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From where he stood in front of her, the leader of the rodent war band would have made an easy target. She could had jumped onto him and battered him to a pulp with a handy stone. She could have snatched him up and flung him into one of the large trees that surrounded the village. She could have punted him into the air, and sliced him into ribbons with her machete as he descended. If worse came to worse, she could always pick him up and just bite his head off his shoulders; it couldn't be worse than the time she had eaten a live handful of rainforest grubs on a dare.
All these things, and more she could think of, but none of them were going to happen. She was bound securely, hands behind her back and knees tucked up against her chest, something like a hundred meters of thin cord crisscrossing around each joint and immobilizing her completely. She stared viciously down at him, and strained at the lines that bound her, but they didn't budge a millimeter. What these little bastards didn't know about rope bondage to be used against larger mammals was probably not worth writing down.
Still and all, he was a sight to behold, six inches tall and armed with a knobbly mahogany club, lines of white clay carefully worked into his fur giving him a tiger's stripes and a set of painted-on fangs to match. He wore pads of finely woven and lacquered armor, protecting his arms, shoulders and hips, and around his waist there was a knotted loincloth. He scowled up at her, brandishing his cudgel, and took an experimental swing at her big toe. She managed to swivel her hindpaw out of the way, and a surprisingly loud 'THUD' echoed through the clearing when it slammed into the ground. That definitely would have hurt, might have even been enough to break a toe, if she hadn't had a course of aluminum bone-lacing done a few years back. "Piss off, shorty," she growled, "before you get me really mad." Despite the language barrier, he seemed to get her drift, and grinned up at her as he raised the club over his head for another swing.
"Niruttu!" a high-pitched voice rang out, and the war chief checked his swing halfway, stumbling and going to one knee in the mud beside Judy's paw. She slipped her toes around it as it lay on the ground beside her foot, using her much greater weight to hold it in place as the native muttered and jerked to free it. She glanced over to where the voice had come from; it was the tree that Nikko was bound to. She saw the corner of his face as he strained to look backwards and around its trunk. He was mouthing something, but was moving too frantically for her to make it out.
A flicker of motion caught her attention, and she saw that another of the rodents was moving slowly towards her. The warrior at her feet stopped struggling and made a ceremonial bow to this new figure, though his paw remained latched to his club where Judy's paw held it. The newcomer was dressed in a flowing skirt of grass fibers, dyed in bright colors and arranged to flutter artfully as she walked. Definitely a she, with hips like those, Judy noted; besides the skirt she wore a fantastically carved wooden mask. Her eyes where they peered through the mouth of the demonic visage were tiny obsidian flecks.
The tiny priestess (or witch doctor, or hougan, or whatever she was, Judy thought) twirled a carved staff as she approached. Judy's eyes were drawn to it, staring at the complex carved patterns and inlaid tiny gemstones that covered its surface. The patterns seemed to swirl and grow within her vision, time slowed down as she watched the staff bob to and fro in the rodent's tiny paws. Stopping before the prostrating warrior, she spoke a few hushed words to him in their language. "Inta enkal, nanparka." he replied, bowing to her and pulling his cudgel free of Judy's unresisting toes. He leaned on it, and kept a wary eye on Judy, but didn't move to hit her again.
"Come, child of the stone trees." the priestess spoke to Judy this time, in a pidgin dialect of Meowlay, beginning to scramble up Judy's bound legs to stand in front of her face. "Put aside your anger, there is no need for it here." As she climbed, she continued to slowly twirl her staff, the patterns shifting and entrancing Judy, making her thoughts unwind and her breathing slow. Once at the top of Judy's bound calf, and directly in front of her slack muzzle, she asked "Why don't you start at the beginning, and tell Ashani all your troubles?" Judy felt her eyelids growing heavy, and she started to speak without really meaning to, the words just spun out of her as the arabesque patterns shifted endlessly along the shimmering wooden pole.
"All the trouble started this morning, when the plane lost an engine."
--- TWELVE HOURS EARLIER ---
The elderly turboprop airplane cruised slowly above the endless green expanse of rainforest canopy, like a gunmetal grey albatross sailing above green ocean waves. At one open side door, Judy held on to the overhead straps and leaned out, just enough to let the wind stream through her fur and relieve the heat. It whistled as it passed over and around the bright orange flight helmet that she wore, and tugged at the sleeves of the flight jacket tied around her waist. Her chest was bare, except for the ballistic armor vest she always wore.
