Last Stand of the Blood Land

by Andrew Carpenter

  Ignatius smiled at the memory as he stood looking at the griffin he had named for the Dwarven word. It was a hot, gloomy day when he first set to training what he hoped would be the steed that could provide the third way he needed to truly defeat the Southerners. He would apply the concept here, improving his relationship with the giant predator each day, little by little, breaking the impossible move of riding him back to his homeland into a series of smaller moves he could master with the patience Fritigern had showed him. Shaping.

  Kaizen was so large that there was no room to rush, no room for force. It was the same as his training as a fighter, where strength came after skill. Skill was a way to kill a larger, more powerful opponent. Here, with the dangerous animal that was several times larger than a buffalo with the aggressive weapons of a lion and an eagle, he had to control the male instinct to use force that could result in the blood born rage he had so often felt. Peaceful confidence, not rage.

  He had a clear mind the first time he took Kaizen’s meal, showing neither aggression nor fear. The griffin glared at him, its beak snapping. Ignatius glared back, one hand on the horn of the mountain goat carcass the other resting at his side as he pulled the animal away from the talons that clung to the food. The Cherub had to strain his neck to look up at the beast, clarity of mind and purpose forming a center despite his body’s natural reaction to fight or take flight. When he finally felt the beast release he moved a few yards away and simply stared back at the animal to make sure that Kaizen understood what had just happened. When he was certain he had a foundation he could build on he practiced taking the animal’s food day after day until he had that portion of the move mastered.

  He built upon this initial success in the coming days, first taking the griffin’s meals before feeding the cat-bird and then placing a hand on the beast’s talon as he ate. Over time the Cherub became comfortable standing next to the griffin and touching his sides, wings, and feathery head throughout the day. As he worked with Kaizen he was continuously working with the others as well. All of them he made familiar with presence, his touch, and his control of their food. Kaizen was the most difficult and dangerous of them because he was the largest and the most aggressive, the most dominant, of the giants. As he progressed with Kaizen his work with the others seemed easy although he was constantly struggling to learn the griffin’s individual personalities. The days flew by as he healed, wove baskets and harnesses, cared for the kudzu, and worked with his pride. The knowledge that the armies of Galatia could be arriving across the mountains to destroy all the tribes of the Blood Lands put urgency into his movements but he never let the urgency cause him anxiety. He took time each day to clear his thoughts for he knew that the sensitive social pride would sense an anxious alpha. He needed to maintain control of his emotions if he was to continue his kaizen work with the griffins.

  He created a special harness for Kaizen and spent several days getting him comfortable with the soft, smooth, braided kudzu vines that were stronger than any rope. He modeled the harness after those that he had made for Currar and Tulma but with added loops where he could hook his feet, pulling himself down across his mount’s shoulders so his hands could remain free to fight. Getting Kaizen to step into the harness and stand still for long enough to allow him to work the harness over the great white wings took an entire day. With the last orange glow covering the horizon over the desert and under the light of a moon so bright that it created a moonbow against a far off storm, he finally was able to climb a boulder and reach out to cinch the harness tight between the griffin’s wings. It had taken an entire deer, fed to the animal at regular intervals, and countless failed attempts that were aborted when he sensed Kaizen’s patience running thin, but he had finally completed this step in his quest to master this complex technique.

  The next morning he awoke to see Kaizen returning from an unsuccessful hunt still wearing the harness. He gave the animal a day or two to become habituated to its presence before he began the final sequence of his program. The griffin was very familiar with his touch, his presence, his whistle, and his rewards. Now he began to get the animal familiar with his weight by guiding him to a boulder where he could press on his shoulders and eventually, swing his leg over his back. He started by simply placing the leg then removing it, increasing the time he rested it there until he finally could put his full weight on the animal. Then he practiced flying up and landing on the griffin until he was spending hours astride his new mount.

  Looking back on the days and weeks he had spent getting to that point the accomplishment seemed impossible but when he felt the animal crouch and prepare to fly with him still sitting on his back he remembered the lesson he had learned from the Dwarf and bellowed a new war cry as the tightly bonded pair lifted off into the sky.

  “KAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAIZEN!”

  Chapter 10

  A tlas felt blind and suffocated, like he was wading through chest deep water at night in the rain. The mismatch of armor he wore, some of it his father’s, some of it scavenged, was so uncomfortable that he felt panic rising in his chest. His lungs heaved against the plates that hung on his back and chest, thick enough to stop an arrow from a longbow and heavy enough that only a Giant could carry them. His mind raced as he gasped at the thin trickle of hot air that made it into his helmet, wild eyes looking out through a slit that showed only flashes of his opponent and the green brown blur of the forest that surrounded them. Parfey’s nine-foot broadsword sucked the life out of his arm; the young leader’s shoulder no longer allowing him to hold the weapon at the ready.

  With a smashing rumble Atlas felt Meggido slam into him. He tried to push back but the experienced knight knew the Giant would resist him and, squatting low to lower his hips, he thrust an arm through Atlas’ legs and hoisted him into the air by his groin, armor and all. With his sword arm Meggido pushed on Atlas shoulder and sent the six hundred pound youth to the ground. Atlas lay stunned while the flat of Meggido’s sword struck him in the chest. He winced when he felt the sword point digging into the earth next to his head, a killing blow that would have pierced through his visor had the knight wanted it to. He lay, panting, for just a moment before flipping up the visor and sitting up to suck cool, fresh air into his seizing lungs. He looked past Omri, who was shaking his head with a grin that recalled his own early training, and up at Meggido. The knight’s breathing was calm and he looked down at his defeated pupil with disappointed, pursed lips. One eye and he can still see well enough to counter any move I make.

  “You should be at Fort Hope doing nothing but training for a few years,” said Meggido.

  “There’s no time for that,” said Omri.

  “Then he is going to have work harder,” answered Meggido.

  Atlas got to his knee, one gauntleted hand grasping for his sword and the other pushing off the ground as he struggled to his feet. He didn’t say anything. Despite his leadership of the tribe he always deferred to the knights on matters of war.

  “You need to wear that armor until it becomes part of your skin,” said Meggido. “I don’t want to see you walking around without it on. Sleep with it on if you have to. Your body will adapt.”

  Atlas nodded slowly even though the prospect of spending the hot summer in armor felt like a death sentence. Meggido and Omri had been working with him each morning to transform him into a knight in just a few months when the rest of their knights had spent at least ten years on the task. There was no substitute for experience gained through daily repetition and years of battle. The fact that any of the knights had survived so many years of ceaseless campaigns against the Centaurs told him the pain of adapting to the armor was worth the cost but here, at the beginning of the journey, it was hard to imagine that he could wear it as effortlessly as the others. Omri put his hand on his shoulder, support transferring through the contact despite the layers of silver metal.

  “It will get lighter,” said the Giant.

  Atlas watched his instructors head off throug
h the forest to attend to some other task, perhaps training or work on a hidden storehouse somewhere in the forest. I wonder if he means the armor or the weight of leadership. His thoughts turned to the faction of the Giants who had opposed his plan for an independent tribe, a tribe that would fight rather than serve the South. So few of them had been there, as he had, to watch Parfey fighting alongside the other races when the Angels had appeared from the sky to defeat Aristippus in the Canyon Lands. He had seen his father, the Pathmaker whose own father had set the Giants on the path to fighting with the South, fight with Wotan and the Centaurs. He had heard him tell the truth he had learned from Theseus; the South was simply allowing the North to bleed itself out so they didn’t have to. Atlas knew that the wall had never been intended to keep the Centaurs out so that his people could prosper. He knew, but many of the others did not, and for some that did it made no difference.

  Many of his people, given the choice, would choose the safety of the South over the hopeless war freedom required. Can I blame them for not feeling the desire to choose their own course? He wanted to be free, wanted his people to be free, but a freedom loving being could not judge others who did not want to pay the cost to be free without contradicting himself. He whistled, calling out to his owl, and was surprised as always to feel her alight silently on his armored shoulder. The presence of the bird, his constant companion, lifted the weight of his training and the conflict within the tribe from his mood and he set off without answering the question of what a freedom fighter was to do about Giants who did not value freedom as much as he did.

  His walk through the forest was longer than it would have been in years gone by. The Plainswatchers had been busy, continuously adding to their ingenious and intricate traps. Pits of various sizes had been dug, filled with poison tipped spikes, covered with a thin framework of dirt, and sown with seeds. The trees were filled with platforms for archers and runways for Dwarves. Deadfalls of rocks and logs that could be dropped from above choke points had been added where advancing soldiers would be forced to concentrate. Wherever a strong, thin sapling could be found, its tip was covered in poisoned spikes before it was bent to the ground, concealed, and set to a trigger. When the trap was sprung the sapling would whip upwards and the spikes, placed so they would strike at the unprotected face of a human soldier, would be driven home. Vicious against humans or unarmored Giants.

  His misgivings about the traps were always at the forefront of his mind when he picked his way through the forest, zigzagging on the trail that was marked with a line of small stones that could be picked up in hurry. The most nefarious trap bothered him the most. The Cherubim females had taken to coating the brambles and thorns of spiky plants with poison. The scratches that were so common in woodland travel could now kill. It seemed there was no end to the poison available to the Cherubim and Atlas couldn’t help but resent them. There are no traps in the branches where they travel. He knew it was too soon to start thinking about after, after the war, when they wouldn’t need traps anymore. He was always thinking of the future and, as he finally reached the edge of the woods, he knew the people were realizing they had the skills to make that future everything Parfey had dreamed it could be. If we can turn back the South without being exterminated.

  On the edge of the forest he could see the fields that inspired that hope. Although it was only early summer, their crops were already looking better than at any time in living memory. Even the oldest of their kind could only remember stories of such bounty. With the help of the buffalo and the collar the Elves had provided they had tilled vast swaths of the plains. The manure from their growing herd of buffalo, received in trade with the Centaurs, fertilized the soil. A wheel, another gift from the Elves, with tiny holes for seeds, had allowed them to plant their rows evenly without wasting seed. Using the contraption one Giant could plant an entire field in a day, a task that would have been a weeks work for a family.

