by Paul Cook
At the foot of the hoist, a terrified group of children and mothers had gathered. They greeted Amero’s descent with frantic cries, which faded when they saw his grim face and bleeding chest wound.
“Arkuden, save us!” some cried.
He said nothing, but pushed the nomad out of the basket and proceeded to shake him awake.
“You!” Amero said. “You want to live, yes? Tell me, are all your comrades attacking through Cedarsplit Gap?”
“I’ll tell you nothing,” answered the bloody-faced man blearily.
There was no time for lengthy interrogation. Amero gave the nomad over to the older boys and girls and bade them guard him.
“Where’s the dragon?” asked one of the women, clutching two babes in her arms. “He’s supposed to protect us!”
“He’s not here,” Amero said bluntly. “We’ll have to defend ourselves.”
He had the spear left behind by the nomad he’d killed. Shouldering it, Amero hurried down the hill to join the fray.
Nianki slept like a child that night. Despite the sundering of the band and the strange death Pa’alu had chosen for himself, she felt oddly at peace when the time came for rest. It reminded her of the aftermath of a storm. Once the lightning, thunder, and rain disperse, the land lies supine, washed clean by the torrent.
The only thing that still disturbed her was that Amero had learned her secret. Just when she had won a measure of control over her passions, his knowledge threatened to upset her fragile equilibrium. She couldn’t look at him without having to fight down the horrible urge to blush, stammer, and run away
She abandoned her stuffy tent and took her bedroll to the ledge overlooking the lake. She spread the ram’s skin, wool side up, and lay down in such a way that she could see the lake between her feet. The dark glimmer of the water, coupled with the steady drone of the falls, soon lulled her to sleep.
Her rest was peaceful until near dawn. She dreamed a shadow fell across her face. Opening her eyes, she saw someone bending over her. His face was in darkness. She wanted to turn away, but she was paralyzed. She couldn’t even close her eyes. She could only lie there helplessly as he came closer and closer, wafting an icy cold breeze before himself. Just before the man’s lips touched hers, she saw a metal pendant glittering at his throat. Who was he? Why was he so cold? A single name formed in her mind: Pa’alu.
She woke, flailing her arms in horror.
There was no one there. Nianki hunched over, breathing hard. She uttered a curse and wiped the sweat from her cheek and brow.
The rocky ledge beneath her vibrated. Her imaginary battle with the unknown man had rolled her off the ram’s skin. Now her feet and hips rested on bare rock. A rhythmic vibration ran from the rock and into her body. Curious, Nianki pressed her ear to the ledge and listened.
Vibrations that strong and regular could only be hoof-beats!
She was up in a flash, striding toward the remains of the nomad camp. It was easy to find Pakito’s tent. His feet stuck out the end, and intertwined with them were Samtu’s smaller, paler feet. Nianki kicked Pakito’s soles. He rumbled threateningly and flung back the flap of his tent.
“What? Who’s there?”
“On your feet, Pakito! There’s trouble!”
“Karada?” He slid Samtu aside. She whimpered a little and tried to cling to his broad chest. “What trouble, Karada?”
“Nacris has come back!”
That sank in, and the big warrior was on his feet in short order.
Nianki went from tent to tent waking her greatly diminished band. In moments, eighty-six sleepy nomads assembled by the dragon’s cairn. All were armed, but few were more than half-dressed.
“We haven’t got much time!” Nianki declared. “The first sixty, follow me. Targun, take the others and pound on every door in Arku-peli. It’s time the mudtoes fought for their own valley.”
Karada and sixty warriors stumbled through the dark village toward the cattle pens. It was plain that if the rebel nomads were coming back, they’d have to use one of the passes at the northern end of the valley, of which Cedar-split Gap was the closest. At the top of the sandy hill that stood between the pens and the village, Karada halted her comrades.
“What is it?” asked Pakito, too loudly.
“Shh! Listen!”
The gap, lined with stone on all sides, focused the sound of massed horses into the valley. They all strained to hear, poised on the crest of the hill. The rumble was unmistakable.
“What’ll we do?” whispered Pakito.
“They think they’ll surprise us, catch us asleep,” Nianki said. “Instead, we’ll catch them.”
She spread her meager force out along the hill, just below the crest and out of sight from the other side. The warriors went down on one knee and leaned their spears forward, bracing the butt against their feet. If the renegades came galloping over the hill, they’d run smack into a hedge of waiting spear points.
Behind them, Targun, Samtu, and the rest rattled every door in the village. Some of the villagers came out to see what the commotion was, but most bolted their doors and tried to get a glimpse of the situation from their upper windows. They were the first to catch sight of the oncoming attack.
The cry went up. “Riders! Riders!”
“Brace yourselves!” Nianki told her warriors.
Waving torches, the first wave of horsemen swept down on the unguarded cattle pens, their agile ponies jumping over the low stone wall. They threw ropes over the gate and tore it down, then screaming nomads got behind the herd and started driving them out of the pen.
“They’re stealing our oxen!” wailed a villager.
Pakito eyed his chief. Karada shook her head. The warriors held their positions.
To her consternation, a sizable body of riders simply rode around the hill, along the pebbled shoreline. There was nothing between them and the village. Nianki was about to order her line to fall back when a second wave of mounted renegades, some eighty strong, came cantering over the hill. It wasn’t quite the headlong charge she wanted, but several of the riders did run into the thorny line of spears. The renegades recoiled, and showered the nomads on foot with stones and thrown spears.
“Hold your place,” Nianki said. “If something comes your way, knock it down before it reaches you.”
Following her own order, she batted down a pair of light javelins hurled at her. The predawn darkness made it difficult to see every missile, and two of her warriors went down, scalps laid open by large stones.
“All right, on your feet!” she said. