Adventures
in the Lost World
Episode 1
Atawna and
the Lost World
Email:
Lespion@msn.com
Chapter
22 Melissa’s
Discovery
Melissa Gallant cursed softly as she forced hr way through
the heavy undergrowth. She was
following Lisha and James, the latter wielding a machete with deadly efficiency
as he slashed the thick vegetation from his
path. For all that it was still
heavy going and Melissa was bathed in her own
sweat.
They had lost whatever faint trail there had been several
hours ago and were simply forging on in the direction Ayashe might have been
taken, but they seemed to have run into a dead
end. Surely their quarry
couldn’t have come this way, the vegetation was simply too
thick.
He companions seemed to agree with
her. “This is no good,”
Lisha panted. “We have come
the wrong way. We might as well
go back to the main trail and start over.”
“I guess you’re right,” James
agreed. He looked up into the
treetops. “I wish I knew
where Atawna and Chara were.”
“Perhaps we’ll find them back at the main
trail,” Melissa said. She
knew that James was worried about the lovely young girl who carried his
child. He had good reason to
be, the forests of the Lost World were full of the most deadly
dangers. So far they had not
run into any of the strange creatures that lived here, but that did not mean
that the two girls hadn’t.
Let’s rest for a bit,” James
suggested. “There was a
bit of a stream back down the trail a couple of hundred
yards. Let’s go back there
and take a break.”
It seemed like a reasonable idea and the trio trekked
down the trail to where a small trickle of water splashed across the trail
they had made. Melissa looked
in the direction of the flow.
“I think there is a better place a little farther in,” she
said. Her sharp eyes had spotted
the glitter of water in between the sheltering leaves of the
forest. Perhaps there was a deeper
pool farther in where she could cool her aching feet.
She pushed through the
vegetation. Yes, there was something
here. Opening before her was
a deep dark pool surrounded by thick
forest. It seemed to be set in
a natural stone basin and overflowed into the small stream they had
seen. “This is more like
it,” she mused.
James came up beside
her. “Quite idyllic,”
he commented.
“Yes,” Melissa
agreed. Then her eyes
narrowed. “There’s
something on the other side,” she
said. Bending down she began
to untie her boots.
A few seconds later she pulled off her socks and set
her overheated feet into placid water.
“Ah,” she murmured, “this is
delicious.” She waded across
the pool. It wasn’t deep,
barely up to mid-thigh, but the cooling touch on her skin was incredibly
refreshing.
She stopped on the far side of the
pool. It was shrouded in thick
vegetation that went right down to the surface of the
pool. Carefully she parted the
green screen. “Ah,”
she murmured, “I thought so.”
In front of her was a dark hole that had been hidden by the vegetative
screen. Water flowed from the
cave into the pool in which she was
standing.
She pulled a little more of the vegetation out of the
way. “This is
interesting,” she said to Lisha, who had followed her across the
pool. She pointed to several
badly eroded marks on the stone arch of the cave
mouth.
“What is it?” the tall black Amazon
asked.
“Writing, but it’s a script I’ve never
seen. I wish Larra was here,
she might recognize it.”
Bracing herself she peered into the
cave. “It looks as if there
is a ledge along one side. Perhaps
we can climb onto it.”
Lisha frowned.
“It’s very dark in
there. We need
torches.”
By this time James had joined
them. “Shouldn’t we
be looking for Ayashe?”
“You’re right,” Melissa
said. “We can always come
back to this. Tell you
what. You head back to the
trail. I’ll just take a
few photos and then be right with you.”
“OK,” said
James. “We’ll walk
slowly. Don’t take too
long. It is not a good idea to
be alone here.”
Melissa smiled.
It was so like Larra’s son to treat her like a little sister
even though she was a good fifteen years older than he
was. “I’ll be
careful. If I’m not with
you in ten minutes come looking for
me.” She took her Zeiss-Ikon
35 mm camera out of her pack. It
was funny about the Germans. For
such a bunch of murderous swine they made damn good
cameras.
Hsu Li Ming watched from the concealment of the
rainforest. Crouched behind her
were the other members of the Dragon
Guards. She held up her hand
as Zhao Ping leaned forward, but her second in command pushed forward
anyway. “She defiles the
sacred pool,”
Li Ming glared at
Li Ming continued to watch the strange
woman. She had never seen anything
like her. Taller than any of
her companions, including the males, she was standing in the waters of the
sacred pool and holding something in front of her face that made a distinct
clicking sound. Her hair was
dark brown and was contained in a single braid that hung halfway down her
back. Tan coloured clothing covered
most of her body, but the parts that were not covered showed that she was
pale-skinned. For some reason
her equally strange companions had left, leaving the woman at the mercy of
Li Ming and her guard, but still she hesitated, watching the strange apparition
as it continued to defile the sacred pool and cave.
Melissa turned.
She would take one or two more shots of the entire areas and then
catch up with the others. She
didn’t want them to have to wait for
her. She could hardly wait to
tell Larra of her discovery. It
wasn’t often that she beat her mentor when it came to an archeological
discovery, but she was sure that she had this time.
A rustling in the vegetation across from the pool sent
her hand to her Beretta, but when the vegetation parted, she got a
shock. Standing across from her
were at least ten men and women.
Several of them were carrying bows and had the shafts drawn back ready
to let them fly, but it was their dress and physical appearance that most
startled her.
