“This is a goddamn stupid idea!” Billy puffed, straining his back to load a giant spool of cable onto a raft. It was an impressive show of strength, me and Xiao barely managed to lift another spool working together, while Billy just deadlifted his alone.

  “It was actually yours,” I reminded him. “or would you rather carry the spools all the way through the woods and the bog?”

  “I know, and that is what pisses me off!” he quipped, panting with exhaustion. “And the fact that we need to load twenty-seven more of those, and float them in increments of two, pisses me even more!”

  I sympathized with him. Not just because the labor of transporting the spools was near literally backbreaking, but because the delay it caused meant Bill’s people were inching closer to starvation. The issue was made worse by the fact that we only had one raft, and a small one at that, so the workforce laboring on making our ferry line was reduced to basically two clueless men and a dinky pallet with a sail.

  “Off we go then, I guess,” I said, stretching my sore back and hopping onto the raft. “Unless you want to check up on our thread-spinners first?” The rest of our little group was crowded around the Duplicators, weaving and multiplying various grades of silk rope, as well as preparing bags of supplies to be sent to the Meadows. Much shouting, arguing and heated discussion was involved, over what precisely should be prepared, and what takes precedence. As we only had one set of Duplicators, one raft, and a limited amount of time, it quickly devolved into a complex Wolf, Goat and Cabbage Problem. Wisely, we left our group in the capable hands of Candace, seeing as she would browbeat anybody else anyway. With her keeping them focused, and Xiao providing the rare and quiet voice of reason, they would manage without us for a second.

  “Nah.” Billy shook his head. “We got what we need, and they’re busy. Let's roll, we’re burning daylight.”

  He climbed onboard, which caused the raft to sink nearly level with the water’s surface. Between the two of us and the two reels of rope, we almost overloaded it. I was not sure if the inland wind was sufficient to push our craft against the lazy current of the river, but there was not much else we could try.

  At Gordo’s suggestion, I replaced the square sail my raft used to have with a lateen one. It reduced the risk of us capsizing, or being pushed sideways into the overgrown shoreline, but had the unpleasant side effect of both me and Bill having to constantly duck under the boom, so as to not accidentally knock ourselves off deck. With both of us being landlubbers with very little experience in sailing, it led to our path being a choppy weave that more than doubled the time we needed to reach our destination. Still, neither us or our precious cargo had fallen overboard, which was a success in my estimation.

  “Glad the otters left us alone,” Billy grunted, climbing off the raft to tie it in place when we reached the peatland shores. “I was not looking forward to meeting them again.” He was strung up and wary all the way, and came aboard armed to the teeth. As Keito and Gordo worked on improving our toolset, he demanded they arm him with something more substantial than a club. After a lot of arguing about not wasting time on non-essentials, which of course wasted time by itself, we let Keito design and produce something that could double as both a tool, and a weapon.

  And boy, did he deliver.

  At the time, we were slightly dismissive of the kid. Young, shy and nerdy, he did not seem like much of a valuable asset. That is, until he was given blacksmithing tools, an open forge and a heap of iron and coal to work with.

  First, to my hidden dismay, he criticized the tools and even the iron itself that I made. Even the attempted laminated steel me and Gordo laboriously produced, was merely a crude byproduct for him. He kept working and reworking it, burying it in charcoal dust, ash or sand as needed, until he turned it into a chunk of smoky, ripple-patterned steel. Only then he turned the new steel into a set of hammers and tongs necessary for the actual smithing work, rather than the crude approximation that I attempted earlier.

  At least, he approved of my leather-rotor bellows, calling them ‘most adequate.’

  With all the tools in place, he got to work on Billy’s order. All the time, as his deceptively unimpressive muscles worked swinging the hammer, he prattled. I thought Gordo was the one to monologue at captive audiences, but Keito could bury a man under an avalanche of trivia if given a chance. He went on and on about ancient metallurgy, the history of iron smithing, and finally his one and true love, the sacred blacksmithing arts of the Japanese masters.

