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From: mandil_k@hotmail.com (mandil)
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Subject: {ASSM} Masters of the Arches  chapter 5
Date: Wed,  9 Jan 2002 19:10:06 -0500
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Masters of the Arches
by Mandil

 

                                 Chapter 5






The following morning, they ate breakfast and then left. The weather
was cold and rainy when they went out of the house. Nika was very
surprised when she experienced the cool humid air of the morning.
Vincent figured that it was probably because of the fact that she was
not used to such cool temperature where she lived.

With both of their knapsacks fully loaded, Vincent was carrying his
rifle by the strap over his shoulder while his handgun and knife were
around his waist. Nika  also had her handgun and knife around her
waist while her bow hung around her shoulder with the arrows tied to
her back..

Vincent had insisted that she wear a shirt with the beige shorts he
had bought her. But when he tried to convince her to wear the boots he
had  for her, she refused. She had walked barefoot all of her life and
Vincent figured that there was no use to force her to wear boots now.
To an observer watching them, they would have made an odd sight indeed
as they slowly walked toward the rock wall. He with his rifle in hand
and she with a bow and barefoot.

As soon as they were inside the cave, he managed to roll back the
large stone so that it would almost completely block the entrance to
the hole. Since he didn’t know for how long they would be gone,
he didn’t want anyone coming to his place looking for him and
thus discovering the entrance to the cave. Once this was done, he made
her close her eyes and he guided her on the flat plate of the arch.
They both stepped on it at the same time while he held her in his arms
as they waited for the arch to take them to Nika’s world.

The minute that they stepped out of the cave on Naka’s world
they felt the warmth of the air on them. The sun was just rising and
the temperature was quite warm already.

Nika became very agitated when she opened her eyes outside. She began
to talk very fast and Victor realised that it was her wish to get away
as fast as possible from that place. The first thing he did was to
take his bearing with his compass. Previously he was not sure if the
compass would work on Nika’s world since he had no way to know
if the planet had a magnetic field or not. He was greatly relieved
when he saw the needle oscillate back and forth to finally stop and
pointing at the same direction. He was also glad to discover that the
direction they had been going the last time they were here, had indeed
been toward the south. Whereas the mountain had been his only point of
reference the last time, he now had his compass to guide him.

Since he didn't want to be travelling again in the land of the Arons,
he said to himself that this time they would go Southeast. Of course,
he had no way to know what he would find in that direction,  there was
always the possibility that they would encounter much worse than the
Arons, but he was willing to take that chance.

The walk downward toward the foot of the mountain went fairly fast.
Nika was in a hurry to get as far as possible from the sacred mountain
and it did contribute a lot to the progress they made. By noon, the
descent was only a gentle grass covered slope. When he turned back to
have a look at the mountain, Nika once again repeated the word "vopa".
It was her way of telling Vincent that the mountain was a sacred place
and bad things could happen to them if they were too close to it.

The terrain changed a little and the grass was now much taller. There
were bushes everywhere with berries, but most of them he
couldn’t identify and thus he didn’t dare to taste any of
the abundant berries.

They moved on for another hour then they stopped near the bank of the
river. The last time he had come this way he had taken a southwest
course and now they were in a more easterly direction and the terrain
was all new to Vincent. They made use of the pause to eat some dry
meat and a few biscuits. He figured that they were about ten miles
downstream from the position that they had been the last time he had
gone near the river. The river had been going in the general direction
of the south then, but now it was blocking their progress to the south
as it went in an easterly direction.

They followed the bank of the river for a while in the hope of finding
a place where they could cross since it was too wide to swim across,
especially with all of their equipment. On the south side of the river
he could see that the tall grass was growing everywhere and he was
glad that there was very little of it on their side of the river.

 

Gradually the topography changed again and they came to the edge of an
area with trees growing here and there while in-between tall grass was
growing. It was a perfect place for an ambush and Vincent was very
reluctant to make his way on such a terrain. The grass was as high as
his head, it did remind him of corn fields in his world, but here the
grass grew much thicker than corn would. The river went straight into
tall grass and he could see that both banks of the river were covered
with it, thus making it impossible to follow the river along its bank.

He had to take a decision now. Either they would go on and make their
way into the tall grass and walk parallel to the river - which was
again flowing directly south - or they had to try to cross the river
and walk on the other side in the hope that they could find some sort
of a trail. Either choice he knew they would have to move through the
grass.

