undergrowth to do goodness knows what with her. She dug her heels into the ground as hard as she could, straining against the sheer force of the hound as he held on to her arm. She felt muscles and tendons tear as the dog dragged her.

  Suddenly, Elle heard a meaty thump. It sounded not unlike a butcher’s cleaver hacking into a side of beef.

  The hound yelped in surprise, letting go of Elle’s arm in shock as its heads swiveled round to see what had happened.

  Instinct took over and, just in time, she rolled out of reach. Five shots rang out as Dashwood emptied his pistol into the dark mass of fur.

  The hound yelped and jumped. As he turned, Hari leapt up, Aeternae blade in hand. He raised his arms and brought the machete down on the beast’s neck. The hound yelped and scampered off into the shadows, the blade wedged firmly into the flesh between its massive shoulders.

  Hari’s robes were in a state of disarray and he looked rather out of sorts. “Through violence, one may solve one problem, but in doing so, one inevitably sows the seeds for another,” he muttered. He stared with his eyes wide in the direction the monster had disappeared.

  “What in the hell was that thing?” Dashwood said as he strode over, still holding his gun.

  Elle lay on the ground holding her arm. Bright, hot pain seared through her, making her whole body shake from the shock of it.

  “Oh no, Elle.” Dashwood kneeled by her. Gently he lifted her and carried her to the fire.

  “It’s just a scratch,” she said through chattering teeth.

  “Hari, get some water boiling,” Dashwood said as he started rooting through their things. He pulled out the beautiful sarong from Elle’s bag. It had been a gift from the women in the village. He unrolled it and started ripping strips from the edge.

  “Please, no,” Elle started saying, but she was in too much pain to do anything. All of her attention was focused on gripping tight the searing pain in her arm with her spare hand. Hot, sticky blood oozed through her fingers.

  “Dog bites are the worst.” Dashwood’s voice penetrated the fog. “Elle, honey, you need to let go so I can see,” he said.

  Slowly he helped her uncurl her fingers. She could see from his grim expression that the bites were bad.

  “Hari, we need to clean these out before infection and rot sets in. Who knows what filth that thing has been chewing on.”

  He rooted round his bags and pulled out a bottle of fiery rice wine, a strong liquor made from fermented rice and fruit. One of the villagers had given it to him with the instructions to drink a capful every day. Apparently it improved virility, among other things.

  Gently Dashwood bathed Elle’s arm in the hot water Hari brought. “Hari, I’m going to need you to hold her,” he said. “Hold her as tight as you can.”

  Hari nodded, his face a picture of tension.

  Carefully Dashwood extended Elle’s arm. Then, working quickly, he uncorked the bottle with his teeth and poured the liquor over the bites.

  Elle bucked and screamed as alcohol ran into the tear wounds along her arm. It felt like her whole arm was on fire and she collapsed, shaking from the shock. As carefully as he could, Dashwood dried her arm and bound it tight.

  She was still shaking, but the alcohol smothering her injuries had jostled her into consciousness. Dashwood finished tying the wounds off. Then, very gently, he lifted Elle into his lap and cradled her there as if she were a child.

  Elle was in too much pain to care. She rested her head against his shoulder, feeling the solid warmth of him.

  “It’s going to be all right, sweetheart,” he said as he held her.

  “My beautiful sarong,” she whispered.

  “It’s all right. We’ll get you another one in Siem Riep,” he said.

  “Do you think it will come back?” Hari said as he set about clearing away the mess.

  “I emptied my gun into its gut, so it’s probably slunk off to lick its wounds. If we’re lucky, it will bleed out before morning.”

  “Let us hope the danger is gone,” Hari said. “For us and for the people who live here.” He peered off into the darkness, lines of worry furrowing his smooth brow.

  “Say, you had quite a swing with that blade. Did you know that? If you ever come to America, I’m sure they’d have a place for you on a baseball team,” Dashwood said to Hari.

  Hari suppressed a small smile of pride. “It is not our way to kill or harm others, but
sometimes great evil must be stopped.” He bowed. “I think I will make us some tea now. That will revive and sustain us. I also have something in my pack,” Hari added as he brought out a small packet of brown powder.

  “Opium?” Dashwood said.

  “For emergencies. This is an emergency,” Hari said in a matter-of-fact tone. “We will mix it into the tea.”

