Chapter Seven

Gunfire exploded over Methos' head, ringing in his ears as he gasped back into life. The bush around him was alive with muzzle flashes, the noise ear-splitting as a battle raged all around him. He lay still, squinting into the darkness while he tried to figure out what the hell was going on.

All he remembered was a soldier he hadn't recognized appearing out of the night and plugging him square in the chest. He hissed between his teeth as the pain of healing shot its final arcs through his chest -- for the second time that day -- and he really loathed dying. He ran a hand over his chest and the ruins of his white 'official' organization t-shirt. His chest was healed but the t-shirt was a write-off -- soaked with old blood and new after the battering he had taken today. It was going to be a bloody magnet for flies come morning.

All around him the gunshots shattered the night, punctuated by the shouts and screams of men falling and dying, running and crashing through the dark bush. Automatic rifle fire spat from in front of him and behind him, the harsh staccato seeming to vibrate through the ground and into his body. The air was an acrid blend of gun-smoke and death -- blood and shit and bodies destroyed by the deadly missiles hurtling through the air above his head.

Suddenly, Methos was aware of a noise close behind him, a sudden quick rustling in the undergrowth only audible in the brief stutter between one volley of shots and the next. He flipped onto his belly, looking instinctively towards the noise and came face to face -- almost nose to nose -- with Tembe, crawling commando-style along the ground. Shit.

The boy gasped as their eyes met, fumbling his weapon into position. "Mae de Deus...you were dead!"

Methos reached behind him and had his dagger in his hand before he could think, launching himself at the young soldier and pushing the automatic up and away from his face. They struggled, Tembe's fingers clawing desperately at Methos, his body twisting and heaving beneath Methos' heavier weight. Something dark and cold rose up inside Methos as he fought the boy on the ground and rational thought fell away in the space between one effortful grunt and the next.

He was instinct -- reaction -- nothing more. The overwhelming need to survive, to escape, was everything. He let it be everything, fighting nothing but death.

Then the thin blade was sliding easily -- too easily -- through the flesh of Tembe's throat, blood geysering over Methos' face and hands, hot and thick and coppery. The boy went limp beneath him, his wide brown eyes already beginning to glaze. Methos rolled away, spitting the blood from his mouth, vaguely aware that his stomach roiled. But he could not make himself regret his own survival -- never -- no matter what he felt about the way it was achieved. So, he kept moving, going through the motions of wiping the blade clean and replacing it in his harness, focusing fully on the task ahead.

The darkness around him was thick and deep, the moonlight barely struggling in vague patches through the dense forest. Amongst the trees, the soldiers were merely amorphous gray shapes, lit randomly by searingly bright muzzle flashes as they continued to fire at each other. But he was never going to get a better chance to escape, so it was now or never. Crouching low, Methos began to head away from the gunfire, the shouts and screams of men throwing their lives away for yet another damn fool cause. He had nothing to go on, no point of reference in the darkness, in the thick equatorial forest he could not even clearly see the stars. Away... that would have to be his only direction for now.

That the UNITA troop had been discovered by the tropos -- the FAA -- seemed certain enough, but Methos wasn't sticking around for introductions. There were no good guys in this war, just the latest players in the thousands of years of turmoil visited on this sad, beautiful country and all he wanted was to be well away from all of them. Methos hurled himself through the thick bush, monkey vine grabbing at his hair and ripping some out and, clamping his teeth over the short, sharp pain, he kept going.

If he could keep moving until daylight, still several hours away, he could work out where the hell he was and, hopefully, find his way out of here. He'd be okay if he could just keep moving in a straight line, though even that was hard enough in this terrain. He had to call on every buried instinct he possessed just to keep going at all. The forest rambled over slopes and hollows, down small kloofs crowded with ferns and vine and uncertain footing and up small hillsides dense with old growth and slippery underfoot with fallen leaves. Methos pressed on through it all, trying not to curse out loud each time he fell.

