“You do realize,” Kossal interjected testily, “that we still have fifteen miles to walk today. We could have skipped all this if you’d stayed on the causeway.”
He offered this last crack as though staying on the causeway had been an obvious option.
“Feel free to go on without me,” I said. “I’ll catch up.”
Ela shook her head. “Don’t listen to him. We’re happy to wait. It’s a gorgeous morning.”
The poor fools a pace away didn’t seem to agree. In trying to drag their friend out of the mud they had succeeded mostly in further miring themselves. One of the men—long-haired, square-jawed, narrow-waisted—caught my eye as he strained on the girl’s wrist.
“Please,” he gasped. “Help us.”
He was up to his knees in the mud and sinking deeper by the moment. Just over his shoulder, the woman with the stick was losing her battle. Despite the ferocity of her attacks, the crocs had backed her all the way into her companions, snapping at the shard of wood whenever it came close. She was beginning to flag, propped up at this point mostly by her desperation.
“Pyrre,” Ela called down from above. “This is the work of the god.”
I stared, frozen for just a moment, at the four people battling for their own lives.
“No,” I replied after a moment, shaking my head. “Not yet, it’s not.”
What I did next may seem like a strange decision for a servant of Ananshael. The truth was, I wasn’t bothered by the weight of my god gathered in the air around us. Ananshael is everywhere, always. Nor did I have anything against the crocodiles, which seemed magnificent beasts, more than capable of the god’s message. It was the intervening moments that troubled me; not the struggle itself, but the pointlessness of that struggle. When one of our priestesses takes a life, she does so quickly, cleanly. If these men and women were going to die, I wanted them to die. If they were going to fight, I wanted them to fight. Instead, they occupied an awful middle ground, a hopeless territory that did not belong to Ananshael, but to fear and pain. I remembered fear and pain all too well from my childhood. It was to escape them that I had first turned to my god.
“Lie down,” I said, gesturing toward the mud in front of the trapped woman.
The man stared at me, baffled.
“Lie down,” I said again. “You’re sinking because your feet are small. Your body is large. Lie down and let her use you to climb out.”
It took him a moment to understand, then he nodded, dragged his own feet from the mud with great sucking sounds, and hurled himself down before the woman. The other man wrenched himself free, sat on his friend’s back, and from that more stable platform managed to begin hauling the trapped woman, inch by agonizing inch, from the delta’s grip.
Behind them, the woman with the stick lashed out, landing a blow squarely on the nose of one of the crocs, forcing the beast to retreat. The other, sensing a shift in the fight, subsided a few feet into the water.
“Is she out?” she shouted without turning. “Is she fucking out?”
“Almost,” gasped the man lying in the mud. “Are you all right, Bin?”
The woman with the stick—Bin, evidently—had doubled over, hands on her knees, sucking air. For a moment she couldn’t respond.
“Bin!” the man bellowed, his voice ragged with sudden panic. “Are you all right?”
He couldn’t see her from where he was, face shoved down into the mud.
“She’s fine,” I said. “She’s forced them back.”
“There!” shouted the second man, sitting back in the mud as the trapped woman came suddenly free. “She’s out, Bin. She’s out. Come on.”
“This way,” I said, gesturing toward the causeway.
They stared, lost, each one, in the private labyrinth of their own panic. There was no time to explain.
“Follow me,” I said, turning to the wooden wreckage and beginning to climb.
My feet and hands were slick with mud, making even the most generous holds treacherous. There were spots where I had to hold on by the tips of my fingers. Twice, the board I was holding ripped free with a furious shriek; each time I managed to catch myself. When I looked down, I could see the first woman, the one who had been stuck, following me up, eyes wide as saucers, the tendons of her neck and back straining. I doubt she’d ever climbed anything more strenuous than a ladder, but her fear made her strong, and each board I tore free offered a more secure handhold to those that followed.
“You’re close now,” I called down to her.
She met my eyes, nodded, and kept climbing.
We almost made it. Or maybe that’s not quite the right pronoun.
I did make it, as did the woman who’d been following me, and the man after her. While they climbed, the other two—the man who’d thrown himself down in the mud and Bin—held off the crocs, lashing out with their sticks every time the creatures got close. They weren’t going to hold them forever, but they didn’t need to. They just needed time for their companions to get clear, and then the woman was climbing while the man, a jagged length of wood in each hand, battered the beasts. The crocs backed off a few feet; he hurled his meager weapons at their faces, turned, and began to climb.
I watched from the railing above, chest heaving with the recent effort.
“Well,” Ela said, draping her arm around my shoulders. “For a servant of Ananshael, you’ve made some curious decisions today.”
I just shook my head, wordless, unsure how to explain.
Below, the crocs gnashed their teeth, churned the water with their tails.
“Come on, Vo,” bellowed the man beside me, reaching down through the railing toward his companions. “You’re almost there. Come on, Bin, keep climbing!”
She was close, close enough to reach a hand toward him. When she did, the board she’d been holding tore free. She seemed to hang there a moment, caught on an invisible line; then she fell backward, trailing her scream behind her. She landed badly, leg lodged in the mud, bent all wrong. The crocs turned, their movement so graceful it might have been choreographed.
“Make way,” Ela murmured, “for the million-fingered god.”
The other climber, Vo, turned. I caught a glimpse of the horror carved across his features.
“Get up, Bin!” he pleaded. “Get up!”
Then, when it was obvious she wouldn’t be getting up, he jumped.
“That seemed ill-advised,” Ela mused.
Kossal grunted. “We’re not going to get to Dombang any quicker for watching this nonsense.”
“Since when,” Ela asked, turning on him, “is the work of our lord nonsense?”
“The work of our lord is happening everywhere,” Kossal replied. “All the time. You plan to stop every time some insect expires mid-flight? Whenever we have the chance to see a few fish hauled up in a net?”
“This,” Ela said, nodding to the scene below, “is more interesting than fish.”
Kossal glanced down, then shook his head. “Not really.”
Ela elbowed him in the ribs. “Don’t be dull. It’s instructive, at the very least.”