The Easy Pickings
“What was that?” asked the grim rebel whom the others called Ol’ Lue. He did not earn that name by age, only by comparison, looking no older than twenty-five and yet clearly being the senior of the three. They stopped and moved closer together until their backs formed a perfect triangle, aiming their rifles at the jungle. Waiting. A frag passed, then two, then three. Then, the triangle disbanded, and the trio continued down the slope with watchful eyes.
A good three-hundred ells later, it was the tallest of them speaking up, a wiry youth called Kanli. “There it is again!” The triangle reassembled, and a handful of frags saw it stay intact as the three scanned every shivering leaf, every crackle and caw in the treetops, before a sign by Ol’ Lue urged them to move on.
Only the Third did not speak up. He may have if he was spoken to, but he wasn’t, and so his voice stayed a mystery, as did his name. He was smaller than the other two, hardly a man grown. While the others had taken off their maroon scarves long ago to keep from sweating, he wore it proudly still. His eyes were big green circles oozing with the urge to please the senior rebels.
“Fuck the Chancellor’s mother!” yelled Ol’ Lue, calling the triangle into being yet another time. This time it only lasted a few breaths. “You heard it, too, right? Over there?” he asked Kanli, stepping away and turning the triangle into an arrow pointing back up the hillside.
“I heard something alright.” Kanli furrowed his brow. “Not ahead of us, though. Behind us.”
Ol’ Lue sighed, and stopped. “I hate this jungle. It sounds different.”
“Don’t say that,” Kanli said with a worried look around. “Don’t anger the spirits. We’re strangers here. Weren’t it for the jungle, we would’a been found and done for long ago.”
“Weren’t it for the jungle, we’d be outta here by now. Fucks do I give about spirits? We’re the Forest Army, and we’re lost in the fucking forest.”
“ Heard ‘nuff stories of lost people being saved by spirits.”
“Only ‘cause unsaved ones don’t tell stories. Trust me, there’s plenty’a folk died while begging for some spirit’s help… Ah, it’s no use.” Ol’ Lue dropped his backpack on the ground under a mighty old telahiem and sat down beside it. “Full stomachs oughta calm the nerves. We’ll rest for a bit. You go ahead ‘n look for spirits, let us know if you come by anything useful.”
Kanli nodded, folded his hands, and bowed as he entered the bushes, whispering, “He doesn’t mean it. We’re grateful for your protection, oh great guardians of…”
In the shadow of the telahiem, Ol’ Lue and the Third unwrapped tinfoil packages of dried beef and golgoya balls, and washed them down with the water they kept in their scratched teal thermoses. After finishing his meal, the Third took out a small metal cuboid with wires sticking out one end and started tinkering with it.
“Gimme that,” hissed Ol’ Lue, snatching away the appliance. “I should slap you again. What did you think bringing a radio? If they’d found out, there’d’a been hell to pay. Can’t you whistle?”
The Third whistled, quite beautifully so.
“Lackwits, both’a you. They should’a given me a proper command years ago. Made that shoe-wearing boy Nhi siwe before he even shed his sarif, but couldn’t throw Ol’ Lue a bone, typical. Were it for me, we would’a taken radios, y’know. But you gotta respect the chain of command. Got it?”
Wisely, the Third kept his response to a nod.
“I mean, you hear me complaining about who’s in charge, but I never challenge their orders. Ever. That’s why we work. Why we got an edge on the sweats. Them’s a weak-minded people, why d’you think they gotta rule everything? Told from the cradle that each’a them is a siwe in his own right, no wonder they make for poor soldiers. Meanwhile, you tell us we gotta whistle, we whistle. May strike us as odd, silly even, but still, we whistle…” Now it was the senior rebel tinkering, trying to shove the wiring back in, get a response from pushing buttons, turning knobs, slapping the device with his palm, but to no avail. Finally, he flung the radio against the telahiem’s trunk, shattering it into a hundred pieces. “Useless piece’a shit!”
Both Ol’ Lue and the Third reached for their guns when Kanli ran out of the underbrush. “I definitely heard something this time!” he said.