And he did fall, time and again, each time cutting his hands and knees and each time feeling the tedious burn of healing. He never thought of himself as particularly graceful, but he had, in five thousand years of walking the earth, developed a certain facility of motion that he took for granted ... most of the time. Not now though, not with the bloody bush conspiring to make him feel like an uncoordinated five year old every time a darker shade of darkness turned out to be an animal burrow, or a leaf-filled wash-away.

Too many years in cities, he decided as he picked himself up again. How many centuries had it been anyway, since he'd been out in the real wilds with only himself to count on? A couple at least. Too damn many. He slammed a reinforced iron door in his mind on the gleefully malicious voice that echoed, 'have you got soft, Brother?' and nailed the door shut for good measure. Fuck you all the way to hell, Kronos, Methos thought, you'd have been no better out here.

So, in a way, Methos thought later, it was Kronos' fault at least much as his own that things went the way they did.

He could blame his late and unlamented brother because he was still busy wishing Kronos to the seventh level of hell when the ground beneath his left foot crumbled and collapsed, bringing him jarringly to a halt as the foot fell into yet another stupid, fucking hole. And jammed tight. Fuck and double fuck. His foot had slipped too far inside the huge hole for him to even try to get his boot off and escape that way. And the ground had collapsed around his leg, shifting what felt like a medium sized boulder at the same time, meaning that to free himself he needed to shift the verdoemde thing. Fan-fucking-tastic.

He need to see more clearly where he was and what he was up against, it was the only way he was going to escape. Methos scrabbled in the many pockets of his long, loose shorts until he was rewarded by the rattle of a box of matches amongst the many bits and pieces he had stuffed in there. Don't leave home without them... He lit one, closing his eyes to avoid being blinded by the sudden flare of light. When he opened his eyes a second later, the flickering match light revealed his predicament all too clearly. He was standing next to a tall, young yellowwood, with his left foot firmly inserted down what looked to be some kind of animal burrow, judging by what he could see of it. And yes, it was a bloody big rock sitting on top of his foot. Better and better.... The match burned almost down to his fingers and he blew it out quickly, tossing the stub away.

At least he could see what he needed to do now. Shoving the matchbox deep into his pocket, Methos grabbed hold of the tree and tried to use it as leverage to pull himself out. And though he pulled until his hands bled and his foot swelled, the damn thing would not budge. The angle was bad and the rock was jammed tight, trying to pull himself out was clearly an exercise in futility.

He managed to slip his dagger from its sheath and, sitting awkwardly on the ground with his knee pressed into his chest, began to dig, plunging the blade deep into the earth to loosen it. His foot was swelling inside his boot, throbbing in time with his heart, sending bright, hot shafts of pain shooting up his leg. The weight of the rock pressing down on it must be impeding the healing, he thought as he pushed more soft earth out of the way. He could feel the sensations warring beneath his skin, setting his teeth on edge.

He bit down hard over the pain and kept digging. Slowly, the forest came back to life around him, the animals frightened into silence by his blundering progress, emboldened by the quiet. The crickets started up again with the ubiquitous background music of the bush, something, a toad or frog, he guessed, plop-plop-plopped across the leaf-carpeted ground and somewhere -- he hoped far away -- a leopard screamed. Basic, atavistic fear crawled briefly and coldly up Methos' spine and he shuddered. As if he didn't have problems enough ... at least whatever lived in the burrow wasn't at home. As pieces of luck went, it wasn't much, but at this point he was taking what he could get.

It was a slow process, but eventually his relentless digging began to pay off. For every handful of dirt he scooped away, about a third of it trickled back down into the hole he was making around his trapped leg. But, he was clearing it and he was fairly certain that his captors had several more important things to worry about than tracking him. Which was a good thing, he thought as he pushed even more soil up out of the hole, because his clumsy flight from the firefight would be easier to follow than a trail of breadcrumbs.

Still, that couldn't be helped now. As long as he could shift his foot from this bloody hole and get moving again, he could make a better attempt at anti-tracking when the light improved. Finding food and water might be useful too. His stomach was starting to think his throat was... well, perhaps it was better he didn't finish that thought.

