Sabledrake Magazine
February, 2002
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Nuyt In The Forest: Part One
Copyright © 2002 By Anthony Docimo
Summary: This is my take on what a lost city might be like, if the area hadn't changed. The area in question . . . well, the answer will be in next issue . . . can you figure it out?
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"OWWAAUUGGHH! OWWAAUUGGHH!" the long bellow rang out, echoing down the early morning wooded slopes. Several trees of budgies went silent at the noise. The chattering of koalas went on, ignoring the interuption. And off in the distance, a raucous "honk" of a goliath sounded as if in answer.
Jacobus Nuyt from his perch up in a eucalyptus tree considered whether or not to track down the owaugh, elusive as the beast often was. To him, the potential rewards outweighed the downfalls.
As several minutes had passed while he had considered the matter, the budgies had started up their singing, the koalas were sleeping, and the grunting of some foraging beast sounded in the wallows not far from him. While he waited in the eucalypt bough for the trio of stickhounds to finish their business at the base of his tree and move on, Jacobus checked what he had with him, to see if it was worth his while to head back into town . . .
Fifteen silver daalders was all the money he had in his pockets, hardly even enough to purchase a change of clothes or a sturdy cage. A week's worth of dried and salted meats were still in his satchel, unraided by the things that roamed the trees. His brace of pistols remained in working order, and had sufficient bullets to take down one of those dragonlike draaks that roamed the deltas, should he encounter one.
All that lay in Coenstad for him was his home, shelves brimming with books. And Jannetie Arminius, with hair the shade of a dusky twilight. That alone was nearly enough to bring him around townwards.
But Jacobus knew well enough that his prospects presently were not enough to get him past the Arminius front door, much less down the grand hall. He needed something, something to prove his worth, something to convince Jannetie's father that Jacobus Nuyt was not some backriver rugswatter with delusions of grandeur.
Any idiot with decent aim or luck could bring a rack of hopping hunters into town. But few enough had ever brought in an owaugh, dead or alive. What better give could a courting man give?
Through the slender silvery leaves, Jacobus watched the scrawny stickhounds slowly lope away, rib bones pressing against their brindled brown-striped fur, their ears pert and alert for little things scruffling in the grass betwixt trees.
Jacobus climbed down once his surroundings were clear, ready to start tracking the beast.
~~~
The kingfishers were singing and the treemice were whistling safely in their perches.
The sun had finished rising to midday just recent, and was now on the afternoon decline as Jacobus stopped in his tracks. He was not alone in these forests, he'd known that all his tracking life since leaving the farms, and he knew how helpful it was to avoid being seen by many of the things that roamed the wood.
In this case, it was the goliath up ahead, presently snuffling in the ferns, swinging it's deep beak through the leaves, trying to scare up something skittish. Not having any luck at that, it craned it's neck around and preened, picking through mottled tan fur-like feathers.
Most goliaths didn't go after things on two legs -- unless the two-legger was running. Jacobus just stood very still, waiting for the huge bird to move on, preferably far away.
It occurred to Jacobus to kill the goliath, and bring it back to Coenstad for the standing bounty there was on these walking blights on livestock. While not nearly as valuable as his intended quarry, Jacobus knew just how important culling these birds was -- with one goliath capable of emptying a chicken coop in just a few nights, a fresh corpse would certainly set Nuyt in good among many of the townspeople. And a good reputation was always helpful.
Jacobus Nuyt sighed as the thick-legged bird stalked off, nostrils wide, in search of something small and four-legged. Reputation was good and all, but he wanted something definite, something that would put him in range of Jannetie, not any other merchant's daughter.
So he let it go, once more hiking onwards toward where he'd heard the bellow this morning.
As he continued on, both eyes scanning his surroundings, Jacobus considered presenting Jannetie with an owaugh-skin hat. She'd like that, wouldn't she? Yes, Jacobus figured that she would; and maybe a goliath or such feather for ornamentation, complimenting the pleasantly-scented flowers brimming it.
~~~~
The sun had finished rising and swung down again, turning to night once more. Jacobus once again made a simple shelter in a eucalyptus tree to pass the night. After all, he reasoned, there had not been tree-lions in these parts for over a century.
A century. A small quarter of the span since the Almighty had parted the black storm that'd threatened to destroy so many Dutch ships, guiding them to this bountiful land of fruit and fowl.
There had been natives on the shore, scattered, huddled tribes, brought under the Calvanistic light that those God-fearing Dutchmen had with them. Marriage had insured survival, and guaranteed children -- and with no lumbers near the coast suitable for shipmaking, they had ventured inland. And so it was that the forest cities were founded, one after another, deeper and deeper in.
There were stories told by some, saying that one city sat upon the edge of a cliff, far, far to the south. Jacobus had never believed such drunken tales himself, preferring the hard facts of the official histories over anything else.
And with that thought, Nuyt found himself only a two-step away from the edge of a small cliff, almost a hillock. In the wet season, he could see signs that the creek rose from its present trickle to a raging torrent. The river had carved out a natural ditch between Jacobus and the next, which was almost block-like in overall shape.
Figuring that the riverbed would head in the same direction he was heading, Jacobus planned to walk along it for a few hours. The block of land to his side, surrounded by steams, had been washed clean by the floods. No plants grew here, nor were they likely to for a long, long while. And resting in the stream, hidden by an overhanging piece of the block, was a draak.
The draak was no different from its saltwater or freshwater cousins: it knew what it could eat, and two-legged animals were definitely on that list. Standing up on all four clawed feet, the draak stalked Jacobus. Draaks had a tendency to push aside rocks and pebbles in the course of walking, the same as anything else, and it was that which alerted Jacobus to the beast's presence.
Jacobus briefly considered using two of his pistols on the monster, but chose against that action. The smell of freshly-dead meat could bring any one of a number of predatory beasties a-running. And shooting his pistol to either side of the draak was also out of the question -- for one, the armored stalkers were unafraid of anything; for two, gunpowder sadly smelled most similar to goliath musk. Perhaps the most important, he only had a certain number of bullets.
Faced with no other options at the moment, Jacobus ran, heading for a cluster of tree roots not far ahead, barely ten feet away. The roots were all that remained of a once-mighty tree, if their size was any indication. Unfortunately, the root gave way under Jacobus' foot, crumbling with rot and termites. Quickly, working for his life, Jacobus pulled himself up onto the block's surface, focusing his efforts on his arms. Once he was completely on the block, he backed away from the edge, looking around, just in case there were more draaks hereabouts. There weren't.
But there only needed be one, because the one chasing him was just as good at scaling short heights as any other draak -- first the snout alone was visible, then the rest of its head, followed by the claws and upper body.
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TO BE CONTINUED . . .