Nikko's voice crackled in one ear. "Much as I enjoy the show Carrots, you want to knock that off? I'm damn sure not gonna be leaping out after you if you lose your grip." She rolled her eyes as she swung around by the strap to face him. He was still strapped into his seat reading, even after four hours in the air. Didn't he have to piss? She stuck her tongue out and blew a wet-sounding raspberry, but did as he asked, moving instead to a steel case, waist-high to her and painted a drab green and stenciled with a faded camouflage pattern. She plucked at the heavy straps securing it to the deck, and then double-checked the electronic readout on its upper surface. Green lights glowed softly in their recessed LED sockets. Good, looked like the power cells were coping with the heat...
From where he was sitting on the bumper of a palletized off-road vehicle, Finn shouted over the roar off the engines. "You not strong enough to hold on 'ta Judy anyway! You just drop her and 'den I got 'ta jump out after you both!" He had his earpiece in, but wasn't bothering to use it to speak to them, preferring to bellow.
"Thanks buddy," Nikko snickered into his mic, "always glad to know that you're here for use." He reached up to his radio headset, changed the channel, and asked "What's the radar situation, Money? Steef right about that hole in the coverage?"
Switching frequencies to follow the conversation, Judy heard the hacker's voice mid-report. "--this is so far outside my skillset that it might as well be you doing it. Six hours of training from a drunken expat muskrat is not going to make me into an ELINT specialist."
"Look, at least I got you those six hours." the fox grunted in reply. "That's gotta be better than just the instruction manual, right? You can't even read the damn thing, it's printed in Beagali!"
"Ehhh, whatever, as far as I can tell we're in the clear. Got a few blips here and there, but they were all commercial band radio sets." A pause, then Money continued "According to GPS, we passed the neutral zone about twenty minutes ago, if there were any Purrmese air defense units out here then we would have found out about it."
"Okay then," Nikko sighed, "let's hope that they're all busy playing grabass with their counterparts across the border. Just keep doing what you're and we'll be back home before you know it." He released the intercom radio switch and stared back down at his tablet again.
Judy chuckled, leaning back out the door as she remembered a few missions just like this back in the good old mercenary days. This part of the plan had actually been her idea, taking a page from the good old days of Tiger Transport. ZIA was a generous paymaster back then, and hadn't been overly concerned with their means and methods, just as long as the cargo went through...
She was still looking down at the passing jungle canopy, when a warm drop of fluid slapped wetly into the side of her muzzle. She glanced up toward the starboard engine, another droplet splattering on the right lens of her sunglasses as she saw a stream of dark fluid streaming away into the void.
She keyed her microphone to report what she was seeing. "Think we have a hydraulic leak on the right engine. Are there any warning lights in the cockpit?"
"For Lion's sake, Judy, it's been nothing but lights and sirens this whole time." Money complained. "Every time he just flips one switch or another and starts muttering in Catonese."
Judy was turning to head up to the cockpit and check in personally, when the engine's roar suddenly changed to a frantic staccato banging. The plane immediately lurched in the air, then started to sink towards the forest below. Sirens began to wailing on the bulkheads, and her headset was filled with frantic voices.
There wasn't enough time to get strapped in to one of the bulkhead seats, so she grabbed a double-armful of the heavy nylon cargo netting, suspended from floor to ceiling against the outer walls of the airplane. She wrapped her arms around it and locked her fingers together tightly, curling one ankle behind the other with another bundle of webbing between her thighs. It was almost like she was performing a Judoe joint lock, Judy thought grimly. The plane started to shudder as it collided with the upper layers of the trees. She shut her eyes tight, praying that whatever else happened, she wasn't left alive but crippled in the wreck.
----
Sunlight filtered into the cabin, dappling Judy's face and making her squint as it shone into her eyes. She slowly came back to herself, and uncoiled her aching arms and legs from the stands of nylon webbing where she had ridden out the crash. It had wrapped around her body, probably cushioning her from the worst of the impact, though she felt like she had just gone through twelve rounds of MMA combat with a hyena.
"Nikko? Finn? Can you hear me?" she croaked, blinking as she tried to make sense of the plane's disarrayed cargo hold. After a moment, she realized that what she had taken for the floor was actually the ceiling, most of the cargo had torn loose from its moorings and lay scattered throughout. The plane was shattered, daylight streaming in through a huge tear in the side.
She could see a rolling river; it crossed the small clearing they had crashed into before vanishing back into the dark recesses of the jungle. She stripped the helmet off her head and let her ears unfurl, pins and needles shooting through them as the blood began to flow again. Underneath a chorus of creaking metal, dripping fluids, and the low crackle of unseen fires, she could hear the groans of mammals in distress.
