Hangman crept through the branches and crouched unseen where he could observe a different party of Renegades.

  Ten of them stood around a clearing while they talked and pointed at the ground. Did they find traces of Hangman, Vulture, or any other Godless? He couldn’t hear the Renegades’ conversation from here to find out.

  He could have slipped away unseen, but this new party gave him an idea.

  The Godless would have to search Renegade territory for years to find out if the weapons were there, but they didn’t have to. The Renegades knew more about their own territory than the Godless could ever learn in their lifetimes.

  He decided to play a trick on them and retraced his steps along the same route through the trees. He returned to the spot where he and the others camped last night. His cousins, uncles, father, and brother were all long gone.

  Hangman stashed his kukris and his knife in the hollow of a rotten tree. He took the three remaining Renegade weapons with him and hung them from his waistband as if he carried them that way all the time.

  He headed back the way he came toward where he would find the Renegade party. He kept going until he heard their voices.

  He swerved sideways, let his vision slip out of focus, and staggered from right to left in a drunken stupor. He even collided with tree trunks, tripped over things, and crashed into piles of leaves and dry branches.

  He made as much noise as possible, blundered to his feet, and stumbled on. He barged through the undergrowth, snapped twigs, and startled birds and insects in the jungle.

  His behavior alerted the Renegades long before he got near them. He kept weaving, stumbling, and changing his course.

  He didn’t let himself focus his eyes even to see how close he was getting to them. He fell over again and scrambled to get up.

  The Renegades overtook him before he got off his hands and knees. One of them kicked him over onto his back. He tumbled sideways and sprawled before they pounced on him and pinned him down again.

  He looked around in bleary confusion. “Cosmos….?” he husked. “Breaker…..? Are you there?”

  “Who’s Cosmos?” one of the Renegades snapped. “What are you doing here?”

  Hangman looked off in the other direction. “Nothos? Where’s Nothos?”

  “He’s out of his mind,” another Renegade snarled.

  “Hey! I’m talking to you!” The nearest man jammed his foot down on Hangman’s chest and flattened him. “What are you doing out here? Do you belong to that party of Godless that came through here last night?”

  Hangman looked up at the guy, but Hangman kept his vision blurry. “The flats…..the flat place of stone…..between the mountains……”

  “He’s delirious,” the second Renegade went on. “Leave him alone. He’s probably dying.”

  “He can tell us what the Godless are doing.” The first man bent over, grabbed Hangman by his shoulders, and shook him. “Hey!! Who are you? Where did you come from?”

  “Gotta find it…..” Hangman croaked. “Gotta find….the flat….stone….place…… between the mountains……”

  “What flat stone place?” the fourth man asked. “The mountains could be anywhere.”

  “Valley…..of stone……”

  The first man threw Hangman down on the ground and smacked his lips in annoyance. “He can’t tell us anything.”

  Hangman pretended to look around. “Cosmos? Nothos? I can’t see you! Where are you?”

  “What do we do with him?” a different man asked.

  “We don’t do anything with him,” the first one decided. “He’s useless to us.”

  “So we just have to leave him here?” the second one asked. “We should take him back to Akon. This deadbeat might revive. Then Akon could interrogate him.”

  “I’m not dragging some semi-conscious Godless freak halfway across the countryside for nothing.” The first man bent over and shook Hangman harder. “Hey! Where did you come from?”

  Hangman dragged his eyes up and went through a torturous effort to focus his eyes. “Take me there…..” he croaked. “Take me…….to the flat stone……between the mountains……with the ancient relics……”

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  “What in the name of all that’s holy is he talking about?” the third man muttered. “What flat stone place? There is no flat stone place—not anything as big as a valley.”

  Hangman didn’t need to hear anything else. He sank back on the ground and let his head loll.

  “Hey—Godless!” The first man kicked Hangman hard in the ribs and then jabbed him with something sharp. “Pay attention and tell me which band you belong to! What are your people doing this far out of your territory?”

  The pain of the stab made Hangman startle even though he didn’t mean to. He planned to pretend to be completely unconscious.

  He spun around and roared at his attacker louder than he should have. The Renegade stood over him holding one of their metal weapons.

  He stabbed Hangman in the leg. The same man was in the act of raising his weapon again to stab Hangman either in the chest or the stomach.

  Hangman overreacted, but he couldn’t let these Renegades injure him more than he already was. He swung out and smacked the weapon away before the guy could strike.

  Hangman realized his mistake and collapsed back on the ground, but he couldn’t stay here any longer. He already knew what he came here to find out.

  The Renegades didn’t know about the valley of the flat stone. They definitely would have known about that if it was anywhere in their territory.