  It only caused all of us to politely excuse ourselves and drift away to other tasks, which allowed him to surprise us with the weapon he devised.

  It was ugly.

  It was beautiful.

  It was deadly.

  It was the unholy threeway child of a Roman gladius, Colombian machete and a Japanese naginata blade, which managed to borrow the best features of a bowie knife as well, and sprouted a sawtooth back. It was just broad and heavy enough to chop a limb off any creature we came across, while being narrow enough to fit nicely into the Duplicator. And the best feature was, it had a tube socket for a handle, so one could put it on a long stick to make a polearm! After a brief brainstorm, we decided to call the new weapon a chopper, even though it was an effective stabber, slicer, dicer, and a saw too.

  Unsurprisingly, we all loved it, as it gave us the longest claw of all the beasts in the forest. We all strapped one to our belts, and Billy insisted on carrying two, just in case. What case would necessitate dual-wielding choppers he could not explain, but I deferred to his greater combat experience, after my rather poor showing against the wild boar, and barely eked out victories against the bird and the hyenas.

  “Why here?” Billy asked, unloading the first reel. “We could've easily gone half-a-mile further. Give the rope a more shallow angle when we set it out.”

  “Sure, we could,” I nodded trying to lift the second reel and failing miserably, getting a mildly derisive snort from Billy, “but this is the furthest upriver where we can find any sort of a sturdy tree by the shore, and we have to tie the rope to something, even if this is supposed to be temporary.”

  I looked around. This was almost the exact place where the male terrorbird almost caught me, when I was digging for iron ore in its hunting grounds. The memory gave me chills, but I had to remind myself that technically, the whole shore as far as the eye can see was the undisputed fiefdom of the damned birds, and we were just as likely to encounter them anywhere else. And until Gordo came up with some kind of a weapon to deal with them, our only option would be to flee and jump into the river, hoping the bird would be a poor swimmer. Admittedly, the hope was based on nothing else but the fact that the beast was already a powerful killer, hunter, and lightning-fast sprinter, and it would be just cosmic injustice if it could also swim.

  Billy must have had read my mind, or at least my facial expression, because he measured me with a look and instinctively reached for his chopper.

  “You think one of them’s lurking around?” he gestured at the bog spreading in front of us.

  I shrugged, and went back to trying to wrap the rope around the base of a nearby alder. ”Can’t really say. I killed its mate, so maybe it moved on. Or maybe not, I'm not a birdologist. From what I gathered, these things are not particularly stealthy, so if it were to come after us, we would likely hear it.” Finally, I tied the knot around the tree-trunk, and Billy gave it a testing tug. “Anyway, if you hear some heavy footsteps, or worse, a sound like a giant rooster that swallowed a truck horn is crowing, run to the water and dive.”

  Billy grimaced. “I'm not much of a swimmer.”

  “Sure, but you are much of a porkchop dinner on land.” He gave me a noncommittal shrug but said nothing, which suggested he was not taking the danger seriously enough. I sighed inwardly. Working with Billy, or Candace, or even Baba, I encountered the same problem, which I sensed would be the bane of my existence. Since the people I found, or who have found me, would mostly be tough-as-nails survivors, it was hard to convince them to take my advice seriously. The people who managed to survive their initial days in this green hell were usually a combination of capable, deadly, and confident, and thus likely to underestimate meek dudes like me, and butt heads with each other.

  “Then I guess we need to find out if it is still around,” Billy said, started banging the chopper against a nearby rock, and shouting.

  “What!! What are you doing, you idiot!?” I tried to stop him, but he just batted my hands away.