Following the first voice she heard, she started to dig through the scattered debris, finding Finn on his back, buried beneath a heavy heap of water filters that had come free from their shipping container. He groaned softly, turning one eye to face her, the other swollen shut underneath a welter of dark blood. His horn on that side had been splintered, but that had probably saved his skull from taking the impact against the metal.
She knelt beside him, paws moving down his body, probing gently to seek any hidden injuries before she tried to move him. He winced as she felt around one thigh, then grinned and panted "Watch 'da paws, Judy, you gonna make Nikko jealous." She grinned, despite everything, and said "You'd like that, wouldn't you? I can't reach your other leg, can you get free of that pile?"
He shut his one remaining eye and leaned forward, pulling himself partially free of the rubble as she tugged at his jacket, helping him along; soon he was on hooves and knees amidst the spilled cargo. He breathed heavily, and flexed his limbs, testing them as Judy patted experimentally at the deep gash on his forehead. Thankfully, it seemed to have stopped bleeding by itself.
Leaving Finn to clean himself up, she continued forward into the darkness of the cargo hold, looking for Nikko. Her foot almost slipped sideways out from under her; when she looked down there was a slowly spreading puddle of crimson goo underfoot. She looked back up and squinted, trying to make out shapes in the gloom.
Ahead of her, against the cockpit bulkhead, a large steel-sided crate had come to rest against the wall; more of the dark stains were splashed out to either side. With horror Judy realized that where the heavy case was lying, Nikko had been sitting in his jump seat.
"Oh Gods, Nikko!" she croaked as she hurried forward, grabbing onto the packing case and hauling it away from the wall with a screech of grinding metal. Another torrent of red slime cascaded out from it, spilling over her boots and dripping through the metal mesh that used to make up the ceiling. Cautiously, she peered around the corner of the crate, not knowing how bad it was but having to know.
In the darkness, a pair of green cyber-eyes softly glowed, focusing on her and blinking twice. "Heya Carrots," Nikko panted, "glad to see you again. There wasn't much air left in here before you came along."
"Nikko? You're alive in there? I saw all this red goo, thought you got squashed!" She tugged again, moving the crate a little further and letting a little more light shine behind it. She saw him lick his chops, then grimace. "Persimmon jelly. Always hated the stuff."
As he struggled free of the restraint harness, Judy's memory flashed, recalling when she had idly inspected the cargo as they prepared for takeoff. She remembered this case, 500 liters of preserved fruit pulp, sealed into its lined packing case with a thin sheet of plastic. That had been the side that hit Nikko, she reasoned, the plastic tore and drenched him in jelly, but otherwise leaving him unharmed.
She shook her head in disbelief at his luck, and left him to get himself untangled. She had to keep moving forward and get into the cockpit. It had originally been up a steep flight of stairs, but now was at the bottom of a twisted metal crater. She carefully climbed down the twisted metal frame, and crawled through the ruined hatchway on all four limbs.
----
Closer to their point of impact, the noise of the fires was louder, and she could smell burning kerosene on the breeze that came in through the shattered windscreen. Glancing over to the pilot's chair, she saw that he was long dead. A jagged shard of steel punched up through his chest and pinned him to his seat. She shuddered, and closed his staring eyes with one paw. That done, she turned to find Money was upside-down, still strapped into his seat at the navigator's bench. Holding two fingers to his throat, she carefully felt for a pulse.
There it was, rapid and faster than it should have been, but steady. As gently as she could, she unbuckled him and lowered his unconscious form to the deck. She bent over him, searching for any major injuries, seeing him twitch away from her paws as she felt down his right arm. Looks like the old break had snapped again...
Another puff of smoke wafted past her nose, and she realized that the background crackle of the flames had grown, it was now a soft roaring sound that drowned out the rest of the jungle's noises. "Shit," she muttered, scooping Money up in a fireman's lift and crawling for the exit, "we don't have much time before it reaches the fuel tanks."
At the twisted passageway into the rest of the plane's space, she set him down, and shouted "Finn, come here and give me a hand, Money's hurt and I can't drag him up without making it worse." The big Troll trotted up to the hole, and slipped one oversized arm down to where the unconscious hacker lay. Judy held the broken limb in place while Finn carefully pulled him up, carrying him aft like a cub in its parent's arms. She scrambled up after, catching Nikko by one sticky shoulder and grunting "Fire's getting close. We gotta get out of here before the fuel tanks blow."
"Shit," Nikko groaned, "all of our gear was stowed in the under-floor lockers. You think we have the time to get it?"
