About twenty mosquito bites further down the road, we descended along a straight path that bottomed out at a bright green clearing before veering off to the right. There, standing in the tall grass, was a girl beside a young boy.
"Holy shit!" Davod exclaimed. "Are you seeing this?"
The girl was Goloagi. Her wet, dark-green hair cascaded behind her in curls. She was average height and dressed in a burlap sack that clung to her figure from the rain earlier, leaving her legs exposed down to her bare feet. And… I mean… Davod wasn't blind, and neither was I.
"Damn!" Neither was Ales.
The boy couldn't have been more than ten. He had that same dark-green skin as the girl riding the lizard, and wore nothing but a cotton flap that hung from a belt around his waist.
As we came close, the girl graced us with a warm smile that filled her whole face. Her emerald-green eyes settled on my best friend, and she spoke in a light accent. "You must be Davod of Gath!"
He reeled back and looked at me in shock.
She looked directly at me. "And you are Caleb of Gath, yes?" Her tone suddenly turned serious. "Look to the crowd; someone isn't laughing."
"Huh?"
"And you must be Geraln, also from Gath."
Geraln shook his head and slapped a mosquito from his neck. "How did you…"
She turned to Faren. "Faren of Suuya…"
But when she looked at Ales, she erupted into a giggle. "And you must be This-is-weird!"
He clenched his jaw and shook his head. "It's Ales. Ahh-less. That other girl…"
Faren slapped his shoulder with a sly grin. "Come now, Thisisweird, don't be rude!"
Davod stepped forward, breathing heavily. He didn't peel his eyes from this mysterious girl; he didn't even blink. "And what's your name, love?"
"Ranía."
He smirked. "A pretty name for a pretty girl!"
"I'm a woman."
"Uh…" he brushed his fingers through his hair and looked around, breathing heavily.
Ranía watched his face with a wide, warm smile. On each of her arms was a brand long distorted as though they'd been burned into her skin as a young child. The number was still legible: 773-614.
Faren nodded to her. "Who's your master?"
She gazed up at him. "Mother owns me."
He glanced at me, confused. I shrugged.
Ranía then rested her hand on the boy's shoulder. "And this is dayu'u."
He turned his face up to her. "'iŋe dowaʒo tʌveɣa'aboʒi?"
She looked around the five of us as she spoke. "dayu'u wants to know if you would be interested in purchasing some mosquito ward. It's very effective, I assure you."
Geraln elbowed his way in front of all of us. Two small black bugs decorated his earlobe, and one of his eyelids was swollen. "Gods, yes! Please! How much are we talking, here?"
He emptied his coin purse into his palm and picked up a brass five-kren. "Will this be enough?"
The boy leaned in and looked over the coins, pointing out a shiny red quarter. He looked up at Ranía once more. "dowʊdexa."
Geraln didn't wait for a translation. "This is five kren. It's worth twenty of those."
She giggled lightly. "Yes, but that one is prettier."
Geraln's eyes popped. He glanced at me for a second, then turned back to the boy. "At least… here, let me give you two quarters, then. How do you say thank you?"
She answered, "ŋʌvɪdesa."
Geraln turned to the boy and spoke directly to him. "Nuvidesa."
The boy reached into a paper bag and gave him a white, ovular bar.
Ales, Davod, and Faren each bought theirs, and the girl explained. "Rub it on your skin. You don't have to cover every inch. That bar should last you a few weeks, and when you run out they will have more in Carthia. It won't dissolve in water, but it will melt if it gets too hot."
Then it was my turn, except I'd given every fraction I had to buy maggots and miracle herb for a girl who died anyway. I had nothing left. "I think I'll manage."
Ranía tilted her head to the side and gazed at me through those doe eyes. The boy queried her, "'iŋe vʊ dowaði?"
Ranía answered. "vʌ ŋo'oze kaθizu."
The boy nodded, then reached into his satchel and handed me a bar. "OK. Hiyigo."
"Huh?"
Ranía clarified. "He's giving it to you."
"Hiyigo," the boy repeated.
"Nuvidesa," I bowed my head and took it. He nodded to me with a warm, welcoming smile.
"What the hell, man?" Ales was upset. "Why he gets it for free and the rest of us have to pay? That's not fair!"
The boy looked up at Ranía.
