Naamah's Blessing - Jacqueline Carey [139]
“I did,” Balthasar corrected me. “I shamed him. I should have let him go.”
“You should have let me go after him in the river,” Bao accused him.
“I should have done no such thing, messire!” Balthasar retorted. “Are you strong enough to swim for two in that current?” He shook his head. “None of us are. You would either have been carried away with him or forced to let him go. I’ll not apologize for sparing you that choice.”
While we grieved and bickered, the rain continued to fall. Our food stores were dwindling at an alarming rate, fruit rotting in the incessant damp, and a portion of our supplies lost in the canoe that had been swept away. With current running as high and fast as it was, fishing proved a futile endeavor.
Gear rusted, soaked clothing began tearing at the seams. Insects plagued us day and night. Their bites itched and festered. Minor injuries, cuts and scrapes and blisters, grew dangerously infected. My own palms were badly blistered from all the paddling, great water-logged blisters that showed no sign of healing. At times I could have wept for the sheer physical misery of it all.
But I reminded myself that we were all lucky to be alive to endure it, and distracted myself by weaving mat after mat of palm fronds, teaching some of the men to do the same. With his Siovalese affinity for engineering, Denis de Toluard directed others in building a rough shelter on the verge of the jungle where at least we could huddle beneath the scant protection our mats afforded.
And on the second day, Eyahue vanished into the jungle for several hours, borrowing a sword to hack his way through. He returned with a satchel full of leaves that released a crisp, astringent odor when bruised, ordering us to grind them to a paste to smear on any open wounds.
It stung like fury, but it seemed to help. By the next day, my blisters were no longer seeping.
“Is that one of your secret herbs?” I asked Eyahue.
He nodded reluctantly. “The ticitls pay a great deal for this medicine.”
I smiled wearily at him. “Thank you for sharing it with us.”
After three straight days of rain, waking to clear skies seemed like a gift of the gods. The rain had stopped in the small hours of the night, and already the river was visibly lower, no longer a raging torrent.
Everything sparkled in the light of dawn, rain-washed and glistening, drops still sliding from the leaves. It was like being in a vast green temple, and for the first time in days, my sense of wonder at the enormity of the jungle returned.
For a mercy, it was an uneventful day on the river. Although we’d lost one canoe, sadly, due to the casualties we’d sustained, there were enough seats to go around in the remaining eight. We searched in vain for the bodies of our lost men as we paddled, regretfully concluding by the day’s end that there was no chance of retrieving them.
At Septimus Rousse’s suggestion, we built a small cairn in their honor, and he once again gave the invocation.
Our journey continued.
Some days after our loss, we had our first encounter with hostile natives—or at least a near-miss of an encounter. We were some hours into the day’s travel when I heard a series of sharp buzzing sounds. Glancing around to see what new swarm of insects had come to torment us, I realized belatedly that the sound I’d heard was arrows in flight.
There was no telling where they’d come from. On either shore, the jungle looked as impenetrable as ever. Even as I searched, a second flight was launched. There was a metallic ping and a startled cry behind us as an arrow struck someone’s helmet.
In the lead canoe, Eyahue was shouting. “Get low! Get low and paddle hard!”
My pulse hammering, I hunched as low as I could, paddling awkwardly. The dugout canoe afforded little in the way of protection. For once, I envied the men their heavy steel helmets.
A third volley hissed above us, and then there was silence. Still, we paddled in a crouch until Eyahue announced it was safe to sit upright.
Shouting