Red Tsonia & the Jungles of Madness

"I'm not forcing anyone to come along," Tsonia said, not unkindly. "But there is safety in numbers. Your chance of survival would be better by my side."

Ambrose had seen Tsonia fight, both during the recent boarding action gone awry and when they first met all these years ago in a nameless pirate haven tucked away on a rocky island off the Xhastrian coast.

He had been there on business, selling overpriced food and diluted beer to the locals and taking on new crew. She had strode into the dockside tavern, wearing only her tattered chain mail and a devilish grin drawing the eye of every man. What caught Ambrose's eye though was the rakish young man in her wake, frantically scribbling on a pad propped on his forearm, trying to capture her stride, her pose and probably her curvy backside.

When stools went flying and heads started rolling, Ambrose met Joras under a table, unwilling to waste his drink in the maelstrom of bodies. The seed for a long-lasting friendship—and so much more!—was planted as they both watched Tsonia fell men by the dozen in pursuit of one crooked merchant who owed her money.

Ambrose's gaze sought Joras's. If the artist stayed, they would be on even terms with the sailors and the chance of betrayal would be much lower. Maybe they could even rekindle some of the magic they had shared after Tsonia had bought rounds for the bar and left them to their own devices for a night. But Joras once again had eyes only for his muse. Ambrose sighed.

Joras was too fixated on capturing every move Tsonia made. He would follow her blindly into the blackest pits of Hell. Someone had to make sure he wouldn't find a miserable end in her company. And if she was willing to blindly dive into the jungle, brave a tribe of murderous savages all in the name of claiming a bounty on a demon-kisser, she would need all the help she could get.

"Is this true, Captain?" Asked Montu tossing a glance at Sethos. "Are we still hunting Kelgore?"

"Tyrant's Blade is but a shattered wreck on the beach," Ambrose replied. "I am your captain no more. You are free to do as you wish, but I invite you to accompany us as a fellow brother of the sea. Together, we can brave whatever this unknown land may throw at us."

Montu offered a wide grin. "Then you'll be happy to know that Sethos and I have become brothers as well." He raised his hand, showing a fresh cut in his palm. "I trust Sethos with my life, cap-... Ambrose."

The Xhastrian did the same. "No man or beast can tear us apart now," Sethos said. "Where my brother Montu goes, I go."

"Even if it puts you at odds with your former master, Kelgore?" Joras asked.

Sethos spat on the ground and turned, showing ghastly burn marks on his back. "This is how he treats his soldiers when in a foul mood," the sailor growled. "I served him loyally from the beginning, but when his eye fell on a whore I was with, this is what I got for not wanting to share. He tore a poker from a fireplace and used it on my back. Kelgore can rot in the Pits for all I care!"

"Why did you sail with him, even after what he did?" Joras asked, pity and dread in equal measure in his voice.

"The only other choice was to be left behind in the fishing village we'd just despoiled," Sethos answered with neither pride nor contrition in his voice.

"Kelgore will answer for his crimes," Tsonia vowed, rifling through the chest and picking up an axe. Grim determination flared in her steely gaze. "Let us take only as many weapons and gear as we can easily carry and be off. The sooner we find him, the sooner justice can be done!"

***

The prints of Kelgore's sturdy boots had vanished at the spring, replaced by signs of dragging, and the clawed footprints of the natives. Tsonia concluded that Kelgore had been drugged and carried off. Sethos wasn't much of a woodsman but he recognized the broken leaves and the scuffed earth when the signs were pointed out to him.

The small group, now armed with swords, daggers, axes and a spade, left the glade behind, following what appeared to be a hunting trail. Branches had been carved away, foliage had been cleared and the occasional snare had been set.

"How kind of the natives to provide for us," the red-haired woman called Tsonia chuckled, pulling a small, furry carcass from one such snare. "We won't go hungry tonight." She tucked the carcass into her makeshift pack and tightened the vines holding their meager possessions together.

Tsonia led the party in single file, followed by the well-dressed northerner and the injured Ambrose in the middle. Sethos, bringing up the rear behind Montu, wasn't quite sure what to make of his new companions. Montu's former captain was preoccupied by something, probably his injury. The northerner called Joras seemed too milky to be a mercenary, and yet Montu and Ambrose both seemed to defer to him.

