And so the expedition formed.
Oskar at the lead—bare-chested more often than not, because his body ran hot and the jungle did not forgive cloth. Karl the dwarf perched on his shoulders like a grim little scout, clutching the map and binoculars as if they were holy objects. Captain Carter von Jonalright commanded the fifty men of the Third Company—security, labor, and discipline in one—while the Eternal Guard carried the supplies and the tools needed to make camp in a world that did not want camps.
And four guides came with them—one from each people along the sea: Limba, Bakoko, Basaa, and Duala. They watched everything with quiet, measuring eyes.
The first thing the guides noticed was what wasn't there.
No servants.
No chains.
No coerced porters.
No line of frightened men carrying loads because someone had a rifle.
Instead, there were strange, oversized hiking packs—Oskar's invention again—canvas and leather, framed for weight, balanced for long marches. Canoes. Tools. White-skinned German manpower, as Oskar said with his blunt practicality when they asked.
"Only us," he told them. "If we build, we build with our own hands."
Something shifted in the guides then—not trust, not yet, but a kind of startled curiosity.
Karl, half delirious with enthusiasm, called them the Fellowship of the Red Dirt. The name stuck.
Thus it was decided.
The Fellowship of the Red Dirt was formed.
And the jungle journey began.
---
On the first day they left Southern Bauxi Town to the sounds of cheering.
Men, women, and children gathered at the gate and along the half-finished walls, shouting encouragement as if the expedition were a crusade or a wedding procession. Workers paused in the clearing crews—axes resting, saws lowered—joining in with grins that were half pride and half disbelief.
Someone rang the small church bell once, awkwardly, as if unsure whether that was appropriate for an occasion like this.
Administrator Ebermaier watched them go with a tight expression—a man caught between worry and awe. He had never seen a prince lead an expedition like a foreman. Usually royalty arrived, posed, and left the danger to other people.
Oskar did not.
Ebermaier swallowed hard, already calculating what supplies would need to follow, what schedules had to be rewritten. Whatever specific spot Oskar chose for Central Bauxi Town, Ebermaier would have to feed it immediately.
The canoes were set in the water.
Men climbed aboard.
Paddles dipped.
The river accepted them—reluctantly.
---
Oskar sat in the front canoe, barefoot and bare-chested already rowing, smiling like this was a holiday.
Karl sat behind him, holding on with white knuckles, because it was his first time in a canoe.
In truth, it was Oskar's first time too—but he had the kind of confidence that turned inexperience into a performance. The canoe spun in a few awkward circles at first, drawing smothered laughter from the others, before he found the rhythm and sent it steadily upstream.
But all of this was not by design really, but necessity. Because Oskar weighed too much for any normal pairing and Karl was too small to paddle effectively, the arrangement had become inevitable: Oskar took the canoe alone, Karl riding with him.
The others split more evenly—five men per canoe, two canoes to a squad, the Eternal Guard moving in compact, disciplined clusters across the water. The guides kept their own canoes and stayed alongside Oskar, close enough to speak, far enough to watch.
The fleet pushed into the Sanaga.
Brown-green water. Light hulls slicing upstream while the current pushed back immediately, offended by the idea of men moving against it.
The first sixty kilometers went smoothly.
Mangroves leaned over the water in narrow stretches. Roots tangled beneath the surface like traps. Channels split around small islands choked with vegetation and rejoined without warning. The jungle rose on both sides—thick, wet, watching.
It was almost peaceful.
Almost.
Then the mosquitoes found Oskar.
Not gradually.
Not politely.
They locked on as if he were a torch.
A living haze gathered around him, ignoring everyone else—ignoring even Karl in the same canoe. They were drawn by heat and sweat and salt like iron filings to a magnet. They clung to his shoulders, his neck, his back, and—most annoyingly—his face.
They stabbed.
They failed.
They tried again.
And in time, they succeeded.
Karl immediately went to war.
