A Preposterous Plight Read online

  “Finding him isn’t your problem,” said Sacy. “Surely they’ve taken him to their village. They’re probably fattening him up for a feast as we speak.”

  Oludara almost reached out to strangle the imp, but realized that would probably just make him disappear. Instead, he took a few more breaths to calm himself before speaking.

  “Do you know where this village is, Sacy?”

  “Of course! It’s in a marsh, not too far from here. A mere two hours’ walk that way.” Sacy pointed southeast. “But as I said, finding him isn’t your problem. Saving him, that’s another matter. The Wytaka don’t take kindly to anyone robbing their meals.”

  “It won’t be the first time I’ve rescued Gerard.”

  “They live in an open marsh. There’s no cover, no way to sneak up on them.”

  Oludara considered this for a time. Then he climbed from the tree and stretched his limbs.

  “In that case,” he said. “I will not sneak.”

  #

  Two warriors unceremoniously tossed Gerard into the middle of the village, splashing him in a three-inch deep puddle.

  The chief and a dozen warriors had spent the last two days parading him around the neighboring villages, which, for some reason, induced dancing and feasting at each stop. They had finally returned to their own village and—as Gerard couldn’t help but notice—were preparing a feast of their own.

  Everyone had decorated themselves with red dye. Women prepared food and drink while men played drums and flutes. People danced whenever it took their fancy. A large fire had been lit in the middle of the village, but no meat was anywhere in sight.

  “Looks like feast day,” Gerard said with a sigh, “and I have a feeling I know what they’re having for the main course.”

  Gerard had attempted escape on two occasions, once by day and once by night, but had failed utterly both times. He could neither fool nor outrun the Wytaka warriors, and had run out of ideas. When Oludara had not appeared, Gerard had resigned himself to playing his part in their feast.

  When all was ready, four warriors wrapped a cord around Gerard’s waist and held it tight. The chief—so covered in feathers, he looked more bird than man—appeared from his hut. He approached Gerard, shouting and pumping his fist in the air. In his other hand he held a carved wooden mace, also decorated in feathers.

  The warriors holding Gerard tightened the cord, squeezing the air from his lungs and holding him in place. The chief shouted ever louder and the villagers joined in a frenzied dance around him. Everyone cheered shrill screams as the chief raised the mace above Gerard’s head for the killing blow.

  At that moment, however, the drummers stopped. People turned their attention away from the chief and everyone fell silent, save for whispered hushes. It took all his nerve to open his eyes and not stare at the mace hovering over his head, but Gerard followed the natives’ gaze to see Oludara standing tall at the edge of the village.

  The initial surprise over, the natives sprang into movement. Curious children circled Oludara at a distance. Warriors rushed to grab their bows.

  “Run, Oludara!” said Gerard. “There are too many.”

  “I need defeat only one,” said Oludara. He raised a finger and pointed toward the chief.

  The chief remained with his feet planted and chest held high as Oludara, his finger never wavering, approached him. Once he stood ten feet from the chief, Oludara pulled his shirt over his head and tossed it to the ground, then removed the ivory dagger from his belt. He pointed to himself and back at the chief.

  The chief scoffed at the challenge, as did most of the tribe. He said something, almost casually, and his men lowered their bows and backed away. He spoke again and one of his men came running with a stone axe, which he traded for the ceremonial mace. He motioned for Oludara to approach.

  “Don’t!” shouted Gerard. “He’s inhuman. You don’t know—”

  Someone yelled “Kandl’o!” and slapped Gerard mid-sentence, silencing him.

  Oludara and the chief circled each other several times before Oludara finally chanced a feint. The chief didn’t even wince, even though it halted just inches from his torso. Instead, he returned the feint with a lightning cut which Oludara barely dodged.

  Gerard watched in anguish as the two battled, trading lunges, slashes, and feints. The chief took a couple of cuts to his arms, but Oludara had the worst of it: a deep gash bloodied his collarbone and nicks glistened in half-a-dozen places. His movements had slowed visibly, while the chief continued confident. Gerard had almost given up hope, when he spotted smoke rising from one of the huts.

