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FG, Ch 102
🕑 Added 2024-08-19 13:43:59 +0000 UTCThe next morning, Marcus knew they weren’t alone.
He woke to the sounds of screaming as the sun split the trees, and both he and Mari ran outside to find the army surrounded on all flanks by a group of thin, almost skeletal beings hanging from the trees.
“Oshu…” Mari murmured.
As Marcus was about to give the go-ahead to assume battle formations, she stayed his hand.
“Believe me, Marc,” she said, staring at the little lizards with statue-like stillness. “If they wanted to kill us, they would have struck without us even knowing."
Marcus blinked through the morning sun to where Mari was pointing and saw the shimmering silhouettes of other shapes moving against the leaves and boughs above. They too came into view only when they wanted to—and Marcus got a good look at their lithe, curled tails and scaleless, thready skin. Their tongues flicked out like monitor lizards waiting to feed, and in their hands, they each carried a makeshift spear.
Which none of them was hefting with intent to use.
What’s happening? Marcus telepathed to the force.
“They’re sizing us up, lad,” Marvin replied, back-to-back with Hialjia and Karliah in the center of the circle, the latter keeping a close eye on the still-bound Prince. “These boys are sly bastards. They ain’t gonna strike if they think they can’t win.”
A rustling above brought Marcus’s attention to the center of the clump of humanoid chameleons above. One of them, wearing a mantle of multicolored feathers and wielding a staff with a beehive affixed to its tip, was staring down at him, cocking his head at Mari.
“Matriarch,” it said.
Mari stepped forward as Marcus stood to shield her.
“Skin like light,” this ‘Oshu’ commander said. “Light of the slaves. Leading the bound.”
“Slaves no more,” Mari replied up to him, ordering her men to lower their weapons. “Free.”
The Oshu leader seemed to consider this with another strange cock of his head and frantic blinking of his giant, slitted eyes. He stroked the wispy beard that hung from the end of his chin with his webbed hand.
“Fight Masters. Many kill?”
“More than many,” Hialjia replied with a smile. “Thousands. Hundreds of thousands!”
The Oshu all blinked at this, and Marcus started appraising their numbers—there were at least 100 of them up there. Well, 100 that he could actually see. It seemed like more were sizzling into existence against the searing sun every second.
Camouflage… Marcus thought. No—more than that. This is downright invisibility I’m seeing right now.
The Oshu leader dropped to the ground and ambled up to Mari, looking over her shoulder at Marcus.
Hail to you, Sir, Marcus decided to telepath—just to see what the reaction of this creature would be. To his surprise, the creature did not shriek or stir at all. It simply jerked its head up and swatted at a nearby fly with the tip of its swift tongue.
“Voice…” the leader trailed off. “Much power Pale One has.”
“This power could be yours, too,” Mari told him—even as Marcus wanted to tell her that this might be a little premature.
The Oshu leader stroked his wispy beard again. “Masters have fire that kills jungle. You have fire that kills jungle.”
Marcus noticed his men inspecting the Hakka carts at their rearguard. They clearly looked upon these technological beasts with some trepidation.
“We have turned fire against the Masters,” Mari told the leader without even breaking a sweat. “We burn the Masters and leave none alive.”
The Oshu nodded after a time of considering these words.
“Pale One has walked in our Dreams. We know she is coming.”
In the face of Marcus’s confusion, Mari nodded, and he couldn’t help but note Karliah’s smirk as she heard these words.
Dreams? He thought. I’m getting the feeling that there’s more to that statement than just metaphor…
“You help us?” the Oshu leader asked. “We help you kill Masters who hate the forest.”
Mari met the stare of the leader. “What would you have us do?”
The Oshu pointed to the depths of the village where they were bound.
“To coast,” he said. “Brothers are bonded. Masters have evil fire that kills any who come near.”
Mari nodded. “Come with us,” she said. “And you will watch the old Masters die.”
The Oshu looked up at his people as they nodded one by one, each of them now coming into full view. Marcus now saw a few of them carrying blowpipes at their hips. They weren’t armored—no, their skin was far too flimsy to bear any platemail that could really help them without hindering their movement. But their stealthiness and agility were clearly second-to-none.
Mari thrust out a hand to the Oshu leader, and before the gawking eyes of the Pipers, she shook the creature’s webbed hand.
“Maria,” she said. “By my name, I swear to you that you and your Brothers will be free by the end of this day.”
Marcus watched, spellbound, as a smile broke across the old leader’s wrinkled face.
