Captain Nemo_ The Fantastic History of a Dark Genius - Kevin J Anderson [107]
The slavers gathered their horses and paid the villagers, making ready to depart at dawn the next day. Accompanying them, Nemo would be shackled and dragged along. Once the slavers put him in chains with the others and set off for the slave markets, he would never have a chance. It had to be tonight.
He sat motionless, studying everything around him, until he developed his plan. He didn’t have the luxury of choosing among options.
At nightfall, the women built large cooking fires, and the visiting slavers feasted with their allies. Though the narrow-faced slavers restrained themselves, the fishermen drank millet beer from clay urns. Nemo ate the watery fish soup an old village woman gave him through the door of his prison hut.
During the loudest part of the revels, he found a sharp stone on the floor of his hut and sawed at the vine lashings holding the back wall together. Then Nemo waited until well past midnight, when silence hung thick around the village. Hoping he could move quietly enough to get away, he parted the back joinings of the hut. With a loud crackling noise, he pushed through and stood in the open again. Free.
Though his heart felt heavy at his inability to cut all the other captives loose, he knew they would be hunted down and killed, and would raise enough noise and alarm that none of them would get away. The vile slavers had horses, and the wilderness would be filled with predators. Nemo had no choice but to leave them here, resigned to their fates.
If he ran on foot into the jungle, though, he would not get far. Instead, Nemo made his way to the crude stockade, where he inspected the two captive zebras. The animals twitched their tails and snorted, moving back and forth.
Knowing he could be caught at any second, Nemo removed the thorny bars from the corral’s closure. The striped animals backed away from him, but he approached slowly, trying to be calm. Not daring to risk even a soothing whisper, Nemo crept closer to one of them. In the starlight, the animal’s black and white markings rippled like an apparition. Its mane was short and bristly.
The first animal trotted away, discovered the opening in the corral, and bolted out into the open. The second zebra, seeing its companion flee, decided to do the same. Nemo sprang toward it, throwing his arms around its muscular neck. He had no halter or saddle, but he had desperation. He grasped the stiff hair of its mane and hauled himself onto its back.
The zebra squealed as if a lion had clawed it, then bounded forward with the speed of terror. Nemo held on, low over the zebra’s neck, squeezing its ribs with his thighs. He had no way to exert control -- so the zebra just ran, galloping out of the village.
Behind him came the outcries of the wakened villagers. Gunshots barked into the night. Hunched low, Nemo kept riding, slapping the animal into greater speed, until the turmoil faded into the distance. The zebra plunged into the tree shadows and tall grasses, fleeing the marsh onto solid ground, toward the plains where it knew to roam. . . .
Several hours later, while Nemo still clung to the zebra, the sun rose over the horizon, spilling golden light upon the grasslands. He cast a glance over his shoulder -- and saw to his dismay a line of mounted dark-garbed raiders galloping after him. Though Nemo was only one slave, he had infuriated and shamed these men by escaping; he was an affront to these cruel people who expected all to tremble in fear of them.
The slavers’ mounts were larger and stronger than his zebra, and they would catch up soon. Nemo swatted the animal’s rump. Though its nose and mouth were flecked with foam, the zebra put on a burst of speed, charging across the plain.
Raising an angry fist at his pursuers,