The quartermaster stood eye-to-eye with Miyani. She turned to me and sneered, “I taught her, you know!”

  Miyani stood with her arms crossed. Her face looked so beautiful with her lips scrunched up in a frown and her eyes bzing. She took a deep breath and held it. Every muscle in her body was tense, including her clearly-defined abs and that delicious curve where her hips wrapped around to her holy arse.

  My girlfriend turned to me and scowled.

  I meant to control it, truly I did. Beside the bag chair I sat upon, that venerable lizard y on a padded sheet with his head on a plush, red velvet pillow with gold tassels. Outside the bay window, the morning sun cast amber light over the outer wall.

  Pu’iyo turned back to me with that shrill, old-woman voice. “This little girl used to hold onto my knee before she learned to stand by herself! Do you hear the way she speaks to me?”

  I scrunched up my eyebrows. “She was talking so fast…”

  The old woman shot her face at my girlfriend and spat, “‘uzi yavo?a geza! z?ta go?i ke?o'ibide ‘amavidu ?a yavo?a geza!”

  Miyani lifted her hands to speak, but the old woman cut her off, “f? ‘owude pabavidu. z?ta ya’ueede '?ki?e ?a v? ba ‘a?ede?a. deko fe?eeu?edu. bi fe?eeu?e? bi??k?vi?a?”

  I tried to pick out words where I could, but the two of them argued so fast I was just lost. A small bird nded on the sill and skipped over to a wooden box in the corner. It pushed its beak into an opening at the bottom, then came up and lilted a familiar song, like an up-down-up-down-warble. The ancient vita'o-lizard-creature-guy got up and reached his head into a covered bin, scooped something into his mouth, then brought it over to the box and filled it with small, brown seeds. The bird took its fill and flew off, and the old lizard y back down and watched as three more birds stopped by.

  “Caleb!” The old woman was looking at me. “Let me expin something to you, and perhaps you can get through to her.”

  Miyani pleaded with her, “poke ki’i ga???eza?”

  The old woman lifted her hand to silence her. Miyani huffed out a hard exhale and looked off, still with her arms crossed and her jaw locked. Pu’iyo smiled at me. “How do you feel about what happened yesterday? And promise to be truthful.”

  “Truthful?” I narrowed my eyes on her. It felt like a requirement to dig deep and find the real answer. “I was a bit shook. I killed a man. And that's, you know, difficult. But, st night, Miyani and I talked about it… mostly I talked and she listened. She's a good listener.”

  The old woman ughed. “You won, didn't you?”

  I shrugged and nodded. “Yeah, we won.”

  She nodded. “Kylen's group won, too, the other day.”

  “Oh?”

  She raised a hand to my girlfriend. “She led them to an ambush point where they engaged the enemy at close range. The ambush was successful. They inflicted great harm to the enemy and won the day.”

  “OK?”

  “Also, Jaysa, Collen, and Raveare were killed. But they won. Isn't that great?”

  “Well…”

  She lifted a finger. “Tell me something. What is etched on your bow?”

  “The Parable of the Golden Acorns. Falcon cries because he sees they won't stop no matter what he tells them.”

  She urged her face forward. “So you know what it's about, then?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Why?”

  I pulled my face back; I was unprepared for that question. “I suppose… I mean… I grew up with these stories.”

  “It's your culture.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Tell me, how old were you when you got your bow?”

  “It's actually not mine. There's this small cn that lives way up in the mountains, the chief's wife was having a difficult bor. They summoned Mother Searnie, and she brought me along as an assistant. After mum was resting with her baby, the chief wanted to see me shoot. He taught me a few things and gave Father Yewan that bow as payment. I think I might have been… six or seven? To be honest, I don’t know exactly how old I am.”

  She stood up straight and rested her hands on the desk behind her. “So it's in your culture. You were raised with it. You nailed that man's foot to a log at three-hundred-sixty yards. Do you know how far your enemy can shoot?”

  I shrugged. “Fifty, maybe sixty yards?”