  “Think, Jacek,” he grabbed me by the shoulder and looked me in the eyes. “We’d be going back and forth at least thirteen more times, at various times of day and night. And then we need to spend a few hours tying these reels together, then spooling them out, which requires one of us, like me, to stay on shore and prevent the rope from tangling.” He let me go, and gestured towards the bog, “If that evil hen is out there, I’d rather find out sooner not later. It would suck ass mightily if it showed up after all the precious rope is here, and I'm here alone with no means of escape, other than trying to outswim it.”

  There was some logic to his words, but I desperately wanted to reject it. Of all the monsters lurking in this place, the bird scared me the most, because I could not imagine fighting it off. It took the combined effort of a dozen wolf-sized otters, a kilometer of rope, a ton of sharpened stakes, spears, and a frickin’ explosion to kill the male bird, and the female was much bigger. That, and the male bird was the only creature here that I saw to be actively, cruelly malicious. Anything else was simply hungry, or just tried to defend itself, but I remembered the casual, almost pointless slaughter of the horned ponies the birds committed and the cold malice in the eyes of the rooster when it thought it had me cornered.

  “Ok, we will give it an honest try, but the second we hear…” I wished I could take my words back, when the unmistakable bipedal shape strolled onto the open peat field. I could not see the she-bird clearly, but I was certain it could see us, with its enormous eyeballs. It stood there for a few seconds, and we saw sunlight gleam off its golden irises. Then the shape burst into motion, rapidly getting bigger.

  Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.

  “...oh fuck fuck fuck,” I croaked and started backing off towards the raft. “Billy, come on!”

  “Steady now,” Billy said with unnatural calm. “I don’t want it to lose track of us.”

  “What?! I do want it to lose track of us, that is the whole fucking point of running away from things! Let's go!”

  Billy followed me, not taking his eyes off the coming danger. Rather than dive into water, we climbed onto the raft and untied it, so that the riverflow would move us out of danger. I hastily pulled down the sail so it would not slow us down, when I noticed Billy grabbing the ferry rope and mooring us to the shore, only a few meters away from the reeds that embanked it.

  “What the Hell Bill?! Lets fucking go!”

  he said nothing, only shushed me and pushed me down on my ass with a casual shove.

  Then, as on cue, the female terrorbird smashed through the greenery, and waded into the water, its sight fixed on us.

  I desperately wanted to flee, but the only option to do that was to chop off Billy’s arm, cut the rope itself, which would be near impossible given its composition, or push him overboard.

  “Come on,” Billy muttered. “Come on, birdie.”

  The terrorbird waded a few steps further, making gurgling, hissing sounds like an angered turkey… and stopped. With the water up to its wings, it dared to go no further. Either it could not swim, did not think it could get us, or did not want to risk swimming through otter territory.

  “Ah. Gotcha, you dumb fuckin’ chicken. Scared of a little water, are ya?” Billy shouted at the creature, which hissed back and flashed its feathery crown menacingly in impotent rage. “Here is our answer Jacek. This fucker is patroling the bogland alright, and there ain’t no way around it. Sooner or later it will nab us. We gotta kill it, and we gotta do it from outside its range.”

  Having said that, Billy took one of the choppers from its scabbard, weighted it, and then threw it like a boomerang at the bird. It bounced off the monster’s neck, nicking it. It crowed furiously, but still was unable to do anything more than flail and posture.

  “Shame about the chopper. Keito gotta duplicate me another one.” Billy said and turned to me. “Let's haul back. We need to prepare to kill this thing, and for that we’re gonna need a bigger weapon, and …we gonna need a bigger boat.”

  “Why a bigger boat?” I was dumbfounded.

  “Eh, it's an expression. Besides, I want to haul this chicken back to my camp, plenty eatin’ on this thing.”

  The return trip felt painfully slow, not because of the current, but because I was too furious with Bill to speak to him, and he was, in turn, too preoccupied with contemplating bird-hunting to notice me fuming.

  Which was why both of us failed to notice anything was amiss until we docked our raft at the pier. Nobody came out to greet us. No reels waited for us to load.