"Doubt it." Judy replied. "Fifty thousand liters capacity in this bird and it's getting hot out there. We might not even be able to salvage the cargo before it blows."
"Yeah, no, that's not an option. If we lose that case, we may as well just stay in here and wait for the fireworks." He turned and raced back to where it was still strapped in place on the ceiling, calling for Finn to look for anything they might be able to use to cut the straps. Judy stood, popped the knots in her back, and followed along to help.
Under a pile of spilled electronic components, she spied a bit of orange, digging through the pile she pulled out a notched but serviceable fire axe. Turning to where Nikko and Finn stood struggling with the straps holding it, she gave a sharp whistle, and then sprinted forward with the axe at the ready. Nikko and Finn barely had time to realize what she intended to so, and they braced themselves underneath the crate to catch it.
Judy took a flying leap, bounding upwards and bringing the axe blade around in a whistling chop at the tensioner. It severed the heavy-duty nylon bands with a 'TWANG', and the cargo container began to descend as the crisscrossed material slid apart beneath it. Finn grunted, and Nikko squawked at its sudden weight in their arms, but to their credit they didn't let it fall.
Landing with a heavy clatter of spilled machine parts, Judy swung the axe down into a wooden crate, and went to help them. Between the three of them it took only a few moments to haul the heavy case out the torn side of the plane, to the spot in the grass where Money lay in a fetal curl.
The fire was roaring now, it was going to blow at any minute, Judy bent down and scooped up the unconscious hacker, thankful that he was uncommonly skinny for a badger or for an Ork. She stood, back creaking at the exertion, and saw Nikko scrambling out of the plane with her axe clutched in one paw. In the other, he held a few odds and ends of salvage; he was shouting something that she couldn't make out over the crackle of the flames.
She turned, and started to run from the burning plane, it seemed like she had barely covered any distance before a 'WHOOMPF' resounded behind her The backs of her ears were bathed in the wave of heat as the fuel tanks finally ruptured, turning the smoldering wreck into a blazing inferno. Judy spared one glance over her shoulder, remembering a temple in a jungle valley far away, before she turned back and staggered onwards with Money over her shoulders.
----
As the sun rose above their clearing, Nikko sat on top of the metal case, watching the grass shrivel and turn black in the burning airplane's heat. Money's head rested in his lap, still unconscious despite Nikko and Judy's best attempts to rouse him. Nikko worried about that, the badger could have a hemorrhage or a fractured skull, but there was almost nothing that they could do to treat him. He shifted his tail a little, holding it up and using it to keep the sun off Money as he lay there.
Finn reemerged into the clearing, carrying two more young trees neatly cut off at the base of their trunks. Judy came up to him with another length of creeper vine, and they worked together to lash the new logs onto the framework of an improvised raft. It wasn't much, but it would hopefully be enough to get them further down out of the highlands, where a more serviceable boat might be 'acquired'. She tugged savagely at the vines, their sap was an irritation on her fur, and she had stepped into an ant nest on the way back. There were still a few crawling around in her boot, which tickled in an even more irritating way.
Finn held the cord in place while she finished the lashings, then asked "Think it's ready for a test?" Judy shoved it experimentally, it flexed but held, the vines holding taught where they had been wrapped around and back against each other. She nodded, and said "Let's try it without the crate first, but I think it's good to go. Still think that having been in the Junior Rangers was a waste of time?"
Finn shrugged his shoulders, "You ask me any other day, I say 'Yeah.' But today it was handy, no mistake." He dragged the raft off the bank of the river, moving out into the current until he was waist deep. He pushed down experimentally, inspected how far it went down into the water, and then scrambled on top of it. The tree trunks creaked, but the raft held steady in the current, slowly drifting downstream while he cautiously moved from side to side, testing its balance in the water. He nodded again in satisfaction, and jumped back into the river to drag it back to the shore.
In the meantime, Judy had trudged back to the cargo case where Nikko was still cradling the unconscious Money. She checked his pulse again, shook her head. "It's lower than before, though it might just be the adrenaline having worn off. Has he moved on his own, even a little bit?"
Nikko shook his head, and answered "Only a few twitches, usually if I accidentally touch the arm." He reached out a paw and brushed it against the splinted limb. Money shuddered, and twisted on Nikko's lap, but that was all. Nikko looked back up at the gunbunny and asked "Is there anything we can do for him? Other than get him to a hospital?"