"I want my money back. Tell him I want my money back."
Ranía smiled and nodded. "It's pronounced, ŋʌvɪdesa. ŋʌvɪ is gratitude, /ŋ/, not /n/, is the sound you hear at the end of song. The vowels are /ʌ/ and /ɪ/, like bug, and pig. Emphasis is always on the first syllable of the root word. The subject, -de, is I, and the object, -sa, is you. ŋʌvɪ, de, sa. ŋʌvɪdesa."
"No, no," he shook his head. "You're not listening."
"Thisisweird," Geraln tapped his shoulder.
Ales turned to him and sneered. "Did you just…?"
"Listen to the natives, man."
Ales stared at him stone-faced and blinked. He glanced around at each of us before settling his eyes on me, only to look at the ground. Finally, he clenched his jaw and turned back to our host. "Nuvɪɪɪɪdesssa."
At that, Ranía settled her hand on the boy's shoulder, turned, and ushered him through the bush. Before they disappeared completely, Davod shouted after her. "Will I see you again?"
She glanced back at him with a smirk. "No one can predict the future."
And she was gone.
As for the mosquito ward, it worked. I hadn't even applied it to my skin; holding it in my hand, they left me alone. We still had plenty of existing welts to scratch, Geraln especially, wherever his skin was exposed, and all up and down his body where they'd bitten through his sweaty shirt.
The road climbed sharply through more wilderness. At the crest we arrived amid clusters of trees separated by well-beaten trails. Low shrubs with bright red berries, large fan palms with long yellow fruits, large trees with pendulous green fruits, and vines bearing beans crept throughout. Beside one section was a wooden cart. Several Herali men stood sentry with bows out and arrows nocked. Several girls were also there, walking barefoot through the trees to gather produce. They were like the other, dark-green skin with white hair and yellow eyes, dressed in a simple cotton loincloth leaving their breasts out and hips exposed.
The five of us leered as one. There had to be at least a dozen girls walking around half-naked like it was nothing. Geraln glanced at me for a second. His brow was raised, his eyes wide, and his chin scrunched. Faren didn't peel his gaze from them for a second, neither did Davod, and neither did Ales. Had there been a brick wall in front of us, we'd have smacked into it.
A sharp hiss.
We all turned. It wasn't a brick wall, but another one of those lizard-riding girls. This lizard was deep red with dark-grey stripes running the length of its back. The girl squinted at us and frowned. She held one of those small, dark-brown short bows with an arrow nocked, and with her other hand she pointed further down the road. "Go."
Her own breasts were out, and a sheen of sweat graced her dark-green skin. As with the other one whose lizard had a blue stripe, there was no harness and no reins. Nothing hinted at how she controlled the creature. There may have been something, but I struggled to remove my eyes from the girl's curvaceous thighs.
The creature wound its long neck around to bring its lizard face within inches of mine. It then yawned its mouth open to display a zig-zag of serrated teeth and let out a sharp hiss.
Memories flashed through my mind of days resting my head on Sarina's lap with the warm sunshine dancing with the cool breeze at the top of the giant terraces that surrounded Gath.
This creature did not want me to look at its human that way.
With my heart pounding and my fingers shaking, I fixed my attention on the road ahead. When I turned back, she was gone.
"Gods!" Ales exhaled sharply.
Faren shook his head as if in a daze. "You see the tits on that one?"
"Which one!" Geraln chuckled.
Davod slapped my arm and smirked.
The road dropped sharply and curved to the right, then hugged the side of a mountain as it dipped through thick forest. On the left, trees and bushes grew out from the cliff, covered in vines, with more trees reaching above that.
Then we came to an opening with a ledge that offered a commanding view. Below us, a large, flat plain like a circle of grass hundreds of yards across surrounded one end of a lake with a castle shooting up from the water. A few more of those mostly-naked girls tended herds of goats grazing in the open field.
Trees cauliflowered over black water that wrapped around beyond another hill on the opposite side. The castle was yellow and gray stones mortared together that rose up from the water with crenelations all along ramparts connecting rows of towers. Men paced the walls with weapons ready, and the only entrance was a massive wooden drawbridge twice as long as the entryway was high that looked as if it had unfolded across the lake.
We descended further. No sooner than we came out of the trees, a horn bellowed out from the castle.