He slapped Oskar's shoulders, his arms, his back—hard enough to make the sound carry over the water. He killed mosquitoes in clusters with single blows while Oskar paddled onward without a care in the world.
Oskar laughed at first.
"Guess I'm popular."
Karl did not laugh.
By mid-morning the canoe floor was dotted with mosquito corpses, and it was obvious: the swarm followed Oskar as if his blood had been chosen.
The worst came when the river shallowed.
When the Sanaga narrowed and the current turned vicious, the canoes had to be dragged—over mudbanks, sandbars, shallow water. Men waded. Boats scraped. Feet sank.
And in those moments, when they stepped ashore to scout channels or test ground, the swarm thickened into something obscene.
The rest of the expedition—guards, guides, Captain Carter—were oddly spared.
They had bites, yes.
But fewer.
Less swatting.
Easier breathing.
No one said it aloud.
But everyone was quietly grateful for the prince who was serving as bait.
Oskar didn't complain.
Every time they hit land, he went first—canoe hoisted on one shoulder like a sack of grain, machete in the other hand.
He didn't merely clear a path.
He erased one.
Vines snapped under his fists. Saplings were kicked aside. Small trees were shoulder-checked until they cracked. Once, a thicker trunk tried to stand in the way and Oskar—without thinking—drove his boot into it like a soldier breaking a door.
The jungle gave way.
And the others followed in his wake like survivors behind a floodbreaker.
By dusk, Karl had checked the map again and again with a kind of exhausted disbelief.
"Eighty kilometers," he murmured. "At least."
Better than anyone had expected.
---
Camp was set on raised ground chosen by the guides—high enough to avoid flooding, open enough for smoke.
The canoes were dragged ashore and turned into platforms. Nets were draped over them like cocoons. It wasn't comfortable.
But it worked.
That night, the jungle charged its price.
Red ants came first—rivers of them spilling across boots and bedrolls, climbing legs and biting like sparks. Men cursed and danced and slapped at themselves in the dark.
Oskar simply scooped earth and ash, building quick barriers until the living lines broke and flowed away.
Later, a snake struck near the fire—fast, angry.
One man screamed.
Oskar was there instantly.
Hands steady. Commands sharp. Venom dealt with quickly and decisively, with the guides' help. The man lived. The fire burned brighter.
They slept badly.
But they slept.
---
The next morning began with laughter that sounded slightly forced.
Karl—because Karl could never resist turning terror into performance—was doing little tricks with the revolver he carried whenever he was allowed to carry one. A spin. A snap. A flourish that would have gotten a normal man slapped by a sergeant.
The men cheered anyway.
They were grateful for anything that felt like normal life.
Captain Carter had taken the camera equipment with the expedition, but he had refused to drag the actual camera crew into the interior. Too dangerous. Too many ways to die that didn't involve bullets. So Carter filmed it himself—quietly, dutifully—Karl's awkward little dance of bravado while men ate and sang and pretended the jungle didn't want them dead.
Oskar woke late.
Not lazily—just… heavy.
His skin was swollen in places, mottled with bites and welts from the swarm that had claimed him on the first day. His shoulders itched. His neck burned. His face felt tight.
He sat up, stared at his own arms, and exhaled as if accepting a debt.
Then he stood, rolled his shoulders once, and moved like none of it mattered.
Day Two began.
And it became harder immediately.
---
Back to the river.
Back into the canoes.
The Sanaga widened, slowed, and then betrayed them—currents that looked gentle suddenly grabbed at hulls and tugged them sideways. The river did not roar like rapids; it simply moved like something with opinions.
They paddled anyway.
Then dark shapes drifted past them—logs, at first glance.
But the "logs" had eyes.
Eyes that broke the surface and vanished again.
Crocodiles.
The first one surfaced close to Oskar's canoe, jaws parting slightly as if testing memory.
Oskar leaned forward and smacked it across the snout with his paddle.
Not wildly.
Not even especially hard.
Just decisive.
The crocodile hissed and sank away as if offended.
Then at a shallow bend where sand broke the surface, Oskar stepped out to test the ground.
That was when another crocodile slid toward him—low, silent, deliberate.
It wasn't large. Not a river giant. But it was fast, and it was close.
The jaws snapped open with a hiss.
Oskar reacted instantly.
He slammed the paddle down across its snout—not hard enough to crush bone, but sharp enough to shock, to blind, to make the animal recoil for a fraction of a second. That was all he needed. He stepped in, moved past the head, and grabbed behind the forelimbs where muscle and hide met in a narrow grip.
The crocodile thrashed—tail whipping, jaws snapping uselessly at air—but Oskar had its balance, not its strength. He heaved, lifting it half out of the water, sand spraying as the animal twisted and screamed.
For a heartbeat it hung there—hissing, furious, alive with violence.
Oskar turned with the motion, using its own weight, spun once, and flung it clear of the bank.
It hit the river with a heavy splash and vanished beneath the surface in a churn of foam.
The water stilled.
After that, the crocodiles stayed where they were.
They had seen enough.
The Eternal Guard barely reacted—they had already watched their prince punch sharks and walk out of the sea like a myth. But the native guides stopped pretending this was normal.
Their eyes followed Oskar with new caution, the way one watched a man who might be blessed…
or cursed.
---
By midday, the mosquitoes returned in force.
Oskar's skin was already a battlefield of swollen marks, but he refused a shirt and refused to slow. Heat poured off him like a furnace; the swarm loved it.
Karl followed him like a frantic medic-mother hybrid—repositioning smoke pots, slapping insects off Oskar's neck, muttering curses in German, Russian, and something that sounded suspiciously like Chinese.
"Why is it always you?" Karl snapped, crushing another mosquito flat.
Oskar grinned without looking back.
"I don't know," he said. "Must be because I'm so handsomely hot."
Karl made a sound of pure suffering.
---
Late afternoon brought the hippos.
A broad stretch of river opened before them. Dark backs rose like boulders in the water. Most of the herd wasn't blocking the channel—just lounging on a shallow sandy island, half submerged, basking as if the river belonged to them.
Because it did.
The guides signaled urgently—hands slicing the air, eyes wide.
Land route.
Wide detour.
Do not provoke.
The Eternal Guard tightened formation, weapons low but ready.
Oskar, naturally, did the opposite of what sensible people did.
He stepped into the shallows instead, Karl clinging to his shoulders, revolver in hand as if a revolver mattered against something built like a living tank.
Water rose to Oskar's thighs. Mud sucked at his bare feet. The smell was thick—river rot, warm animal, wet grass.
Two bull hippos lifted their heads.
Their eyes weren't stupid.
They weren't afraid.
They were offended.
Oskar raised his hands slightly and, as if he were speaking to bad-tempered aliens in a cheap theatre play, called out:
"Hey you fat dumplings! We come in peace, alright? Can we paddle by?"
Karl instantly protested, horrified.
"Wait—what, what are you doing Oskar? For god's sakes, don't yell at them?! And don't call them fat, I think they can hear you?!—"
One of the bulls surged forward without warning.
Water detonated around it, a wall of brown spray thrown aside by sheer bulk.
The sound was not a roar—it was the sound of mass deciding to become force.
Oskar did not retreat.
He stopped.
Planted his feet in the mud and held his ground, every muscle tight but still. He did not shout. He did not wave his arms. He did not panic.
He made himself present.
Big.
Unyielding.
The bull hippo thundered closer, jaws yawning wide, breath hot and foul. At the last possible moment, Oskar exhaled sharply and bellowed—not a scream, not a challenge, but a sudden, violent burst of noise meant to startle, to disrupt, to force hesitation.
He raised his arms and stepped forward once, claiming the space instead of yielding it.
The hippo skidded to a halt only meters away.
It huffed. Snorted. Stamped the shallows, sending ripples shivering across the water.
For a long second, predator and man stared at one another.
Then the bull turned aside, offended but unconvinced, and lumbered back toward the herd.
The river settled.
