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Chapter 19 - Acoran Way

'There is no way I’m going in that thing!’

          Sela stood, hands on hips, with a look of disdain fixed on the face beneath her colourful mask.  The thing was a six foot square, hempen carriage with an oakaen floor.  In Sela’s eyes, it did not look like it was capable of carrying the weight on the entire squad.  It was suspended beneath a monstrous bobug which clung upside-down to the roof of the cavern eighty feet above.  The bobug looked like a beetle, dark and shiny, but it was ten thousand times bigger than any six-legged creature Sela had seen on the Tamu Plains.  The beast was to carry the squad into the black reaches of the vast underground tunnel known as the Acoran Way.

          Jehenna scoffed at Sela’s diffidence.  ‘Have you no stomach for heights, or is it fear of the dark which unsettles you?  Or perhaps you’d like a bigger basket?’

          Although Jehenna was being sarcastic, she was actually right on all three counts.  Sela’s world was one of wide, flat expanses where height was measured by the length of a spear or by the long blades of the savannah grasses.  Tamu was a land of sun-filled days and at night the phosphorescent grasslands would glow until the morning sun.  She had rarely experienced true darkness, and now she was about to plunge headlong into it.  Sela spent her days surrounded by space and warmth and was a little alarmed by the thought of spending three days careering through the cold dark under the Acoran Ranges confined to a tiny carriage.

          ‘Are you scared of the bobug?’ Jehenna added unnecessarily.

          The bobug was not the issue; like all Tamuans, Sela shared a highly empathic relationship with most beasts and trusted them above most intelligent bipedal lifeforms – such as her squad leader.

          Sela disliked the tone in Jehenna’s voice and strode up to the Acoran, her head tilted right back to look her in the eye.  Unfortunately for Sela, it was one of those moments when a retort would not be thought of until long after the opportunity to reply had passed.  Instead she grimaced at Jehenna, a gesture that was completely hidden behind the her large mask.  This done, she walked back from the edge of the platform to brood.  

 

 

They were standing atop a small, wooden dock that was suspended by ropes high above a dark expanse under which lay a bubbling mire.  The sulphuric stench from the black ooze was overwhelming.

          ‘Welcome to the Acoran Way, one of the engineering wonders of the Acora!’ Jehenna proudly announced with her left arm swinging around in a grand gesture to indicate the space above and below them.

          ‘The Acora built this cavern?’ Tawhawki asked, his question laced with doubt.

          ‘Well, no actually,’ Jehenna said, clearly annoyed by the question.  ‘But what we did do is design the means to traverse the space.  It is 200 leagues between here and Harvagor at the western end.   Over 5,000 iron rings have been laid in the cavern roof.  It took countless Acora fifty years to complete the job.  Over 150 workers died in the course of that time.  It took as many years to train the bobug to use the rings.'

          Bormanus stepped forward and gazed up at the creature above.  He flicked back his long, white hair and pouted his lips like a teenage girl.  ‘Into the abyss on the back of a bug!  That doesn’t exactly fill me with confidence,’ he muttered self-indulgently.  ‘I’m putting my life in the hands of a dumb beast.’

          Surprisingly, it was Sela who came to the bobug’s defence.  ‘Firstly, she doesn’t have hands.  She holds onto the rings above with hooks at the ends of her limbs.  Secondly, she’s not dumb.  But she is nervous.  She doesn’t like the dark.  Contrary to what the Acora believe, it’s not the promise of food at the other end of the tunnel that keeps her going.  It’s the light.  She knows that when she gets across the Way, you will let her graze in the sun.’

          Jehenna was astounded.  ‘How do you know that?’ she asked Sela suspiciously.

          ‘It’s the way of my people,’ Sela replied giving Jehenna no indication that she wanted to discuss it further.

          Jehenna turned to Bormanus who was still gazing doubtfully into the darkness before them.  ‘The passage below and before us is not an abyss.  Hundreds of feet below us lies a stagnant pool we simply call the Mire.  It is the source of this stench and runs the entire length of the Way.  You will get accustomed to the smell.’

