I smiled wistfully. “It does, doesn’t it?”
But all too soon, as Eyahue had predicted, the jungle turned to swamp. Firm trails turned into a quagmire, with as much as half a foot of standing water underfoot. Everything smelled of vegetal rot. The thick muck sucked at our feet, making every plodding step an effort. I did not know who fared worse, the men in armor struggling to make progress, or our poor pack-horses, who sank knee-and hock-deep in the mire at times, plunging free with difficulty.
I did my best to encourage the former and soothe the latter, but stone and sea! It was hard going.
“How far, Eyahue?” I gasped on the first day.
The old pochteca grunted. “Tomorrow or the next day. You are lucky to have me,” he added again. “I know the best paths.”
I daresay it was true.
Thanks to Eyahue’s guidance, we were able to make camp the first night in the swamp on land that, while not precisely dry, was merely muddy. After gnawing on stale flatbread, men rolled themselves into their cloaks and dropped into an exhausted sleep. While well watered, our pack-horses went hungry for the night.
The second day was worse; and the second night worst of all. There was no solid land, dry or muddy, to be found. We slogged through the swamp until the light failed us, and dozed as best we could, soaked and miserable, wedging ourselves in the crooks of the hardy trees that sank their roots deep into the mire.
On the third day, we won clear of the swamp. Bit by bit, the ground grew more solid, the trees sparser, until a vast savannah of grasslands stretched before us.
Balthasar Shahrizai whooped in approval, flinging his arms into the air. “Blessed Elua be praised!”
“We’ve not reached Tawantinsuyo yet,” Eyahue said in a testy manner. “There’s a long way to go.”
“But you said that was the worst of it?” I asked him.
He pursed his wrinkled lips. “The worst until we reach the river passage.”
Although there were hours of light left, everyone was exhausted and the horses were famished. We unloaded them and turned them loose to graze, then set about building a roaring bonfire despite the heat, propping our sodden clothing on stakes to dry, the men tending to their gear. Septimus Rousse made a hearty porridge of sweet potatoes and maize from our stores, and all of us felt better for having a warm meal in our bellies.
“It really does feel like a whole new world,” Denis said in a contemplative tone, gazing across the sea of waving grass. “And to imagine that for thousands of years, no one knew it was here.”
“Except for the millions of people who lived here,” Bao pointed out.
Denis waved a dismissive hand. “Oh, you know what I mean! I’ve never been to Ch’in, but I knew it was there, as surely as you knew Terre d’Ange existed before you set foot on it.”
Bao stifled a yawn. “I never thought about it. I would not have left Ch’in were it not for Master Lo.” He gave me a tired smile. “And I would not have left it a second time were it not for Moirin.”
“Denis, why did Thierry want to come here so badly?” I asked him. “I know he did, but I never fully understood why.”
“Glory,” Balthasar murmured when Denis did not reply right away. “Adventure. All his life, Thierry felt overshadowed by the deeds of his ancestors in the past, and stifled by the tragedies that befell House Courcel in his father’s lifetime. He wanted to live life to its utmost, to walk the knife’s edge between terror and exhilaration. He wanted to pit himself against the greatest challenge he could imagine. In our lifetime, that’s the exploration of Terra Nova.”
There was a little silence.
“What the Circle of Shalomon attempted didn’t help,” Denis said quietly. “Seeking to explore a different kind of uncharted territory. It further convinced Thierry that Terre d’Ange needed to find a way to seek greatness.” His mouth twisted. “One that didn’t involve loosing a fallen spirit on the world.”
To that, I had no reply.
“You didn’t help, either, Moirin,” Denis added. “I’m not saying it was your fault.” He shook his head. “It wasn’t. But when you sailed off on that enormous Ch’in ship in pursuit of some arcane destiny, it fanned the flame within him.”
I felt guilty. “I didn’t want to go.”
Bao stirred. “Hey!”
“I’m glad I did,” I said to him. “But I didn’t want to. I didn’t choose my everlasting destiny!”
