by Dora Machado
“Throw me your knife,” Lusielle said. “Quickly, please.”
He unsheathed the hunting knife from his belt and tossed it to her. “Now go.”
Lusielle started down the trail, veering off into the swamp, stepping over the slow, flowing moats of dark water meandering through the bog. She ducked under the moss-draped branches of the golden cypresses, avoiding the root’s knotted stumps, and stepped from one quaking pile of moss-covered peat to the next.
The scent of decay filled the air, coating her skin and lodging in her lungs. In her haste, she stepped on a bullfrog. The critter grunted with an offended croak and splashed into the black water.
She found the leather leaf bushes growing low to the ground among a cluster of yellow marsh ferns and mustard sedges. The giant leather leaves were not unlike the ones she used to harvest for their sap in the Little Gray Swamp near the inn where she grew up. Each giant, deeply veined leaf was a good four measures long. True to their name, the leaves were almost succulent in texture and waxy to the touch. The stems, on the other hand, were sharp with thorns, good to make pins but terrible for the hands. Wrapping her fingers in her skirt, she cut out some of the giant leaves and, leaving the milky resin to waste, rushed back to the road.
The man’s stare held both shock and disbelief. “What are you doing back here?”
She could tell by the churned-up mud that he had been thrashing hard, trying to get out. He was now buried down to his waist. Lusielle approached carefully, spreading the first leather leaf over the mud ahead of her. “I think these might help.”
“Have you taken leave of your reason?”
“I suppose I have.” Lusielle knelt on the first leaf, spreading her weight evenly on her hands and knees. The leaf didn’t sink into the mud, but rather floated over it as she had hoped. “Try not to move.”
“You’re going to get yourself trapped!”
“For a mighty lord, you’re an optimistic soul.” She put down another leaf and scooted closer, repeating the process several times, until she had laid a path between the solid ground and the sinking man. Scooping handfuls of mud, she dug his legs out from under the horse. “This is where it gets tricky. Can you toss me those ropes without sinking all the way down to your chin?”
He reached down and, grabbing the rope hooked to the saddle, threw it over to Lusielle. “Are you always this stubborn?”
“Can you unclasp your chest plates? Yes? That’s good.” She pulled the plated vest over his head and set it aside. Well, at least he could follow directions. “Now, lift your arms, please.” She ran the rope beneath his armpits and after tucking in a last leaf between his back and the mud, retreated, balancing her weight carefully on the shifting leaves.
Back on sound ground, she began pulling. The mud pit didn’t yield at all.
“See?” he said. “It’s no use. I’m stuck.”
“Patience is to achievement what rush is to defeat.” Lusielle heaved. “Are all highborn impatient or are you just short on faith?”
“You won’t be able to handle my weight.”
“Don’t be mistaking me for one of your primped-up ladies,” she said. “I can lift more than a powder brush to my nose.”
“You don’t look very strong to me.”
“I once handled a full barrel of seed flour, all three bushels of it, by myself.” She heaved again. “True, I had to roll it across the room. It’d be nice if I could roll you too.”
“I am ordering you to go now!”
“You can command all you want, my lord, but don’t thrash.” She wrapped the ropes around a tree to enhance her leverage. “And stop fighting the mud. Can you just play slack?”
This time when Lusielle pulled, the mud budged, if only slightly. Slowly, she managed to dislodge the man and heave him onto the leather leaf path. He clung to the ropes with one hand holding on to his sword with the other one. She heaved, straining under his weight, but determined to bring him in. She settled on a rhythm, a long pull and a short breath, making just a little progress each time.
“It’s working!”
“Of course it’s working.” She tugged with all her strength. “You could use a little bit more faith in your fellow humans, my lord. But then again, you can’t trust others very well, can you? After all, you were born higher than the rest of us.”
“And what fault do you find with that?”
“That’d be a long list.”
“Humor me.”
“If you insist.” She took a deep breath and, ignoring her aching back, fired the words in between pulls. “Greed. Arrogance. Belligerence. Violence and—”
“And?”