  Above it all soared an assortment of hawks and even a handful of eagles. They kept the fields free of rodents and even some of the larger insects, bringing back a stead supply of meat to their owners. Atlas strode out along the field, the sun shining off his armor, and felt hope for his people despite his knowledge that at any moment the Plainswatchers might send word that their doom had been spotted approaching from the south.

  When he reached his father’s settlement he stopped to watch the steady stream of activity moving into the forest. There were hundreds of new arrivals that needed to build homes before winter set in and the plains surrounding the fort would have been the ideal spot. Arbolante had explained what was painfully obvious, his pointed ears and straight silver hair lodged in Atlas mind with frustration over the message he had not wanted to hear. The Elf had told him that it was pointless to build. Any energy and supplies that were spent constructing homes for the Giants would be wasted. He had used the analogy of a structure of sand built close to the water at low tide, a structure that would be swept away when the water returned. Atlas had never been to the ocean but he understood the meaning of the message. He had to plan to lose all of this, the aviary where they kept their birds, his lodge and fort, the fields. The Southlanders, whose phalanxes could not be stopped on the open plains, would take anything that could not be hidden.

  Atlas had been unable to tell the new arrivals that there was no hope for them, that they could not build anything to get them through the coming winter. Instead he had told them to build wigwams back in the forest. The simple structures, made of a frame of branches covered in bark, would keep them from freezing to death and gave them a place to store their bedding and supplies. A place to call home. The crude structures were senseless if the Southlanders invaded the forest before winter, but they gave the tribe hope and let them put down roots. He had been willing to trade some of their resources to fend off the sense of hopelessness. Without something to fight for and something to hope for the rest of the plan will fall apart.

  Walking towards his fort he spied a cluster of wings gathered with Theia and Debir. The Cherubim were a common sight, their areal comings and goings as much a part of their village as the hawks their little neighbors had provided. But he could see males among the customary females and knew that he would be making decisions that day, as was always the case when someone wanted his attention. Approaching, he recognized the grey wings and black curly hair of the war chief, Oberon, and smiled despite the heat of his armor to think that the little warrior had come to see him. Of all the Cherubim he had met, this one was his favorite. He had fought with him and had seen the contrast between his personality and that of Ignatius and Donus. He was balanced, kind, and although none of them liked the killing and dying that was part of a warrior’s life, he seemed to abhor it more than the others. The females seem to relish their poison but this one always remembers what it is that we prepare for.

  Walking through the wide-open gates of his fort he stepped into the muddy, over trod yard where Andrika and Stratera were conferring with Albedo and Strato. Oberon looked on, listening to the two pairs of young fighters with a distant, bemused smile. Although the chief was the same age as the others, he wasn’t interested in the inevitable fraternizing that occurred when the long separated sexes of a tribe came together again. The Cherub nodded at the Giant, young leaders unable to shake arms due to the armor that separated them. Atlas nodded back, suddenly feeling uneasy at the presence of the chief. He would not have come without a reason and a reason means a problem.

  Rebus and Arbolante joined them, their ancient, moccasined feet somehow picking their way through the mud without dirtying their kimonos. They always seemed to be where the action was, pulling and pushing the leaders towards decisions that, in their time tested knowledge, fit into plans that had time scales beyond what any of the others conceived. Atlas thought of the help Arbolante had given his people, the prosperity he had put within their grasp, and suddenly felt suspicious of what would be asked in return. Can a leader ever let his guard down?

  “We
lcome,” said the Pathmaker to the Cherubim with a hearty grin that felt sincere. “These visits are becoming a tradition in my father’s hall.” The memory of the first trio of Cherubim to visit was etched in his mind.

  “We will have to start building bigger halls so we can make a tradition of you visiting us!” said Oberon with an equally welcoming affect.

  “There is always much to talk about. I love to see you little winged death dealers eat, come in and Theia will feed us.”

  They followed him into the hall and he noted happily that Theia was there already, serving Debir, Meggido, and Omri. The sight of the senior Giants calmed Atlas; he wouldn’t have to make whatever decision Oberon put to him alone. The sight of Theia also made him smile. She was supporting her son as she had his father, making his guests feel welcome and pulling as many cares away from his mind as she could. At first, the sight of the fat on her powerful frame made him happy that the thin years that had been required to establish their homeland, years she had shared in struggle with Parfey, were behind them. Then, watching her set a bucket of water in front of Stratera, he thought about how the females of the Cherubim wore weapons and prepared to fight as the males did. I hope it will not come to that.

  He wondered if one day there would be a Giantess who could serve as his partner as Theia had for Parfey. He did not know her yet but already he hoped he could protect her as he hoped he could protect all the people. Funny to have hopes and plans for a female I have yet to discover. He laughed a little at himself as he swung an armored leg over the bench next to Omri and across from Oberon. The little winged being cocked his head and joined him in a laugh.

  “What is so funny my friend?” asked the Cherub.

  Atlas thought about lying and telling him that until he had sat down his stiff muscles had hurt so continuously that he had forgotten about them. He knew that his trainers would make him pay for complaining, however, and so he told the truth.