7. At Death's Door
Annatas had los her bearings. They’d decided she had the best sense of direction in the entire group of Sumiseri. And with water nearby it was easy to find your path: just follow the current or the river. But in a sea with only sandhills, however, she also wasn’t sure where the Indus civilization resided.
“I’m sure we’ve been here before,” her husband Perites said.
“No,” a scared goat said. “Those pawprints are from Akradi! They are close!”
“They’ve been close for months!” Annatas snapped. It was unheard of for a woman to yell at a man like that. But all the old rules were quickly forgotten after running for your lives for days.
“Mamotas, stay close, trust nobody, don’t get distracted.” She felt next to her. Mamotas was already gone.
He heard the entire conversation, but didn’t feel like reacting. He’d found a new, different trail of pawprints. He was fascinated by categorizing and remembering things, which meant he knew the details of all pawprints. And these weren’t theirs or from the Akradi.
The trail slithered through the sandhills. Their own area was almost entirely flat, positioned between the Twin Rivers. They called it Eden: flat moorland. But down here? Here he could take a glide every few minutes. Clearly the better place.
You might think it strange that he thought in minutes, dear reader. But the humans got their system of time from the Sumiseri. The reason they picked such weird numbers, such as 24 hours a day or 12 months, is probably because they calculated everything in multiples of 6 or 12.
The trail ended at a small cave, hollowed out with force at the side of a hill. Inside, on the cold floor, was a dead body of a sloth.
A dead body that startled him when it suddenly did breathe.
Her bones were visible. Underneath her leaf thin skin he could clearly see her beating heart. Every tiring breath ended in coughing.
When Mamotas gently grabbed her claw, her eyes opened wide.
She said something, but it was inaudible and sounded like a different language. He smiled just to appear non-threatening.
He opened his mouth and gestured throwing something into it. Food. His parents would kill him—their own food had as good as run out—but he couldn’t leave this sloth behind, could he?
She eagerly accepted his offer, but trying to stand up she immediately fell over. Mamotas was barely strong enough to support her. So they shuffled and crawled back to his yelling parents.
With every delayed breath and slow heartbeat, he feared for her life still. He was used to fearing for his own life in Sumiser, which was obsessed with attacking each other’s cities. Sleep was rare for him. And yet this worry for her life was a new feeling, somehow even worse.
They turned the corner and fell into Annatas’ arms. “Mamotas! If you slip away one more time—”
The two Gosti traders yelled and forced their way through the group to reach the sloth. She was also wide awake now.
“She is from the Indus! She failed our last trade!”
Annatas studies the wounds on Prebuha’s skin and mumbled: “Looks like the Indus also wasn’t happy with that.”
The ground shook. Akradi. Did they never sleep!?
The group moved at once, away from the tremors. Mamotas looked behind. The first Akradi soldiers already stood on the horizon, like vengeful ghosts with their terrifying masks. But Mamotas was positive: those maskers did give you extra motivation and energy to flee!
It did not help the sloth. She had to be carried by the Gosti traders and his complaining father, as she fell unconscious again.
After running for an hour, they thought themselves safe. The last bits of food and drink were distributed among the panting animals.
A heavy-handed push placed Prebuha on the sand. She received a few nuts, but lacked even the energy to move her jaws. How long hadn’t she eaten? Mamotas had to help her to chew and swallow anyway.
“I’m Prebuha,” she said, pleading, eyes wet. “I do all you ask. I work for you. But please, please, make me part of the group.”
The others had to decipher the meaning of her words from her gestures. A trade reacted by grabbing a Bulla showing a house and a tower.
“Where is your city? Will they let us in and protect us?”
“Yes! My city!” Prebuha said, trying to see if her interpretation was right. “I know the way. I’ll lead you to Indus and know secret passages.”
She searched for a Bulla with a sword and pretended the sword attacked the buildings, until they disappeared.
That … they didn’t understand.
She turned around, coughing and shaking, to point at the water in the distance. Her claws drew several ships in the sand with the signature of the traders. Then she looked at them questioningly.
“Our fleet? You stumbled upon our fleet?” They added another drawing to hers: a huge wave underneath the boats. “All our ships washed away after a terrible flood of the Tigres. We didn’t send them. That’s … that’s why they’d be empty.”
Prebuha sunk deep into the sand when she understood. With her last powers, she drew herself, or something close to it. She aggressively wiped away the ships and drew an arrow away from herself.
“You destroyed our fleet of enemy ships? And that’s why you had to leave?” Mamotas asked, confused.
She ignored it and drew something else for the traders. A square to represent a clay tablet, with three waves below it—the middle one slightly longer and thicker. Her leader’s signature.
“Ah. You ask about the origin of the message.”
One trader showed an object from his pouch. When Prebuha looked through it, she saw things in the distance as if they were close. Like the magic of gods!
He had more objects like these. One was a piece of stone with water inside, to check if some building was perfectly level with the floor. Another was a small balancing scale with standardized clay weights.
“The one who gave us these things, also said—insistently—that we deliver the message at our next trade.”
Prebuha slammed the floor. She hastily drew lightning bolts and floods everywhere in the sand. Nobody understood, because nobody had been able to read the contents of that message. But she now realized who wrote it—and that it was probably all true.
“Now it’s time you prove your worth,” Annatas said impatiently. She pulled Prebuha from the floor and turned her around, in the direction she just revealed contained the Indus river. “Lead us to safety!”
She nodded and shuffled forward, almost hypnotized and unable to do anything else than follow commands.
Her eyes shut again. Mamotas had to support her and raise her claw when she attempted to point somewhere.
“Mamotas, get away from here,” his mother said sternly. “She might have a weapon!”
“No mom. What if I was in that cave? What if I had arrived at the Indus, starved and near death? Wouldn’t you have wanted them to help me?”
“Tell that to the Akradi when they grab us and slit our throats!”
For a while, they walked and followed Prebuha’s directions. Mamotas only spoke once they were at a safe distance from his parents.
“Don’t mind my parents. They see enemies everywhere. They probably didn’t even see we just walked past a very rare species of tree! Oh, I can’t wait to see the Indus. They say it’s the most beautiful place on earth. Right?”
He looked at her. She must’ve understood something, for her face turned sorrowful and she longingly studied the horizon.
Once Prebuha collapsed from exhaustion, they decided to camp for the night. The group gathered around a small fire, an invention from the Gosti that they had learned to control by now.
“What if they don’t let us in,” Annatas whispered.
“Then we conquer them,” an elephant said. “Lagaso fell easily once we all wanted to fight for it.”
“They haven’t been conquered by anybody in a thousand years! The Indus must have godly weapons.”
“Or not,” a Gosti trader said. “We can get everything we want by trading. By giving away a few things we don’t need ourselves. Why would we attack them? I spoke to many other traders, and it seems like the Indus trade is the only thing keeping all civilizations afloat!”
“Well, well,” Mamotas said, “we could trade until recently …”
“It doesn’t matter,” Annatas said. “We don’t attack. We have family there, the old Megitas and his children. The goats do too.”
“My sister married someone from Harap, their other big city,” a small cat said. “They now have nearly forty kittens. Any attack on Indus is an attack on my own family too.”
“But what if they don’t let us in?” Annatas repeated.
It fell silent. Prebuha coughed and turned to her other side. Her dreams were at least good enough to add a slight smile to her face.
A scream. Another scream. The sounds came from the water. Ships, many ships.
Everyone jumped to their feet and grabbed their weapon. Then they noticed the symbols on the sails: the other part of their group, led by their bull commander, refused to sail on and went ashore.