‘It’s a hell of a lot,’ I said humbly.
‘Not Hell!’ she exclaimed, very seriously. ‘Heaven, man! Heaven!’
Under the shadow of the branches, the jungle seemed an eerie, claustrophobic place. The air hung hotter, heavier, incredibly humid, like one vast exhaled breath – bad breath, because it stank. It throbbed with the metallic chir of cicadas and the morbid croaking of tree-frogs. Our few lanterns did little except attract assorted blundering nightlife. My pack seemed to snag in every twig I passed. I was beginning to see Le Stryge’s point about the south, and we weren’t even through the thicket yet.
Cutlasses slashed at the spiny mass, their short weighty blades more use here than broadswords. We didn’t mind leaving a track behind us; quite the opposite. Small birds flew up in a startled twittering as we hacked our way through. ‘Bananaquits, maybe,’ grinned Jyp. ‘Bright little fellers. Only I wish they weren’t so loud.’
I knew what he meant. No point in letting the Wolves hear us coming. Or see us; once we were through the thicket, one by one the lanterns were blown out. The trail was narrow, and the Wolves deliberately hadn’t cleared it much. Between tall ferns it led us, under looping vines invisible in the dark and only too eager to hang us, into the gloomy shadow of royal palms and mango trees, the ground squishy with their overripe fruit. The chatter of small streams surrounded us. Every so often one would cross the path, and we would slip and splash and curse across the mud, sending small frogs scattering. When the moon rose high enough to slip its light between the trees it seemed to help; but also it threw strange shadows, dappled, ambiguous, half alive, into which we couldn’t help poking our swords as we passed.
Time went by, and with it we toiled upward, sweating and sore. The air grew purer, full of sweet heady smells. A grateful breeze freshened the forest’s dank whispers with the rush of surf. Owl cries, more like the hooting whit-tu-whui than any I’d heard back home, bounced back and forth. Some of the other noises that came floating out were scary in the extreme, shrill shrieks and demented gibbering laughter. It was silent things, though, impossible to avoid, that worried me more. The trail was steep; I found myself envying a Wolf’s clawed feet when the soft loam crumbled and slithered away beneath me. The brush on the upper slopes was thinner but tougher, mostly sisal and other spiky-leaved horrors. The sailors marched on like ageless automatons, but me, I was getting tired, very tired. At last Jyp ordered a halt, and I bumped into him before I understood. The reddening, swollen moon hung level with us beyond the nodding palm fronds ahead. We had topped the first slope. Leaving the others for a drink and a bite – biscuit and lukewarm water – we inched forward on our bellies to peer over the edge. ‘Quite a view, huh?’ breathed Jyp softly.
‘Ace,’ I agreed, squirming, wondering what was slithering about under me and did they have snakes here, or scorpions maybe? ‘See anything?’
‘No. Doesn’t mean they’re not out there, though.’ It was certainly quite a sight. The valley yawned wide beneath us, lined with trees whose tops trailed faint ghost-banners of mist beneath the moon. In gaps I glimpsed a snaking band of silver, and a rush of water roared louder than the surf. From the far wall it came; from a steep false summit water skipped down a twisting stair of rocks, to fall at last as a cascading curtain into a shadowed pool. Shining vapours boiled out of it, and a deep insistent voice, and flirting among them the ragged shadows of hunting bats. Above the falls the hill rose straight and steep and thickly wooded to almost twice the height, till it touched the outermost terrace of the castle. You could see it more clearly from here, like a pale ship foundering in a dark sea, yet still dominating the hillside with stony arrogance.
Jyp glanced back. ‘Not long till dawn.’ The sea glimmered through the trees, our mastheads skeletal silhouettes against it, still surprisingly close. We’d mostly been travelling upwards, not away. ‘Better be shifting. Eat up!’
The biscuit wasn’t that sustaining, but as we filed cautiously over the summit Jyp plucked dark fruits from a tree we passed and handed me one. I saw others doing the same, dug my thumbnail in and sniffed cautiously, and got something of a shock. It was a little avocado, far more fragrant than those leathery banes of business lunches back home. The pulp was so juicy and green I hardly missed the vinaigrette. Further on there was an orange tree, and though the fruits were sour they were good to suck for thirst. An hour or so later the moon, mad and burning, set beyond the castle. The air grew cooler, and in the warm damp dark beneath the fading stars the jungle began to stretch and stir expectantly. Chirrups and titters rose among the undergrowth, and an eared dove began cooing in a weird little minor tone, awakening relations and neighbours along the way. By the time an orange sunrise touched the paling sky the air rang with a real dawn chorus, every call imaginable from the chipping of wren and kiskadee to the manic whoops and cackles of things Jyp called Corny-birds – I found out later the name was corneille. As we came downhill the trees changed; we passed through a long grove of calabash trees, and down towards the river whole thickets of mangoes, their fruit dangling disturbingly from long green cords.
‘Uh-huh,’ said Jyp. ‘Thought so. Been cultivated, way back – plantation for the castle up there. Pity they’re not ripe yet.’ He shook his head. ‘Though maybe they’d stick in my gullet. Any plantations here they watered with blood.’
Small parrots or parakeets popped up among the branches like live flowers, or swung upside-down to peer at us, screeching mockingly. Then they took fright at something and flew up with a rush and a flutter, and the rising sun struck flame from their plumage as they wheeled. The air swiftly grew very warm, and the cool rush of the stream drew us like a magnet; we stumbled towards it, hardly noticing the soggy half-marsh that plucked at our boots. Until, that is, the legions of flies descended in a discordantly droning cloud, and sent us bolting and slipping through the stony-bedded stream, beating ineffectually, and up onto the far slopes, steeper and drier, where they didn’t follow. We flung ourselves down to rest, a miserable, muddy and bitten crew; only Mall, who’d brought up the rear, seemed completely untouched.
‘Knew we should’ve brought Stryge!’ I sighed. ‘One whiff of him and they’d have forgotten the rest of us!’
One of the foretopmen grunted. ‘Aye, an’ dropped darn dead t’moment they bit ’un!’
‘Or his little friends –’
‘Like hell!’ said Jyp with soft savagery. ‘Don’t even wish it!’
I was nettled. ‘Okay, okay! They give me the creeps, too – but they saved some necks in the boarding, didn’t they? Mine included. So what’s the matter with them.’
‘You don’t want to know,’ he said bluntly.
‘Hey, come on – I’ve seen a few things too now, remember? The girl – I can’t imagine; but Fynn’s – I don’t know, some kind of werewolf, isn’t he?’
‘No,’ said Mall softly. ‘He is a dog. A yellow cur of the gutters, vicious and strong, deformed by warlockery into the shape of men. Held so by the power of Stryge’s will – as habitation for another mind.’
Even in the sun I shivered. ‘Whose mind?’
‘One dead – or one who has never lived. Either way, a force from outside. From the further regions of the Rim. A spirit.’
‘And the girl? Some animal, too?’
‘No. Peg Powler is an old country name, from my day, for the spirit of a river.’
‘A river?’
Jyp growled. ‘A devouring, drowning spirit. That the old fiend trapped somehow, in the body of one of its victims – a suicide, maybe, or just plain accident. Hope so. But from what little I know, he’d have had to be real close by at the exact moment she died. And well prepared.’