| From: | "Paul J. Adam" <Shadowtk@********.DEMON.CO.UK> |
|---|---|
| Subject: | River Rats III |
| Date: | Sat, 31 Oct 1998 10:36:51 +0000 |
>>>>>[TO: D J H Coppinger, Director: Cpt L R W Lynch
CC: Archive
And this is where I should really have said "turn the boat around and
let's go home..."
+++++begin video
Ronin comes up onto deck, rifle held ready: moving to where Stephanie
crouches by the forward gun mount. "What's up?"
"Look." she replies, pointing. The _Forlorn Hope_ is backing water
slightly, holding position in the river against the current. Fifty yards
ahead, on one of the sandbanks that periodically rise from the water
(that make navigation so hazardous, and night travel so difficult) a
stake has been driven into the ground, and a decaying corpse is tied to
its crossbar in a crude crucifixion.
The corpse, is larger than a Troll, at least ten feet tall, and though
it's humanoid it surely was not human in life: rather, a ghastly half-
man half-beast monstrosity.
Not the gracefully beautiful "intermediate" form of a genetic
shapeshifter like Lilith or Stephanie, though: more like a clumsy parody
of such. As if someone had taken a Troll and a jaguar, and crudely and
carelessly combined them.
"What the fuck _is_ that?" Li asks from the gun mount.
"I don't know." Stephanie replies. "It's very dead and it smells very
bad. Harley, take us closer in, carefully."
The Commander eases slowly forward, getting within ten feet of the
creature before Harley calls "Best I can do, boss-lady, we got inches
under the keel..."
"Good enough. Emma, Chen, cover flanks, make sure we don't get surprised
while we look this over." Stephanie surveys the overgrown banks
suspiciously, but nothing comes out to take advantage of their
distraction. Ronin, meanwhile, is examining the dead monster.
Humanoid in shape, its limbs are knotted with muscle, the joints subtly
wrong for a human and the hands ugly caricatures: paws with the pads
stretched into clumsy fingers and the dewclaw twisted to form an attempt
at a thumb. Hooked claws protrude from the tips, too long to retract
into the warped paws. The face is just as bestial, a human face forced
into an animal mould with the jaw extended to form a clumsy muzzle,
lined with huge carnaissals and canines. Patches of unhealthy fur vie
with bare skin to cover the body.
The corpse wears a simple tunic, with the yoke and belt of combat
webbing over the rough cloth. The cloth is torn and bloody across its
chest, and the stubs of at least two arrow shafts still protrude there,
showing how it might have met its end.
"So, it's ugly but you can kill it." Ronin mutters. "No offence,
Stephanie, but that isn't any relation to you, is it?"
The short girl shakes her head violently. "Euurgh! No! This wasn't born,
it was made. It's a thing, not a someone. Just look at it in... oh, you
can't. Harley, back up and let's find a way round that bank."
"_Made_? Someone _made_ this?" The samurai gestures with his rifle.
"Probably the person we're going to look at. I didn't know he was
messing with that sort of thing. I wish my mother was here, she knows a
lot more about it, she's got all these old books that she won't let me
read, but I don't understand why because they're all written in funny
languages and not ones I know, but some of them have got pictures that
are really gross and gruesome and I wanted to know why you'd have
pictures of how to cut someone up into chops and steaks and cutlets,
because it sounds like a cookbook and I wondered why she would tell me
not to read it especially because _she_ can't cook at all."
A hoarse cry from the bank and in an eyeblink everyone on the boat is
crouched or prone, weapons levelled: as a brown-skinned man waves to
them, calling again.
"Hold fire. Harley, stop us here." Stephanie says quietly, then rises
back into full view: her AK-98 held low and aimed to the side, ready but
not threatening. The man, meanwhile, seeing them slow, almost
ceremoniously takes off the pouch slung around his neck, lays it and
what looks like a blowpipe aside, and unties a sheathed knife from his
thigh: left only with a loincloth and a beaded necklace, he makes a
beautiful racing dive into the river, swimming out to the boat with an
athletic grace.
He takes Stephanie's offered hand, and she pulls him onto deck where he
stands, looking around curiously. Little taller than the short
mercenary, he's dwarfed by most of the other crew, but he seems quite
unconcerned: beginning to talk rapidly to Stephanie in an unfamiliar
language.