  “Fire!” he shouted, and a dozen Wytaka shouted back “Kandl’o” without even taking the time to look away from the fight. Two more lines of smoke filled the sky before others finally took notice and shouted “Boteh!” People ran to grab bowls and jars of water. The men holding the rope around Gerard’s waist ran off, leaving him free.

  A stilt gave way on another hut, causing it to crash into a puddle beneath.

  “What’s going on here?” Gerard asked himself.

  Then he heard shrill laughter and spotted a red hat bobbing up and down beside a hut. The next moment, the hat disappeared.

  “The little devil,” he said, smiling.

  Sacy appeared at Gerard’s side with his rapier and pack in hand. He tossed them to Gerard and said, “Don’t just stand there you fools, run!” Then he disappeared again.

  Gerard looked back to see Oludara and the chief still focused on each other. It appeared that Oludara had heard Sacy’s advice, however, because he lowered his knife and ran. The chief took a step after him, but paused after finally taking in the chaos around him. He lowered his axe, stood up straight, and shouted commands at his villagers, organizing their efforts to quench the fires.

  Gerard followed Oludara and said, “Are you all right to run?”

  “I’ll manage,” said Oludara, though Gerard could see he was obviously weakened from loss of blood.

  The two of them sprinted toward the woods, and to their relief, no one followed. As they ran, the Wytaka yells and Sacy’s laughing grew ever fainter.

  Just as they reached the edge of the woods, however, Sacy’s laugher changed to a shriek. Gerard paused to look back and spotted Sacy at the edge of the village, frantically patting his bald head, searching in vain for his pointy hat. He turned to see the chief just behind him, holding it triumphantly in the air. Sacy tried to run, but the chief sent him sprawling with a swift kick. The chief grabbed him by his neck and carried him back to the village like a kitten.

  #

  Yet again, Oludara and Gerard lay panting side by side in the woods. Once he’d caught his breath, Oludara sat up and found some bandages in Gerard’s pack, offering silent thanks to Sacy for recovering it. He staunched his wounds as best he could.

  “A third capture?” gasped Gerard. “This is preposterous!”

  “It is difficult to believe,” replied Oludara. “Unfortunately, we must go back. We can’t leave Sacy with the Wytaka.”

  “As tempting as the idea is to move on and free ourselves forever from that prankster, I have to agree. He saved our lives today. Although I can’t for the life of me say why; he’s never risked his neck for us before.”

  “Perhaps he thought saving us would be easier than finding someone else to pester.”

  “Perhaps,” said Gerard. “But what can we do? As creative as your idea was of walking straight into their village, I don’t think I’d risk it a second time.”

  “Neither would I,” said Oludara, shaking his head. “If Sacy hadn’t intervened, it would have been the end of me. That chief is incredible. Rarely have I seen such a great fighter.” Oludara gave an exhausted sigh. “We have faced too many trials this week. I am too tired even to think.”

  “And I’m tired of running. It seems we’ve done nothing else these past days.”

  “We are surrounded on all sides by the most dangerous enemies we have ever faced. What can one do
in a situation like this?”

  “No plan?” asked Gerard, appearing genuinely surprised. “No saying from your people this time?”

  Oludara looked down and shook his head.

  “In that case,” said Gerard, “I believe I recall a saying.” He grinned slyly as he spoke.

  Oludara raised an eyebrow. “Really? What is it?”

  “An old Greek named Aeschylus once said, ‘there is no disgrace in an enemy suffering at an enemy’s hand’. We face three foes who hate each other as much as they do us. Why are we the ones fighting?”

  #

  Gerard heard Oludara’s signal: a fox howl. He took a deep breath, then ran toward the camp. A man on guard duty, some hundred feet away, spotted him first.

  “It’s him!” shouted the man. “It’s that van Oost fellow!”

  Gerard slid, pretending to slip. He took his time straightening up, wobbling around until Antonio and a dozen men armed with harquebuses came running. Diogo wasn’t among them.

  “Stay back, Antonio!” yelled Gerard, waving his hands. “It’s dangerous.”

  “Take him!” Antonio yelled at his men. “Twenty tostões, dead or alive!”

  At that, Antonio’s men gave a cheer and charged. Gerard turned and fled.