Judy shook her head, "Tribal mammals used to perform trepanation, apparently it would sometimes work, since the skulls that they found had healing around the sites. But I have no idea how they would do it, and in any case we don't have any kind of tools for the job." She gestured over to where the Troll was pouring water out of one oversized boot and added "Unless you want to have Finn give it a go with the axe?"
"Not funny, Judy." Nikko sighed. He leaned over Money's face, and peeled one eyelid back. The pupil contracted in response to the noonday light, but there was no other reaction. Nikko tried the other side, just in case, then gently wormed his way out from underneath the badger and hopped down from the top of the box.
Finn had trudged up, dripping slightly. He bent down and touched Money's forehead with one finger tip. Finn's bared his teeth and his eyes screwed shut in concentration, but he slumped in defeat a moment later. "Sorry Nikko, I try to call 'da sprits for help, but nothing. I never was good at healing..."
Judy shaded her eyes with one paw, glancing up at the sun to measure its progress across the sky. It wasn't exactly at the zenith, but it was close, say a half hour before noon. She grunted, then turned to Nikko and Finn, who were standing over Money and discussing possible ways to temporarily boost Finn's magical prowess. "Guys, hate to break up the party, but we're gonna have about four, maybe five hours of daylight left. I suggest that we get a move on, if we want to find somewhere safe to camp at the end of the day."
Nikko nodded to her, saying "Sure, Judy. You're our expert on non-concrete jungles." Stooping, he gathered up the few bits of salvage from the wreck, then helped Judy to lift Money off the chest again. Finn bent down and picked it up, letting out a pained grunt as he stood up again. "Lift with the legs, Finn, not the back." Nikko quipped, and the big Troll shot him an angry glare before stomping off with the heavy steel container. Onto the raft, a few loops of vine to secure it, then Money went back on top of it.
"Wish we had a pillow or something," Judy muttered, as she cinched the cords tight against the wood. "I don't know what it's going to do to have his head resting on the metal, getting jostled every time it moves."
"Nothing to do for it," Nikko replied, as he carried the three long bamboo poles aboard. Finn had to range further away from the clearing to find them, but Judy had insisted that it would be worth it, they needed something light but strong to use as push-poles.
Finn took his personal one from Nikko, and leaned into it as he pushed them away from the back. The raft stuck for a second in the shallow water, but soon broke free and drifted into the current, picking up speed as it found the main channel. Within a minute's time, the clearing and their last link to civilization vanished behind them, and the green walls of the rainforest closed in around them.
-----
They quickly fell into a routine as they punted their way downstream. Finn, with his advantage in height and strength, was in charge of the tiller. Nikko took the left side of the raft, and Judy was in charge of the right. Eventually, after enduring Nikko's badgering, she grudgingly agreed to call it the starboard side. Finn refused to play along when he was asked to call his section the poop deck...
The jungle crept by slowly, and they had to watch for any obstructions in the water that might snag and damage something important. Nikko and Judy used their bamboo poles to shove the raft out of the way, and they would drift past the tree trunk or half-submerged boulder as Finn worked to keep the raft going in a forward course. The first few obstacles were occasioned by much shouting and confusion, which slowly gave way to caution and careful work, with more practice they eventually grew relaxed enough to let the sides of the raft scrape gently against the rocks.
The sun crept lower in the sky, dipping behind the canopies of the trees at first, then slanting downwards so that it was blocked in the greater part by the heavy trunks and thicker branches. What had originally been a blazing spotlight over them was now reduced to a dappled glow, which left deep patches of shade that they cruised along underneath.
One of the items that Nikko had managed to carry away from the plane before it had been destroyed was, improbably, a small mechanical music box. When you wound it and flipped up the cover, a tiny painted figurine of a decades-old gazelle pop star would dance on a little stage, its limbs jerking and jittering on nearly invisible metal rods. Judy had ribbed Nikko at first, of all the useless junk to bring along this had to be the most perfectly useless thing imaginable.
He had flushed with embarrassment, and hotly countered that he thought it might have been a case of emergency equipment or first aid supplies, but excuse him for not checking this as the PLANE was exploding around them! He had continued to sulk afterwards, no matter how she tried to bait him into conversation. But as the afternoon wore on, leaving nothing but the sounds of babbling water and whining insects, the silence eventually got to her. When a stretch of open water gave her a bit of spare time, she set down her punting pole, and went over to the corner of the cargo case where Nikko had stashed the music box.
Scooping it up, Judy found the key on the bottom side, and wound it up. She set it up on the lid of the case, wrapping Money's undamaged left arm around it to keep it in place. The song slowly plinked out as Judy took up her position at the raft's side, and soon each of them was humming along as it repeated.
