(eng) Neal Asher by Africa Zero

Author:Africa Zero [Zero, Africa]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

the army of god and the sauraman

I was twenty metres up in the branches of a prairie elm—a splicing of elm, redwood, and stinging nettle—and so intent on collecting the microscopic seeds of the orchid that I didn’t notice the men until they were below me. As soon as I heard the voices I looked down and instantly became curious: I did not recognise the uniform, though it had parallels in the far distant past, and as far as I knew no-one on Earth had been taking slaves for at least a hundred years.

There were four men dressed in black, with skirted helmets of mirror metal on their heads, and rapid-fire projectile weapons in their hands. They were guarding a neck-yoked and manacled party of about twenty ragged men and women. These people were loaded down with equipment that I focused in on and identified as a variety of fuel-driven cutting implements. I watched them pass under the tree then after securing my sampling pack to a branch, I scrambled to the ground and followed.

The buzz of the chain saws located the group for me when for a short time I lost sight of them, and if that had not been enough the fall of a hundred-foot elm would have been. I sneaked in close and watched them from a ridge tangled with lianas and infested with poisonous spiders the size of apples. The creatures were tenacious, but after testing their fangs on my skin a few times they soon lost interest.

The slaves, now freed from their yokes but still manacled, were stripping the branches from the elm and cutting away the top shattered section. The guards had seated themselves at a vantage and were smoking something which, by the giggles, I figured was not tobacco. I settled down to watch, only mildly annoyed at the destruction of this fine tree. The loss of one or two of them would be no problem, but if these people went into wholesale lumber-jacking I knew I would have to do something. The tree orchid had only just managed to get a foothold here.

In the hour that followed they cut the tree into thirty-foot sections then split it into rough planks as thick as a man’s body. When these were stacked, one of the slaves approached the guardsmen. Something was said, perhaps about the work being completed, and one of the guardsmen rose and followed the slave back to the tree. When he got there he walked to one of the slaves who was lying on the ground, stood over him, and began shouting. This second slave slowly dragged himself upright and as he did so I noticed the other guardsmen had risen and were approaching also. When I turned my attention back to the first guard I saw him strike the slave in the belly with his weapon. I don’t know what came over me then. I should not have interfered. I rose from my bed of spiders and began walking down the slope.

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