They followed a meandering trail through the claustrophobic jungle. The dense foliage pressed in on them from all sides, and seemed to swallow their words. It was hard to hear Montu even just in front of him, let alone any of the others further up the line. Despite the hum of insects, the caterwauling cries of birds and monkeys, and the ceaseless drumming that seemed to surround them, Sethos found the jungle eerily quiet and still. He was a sailor, and used to the open expanse of the sea and the chatter of other sailors.

"So that's the infamous 'Red Tsonia', is it?" Sethos asked, just to hear something other than the drums. "I heard she stalked the Beast of Bral for three months across the Wastes of Cairn and carried its hide back to Baron Septimus as a wedding dowry, then refused to marry him."

Montu laughed. "We played that game the first two days she was aboard. Someone would repeat some outlandish tale they'd heard of Tsonia's exploits, she'd claim it was all true, and then her man Joras would set the record straight."

There was no response from further up the line so Sethos let the conversation end there. The confined bowels of the jungle unnerved him. He was certain Montu and Ambrose had to feel the same.

Ahead, Tsonia called a stop. The trail they had followed intersected another and they could find no track or sign that made for an obvious choice.

"Do we ask Shala?" Ambrose suggested, and Sethos's ears perked up

"What do you know of Shala?" he asked. "Does she still live, as well as Kelgore?"

"Live' is perhaps too generous a term," Joras answered. "But by some sorcery, she's not exactly dead yet, either."

Tsonia rolled her eyes. "Fine," she sighed. "I suppose the old witch's opinion is marginally better than a coin toss." She set the pack on the ground and to Sethos's horror, pulled out a severed head by its hair. He recognized her visage immediately as her malevolent gaze fell on each member of the party. Shala growled, her anger obvious despite the piece of driftwood between her teeth.

"You have something useful to say, perhaps?" Tsonia removed the wood.

"Insolent whore!" Shala spat. "How dare you cram-"

Snarling, Tsonia rammed the wood back between the head's teeth. "Oh, not enjoying the company?" she snapped. "Too bad. We only have this one pack and you're sharing with our dinner." Shala replied with another growl and a hate-filled glare before Tsonia tied the vines again and tossed the pack over her shoulder.

"It's dangerous to keep that thing," Sethos warned. "If you can't burn it to ash, you should smash it to a pulp."

"It may yet prove useful," argued Ambrose. "We may need her magic to get home."

"They hurt you, didn't they?" Joras asked softly. "Kelgore and his witch, I mean."

Sethos stood silent for a moment. The men who sailed the sea had a code, and he was loath to speak ill of any man he'd sailed with. And sailing with Kelgore had been hugely profitable for a time. But he had seen things that haunted him. Things he hoped no man would ever see again. Sethos glanced at Montu. His blood brother nodded.

"Kelgore can seize the minds of others," Sethos murmured at last. "It's those black eyes of his. When you look into those eyes, he steals your will and your memories both. He turns you to his cause whether you wish to do his bidding or not. I have seen Kelgore compel strong men to slice the throats of their own children, or to throw themselves into the sea and just let themselves drown rather than try to swim."

"And after, you have no memory of what you have done," Tsonia added quietly.

"Yes!" agreed Sethos, looking up with a start. "You've seen it! You've seen this power he wields."

"I've seen it," she agreed, wiping her hand across her mouth. "Which is why he must die... But first we must find him. Very well, if we can see no reason to choose one path over another, then I sugges--"

Sethos couldn't say where the violent eruption of fur and foliage came from. Before he was even aware of it, the whole party was knocked asunder in a chaotic frenzy of violence. As a massive beast tore through their midst, he saw flashes of teeth as long as his cutlass, claws like knives, fur striped brown and white like the sun-dappled jungle floor. And then just as quickly it was gone.

"Ambrose! It got Ambrose!" Montu shouted as he clambered to his feet. In a flash of fiery hair, Tsonia was already plunging headlong into the thicket.

Sethos sprang up, drew his sword, and followed his blood brother in pursuit with the man Joras close behind carrying the pack. If Sethos had found the winding trail claustrophobic, this wild boscage was worse. Leaves and branches assailed him as he tore heedlessly through the dense undergrowth. Somewhere ahead, Ambrose screamed for help.

Montu hacked away a branch and Sethos did likewise, just in time to see the mail-clad mercenary let fly her axe on the run. The spinning blade vanished into the brush, but a monstrous squeal of pain told them it had found its mark.

"It bleeds now!" Tsonia called, without breaking her stride, and only a few yards later, Sethos saw the splatter of crimson against the leaves and the crooked path it wove through the jungle.