When the spring finally wound down, and the silence closed in around them again, it was Finn who picked it up to carefully wind it again. Nikko had grinned at his old friend, who shrugged and went back to punting as the song looped around to the beginning once again. Soon, the humming was replaced by snatches of song, as the three searched their memories and tried to remember the half-forgotten lyrics of the once-popular tune.
"Big as your ears are Finn," Judy cackled, "I can't believe you misheard that part of it. It's not "let her out so she can breeze", that doesn't even make sense! It's supposed to go 'let her out so she can breed'."
"Dunno about that Judy." Nikko commented, as he lazily pushed the raft further out into the main channel, avoiding a snarl of thick vegetation on his side. "That's a little racy, even for her. I thought it was supposed to be 'let her out so she can dream'?"
"You two are impossible, you know that?" She stamped her foot in irritation, and then belted out the verse at the top of her voice.
"There's a She-Wolf in your closet, let her out so she can--"
Whatever came next was left uncertain, as a deep rumbling growl from the bank cut Judy's solo off in mid-verse. All three mammals spun towards the source of the noise; a huge scaly head was protruding from behind an uneven pile of mud and leaves on the river's bank. Pitch black eyes with vertically slit golden pupils stared out at them, and the creature hissed again in anger at their intrusion on territory.
"Judy, what the fuck is that thing?!?" Nikko hissed, his tail fluffed up behind him in an unconscious display of fear.
"Cocodrile." she whispered back, kneeling on the raft's deck with her bamboo pole held in a two-handed grip like a Zweihander sword. "That one's a female, I think. They, uh, they get bigger than the males."
Finn slowly reached down to the deck and snatched up the axe in one paw as he stared back at the angry predator. "It looks pissed." he muttered, as he worked the punting pole frantically with his other paw, trying to steer them away from the nest.
Judy kept both eyes on the beast as she whispered to Nikko. "You got anything else in your bag of tricks that might get us out of this mess?" He rapidly patted at his pockets, felt around in one and came up with a small cylinder; she recognized it as a self-lighting magnesium flare.
"This any use?" he asked, at her nod he scuttled up behind her on the raft's deck to place it in her outstretched paw. They were floating immediately past the big reptile's nest now, and she could smell the cloying stink of it, the ammoniac reek of its dung overlaid with the rotting flesh stench of its breath. From this angle, Judy could see the rest of its huge body, where it curled around the mud nest and hid most of its bulk in the riverside brush. She remembered that was how they took care of their young, remaining to guard them for months until the babies hatched in the monsoon season. Maybe if they drifted past quietly, it would leave them alone? It was worth a shot...
Her hopes were shattered as it surged forward, plowing into the water behind them, disappearing for a moment under the surface before its eyes and snout reemerged. Finn didn't wait for her command, but tossed her the axe and grabbed his punting pole. With powerful strokes, he started pushing them faster and faster down the river, while Nikko frantically ran from one side of the bow to the other to steer them away from obstacles.
In the middle of the raft, Judy weighted her options. The beast wasn't smart, but it was powerful and hormonally driven to defend its territory. With a firearm she could have blown the back of its head out as it came in for the kill, but in melee her chances were dire. She had to keep it at bay somehow; her discarded punting pole gave her an idea.
She snatched it up, and slammed the end she had been holding butt-first against the axe's blade. It split down the middle, nearly gouging into her fingers; she turned the bamboo ninety degrees and chopped another perpendicular gash into it. She quickly threaded the flare into the gap, bent the bamboo back around the fiberboard tube, and lashed it into place with the last scrap of creeper vine left over from building the raft.
Reversing the bamboo pole, she loosened the plastic cap over the end, exposing the phosphorous striking surface beneath. If the beast surfaced and came at them, she would whip the improvised fire-spear against the steel case to light it, then try to jab it in the eye or the mouth. Despite everything, a feral grin started to work across her muzzle, this was going to be one hell of a fight!
Finn had just pulled in his pole for another stroke when it was wrenched backwards, nearly pulling him off his balance and into the water. He let it go with a shout of alarm, dove for the axe where it lay at Judy's feet. As he reached out for it, the raft bucked in the water, knocking them all off balance and pushing the raft along even faster. Finn scrabbled for the blade, but it had come to rest almost over the edge of the platform. The Cocodrile slammed into the raft's stern with another jolt, and he watched as it fell into the water, disappearing with a soft 'plop'.
