Chase the Morning полностью

She sat down in the sand with a bump. ‘Five centuries!’ she said hoarsely, and laughed a little. It sent shivers down my spine; it didn’t sound like human laughter at all. ‘And still I drag the chains! Ah, a nice irony – loved by one I daren’t rebuff, lest I kill what shreds of feeling he’s left himself.’ I was about to reach out; I didn’t realize it, but she did. ‘Nay, never paw me! I’ve scant use for stallions!’ Then, relenting a little, she rubbed her hand awkwardly on my knee. ‘Even ones of some mettle. Come, sirrah!’ she said softly. ‘I’ll not lie with you; but an I live another thousand year I’ll not forget you.’ Her finger and thumb tweaked the sensitive leg nerves with a force that shot me yelping to my feet. ‘Not altogether. Will thus much serve?’

‘It’s a hell of a lot,’ I said humbly.

‘Not Hell!’ she exclaimed, very seriously. ‘Heaven, man! Heaven!’

Under the shadow of the branches, the jungle seemed an eerie, claustrophobic place. The air hung hotter, heavier, incredibly humid, like one vast exhaled breath – bad breath, because it stank. It throbbed with the metallic chir of cicadas and the morbid croaking of tree-frogs. Our few lanterns did little except attract assorted blundering nightlife. My pack seemed to snag in every twig I passed. I was beginning to see Le Stryge’s point about the south, and we weren’t even through the thicket yet.

Cutlasses slashed at the spiny mass, their short weighty blades more use here than broadswords. We didn’t mind leaving a track behind us; quite the opposite. Small birds flew up in a startled twittering as we hacked our way through. ‘Bananaquits, maybe,’ grinned Jyp. ‘Bright little fellers. Only I wish they weren’t so loud.’

I knew what he meant. No point in letting the Wolves hear us coming. Or see us; once we were through the thicket, one by one the lanterns were blown out. The trail was narrow, and the Wolves deliberately hadn’t cleared it much. Between tall ferns it led us, under looping vines invisible in the dark and only too eager to hang us, into the gloomy shadow of royal palms and mango trees, the ground squishy with their overripe fruit. The chatter of small streams surrounded us. Every so often one would cross the path, and we would slip and splash and curse across the mud, sending small frogs scattering. When the moon rose high enough to slip its light between the trees it seemed to help; but also it threw strange shadows, dappled, ambiguous, half alive, into which we couldn’t help poking our swords as we passed.

Time went by, and with it we toiled upward, sweating and sore. The air grew purer, full of sweet heady smells. A grateful breeze freshened the forest’s dank whispers with the rush of surf. Owl cries, more like the hooting whit-tu-whui than any I’d heard back home, bounced back and forth. Some of the other noises that came floating out were scary in the extreme, shrill shrieks and demented gibbering laughter. It was silent things, though, impossible to avoid, that worried me more. The trail was steep; I found myself envying a Wolf’s clawed feet when the soft loam crumbled and slithered away beneath me. The brush on the upper slopes was thinner but tougher, mostly sisal and other spiky-leaved horrors. The sailors marched on like ageless automatons, but me, I was getting tired, very tired. At last Jyp ordered a halt, and I bumped into him before I understood. The reddening, swollen moon hung level with us beyond the nodding palm fronds ahead. We had topped the first slope. Leaving the others for a drink and a bite – biscuit and lukewarm water – we inched forward on our bellies to peer over the edge. ‘Quite a view, huh?’ breathed Jyp softly.

‘Ace,’ I agreed, squirming, wondering what was slithering about under me and did they have snakes here, or scorpions maybe? ‘See anything?’

‘No. Doesn’t mean they’re not out there, though.’ It was certainly quite a sight. The valley yawned wide beneath us, lined with trees whose tops trailed faint ghost-banners of mist beneath the moon. In gaps I glimpsed a snaking band of silver, and a rush of water roared louder than the surf. From the far wall it came; from a steep false summit water skipped down a twisting stair of rocks, to fall at last as a cascading curtain into a shadowed pool. Shining vapours boiled out of it, and a deep insistent voice, and flirting among them the ragged shadows of hunting bats. Above the falls the hill rose straight and steep and thickly wooded to almost twice the height, till it touched the outermost terrace of the castle. You could see it more clearly from here, like a pale ship foundering in a dark sea, yet still dominating the hillside with stony arrogance.

Jyp glanced back. ‘Not long till dawn.’ The sea glimmered through the trees, our mastheads skeletal silhouettes against it, still surprisingly close. We’d mostly been travelling upwards, not away. ‘Better be shifting. Eat up!’