The beast fled like a coursed hare, skirting this way and that, but Tsonia doggedly held its trail and the three men followed in her verdant wake. Suddenly the ground dropped away and Sethos found himself skidding and sliding down the embankment of a deep ravine in a cloud of dry forest litter. As he scrambled to arrest his perilous descent, he finally caught sight of their quarry ahead.

Its long, sinuous body was like that of a great weasel or otter, but the fangs that grew from its jaw reminded Sethos more of the great bloated tusk-seals he had seen in the frozen north. It held Ambrose in its maw, secure behind those fearsome teeth. The man struggled still, but before Sethos could guess at Ambrose's fate, the beast had scrambled away around a bend in the ravine.

"It's trapped itself!" shouted Tsonia. "Hurry! Before it finds purchase to climb out again!"

Sethos found it easier to follow the rocky gorge at speed. In the dim depths, the brush was not so dense, and he frequently spotted their prey trying in vain to escape back to the jungle coverage above. But the chasm narrowed. Sethos caught glimpses of Ambrose tucking himself tightly around the great saber-toothed snout to avoid being battered against the steeply sloping walls.

Cornered by the contracting ravine, the great beast made one last desperate attempt to climb to its freedom, claws scrabbling against the loose dirt and mulch, Tsonia's axe still lodged in its flank. Failing, it floundered back to the bottom and turned on its pursuers, hissing.

Ambrose pounded the brute's snout with his fists, but the creature shook him violently until Ambrose was forced to relent. He seemed to almost slump in the beast's jaws, as if his very strength drained away.

"Stand your ground here and don't let it flee," Tsonia warned. Montu and Sethos flanked the warrior, swords at the ready, penning the great creature in. "It will have to drop Ambrose if it wants to fight."

"Here," offered Sethos, "Take my blade."

With his blade in hand, Tsonia charged the beast, dropping low at the last moment to avoid a swipe of its giant paw. It was evident to Sethos that she sought to attack the monster's flank and avoid any strike that might injure Ambrose, but the beast was too nimble, its long body turning and shifting and always keeping its snarling gaze on its foe.

A distraction was called for.

"Montu, my brother, stand ready if it should flee," Sethos instructed as he knelt down to pick up a pair of good-sized stones from those scattered at his feet. "Joras, help me draw its attention... To the left, ready?"

"Yes, I see," Joras confirmed, laying aside his pack and spade and picking up a pair of stones as well.

The pair let fly with their stones, pelting the great beast's shoulder and ample side. It turned, growling at them, and with no hesitation, Tsonia seized her opening. The curved blade drew a gash along the creature's right side. It was no killing blow, but Tsonia clearly had a more immediate goal. As Sethos and Joras rearmed themselves, Tsonia snatched the embedded axe from the creature's hide, ripping it out with a gout of flesh and blood.

The mighty beast screamed in agony, dropping Ambrose, and wheeled on its tormentor with ivory blades. As Sethos and Joras let fly a second volley, Tsonia hacked at its tusk with the axe and drew a slash across the giant weasel's flaring snout.

The creature recoiled in pain, and decided it had had enough.

Charging like a coiled spring the creature burst past Montu, who set his blade and raked the beast's long flank as it passed. Sethos and Joras could only press themselves flat against the walls of the canyon to avoid being smashed by the careening hulk as it fled.

"I am beginning to hate this place," Ambrose quipped as Joras helped him to his feet. He was shaken, battered and scratched, but not seriously harmed. Sethos supposed the giant saber-toothed weasel had meant to carry Ambrose back to feed to its young.

"The trails are far behind us now," Tsonia observed, "and I don't like our chances of finding our way back. I suggest that if we cannot track Kelgore, we make for high ground and get the lay of the land. Perhaps we can spot something useful."

This course of action sounded reasonable. Sethos and Montu nodded their agreement.

"That sounds like quite a climb," Joras objected. "Perhaps we should call it a day and let Ambrose rest. We only have a few hours of daylight left to find shelter."

Reluctantly their fire-haired leader agreed. "Let's at least find a way out of this ravine then. I don't want to get caught in a flood if there's rain."

***

Ambrose had managed to spark a fire while the others scavenged in the gloaming twilight. The worst of his wounds had been swaddled in bright orange bandages torn from Joras's cloak. The crude lean-to that Montu and Sethos had built had kept most of the brief rain off of him, but he was still damp and sweaty and miserable. His tunic dried by the fire as he fed damp punk wood into the flames.