The river looked so still and it was indeed a highway toward the south
and as Vincent looked at it he thought how much easier it would be if
they had a canoe.

The sun was getting low in the sky and they made camp for the night in
a clear area just on the shore of the river. He still recalled
Nika’s reluctance to lighting a fire the last time they were
here and he therefore chose to do without one.

As they were quietly eating, he looked around. There was just enough
light to see, and he noticed the abundance of dead trees and branches
everywhere around them. He then got an idea that could make their
progress easier. Why not build a raft and let the current of the river
carry them southward? It was going in that general direction and it
was certainly not the lack of logs that was preventing this since he
could see plenty of them just nearby. They could tie three of four
logs together with the ropes they already had. If the logs were dry
enough , the raft would have enough buoyancy to float them down the
river. The water was calm and the current was quite gentle, the
project was thus quite feasible.

The next morning he did build a fire. For one thing, the flames were
much less visible than they would have been in the evening and another
reason he did so was the fact that they were not going to be very long
in this place. He therefore used very dry wood, of which there was lot
of it, and thus reduced to a minimum the amount of smoke given off.
Another reason that Vincent wanted a fire going, was his strong habit
of drinking coffee in the morning. Ever since he has been sixteen, he
had always begun his day with a cup of hot coffee. He had brought a
good supply of it and since there was plenty of clear water in the
river, he saw no reason for changing his habit.

While Nika cooked the salted bacon and was boiling the water, he went
to work on the raft.

It didn’t take him long to slide and roll five thick logs
parallel to one another until they were all at least a third in the
water. He knew that once the logs were tied together he would not be
able to roll them since they would form a single unit and therefore
the whole raft would have to be more in once piece. He next managed to
tie the five logs together so that they were going to remain in place
and not start to roll once they were in the water.

Before leaving on their new raft, they ate breakfast and they talked a
little. He took the opportunity to teach Nika a few more words while
she made him understand that she was still very interested in going to
the south where her village was.

Once the fire was extinguished and everything they owned was packed,
they both undertook the task of pushing the raft into the river. This
was done with much difficulty and a lot of sweat from both of them.
But at last they were ready to leave. As soon as everything was
loaded, they both embarked in the middle of the raft and with the aid
of the two poles that he had already prepared, they began pushing the
raft further in deeper water.

It proved to be very adequate as far as buoyancy was concern, but
rather difficult to guide once they were in deep water. The current of
the river was flowing at about the same rate as a fast walker would go
on solid ground and they made good time without much effort.

A couple of hours went by and the grass on both side of the river
remained as tall as ever but then they noticed that the trees were
getting more numerous and also much taller. Once, Victor thought he
detected movement between two trees on the left bank, but he
couldn’t tell what it was or if he had imagined it. Anyway, it
didn’t matter he told himself, anyone trying to follow them
would have a very hard time to keep up with them, and as long as the
raft remained far enough from either bank, they were safe.

By the middle of the afternoon, the raft came to a junction of the
river where it merged with a smaller river. This river was about half
the size of the one they were on and as both rivers merged it made a
much wider river. At the junction where both rivers met, there was a
large clearing and they could see lot of game there. Then just after
the junction and about thirty yards from one bank was a small island
of sand covered with shrubs. Victor decided to anchor the raft on the
sand bank of the small island. They both needed to stretch their legs
and he figured that it would be a good idea to do a little hunting to
increase their food supplies.

While Nika was watching him, he managed to kill a boar-like creature
that was drinking from the river. The animals in this part of her
world were not used to seeing humans and he was able to get very close
to it before shooting it dead. He learned from Nika that it was called
a "Rom" and that it was a grass eater. It did look like a boar from
his world except that it was a little bigger and like its counterpart
on earth, it had a short temper since it was preparing itself to
charge Vincent just before he shoot it dead

They both got busy with the butchering and smoking of the best cuts of
meat. Since the island was a relatively safe place to spend the night,
they establish a camp there for the night, while letting the meat
smoke slowly over the fire.