  The old woman continued. “They've captured a number of those eupin bows you men carry, and they practice. Ude can hit fairly consistently—he’s up to about a hundred-fifty, but he wasn't born into it. Not like you.”

  I shrugged again. “I guess?”

  “You don't see the problem, do you?”

  I looked at Miyani. I was confused, but those legs, God, she looked nice. She opened her eyes wide and shook her head at me with a disgusted sneer over her lips. I turned back to the quartermaster. “Not really?”

  She crossed her arms over sagging, wrinkled breasts. “You can outrange your enemy sevenfold. There is no reason to risk an engagement close-in like that. This has been such a heavy war; so many feed the jungle. Why risk your lives when she can find an outcropping where you are immortal at range?”

  “I’m sure she had a good reason…”

  Pu’iyo lowered her eyes and took a deep breath. “Did you know that Collen was about to finish his tour?”

  Miyani didn't turn her neck. Rather she shifted her cute yellow eyes between me and the quartermaster to follow our part of the conversation, never once rexing her shoulders or resolving the scowl across her gorgeous lips.

  Pu’iyo closed her eyes. “I liked him. He had a thing for Yumi, though, oh he liked her! And he was one week shy of going home.”

  Two long horn bsts called out from the gate. Pu’iyo turned to look at a stack of papers on her desk, then looked out the window. “Talk to her. Maybe she'll listen to you. Anyway, they're about to open the gate, and I have work to do. Please go.”

  We exited Pu’iyo’s study into a narrow stone passageway that smelt of wet algae. I tried to take Miyani's hand, but she shook me off. I tried to rest my fingers on her back as we neared the dark stairwell leading outside. She turned and swatted my hand away, “no touch!” and stormed ahead of me.

  “Wait,” I took hold of her shoulder.

  She turned and grabbed my hand, curling in with her fingers enough for me to feel just how sharp those bck spikes she wore on her nails were. She gred up into my face and spat, “you think time at look for me now is good? No good time!” Then she turned, only to turn around again, push her hand into my chest and shout, “IM-MATURE!”

  “??si,” I pleaded, “xe??. tuv?sedu.”

  At that, she turned and crossed her arms, and looked up at me with her jaw locked.

  I slowed down and tried to articute with my hands as much as possible. “What do you say? About all that?”

  She gred at the hallway behind us for a moment, then shook her head at me. At least she slowed her cadence this time. “You understand nothing! You are hopeless!”

  I smiled. “Try me.”

  She waved me off. “Don't waste my time!”

  Before she could walk off, I took her shoulder again. “No.”

  She turned back to me with her eyes bulging. She gred at me. I was a bit scared of that, but I tried no less.

  “Please. Tell me. I know I won't understand everything. But maybe I'll pick up something useful? Please? ??si g?eusedu.”

  She crossed her arms and huffed, then threw her gre once more down the narrow hallway that led back to the quartermaster’s study. She breathed in deep, “go?i zo?u’uye ‘ixode! deko tuv?yedu! koθode todo. w?f?eayedu ?ofoθ?yu. s?mi ya’ueede todo. v? koθoye…”

  “Wait, wait,” she paused for me to sift through her words. “You understand everything. You know everything she says, but she’s not listening to you.”

  “Yes,” Miyani leaned into me.

  “OK. What…” I looked up. I needed to think about how best to phrase my question, and the view of her hips from this angle distracted me. I spoke slow and clear. “What… did… we… gain… from… that… risk?”

  She mouthed the words one by one as she pieced them together.

  I tried in Uhuida. “I trade you maybe dead then win big prize?”

  She scrunched her lips together and fought off a giggle, but her eyes smiled, and that was worth everything. She took a deep breath again and looked up at me without that sheen of apprehension. Words poured out from her. She tried to slow down at the beginning, but she was using words I wasn’t familiar with, and after a time it became clear I wasn’t going to pick up anything.

  She paused and looked up at me. I shook my head. “OK. Can you find a pce to talk? Out there? We'll get Jezi to transte, but I think we all should hear this.”

  She looked up at me and rexed. Then she smiled and nodded, “OK.”