“The Ajan save us if this is his Army.” Ol’ Lue sighed. “Sit down, eat your food. We can’t stay too long. Found any spirits yet?”
Despite Ol’ Lue’s spiteful chuckle, Kanli shook his head most earnestly. “You don’t find them, they find you.” He dropped his backpack, and took a seat opposite the other two. “I’ve been praying to one’a them the mountain shepherd told me about. Hama, he’s called. Supposed to help the helpless and the innocent pass through the jungle unharmed.”
“We’re armed. We’re soldiers.”
“You always go on about how the two of us are so useless and naive. In a way, that’s not that far off, is it?”
The sigh that came from Ol’ Lue’s mouth was deep and ripe with pain. “Unbeliev—“
Within a fraction of a breath, the three had risen, and the triangle reborn. Kanli asked, “You heard—“
“Yes,” said Ol’ Lue. “Over there?”
“Yup.”
The senior broke out of formation, pulling Kanli with him. “You stay put, young’un.”
Like that, the two men entered the bushes, wagging around their guns at an enemy yet to be seen. They walked an ell, five, ten, and suddenly stopped. Each nodded. They had heard it again. It was closer this time. They proceeded, ears perked, stopped again, nodded, proceeded—and froze entirely. The noise had brought them to a small clearing before a teak covered entirely in ivy leaves, leaves that weren’t still. They shook as something inside the growth moved around, up and down the trunk. Something fast. Small.
In a flash, the monkey jumped out to pelt Kanli’s face with a handful of nuts, and shot up another tree before Ol’ Lue could even readjust his aim. Kanli screamed in shock, fell, and gasped. “What was that?”
“Fucking Erues,” Ol’ Lue said, kicking the tree. Far up above them, a choir of monkey voices welcomed their brother. “Should’a known. The ones up here in the north are said t’hold a grudge against humans. Little cunts, but can you blame ‘em? Sweats keep cutting down trees wherever they tread.” Both men spun and cursed when the Third shot out of the underbrush aiming his gun at them. “Good grief,” Ol’ Lue hissed, slapping down the gun. “Was that necessary?”
The young man seemed to give the question serious thought before opening his mouth and stating in a full baritone, “It was not.”
The talking-to that followed was long, and as loud as Ol’ Lue could allow himself to get without entirely abandoning stealth, even putting a couple of birds to flight. He went on until his voice had grown tired, and Kanli and the Third had grown quiet as rocks. Then, he stopped, and slapped the latter on the back of the head one last time, decreeing that they better get moving before the day’s end was upon them. After all, the terrain told him that they were still far from the Foen, and for all they knew, the Empire was still hard on their heels. There was no time to waste, be it for useless, naive underlings or the rotten character of the northern Erue.
It was only when they got back to camp that Ol’ Lue truly lost his restraint. There, under the thick old telahiem, they found the backpacks’ imprint in the dead leaves, the thermoses lying empty among a heap of crumpled tinfoil, and even the shattered radio pieces utterly removed from the scene.
With a stomach full of beef and rice and clean water, clothed in garbs that for the first time in what felt like forever did not make him reek like an uguae buffalo, Tye felt as if he had been reborn. He strode through the jungle with a skip in his step, swatting bugs on his skin, feeling the cold metal of the revolver he had found in the senior’s backpack on his hip, and whistled a flat melody. Not even the sizzling noise of the jungle’s birds and bugs could curb his spirits, since after all, it was them that had allowed him to pull off his first sting since Oiji—easy pickings, he reckoned, but one had to start somewhere. His fears about the TLA’s legendary intuition when it came to the jungle had turned out grossly exaggerated. They had neither seen nor heard, let alone smelled him. No surprise, really, not when you consider who came up with that legend to begin with. North or south, Empire or Liberation—only chumps make for good soldiers.
And chumps were his specialty.
