Free Hell or High Water by Unknown Page A

Sodden Lands.”
    Both mambeles, one already blooded, the other pristine, dug through simian fur and flesh. First a gout of the charau-ka’s blood spattered across the earth, followed by his weapon—and then the charau-ka itself.
    Hanging now by his feet, the surviving simian hurled a pair of stones, produced from spirits-knew-where. The huntress knocked the first aside with a desperate backhand, iron blade sparking on the jagged rock, but she’d no way to avoid the second. All she could do was rise from her crouch so that she took the stone against leather-warded chest rather than unprotected head.
    Dyed the crimson-brown of drying blood, the jerkin was boiled and hardened to turn aside spears and arrows, yet she felt her flesh bruise, her rib shuddering but thankfully not cracking with the impact.
    She needed to close, fast. Fortunately, the damn monkey’s acrobatics and elevation didn’t give him nearly the advantage he anticipated.
    Again the mambele flew, followed swiftly by the second. The charau-ka swung aside on one foot, allowing both blades to sink harmlessly into the wood; but then, she’d known full well that he would.
    In the brief seconds of his dodge, the huntress broke into a run and leapt. Hands calloused by a life in the wilds of the Mwangi Expanse closed around the rough bark. Even as the charau-ka spun back her way, she swung forward, wrapping her calves around the creature’s torso just below his arms. A sharp twist of the waist was enough to shake the bough and, more significantly, yank the ape-man from his perch to land headfirst on the jungle floor.
    It wasn’t much of a fall, not nearly enough to kill. No, it was the woman landing on him even as he bounded upright, both mambeles once more in her hands and angled sharply downward, that did the trick.
    Silence, then, save for the huntress’s sharp breaths. Still alert for the missing charau-ka, she carefully cleaned her blades on the creature’s hairy hide before sheathing them. She then made her way to the spears, jutting from soil or flesh, retrieving those that might be reused, salvaging the iron tips from those that could not.
    “If you seek the human, you will not find him.”
    She spun to face the thick screen of foliage from which the voice had come. It had an odd sound to it: raspy, slightly mangled, as though spoken by someone unaccustomed to the regional dialect.
    Or, she realized when the figure stepped into the open, by a mouth that was never meant to pronounce the words.
    He stood perhaps a head taller than she. Scales the murky green of stagnant swamp water faded gradually into a sallow tan across his throat and chest. A crest of similarly colored spines ran from atop his head to the base of his tail. He wore only an open vest and loincloth of some mammalian hide, but his eyes gleamed with cunning and the black talons of one hand were wrapped around a feather-and-bone-bedecked spear.
    It was only as she completed her fleeting inspection that she realized she had no way of knowing if “he” was in fact male. She’d just assumed, perhaps due to the voice.
    Her own hands lingered near the mambeles, but if the newcomer was hostile, he could have struck from concealment. Warily, she straightened and ran a hand over the prickly stubble that was the only hair atop her scalp. “What do you mean?” she asked.
    “I have watched these charau-ka since before midday. They met earlier with one of the great speaking gorillas of Usaro. A wizard, surely, for it disappeared soon after, taking two of the charau-ka and a human with it. They may be anywhere now, perhaps even Usaro itself. As you clearly track them, I assume it is the human you seek?”
    She growled something she hoped, afterward, the reptile wouldn’t be able to translate. “Yes, damn it. It is.”
    The lizardman nodded, though whether the gesture meant the same thing coming from him as it would from her, she was unsure.
    “I am Ameyanda,” she said, remembering at least a