  Outside, the rest of our unit was getting ready to head out. About two-dozen feet from us across scattered grass runners and mud, a rough scraggle of men—none of whom had killed a man—gathered around Marya mounted atop Ace as she spoke to them.

  Miyani looked up at her. Marya looked back with a smug air of superiority, and Miyani sucked her teeth.

  The lizard with the blue stripe down his body stepped up to her and squawked. He rubbed his face in her cheek, and she touched her forehead to his. He squawked a strange pattern of gurgles and clicks, and she nodded at him. Then she expined the situation to him as they made their way to the stalls. I think. She might have told him a recipe for a coconut-mango minicake. Maybe.

  I joined my group. Borel stood, his braids freshly done, with his heavy arms crossed and broad shoulders, smiling as one of the twins—the one who kept his hair in a bun—was telling him something. I started to inspect the fletchings in my stock of arrows and when Gino came over to me. “How did it go, man?”

  I looked up and remarked, “I don’t think I’ve seen blue sky since I got here.”

  To the ?aze and to the ?a?a, ominous clouds drenched everything beneath, and to the wu?i, a part in the clouds allowed the morning sun to shine through to where we were, and all around us was covered in droplets that shimmered like diamond-trees in the spring. Gino ughed. “I’m talking about the old woman. What did she want?”

  That gave me an idea. I wasn’t sure how the men would respond to knowing their lives had been put in danger, but what if I could butter them up a little? “I think Miyani knows something.”

  Geraln stood beside us. “What?”

  “Something about what happened yesterday; I think she knows something.”

  Borel dropped his arms and sauntered over. “What’s that?”

  Our whole unit gathered around in a circle. Malchuk, Rock, and Northstar leaned into Jame, and Ales raised his chin to me. “What does she know?”

  I leaned in. “I think we did a lot more damage to the enemy than we realize. She's going to find us a pce out there for a conversation; we need to talk about this.”

  Jame shook his head and crossed his arms. “Talk about what, exactly?”

  Ales echoed, “yeah. What's going on?”

  I looked around among them and lowered my voice for dramatic effect. “OK, listen up. Some of you know this, and some of you don't. We're up against an alliance led by the Sewu’oni. They don't normally work in this area, so the allies they have in this area are the Mewi'ishi…”

  “m?we’i?i,” Jezi corrected me.

  “Right. They're the guys with the cloud and lightning tattoo. They're the ones who brought those men in with their hands chopped off. The other one is the Pedhayana. They're the ones with the coiled snake.”

  Ales nodded, “the fuck those guys.”

  Borel cocked an eyebrow at that.

  Jezi raised a hand and looked around the group as he spoke, “other tribes sometimes you see around here are the fas?wo?i, they have the hammer vayi?o. They are mountain people. Towards the coast are the ya?asay?, they have the vita’o cw and they are assholes. They are the reason we cannot get ships through to Carthia. Around the area of the pass are the xaeusa they have the owl. They were good allies with Miyani's tribe before the sewu'o?i destroyed Miyani’s tribe.”

  “Yeah,” I said, “and that's who we shot yesterday. They had the jaguar tattoo—that's the sewu'o?i. They have all these lieutenants in this area, so why were they here?”

  One of the twins crossed his arms and nodded. “That's a good question.”

  Borel furrowed his eyebrows. “Why are they here?”

  I nodded as well and looked at Jezi. “That's what I want to ask her.”

  Jezi nodded. “We need to find out this!”

  And so we departed. We made our way across the open field that separated the Tower from the Jungle, and Miyani sat atop Blue beneath a massive tree with huge green mangoes hanging down. She ushered us in close and pointed to Jezi. He stepped up to her.

  Words poured out from her at twice the cadence she used on me. I'd scarcely caught two or three when Jezi expined them, “she says she knows that a lot of you hunt back home. Please use your hunter skills and do not leave a trail. Make sure the others understand as well. Need three of us to walk that way a few hundred yards and come back. Then we go through here.”

  Geraln left with Rock carrying that big shield and one of the twins, the one with his hair down past his shoulders.

