Children of the Plains tb-1

by Paul Cook

  Amero had spent half a day building this pit, digging a shallow hole in the sand near the base of the cliff and lining it with small stones. In the center of the pit he’d piled up a ring of smaller stones and plastered the resulting bowl with clay. He’d filled this inner bowl with beads of raw copper collected from the tunnel debris. He had then carefully laid a fire in the outer pit and marshaled his helpers to fan the flames.

  Duranix had been gone four days and four nights. The dragon had been away from Yala-tene for longer periods in the past, but Amero usually knew why and where Duranix had gone. The twice weekly offering of meat had been placed on the cairn the previous day and was still there, gathering only flies. The family of Konza the tanner had the honor of providing the dragon’s meat, and its apparent rejection didn’t sit well. A family of five could live for two weeks on one offering. So, where was the dragon? Amero had tried to explain Duranix was away on an important reconnaissance, scouting for possible dangers to Yala-tene. The village elders had accepted this in stony silence and departed to their daily work. The rotting meat continued to lie in the open.

  It was a hot, sunny morning. As Amero toiled over his copper experiment, lines of villagers led by Farun and Mieda headed for the tunnels. Mieda’s stone-cracking technique was such a success that he and Farun planned to duplicate it in the two other tunnels, finishing the excavation in short order.

  Mieda rose at dawn and supervised the laying of firewood at the blocked ends of both passages. About the same time Amero was lighting the fire in his pit, Mieda was putting the torch to the tunnel fires.

  “Keep fanning,” Amero said, as some of the children tired. He’d brought a bucket of melons along to reward his helpers, and when anyone faltered, he handed them a sweet wedge of fruit. Some minutes — and some melons — passed, and the beads of copper began to shimmer with heat. Amero poked them with a long stick, which quickly succumbed to the heat and flickered into flame. He’d forgotten how hot the fanned fire would be to his tools as well as the copper.

  The children slid back from the pit as the heat grew. Amero sent around a gourd dipper of cold water. Most opted to pour the water over their heads rather than drink it. Knowing a good idea when he saw one, Amero soaked not only himself but another stick. The damp stick survived the heat long enough to prod the beads. To his delight, Amero found the metal bits had grown soft as tallow.

  “Keep it up!” he said. “Something’s happening!”

  Just then a loud rumble reverberated through the valley. Amero felt it strongly through the soles of his feet. He looked down the shoreline and saw a tall cloud of dust and smoke rising from the mouths of the two tunnels under construction. At first he thought nothing of it, remembering how much smoke had come from the tunnel he’d helped dig. Then he heard screaming.

  “Douse that fire!” he said. They stared at him in disbelief. One boy froze, and the flames caught his reed fan. He dropped it, blazing, into the pit.

  “Go on, douse it!”

  Two boys picked up buckets and poured water over the fire. It died with a loud hiss and much smoke and steam. By then Amero was already running toward the tunnels.

  People were crowding around the tunnel mouths, shouting, crying, climbing over each other to see. Amero had to shove his way through the mob to reach the center tunnel. The air was full of acrid, resinous smoke and grit. Lying on the ground were eight diggers, covered in dust and bleeding from gashes on their heads and backs.

  Amero spotted Farun through the dirt and soot. He dropped to his knees and clasped Farun’s hand.

  “What happened?” he demanded. “What went wrong?”

  Coughing, Farun replied, “The roof fell. We had the black stone hot enough, and Mieda sent for water. I was in the first pair to dump water on the rock face — ” Another fit of coughing seized him and blood flecked his chin.

  Amero ordered everyone back and called for travois to take the injured away. Eight men were removed from the center tunnel. The north tunnel had also collapsed. No one had managed to get out.

  Amero looked around wildly at the sooty, coughing men and cried, “Who was in there? Does anyone know?”

  Konza the tanner regarded him with a dull, shocked expression. “Mieda, Talek the mason, Halshi — ”

  “Halshi was in there?” Amero exclaimed.

  Konza nodded slowly. “So was my eldest son, Merenta,” he said. Tears trickled down his face, cutting tracks in the dust on his cheeks.

  Amero tried to think of something comforting to say, but his tongue felt wooden and useless. He could only stare at the blocked tunnel. Halshi was in there, and Mieda, and so very many others.

  Suddenly, a tall stranger appeared among the dazed crowd. Dressed in buckskin trews and a sleeveless hunting shirt, his long chestnut hair gathered in a thick knot at the back of his neck, the stranger ran by the grieving Konza and the paralyzed Amero to the pile of fallen stone blocking the tunnel mouth. With his bare hands he took hold of a large chunk of sandstone and rolled it aside. Several smaller rocks he tossed out of the way.

  His industry freed Amero from the paralysis gripping him. He fell to his knees beside the stranger and started digging, too. The two men joined forces to dislodge a large, flat boulder. With much grunting and a few skinned knuckles, they got the slab out of the way. Others overcame their shock and horror and joined in the digging.

  “Thank you,” Amero panted. He suddenly realized he had no idea who he was speaking to. “I don’t know your face. Who are you?”

  “My name’s Pa’alu,” the man said.

  “You’re a plainsman. Where did you come from?”

  “I’m one of Karada’s band. The dragon, Duranix, guided me here.”

  Amero seized the muscular newcomer by the shoulders. “Duranix! Where is he? We need him — he could tear down the whole mountain and free those buried!”

  Firmly but gently, Pa’alu broke Amero’s grip. “Duranix isn’t here. He brought me to the valley and showed me the trail here, then he flew away.”

  “But why?”

  Pa’alu hesitated. Under the circumstances, how could he explain? Duranix owed him a debt, so he’d asked the dragon to flyback to the Thon-Thalas to look for Karada and the rest of his people.

  He said simply, “He went to search for survivors of a great battle. Karada and my people fought the elves and lost.”

  Amero looked away briefly, searching in vain for a glimpse of his friend, as Pa’alu turned and rejoined the rescue dig. Bare-handed progress was slow, but tools were brought and the furious work organized. The sun bore down on the scene as the men and women of Yala-tene toiled to free their trapped friends. Many of the rescuers worked until the pitiless heat wore them out. The exhausted were carried to the shade.

  Besides being hot, the work was bedeviled by constant secondary landslides. Rocks ranging from fist-sized pebbles to veritable boulders rained down on the tunnel mouth. The entire face of the sandstone cliff was shattered, and the cracks ran all the way back to the collapsed center tunnel. Mieda’s technique had worked too well.

  The sun had sunk behind the western peaks by the time they reached the buried diggers. One by one they were brought out — Mieda, Talek, Merenta, Halshi, and the rest. None were alive.

  They were carried to the nearest open ground, below the cairn that had held the food offerings of the dragon. It had been a long time since Amero had lost someone he cared about, and gazing at the still faces of Mieda and Halshi left him feeling empty inside. Hollow. He didn’t understand why he felt so betrayed. There was no one to blame. Mieda hadn’t known the rock was fissured over the tunnels when he built the fires. He had died leading his diggers, an honorable death. No, the betrayal lay elsewhere.

  A foul smell assaulted his nostrils.

  “Get that rotten carcass out of here!” Amero shouted. A maggot-ridden ox haunch was dragged off the cairn. As family members gathered to claim the bodies of their loved ones, Amero’s aching emptiness grew larger. An idea formed to
fill the void in his heart. He called for firewood — lots of it.

  Farun, his head bandaged and his arm in a sling, limped up to Amero. “What do you intend?” he asked.

  “Our lost friends were working to make the village a better place,” Amero said. “They died together. We should honor them together.” His head swam. He wiped cold sweat from his brow. “The mountain treacherously crushed them. We will free their spirits and send them to the sky, where the mountain cannot touch them.”

  He ordered cords of pine and cedar laid atop the cairn. The eight victims were then laid on the stacked wood, and Amero called for a torch.

  No one moved to comply. The villagers, like all plainsmen, believed burial was the proper way to treat the dead. They were paralyzed between loyalty to their young leader and anguish at his flaunting of one of their ancient traditions.