          The entire squad gazed at Jehenna with disbelief.  This was not a smell to which one became accustomed.

          Jehenna lifted her gaze to the roof of the cavern.  ‘Her name is Ema.  She is one of five bobugs we use to cross the Way.’

          The bobug’s chitinous skin shone in the glow of the morning that poured in through the entrance to the Way.  Closer inspection revealed that the bobug’s exoskeleton was actually translucent and the morning sun’s light hinted at organs, veins and muscle just under the creature’s casing.  Its size and weight were immense and yet it hung from the rings by six limbs thinner than Bormanus’ waifish arms.  As Sela had mentioned, each limb ended in giant, smooth hooks.

          ‘You should feel honoured,’ Jehenna continued.  ‘You will be the first karbish ever to ride –’

          ‘What’s a karbish?’ Rama asked.

          ‘Anyone who is not Acora is karbish,’ Jehenna replied.

          ‘Why do I feel a little insulted by that?’ Sela sneered.

          ‘You feel insulted because you are intimidated by our achievements.  It is not the wish of the Acora that other races feel inferior, but we can do little to change such a reaction.’

          ‘Of all the arrogant, egocentric things to say.  The Acora have to be the –’

          ‘Will we have to put up with that smell the whole way?’ asked Bormanus.

          ‘How are we going to all fit in the basket?’ asked Tawhawki.

          ‘Has anyone ever fallen into the Mire?’ asked Rama.

          Jehenna was stunned.  She was accustomed to Acoran troops who never questioned anything and never complained.  Here she was, apparently accompanied by the Myr’s elite, and already she was wishing she had not agreed to lead the squad.  So far, the only member of her squad who hadn’t bothered her with comments, queries and criticisms was Kali, the mute Kolpian, but he had more than made up for his silence by standing on her foot twice.

          Jehenna took a breath and dealt with the last question she was given.  ‘Yes Rama, over the years many have fallen into the Mire.  None are unchanged by the experience.  The river of mud below you is not something you’d want to get close to.  Its vapours will put you to into the heaviest of sleeps.’

          Rama smiled broadly.  ‘That doesn’t sad too bad.  In fact, I could use a good nap.’

          ‘This is not a slumber from which you would easily wake.  Should you be woken by another, you would have no memory of your previous life.  There were many Acoran engineers a century ago who just wandered the lands after falling to the Mire.  They had forgotten where their homes were.  Forgotten their families.  There is no recovery, no cure.’

          ‘How long are we going to be hanging above this wonderful mudpond?’ asked Sela.

          ‘It will take us three days to make the crossing.’

 

 

Above them, the roof of the entrance to the Acoran Way was bathed in golden light as the sun’s first rays reached out from the far horizon.  Looking eastward, the mouth of the cavern offered one of the most glorious views in the Myr: the crimson waters of Lake Cessair glittered as morning light skipped across its surface.  Far across the lake, silhouetted against the rising run, the majestic spire of Cessair Tower rose into the sky like the mainmast of a ship.  To the right of the cavern entrance, the southern mountains of the Acoran Ranges curled around the lake maternally.  A flock of red larida wheeled in the air and one by one broke formation to dive into the lake to retrieve a scaly breakfast of carpu from its depths.

          Beneath the entrance, a shining bluestone path could be seen leading up from the water’s edge where a collection of small boats lay moored.  

          The cavern itself had no floor.  The path from the lake led up to the gangway upon which the unlikely collection of assassins stood.  When Sela first stepped onto the gangway, it rocked and bounced to such a degree that she fell to her knees, much to the disgust of Jehenna who strode purposefully across the gangway to the hanging platform below the bobug.

          The gangway had also posed problems for Tawhawki.  The weight of his massive six-legged body made the timbers of the gangway bend slightly.  Halfway along the suspended pathway, one of Tawhawki’s hooves split a plank and his hind leg fell straight through.  The gangway pitched violently to one side but Tawhawki managed to keep his balance long enough to regain his hooves.  Unfortunately, all the provisions the Caquikki consul was carrying slid from his broad back and made a soundless decent to the noxious mud below.