  Above us, some animal was being particurly obnoxious crying out to the whole forest in some whiney string of hoots. Something shuffled above us, and bids scattered. In the distance, a massive python high in a tree worked its jaws around a furry snack.

  When they got back, we followed Miyani through a path that cut diagonally through low trees with a red skin of bark peeling away from a yellow trunk that had long, red fruits hanging down.

  The route Miyani prepared for us led us through a narrow gap of a ravine with orange broken stone yered in a multitude of colors on both sides. The ground was pure mud a foot thick but covered in water. Swarms of mosquitoes flew about as we passed—I dreaded how that would have gone had any of us not had that ward, which I was running out of.

  The gap was so narrow we could scarcely squeeze through in some pces and ended at a sharp drop over moss-covered stone that fell somewhere beyond the trees below us. There was a narrow ledge on the right that wrapped around a cliff covered in moss and ferns that ended in a dense thicket of trees.

  Miyani met us in a covered area with human-sized leaves above us in yers thick enough to cast us in twilight.

  There, Borel looked us over and nodded. He spoke in Goloagi, “Rock, Northstar, Malchuk, you guys on lookout. We’ll transte for you when you get back. Jame, you too. I'll catch you up.”

  Miyani dismounted from Blue. She tried to bring his head close to hers, but instead the lizard hopped excitedly between his feet and gave each of the four men a good sniff, rubbing his face in each of their cheeks. Rock chuckled at that and scritched his neck, and Blue turned to Miyani with a long string of clicks and gurgles.

  She spoke to Jezi, who reyed the message for them in Goloagi. “Fan out that way and that way, and this way especially two of you in that area. Blue will take turns visiting you. Talk to him if you see anything, he understands you. If you do not see him for a long time, run back here. Try not to leave a trail.”

  At that, the rest of us gathered around. Borel started. “Alright, what’s going on?”

  Miyani moved to speak, but I raised my hand first. I couldn't risk her starting the conversation with you all could have been killed. I didn't think she would, but I took the lead just in case. I nudged Jezi to transte. “Do we know what the sewu'o?i are pnning yet?”

  She smirked at me, nearly ughed, and Jezi reyed her answer. “She says not yet. She would like to know because the war party is sixteen men and why were there twenty of them. Four of them did not act like soldiers, but three of those ones are dead and one escaped. If we see another party like that, we should try and capture one of these special men.”

  Faren raised a hand. “Doesn't that carry a risk?”

  We all turned to him.

  “I was talking with Keelin. She says bringing us in close against them exposed us to some of us getting killed. She said that Miyani has been trying to get the other scouts to do the same. I want to know what that's about.”

  Ales crossed his arms and furrowed his brow at her. Half the men turned to her. Geraln tilted his head to the side and added, “we can outrange them sixfold. Why did we get in close like that?”

  Others began to ask their own questions, so I stepped in, “one at a time, man!”

  Borel held out a hand to her and nodded his big chin. “No accusation, we just want to know why.”

  Miyani listened to Jezi and nodded. Then with a deep breath she began. Oh, her thighs looked delicious. Toned, thick muscle, short and stout. My mind went back to running through Carthia with her on my back and the sensation of her steering me with those thighs, and I was getting an erection just thinking back on it.

  She rolled her eyes at me and shook her head as Jezi expined. “She says these special bows you carry, she says that’s a blessing, but it’s also a curse. She says the scouts like to set us up on these high points where we have the clean view to use the long range. You make these isnds of death where the enemy can’t go.”

  He turned back to her to listen for the next part. “And I know because remember I was on their side a month ago. We will snake our way between these isnds you create, and we can do anything we want along these routes. We have to throw you some bums sometimes so that you will go home and drink to your victory, but the real stuff we moved through these snake routes.

  “She says she knows that everyone says it is a risk. She believes it is a more risk if we allow them to move freely along these routes.”

  I was fbbergasted. “And you expined all that to Pu’iyo?”

  Miyani shook her head and sucked her teeth. Jezi ughed, then transted. “She says there is no room for her in those conversations.”