  There was, however, a corpse.

  A man, or rather, about two-thirds of one, lain sprawled on the grass, halfway between the pier and the Duplicators. The man had no head, and his torso was torn open, but it was clear he was not one of our people. There were otter tracks all around the corpse, and teeth marks on it.

  Worse, far worse, however, was that one of the arms of the man looked like it was cleaved clean off.

  No animal could do that, except an angry human with a chopper, just like the one attached to my belt.

  “What in the fu…” I started. Billy knelt next to the corpse with a chopper in hand.

  “Shut it,” he whispered, getting up slowly, and raising a finger. “Listen…”

  I thought I heard a noise from somewhere behind the tarp tent stretched over the Duplicators. I started towards it, when I heard a soft twang, and an arrow shaft sprung from the ground, right next to my foot.

  “That is as far as you go, chap,” said a calm, almost lazy voice. “Both of you drop your machetes, and hands up.”

  “Listen up asshole…” Billy started, but lost track of his words when a dozen men emerged from the bushes behind the tent. All of them were naked and caked with mud, spanning the whole spectrum of races and ethnicities. All except one were armed with spears. Our spears. Except for one, an athletic young man with a short bow in hand, arrow strung. He must have been the one who nearly shot my foot, and from the way he held the bow it was obvious that the next arrow would easily go through my chest.

  Finally, the last man emerged. A wiry, yet muscular man of slight stature, his pale skin and strikingly blue-gray eyes making an eerie combination with a short salt-pepper beard and a gray buzzcut. he limped after the bowman, using a spear as a crutch, but something told me the grizzled fucker was far more dangerous of the two, despite his handicap.

  “What the hell happened here?” I gestured at the corpse. “And who the hell are you?”

  “Last things first. Captain Theodore Danton, Royal Marines,” he said, giving me a slight nod, “Together with your friend, Sergeant Yusuf Baba Abdullahi, and Team Leader Kyle Weathers, I managed to corral a group of survivors. One could say I'm in charge of them, as much as anyone can be in charge of anything in this bloody situation.”

  “You’re in charge of that corpse right here, Captain Brit?” Billy quipped wryly. “Shit job you doin’ then.”

  Danton noded in acquiescence, “We had a … regretful misunderstanding, with the good people of this very camp. Which attracted the attention of the otters. ”

  “What the fuck did you do? I swear to God if any of my people-” Billy started forward, chopper still firmly in his hand. He looked like he would fight the whole lot of them by himself. The bowman drew the moment Bill even moved.

  “Sadly, yes.” Danton said, his tone apologetic. “Miss Cho, the woman in charge of this camp prevented us from entering, and refused to share any food or supplies with us until you two came back. My people, being hungry, tired, and desperate, reacted harshly to it, and breached the palisade, against my orders. A fight broke out, and unfortunately, weapons were drawn. One of your men, Ali Dadwani, was killed by one of mine, Chung Tieh. Miss Cho wounded Mister Tieh in retaliation, and the fight attracted the attention of the otters, which killed him, and injured several of our men, until we drove them off with spears and arrows.”

  “You fucks killed Big Ali?!” Bill rushed forward, but the twitch from the bowman made him stop.

  “Now, now. Let's not act rashly.” Danton dropped the pretense of playing nicely, his voice suddenly icy. “Farrukh here,” he patted the archer on the back, “is an excellent archer, but he is not, yet, a killer. Let's not make him become one.” He gently pressed on the arrow, making the bowman lower his weapon, and gestured to the rest of the men to stand down. “There is no need for more violence. This damned place provides quite enough of that, without us, humans, hurting each other. Please drop your weapons, and come with us.”

  Billy sheathed his chopper instead of dropping it. “Pal, I ain't going to just forget about the lot of you assaulting our own and committing homicide. But seeing how you have over a dozen men with spears, I'm open to parlays. Name’s Bill, by the way, Bill Donahue, formerly a police officer, so don’t expect me to just let you murder people.”

  “And you must be Jack?” Danton nodded at my dumbfounded form. “The man in charge of this place?”

  “I am.” I almost growled. “Just so you know…Captain, if you killed any otters, you definitely signed a death sentence on yourself and your men. These things do not forget nor forgive, and they are my allies. And my friends. They will remember your smell, and there will be reckoning. Make sure to set your own camp deep inland, as far away from the river as you can, if you value your life.”

  “Is that a threat?” Danton asked, cocking his head. I must have struck a nerve mentioning the otters.

  “No. I'm just explaining to you what will definitely happen. If you killed even one of them, you’re fucked.”

  He nodded. “Fair enough. I’ll keep that in mind. Rest assured, we had not killed any of them, though a few scampered off with shallow nicks. We intended to camp by the ravine anyway, to…. ease the situation. Your friends had barricaded themselves in the hut, and seem to have taken one of ours as hostage.”

  “What?” I almost laughed. I could have imagined Candace chopping a guy’s hand off out of sheer rage, but taking hostages was something I would not expect her to do.

  “We sent our..well, our Nun, if you believe it, as a negotiator, to coax them out of the hut, and convince them to share your supplies. She has not come out since.”

  “Share our supplies? But-” I caught myself in the last possible moment. Without any sudden moves, I eyed the tent. The newcomers had cleared out the weapons rack, and the few bags of food that awaited duplication, but the Duplicators themselves remained hidden under a tarp, the stump disguised as a worktable. Thank goodness for Gordo being a quick thinker! They did not know about our magical devices, which would likely spur them to fight much harder, and possibly kill us all. Not knowing where our food and clothes came from, they must have assumed we were indispensable. But Baba was with them, why hasn't he told them about the Duplicators? In fact, where was he?

  “You said Baba was with you. Can’t see him among you.”

  Danton limped towards me, wincing every time his swollen ankle brushed the undergrowth.

  “Dear Sarge is indisposed. Some nasty fellow bit him, and it seems like infection had set in. Part of the reason we are desperate for your people to share your supplies, is we need some way to clean, stitch, and wrap up the wound, and they clearly have the tools to do so.”

  I hesitated. This could be a ruse, but I was not in any more danger trusting them, than I already was anyway. “Please lead me to him.”

  “Of course. Won’t do you much good though. The old chap is hard as boots, but no man can beat this kind of blood loss on perseverance and grit alone. He’s not lucid.”

  We followed Danton reluctantly. Farrukh the archer watched us like a hawk, his bow still half-drawn, and the spearmen crowded behind us, their faces grim. I could almost feel the spearheads, the copies of the crude iron blade I made myself, piercing my back at any moment.

  A few hundred steps outside my camp, we found Baba curled on a bed of dry leaves. His hand was swollen, and smeared with green goop, made of what looked like chewed-up plants. He was breathing shallowly. A group of women stood around him, attending to him and other, less seriously wounded men. One of the women, a sharp-featured lady with a severe buzzcut, was armed as well, and I noticed the rest of the men, except for Danton and Farrukh, stopped way out of range of her spear.

  I kneeled next to Baba, and touched his forehead. He was running a fever and was covered in sweat. It seemed almost impossible for this seemingly indestructible badass to be reduced to a helpless wreck, but yet, there he was. Dying, or nearly so, just like Gordo, who miraculously survived, and just like Ruslana, who did not.

  “What happened to him? Otters?” I asked.

  The spearwoman wanted to respond, but Danton shushed her with a gesture. “That is a conversation for another time. Just you and me.” He nodded towards the camp. “Now, can you convince your friends to open the door, to share food and bandages with us? Baba’s life’s on the line here, as you can plainly ascertain for yourself. We’d also want our Nun back, as she is the only one who knows a bloody thing about herbal medicine, which is, sadly, what we are reduced to.”