Cursing, he scrambled to his feet, eyes darting back and forth, scanning for the reptile in the murky depths. He began to work his fingers in complex patterns, following his years of training in the shamanistic arts to draw power from the environment, power that he could use for combat magic. Tiny flickers of green light began to swirl around him, and he started to softly chant in a forgotten language, waiting for his opportunity to strike...
Nikko had abandoned trying to steer the raft, and was now holding tight to Money, trying to keep him from falling off the cargo case as it bucked beneath them. Glancing over his shoulder, he saw that the river was entering another clearing. It widened as it ran out from under the trees, but now there were more rocks directly ahead of them, and the current was becoming swifter as the river's depth reduced. He dragged Money down off the steel platform and squatted on his chest, holding him in place by sitting on him while he braced himself with the long pole against his shoulder.
The rock caught the far end of the pole and jabbed it hard against Nikko, but he grunted and pushed back, turning the raft away from the boulder with inches to spare. As soon as he had regained his balance on the raft, he saw another obstacle, this time a huge pile of flood-washed debris in the crook of a fallen tree. With a snarl he leaned forward and braced for the impact...
Judy spotted a glimmer of light from the water an instant before the Cocodrile surged out of it. It came up roaring its challenge, a prehistoric bellow that resonated with millions of years of prey survival instincts. She wanted to run, to scamper away and find a safe burrow to hide in. This was worse than being stalked by another mammal; the beast was a primeval horror, a sixty-five million year old killer just waiting to get its jaws around her and swallow her whole.
She shook her head, trying to clear the animal fear that threatened to overwhelm her, thinking of how she was the only thing between it and the defenseless Money Badger behind her. She screamed in fury back into its jaws, and whipped the flare around in a wide arc. It scratched along the steel side of the cargo container, leaving a deep furrow in the paint, before coming to life with a cough and a bitter whiff of burning sulfur.
Quickly, she carried the stroke through, slapping the beast in its muzzle with the fiery end, shoving it into the wrinkled hide where it would burn into the flesh beneath. The beast hissed, dodging away from her weapon as best it could, before coming onwards again. Judy brought the flare down across its snout this time, the burning end sending a gout of white-hot magnesium sparks into its nostrils. It reared back, howling in pain, and she took the opportunity to quickly follow up with a jab towards its elbow joint. The flare sizzled as the water boiled away beneath it, and another patch of armored scales burned away beneath the onslaught. The air was redolent with the smell of overcooked meat, and the stink of burning metal.
From behind her, Judy heard Finn chanting, summoning power from the natural world to strike out at the reptile. He bellowed "DUCK!" and she threw herself down onto the wooden platform, over her head a brilliant green lightning bolt arced. The flare of the Mana Bolt dazzled her, when her vision cleared again she could see the Cocodrile was lying stunned, it's broad head halfway out of the water and resting on the raft. Its eye slowly opened, the pupil focused onto her, but it had had enough for one day. Hissing, it backed down into the water, disappearing beneath the small waves.
"That's right! Go back to your shitty little nest, and don't you EVER think of messing with Judy Nails again!" she shouted, the adrenaline surging through her veins in the moment of triumph. Behind her, she heard Finn collapse in exhaustion, the drain of the spellcasting having rendered him nearly unconscious. Torch in hand, not willing to turn her back on the skulking monster, she called back over one shoulder "How're we doing Nikko? Smooth sailing ahead?"
"Oh sure," he groaned, "For the next little bit it’s great. Then we hit the waterfall." She blinked in surprise, had he said waterfall? Glancing back over her shoulder, she saw a rising plume of mist, and over the sputtering roar of the flare at the end of her bamboo rapier she could hear a deeper roaring. The current was building speed, racing forward towards the precipice, Judy realized that there was no way they could stop the raft in time, even if they had the tools to brace it against the water's momentum.
Making up her mind, she tossed away her torch and ran to where Nikko still sat astride Money's chest. She grabbed him by his collar, and started to tug him towards the raft's rear side. "We've got to get on the back end, we've got to get behind that fucking steel coffin or it'll pile-drive you into the bottom!" Nikko didn't understand, but he did as she ordered, dragging Money aft as Judy started tugging Finn into position. They all huddled together behind the heavy cargo container and clung to each other as the raft sailed over the edge of the falls, dropping into a boiling cauldron twenty meters below. As the water crashed into her, and she crashed into it, she had just enough time to take one gulp of air before she was pulled down into its depths.
----
Judy yawned, and continued sleepily. "Thas' about it. Went into the drink, next thing I know we're on the bank. Don't know where that befrigged casket went. T' hell with it..." She trailed off, not knowing what else to say. Instead, she just stared at the priestess's staff, wondering what pattern was going to come up next as it slowly revolved.