During their second day downstream, they noticed that the topography
on both side of the river was changing again. The assortment of trees
became different also and most of them even Nika couldn’t
recognise. At noon, they tied the raft to a low branch from one of the
gigantic trees growing close to shore. Again they built a fire and ate
some of the meat. Nika took the opportunity after eating, to practice
shooting her bow. As Vincent watched her, he was fascinated with the
accuracy of her shooting. Had she been in his world he knew that she
would have been a champion, so good was her marksmanship. The metal
tipped arrows fascinated her and while she was aiming at a tree that
was at least thirty yards away, every arrow was a true hit on the
centre of the tree. He managed to ask her with words and signs, how
fast she could send arrows; she made her point by sending three arrows
in the tree in less than five seconds.

In mid afternoon Vincent figured that they had travelled about seventy
miles downstream. Of course, there were many bends and turns in the
river, therefore in a southerly direction the distance was much less
of course. Many times they saw game on both sides of the river, most
were grass eaters of all kinds but all were different from those of
Vincent’s world. At one turn of the river where much of the
great trees had been replaced by grassland, he saw hundreds upon
hundreds of four legged black furry creatures. They were as tall as
big horses with a fat belly; their long black fur went down on each
side of their hind legs.

Having nothing much to do while he was on the raft, except to guide it
once in a while when it got too close to one bank, he continued to
teach new words to Nika. At the same time, he did try to learn a few
words of her language but progress was slow in that direction.

With a lot of patience, he was able to learn that she had escaped from
a village where she and her two sisters had been held as slaves. The
chief of the village, whose name was Gromo, was a cruel man and he had
ordered a raid on Nika’s village some time before that. Both of
her parents had been killed in the raid and half of the people of her
village had either been killed or made prisoners.

They had been taken to Gromo’s village after many days of
marching , once there they had become slaves. During the day they
would work long hours into the fields where they tilted the soil and
took care of the tuber-like plants that she called ‘malka’
which made up a good part of the diet of Gromo’s people. At
night the female slaves slept together in a large building in the
centre of the village. But more often than otherwise they were called
upon to spent the night with any of the male of the village that had a
fancy for one of the slaves.

Vincent was both shocked and horrified to hear this, when he asked her
if she had ever been called to serve such duties, she replied without
any hesitation whatsoever that she had done so more than half of the
nights when she had been a prisoner. As a matter of fact, she said she
had been one of the slaves that had been the most in demand to serve
night duties. But this bad ordeal that she underwent didn’t seem
to bother her much as she explained this to Vincent. To hear her tell
about these night activities, it didn’t seem to be much more
important than her working in the field. As he listen to her tell
this, Vincent wished deep inside that he would meet this Gromo and
these villagers one day so that he could teach them how to treat
women.

One day when she had been working in the field with the other slaves,
a large animal came roaming near the field. By her description of the
beast, Vincent figured it must have been in the feline family
something resembling a lion or a tiger, but much taller. Could it be
something like a saber-toothed tiger, he told himself? He certainly
hoped not since he doubted very much that his 303-calibre riffle could
stop one if it should come after him.

While most of the villagers went to chase away the predator, only four
guards were left to watch the slaves in her field. There were at least
fifty slaves with her, so the first chance that she got she hid
herself in the bushes until  the slaves were sent back to the village
for the night. For half the night, she then ran in the direction of
the forest to the north. She wanted to get as much distance as
possible between herself and the village before they discovered that
she was missing. She knew that if she was caught she was going to be
tortured to death in front of the whole village. They had done this to
Slad sometime before. He was one of the male slave who had tried to
escape and had been caught the next day.

She was aware that her only chance of escape was to reach the forest
before they found out she was missing. Once in the forest she knew
that she was safe from them since they were afraid of the forest. They
had all sorts of stories and superstitions about the strange creatures
that lived in the forest and they never ventured near it. Nika had no
such restriction about the forest. Her people had been living near a
forest and they often went hunting there for games and to gather wood.

Many days after her escape she came onto a grass plain. She was then
careless and she lit a fire to cook a bird she had been able to hit
with a stone. That was the day that she had saved his life by warning
him about the Rom that was about to charge him.

Later that day, probably attracted by the smoke of her fire, the Arons
caught her. She explained that the Arons ate anything that moved and
if they caught someone, it was a certainty that he or she would end in
their belly. The day that Vincent set her free, they were taking her
to their village.

                               (end of chapter 5)

                            <http://www.asstr-mirror.org/files/Authors/mandil/www/>

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Pursuant to the Berne Convention, this work is copyright with all rights
reserved by its author unless explicitly indicated.
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