“You are so heavy.” She was ready to collapse from the effort. “Too much muscle on your hefty bones.”
“Hey!”
“Hush, my lord, this is hard work. I think one more pull might do it ….”
As soon he hit solid ground, he turned on his belly and, rising to his feet, disentangled himself from the ropes. Mud caked his body from waist to feet, but not even the exhaustion of thrashing in the mud could slow him down.
“I think I hear them coming.” He grabbed her hand and led her away from the road. “We don’t have a chance of outrunning men on horseback. Can you swim?”
“Swim? You don’t mean to dare the Nerpes’s currents, do you?”
“The Nerpes? No, not the Nerpes.” He stopped at the edge of the bog. “I mean to cross this.”
Lusielle stared at the impassable swamp before her, then at the mud-splattered Lord of Laonia. “Are you crazy? This is the Dismal Bog? Do you have any idea of what’s in there? Perhaps your privileged life has sheltered you from frequenting places like the Dismal Bog—”
“My privileged life?”
“It’s league after league of swamp and mire like you’ve never seen—”
“I’m not an idiot.”
“Do you know the stuff that lives in there? If it doesn’t sting you, it’ll poison you, and if it doesn’t eat you, it’ll kill you.”
He had the gall to smile. “Have you a better plan?”
“Why on earth would you want to trek through that?”
“To lose Orell, that’s why. He won’t follow us in there, I guarantee it. And because there’s a place on the other side of the bog where I know someone who can help us.”
“And will you be able to find your way out of the bog?”
“I can find my bearings anytime, anywhere.”
“Mad and cocky.”
“It’s either the bog or Orell.” He waded until he was knee-deep in the black water and offered a muddy hand. “Are you coming?”
Only the nearing clatter of a mounted party persuaded her to follow him. “These friends of yours better be very helpful.”
“A man can only hope.”
Chapter Twelve
THE DISMAL BOG WAS A PLACE of contrasts, designed to distract the eye from a host of dangers. A gray haze lurked above the dark water, an ominous mantle cloaking the perils of the meandering slush gnawing at Bren’s boots. As they trekked deeper into the swamp, the water was black and thick, a cauldron of decomposing matter clinging to their legs. In contrast, the gnarled trees shimmered with golden foliage and the tiny leaves traveled on the wind currents like a rain of gold coins mirrored on the water’s obsidian face. The scent of humid rot and molding decay sunk into his lungs and flavored his spit. Even the song of the great tufted warbler doubled as a warning.
Bren glanced back to make sure Lusielle was keeping up. She was trudging through the sludge with admirable determination. She had been very quiet most of the day, pensive really, whispering curt answers to his questions, stopping only occasionally to examine a plant or a flowering bush, looking over her shoulder, no doubt expecting to see Orell and his minions. Her jaw was set with resolve, but her lips were turning blue.
Bren spotted a dry patch, little more than a pile of mud and decaying leaves caught between the buttress roots of an enormous cypress. “I think it’s time to
rest.” He inspected the place. “We’ll stop here for the night.”
She trudged on straight by him.
“Are you deaf?”
“I heard you well enough,” she said, without stopping. “But I rather we just get to wherever it is you’re going and deliver you to your friend.”
Deliver him to his friend?
He didn’t have to be a genius to understand her reasoning. She feared he would kill her as soon as they stopped for the night. Why hadn’t she run when she had the chance? What strange thoughts had persuaded her to help him? He hadn’t expected the kindness, and yet he was free from Orell because of her.
On the other hand, he could sense her bristling like a wary cat. With the frightening prospect of a night in the Dismal Bog approaching, she must be regretting her impulse to help him.
He could offer very little in the way of comfort, but if he didn’t ease her fears, she would do something foolish, like bolting and getting lost in the swamp. “Be at ease,” he said. “You’ll be safe with me while we’re in the bog.”
“While we’re in the bog?” She flashed him a skeptical look. “Can’t you make a better oath than that?”