The jungle, it turned out, was low on chumps, and so he knew better than to expect more blessings like the one that had just fed him. He was no creature made to live in nature, no; Tye was born and bread to thrive in the city, under its neon lights, between its soulless concrete walls, among its people. An alley cat, as Aishi liked to call him. How he missed his friend. How he missed Jaemeni. Successful day or no, he needed to get out of here, out of the endless tangle of plants designed to tear at his skin, out of the clouds of bugs bent on sucking him dry. He needed to get home.
What he needed most, though, was a plan, and so he went back to the first draft he had devised during his past days in the jungle.
1. Acquire new clothes [X]
2. Go south until you hit the Foen
2a. Bathe
2b. Find girl
3. Acquire money
3a. Buy drugs
3b. Do drugs (w/ girl?)
3c. Acquire new money
4. Buy fake identity
5. Buy ticket to Jaemeni
It had been a while since he had last seen a map, but the other inmates of the Bitaab Prison Complex had never failed to impress this crucial point on him: ‘five and five leagues south makes ten / makes a convict a free man.’ A crude and inaccurate point. Tye’s cellmate Aerani, who, prior to his conviction, had been a skillfully corrupt zoning commissioner, liked to explain at length the faults with common prison wisdom. Instead of ten, he needed to cross thirteen leagues; considering the terrain, he should add another eight leagues on top of that.
As Tye pondered a decent rhyme for ‘twenty-one’, he could still hear Aerani’s voice in the dark, telling him about his most outrageous bribes before tapping the ash off his cigarette into the toilet.Tye wondered what that crazy bastard might be up to these days, and reckoned it likely involved lying buried under a mountain of rubble. May he rest in Arama doing what he loved—lotus powder and hookers.
Before he could check off (2), then, he had to cover some ground. Three leagues he had already managed since his escape. His feet still hurt from running day and night, desperate to put distance between him and the monster unleashed by taterface in his last foolish act. It had been a climactic end to a formidable foe, yet somehow, it filled Tye with a certain gloominess. It’s the brat. Girls crying could ruin almost anything.
It had happened so fast, he still struggled to piece all of it together. But there had not been a doubt in his mind when he had first laid eyes upon that wildling. It was the other Cursed. The five-fingered one, the one whose hand had left signatures all over the caves. The one who had survived. If the geezer hadn’t cut him free, the fate that would have awaited him would have been no less gruesome than the one that found the young siwe, no, more so even. The red giant’s enormous speed couldn’t hold a candle to the wild Cursed’s power, or his savagery.
He had almost felt bad leaving the brat, the geezer, the simpleton, Kysryn, and the stretchy girl to be slaughtered, but what else was he supposed to do? Stay? You’d have died with them. And who’d benefit from that? No one. No, these doubts were mere distractions from the obvious truth.
Mount Taab had been his hell, and he had escaped.
Tye walked on deep into that night, whistling, taking breaks when he felt like it, until his bones began to feel as heavy as the mountains to his back. He ate a small meal of beef, golgoya, and water from the resources in his backpack that had survived his first feeding frenzy. The moon was but a thin sickle, yet trees were well spaced apart, and the skies so awash with stars he could see clear as day.
While looking for a place to sleep, he came upon a swathe between the trees bristling with naiberry bushes. Tye sauntered around picking the ripest ones by touch, helping himself to an ample dessert, until his stomach felt close to bursting open. His stubble sticky with berry juice, his mind drifting off into sweet dreams of moms, Aishi, and the alleys he knew he would soon prowl again, he stopped at a tree rising from amongst the bushes. Its limbs were thick, and winded, and all grew eastward—another telahiem. Two ells off the ground, he made his bed in the crook of three forked branches, and let his head rest and gazed upward at the lights of his ancestors in the night sky. There was no end to them. The longer Tye looked, the more he spotted, making him wonder if he had ever seen so many at once. Almost as sweet as neon. His lids fell shut, and he fell into a deep, deep slumber.
His awakening was as harsh as the death of taterface. A pain prodded at his ribs and robbed him off his wooden bed. For a breath, all the physical world receded from touch, making him wonder whether he was flying until the ground smacked him in the face. Lights were still flashing before his eyes when the voice started speaking.
“He sure looks like one. Wake up, scoundrel!” It was deep, and stern, reminding him of a voice from his dreams. Just then, his ribs were prodded again, and he opened his eyes only to be blinded by the sun. “How much you say he took?”
“Picked clean three bushes, sirs!” This voice was hoarse, frail. An old man. “May not sound like much, but selling m’berries helps get me through the dry heat!”
“Don’t worry, he’ll pay for it. I said wake up!”
The third prod took the air out of his lungs. “I’m awake,” Tye gasped, writhing in the dirt.
“Better—hold on, he has a weapon! What are you waiting for? Take it!”
A hectic hand reached under Tye’s belt, removing the warm metal pressed against his skin. He crawled back into the telahiem’s shadow, disoriented, and blinked.
When his eyes had adjusted to the light of day, his trouble became painfully apparent. Four sun-roasted men stood there outside the shadow, looking down at him with distrust written all across their faces. One was bent over a knotted stick, wearing a wreath of thin white curls around a bald head, and bushy brows surrounded by a hundred wrinkles. The one closest to him was a man of forty and more, yet still strong, and a dismal spirit judging by his eyes. His light blue khakis, vest, and beret matched the clothes of the remaining two, younger men, their faces a stark contrast. The ugly one eyed him like one would a sewer rat, while the handsome one looked simply amused. Watchmen. Careful now. When the middle-aged man spoke, his turned out to be the stern voice from before. A leader’s voice.
“You stole old man Tengo’s property. Explain yourself.”
It was too soon for Tye to think of a convincing lie. His dreams had not even fully separated from reality—had that been a tree embracing him just before, or the arms of a dozen Jaemenian courtesans? Better buy some time. “Got attacked by a stripecat.”
The head watchman’s forehead wrinkled up, revealing deep crevices dug by years of mistrusting folk. “What’s that got to do with stealing?”
“Stripecats?” The old man peered around the rows of bushes. “Y’sure? Ain’t seen them in years ‘round these parts.”
“Imagine my surprise!” Tye said. “Damn thing took a swing at my back so hard, I thought it split my spine in two. Luckily, my ba—“ A glance up at the tree revealed the backpack he had kept, intact and full, hidden in the branches. “My gun spared me an injury. Broke it, though. Had to run. Oh, and how I ran.”
“Still, that does not explain you stealing Tengo’s stock…” The head watchman squinted at him, then up the tree. He’s seen you look. Tye’s head began to race. What was in the backpack? Pants and shirts, mostly. Some bullets. A tubule and two stone of powder—no, those were figments of his sleep just like the courtesans. Come to think of it, had he dreamed of Aerani? Doesn’t matter. You gotta act cool. The watchman hadn’t spotted the backpack yet. Tye had to keep him distracted.
“Well, I’d left most my luggage when the cat came at me, including my money and food, and who don’t love some naiberries for dinner? Of course, had I known these bushes belonged to someone, I’d’ve never eaten a single one. Simple misunderstanding, nothin’ more!“
“I mean,” Tengo said, “I get that an’ all, but who’s gunna pay for m’berries?”
The watchman grunted. “We’re gonna get to that. First off, I still have questions. What are you doing alone in the jungle during the middle of the dry heat? What’s your name?”
“Aerani,” Tye said. “Funny you should ask my purpose—when I was in the midst of running yesterday, I wondered the same thing.” This at least made the handsome watchman smile. His colleague meanwhile had begun scanning the tree himself. Tye felt two beads of sweat race down his temple, and put on that smirk that so well suited Oiji, Aerani, whoever he needed to be to convince these people. “Huntin’ birds, I was. Don’t make much use of the gun, but I keep it with me just in case. Had I spotted that stripecat earlier, who knows, I might’ve been dining on it rather than on old man Tengo’s berries!”
“I’m old man Tengo,” said Tengo, his eyes opening wide. “Do we know each other?”
Gods, this could have been so simple.
“What kind of birds?” the head watchman asked, stern-faced as ever.
“The colorful kind. You’d be surprised how much city folk pay for some nice feathers. What d’they call those bouquets, Kiribabe?”