The men on the walls all looked out towards the trees. All the goatherds looked around and gathered spears in both hands. Even the goats clustered together behind them. Two of those lizards emerged from the trees and raced up to where we were. They encircled us, squawking and cawing, clicking and chirping.
No rider controlled them.
My breath caught in my throat, and I grasped the handle of my sword. Davod and Ales did as well, but Faren was calm. "Don't draw."
One of them stopped and craned its long neck to move its eyes among us. It held its head in place while its body moved, only shifting its head in short spurts.
The other one sniffed the air, squawked, and the two of them raced back into the trees. One of the nearby goatherds chuckled to herself and relaxed before turning her attention back to her flock.
I glanced at Davod. His eyes were wide and his knees trembled. He looked over at Geraln, who stood like a statue looking off into nowhere in particular, while Ales's fingers shook. "What the fuck is this place, man?"
Faren shrugged. How he managed to remain calm was beyond me. "I guess we should go to the castle?"
The irregular black slate road led us across the open plain to a fork with one route leading to the left and through more dense trees in the distance, and the other directly to the drawbridge. The wood creaked and the whole bridge seemed to sink as we stepped across. Off to the side, a school of tadpoles squiggled among the rocks just beneath the water surface. Overhead, beneath heavy clouds, two Herali men with their longbows out guarded the rampart above the archway. They nodded us forward as we passed beneath.
The inner courtyard bustled with life. Herali men paced the walls high up on all sides, dark-green children chased chickens through a vegetable garden, and more of those girls went about carrying sacks over their shoulders with their breasts out for all to see. Ales's eyes bulged and he glanced at me with a mischievous smirk. The whole ground was covered in grass runners that had been trampled on a thousand times over. To the right was a row of stalls with shredded brown plant material and covered in canvas awnings, and to the left was an open barn filled with barrels and crates, carts, yokes, baskets, sacks, and other things. At the far end, a young Herali man wearing the same kind of loincloth around a belt rushed barefoot towards us.
"New recruits!" he shouted. "Come this way!"
The man had a tattoo of Cougar on his shoulder, and a sword hung from each side of his belt.
We all glanced at one another, then followed him.
There was an open building with stone pillars like arches in place of walls beneath a stone roof where long, hewn logs were arranged in a circle as benches. Behind that were clusters of mud huts with grass growing on the roof, stacked atop one another three stories high. Geraln furrowed his eyebrows and chuckled at the sight of them.
The man turned and pointed to each of us with one finger, counting silently with his lips.
"Perfect," he said. "You two," he pointed to Faren and Davod, "kitchen. That w—"
Ales interrupted. "Is this Carthia? We're supposed to go to Carthia."
"In the morning. You," he glanced between me and Geraln, and settled on me. "And you. Laundry. That way."
"And you," he pointed to Geraln.
"Excuse me," Ales cut him off. "What if I don't want to do anyone's laundry?"
"That's fine," he nodded and pointed to Geraln. "You can do laundry."
He then directed Ales to a far corner. "Pig sty."
"WHAT?"
I patted Ales on his shoulder. "Look, Thisisweird, we all have chores."
Ales glared at me for a moment.
"Oh," our host stopped. Heheld up a finger and added, "don't talk to the sekɪwa."
Geraln scratched at the welts on his wrist. "The what?"
The man walked off and disappeared behind one of the mud huts. Davod shrugged. "I mean… kitchen duty… I'm fine with that."
Geraln sneered. "Of course you are!"
Ales turned to Faren. "Trade?"
Faren shuffled off with Davod. "What was that? I can't hear you!"
He then shifted his dark-green eyes between me and Geraln.
"I'm fine with laundry," I said.
"Me too," Geraln echoed, and we made our way towards where the man directed us.
We came to a covered area beneath a stone building where clothes were piled up on a wooden table at one end, and several yards of string stretched out beneath a large canvas tent at the other. An old woman dressed as the others greeted us as we came up. "You wash. You line."
I started with a bar of soap, scrubbing some cotton rags while Geraln strung up wet clothes from another pile. The next pile was small, so I combined it with another.
The old woman snapped her fingers many times over. "vʌ, vʌ! pʊ vʌ mekaseʒu! This… this… no mix!"
Hours later, I lost track of where the sweat ended in my shirt and the wash water began. Another man came, and the old woman put him to work as well. He was short and stocky, and he wasn't Herali or one of the natives. His skin was a slight shade darker than mine, with green-yellow hair he'd cropped short. Like Dariana, like those girls we'd met in Ulum, he was Saeni.
I dropped off a soapy pile for him to rinse. He looked up at me with those light-green eyes. "I am naming Rock. You is having name?"
"Caleb," I told him, "and that's Geraln."
"Dje-rahn," he tried. "You are recruiting with the war?"
"We just got here," Geraln added.
"Me too. Me too," he nodded effusively. "I living from Tortiess. Is in the Saen. We, eh… near Ulum County in the Heralia. You?"
"pʊ vʌ ʒʌgowe!" the old woman snapped. "No talk! Work!"
Geraln tilted his head at her. "Are you paying us?"
"No talk! Work!"
My fingers had long shriveled into raisins when two native girls rounded the corner. They were as short as Talys back home, barely as tall as my chest, but their bodies were incredibly fit with well-muscled arms and legs. As with all the other girls we'd seen, they were nearly naked—hips and thighs exposed along with their breasts. Except where all the others wore a cotton loincloth, theirs were brightly-colored fine silk with delicate gold embroidery.
Good God, those legs.
I'd seen girls in burlesque more modestly dressed, and never had I seen girls with such incredible physique. My heart raced. I didn't want to look like a creep ogling their delicious bodies, but I couldn't help it. The sight of them elicited my body to react in embarrassing ways.
They were embroiled in a conversation, but I had to say something. "Hello, there."
One of them tossed a sack full of clothes that hit my arm and dropped to the table, and they both walked off. They never once looked my way. I stood like an idiot watching them leave, when that old woman pinched my ear.
"pʊ vʌ ʒʌgose sekɪwa!" She waved a finger and shook her head. "vʌ tixeʒi 'aboʒiseʒu!"
She went back to her work of looking over papers, but pointed two fingers at her eyes before pointing at me.
Rock chuckled heartily and grinned at me. "What she said!"
By the time we'd finished, my friends all went to dinner. I needed to be alone with my thoughts, so I sat on a log in that covered area we'd seen earlier, watching happenings in the courtyard.
There were a couple of those lizards in the stalls with no doors, chains, or anything to contain them. If one of them decided to walk around and eat someone, there would be nothing to stop them, yet no one seemed concerned.
A column of men came in through the gate. Most of them gave me a friendly nod. One of them—he was Herali like me—crept up to one of the sleeping lizards and flicked its face. He jumped away laughing while the creature raised its head, hissed at him, and went back to sleep.
Another one of those lizard-riding girls followed. Her yellow eyes landed on me for a split second before turning away, and she led her lizard over to one of the stalls. After dismounting and undoing the saddle, she searched through a wooden box at the side and shouted at a young girl who was filling another stall with fresh bedding. The girl came over to her and tried to speak, but the rider erupted into a tirade I didn't need translated to know it was verbal abuse. The youth lowered her eyes and sulked off.
Faren sat down beside me. "Gods, I could use a smoke right about now!"
That made me smile. "That'll get you killed, remember?"
"I remember. I'm just saying, man."
"What's for dinner?" I asked him.
He popped his eyes and looked at me with a weird smirk. "I do not know!"
That made me laugh. "Weren't you in the kitchen?"
"They refused to tell me! They had me scrubbing pots and pans, then they kicked me out while they prepared to serve it up."
A train of Herali men made their way into that storage barn, led by an older woman who was mostly naked as the others. The loincloth she wore around her waist was fine red silk with gold stars embroidered into it.
"Man," Faren shook his head watching her, "I'm in titty heaven."
She saw us looking and scowled, shaking her head subtly, and turned back to directing the men. Some of them brought out several large, wooden carts and started loading them with sacks, boxes, and things. Others brought out yokes, untied straps, and set them beside the carts.
Some goats funneled their way across the drawbridge, followed by one of the nearly-naked goatherds we'd seen outside earlier. Faren watched her, too. "One of the guys in the kitchen said Carthia is even better. He says they've got Girls of every ethnicity there is, and they're all dressed like that."
I nodded. "And this will be our home for the foreseeable future."