  It was Pa’alu, the stranger, who brought Amero a blazing torch. He took it with a grateful nod and held it high above his head.

  “Don’t be afraid!” Amero declared. “We have all lost friends we’ve loved. I give them the honor, the dignity of fire! Let their spirits remain ever more watching over us!”

  He thrust the torch into the lowest course of logs. The dry pine caught fire rapidly. In minutes, the cairn was a lake of flame.

  The people of Yala-tene stood silently around the pyre, watching the thick smoke rise to the stars above. Amero tossed the torch into the flames and stood back beside Pa’alu.

  “Thank you,” he said.

  “It’s nothing,” the hunter replied. “I hope someone does as much for me someday.”

  Duranix, where are you? was Amero’s miserable thought. The words had barely formed in his head when the sky was shattered by the dragon’s terrible roar. Already overwrought by events, the crowd shifted and wavered. Some fell to their knees as the black shadow of the winged dragon passed overhead.

  In a rare display of his true shape, Duranix alighted on the shore of the lake, some paces from the blazing cairn. He furled his leathery wings and approached the pyre, scales gleaming in the firelight. People scattered before him, many more dropping to their knees as the dragon’s flashing eyes swept over them. By the time he reached the cairn, only Amero and Pa’alu were standing.

  “What is this?” asked Duranix, raising a claw to the fire.

  Tersely, Amero told of the disaster, the rescue attempt, and his inspiration to honor the dead with a funeral pyre.

  Duranix extended his long neck and put his head in the flames. A wave of horrified gasps flowed from the villagers and several of the women shrieked. Seeming not to notice their reactions, the dragon looked around in the fire for a moment, then withdrew his head. “Mieda,” he said with unusual emotion. “He’ll never see the northern seas again.”

  “Where were you?” Amero demanded. Words caught in his throat like stones. “We needed you! You could’ve dug those people out of the mountain faster than the whole village, but you weren’t here!”

  Duranix sat back on his haunches. His booming voice carried over the crackle of the fire. “I was scouting for enemies. I found a band of warrior nomads, led by the woman Karada. She’s fighting the elves for control of the eastern plain. Two days ago she lost a battle, and her people are scattered. This man,” he said, pointing to Pa’alu, “came with me to see Yala-tene. He’s one of Karada’s band.”

  “Are we in any danger?” asked Amero, wiping tears from his face.

  “Not from the elves. They’ve come no farther than the headwaters of the Thon-Thalas.”

  “Any news of Karada?” asked Pa’alu anxiously.

  The dragon shook his massive head. “I could find no one brave enough to converse with me,” he said, sounding vexed. “The nomads are hiding in fear of elf retribution.”

  Duranix backed away from the cairn. The flames had subsided a bit, and the balmy wind off the lake was blowing smoke and hot ashes. He moved off a few paces and unfurled his wings. Without another word, he leaped into the air and flew back to his lair behind the waterfall.

  Amero took a deep breath and faced the crowd. “I don’t know what to say,” he said. “Duranix might have been able to save our people if he’d been here. He was away, working on our behalf, and he’s only one creature. He can’t be everywhere at once.” He searched the faces of the stunned, anguished people. “If any of you are unhappy with me, with what I have done, speak now. I will listen.”

  For a moment no one said anything. Then Valka, father of Halshi, tottered to the front of the crowd. He was elderly, lame from old hunting injuries. Despite his gnarled limbs and twisted hip, he stood as straight as he could before Amero.

  “I’ve lived twice as long as my father,” he said in a wavering, tired voice. “I’ve seen more of my children survive in the last ten years than in all the years before. I have a warm house, a bed, and much family around me. These things I owe to the great dragon and to his son.” When he used the word “son,” Pa’alu turned to stare at Amero.

  Old Valka went on. “Halshi was my only daughter, a good girl, hard-working and cheerful. I’ll miss her, but I would rather she died in a cave at Yala-tene than out in the wild, poisoned by snakebite or torn to pieces by the yevi. Here, a hundred families knew her and can mourn for her. That’s as good a rest as any plainsman can hope for.”