  Dashwood helped Elle drink her opium-laced tea and he held her in his arms until she stopped shaking. Then, ever so gently, he helped her lie down in her sleeping roll.

  Elle felt her eyes grow heavy, and slowly the throbbing pain in her arm dissipated as the drug took effect. “We will go hunting for it tomorrow, won’t we?” she slurred. “… must make sure it’s dead. So it can’t hurt any of the people here …”

  “We’ll worry about that tomorrow,” Dashwood said. He kissed her forehead. “What on earth were you thinking, taking on a creature like that on your own? You are a remarkably brave and stupid girl in equal measures, do you know that?”

  “Brave and stupid,” Elle agreed. Then she drifted off into an opium-soaked oblivion.

  The next morning, the sun was already high in the sky when Elle woke. She sat up quickly and immediately regretted it. Her arm felt three times the size it normally was and it was throbbing. At some stage during her slumber, someone had moved her into the shade of a tree.

  Dashwood and Hari were both sitting around with anxious expressions.

  She stared down at her arm. The beautiful patterned cotton of her former sarong was marked with brown patches from where the blood had soaked through. When she touched it, her arm felt hot and awful.

  “How long have I been sleeping?” she muttered.

  “A while,” Dashwood said.

  “I have managed to negotiate the use of an oxcart for us,” Hari said. “The chief in the next village will help us. If we can walk there.”

  Elle struggled to sit up. The world spun around her and she fought a wave of nausea and pain as she moved. “I can walk. Just give me a moment,” she said. But despite her words she started vomiting behind a plant.

  “How far is it?” Dashwood said. He looked concerned.

  “Not too far. Perhaps less than an hour,” Hari said.

  “Then let’s go,” Elle said as she wiped her mouth with her good hand and dragged herself upright.

  “Logan, do you think you could help me put this pack on to my shoulders?” she said.

  “Elle, you are not going to walk like that,” he said.

  She gave him a brave little smile. “I will be fine, Captain. You did an excellent job with saving my arm. Remind me to ask you where you learned to do that once the buzzing inside my head has worn off.”

  There was much arguing in the ensuing minutes. Elle, it seemed, was remarkably stubborn when in a fever-induced state, and it took a huge amount of coaxing for her to agree that Dashwood and Hari would carry her things. Then there was a debate over which direction was better. Elle insisted that they needed her compass even though Hari had already been to the village and back.

  And so the three of them set out to walk to the next village where an oxcart awaited them.

  CHAPTER 27

  Elle woke to find that she was in a proper bed, tucked in between thick linen sheets that smelled faintly of soap. She stared at the woven palm leaves, that lay layer upon layer on the roof tresses, quite unsure of where she was or how she had got there. She was growing mightily tired of these blackouts and awakenings. They were starting to do things to her mind.

  A blue dragonfly buzzed in through the open shutters in the window, its iridescent wings humming as it made a slow circuit around the room. It hovered for a moment in the still, warm air before zipping out of the window again.

  “Where am I?” she said as she struggled to sit up. Her mouth felt dry and sticky, the sweet residue of fever still on her lips. She flinched as she felt the ache in her arm. She looked down to see that it was covered in white, neatly wrapped bandages.

  “Ah, splendid. You are awake.” A stubbly-looking man in a white pinafore frock strode over to where she lay. His hair had been shaved the exact length of his beard, which gave him the overall look of a graying mass of fuzz. In fact, the only contour to his face was a pair of glasses perched on the bridge of his nose. He stopped by the side of the bed and casted a practiced eye over her.

  “May I?” he said, with a reassuring smile.

  Elle nodded and he rested his cool hand on her forehead, testing her temperature. “Yes, much better. Normal, I should say.”

  “How did I get here? Or perhaps first I should ask where am I?”

  “You are in the village of Siem Reap. This is the medical outpost of the fever hospital in Phnom Penh. I am Dr. Poulin. At your service,” he said.

  “I am in the hospital?” Elle felt confused. She had lost time before in her trips to the Shadow realm, but never this completely.

  “Oh yes, they brought you here by oxcart. Apparently you lost consciousness somewhere on the road north of here.”

  Elle frowned. The last thing she remembered was walking along the flat jungle track in the hot sun, but the images she remembered were shrouded in a hazy cloud of pain and the opium Hari had given her.