To our right, a medium-sized pig dug its snout in the grass beside the stone walls. He dislodged a chicken who'd been hiding there. The bird fluttered, clucked, and pecked at the beast until he ran off.
"Check it out, it's the yonim girl."
Standing outside the gate was that lizard with the blue stripe down its body, carrying the same girl on its back, the one with the pixie-cut hair who'd gotten our names. She stood guard, checking the forest behind her while another cluster of goats funneled across the bridge. Then, only after the last of the goatherds had entered, the lizard lurched forward, and with the rattling of iron chains, the bridge folded upwards and slammed the archway shut.
In its mouth, the lizard carried the limp carcass of some small, furry animal with an arrow shaft in its back. It carried her up to where Faren and I sat, and she passed her eyes between us. "Kedib-uv-gath, Faden-uv-suya. You… OK?"
I couldn't speak. Her face struck me. She had a round face with wide lips and eyes full of pain and life, the face of a girl who in another lifetime might have been high nobility who muddied her finery only to laugh it off. Yet her commanding gaze, the way she sat up tall with an easy confidence, exuded an energy of someone who had nothing to prove. Not to anyone.
Faren gazed up at her with his droopy eyes and nodded. "We're good, love. Thanks. Uh… ŋʌvɪdesa."
Her lizard gave off a low, grinding groan. She looked at the creature and stroked the base of its neck as it carried her away. "ɣaŋodi. tuzubo. pʊ 'esapaɣe."
And those legs, my God. All my life I never knew.
Fingers passed before my eyes. I turned to Faren, who laughed at me. "Speaking of getting yourself killed, man!"
But I needed to talk to her. I had to try.
I walked past one stall where another one of those lizards slept in that shredded brown plant fiber stuff, and my skin crawled. If this didn't go well, there would be consequences.
I walked up to the stall where she'd brought the blue-striped lizard with my heart thundering loud enough to drown out the crickets. She was undoing some fastener buckle thing at the side of the cotton saddle, and I couldn't tear my gaze from her. The lizard chirped and clicked, and she turned around surprised. White eyebrows rose high in her dark-green face.
They'd warned me not to talk to them. I needed a good excuse. "What's your name?"
"Oh," she smiled. "mɪyaŋi."
"Miyani?"
She nodded. "ti. Eh… Blue."
"Blue?"
She stroked her black-clawed fingers along the side of the creature's long neck. "Nayeem he Blue."
I slowed down my words so she could pick them apart easily. "His… name… is… Blue?"
She laughed nervously and repeated, "hizz nayeem izz Blue. ti."
"ti. Does that mean yes?"
She nodded emphatically. "ti. Yes."
She reached for the arrow protruding from the animal carcass in the lizard's mouth. He turned away and groaned, and she scolded him. "ʒɪtixe ɣemaðase yaŋʊvisa?"
He responded with a peculiar string of muffled clicks. She pressed one hand on the creature's dinner, and with the other she carefully worked on the arrow until it came out. He turned around, and she gave him a gentle swat on the rear as he settled down into the bedding. There, he anchored his dinner with his forelimbs and tore off strips of meat.
But I'd found a rhythm with this girl, and I'd have done anything to hold onto it. "ti is yes, how do you say no?"
"No… izz say vʌ."
"Vuh?"
"ti, vʌ." She shook her head and nodded with a smile. "ti, zimʊde vʌ. ti. vʌ."
She removed the sling that held her bow and arrows from her shoulder and hung it on a hook.
"What about hello?"
"Helo, eh… zawa."
"zawa?"
"ti."
"What's this?" I gestured to my shoulder, mirroring the white bat's wing tattoo she had on hers.
She touched it and nodded. "saŋɪwesa. Is, eh… you fakun? Kuga?"
"Falcon," I said.
"Is sem."
"Saniwesa?"
"Hey!" A voice called out to me from across the courtyard. It was the same man who'd given us our chores. He rushed over, shaking his finger. I was in trouble. What kind of trouble, I didn't know, but I would find out soon enough.
I really just wanted her name, truly.
As I walked off, she called out behind me. "vʌ koðosa."
I walked half-backwards with the man, still turning to look at her over my shoulder. "vukodosa? Is that goodbye?"
"vʌ koðosa bye-bye," she nodded.