Only then did Oskar breathe.
Karl swayed, pale as chalk, gripping the revolver like a charm.
Even Oskar felt his legs tremble when the moment passed.
For the first time, he truly understood what a hippo was.
If it had chosen to finish the charge, there would have been no strength in the world strong enough to stop it.
Survival would have depended on luck alone.
The guides exchanged quiet looks and began whispering among themselves—not in fear, but in something colder.
Recognition.
---
Camp that night was slower to form.
The men were tired now in ways the first day hadn't achieved. Sweat stank. Feet blistered. One man twisted his ankle badly and tried to pretend it didn't matter.
Oskar hoisted him anyway.
No debate.
No discussion.
The man's pride did not outweigh the expedition's pace.
They hadn't washed properly. Their clothes were stiff with salt and sweat. And no one had brought toilet paper—which became the sort of tragedy people only truly appreciated when it was too late.
When they finally found raised ground, they dropped packs and ate rations in silence:
Dried meat.
Hard bread.
Boiled water that still tasted like river.
No one complained.
Not because they were happy.
Because they were learning that, this was the price of the cursed river.
And the river was not finished charging them yet.
---
The third morning began with sickness.
Oskar woke to the sour, humiliating reality that something he had eaten—river crab, half-cooked fish, or something he didn't remember at all—had turned against him in the night. He had soiled himself in his sleep, fevered and unaware, and when he rose the shame barely registered beneath the heat burning in his blood.
Diarrhea struck half the column.
Fever followed.
Faces went pale. Hands trembled. The jokes that had carried them through the first two days vanished, replaced by tight mouths and careful breathing.
Karl was fine.
The native guides were fine.
Everyone else looked like hell.
Even Oskar looked rough now—skin swollen from thousands of mosquito bites, eyes bright with fever, sweat pouring off him in sheets. His body was angry. Pushed. Demanding rest.
And still—
He went first.
Still he lifted canoes.
Still he cut the way.
They were close now. Not far. Only a short distance remained to the place Oskar had marked on his maps long before this journey had begun.
The jungle knew it.
Monkeys followed them for hours, screaming insults from the canopy—shrill, mocking cries that echoed through the trees. A few hurled bananas down at the column, which the men gratefully caught, laughing weakly at the strange generosity.
Parrots flashed overhead like living color—red, green, blue—vanishing as quickly as they appeared.
Crocodiles appeared now and then along the banks, lazy and watchful, but none tested them. A larger herd of hippos surfaced once, eyed the column, and let them pass without incident.
The river was changing.
By late afternoon, the Sanaga narrowed. The banks rose. The current slowed. The air shifted—still humid, still thick, but no longer openly hostile, as if the land itself had decided to wait and see.
Ahead, the river split.
A crossroads.
Two branches diverged—one bending north, one sliding deeper southward.
Oskar stepped onto the bank and looked around.
Monkeys scattered above him. The ground underfoot was firmer here. Elevated. Defensible. Water on both sides. Jungle stretching north like a wall.
He checked the map.
He didn't need long.
"This is it," he said.
The guides exchanged looks, then nodded slowly.
Karl took the map with shaking hands, studied the terrain, and finally nodded too. It was a perfect midpoint—halfway between coast and interior, a natural choke point, defensible and fertile in a way the lower ground had never been.
They planted the Imperial German flag at the shore.
The black eagle spread its wings against the green.
Oskar named the place Central Bauxi Town.
Tents went up with trembling hands. Fires were lit. The sick were laid down properly for the first time in days, shaded and watched.
No one cheered.
They were too exhausted.
But no one argued either.
They had survived this far because they followed a man who refused to stop.
And Oskar—feverish, filthy, and very much human now—did not rest.
Because Central Bauxi Town sat like a triangle: river to the left, river to the right, jungle to the north. A gift of terrain that begged to be shaped.
He took a shovel.
He began digging.
A shallow moat first. Then deeper. Crude wooden palisades followed—cut fast, set rough. Clearing around the camp widened, trees falling, brush burned back.