In the distance, the drums continued, and not for the first time, Ambrose wished they would stop. He considered unbinding the old witch's head, just to have a voice to listen to other than the incessant beat of the drums. He was sure that sound would haunt his nightmares for the rest of his days.

Before Ambrose's misery could drive him to foolishness, Montu emerged, hacking through the foliage with his sword.

"Well done keeping this fire alight through the rain," Montu called. "The smell of smoke led us right back to you."

"We'll not go hungry tonight, at least," called Sethos from behind Montu. He held up a pair of large birds by their feet.

"I'm glad you're back before dark," Ambrose replied without standing. "Come and dry those wet clothes by the fire. I'm worried about what rot and disease might find us without good, healthy sea air."

"The humidity is bothersome, isn't it?" agreed Montu, removing his tunic and spreading it out to dry in the fire's smokey heat. Sethos crawled into the lean-to in search of a knife to butcher their meat. "The drums are bothersome, too," he added.

"Did you spot a drummer, like you hoped?"

"No," Montu shook his head. "No sign of man nor beast-man. The drums fell silent as we approached. They're watching us, I think."

"Of course they're watching us," Ambrose snapped. "But why? That's the question."

"Perhaps they fear this," Sethos said, emerging from the lean-to with the witch's severed head in his hands.

"Put that back!" Ambrose growled. Shala's eyes locked on his and he felt for a moment as if his very soul shriveled under her gaze. He turned away. "I don't want to look at her."

"Then we should cast it into your fire and be rid of it," Sethos argued.

"She claims her magic can bring us home," Ambrose objected.

"And you believe her?" Montu asked, snatching the grotesque thing from Sethos, holding it at eye level and staring defiantly into Shala's scowl.

"I don't know," Ambrose answered, his eyes fixed on the throbbing heart of the campfire. "I don't want to, but I fear there may be no alternative... I don't want to die here... But I'm sure there would be a terrible price for her help."

"Let's ask her then!" Montu proposed with a laugh. "Tell us old woman, what would it cost us for your magic to take us all home?" He began to unfasten the gag that held Shala in silence.

"No, stop!" Sethos objected and reached to grab the witch's head back from his blood-brother.

Ambrose flinched at the sudden flurry of recklessness. Montu, balancing the head in one hand, tried to jerk it away with a good-natured laugh. For a moment they fumbled Shala's severed head between them, and Ambrose pushed himself back away from their roughhousing, his injured hand throbbing with the memory of his own carelessness. It looked for a moment as if Montu would yield to his wiser brother, but then Sethos suddenly yanked his hand back, leaving Montu with the prize.

"Shit! The bitch bit my finger!" he cried, shaking the pain from his injured hand. "She drew blood."

"Traitor! Deserter! Mutineer!" spat Shala, as Montu dropped her to the ground to save his own hands. "Addle-brained Turncoat! Pox-ridden bastard son of a drooling whore!"

Sethos found the gag and pressed the wooden bit back between her teeth.

"Does it ever say anything useful, or just hurl insults?" Montu asked as he helped tightened the gag back in place.

Ambrose thought about it. The witch had been more forthcoming after Tsonia had first recovered her. He wondered if perhaps her mind was beginning to rot. Of course, if he'd been bound up the way she had, he wouldn't be in a very helpful mood either. He was still considering how to answer Montu's question when his former shipmate looked up with a start.

"Hulllooo!" called a familiar voice from out of the brush. "Ambrose?"

"It's Tsonia and Joras," Montu hissed. "Put it back," he urged Sethos, forcing the gagged witch into his blood-brother's hands "Quick! Quick, put it back!"

"Here," called Ambrose as Sethos scurried inside. "This way."

"I wish you wouldn't make such a racket," Ambrose heard Tsonia admonish Joras as she hacked their way into the campsite.

"I'm pretty sure everyone already knows right where we are," Joras countered, gesturing to the ever-present drumming that surrounded them day and night. "Did you have any luck?"

"Two fine birds for dinner," replied Montu, standing up and drawing the eyes of the newcomers. Ambrose recognized the ploy and scooted over to block their view of Sethos and the lean-to. "How about you?"

"Not so much I'm afraid," Joras replied. "A pair of breadfruits and an armload of dry hanging deadwood for the fire."

"That's alright then," said Sethos, crawling back out of the lean-to with what Ambrose considered forced nonchalance. "We'll eat well, dry our clothes and be on our way in the morning."