  As the first shots rang out behind him, Gerard knew his run would be short. He had spent the last day leaving a trail for Antonio, and, even with the man’s fear of the Wytaka, his rival couldn’t resist the bait. Antonio had set up camp no more than a quarter mile from the Wytaka marsh. In the next moments, Gerard would either reach his destination, or take a bullet trying.

  Nevertheless, it seemed an eternity before Gerard finally broke from the woods and into the marsh. The moment he did, he was greeted by the scene he had desired: the Wytaka chief, alerted by the harquebus fire, led some forty warriors straight in his direction.

  The chief didn’t slow his pace when Gerard came into view, but when the first of Antonio’s men appeared from the woods, he called out an order and his warriors lined up, bows drawn.

  At least one of Antonio’s men had enough sense to scream a terrified warning of “Wytaka!” before turning tail to flee. The other men, however, continued pouring into the marsh from sheer momentum. After spotting the Wytaka line, they quickly joined in the retreat. Gerard fled just behind them.

  With another command, the chief sent his men sprinting into the woods. Great runners, they closed quickly with the bannermen. Antonio bellowed orders, calling for his men to stand their ground, and through sheer force of will managed to put some order into his retreating troop.

  At that, the two sides paused to organize into jagged lines among the trees. Then, the combat began. Gerard, caught in the middle, dropped to the ground and pulled the brim of his hat down over his ears as arrows and shot whistled overhead. Both sides ignored him for the moment, locked in their own deadly duel. He made a sign of the cross and silently prayed for Oludara to arrive quickly. As much as he had the right to bear a grudge against both sides, he had no desire to see the affair turn into a bloodbath.

  Moments later, thudding footsteps and a familiar gorilla-like bellow answered his prayer. Oludara passed him on one side while Magwhar came crashing after.

  Shouts of “Magwhar!” echoed from both sides. That word, at least, shared the same meaning and terror for everyone involved. For the moment, Wytaka and bannermen forgot each other and trained their fire on the beast. The Magwhar, finding itself assailed on both sides and unsure where to flee, screamed and ripped trees from the ground to toss at its attackers.

  Gerard scouted through Antonio’s men and spotted the object of his desire—his harquebus—in the hands of a skinny Portuguese man. The man knelt upon the ground for a shot at Magwhar and Gerard rushed in his direction. The man took his shot and, in the ensuing cloud of smoke, Gerard yanked the gun from his hands and sent him sprawling. The man looked up, flabbergasted.

  “Thanks for holding on to that for me,” said Gerard, already sprinting for the marsh.

  As he ran, he spotted Oludara sneaking up on the chief. The chief noticed and readied himself for an attack. Oludara lunged and the chief hacked at his head, but Oludara ducked the blow and side-armed a hand toward his true objective: Sacy’s hat, stuffed into a feather band on one of the chief’s arms. Oludara yanked the hat free and didn’t stop moving as he made his own dash for the marsh. The chief roared in fury and almost went after him, but regained his composure and returned his attention to his men and Magwhar.

  #

  Jupi-açu, the Wytaka chief, surveyed the remnants of the battle. Magwhar lay unmoving. It had withstood hundreds of arrows and gun shots, but the dreaded beast—a longtime enemy of the Wytaka—had finally fallen. Many of Jupi-açu’s men had been injured, but he saw no dead among his own. The Portuguese cowards had fled during the confusion.

  One of his men called him back to the marsh. When he reached the clearing, he spotted movement in the distance. In his village, he could just make out the two strange men trying to undo Sacy-Perey’s bonds, until the dark one had the idea of placing the devil’s hat upon its head, at which point it disappeared and reappeared nearby, leaving the coils of rope to collapse on their own. The three ran off, Sacy in the middle, hopping deftly on his one leg.

  Several of his warriors gathered around Jupi-açu, awaiting orders.

  “Do we chase them?” asked a warrior at his side.

  Jupi-açu considered, then laughed heartily.

  “You can catch and hold one devil,” he replied, “perhaps two if you are lucky. But, as we have seen, never three at one time.

