Hell or High Water Read Free

savenger gangs they sought.
    The White Leech. Grandmother Sun, help us…
    “Seyusth is a powerful shaman, but woefully ignorant regarding the Sodden Lands.”
    “All right, shaman. Follow me; I know who you’re searching for.”
    They trekked beneath shrouding canopies of leaves and low-hanging lianas, over fallen logs and rotten fungi, through brambles and ferns glistening with condensation and sticky secretions. Seyusth slipped through without effort; thorns and foliage ran off him like water. Ameyanda, for all her skill, had a harder time. More than one scrape or sting brought a grunted curse, and her resentful gaze on the lizardman’s back nearly set his vest to smoldering.
    Embarrassment, more than pain, chafed her. It had been many years since Ameyanda had required anyone else to slow their passage through even the wildest jungle.
    “You are certain this White Leech is the band we seek?” Seyusth asked.
    “They’re the only border scavengers who make use of the dead-who-walk. Rumor and tales have it that their chieftain, Montirro the Thrice-Blind, learned his necromancies from the Koboto people themselves.”
    “I had heard that the Koboto sacrifice anyone who nears their lands.”
    “True.”
    “Then how—?”
    Ameyanda shrugged. “As I said, rumor and tales. But that the White Leech raises the dead is no mere tale. I know warriors who have seen it themselves.”
    “But can you be certain the White Leech is the only such band?” he pressed.
    “As certain as you can be that Issisk still lives.”
    The following miles passed without further conversation.
    ∗∗∗
    They crossed no border. No fences, no signposts; no mighty river or towering escarpment marked the transition.
    The trees grew sparser, their roots and branches more crooked. Fern leaves and winding briars gave way to hanging mosses and slender reeds. The lush scent of loam and sprouting things wafted away beneath the odor of rot and stagnant pools.
    The mud grew thicker, more greedy as it tugged at scaled or sandal-wrapped heels. Worse, it became vaguely caustic, just enough to cause irritation and a sanity-threatening itch.
    By the time they’d passed beyond the mud flats into the swamp proper, the filthy, lukewarm water was almost a relief.
    This far from the sea and the eternal hurricane dubbed the Eye of Abendego, the Sodden Lands were indeed simply a swamp, if a swamp with abnormally deep patches and river-like currents. Ameyanda knew that the further west they progressed, the worse it would become. Mires of impossible size, plague-bearing floodwaters as deep as any lake, a barrage of wind and rain so constant as to wear down the heaviest stone.
    They shouldn’t have to go so far—to the huntress’s knowledge, the White Leech operated primarily here in the outskirts—but even this was far from pleasant.
    When the shallow marsh began to develop waves high enough to slap at her chest, and a tepid, breath-like gust began to herald the promise of rain, Ameyanda pulled a face and reached out to stop her companion in his tracks. Already she had to raise her voice to be heard over the building winds.
    “We’re not going much farther in this without a raft of some sort,” she told him, running a hand through the stubble on her scalp. It itched, and retained a surprising amount of water, but she hadn’t had the opportunity to shave her head in days.
    Seyusth stepped aside to haul a thick vine from a nearby cypress. “Use this to secure yourself.”
    “Secure myself to wh-augh!”
    Ameyanda leapt backward, splashing murky water in all directions, as the shaman shifted. One moment, a lizardman; the next, over the span of seconds, his limbs drew into his body and thickened, his torso elongated, his snout lengthened. His pebbly flesh bulged in some spots, smoothed in others.
    Lurking in the water, eyes and nostrils protruding menacingly, was a full-sized crocodile.
    “Warn me before you do that!”
    The crocodile, in a very familiar and