"No comprende. Don't understand." she replies, holding up a hand: it
glows softly, and the man looks at it with interest: she slowly reaches
out to touch his forehead, and they stand silent for several minutes,
both with eyes closed, before Stephanie speaks quietly.
"His name is H!aya, as far as I can make out. His people - they just
call themselves 'The People' - live around here, and they're bothered
sometimes by monsters like the one we saw, as well as by men with guns
and by... what might be insect spirits. They come from up the river,
from the high lands. Boats, often much bigger than ours, come through
sometimes. Every couple of weeks. Sometimes pirates, sometimes traders.
They leave the boats alone, then they don't get bothered so much. They
put the bodies of the... things they kill out there to see who is new,
because anyone who hasn't seen one of those things and stops to look
might not be with the... Bloodied Ones. That's the name they call the
bad guys, the enemy who sends the monsters.
"And they hate the Bloodied Ones, because as well as retaliating for
attacks on passing boats, the monsters and the men and the bugs come to
kidnap people, who are never seen again. They're hoping someone will
help them fight back."
"Can we?" Ronin asks.
"Not this time. But we could come back with more force once we know what
we'd be attacking." Stephanie replies. "The Amazonians might let us in
if we had proof, this sounds nasty."
"Who're these Bloodied Ones?"
"He doesn't know, he's only seen their servants. There's a legend,
though. Wait up..." Another pause, for the pseudotelepathic exchange
that circumvents the language barrier. "That's actually pretty cool.
"Many generations ago, in the last time of Power, the people lived in
stone houses and tilled the fields for food, when a star fell from the
sky into the jungle with a great thunder that shook the earth and a wind
that stripped the leaves from the trees. When the bravest of The People
went to see where it had fallen, there was a great temple raised from
the earth where before there had been only jungle. The temple was the
home of the Bloodied Ones, and when the People tried to speak with them,
they came out to fight. They killed or maimed the warriors who fought
against them, and enslaved the People. Those who could work, were worked
almost to death in the fields or building new houses of stone. The women
were taken and used by the Bloodied Ones, who spawned their children on
them. The old and the weak were sacrificed, because the Bloodied Ones
fed on souls as well as on meat and fruit.
"But the Bloodied Ones' evil was too much for the Earth to bear, and the
jungle grew angry with the corruption they brought, and it sent forth a
great jaguar that hunted the Bloodied Ones by day, and came to the
People in their slave pens at night. The jaguar taught them how to make
weapons, because in their slavery they had forgotten, and it showed them
that the Bloodied Ones and their minions could be killed by those brave
enough. And they rose against the Bloodied Ones, and though many of the
People were killed they overthrew the Bloodied Ones and killed them or
drove them into the jungle, which the Bloodied Ones had always hated and
feared, and they defaced the temple and killed the children of the
Bloody Ones.
"And thus the People left their stone houses and their fields forever,
and lived in the jungle where the Bloodied Ones could not go, but only
send their servants. Because the jaguar's last warning was that the
Bloodied Ones would return in every time of Power, and that the People
should live in the jungle's protection so that when the Power and the
Bloodied Ones returned, the People would have time to prepare their
defences."
"Interesting story. Is it true?" Ronin asks.
"H!aya thinks it's cute and old-fashioned, and that it's been used to
explain everything from Portuguese slavers to whatever the problem now
is, but there's definitely something nasty up the river, those monsters
and bugs come from somewhere, and he's not going to _disbelieve_ it
until he's got something better. He's actually got a bit of education,
he went down-river and got some school before coming back, he isn't
stupid..." Stephanie looks troubled. "I think we need to be ever so
careful how we advance now, and we need to try not to get bounced by any
of those ships he mentioned.
"He was wondering how we'd be turned into 'spirits of the jungle' in the
legend if we helped out here, by the way, he's smart enough to be a bit
cynical about how legends happen."
"I hate to be tedious, but we _can_ trust him?"
"Oh, yes, he was telling the truth. At least, as he knows it."
"Fair enough. So, they're friendly?"
"Especially to someone who might help them. Or take a look and come back
in force to help them."
"Then you think maybe we could trade with them for some fresh food?
They'll know what's safe to eat here, even if we don't." Ronin's voice
has the longing of a man who's imagining fresh fruit, after weeks of
dining on military ration packs.
+++++end video]<<<<<
-- Stephanie <10:36:43/10-31-59>