“You’re cold,” he said. “You need to do as I say.”
She stopped. She turned. She stood there for a moment, with her skirts hiked up to her waist and the water lapping at her calves, soiled but defiant, glaring at him.
“Do I work for you? No. Am I supposed to obey you because you’re highborn? Because I worship the Thousand Gods? Because you have a sword? Am I supposed to be grateful because you feel entitled to allow me the courtesy of extending my life? I’m not afraid of you. Do you want to kill me?” She spread her arms and offered her chest. “Do it and let’s be done with it.”
By the Twins, she didn’t know what she was asking for. The reckless wench had a troublesome streak and a death wish.
Bren summoned whatever little patience he had. He couldn’t very well carry out his duty while trudging the Dismal Bog with Orell at his heels. He felt like throttling the woman.
“No appetite for sport at the moment?” she asked. “Well, let me tell you something: I’m a banished woman. I was sentenced to death. Obedience got me here and as you can see, it didn’t work very well. I’m done taking orders from others, and that includes you.”
Part of him understood her frustration. He knew what it was like to live as an outcast. But this? What seed of madness made a perfectly sane woman challenge someone like him?
One moment she was there, facing him, standing in the black water with her hands on her hips and her feet planted apart like the fierce Goddess herself. The next moment she was gone, leaving him staring at the sluggish layer of golden algae converging on the very spot where she had stood an instant before. A trickle of black bubbles was the only evidence of her previous existence.
Bren dove into the spot, groping through murky water. In the deepening darkness, something rough and slimy skimmed through his hands and got away. Heart hammering against his breast, he came up for breath. The bog had suddenly gone silent. The moon rose above a cluster of trees. A white beam swept over the swamp. There was no sign of the woman.
He trained his eyes on the tenuous landscape. Nothing on the surface, no traces of a large predator or even a small one, no waves or ripples. By the turd of the gods. How could he have lost her when she had just been standing there? She had to be in the water.
But where?
A strange noise caught his attention, a humming, a barely detectable buzz strumming his eardrums. It was coming from a nearby cluster of golden trees. He waded over.
The hum was coming from an extensive vine twisted over a massive oak. Long stems as thick as his arms coiled around the tree’s corrugated trunk. Huge thorns dug into the bark with a relentless grasp. The vine was unlike any climbing bush he had ever seen. The stem was pulsing, rippling like a single constricting muscle, throbbing with a subtle phosphorescent glow which ignited the tiny lobular leaves into a purple sheen.
Bren groped for the vine’s main stem and followed it to the bottom of the tree. He fumbled onto a tangle of submerged roots glowing faintly beneath the water. The coarse roots throbbed, writhing in his grasp like a handful of serpents. He followed the contorting roots until he was waist-deep in water.
His boots tripped on something. He reached down to find a bundle at his feet.
The whole mass rippled and stiffened when he grasped it. Something crawled about his foot and coiled around his ankle. Bren tried to shake off the grip, but it only tightened. A sudden yank dragged him underwater.
He fought back, unsheathing his sword, hacking at the liquid darkness. He struggled for breath, knowing he would die in the Dismal Bog unless he was able to get free.
The tangled roots’ eerie glow was a poor illumination for such a frantic battle. The glow spanned from the bog’s depths to the surface and up the tree.
The glimmering trail wasn’t lost to Bren’s sputtering mind. Using the last of his breath, he broke through the surface and lunged towards the tree. In one single, powerful thrust, he hacked off the vine’s main root.
The vine shrieked like a wounded animal. The hum ceased, and the glow died. The roots in his hands tautened and stilled.
The water boiled with a swarm of bubbles as a knot of dead roots surfaced from the bottom. The sounds of gagging and hacking confirmed Bren’s fears. Struggling within the roots was Lusielle.
The wet roots constricted when he tried to rip them off, spurting a clear slime. Unable to untangle the woman, he scooped her out of the water and carried her, roots and all, over to the dry spot he had claimed earlier. Depositing her on the ground, he propped her against his chest.