"This case, it is a city thing?" the priestess asked. "You carried it into the jungle, went to much trouble to secure it. What does it hold?"
Judy hesitated for a second; this wasn't something that she was supposed to talk about. But as the patterns danced on the little magician's staff, she wavered, and then said "It's a cryo-suspension pod. There's a princess inside it." She giggled, that was a funny word. Princess...
From his tree, Nikko was making a lot of noise, but someone must have gone over and shut him up again. Judy didn't like the thought of that, she wasn't supposed to let people do mean things to Nikko. She blinked, then shifted in her bindings, trying to get a little more comfortable where she sat. The priestess was almost pitched off Judy where she stood, and her staff went tumbling down out of Judy's line of sight. Its hypnotic influence gone, Judy realized that it was now full on night; she must have been talking for hours.
"Oh, for fuck's sake, did you really just put the whammy on me?" she snarled, struggling in earnest this time. Her tiny inquisitor dove for the ground, her mask coming off and tumbling away as she rolled across the muddy bank. "Yes, yes, I use the Talking Stick on you, that why we call it that." she huffed, getting to her feet and flicking at the grime that had spattered across her vestments. The warrior came up, her ritual mask in one paw, he offered it to her with an obsequious bow. She snatched it up and fixed it in place, but it was a little lopsided and the effect on Judy was less awe-inspiring this time. "Stop struggling or you hurt yourself. We let you go at dawn any way."
Judy halted her frenzied attempts to loosen the cords, staring down at her captor. "Let us go? Then why did you bother to capture us in the first place? You tie us all up, brainwash me and debrief me under hypnosis, you know that's a war crime right?"
The rat priestess tilted her head quizzically. "War crime? You say we at war?" she squeaked at Judy. "If we at war, then you prisoners instead of guests! Prisoners go to sacrifice mound, and become tiki skull! You still want war with us!?!" she squeaked in outrage.
"Ugh, never mind, no we don't want war with you." Judy muttered. A helicopter gunship loaded with napalm rockets, now that was something she did want, but there was no sense mentioning that just now. She forced herself to take a breath, let it out and continued in a more measured tone. "Look, our friend is badly hurt. We're stuck in the jungle with no food, no shelter, nothing but a fifty kilogram steel sarcophagus with some high muckety-muck's daughter frozen inside of it." Nikko started to make more noise; from the muffled tones she imagined that they had stuck a gag into his mouth.
"So right now," she continued, "we're out of options. We're in your power, and you can either help us, or turn us loose to die of starvation or disease or another big damn Cocodrile." Looking down, she saw that the priestess was paying attention, one hand on her muzzle as she weighted Judy's words.
"I'm thinking that maybe there are things that we can do for you." Judy hunched forward, moving her forepaws like the pans of a scale with the little bit of slack that she could manage. "Maybe you need some heavy lifting done, maybe there are more reptiles out there that need clobbering. Maybe you've got some enemy tribe that needs an attitude adjustment?" she offered, with a disarming smile. "Could be useful to have three big mammals at your beck and call, they'd say you must be a pretty powerful leader to command us."
That sealed the deal, Judy knew it as she watched the tiny black eyes narrow to eager slits, and the paw at her muzzle start to furiously comb at the fur. 'Someone has a score to settle,' she thought, 'and we're going to be the doomsday weapons that do it.'
"Outsider, swear your loyalty to me, Ashani of the Black Hills tribe! Your warriors obey you, and you will obey me, yes? I will heal your fallen one with root and mojo, I swear it, if you pledge yourself to me!" She rubbed her paws together in savage glee. "Oh yes, Bishwa. One day soon you know that Ashani is best! You so smug with your Speaking Stick, it just a copy of mine! But soon I put your skull on the tiki pile, oh yes--" She broke off, and squealed orders to her tribe, Judy was shocked to see dozens of loincloth-clad rats pouring out of the undergrowth. They had been perfectly concealed within it; she hadn't seen or heard them this whole time.
The rodents scurried up her body, nibbling through the cords and pulling them from her limbs in coordinated order. Within seconds, she was free, and she rolled over onto her side, her body unable to respond as muscles cramped from long immobility. Summoning what control she could, Judy crawled forward on shaking paws and knees, to where Ashani stood. She offered one fingertip, and Ashani grasped it between both of hers as she muttered a few phrases in her own tongue. Satisfied, she released Judy's digit and demanded "What you like to eat? We untie your warriors and go to village, tonight we feast!"