“Thierry did,” Balthasar said. “Or at least he tried to. And he would have chosen it with or without you idiots attempting to summon demons, or Moirin’s date with a mysterious destiny.”
“Why didn’t you accompany the Dauphin, my lord Shahrizai?” Mathieu de Montague asked with curiosity. “It seems you knew him so very well.”
Balthasar smiled wryly. “Cowardice.”
Bao scoffed.
“I don’t think anyone’s going to believe that excuse anymore, my lord Balthasar,” I observed.
He shrugged. “All right. Mayhap I’m not a coward, but I like my comfort and luxury. I don’t mind a stiff challenge so long as at the end of the day, there’s a hot bath and silken sheets, and some pretty lad or lass begging for sweet discipline. Thierry knew that about me. He never expected me to go.”
“Do you suppose he ever imagined you’d come after him?” Mathieu asked.
Balthasar laughed with genuine amusement. “No.” He ran one hand over his sweat-streaked, grimy face, flicking his fingers with disgust. “No, I think Thierry de la Courcel will be surprised as hell to see me when we find him.”
“If we find him,” someone on the far side of the fire muttered.
“When we find him,” Balthasar corrected him. He glanced at me. “He’s still alive, right?”
I stared into the dusk falling over the savannah, the trackless sea of grass rippling in the evening breeze. I wished we’d had a confirmed sighting to assure us we were on the right path; and I wished that Jehanne had returned to my dreams to tell me once more that her step-son lived, or give me any kind of guidance.
Bao nudged me. “Right, Moirin?”
“Absolutely,” I said. “Without a doubt.”
FORTY-SEVEN
We marched across the savannah.
Our gratitude at having reached dry land with ample grazing soon gave way to frustration at the lack of drinking water. Eyahue had cautioned us to conserve our stores, but he hadn’t fully reckoned on the needs of our pack-horses, being unaccustomed to taking them into consideration.
At every stream and drinking hole, we drank our fill and refilled our waterskins, doling out the contents parsimoniously to men and horses alike on the long stretches in between. Onward we marched beneath a broiling sun, throats parched and dry. Eyahue taught us the trick of holding pebbles in our mouths to generate saliva.
“Keep going, keep going! You’ll have plenty of water on the river.” The old pochteca chortled. “More than you ever wanted!”
On the tenth day, one of our pack-horses foundered. We had done our best to tend to the horses, but this one had developed an infection in the frog of its hoof on the left foreleg after slogging through the swamp, and it had only worsened over the course of the journey. When it began to limp too badly to keep pace with our caravan, we made the decision to put it down.
The Jaguar Knight Temilotzin did the deed, cutting the big vein that pulsed alongside the pack-horse’s neck with a keen-edged obsidian dagger. The horse sank to its knees and toppled slowly onto its side, its eyes rolling in what looked like relief, bleeding profusely into the grass. Its sides rose and fell several times, and then went still.
We butchered it and ate the meat. We redistributed its load among the men and continued onward. And we still had no confirmation that the Dauphin’s party had passed this way.
“What if they misread the map?” I asked Eyahue. “What if they missed the river?”
He shook his head. “Doesn’t matter if they read the map wrong. Sooner or later, they will meet the river.”
And sooner or later, we did, too.
Even as the swamp had given way to savannah, the savannah gave way to the jungle once more.
There were signs of cultivation on the outskirts of the jungle. It was Brice de Bretel who let go a startled cry, pointing. “Look!”
At a glance, it seemed an unremarkable sight. One of the local inhabitants was tilling a field, walking behind the patiently plodding horse that drew his rough-hewn plow, the fellow’s strong hands gripping the handles as the two-pronged wooden plow dug furrows in the earth. I had to look twice before it struck me.
His horse.
There were no horses native to Terra Nova, and the Aragonians hadn’t explored this far. There was only one explanation for it: Thierry’s party had been here before us.
“Do you suppose we’ve found them?” someone asked nervously. “Or… what became of them?”
I asked Eyahue what he thought.