“Kiribyane,” said the smiling watchman.
His superior spat. “So you’re a poacher, is that it?”
“NO!” Tye said decidedly. He’s out to get you. He doesn’t like you. “I’d never hurt an animal that ain’t expensible. Saw a diva not five days passed—just let it go on its way. Love feathers, but I do love the animals too. Is just that some of them are too many, so why not profit from those?”
“Still seems like you went way deep into the jungle just for some—“ The head watchman stopped when his quiet, unsmiling subordinate jumped past him and onto the lowest branch of the telahiem. Oh no. He found the backpack fast enough, ripping it down to the ground. “Now, what’s this?” the leader asked.
There’s nothing bad in there. He’d seen to it. The radio had been irreparably damaged, so he’d discarded it, just like he had discarded anything that could have betrayed the backpack’s origin. It was a nondescript thing to begin with, cut out of cotton canvas and bound with rope. A few extra pouches had been sowed onto it, but those were empty.
That did not stop the head watchman from checking each and every one before moving on to the main compartment. Here his impatience became apparent. In one fell swoop, he overturned the bag spilling all its contents on the ground, and starting sorting through them with both hands. Tye could only sit there and act like nothing was wrong, act cool, and let his eyes wander. Old man Tengo picked his nose. The silent watchman stood close-by watching his superior search Tye’s possessions with increasing fervor. A sycophant if you’ve ever seen one.
Only the third one seemed interested in other things, particularly Tye’s revolver. He let it swing around his index finger, threw it up in the air, and let the cylinder spin, always making sure to keep the hammer uncocked. He knew how to handle it; a little too well, seeing as no watchman Tye had ever met worked with revolvers. When he spied Tye watching him, the same handsome smile once again played around his lips.
“You lied to us,” the head watchman suddenly said, dangling two packets of tinfoil in front of Tye’s face like they were the lost treasure of the Gwai. “You said you lost all your food.”
Calm calm calm. “I did,” Tye said. “All the good food. That’s uguae beef, been packed up in the heat going on ten days now. You wanna try it, be my guest.”
He watched as the leader pried open one of the packets with eager fingers and took a sniff. “Smells fine to me.”
“Oh, no, no,” spoke old man Tengo, smacking his lips. “Uguae you oughta look out for. Ate some two years ago, smelled fine when I ate it. Gave me the shits for half a season. This young man made the right choice being careful.”
The head watchman threw both packets to the ground and shot up to his feet. “He stole from you. He has no money to pay you!”
“Is that so?” For a breath, it seemed like Tengo was indeed unsure. Then, he smiled a smile riddled with holes. “Oh, well. There’s other ways of paying old man Tengo. You seem like a fit young fella. Can you work?”
“Nothin’ I’d rather do,” Tye said. “Y’berries gave me a whole lotta energy!”
“Oh yes, they tend to do that. Tell you what, help me harvest ‘em for five days, I’ll put food on your plate, and give you a place to sleep. Sound good?”
GODS YES. “Sure, why not?” Tye bowed before the old farmer could forget the deal had happened, and watched with relief as he bowed, too. Tengo then turned his back, and went into the field clinging to his stick.
“You… you called us!” said the head watchman, walking after him. “You reported a crime.”
When Tengo turned, a look of confusion came over his face. “What crime?”
The watchman looked at Tengo, then at Tye, then at Tengo again, and finally shut his mouth. It’s done. Tye looked at the smiling watchman, who looked about the scene with the same amusement as before. He gave the revolver one more swing, then handed it back to Tye and shouldered his rifle.
Just as Tye crossed his hands behind his head, however, a voice yet unheard suddenly spoke up. It was shrill, and loud, sounding as ecstatic as only a true sycophant could sound. “Sir, sir, look at this!”
Tye turned to see the third watchman holding one of the shirts from his backpack. He reached into the sleeve. Pulled something out. Gods, no. It can’t be. Between the sleeve and the sycophant’s fingers hung a long piece of fabric, a wrinkled garb crusted with sweat all over.
It was maroon.