“Sekri,” he said. “Let us make the dream of freedom become real.”
…
For most of the day that remained, Marcus kept a watchful eye on their new companions as they swung through the trees and yipped high above them.
“Did you know they were here?” he asked Mari.
“I’d heard rumors,” she replied. “Only the Oshu communities of the Arasaka would be brave enough to actually come out in the open in these times. There’s a reason they’ve survived as long as they have.”
“The Oshu were the first of Yokun’s little slavery experiments,” Karliah explained. “They’ve been striking at the old Masters from the depths of these jungles long before we have.”
“True guerrilla tactics,” Marcus marveled. “Supported by their natural camouflage in the environment. It’s an advantage that makes each of them alone worth at least five men.”
“Hmpf,” Hialjia scoffed. “Tauron could still take them down.”
“Not a fan of subtlety, Princess?” Marvin asked amidst the laughter of a few of the other humans with them. “You remind me of me maw.”
“Is your mother a woman with a powerful battleaxe?”
“Oh, Princess, she was the battleaxe.”
Marcus didn’t pay much heed to the rest of the Pipers’ conversation, finding himself enraptured by the grace of the Oshu swingers above—their forms agile and strong against the midday sun.
“Their tribes have been scattered and all but crushed,” Mari told him. “Or so we thought.”
“They’re taking us to a plantation, aren’t they?”
Marcus stiffened as the reality of this sunk in. His forces would have the element of surprise, sure, and a good range of combat experience complemented by his unique new strength in mass communication, but they still lacked the manpower that their enemy enjoyed. And they were now deep in Yokun-controlled territory…
Mari’s grip on his hand brought him out of his thoughts. He suddenly found that he could hear the sound of the sea nearby. They were getting close to the coastline.
“You’re worrying again,” she said. “Aren’t you?”
“I wouldn’t be much of a general if I didn’t. After all, we don’t exactly have the numbers for a proper siege if it comes to it.”
He paused when he said those words. The experience of his devastating Pyrrhic victory in the siege of Grindlefecht below was still fresh in his mind.
But Mari’s smile never dropped. “You’ll see that we have more advantages than you might think,” she said. “You think I survived this long on numbers alone? You know yourself that they aren’t what win battles, Marc.”
“No,” he replied as they finally stopped before the last section of jungle foliage. “But they sure do help.”
Sekri, the Oshu leader, gestured for the main commanders to come forward. Hialjia stayed behind to make sure the Prince was behaving himself.
Slowly they peered through the crisp, leafy curtain that was the edge of the jungle.
What Marcus saw shouldn’t have surprised him. But even a historian, when confronted with the horrors of the past in a new light, has to check himself.
The plantation was built on what looked like the ruins of an old temple—spires and pillars with intricate Oshu etchings covering them dotting the precipice. A barbed wire gate surrounded a wooden palisade guarded by at least 500 men with muskets and shining, onyx armor. Within, Marcus could see the inmates chopping and processing the wood of the jungle surroundings, each of them toiling under the sun, skin pallid and flaky, many being dragged away by overseers with barbed whips drawn at their sides.
Marcus cringed as he surveyed the scene—inmates who had been left to rot in piles outside the palisade, who were currently being burned with Hakka charges set by officers barking commands at their young charges. Probably, these young ones thought they were just doing a job at the behest of their monarchs. If Prince Nagoya’s attitude was anything to go by, the hatred of these Keji-Sai, as he called them, would grow quickly during their lives. They probably hated the slaves they beat without really knowing why. They also probably worshipped the chain-covered symbol of the eagle that flew above them with a similar ignorance.
“Clan Kaita,” Mari said, pointing at the flag.
“The Clan of Prince Yaresh,” Karliah scoffed. “Our little guest should be pleased. He’ll get to watch his precious brothers' people fall.”
Marcus noted the almost tearful face of Sekri beside him—the Oshu was watching his brothers slave away under the yoke of violence, the barbs of the Yokun being used to make sure they never attempted to blend into the environment and try to escape.
“They break to control,” the Oshu whispered. “They kill spirit before they kill the body of the people. We suffer. Many suffer. Many will suffer long before the death of the tribe.”
“No more,” Marcus said, drawing the eyes of the old warrior. “Not after today.”
He turned to Mari with renewed determination.
“We’ll have to get the Hakka-carts ready,” he said. “And then I’ll need some time to plan.”
She nodded to them, issuing commands to her men who began the process of hiding the refugee noncombatants.
“Set up camp,” she ordered them. “Today, we prep for liberation.”