          Surprisingly, blind Rama had no issues with the gangway at all.  His sense of balance was more finely tuned than any Acoran, and despite the lack of railings or guide-ropes, he made the trip across to the platform without a single misstep.

 

 

Jehenna had coaxed everyone but Tawhawki to leap across from the gangway to the carriage.  The six foot gap did give rise to more commentary than she had hoped, but now she had all but one member of her squad in the hempen basket, Jehenna felt she was actually getting somewhere.  She was indebted to Kali who picked up Sela and jumped across to the carriage despite her protestations.  Sela’s screams bounced off the cavern walls and Jehenna found herself momentarily envying the Kolpian’s deaf state.

          Tawhawki looked critically at the gap between the hanging platform and the carriage.  ‘Excuse me, but did anyone actually think about how I’m supposed to get over there?  I don’t think this arrangement was made with Caquikki in mind.’

          All stared blankly about the carriage.  It seemed ridiculously small compared to Tawhawki’s large body.  Tawhawki stamped one of his front hooves in frustration.

          ‘Ah, a golden moment for Myrran bureaucracy!’ laughed Sela scornfully from the carriage.  ‘One squad go galloping off on snorses across the open fields of Scoriath, but which team gets the Caquikki?  The one traversing hanging walkways and leaping across endless pits into tiny baskets!  Public officials – don’t you love them?’

          ‘Excuse me, my good fellows.  Do we have a problem?’  Out of the shadows stepped the rotund, purple-clad figure of Porenutious Windle who had silently made his way up the gangway.

          ‘Hmm, let’s see,’ smirked Sela who had always held Windle in low regard.  ‘We have a small, hempen basket hanging over there and we have a 200 pound Caquikki standing here.  Small basket, big gap, large Caquikki.  Somehow, I don’t think it’s going to work.’

          Porenutious dabbed his bald head with his handkerchief.  Although the sun had just risen, he was sweating already.  The short walk up from the lake was enough to start a process of perspiration that would continue until Windle placed his head on his pillow at day’s end.  ‘Yes, yes, ma’am.  I see you do have a point,’ he said weakly.  ‘Perhaps if we…’  He had no solutions so he looked away pretending he had not started the sentence.

          Jehenna frowned.  ‘Mr Windle, why are you here?’

          Windle smiled wanly and stepped forward purposefully as if to make an important announcement.  ‘I am here for two reasons.  Firstly, the Chamberlain sent me to make sure you got away safely.’    He looked about at the blank stares.  The company was clearly unimpressed with this display on interest.  They had more pressing matters to attend to.

          ‘And the second reason?’ Jehenna said plainly, folding her arms in a show of annoyance.  Windle’s appearance was not part of her schedule and she was not a person who deviated from schedules easily.  

          Windle looked at the boards of the landing beneath his feet.  He licked his lips and cleared his throat.  This nervous preamble unsettled Jehenna.  Something had happened.  Windle was the bearer of bad news.  ‘I… bring you sad news,’ he said, his reluctant voice echoing across the cavern.

          ‘What news?’ said Jehenna.

          ‘We have incurred our first casualty,’ Porenutious replied.

          ‘Already?’ remarked Sela, startled and anxious over the news.

          ‘Who has been lost?’ Jehenna queried.  As she asked her mind quickly flicked through the members of the other assassination squads.  She quickly dismissed proven fighters such as Pylos, Bannick and Sir Edgar.  She thought of the more vulnerable individuals that accompanied these warriors: the priest, the fisherman, the politician.  ‘Maeldune?’ she said with panic rising in her voice.  ‘Is Maeldune okay?’

           ‘As far as I know, Consul,’ Windle responded respectfully.

          ‘Then who?’ Sela exclaimed.

          ‘Bannick Landen was found dead this morning at the base of Cessair Tower.’