At last most of the soil was shifted and all that lay between Methos and freedom was a boulder about the size of a small house. Well, he amended to himself, perhaps not as big as all that, but big enough and heavy enough to be damn hard to shift -- especially up hill. A thought struck him as he sighed heavily and let his head drop back, shrugging the knots from his shoulders, remembering something from his few, brief moments of light earlier.

He drew out another match from the box and lit it, looking upwards as he held it aloft. Yes, there it was -- he had remembered correctly. About halfway up the sapling was a straight, dead-looking branch about as thick as his wrist. It was high, but he should be able to reach it. He blew out the match, letting the darkness envelop him once more, the contrast almost disorienting him for a few moments. Then, snapping his concentration back into focus, Methos pushed up from the ground and stretched himself out full length along the tree trunk, reaching his hand as high as he could.

Damn.  He could feel his fingers curling around the side of the branch, but nowhere near enough to actually grasp the thing. Any minute now he was going to become seriously pissed. He blew the edge off his annoyance and centered himself with a slow, steady exhalation of breath and tried again. This was going to hurt.

He began by stretching himself full-length again, using his free leg to pull his trapped one taut -- so taut that the pain was making his breath come in short, tense sobs. He ignored it, clearing his mind until he was beyond it, in a place where the pain was far away, happening to someone who wasn't him. In the vacuum he could push beyond the pain, beyond the limits of muscle and sinew and as his fingers curled at last around the girth of the branch he was almost unsure whether it was a vision or reality. It was not until a jerk of his elbow tore the branch free and he collapsed to the ground, the pain rushing back into his conscious mind like a flood of acid, that he knew he had made it.

He gave himself a moment to recover; hauling deep, cleansing breaths in through his nose as the burning tide receded to throb in his buried foot. This wasn't over -- not nearly over yet. As soon as he could stand again, Methos unfolded himself from the ground and wedged the branch as far in under the rock as he could. He pushed the makeshift lever down as hard as he could, so hard his blood pounded in his ears, and finally the rock began to move.

It wobbled, tiny landslides of earth running away from the sides, just visible in the uncertain moonlight shifting through the leaves above. Methos pushed harder, pressing the hardwood towards the ground, pulling back on his foot at the same time. Atlast-atlast-atlast... it lifted an inch from the ground in which it was buried and he could drag his foot free and fall backwards, gasping and wiping the stinging sweat from his eyes. His foot, able to heal now that it was freed from its prison, burned and throbbed and burned until it was quiet at last.

Methos gathered himself as quickly as he could. It wasn't very likely, he thought, that the guerillas were tracking him, but likely enough to make hanging about a fairly poor option. His best bet was getting the hell out of there while he could, but he was exhausted, dehydrated and reasonably clueless as to his location. Water, and a safe place to rest until daylight, seemed the safest thing.

Of course, he still had to find those things.

It took him another hour of stumbling progress, but he managed to negotiate the thick bush without doing too much more damage to himself and trace his way back to water, using every sense but sight to track it down. He could have cried with relief as at last he felt the cool, damp air of nearby water caress his skin and smelt its faint mossy odor as he stumbled down a slight slope.

He fell to his knees beside the small stream and drank until his stomach sloshed coldly, wishing at the same time he had some way to carry the water with him. But it was the wet season, rains should be plentiful, although they had stayed away that day. So, even without having portable water, he wasn't going to be dying of thirst, which would have been high on his list of crappy ways to die, if he had such a thing.

Hunger still lurked like an unfed dog at the edge of a campfire but he did his best to ignore it. He would find something come morning, fruit or nuts -- once he could see it wouldn't be all that difficult to hunt up something that he could eat on the run. So, while his stomach still rumbled discontentedly, he needed desperately to rest. Rest now -- eat later, he told himself, ordering his belly to be silent. He pretended that it listened.

A massive fig tree loomed like a pale gray ghost in the darkness by the stream bed. The high, sculpted buttress roots curved like sheltering arms, creating small caves, open to the sky. Too tired to do anything else, Methos walked into one, sinking gratefully down into the thick mulch that carpeted the ground. He leaned into the smooth, dry bark that walled his shelter, curled up and let sleep flow over him.

