Neeko and Pais’ca walked through the tall grass as the sun beat down. A gentle rain had fallen that morning, but when they looked south, they could see it pouring over the rain forest. The green canopies and sprawling hills drank it all up, while the grass seemed to feed on Neeko’s blood more than the water. Every time they passed through a dense wall of foliage, their machetes proved somehow insufficient. A few blades scraped skin from bare spots between Neeko’s pant leg and his sandals, or from his forearms.
A copse of trees ran down a gradual slope that a creek had carved, and they stopped for water there. Neeko noticed Pais making some marks on one of the three maps she kept in a tube in her pack.
Later, in the afternoon, they came upon some overgrown ruins. A crooked tower of two-and-a-half storeys overlooked three moss-devoured squat buildings. Trees grew through two of them, leaving rubble in place of their rooves, suspended from branches like flies in spider’s silk. As they walked around the ruins, Neeko blinked and it wasn’t the sunlight. Half the tower had been pulled down by vines, splitting it lengthwise. He was surprised the thing still stood.
They found a way in through an outer-wall that adjoined the buildings, to find empty floors covered in rotted wood and entirely lacking in any distinguishable furnishings. This place was old, older than the oldest building back in Hawsi, Neeko thought. He scratched the stubble on his chin and looked at Pais.
His guide was examining her map, but shrugged. “We’re probably as close to Numa’nakres and the Yurna Mountains now as we are to Hawsi.”
“So it was built by neither?” Neeko asked. The Empire of Numa’nakres was its largest point—it had never built structures this far out.
“Something older,” Pais’ca said, nodding.
Neeko looked between the trees at the split tower. The sun was behind it now, casting it in shadow. “Why here? Are there any resources in this region?”
“No that I know of.” The woman shrugged. Her forearm caught the light, and the amber circle on it gleamed like its own sun. “I know that on the Great Isle, empty inland regions like this become a haven for bandits. Maybe some old civilization built this tower as an outpost, or a look-out.”
Neeko thought for a moment. He looked at the tower, and he looked at the moss that had crawled in through the doorway of a nearby one-storey building. Then he looked back at his fellow traveller. “Let’s be on our way, then,” he said.
From the edge of the forested ruin, they could see many miles north. The land seemed to slope downward the entire way to the horizon, though Neeko knew that the Iron Mountains of Numa’nakres would slope up quite a bit somewhere in that direction. He had not explored them extensively when he visited the—
People were walking through the fields below them. They were going towards the west, crossing parallel to the horizon. There were maybe five or ten of them in all, but it was too far to be certain. “We’re here,” Neeko muttered, pointing. Thankfully, he thought, because I’m so tired…
The pursuit that followed was even more exhausting. The people they had seen moved quickly and did not notice them coming from the ruins. Pais led the way, hacking away with her machete at times. Nearly an hour passed, as they followed the Field Roamers across the savanna. As they rounded the downward slant of the land onto a dipping hillside and realized how close they were, Neeko wondered how they had not spotted the duo approaching. They followed them through the forested valley; as Neeko looked up through the scattered tree branches, he could see a few of the Field Roamers already through the small woodland. They had nearly caught up.
Then a rock hit the tree to Neeko’s left, cutting away its flesh and leaving a pale white spot beneath the bark. “Get behind something,” Neeko blurted, and quickly stepped behind that very tree. Pais’ca followed suit. He shouted something in the Cani language, their daily greeting, in the hopes it might symbolise peace to these people. He peered around the tree. Two men in colourful paint stood near the creek, gently swinging slings near their hips, ready to let fly another stone. Their red and orange artwork covered their skins up to their necks, and their faces bore no friendliness.
“Neeko, look,” Pais said.
Two more were approaching ahead of them, on the other side of the cover they had sought. The two moved slowly, but were focused intently on the two travellers. One spun a sling, while the other used a long wooden spear like a walking stick. The one with the thin shaft in his hand called out, but Neeko didn’t understand anything of it.
Pais looked at him frantically.
“Stay calm,” he urged her. “Do you understand them?” Before she could snap out of it and give him a reply, he bellowed, “Peace! Friend!” in Cani.
This only brought a similar reply from the Field Roamers. They repeated it with different words, their human voices called like animals, whooping and unnerving. They rattled their weapons and pointed at the ground.
“Get rid of your weapons,” he told Pais quickly. He tossed his machete into the open. Pais inhaled deeply and did the same.
Then the approaching spearman and his friend were upon them. The man with the sling tied it around his thigh and bent to grab their weapons, while his comrade kept the spear leveled at the two travellers. Neeko took a step away, but the two who had ambushed them from behind were approaching. They grabbed the pack from his shoulders, though he would need to release his shoulders to yield it.
Before he did, he pressed his hand against the leather satchel on his belt, where his notebook was sheathed. He would lose the supplies and herbs in his pack, but not his research. He let his shoulders slouch and the leather loops slid away.
Pais stared at him with furrowed eyebrows. She stood in a circle of sunlight as one of the men seized her pack too, and her maps.
Hands from behind Neeko reached from his side and set a thin sinew rope in his hands. The man mumbled something in his language and shoved Neeko toward the sunlight. Pais’s breathing was picking up. “I don’t understand,” she said. The man repeated it, angrily, and Pais looked at Neeko with tears in her eyes. “He wants you to tie me up.”
“Stay calm,” Neeko repeated. “Tell them we are just explorers. We only want a place to stay. A roof.” He told them “trade” in Cani.
Neeko listened to them banter. Pais struggled with each word. The man with the spear seemed to be in charge and barked words back at her. He had a ring through his lip, a small bone loop, and his eyebrows were thick and nearly connected over his nose. Pais grew tauter, despite Neeko’s attempt to calm her with his demeanor. She turned to her patron with desperate eyes. “They don’t acknowledge anything I say. They said something about the sun and moon, and about life and death. They said we are here for a reason.”
“Yes,” Neeko said, smirking despite her worry. “We are.”
The man who had given Neeko bindings shoved him into the ring of sunlight and barked his order again.
Neeko regarded Pais apologetically and reached for her hands. “Just for now,” he said. “We’ll make it through this.”
Then the man with the spear gave another order and Neeko’s hands were bound behind his back as well. The leader stepped closer to Neeko and sneered. He opened his mouth and Neeko got a whiff of some sort of sour berry. “Tika,” he said, and pointed his spear up the hill.
“Walk,” Pais said, and she stumbled past Neeko in the direction they had been commanded.