James Axler – Deathlands

Krysty nodded, touching the woman on the arm, by her coiled silver bracelets, making her jump. “Best you get all the women together and go back to the village. Tell Itzcoatl what you told us and also tell Jak. The god should know of this. Tell the god, Jak, that we’re going to recce.”

“To wreck?”

“No. Say we’re going to take a look. That’s all. You understand?”

“Yes. We go back village and tell of slavers. You will be follow them?”

“Right.” Krysty turned to Ryan. “Let’s go, lover.”

“LOOKS LIKE WE COULD BE in for rain,” Krysty said, gesturing toward the thunderheads that were gathering height and strength toward the north.

“Reckon that when it really rains in a jungle like this, you need to keep your mouth closed to stop from drowning. Coming our way, too.”

“I can hear the river. Must be where they’re doing the fishing. We can warn them and send them all back safe to the village. Away from any slaver patrols.”

“Sure.”

“Just so long as they understand American.”

Ryan grinned as they reached a point in the trail where it zigged and zagged steeply downhill, with flowering bushes on either side, their scent like fresh grapes.

“If they don’t, we just point toward the village and look fierce and angry and shout a lot.”

Krysty was in the lead, pausing at a sharp bend where they could look down, two or three hundred feet of sheer drop, to a fast-flowing river that ran from a feathery waterfall a little way up the valley. There were a number of brown-skinned women, some of them naked, throwing thin nets into the frothing pools. Even from that height, it was possible to hear the sound of their unrestrained laughter.

“Slavers come by here and they’ll think it’s Christmas and Thanksgiving all rolled into one,” Krysty said. “Sooner they leave for the village, the better.”

Ryan nodded. “Paradise in the Bible had its snake, didn’t it? This place has all kinds of snakes, and not many of them crawl on the ground.”

They were three-quarters of the way down the narrow track before any of the women saw them. At first there was a moment of hysterical panic as they ran in all directions, screaming and dropping their nets, until one of them recognized Krysty’s flaming red hair, and the tall man with the patch over his eye, and calm was restored.

Most of them made an effort to grab at their loose cotton dresses, while others, mainly the younger ones, made no effort to hide their nakedness.

Several actually flaunted their bodies, smiling at Ryan and touching their own breasts, allowing their wet fingers to wander down across their bellies to the dark curling hair at the junction of their thighs.

“Think you could strike it lucky here, lover, if you play your cards right,” Krysty whispered.

“Sure, sure.” He clapped his hands and beckoned for the women to gather around. They did so, some of them so close that their wet bodies left damp patches on his clothes. Some had collected the nets and others had picked up the willow baskets filled with silver-scaled fish.

“Anyone speak good American?”

Several hands went up, and he selected an older woman who’d had the grace to dress herself in her cotton shift. She wore a necklace of tiny pieces of pink quartz and had a single silver stud through her nose.

“There are slavers, men with whipsclose. Understand?” She nodded, eyes widening with fear. “You must all go back to the village very quickly.”

“Where they?”

“Close.”

The woman turned to the others and spoke a string of rapid words, pointing first to the surrounding forest and then back to the village.

“Quickly,” Krysty urged.

Most of them were ready to go, but some went around the riverbanks to retrieve clothes, creels and nets.

Ryan was just thinking that it had gone safely and well when the bushes across the river parted and out stalked death.

Chapter Twenty-Four

“Fireblast!”

Ryan had been deeply worried that the group of slavers might be close, waiting silently in the dense undergrowth to try to ambush them.

The last thing he expected to see was the giant jaguar that he and Krysty had seen earlier.