  Borel scrunched his lips and looked around. “Well I think the intel alone is worth it.”

  Ales crossed his arms. “So wait a bit. We're the only ones exposing ourselves to getting killed, then, aren't we? Because none of the other scouts do it this way.”

  Faren shook his head. “I don't know, man, it sounds like a fool's errand.”

  Geraln added, “what did we actually gain, anyway? We learned that the tribe we're at war with is at war with us. So?”

  I nodded towards him, “clues, man. They add up.”

  One of the twins, I wasn't sure which one, spoke up with a nervous lilt, “I don't know, man. I don't want them shooting back at us if I can help it.”

  His brother nodded, “aye.”

  I addressed that. “OK, but here's the thing. If they know where we are, that shaves off some of that range advantage, don't you think?”

  Gino ran his fingers through his curly hair and looked at the ground. “If I'm being honest, man, I just want to survive this pce and go home.”

  His feeling was echoed by at least half the men present.

  I challenged him. “You don't see anything here worth fighting for?”

  He looked back at me. “I can find something to fight for anywhere. Why should I risk my life for this pce?”

  Borel followed the conversation in silence as I answered Gino. “Don't you think this pce is worth it? Carthia is… don't you see? It's hope. It's a home for the homeless. It's where you go when there's nothing left in this world for you. That a pce like that can exist, I think that's beautiful. You see this?” I grabbed Jezi's arm with the number 411-417 branded in. “Jezi. Do you remember when you were ensved?”

  The kid blinked his green eyes at me. “My mother was a cook for the count. His wife accuse her of sleeping with her husband and sold us to the sver. I was six. Two years it was work in the fields sunrise to sunset never you can rest and only religious holidays you are put to work elsewhere. Two years and she tells me we are going to Carthia, and where is this pce because I never hear of it.”

  Ales raised his eyebrows. “Damn.”

  The kid ughed. I answered back to Gino, “I think that sounds like a pce worth protecting. If there are people out there who want to destroy such a pce, then I need to know what they're pnning. And if that means meeting them in the jungle, even if it means giving up my range…”

  Overhead, that bird called out an up-down-up-down warble. Miyani looked up, then snapped her attention to her left. A moment ter, Blue squawked and stepped up to her, then squawked again.

  She scritched the back of his neck and told him, “go?i ??godi.”

  He squawked again, then turned back towards the trees. I thought I heard something before he disappeared, but I wasn't sure. Fiu was the first to notice. He waved his hand before his nose and made a sour face. “Gods!”

  Miyani cracked up ughing as, one by one, we discovered Blue's scent. Once that died down, Jezi nodded with resolution. “I will fight for my mother. For my home.”

  I turned to Geraln. “What about you? You said you wanted to end svery throughout the Empire. Here's a chance to show the world what's possible.”

  He took a deep breath and let it out slowly.

  I pushed further. “What about s?wi? Is she worth protecting?”

  Geraln stared at me a moment. A lock of dark hair framed each side of his chubby, sweat-covered face. He gave no hint of a happy thought on his lips but answered, “I just want to survive and go home.”

  Faren spoke to me, nodding his droopy eyes towards my girlfriend. “Look. I know you really like this woman, but you've got to think, man!”

  I looked at him. “I am thinking.”

  Geraln raised a finger. “I say we put it to a vote.”

  “No.” Borel held his arms crossed and shook his head. “It's my decision. We're not voting anything. We go with Miyani's pn.”

  The twin with his hair in a bun spoke up to that, “please, man! Think about what you're asking us to do! I don't want to die here!”

  Borel scrunched his lips and shook his head, still with his stance wide and arms crossed. “All I heard about this pce coming here is men get killed. We've been using our range advantage this whole time, and we're still getting killed. I say we try something different. She knows better than anyone how they've been killing us, so we go with her pn. Period.”

  Gino held his hands out and pleaded, “just think…”

  “Nope,” Borel then turned to Miyani. “I want to know who these extra men are and what they're doing. Can you find us another group like that?”

  She nodded enthusiastically. “I try.”

  Geraln clenched his jaw and gred at me.