The Descent to Madness (9 page)

             
He laughed to himself, humourlessly. He had probably lived on his own in the wild for longer, and with more success, than most, yet something as basic as lighting a fire eluded him. His thoughts returned once again to the night at the slave camp and, as the bright sun beat down on his face, it was easy to envision the roaring campfire, instead of the pile of useless kindling he had in front of him. He looked at the branches and dried grass, picturing the leaping flames that spat and danced in the dark. He closed his eyes, smiling at the memory of the fierce warmth on his skin, the welcome, sweet smell of wood-smoke and the soft crackling and hissing of branches as they blackened and split.

             
In his mind’s eye he looked past the flames, past the rippling convection haze, deep into the glowing embers at the heart of the fire, there, somehow, witnessing the essence of combustion at its most basic level. Ripples of energy raced across the face of the wood like waves across the sea,  and in the wake of each wave, flakes of the wood, smaller than could be conceived, leapt up into the air, mortally wounded. Pirouetting through the turbulent haze like ballet dancers at the climax of some tragic scene, the wood particles danced solo until they found a partner on the breeze, a particle not wood but something else, already floating, waiting for them. They met, they clasped together for the finale, twirling round and round before spontaneously exploding into a glorious burst of heat and light, unleashing another wave of smaller dancers to shoot off and start their own dances, find their own partners.

             
His heart raced as he witnessed this, all in his mind; the dancing magical, the heat and light as real as anything. He became lost in the scene, dancing along with the actors, learning the choreography off by heart, thoughts of the macro-world forgotten as he began to compose a song in his mind to describe the micro, a rhythm to go along with the opera of flame.

             
A sudden and very real sound dragged him back to reality with a sharp jolt.

             
He leapt up from the rock and span on the spot, his heightened hearing pinpointing the source. The scream came again, a woman’s high-pitched shriek of distress.

             
He ran in the direction of the alarm.

             
Behind him, at the foot of the rock he’d been leaning against, a raptor lay stripped and forgotten next to a pile of gently smoking firewood.

***

Racing downstream, feet skimming with expert care over the rocks and grass, he arrived at the scene in mere moments and skidded to a halt.

In the crystal running waters of the river, a woman stood, waist deep and facing away from him. She was nude - her clothes discarded in a pile on the bank – her form slender and her skin dark, not the swarthy tanned leather of the barbarians, but a creamy olive that glistened like the bark of a smooth tree in the rain. Her long black hair reached down her back, past her waist, where it splayed out in the water like a dress as though in vain attempt to preserve her modesty. He noticed that the woman was slowly backing through the water towards the bank where he stood and he suddenly felt a creeping shame at his tattered and dishevelled appearance, but he had not time to dwell on the ridiculousness of the notion as she let out another piercing scream of fear.

On the other side of the woman, a long, dark, insidious shape could be seen zigzagging its way towards her through the water, the form huge, menacing and utterly unmistakable. It got closer, reaching out towards her before coiling backwards ready to strike.

It all happened in one instant; the snake struck out towards the woman and the woman cried for help, falling backwards in a desperate attempt to get out of its way. An instant was all Stone needed. With no hesitation, he leapt into the water, the woman falling in slow motion, the snake’s strike rendered languid. He landed with a splash between the beast and its prey, arms wrapped around the reptile’s thick, muscled neck in an attempt to wrest it away from its intended victim. Confident in his grip, he let the moment go.

The strength of the beast was staggering, its scaly green form a living, wriggling tree-trunk the width of his thigh as it thrashed about, churning the water white in its struggle to dislodge him. His arms strained with the effort of restraining his foe and his brain ached from being rattled in its casing, but he held on until he could see the woman dragging herself clear from the water, wrapping her clothes about her dripping wet form. Satisfied that she was safe, he let go of the monster and pushed himself away.

But the serpent was not about to be denied its meal, its attention merely switching from its old target to the newer, meatier one. Just as there was three or four clear feet of water between them and Stone thought himself safe, the snake struck out again with lightning speed. The beast’s head lunged towards him, bursting from the water in a spray of foam, mouth opening impossibly wide, easily wide enough to encompass his entire head. Rows of jagged, needle-sharp teeth lined the top and bottom and Stone had time to note the putrid, decaying remnants of former meals that clung between them.

He swayed to one side, the effort required doubled in the waist-deep water, and brought his arms round in a two-handed hammer blow. It connected with the side of snake’s head and he gave a grunt of satisfaction as it fell away from him to land in the water with a splash. His jubilation was short-lived, as the snake arced around in one fluid motion, looping under itself to come at him from another direction. Head throbbing with the strain of maintaining this speed, Stone struggled to turn in readiness for this fresh attack, coming about face just as the snake struck again.

Stone knew that he couldn’t move out of the way this time, instead, bringing his left arm up to block the monster’s bite. The snake slammed into him, razor-teeth clamping down deep into the meat of his forearm, the searing pain causing
him to lose grip on the moment and the encounter descended into a frenzy of thrashing water, blood and pain. In seconds, the thick coils of the snake looped about him, constricting, crushing, the weight dragging him down into the violent broth, driving the air from his lungs, all the while its jaws sawing deep into his ruined forearm. Stars exploded in front of his eyes as his body screamed for oxygen. His right arm pinned against his side by the snake’s coils, his left held in the grasp of its clamped jaws, he could do nothing but cry out in silent desperation as they struggled on the riverbed, water rushing into his gaping mouth, threatening to fill his burning lungs. His vision faded around the edges, as it had back at death’s door after his encounter with the horned bear and he knew that he could hold his breath no longer.