          It was numbing news.  Bannick’s reputation was such that many regarded him as almost invincible.  Even those who did not know him were shocked, and those that did – Rama, Tawhawki, Sela and Jehenna – were stunned into speechlessness.  Bannick Landen was simply not somebody one could picture as being dead.  It was impossible to think of him and not be swept up in images of vitality.  Bannick was often described as being “larger that life” and now he was dead.  The fact seemed to contradict itself.

          Finally after a long silence, Jehenna asked, ‘Who did this?’  Her voice was dry and constricted, as if she had not spoken for days.  Although her husband was no fan of Bannick, she had always admired his uncompromising manner and the energy that characterized his approach to everything he did and said.

          The politician in Windle responded to the awkward situation.  ‘This highlights the threat we pose to Caliban.  It highlights the importance of our mission and –’

          ‘Who did this?’ Jehenna repeated.

          ‘We do not know’ Windle said rather meekly.

          ‘Forget your political spin Mr Windle.  What it highlights is that we are compromised.  I doubt it was a Ghul soldier who killed Bannick.  He was not one to be vanquished so easily.  It would have been someone he trusted or had no reason to fear.’  She turned to the rest of the squad.  ‘So the first of us has fallen.  This should drive home the point that we are at war.  This is no afternoon stroll we are on.  I suggest we put aside our petty concerns and stop our squabbling.’  She looked at Tawhawki.  ‘It is time for us to measure up to the obstacles that are before us.  It is time for us to act as consuls, elected to serve the people of the Myr because we are the best of our kind.’

          Tawhawki stepped forward to the edge of the hanging landing.  His hooves clip-clopped on the boards and echoed around the chamber.  ‘In other words, jump into the damn basket,’ he said plainly.

          ‘Precisely,’ she replied.    

 

 

Tawhawki’s torso lent forward and his fist clenched as he reared up on his two back legs.  His muscled were like knots of steel rope as his body tensed.  Without another moment’s hesitation he thrust his great equine body out across the gap.

          Sela screamed at the sight of the bulk of the Caquikki hurtling at the carriage, like a hooved cannonball.  Startled by the cry, the bobug pitched forward.  The basket also swung forward much to Tawhawki’s dismay.  He shot out a thick arm and just managed to snag one of the mooring lines.  His weight was such that the entire carriage listed to one side and Sela was flung from it out into the blackness below.  Her hands flayed the air and had it not been for Tawhawki’s tail, she would have disappeared into the black.

          Tawhawki yelped in pain and Sela screamed even louder.  The bobug rocked forward again, keen to leave the noise behind.

          Trying to be forceful and quiet at the same time, Sela growled through clenched teeth, ‘Would you give me a hand here, Tawhawki?’

          ‘I do not have a hand to spare,’ he growled back.  He could not hold on much longer.  He imagined the muscles in his arms were on the verge of ripping.  They were not designed to bear his body’s considerable weight.  The added weight of the Tamuan thrashing about as she held his tail was more than he could take.  He looked up to see the concerned face of Kali peering over the edge of the carriage.

          ‘Get her off me!’ he mouthed to the Kolpian, exaggerating each syllable in the hope the deaf brute would understand.  He wasn’t left wondering long, for in the next instant, Kali leant out of the basket and  reached past Tawhawki for the frenzied figure of Sela Noye who was doing nothing to make her situation better.

          She glanced at Kali’s extended arm, but it was well short of her own.  ‘I can’t reach it!’ she cried.

          ‘Climb up, Sela!  You have to move!  Get on my back!’  Tawhawki flicked a glance over his back and realised that Sela was prepared to hang on his tail until she – or he – dropped.  She waved one hand around but made no attempt to climb up his tail onto his back.

          He had no choice but to buck.  Although the absence of solid ground beneath his hooves meant Tawhawki’s kick had little power in it, it was enough to send Sela flying high enough into the air for Kali to grab her hand.  Sela was swung up into the carriage and unceremoniously dumped on the floor.  Her yelping throughout this manoeuvre did nothing to calm the bobug and the skittish, giant creature lurched forward again.   Tawhawki used the bobug’s momentum to swing himself up to the side of the carriage which he clung onto for dear life.  His six legs kicked frantically in the air, unable to find a purchase that would help him up into the basket.