And if he had dreamed, he could never remember it, save for the lingering sadness of things and people gone, long gone and gone too soon that was with him even as he woke with the first dawn light. He shook it off with the opening of his eyes.

The forest was still gray, leached of color as he opened his eyes, but so much better than the pitch-blackness of the night. Daytime sounds were already starting up and the koo-ka-roo of the bush doves in the tree above him was a familiar note in counterpoint to the other bush sounds of insects and animals, though not nearly as many as should have been.

He stood and stretched, joints popping and tight muscles easing into their usual relaxed readiness. He rolled his shoulders and let his head drop back, gazing up through the high leafy canopy of the fig tree. The massive tree extended all the way past its neighbors until it almost seemed to touch the sky, which was no longer black but a kind of bruised purple still dotted with a star or two peeking through the thick foliage above him. Methos grinned and launched himself up onto the lowest branch.

The climb wasn't easy, hauling himself from branch to branch, the pale bark was slippery with dew, and each handhold was a stretch to the next. He pushed up and up through the tree, disturbing a small band of monkeys and sending them chattering and scattering into the nearest trees. The branches grew thinner the higher he went, bowing under his weight as he stepped carefully from one to another. At last the light became brighter and he found himself almost at the top of the huge tree where it rose above the canopy.

Finally, Methos could see something other than trees and bush. Actually, he could still only see trees and bush, but it was from a different angle and now, at least, he could see more of the sky and get his bearings. He craned his neck far around to the right, balancing carefully in his precarious roost as he followed the lightening of the sky to where the sun boiled huge and red and low in the east. That was the direction he needed to follow. The stream beside the tree seemed to meander in that direction, so he swung down from the branches, coming down far more quickly than he had gone up, and began to follow it.

***

Methos moved quickly along the watercourse, walking in it wherever he could, hoping to confound anyone tracking him. He'd been going for a few hours now, stopping only to drink from the stream and eat when he came across a tall mongongo tree, its large brown fruit lying scattered on the ground. That had been a welcome discovery, practically the bush equivalent of an all-you-can-eat buffet.

He had scooped up several, using his knife to pare away the thick outer skin and cut the moist, date-like flesh away from the large nut inside. His mouth watered greedily as the scent of the sweet fruit teased his nose. The fruit was delicious and he ate as many as he could, but he wished briefly for a fire and the time to cook the kernels -- split open and roasted they were a real delicacy, as sweet and creamy as roasted cashew nuts and incredibly nutritious. He pocketed a couple of kernels anyway, on the off-chance that he made good enough time during the day to risk a fire that night.

A hundred, or even fifty years before, he knew that his chances of finding such a bounty would have been slim. Mongongo were a favorite of the native people and of the eland and elephant. But since the war, with the people driven away and almost all the large animals gone to feed hungry troops, the mongongo fruit lay uneaten. If there was some cosmic irony there, he wasn't going near it, he thought with a wry snort. He was just grateful not to be hungry anymore. He could have gone a long time without being reminded of what real, genuine hunger felt like and never missed it.

And so, he pushed on, vastly more energized and slightly more optimistic. While his progress in the night had been slow and clumsy, he knew that he had made better ground today, putting several miles between himself and his captors. He only hoped it would be enough. It was still several hours walk to the border, as near as he could figure it, more if he struck rougher ground or had to leave the stream because it became impassible. But he had to believe that if he could keep moving he would make it.

The ground sloped gently downhill most of the way and the stream's current pushed at his legs as he walked in it, almost as tiring as having to fight it. The rocks beneath his feet were slick with moss and more than once he had to stop, cursing vividly as his foot slipped and jammed toe-first into unyielding rock. He figured he'd broken his big toes at least once each. It was a damn good thing he healed fast, even for an Immortal.

He had just passed through a small ravine where the water dipped between walls of sheer rock, not high, but narrow, the sides so close together that he had to turn his shoulders sideways to negotiate it, when he had his first inkling that he was being followed.