Only a few able-bodied men joined him.
Karl did not.
Karl, instead, finally learned to operate the camera.
He filmed Oskar working—sweat streaming, muscles corded, fever blazing—because even Karl understood that this was something that would be believed only if it was seen.
At one point, Oskar accidentally struck a wasp nest hidden in the foliage.
The jungle exploded.
Angry insects swarmed him in a living cloud, stinging and buzzing and burning. Oskar slapped dozens, cursed loudly, and then broke into a stumbling run for the water, plunging into the river to escape the fury.
The men laughed weakly.
The jungle laughed harder.
---
That night, the jungle did not attack the camp.
It waited.
The fires burned low. Men lay wrapped in nets and cloth, groaning softly in their sleep, feverish and exhausted. The river slid past in the dark, thick and unseen, making small sounds that meant nothing until suddenly they meant everything.
Karl woke with a sharp, practical problem.
He crawled out from beneath the netting, revolver already in hand out of habit more than fear, and padded carefully toward the riverbank, swearing quietly to himself about the indignities of empire-building and the utter lack of civilized latrines.
The moon was thin. The water looked still.
Too still.
Karl had just reached the edge—just begun to turn—when the surface exploded.
A crocodile lunged out of the shallows, not large, not ancient, but fast and hungry and close enough that Karl felt its breath before he understood what he was seeing.
There was no time to shout.
No time to think.
Only reflex.
Karl's arm came up. The revolver barked once—loud, sharp, obscene in the quiet night. Then again. And a third time, more out of terror than aim.
The crocodile convulsed, thrashed, and slid back into the water in a spray of mud and blood, its body going slack almost instantly.
Silence followed.
Then chaos.
Men were on their feet in seconds—rifles raised, nets torn aside, Captain Carter already moving, Eternal Guard fanning out on instinct. Smoke pots flared. Voices shouted Karl's name.
They found him standing there, pale as chalk, revolver smoking slightly in his hand, staring down at the still shape washed half onto the bank.
Dead.
Medium-sized. Young. A hunter that had made a single, final mistake.
Karl looked up slowly, eyes wide behind his spectacles.
"I—" he swallowed. Then, with visible effort, straightened. "I believe that was… self-defense."
Oskar arrived last, pushing through the ring of men.
He looked from Karl to the crocodile, then back again.
For a long moment, he said nothing.
Then he smiled—tired, proud, and unmistakably relieved.
"Well," he said. "Congratulations."
Karl blinked.
"That's it?" he asked weakly. "I nearly died."
"Yes," Oskar agreed. "But you didn't. And you killed your first crocodile. With a revolver. I'd say that earns you a meal."
Karl stared at the animal again.
Then, very slowly, a grin crept onto his face.
The guides watched the scene without comment.
They did not scold. They did not protest. They did not invoke taboo.
It had been a clean act. A necessary one. The river had reached, and the man had answered.
That was acceptable.
The crocodile was butchered quickly.
Not much meat—but enough.
Fat rendered. Flesh cut and roasted over the fire. Shared carefully, deliberately, like medicine rather than celebration.
Men ate slowly.
Quietly.
And as food settled into empty stomachs, something changed. The shaking eased. The hollow ache softened. Faces regained a little color.
Strength returned—not fully, not safely—but enough.
Oskar did not sit long.
As soon as he finished eating, he rose, took up a shovel, and went back to work. The healthier men followed. Drainage trenches deepened. Standing water was broken up. Fires were fed with green wood to drive smoke low across the clearing. Brush was cut back further, giving mosquitoes fewer places to gather.
Little by little, the camp became less hostile.
Not safe.
But survivable.
Karl sat by the fire, revolver laid carefully beside him, retelling the moment with growing confidence and just enough embellishment to make the men smile. It was his first kill. His first real one. And somehow, he was still alive to talk about it.
The guides listened without expression.
The jungle listened too.
From the trees, the monkeys remained silent.
Waiting.