“Lusielle?” She didn’t respond. “Lusielle!”
Her eyes opened. Her chest rose and fell with shallow breaths. Her long hair was plastered against skin that had paled beyond white. She was faint and shivering, but at least she was conscious.
“You’re all right,” Bren said. “You’ll be fine.”
“The sucking ivy,” she rasped. “The wicked roots. Take them out.”
“Take what out?”
He followed her eyes to her side, to a spot below her ribs where one of the roots clung to her body. A black thorn punched through her clothing and dug into her side, a macabre claw. Bren had seen all kinds of gruesome wounds in his time. He had been unflappable under the strain of battle, carnage, pestilence and disease, and yet for some inexplicable reason, the sight of the jagged thorn sheathed in Lusielle’s flesh chilled him to the core.
He tried to pull it out, but she twisted in pain.
“Don’t pull on it,” she said. “Make a fire, burn the roots at the joints.”
“Are you sure?”
“Hurry.”
He moved fast. He took off his drenched mantle, rolled it and placed it under Lusielle’s head. Snapping off some branches and twigs from the trees around him, he built a rudimentary fire pit. He pulled out his flints from his pocket and tried to ignite the firewood with the sparks. As most everything in the humid swamp, the kindling was far from dry. The sparks produced no flame.
“Cattails,” she rasped. “Cut off the heads. Break them open.”
He rushed to gather an armful of reeds. He broke open the cattails’ head and collected the grainy fluff in a little pile atop the firewood. This time, when he struck his flints, the sparks burst into flames.
Bren lifted a burning reed. “You said to burn the roots?”
“A touch of fire at the joints.”
Something strange happened as soon as the flame licked the joint. The root flinched and broke off. The long thorn withdrew from Lusielle’s flesh as if squeezed out by an invisible hand.
“The others,” she said. “Take them out.”
It was only then that Bren realized there were other thorns embedded in her body. He steeled himself for a systematic assault, starting at the top, where a gnarled root coiled around her neck. The thorn that withdrew
from her neck was less than a thumb away from her jugular. He located three other spots and, after putting the fire to the roots, watched the fearsome thorns falling out of her back, hip and thigh.
“I think that’s the last of them,” he said.
Her respiration deepened. Her body relaxed.
Bren examined the punctures. Other than a single drop of blood marking the place where the thorn had pierced the skin, he could see no further damage.
“There’ll be a little bruising tomorrow,” she said with mind-boggling composure. “But it should be fine.”
“You’ve seen this before?”
“I’ve read about it. The thorns inject a poison that numbs and immobilizes the body. Once drowned, the vine feeds on the victim until it’s consumed. I’m afraid I’m going to have to go to sleep.”
“Now?”
“The vine’s slime has soothing properties. It’s making me very sleepy. But you took out all the thorns, which means I should only need to sleep for a few hours.”
“Are you sure?”
“Fairly sure.” She closed her eyes. “Remember your promise.”
“What promise?”
“You said you wouldn’t kill me while we’re in the bog,” she mumbled, falling asleep.
“I won’t,” Bren said, mostly to himself. “Not tonight.”
* * *
The brown lizard gave him a good chase through the bog, but Bren was really hungry. In the rush after escaping Orell, he’d had no time to think about supplies, let alone steal some. As it was, he felt lucky that he had managed to retrieve his sword and his hunting knife from Orell during the escape, as well as his wine skin and his flints, all indispensable to him.
He wasn’t overly worried about himself. He had gone days without food before. But he was worried about Lusielle.
He kept up the chase through shallow peat holes, dark pools and root nests, going after the crested lizard with his sword. He must have looked quite deranged stalking the lizard through the Dismal Bog.
A sword was not built for hunting, but in the end it did the job, hacking off the creature’s head. Out of necessity, Bren had eaten strange fare before, though never a bog lizard. As he carried it by the tail, he hoped there was enough meat on it to account for the effort.