“No,” he said dismissively. “I know these people. I speak their tongue. They are peaceful farmers and fishers.” He pointed toward the jungle. “The river is only an hour’s walk away. It is likely that your prince traded horses for canoes.”
Temilotzin scowled. “So your people will give horses to peasants, but not to the Emperor?”
“I doubt they had a choice,” I said. “Nor will we. It’s barter or turn them loose. But they’re geldings, not breeding stock.”
That mollified the spotted warrior. The fellow with the plow had caught sight of us, and he and a handful of others working the field were staring. Eyahue went to speak with them, then beckoned us over, grinning from ear to ear.
“Yes, your white-faced strangers were here,” he informed us. “Tipalo says many months ago. They traded two horses for help building canoes. One of the horses died. He would like more.”
At last, I let myself feel relief. “Does he have any idea what happened to them?”
“No,” Eyahue said. “They paddled down the river and never came back. That is all he knows.”
“It’s more than we knew yesterday,” Bao said pragmatically. “We know they reached the river, and we’re still on their trail.”
Whether it was due to innate hospitality or eagerness at the prospect of gaining two more horses, the folk of Tipalo’s village gave us a generous welcome. The village was located some distance into the jungle, before it began to thicken to the point of impassability, near a river that Eyahue said was a tributary of the big river.
It was a rustic place with a circle of wooden huts sporting roofs of thatched palms built on hard-packed earth, but the folk seemed relaxed and agreeable. Dozens of near-naked children regarded our sweltering men in their steel armor warily, but they swarmed Temilotzin, giggling and scattering when he roared and waved his arms and stamped his feet in mock-threat. Remembering the casual ease with which our Jaguar Knight had beheaded Pochotl, I could not help but marvel at the contrast and think that human beings were complex and contradictory creatures.
“Aside from the insects, this isn’t as bad as I imagined,” Balthasar remarked, swatting at a swarm of mosquitoes.
“No,” Denis said. “But I daresay there’s worse to come.”
“I’m sure there is, my doom-saying friend,” Balthasar said mildly. “So let me enjoy myself while I can, won’t you?”
Over the course of our journey, Eyahue had endeavored to teach us a bit of Quechua, the native tongue of the folk of Tawantinsuyo. I’d hoped that when it came time to barter, I’d be able to understand a bit, but we had not yet reached the boundaries of the empire, and these folk spoke a dialect of their own.
So it fell to our crafty old pochteca to barter for us; and in all fairness to him, it appeared he struck a decent bargain.
“Tomorrow, we will go to the big river,” Eyahue announced. “Tipalo and the others will help us fell marupa trees and build canoes.” He cast a critical eye over our company. “At least nine will be needed. It is a great many trees. For this and additional supplies, we will give them your horses. If we survive and return to reclaim these horses…” He shrugged. “Well, then we will strike a new bargain.”
“Do you not expect to survive this journey?” I asked him.
Eyahue sucked his remaining teeth in a meditative fashion, rocking back on his heels and reaching out to sling one wiry arm around the waist of a giggling village woman who may or may not have been part of the bargain he’d struck on our behalf. “I have survived it before,” he admitted. “Many times. But I am old now.”
“Not that old,” Balthasar observed.
“Old enough.” He squeezed the woman’s buttocks, eliciting further laughter. “But young enough, too!”
On the following day, we hiked deeper into the jungle and got our first look at the big river. At a glance, it didn’t look as intimidating as I’d feared. It was a wide swath of slow-moving milky-green water that led deeper and deeper into the depths of the jungle. But Eyahue had proved himself right time and time again, and when he assured us that the placid river would develop deadly rapids in the leagues ahead of us, I did not doubt him.
The marupa trees grew tremendously tall, with very straight trunks ideally suited for making long dugout canoes. The villagers indicated two that would be acceptable and set out scouring for others while our party began the task of felling and hollowing the first two trees, sharpening hatchets and adzes dulled in the digging of a mass grave after the attack of the Cloud People.