          Jehenna wasted no time in slinging one of the free mooring lines around Tawhawki’s torso.  She locked this rope around a bitt at the front of the carriage.  With this secured, she could attend to hauling the huge Caquikki into the carriage.  Rama and Kali helped her do this whilst Sela and Bormanus backed up against the other side of the carriage, bracing themselves for the impact of Tawhawki’s heavy body upon the carriage’s thin, oakaen floor.

 

 

Jehenna grabbed a rope that led up to a muzzle around the bobug’s spherical head.  ‘Let’s go Ema,’ she said softly as she gave the rope a gentle tug.  The bobug moved off slowly.

          Soon the bright light of the cave entrance was lost behind a turn in the cavern and to Sela’s delight, she was not enshrouded in darkness.  A soft, warm light fell from above.  It was coming from the bobug.  ‘The bobug mates at night,’ Jehenna explained.  ‘It uses this light to attract a male.  We found that by keeping the female without a mate, it will glow whenever it finds itself in darkness.  Their blood has a luminescent quality.  Before the coming of the shatterbugs, the Acora used bobug blood to light our cities, our shipping beacons and this passage under the mountains.  However, without the sun to replenish it, the bobug can’t maintain the glow for more than a few days.  If we don’t reach the western landing in three days, we’ll be in darkness.’

          Tawhawki, clearly annoyed with how the mission had unfolded thus far, voiced his concerns.  ‘Now this is a deal that just keeps on getting better!’ he groaned.  ‘Here we are tied onto the back of the slowest, loneliest bug in the Myr.  Three days!  You said it’s two hundred leagues to the other side.  It’ll take weeks to get there at this speed.’

          Jehenna gave a saturnine smile.  ‘Oh we won’t stay at this speed for long.’  She gestured to the roof of the cavern.  In the amber glow of the bobug, they could see that further up the cavern the size and layout of the rings changed.  Instead of single small rings close together, the track was defined by pairs of larger rings much further apart.  The bobug was coming to the end of the single rings.  ‘I’d find something to hold onto if I were you,’ Jehenna warned, looping a length of hempen rope around her forearm.  

          As she said it, the whole carriage pitched to the front.  Above them, Ema was coiling back on her rear legs as if to spring.

          And then they were off.  With her fore limbs extended, the bobug hooked onto the two larger rings in front of her.  In the same movement, her hind limbs drew up, hooked onto the same rings and thrust her forward.  This galloping motion would be maintained for the journey.  Ema would not be rested until they had reached the far side of the Way.

          Despite Jehenna’s warning, everyone else in the basket was caught off guard.  Had there been more room in the basket they would have been flung out of it, but Tawhawki’s body walled them in.   Sela found herself buried between his hind quarters.  Tawhawki’s tail brushed against the Tamuan and a rather noxious smell gripped her face.

          ‘That’s disgusting!  That’s worse than the mud below!’ she exclaimed.

          ‘Well I didn’t ask you to put your face there!’ Tawhawki replied defensively.

‘I don’t mean to be a bother, but is someone standing on my foot?’ Rama inquired, with the gentility of a priest.

          Although he hadn’t heard the question, Kali noticed that his large foot was squashing the blind man’s toes.  His sweet eyes conveyed an apology and he swivelled around to free Rama’s foot.  As he did so, he accidentally sent one of his elbows into the back of Sela’s skull.

          ‘Ouch!  I don’t believe this!’ she cried as she bent over in pain, exposing her quills.  Kali tried to move himself into a position whereby he wouldn’t step on or collide with the others in the basket but achieved the opposite.  His shoulder collected Bormanus in the face and he went reeling backwards into several of the quills splayed out along Sela’s spine.  His girlish shriek shot through the cavern like an arrow.

 

 

Jehenna brought one hand up to her temples rubbing them as if to relieve a severe migraine. She knew this was going to be a very long trip.