Chapter 5: Escape

Gunsmith asked, “Can you still run? Have you been drugged, or are your legs hurt?”

John stared wide-eyed and answered rather blankly, “N-no problem there. It’s just that I haven’t eaten or drunk anything in almost two days. I don’t think I can run very fast or very far.”

“That’s fine. As long as you can run.” Gunsmith pointed in one direction. “When I open the cage in a moment, take that path.”

“Hey, buddy, if you really can get us out of this cage, I’d suggest running a different way. Over there, for instance.” He pointed in another direction. “I’ve been locked up here for two days, looking for a chance to escape the whole time. From what I’ve seen, the path you’re pointing at is the one these natives use most often. The way I’m pointing is an out-of-the-way corner. I haven’t seen a single person go there in two days.”

“Yes, I know,” Gunsmith said. “There’s waist-high fountain grass over there, and the layout of the buildings also suggests hardly anyone goes that way.” He reached out and gripped a wooden bar beside him. “Which means if we run in that direction, there’s a good chance we’ll hit a deep swamp or a cliff before we get very far.”

John thought it over, then added, “And the path they use most often probably leads to wherever they fetch water or hunt. So that must be a way out!”

“Exactly,” Gunsmith said.

“What are you doing?” John had seen Gunsmith take hold of the wooden bars with both hands as he spoke. “You’re not thinking of breaking wood that thick with brute force, are you?”

“I could,” Gunsmith replied, “but it would take a lot of effort and make too much noise. I have a better way.” As he spoke, the wooden bar touching his palms suddenly turned to sand and spilled onto the ground.

“How did you do that?” John exclaimed. “A magic trick? Actual magic?”

“To put it in terms you’ll understand right away,” Gunsmith said, “it’s a superpower.”

“Superpowers really exist? If I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes, I’d never have believed it,” John said.

“It’s nothing so remarkable. Magic tricks have to be learned, whereas superpowers are innate. Of course, mastering either still takes effort and thought.” As Gunsmith spoke, he reached for another wooden bar. “EAS named my ability ‘Alchemy.’ Any object without consciousness can be transformed like this. I can even turn seawater into diamond.”

John thought this was getting a little far-fetched. Leaving aside whatever this EAS thing was, nobody would readily believe a claim about turning water into diamonds. “Buddy, you’re getting carried away. Turning wood into sand is one thing, but making…”

Before he could finish, Gunsmith had made the second bar disappear and cut him off. “When you get down to it, it’s just carbon… And carbon can be burned to keep you warm, too.” He wasn’t being high-minded. He simply had an unusual understanding of money.

John countered, “Diamonds control women, women control men, and men control the world.”

Gunsmith smiled noncommittally and steered the conversation back to his ability. “The greater the difference in the materials’ molecular properties and structure, the more time and mental effort it takes. I once tried turning a shoe into a watch. It took a full forty minutes. And I had to know exactly how that watch was built inside, or all I’d have made was a toy that looked exactly like a real watch but didn’t keep time at all.” He let out a long breath. Even turning those two pieces of wood into sand seemed to have taken quite an effort. “In that time, I could make four watches with my own hands. I just couldn’t use shoes as the raw material.”

The two natives guarding them a short distance away now turned and glanced into the cage. Gunsmith’s body just managed to conceal the two wooden bars whose middle sections had disappeared.

The two natives exchanged a few words, then started toward the cage. Apparently, they had noticed something amiss.

Keeping his voice as low and calm as he could, Gunsmith said, “John, is this gap wide enough for you to squeeze through?”

John knew they had reached the point of no return. Weak as he was, he rallied and replied, “Whenever you’re ready.”

“They’re obviously getting ready for a feast around the bonfire, so security’s fairly lax,” Gunsmith said. “I’ll deal with these two. Squeeze out now and run as fast as you can in the direction I showed you. I’ll follow and cover our retreat. I still have plenty of strength, so whatever you do, don’t look back. Just keep running. Even if you hear me go down after being hit by a poisoned dart, don’t try to come back and save me.”

Watching the two native guards draw closer, John gritted his teeth and replied, “Buddy, I don’t know how to thank you. Before I met you, I’d already written myself off as dead. If I make it back to civilization alive, I’ll write a book about your heroism, or make a movie.”

“All right, I’m not dead yet…” Gunsmith said.

While they were talking, the two natives had reached the cage. Their angle of approach had kept them from getting a clear view, but now there was no hiding the gap behind Gunsmith, wide enough for a person to pass through. Their expressions changed at once, and they began talking to each other in their native language, their voices growing louder.

Gunsmith’s bone gun slid into his hand in an instant, but he didn’t fire. Instead, with one hand, he detached two tooth-shaped bone spikes from the gun’s body and held one on either side of his middle finger. Before the two natives could react, he struck as fast as lightning.

Both guards fell, clutching their throats in agony. The bone teeth had struck each of them in the throat. They could still thrash about on the ground for a while, but neither could cry out.

John was so stunned by the sight that he forgot to run. Gunsmith turned to him. “Hey, don’t just stand there. Someone will notice any moment.”

Only then did John snap out of his daze and squeeze out of the cage. Keeping low and using several thatched huts for cover, he scurried off along their planned escape route.

Gunsmith followed him out of the cage. As he passed, he glanced down at the two cannibal natives on the ground, who had not quite breathed their last. “Don’t look at me like that. You stuck two darts in my neck, too. This is perfectly fair.”

John and Gunsmith had barely run a hundred meters before someone discovered what had happened at the cage. A moment later, the cannibals spotted them as well.

And so, in this tribe where communication was mostly a matter of shouting, the shouting began. Dozens of adult men grabbed spears and blowguns, quickly gathered, and set off in pursuit of their escaping dinner.

As the saying goes, panic makes you run any which way. John had followed Gunsmith’s directions out of the village, but once he entered the jungle, he immediately lost his head. He plunged into every patch of trees and scrambled over every slope. Having gone two days without food or water, he soon began to slow.

The poor explorer was clearly scared out of his wits by the cannibals. When he could no longer run, he used his hands as well as his feet, stumbling and crawling onward. Fear and the instinct to survive told him he mustn’t stop. If he stopped, he would be skinned and dismembered, without even an intact corpse left behind.

Gunsmith was an entirely different story. For example, when we’re playing one of the Warriors games, we’ll often see some generic-looking officer charge out halfway through a battle and announce, “Let me teach you the fundamentals of warfare.” You knock him flat in five seconds, and he immediately says, “Retreat is also a military tactic.”

It’s a little ridiculous, but there’s nothing fundamentally wrong with that line. A retreat and a rout are two different things. In the former, you fight as you fall back, maintaining order. In the latter, you throw away your helmet and armor and flee wherever you can.

Gunsmith knew full well that if he behaved like John, they would have no chance of shaking off their pursuers. He still had one last option. He could consider killing everyone chasing them. But that carried risks too. Even though he was on his guard this time, the cannibals had numbers on their side. One blow dart finding its mark would be enough to doom the two of them.

So Gunsmith was in no hurry to catch up with John. He deliberately slowed his pace, using stones and other hard objects picked up along the way to batter the leading cannibals bloody. This made the others wary and slowed the whole group.

Gunsmith also had to erase the tracks John left and create false trails to send the trackers in the wrong direction. Once his attacks had held up the pursuers long enough for the distance between them to grow, he set to work. John’s tracks were quite distinctive and easy to imitate. His footprints were heavy and erratic, mixed with handprints and marks where he had propped himself up on his elbows…

About an hour later, as the light began to fade, Gunsmith had all but tricked the cannibal tribe into getting lost on their own turf. John finally stopped and lay facedown on the ground. He truly couldn’t move another inch.

His breathing came in fits and starts, and his face was pale. His stomach suddenly heaved again, making him vomit onto the ground, but he no longer had the strength even to prop himself up. He could only let his face rest in the vomit-covered mud. It was only gastric fluid, though. His stomach had long since emptied, with not a scrap of food left in it.

Gunsmith caught up just a few minutes later. He walked over and said, “Don’t worry. We’ve shaken them off. They won’t catch up anytime soon. You look terrible. You need a good long rest.”

John still wasn’t entirely reassured, but the words at least let him relax a little. As his breathing gradually steadied, he finally found the strength to roll over and sit up. “Whew… Buddy… I never thought I’d get out of that village alive.”

Gunsmith took his homemade fire starter out of his pocket and handed it to John. “You can light a fire with this. You’ll have to get up and walk a little farther. There’s a cave over there. Go inside and build a fire. I’ll find you some food and clean water, or you’ll drop dead before the cannibals even catch up.”

“Thank you… Charles. Without you, I’d never have escaped.”

“I was saving myself, too. Bringing you along was no trouble. You don’t need to make so much of it.” Gunsmith didn’t think it was any great matter. He waved a hand and went into the woods alone to find something to eat.