“Biko, seize him!”
Smiles or no, the watchman did not waste a breath before slamming the revolver out of Tye’s hand and wrestling him to the ground. Before he could think, the cuffs clicked around his wrists. The two younger officers lifted him and pushed him with his back against the tree while their superior aimed his rifle at Tye’s head and cocked it.
“I’ll give you one last chance to tell the truth,” he said. “There’s two reasons for why you might be in possession of that. One’ll get you killed right here on the spot.” He spat. “Are you a rebel, or a thief?”
“I… I…” Tye looked to the others for a hint. But they were of no use. The sycophant mirrored his superior’s joy at his misfortune. Old man Tengo seemed shocked, then confused, before he finally turned away and started picking berries. Even handsome Biko did not move a muscle. He had taken the revolver back and put it under his belt, where it stayed, unused, unswung.
What were his chances, Tye wondered, and came to no conclusion. People’ve been trying to kill you for thievin’ all your life. Yet people also died for treason in the name of the Ajan every day. More so, people who showed mercy to even one rebel often got jailed themselves; perhaps that was their motivation. Then again, kill a rebel, might be other rebels want revenge. Kill a thief, however…
There was no logic that could save him. Only when he accepted that, Tye came upon a deeper truth. He didn’t know. He couldn’t know. For all he could surmise, his chances were half-n-half. The only thing he could do was deny them their expectations.
What they expected was for him to cower, and lie.
Tye took a breath, and with the deepest pride he could muster, said, “I am a thief.”
He paid for that, yet the fact that it wasn’t a bullet hitting his face made the leader’s fist feel almost soft. They cuffed his feet, too, dragging him off the field and into the back of a rover. It was right as they took off that Tye heard old man Tengo cry out from his field.
“Who took all m’berries?”
The ride was short, tense, and bumpy. The town they arrived in consisted of little more than half a dozen hovels, a store, and some patches of weeds for uguae buffalos to graze on, all situated along a single dirt road and surrounded by thick jungle. A wooden sign hung perilously off a crooked post beside the entrance. ’Ailila’. Shitsville, more like it. The rover pulled up between the local store and shitsville elementary school, in front of the largest building in town. It was the Watch station of Ailila.
In there they shoved him, beat him up some more for not offering up his wrists and ankles fast enough, and before he knew it, Tye went down a short corridor. Behind the door at the end of it, there was a proper lockup, four cells in a row, the rightmost three of which were unoccupied. The leftmost one belonged to a drunkard sleeping contently in a pool of his own vomit. Tye’s cell was the one next to him.
The smell didn’t take long to get used to, nor did the two-by-four-ell narrowness of his new home. After all, he had nothing if not experience being shaken down. Within time, the drunkard woke up, introduced himself, turned out underequipped for a decent chat, and was soon after released. Before the end of the day, Tye was alone, and remained so until deep into the night.
Dinner came late, so late it woke him. The man who brought it was Biko, the watchman with the handsome smile. He slid the tray under the cell door without saying a word. Bean stew and golgoya in a metal cup, and a cup of citresse water. Tye felt dizzy, and discomforted by having his dreams be interrupted once again.
This time, there had been both Aerani and Aishi sharing his table, his courtesans, his company. The latter of course had not taken long before losing interest in the former, whom he openly called ‘a jaded remnant of the business boom between the two wars’. Aishi always lost interest in people. Except for Tye.
When he had gulped down the last of the bean stew, Tye looked up to find Biko still leaning in the doorway peering down the corridor that connected it to the reception room. Biko—short for Ibiko? He didn’t strike Tye as a simpleton, yet first impressions could always be deceiving. He hadn’t said much. That could signify everything from an idiot to a genius.
A click sounded from the reception room, followed by silence. Biko turned around and took something off his belt—the revolver. It turned and turned and turned in his hand as he looked at Tye with eyes that told nothing, but clearly saw things. Is it him you should have feared? There wasn’t a thing to do but wait.
Finally, Biko’s mouth turned into a smile. “So you’s a thief, huh?”
Martin Surga 