  Valka doffed his buckskin cap and bowed his head. “Be content, Amero. You’ve made my life more than I ever expected.”

  By threes and fives and tens, the people of Yala-tene bared their heads and expressed sentiments like Valka’s. In the end, Amero found their gratitude as hard to bear as their grief. Weeping, he walked off alone into the darkness beyond the dying pyre.

  Amero remained in the village until the fire was out. By then it was very late, and the crowd had dispersed, save for a few, like Valka and Pa’alu, who slept on the ground by the cairn. As Amero walked slowly through the quiet village on his way back to the cave, he passed by the remains of his copper experiment. He took a moment to kick apart the clay bowl. Instead of a cascade of separate copper pellets, the bowl contained a single mass of metal, all melted together. At least the day had one success, though he had no heart to celebrate it.

  Chapter 12

  By the time Karada reached the western slopes of the mountains, her band of followers had grown from forty-odd warriors on foot and horse to over a hundred. All along the route plainsmen left the line of march to collect their mates and children, most of whom lived in solitary camps in the eastern foothills. In the wake of their defeat, they feared the Silvanesti would sweep the countryside clear of humans, so they packed up their families and followed Karada west.

  It was raining as the long, straggling procession of nomads wound its way along the twisting mountain passes. Most of them, Karada included, had walked all the way from the Thon-Thalas. What horses they had were given to a few trusted scouts, who rode ahead looking for potential trouble and locating the best trails.

  The habit of leadership was strong in Karada. Though this ragtag collection of families was a far cry from the hundreds of warriors she had so recently led, they still saw her as their chief, and it was a role she could not easily relinquish.

  She was constantly on the move, going from the head of the line to the back, encouraging the wounded and whipping the laggards into line. It became clear four days into the march that the elves were not pursuing, but still Karada wouldn’t allow her people to dawdle. She drove them over the mountains through the low, easy southern passes, and not until they reached the great open plain did she allow any rest.

  The skies cleared, and while the younger hunters scoured the savanna for food, Karada held a council with the surviving leaders of the band. There weren’t many — Targun, Pakito, Hatu the One-eyed, and Samtu.

  No one was surprised Samtu remained in Karada’s band despite being threatened by her own chief. Samtu owed everything to Karada. Her family had died when she was only five. Karada had found the girl wandering like a fox cub, naked and f
ilthy, and raised her in a stern but caring way.

  Karada’s seconds ranged themselves around a modest fire, sitting on whatever rocks or logs were convenient. Karada took a chunk of trail bread from her knapsack — the last bit of food she had — broke off a piece and handed the rest to Pakito. The trail bread went around the circle until it was gone, then Karada started a gourd of fresh water in its wake.

  “Here we are, back again on the plains of my birth,” Karada said. “I wish it were for better reasons.”

  “I can’t think of a better reason than being alive,” Targun said. Though Karada had never stopped to consider it before, he was the oldest man present and was showing his age. His once black hair was shot through with gray, his squat, powerful frame now seemed wasted and hollow.

  “At least there’s good fishing here,” he added. “Nothing bigger than a minnow ever got up the blasted Thon-Thalas!”

  They laughed a little. The water gourd came back to Karada. It was still heavy and sloshing. Her comrades had left much of the water for her.

  “It’s late in the season,” she said. “We don’t have the time or the horses to hunt down enough game to feed the band.” She spat on the flattened grass. “Balif thinks he’s shown himself to be a generous conqueror by letting us go. The fact is, if we don’t do something, few of us will survive the winter.”

  “What can we do?” Samtu wondered.

  “That’s what I’m asking you.”

  Silence reigned. Finally, Pakito said, “We could find Pa’alu.”

  “How will that help?”

  The big man reddened. “He’s smart. He could think of something,” he said lamely.

  “He’s smart all right — smart enough to run off and not come back,” jeered Hatu.

  Pakito jumped up. “Watch your words, One-eye!”

  “Have I said something untrue?” Hatu was no weakling himself, the last survivor of a family of four strapping brothers. His manner was always outwardly mild, but he was a tough, sometimes ruthless character. Even Karada respected him as a fighter.