Chapter 6

Tangles and brambles were everywhere. From all directions came the never ending calls of birds and the chirps of insects.

Heat washed off the ground and sweat dripped from the trees. Rustlings and scamperings were audible in the underbrush as small furry creatures fled before five hundred sets of feet. Strung out in a wide arc, the search party from the Hai Lei moved slowly between the trees, looking everywhere for some sign of the missing airship and its crew. With the sun at its highest point, even the canopy of trees overhead provided little relief from the sweltering rays, and the occasional breeze served only to blow a fresh draught of hot, humid air into the faces of the seasoned forest men.

Iordan Lei stood several paces behind the line conversing with a young captain. Worry lines creased the prince's youthful features after the party's third night in the forest, which for him had been without sleep. He lifted a hand to mop the sweat from his brow and push several silver locks of hair out of his face as his eyes flicked upwards from tree to tree.

The silver ring on his finger, bearing the crest of the Hai Lei, was the only thing he wore to set him apart from the men around him; yet he so resembled his father that his royal blood could have been doubted by no one, even without the ring's proof.

"... my lord... my lord?" prompted the captain.

"What? Oh, sorry, Milan," said the prince, shaking his head and returning from his distraction. "What were you saying?"

"I asked about our pace. Are we moving quickly enough?"

"Well, the left is. Problem is we have to keep halting to wait for the right. Who's down there anyway, Dono?"

"No, my lord. It's Krein leading the right flank. The growth is thicker on that side and the men sometimes have to cut their way through."

"Well tell them to do what they can." The prince turned his head up and down the line with a sigh. "And let's have the left slow up again."

Runners took off in both directions to deliver the messages. Iordan turned to speak to the captain again but stopped, open-mouthed, when the sound of running feet came crunching through the forest undergrowth behind them. Facing the sound, both men caught sight of a young boy dodging towards them between the trees, still many yards distant. When he drew near, the messenger bowed to the prince and began to speak.

"My lord... prince," he began between gasping breaths, "... the lord... Iosoan... wishes word on... princess."

Iordan raised an eyebrow at the captain and said to the messenger, "Thank you. I'll send my reply back with another runner.

You go get some water," he gestured toward the group of message runners standing off to the side, "and rest here a while before you go back." He waved another runner over and said, "Go back to my father and tell him we're making good speed, tell him how far we've gone, and tell him we've seen no sign of my sister or the airship."

The fresh messenger bowed and ran away into the forest while the spent messenger bowed and went to rest against the trunk of a nearby tree. The prince pulled the captain back a bit from the line and spoke in a voice that could not be overheard.

"That's the second time my father's asked for news today. He knows I would send word as soon as there was one."

"My lord, he's worried..."

"I'm worried too. But we're too far from home to be sending messengers back and forth at top speed just to check up." Iordan glanced around and then said, "Do you think he might have another reason to be worried he's not telling us?"

"Another reason..." the captain shrugged. "Do you have a reason you're not telling me?"

The prince sighed, said, "The pirates. Don't you think it's a little strange an airship disappears the same time the pirates start moving farther into our land to raid villages?"

"Yes, it's strange. But how could that filthy bunch attack and airship?"

"I don't know, but it's hard for me to believe they're not connected."

"Do you think the princess was captured?"

"No! I mean... I hope not. I don't see how, but..."

"My lord, we could swing more to the West..."

"No, Orman is already gone that way. We need to stick to the route the airship was supposed to be on, that's the only way we'll find the ship if it really crashed." Iordan let out a long sigh.

"If it really crashed?" the captain repeated with raised eyebrows. "You think maybe it didn't?"

"I don't know what to think anymore, Milan. I've been too long without sleep." He nodded his head towards the line of men and added, "Don't tell them that."

"I won't," came the reply with a smile. "How long are we waiting here?"

"This is long enough. We need to get moving again." When the captain moved to give the order, Iordan added to himself, "I really hope we find you soon, Jaide. We're running out of forest here."

The line of men set off again, stretching away out of sight in both directions as they picked their way through the tangled forest floor. At intervals, hunting horns rang out up and down the line to signal their presence, and several birds flying overhead tried to imitate the sound. The search party moved between the trees, crouching under low-hanging limbs, stepping over fallen logs, and keeping their sandal'd feet from falling prey to the aeleos thorns which threatened from every angle. Two hours passed with no sign of an airship.