It wasn't anything that he had any real evidence of -- not yet -- but all the same, that prickling at the back of his neck that he'd learned never to ignore, would not leave him. As he was turning to slip through the narrow ravine, a flock of birds rose suddenly from the bush a few kilometers behind him. It could have been a snake or some other predator that had disturbed them, he knew, but there was something just...wrong about it. He put the feeling to the back of his mind for the moment and hurried on.

He reached a wide still section of the water, maybe half an hour later, when the first shot rang out, smacking into the trunk of a tree just to his right. Reflexively, Methos dropped, diving to his left and landing on the muddy bank. Just as quickly, he pushed up from the ground and sprinted for the cover of the bush, leaving the stream behind. More shots followed him. Through the crashing of his flight through the trees he heard a shout and the shots stopped, as suddenly as they had begun. But he could hear the soldiers behind him, running, chasing him... closing in on him fast. His heart pounded in his ears, mixing with the pounding of his feet on the ground until all that filled his ears was the sound of his own urgency. If he thought for a second they'd just shoot him and leave him to die he'd have stopped right there, but the mere fact that they had come after him pointed to some other motive altogether.

He didn't know what it was they wanted and he didn't much care, but he didn't plan on sticking around to find out. They were gaining on him now, the forest crashed behind him, shouts ringing out from man to man as they closed in. He was fit and quick -- but the soldiers had the advantage of knowing the terrain. Still, he wasn't giving up yet.

A soldier in worn fatigues appeared in front of him, his weapon pointed high at Methos' chest. Oh fuck ... not again. Methos skidded to halt, leaves kicking up behind him, his hands raised high. Now he was giving up. At least ostensibly, and only for the moment, but for now, going with the flow seemed to be the smart option. He tilted his head to one side and dared a well-a-guy-had-to-try little shrug and half-smile.

The only response he received from Allessandro, since it was the rebel captain -- murdering prick -- who had his Uzi shoved into Methos' chest now, was to grasp Methos' shoulder and push him around so that his face collided fairly uncomfortably with the nearest tree trunk. With the muzzle of the Uzi shoved hard into the back of Methos' neck, Allessandro searched him, patting him down as expertly as a New York cop on a Saturday night.

It didn't take him long to ferret out the location of the dagger. Methos' heart sank to the level of his soggy boots. Now the shit was going to hit the fan, for sure. The captain pulled Methos' t-shirt up at the back and tugged the knife free, exclaiming under his breath. In another heartbeat, Methos was spun back to face Allessandro, finding his own blade at his throat. A breath hissed involuntarily.

"What kind of a doctor carries such a thing?" the captain demanded, pressing the blade closer to Methos' skin, a whisker from his carotid.

Methos raised his eyebrows and shrugged a little. "A well-prepared one?" he ventured, knowing there was no real explanation he could give the man. He prepared for the inevitable.

He didn't have to wait long, although he would have preferred about a hundred other things to the knee that slammed up into his groin. Fuck! He didn't have to fake the agony and the nausea as he sank to his knees, gasping and gagging and curling in over the pain that was never -- no matter how many times it happened -- any less excruciating. Methos breathed slowly over it; grateful beyond words as his body's healing washed it from him.

He kept up the fiction of being in terrible agony for as long as he could, enduring the snipes and chuckles of the soldiers as one by one the stragglers rejoined the troop. Methos stayed down, letting his body heal completely, feeling the rest draw the strength back into his muscles. He didn't stand until he was dragged to his feet.

The gun muzzle was back at his nape in an instant. "Hands at the back of your head," Allessandro barked.

Methos complied, linking his fingers and flexing his wrists as much as he could, hoping that the captain did not notice the maneuver. Apparently it went undetected; the next thing he knew, something that felt like nylon rope was being wrapped around his wrists, binding them tightly. Then something hard nudged him between the shoulder blades, propelling him forward.

"March!" Alessandro ordered.

Methos sighed and marched. This deja vu thing was really starting to piss him off.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 Continued in Chapter Eight      Back to Main Page          Back to Contents