They were clearly
oriental. Everything about them
from the almond eyes, ink-black hair and their short stature proclaimed Asian,
not African ancestry. Most of
them were lightly clad, no doubt as a concession to the tropical heat and
humidity. The one closest to
her, a young girl of probably no more than seventeen or eighteen, was almost
naked, her slender charms being covered by no more than a gauzy skirt that
was split up both sides, exposing most of her well-formed
legs. Her torso was bare revealing
small, almost childlike breasts crowned with rose-tipped nipples.
She was a very determined-looking
child, however, the barbed tip of her arrow pointing directly at Melissa’s
chest.
The girl said
something. Surprisingly, Melissa
actually understood some of it.
After years of traveling with Larra she had picked up a smattering
of several languages. Her Mandarin
was not good, but she knew enough that she could decipher what the girl was
saying despite her archaic accent.
Unfortunately what the girl said was something that she was not inclined
to obey.
“Surrender,” Li Ming
ordered. “Come out of the
pool and lie down on the ground.”
She didn’t bother to threaten the strange woman with
death. It should have been obvious
that with a half dozen arrows pointed in her direction any attempt to resist
would be extremely foolish.
Melissa edged her hand toward her
Beretta. She doubted that any
of the strange Orientals facing her would know what it was, especially armed
the way they were. “I mean
no harm,” she said in Mandarin.
“I come in peace.”
“Do as you are ordered,” the Chinese girl
replied.
Melissa had no intention of
complying. She had been tied
up enough to last her a lifetime and had no intention of placing herself
at the mercy of these strange and threatening
people. At the same time she
had no wish to harm, any of them, especially as many of them were
women. Her hand closed over the
butt of her pistol.
“Sacrilege,”
“No,” Li Ming
protested. But it was too late,
Li Ping loosed her arrow.
Melissa had only hundredths of a second to react, but
her years of training with Larra had not been wasted
time. She sensed the arrow leaving
the bow even before
“Aaahhh!” Melissa cried in pain as three
shafts reached her. She was able
to deflect one, but not the other two.
One struck just above her left breast, striking at an angle and emerging
just under her left armpit. The
other struck her right thigh.
Staggering under the incredible pain and shock she almost collapsed
into the water, but somehow managed to stagger to the edge of the pool before
falling to her knees. She attempted
to pull her pistol from its holster, but one of those who had attacked her
seized her arm and pinned it behind her
back. Then another grabbed her
other arm and pulled her from the water.
“Bind her,”
Li Ming looked at her rebellious comrade in
shock. “What have you
done? Have you gone
mad? The woman was not threatening
us.”
“She is a demon,”
“You will be punished for this,” Li Ming
threatened.
“Bind this one too,” she said as Li Ming staggered
back. “She allowed the demon
to wade in the waters of the sacred pool.
She must be taken to the king for judgment.”
“You cannot do this,” Li Ming protested, but
the members of what had once been her command were not
listening. She was disarmed and
her hands were bound behind her.
Staggered by what had happened she offered no
resistance.
Melissa was too distracted by her injuries to understand
what had transpired among her captors.
Gasping in pain she was hauled across from the pool and her arms were
forced behind her back. Leather
thongs were lashed bout her wrists and then with both arrows still protruding
form her body she was dragged to her
feet. She swayed, fighting back
the wave of pain and nausea that swept over
her. Helpless, she could do nothing
as her weapons and other possessions were stripped from
her. Then she was prodded
forward. To her surprise her
captors pushed her back into the pool and then waded in after
her. Crossing the waist-deep
water they led her toward the dark opening on the other side and then dragged
her into the darkness.
Inside the cave her captors halted while one of them
went ahead. A light flared in
the darkness as flint and steel sparked a torch to
life. Through her haze of pain
Melissa saw that a wide ledge ran along one side of the cave about a foot
above the water. The Oriental
warriors pushed her toward it and in spite of her injured thigh forced her
to climb onto it. Then with three
warriors leading the way and the rest following she was escorted into the
darkness.
Wincing with every step, Melissa saw that she was in
a dark tunnel, the roof of which was about five feet over her
head. Alongside the path ran
the dark stream, flowing languidly in the direction they were coming
from. It was only as she limped
painfully in the direction her captors pushed her that she became aware of
the fact that the young woman who had shouted at her was being led in front
of her, her hands tied and a rope about her
neck. She was, however, having
too much trouble remaining conscious to dwell on what might have
happened. Every step was
agony. Only the fact that the
arrow in her thigh had penetrated the fleshy part of her leg rather than
the muscle allowed her to keep moving, that and the fact that whenever she
slowed down one of the young men or women of her escort prodded her forward
at the point of a knife.
The next half hour seemed much longer than
that. Racked with pain, Melissa
stumbled forward all the time wondering where she was being
taken. Then the cave
lightened
and in twenty paces she
and her captors stepped once more into the
sunlight. In spite of the distraction
of her injuries parted she could not help but stare at the amazing sight
that met her eyes. It was as
if she had stepped into ancient
Li Ming hung her head as she was paraded through the
village. She was completely
humiliated. Only two hours ago
she had led the elite Dragon Guard from the
village. Now she returned as
its prisoner, her hands bound behind her like a common
criminal. Before her the triumphant
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