On the right flank of the party, corporals Drake and Bein were using bone knives to cut through a particularly dense, tangled section of thorns and vines when they caught the sound of barking ahead of them on the breeze.

"Shit! Dogs!" yelled Bein.

"They're not hunting. Not if they're barking like that," said Drake, listening. The men around them heard the sound as well and were gazing anxiously through the trees.

"Well it sounds like they're coming this way, so when they get here we sure as Hell better not be." He turned to shout to their sergeant, "Hey Krein, sir! It's dogs!"

"I hear them!" answered the sergeant, "Everyone up!" He raised his hunting horn to hip lips and sounded a warning call, which echoed up and down the line. In an instant, five hundred sets of feet left the ground, and the entire search party was perched on tree limbs, peering down.

A minute passed before the pack of dogs arrived. The ugly beasts sniffed around the bases of the trees, and several animals looked up and clawed at the trunks. Barks and growls passed beneath the right flank of the search party for a short time, but the dogs showed no real interest, and moved on to the East. The sergeant was about to blow the all-clear when he spotted new signs of movement below. He, the two corporals, and the rest of the men watched silently as a large group of hairy, naked men and women walking with hunched backs followed the pack of dogs.

Wild men: they had been long rumored to inhabit the Khokuri Forest - as far back as history could remember there were stories told about a strange wild race of men that roamed amongst the trees. Some said they hunted, others said they only scavenged, still others said they lived off roots and berries. Some stories painted the picture of groups of tiny men completely covered in white hair, while others said they had pointed horns and tails; a few of the more fantastic tales spoke of winged men who chased birds between the treetops and hatched their young from eggs. Few educated people actually believed the wild men existed, but from time to time there were sightings reported by those living in the smaller villages...

These wild men spoke no language, but made guttural sounds to one another and occasionally hit each other as they walked.

Their bodies were covered with crisscrossing scars, their matted hair was filthy and tangled with leaves, and many were missing fingers and toes. At the center of the group walked the leader; the tallest and most well-muscled of the lot. An ugly red scar, deeper than all the others, ran diagonally across his chest, and he walked with a slight bob in his step.

Turning their heads sharply, almost like birds, the wild men moved with an air that seemed to be of both confidence and nervousness. As the search party watched from the trees, a smaller man gave a growl and jumped on the leader's back from behind, biting and drawing blood. Giving a deeper growl, the leader grabbed his attacker's head and flipped him over his shoulder onto the ground. The group of wild men and women moved around their leader and watched with interest as he grabbed his attacker from behind and began to force anal intercourse upon the man. When his victim tried to twist and escape, the leader put an arm around the man's head and twisted; the search party watching in horrified disgust could hear the sound of the man's neck breaking. When the leader had finished with a long grunt, he dropped the dead man in the leaves and his group moved in to tear apart the body.

As the wild men began to eat the raw flesh, their hands and faces covered in blood, they fought amongst themselves. Two females, who could not have been more than fourteen, pulled on either end of a leg torn from below the knee. One growled with veins hanging between her brown, cracked teeth, while the other bit into the foot. Several of them began to engage in various sexual acts while they ate, in which the gender did not seem important. Then, in the midst of their bitings, clawings, humpings and growlings, a howl of pain rang out. The female who had chewed and swallowed the penis and testicles belonging to the dead man had just bitten down on the same organ of a living man. The man held his bleeding gentiles with one hand and with the other he stuck the female sqaure in the face, and another fight broke out. After several more long minutes passed, the group moved away after the dogs, still grunting and fighting as they went. As they disappeared into the trees, a noisy out crying of birds seemed to rush in, as if filling a hole the wild men had left behind.

The sergeant was still white-knuckled in shock when he finally sounded the all-clear. As the horn call echoed up and down the line, and the search party dropped lightly to the ground, he decided those in the middle and left who had not seen the spectacle he had just witnessed should count themselves fortunate. "Wild men and dogs," was all he told the runner who came to ask what had happened. He and the men around him were still shivering, trying to banish the images from their minds, as the party once more set forward.

