Naamah's Blessing

sounds. Glancing around to see what new swarm of insects had come to torment us, I realized belatedly that the sound I’d heard was arrows in flight.
    There was no telling where they’d come from. On either shore, the jungle looked as impenetrable as ever. Even as I searched, a second flight was launched. There was a metallic ping and a startled cry behind us as an arrow struck someone’s helmet.
    In the lead canoe, Eyahue was shouting. “Get low! Get low and paddle hard!”
    My pulse hammering, I hunched as low as I could, paddling awkwardly. The dugout canoe afforded little in the way of protection. For once, I envied the men their heavy steel helmets.
    A third volley hissed above us, and then there was silence. Still, we paddled in a crouch until Eyahue announced it was safe to sit upright.
    Shouting up and down the river and taking stock of the situation, we determined with relief that our company had sustained no casualties in the attack. It was a Namarrese fellow named Marcel d’Aubrey who had taken a strike to the helmet, and although he was shaken, he was unharmed.
    Once we had ascertained that there were no injuries, I asked Bao to bring us alongside Eyahue’s canoe.
    “You said if the hostiles decided to kill us, we’d never see it coming,” I reminded the old
pochteca
. “So what passes here?”
    “That?” He rested his paddle across his knobby knees and scoffed. “Oh, that was just a warning. They were just telling us to keep moving.”
    “If Messire d’Aubrey hadn’t been wearing a helmet, they would have killed him,” I observed.
    Eyahue sucked his teeth. “True,” he admitted. “I imagine they were curious about those shiny head-pieces.” He shrugged. “Now they know.”
    It was an effective reminder of the myriad dangers the jungle held, but in the days that followed, it grew obvious that hostile natives were the least of our concerns.
    First and foremost was the shortage of food. Already, we were eating but two meals a day while expending considerable energy. The last of our fruit was long gone, and if our stores were to last until we reached Vilcabamba, we were down to half a roasted sweet potato a day for every person in our company.
    It wasn’t enough.
    Our bellies complained, and our strength waned, leaving us weak and listless. Our efforts to fish with nets and traps yielded meager results. I had better luck fishing with my familiar childhood methods, calling the twilight and coaxing fish into my bare hands; but where a catch of four or five good-sized fish would have provided a veritable feast for my mother and me, it didn’t go far among thirty-some starving men.
    Eyahue found my success suspicious. “How do you and your husband catch more fish than anyone?” he asked. “Why do you always go away alone to do it instead of sharing your secret?”
    “It’s a gift from my mother’s people,” I told him. After the way the Emperor had reacted to the small gift of magic I had displayed in his gardens, I was wary of the
pochteca’s
response if I told him the whole truth. “It cannot be taught, and the fish will not come if there are others present.”
    Gods knew, that was true enough, and it seemed to mollify Eyahue.
    It was a good thing I’d paid attention to the children in Tipalo’s village, for it wasn’t long before we were relying on their lessons. Several of our men became quite expert grub-hunters, and we discovered that they were slightly more palatable when skewered and roasted. True to his word, Balthasar held out and refused such fare. I wished he wouldn’t, for he was developing a feverish look I didn’t like. More than once, I’d caught him shivering in the heat and trying to hide it.
    “Bao’s right,” Denis said to him, chewing a mouthful of grub-worm with fierce determination. “It’s not so bad.”
    “Not so good, either,” someone muttered.
    Although we scoured the outskirts of the jungle and plundered the river for edible game as best we could, it still wasn’t enough. There were just too many of us.
    The day we spotted a herd of
capybaras
wallowing and grazing along the edge of the big river, I thought mayhap our luck had changed. They were odd-looking beasts; extraordinarily oversized rodents with coarse coats, squealing and grunting and nudging one another as they swam and rooted among the weeds.
    “Bao!” I whispered, setting down my paddle. I scrabbled for my bow and nocked an arrow. “Bring us close!”
    He nodded,