  “These men are not our enemies. They fight the invaders, just as we do, and unlike the cowards who come to take our land, these possess the spirit of the Wytaka. Send word to the other tribes to let them pass. Make no contact with them, just leave them on their way.”

  Jupi-açu turned back to fetch Magwhar’s corpse. His captive had been lost, but the tribe had a new reason to feast.

  #

  Antonio looked at his men in disgust. It had taken the better part of a day to regroup them, and he wasn’t sure they were worth the time after their debacle with the Wytaka. He called over Diogo, who had singlehandedly tracked down many of the stragglers.

  “What are our losses?” he asked.

  “Many of the men took an arrow or two during the fight,” said Diogo, “but only one, Everardo, died from his wounds. Magwhar crushed Bartolomeu and Domingos.”

  Antonio removed his hat and made the sign of the cross, then put it back on.

  “It could have been worse, I suppose,” he said.

  “What will we do now?”

  “We won’t be traveling through Wytaka land, that’s for sure. Gerard will have to wait. We have business down in Santos, so we’ll go inland and skirt around their territory.”

  “That will take time,” said Diogo. “And who knows what lurks there? It might be better to double back to Vitoria and hire a ship.”

  “Perhaps,” mused Antonio. “By land or by sea, it doesn’t matter; I’ll get there all the same. And if Gerard van Oost somehow survives the Wytaka, he won’t last for long. I swear I’ll find him on the other side.”

  #

  Gerard, Oludara, and Sacy rested on a wide beach which—and Gerard gave silent thanks for this—ended in dunes that hid all sight of the forest behind them. Gerard sat watching the waves while Oludara and Sacy lay with their hands behind their heads, looking up at the sky.

  “A shame we could not take the hide of that Magwhar,” said Oludara. “It’s leather would make a fine vest.”

  Gerard’s stomach turned at the thought of anyone wearing a piece of that malodorous, abominable creature.

  “Yes,” said Gerard, “what a shame...” Then he turned to Sacy. “One question, Sacy. Do you happen to know what ‘kandl’o’ means in the Wytaka tongue? It is a word they spoke often, at least to me.”

  Sacy rolled on the ground, holding his sides and laughing. “Shut up!” he gurgle
d out between laughs.

  “Why are you telling Gerard to shut up?” asked Oludara.

  “No, the word means ‘shut up’ in Wytaka.”

  “Much as I suspected,” Gerard said with a frown.

  Sacy hopped up and looked at them with a rare, somber expression. Then, he stared down the shore to the south.

  “I’ve quite enjoyed watching your bumbling travels,” he said, “but I must travel no farther. My domain ends here.”

  Gerard, his heart soaring at the notion of traveling free from the imp’s unending nuisance, bit his lip to keep a smile from breaking across his face.

  “That’s too bad,” he said. “It won’t be the same without you, but I think we’ll get on all right.”

  “Perhaps,” said Sacy. “But if you should chance upon some other Sacy, be sure to tell him that Sacy-Perey is the only true Sacy!”

  “Other Sacy?” said Gerard, almost choking on the words.

  With a final giggle, Sacy disappeared.

  Gerard, crestfallen, looked to Oludara.

  “What did he mean by ‘other’ Sacy?” he asked.

  Oludara could do no more than chuckle in reply.

  #

  The smell seemed too good to be true. Abandoning caution, the anaconda slipped from the stream and approached the corpse. Her senses hadn’t lied: the Magwhar had indeed been slain.

  Readying herself for the meal of a lifetime, she unhooked her jaw and slithered toward the beast. She knew it would stretch her to the limit to swallow the giant creature, but refused to relinquish such a glorious treat.

  That’s when she sensed movement and rocked her head from side to side, flicking her tongue. She caught a scent which made her turn back in panic. The Magwhar’s stench had masked that of something even worse.

  Turning, she discovered she had nowhere to run. Wytaka, bows raised, surrounded her on all sides. One of them, taller and broader than the rest, approached her with axe in hand, his lips curved up in a smile.

  END

  Gentle Reader,

  I hope you enjoyed “A Preposterous Plight”, the fifth novelette in The Elephant and Macaw Banner series, and I sincerely hope your own plights are never so preposterous.