Another hour passed before the first sign of the missing airship was spotted. Corporal Hatch on the left side was the first to send a runner about the splintered remains of a bench, followed by corporal Drake on the right about several broken deckboards. Iordan was standing over a piece of a wing, ribbed with wood and stretched with tanned hide, when several more messengers came to tell him about shreds of the canvas awning and a battered piece of luggage filled with billowy cotton robes. A hundred yards farther on and sixty-five messages later, he and captain Milan found themselves standing beside the airship's engine, its belts snapped and its mountings wrenched free. All around were scattered broken timbers, already beginning to be overgrown.

"I don't understand how this can happen," said Iordan, shaking his head. "It's been shattered... and most of these pieces are burned..." He glanced at the men around him, all with similar expressions of disbelief. "What can do this?"

A messenger came running from the right.

"My lord," said the boy once he had reached the prince. "Sergeant Krein wishes to inform you that we have discovered the," he gulped, "remains," he gulped again, "of several bodies."

A moment passed. The silence was thick and the men's faces were white, not wanting to look at the prince.

"Several?" Iordan asked after letting out a deep breath.

"My lord... we can't count how many bodies, because... it looks like they were... eaten."

All the men within earshot gasped.

"Is my sister among them?"

"We... don't know..."

"Is there any hair left?" asked a very pale prince, his knuckles clenched white and sweat dripping from his palms.

"Yes, my lord," the boy answered almost in a whisper.

"Is any of it the same color as mine?" Iordan's voice cracked as he spoke.

"Yes, my lord," came the inaudible reply.

"Show me."

The young prince choked back his tears as he allowed himself to be led to view the carnage. There were indeed body parts strewn about over almost a quarter hecter, now rotting and covered with crawling insects. Though the stench of decay was overpowering, Iordan did not seem to notice as he followed the boy to the left end of the line. The sergeant handed him a small piece of silver: a hairclip belonging to the princess, still clasped firmly shut on several strands of silvery-blonde hair.

"This is all?" The prince's voice was a bare whisper, sounding as if he were waiting only for death to come.

"We found it over there, my lord," the sergeant nodded.

"Where is her body?"

"That's all we could find."

"Let's keep looking."

The sergeant nodded, and the men spread out to continue their search.

One hundred leagues to the North and East, captain Orman and his party of two hundred were surveying another scene of devastation. After leaving the main road and marching for half a day Southwest on a smaller path, along a route they would likely encounter bands of slavers, the battle party entered the remains of a small farming village that had been raided several days before. Hacked bodies of men, women and children littered the ground, now scavenged and decaying; black with insects. Dried blood caked the dirt and the broken walls of houses and barns. The stale air hung like death, and a screeching chorus of birds echoed eerily off the trees.

Orman stood with him men at the North end of the village, his sad eyes reflecting the image; he had seen raided villages before - many of the men had - but the sight was never any easier to bear. And this village was by far the worst.

"Enes," called the captain, "take the right. Ban take the left. Let's secure the village."

Two squads moved along the outskirts of the village, probing the trees for any other sign of life or death while the main body of the war party waited silently.

"Perimeter secure, sir!" came the call from the South side after several minutes had passed.

"Okay, Jon," the captain said without turning, "take your squad to check the buildings."

Again they waited as a new set of men moved into the village, stepping carefully over fallen farmers and traders as they went from house to house and barn to barn. Orman lifted and hand to wipe the sweat from his face. Overhead, a small flock of forest birds flew into view, screeching and pecking at each other as they dived and wheeled erratically.

"All secure, sir!" came the call.

Orman paused for a moment, eyeing a set of wagon tracks running off to the East from what had been the village sqare.

"Jon," he finally called.

"Sir."

"Your squad has cleanup."

"Sir," the corporal answered, without much enthusiasm.

"Enes, Ban."

"Sir!"

"Fall back in. We'll head South to the next village. See if we can find someone alive."

So the battle party marched further South along the small dirt path. Hours passed without incident, and afternoon came upon them before they reached the next village. When they arrived, a completely different scene met their eyes from that which they left behind: another village, obviously raided, yet it was almost clean. Pieces of scavenged and rotting livestock were piled well away from the buildings rather than among them, and there was no trace of human body in the streets. The ground was mostly free of blood, and there seemed to be much less debris from the smashed buildings lying around. Orman followed the same procedure as before, first securing the perimeter, then the heart of the village, before moving in to investigate.