  The first guy corrected and brought his weapon around, but he didn’t raise it to strike again. Hangman rolled onto his knees, blundered to his feet, and took off staggering farther west.

  He was going in the opposite direction from where he wanted to go, but his ploy worked. The Renegades didn’t know about the valley of flat stone or the weapons.

  The Renegades followed him. “Where do you think he’s going?” the third one asked.

  “He’s heading for Renegade territory,” the fourth one remarked.

  “That proves he’s out of his mind,” the first one added. “He doesn’t know where he is or where he’s going. That’s why he keeps calling out for those other people. They must be other Godless.”

  “Then we have to question him,” the second one insisted. “Or we have to let Akon question him. If one Godless is venturing into our territory, others might be doing the same thing.”

  “Look at him!” the first man countered. “Does he look like he’s with anyone or planning anything? He’s lost and insane. He probably just stumbled here……”

  “It’s too far away from everything,” the second man pointed out. “One of the creatures would have munched him long ago if he was just stumbling around and falling all over the place.”

  The first man stopped and stared at Hangman’s back. The four Renegades halted there to consider the situation.

  “You’re right,” the first man muttered. “It’s suspicious.”

  “Come on,” the second one murmured. “Let’s restrain him and see if we can find out what he knows. He must know something.”

  He heard them coming up behind him. He couldn’t let them restrain him or interrogate him. He reacted again without thinking.

  He spun around at the last second and grabbed the first man as the Renegade extended his hands to take hold of Hangman.

  Hangman wheeled too fast for the others to see him coming. He snapped the guy’s neck and let the body fall right there on the ground. That left three.

  They weren’t prepared for him to suddenly come out of his stupor so fast. His trick worked better than he expected.

  None of them had a chance to draw their weapons. Neither did he, so he used the next best thing.

  The other three Renegades hesitated when they saw their friend fall. Hangman took advantage of that moment, seized the second man by the shirt, and shoved his head into the opening of a different hollow tree.

  Larval Abnormits squirmed around in there. Each one was as big as Hangman’s thumb.

  He squashed the guy’s face down into the nest of larvae. They started gnawing at him and he screamed out. He reared away and pulled his head free, but not before a dozen larvae stuck to his face.

  They started chewing into his eyes and cheeks. He clawed trying to get them off, but they squirmed out of his way and burrowed right into his flesh.

  His screams snapped the last two Renegades out of their trance. They rushed Hangman, now that they saw him fully alert and standing up straight in front of them.

  One of them hacked his blade at Hangman’s head. He dodged out of the way and the blade thunked into the trunk behind him.

  The wood cracked and thousands of larval Abnormits poured from the fissure. They covered the ground in a sea of white.

  Hangman tried to spring away, but they washed around his legs, crawled up him, and chewed their way into his thighs.

  The larvae surrounded the last remaining Renegades. They forgot about him completely and started scraping their blades across their legs trying to get the larvae off.

  The Renegades’ efforts only exposed them to more larvae squirming and crawling all over the ground around their ankles. The two men completely forgot to try to get away.

  Hangman couldn’t make the same mistake. The pain in his legs drove him into a panic. He had to get off the ground fast.

  He jumped straight up, grabbed a low-hanging branch, and swung himself up into the canopy with dozens of the larvae still gnawing and chewing at him. They crawled higher toward his pelvis.

  He didn’t stop running through the branches until he heard screaming in the distance behind him. He stopped there and blocked out his own pain to listen. He heard three different voices. The Renegades were going down.

  He ran for another ten minutes before he collapsed in the crook of a different tree. He sank back against the trunk, shut his eyes, and swallowed down the sting of bile before he dared to look at how bad his wounds were.

  He had to use his knife to dig the larvae out of his legs. They had eaten their way into his calves and thighs. One latched onto his hip, but they couldn’t chew through bone.

  He threw them over the side onto the jungle floor far below. They couldn’t crawl back up here, but he had bigger things to worry about.

  He pried off the last one and collapsed shaking and shivering against the trunk. He had to seal these wounds before they got any worse.

  His hands shook so badly that he almost dropped his bowl of leaf paste when he took it out of his bag. He concentrated on smearing the paste to the worst wounds on his legs, including the blade cut the Renegades gave him.

  He couldn’t travel now. He didn’t trust himself in the canopy and he couldn’t travel on the ground at night.

  He dragged his bleary eyes open. He was as dazed and insensible now as he pretended to be in front of the Renegades.

  He forced himself to concentrate just long enough to find another tangled nook between multiple tree trunks. He curled up inside it and fell into a black sleep.

  End of Chapter 14.

  ? 2024 by Theo Mann

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