  “I—I don’t know,” she said.

  “You’ve had quite an adventure, haven’t you, my dear?” The doctor beamed at her.

  Elle looked at him. “I’m sorry, but I don’t quite remember what happened.” She was suddenly worried about what lies Dashwood had told to get her in here.

  “Never you mind about that. We can discuss that later when you are ready.” He smiled, making the skin around his eyes crinkle. “We don’t want you to fall into a relapse from shock now, do we? So I must insist that you rest. Not everyone who is attacked by a tiger lives to tell the tale. And by the bite marks, I should say it was a big one too.”

  “Attacked by a tiger?” Elle said.

  “Oh yes,” said Dr. Poulin. “The news caused quite a commotion. The villages between here and the place where you fell have been in uproar. They even sent a hunting party out to find the man-eater. They found some tracks I’m told, but no tiger.”

  Elle did not answer.

  “Although, I did think it rather strange that there are no claw marks.” The doctor contemplated this for a few moments. “People attacked by tigers normally come in covered in long lacerations made by the claws. Your injuries look like dog bites. More like a wolf, but that is impossible of course.” He shrugged. “Oh well, he must have missed you. You are quite small, aren’t you? Either way, whatever happened I think you were extraordinarily lucky. And I must say, your companions did a marvelous job binding the wound.”

  “My companions?” Elle looked around. The room was empty. Hers was the only bed occupied. A soft breeze whispered through the mosquito nets that were suspended from hooks in the ceiling above each bed. It made the place seem eerie.

  “Yes. And with the penicillin fighting the fever, I should say that with all things going well, you should be on your feet in a day or two.” The doctor nodded again. “Yes, very lucky indeed.”

  “W—Where are my companions?” she asked.

  “Oh, the monk has gone off to do whatever it is that monks do, and I do believe that the American hopped the mail dirigible to Bangkok.”

  Elle felt her heart sink. So her captain had decided to leave after all.

  “He said he would be back in a day or two, weather permitting,” the doctor said, interrupting her thoughts.

  “How long ago was that?”

  “Oh, the last few days. The airship flights round these parts are not that dependable. Things tend to happen when they do.” The doctor lifted a large glass syringe. He depressed the plunger and a fine line of clear liquid shot out of the needle tip. “Now, lie back and close your eyes. I will give you a little more laudanum to numb the pain. It should help you sleep.”

  She felt the needle press into the skin of her good arm and it was not long before the
world became all hazy again. “Perhaps just a little nap,” she mumbled, and the world went dark again.

  When she woke, it was dark outside and her head felt cool and clear. She could hear crickets chirping and the windows framed the lush star-speckled night outside. She struggled to sit up in bed, trying to set her mosquito net aside.

  Her progress was rather wobbly. She felt as if all her bones had somehow turned to rubber while she had been asleep. How long had she been out? Time seemed such a blur.

  A single lamp glowed from the hook next to her bed, casting a pool of light over her so she could view the rest of the room. The ward was dark and quiet. Beside her bed, sprawled in a wicker chair, was Dashwood, fast asleep. His head was turned awkwardly to the side as he rested his cheek against the back of the chair. His shirt was open at the collar and she watched the gentle rise and fall of his chest as he slept.

  On the table next to her bed was a wooden tray covered with a cloth. She leaned over and lifted the fabric to find an enameled tin bowl filled with lukewarm soup.

  At the sight of the food, Elle felt her stomach growl. With her good arm she lifted the bowl on to her lap and began to devour the soup, her spoon clattering against the sides of the bowl as she ate.

  Dashwood sat up and blinked. “Ah, you’ve come back to us,” he said.

  Elle nodded as she pulled the spoon from her mouth. “Hello, Captain. Care to tell me what on earth happened?”

  Dashwood rubbed the back of his neck. “Well, you kinda keeled over on us on the road. Was a hell of a business getting you to Siem Reap, but lucky for you the doctor was here. He tells me you will keep your arm.” He gestured at the bandages.

  “If I don’t starve to death first,” she said as she scraped the last of the soup from the bowl with her finger. How long had it been since she’d eaten? She wasn’t sure.

  “So, I have news,” Dashwood said when she was finished. He was grinning at her.

  “Do tell,” she said as she placed the empty bowl on the bedside table.

  “I went to Bangkok on the mail shuttle.”