His mouth exploded with bubbles of carbon dioxide as his exhausted lungs at last emptied themselves. On the intake, water sucked straight down his windpipe, filling his chest to the brink with icy cold pain. The cold spread throughout his body, as shock overwhelmed him, the cold becoming numbness, then finally peace.

He floated there, relaxed in the grip of the serpent, wondering if this was how drowning felt for everyone. Out of curiosity, he breathed out, amused by the fact that no bubbles now escaped from his mouth. He drew in another deep lungful of cold water. The blackness that threatened to creep in from the edge of his vision vanished. The numbness disappeared, the pain in his limbs returning with a vengeance, though the burning of lactic acid slowly faded with each new, tentative lungful.

             
Floating there in the silence of the still water, snake still clamped to his forearm, Stone blinked, each fresh breath a miracle his brain refused to process.

A burning, tingling sensation around the teeth stuck in the flesh of his arm spoke of infection beginning to spread even now. He looked down at the wide head and it stared back at him with black, glassy, reptilian eyes. He was unsure whether a cold-blooded animal could get a shiver up its lengthy spine, but something in those eyes registered confusion, apprehension on a basic level.

Needle teeth snapped as he clenched his fist.

***

Lanah lay on the bank, chest heaving, rivulets of water dripping from her smooth body onto the soft grass beneath. She shivered, despite the furs and leathers wrapped about her bare form and stared into the still water with wide, hazel eyes, unable to see beneath the surface for the glare of the noon-day sun overhead.

             
She was wise, seventeen summers; she knew to look for beasts before bathing, but the serpent had been lying perpendicular to the shore, just floating gently beneath the surface with only its nose visible. She’d been blissfully unaware of its presence as she’d stripped off for her morning wash, far from the village, far from the prying eyes trying to get a glimpse of the forbidden fruit that is the chief’s daughter. She’d been wholly unprepared for the fright as the twenty foot snake had swam its way towards her, hence the scream – she was not usually a screaming kind of girl, not like the other girls of the village, all weak and swooning to make the boys feel macho. She was not a girl who needed rescuing.

As befitted the daughter of the head of the village.

              Nevertheless, she knew where she’d be right now, had the mysterious man not leapt in front of her out of nowhere to tackle the beast and so, it was with genuine fear and concern that she watched the gently running water for any indication of his survival. The thrashing had died some moments previous, the bubbles long since stopped rising to the surface. She imagined the lifeless corpse of her rescuer, wrapped in the cold, remorseless coils of the predator and closed her eyes, supressing a shudder of horror.

             
A sudden splash made her open her eyes again and her heart stopped in her chest.

             
The man arose from the water at the centre of the river and strode for the shore, slowly and purposefully. He alighted on dry land and stood barefoot on the grass, regarding her with the expression of a man who had long since given up questioning the things life threw at him.

In the river, some way off, the corpse of the snake rose to the surface and floated off, its neck twisted at an unnatural angle.

              She lay still on the ground, gazing up at her rescuer. His face was unshaven but youthful, his tangled brown hair reaching to his shoulders as dripping water ran down his chest. His lean, muscular body glistened in the sun and water steamed off him as it evaporated in the noon-day warmth. His clothes were nought but sodden rags that barely covered his modesty. He looked down to his left forearm, the skin and flesh torn from the altercation. The skin was already turning black from some horrendous infection. He gave a quick ‘hmm,’ as though not too worried about the matter, then returned his gaze to Lanah before speaking.

             
“Stone,” he said, gesturing to himself with his uninjured right arm. “You are?”

             
She caught the grasp of his meaning, even though she didn’t understand his words.

             
“Lanah,” she answered, touching her chest with one slender hand.

             
“Lanah…” he repeated to himself. He gave a brief nod and a smile before finally allowing himself the luxury of collapsing into unconsciousness.

***

A tumbleweed rolled by. How stereotypical, Stone mused, as he watched it roll on to disappear over the dune.

He closed his eyes, raising one hand against the glare of the fierce sunlight, and looked around. The desert stretched away under clear, blue, cloudless sky in all directions, as far as the eye could see. The sun beat down mercilessly on the lifeless dunes, the heat unbearable on the soles of his feet as he stood still, so he began to walk, keeping his steps quick to avoid touching the ground for any length of time.

After a few moments he looked up and saw, in the distance, what looked like an oasis, with trees and water. Instinct drew him to it. The distance seemed to fluctuate, at times close, then really far away, then suddenly he was there, the moist sand squidging between his toes. He gazed about the greenery; shrubs, patches of grass, reeds in the water and palm trees, laden with coconuts, lining the shore of a large, shimmering pond. He walked up to a coconut which had fallen to the ground, picked it up and bashed it on a rock to open it.

The
coconut cried out, aghast, turning to give him a disapproving look, then rolled off into the undergrowth. Stone blinked, mouth open, a gormless statue.

A splashing drew his attention to the pond; a figure had just broken the surface, emerging from the waters and turning towards him. It was a beautiful young woman, with olive skin, brown eyes and long dark hair. She was naked, the water only up to her waist, revealing plainly the smooth curves of her slender frame, the fullness of her breasts. She smiled seductively and beckoned him to join her with a finger.

Mesmerised, he waded slowly into the cool pond and she came forward to meet him, wrapping him in her long, slender arms. They embraced, they kissed, passionately like long lost lovers, his hands roaming over the softness of her skin, cupping her bosom, then lower, taking in the smoothness of her belly, lower, the curve of the small of her back, lower, the firm scales where her bottom should be…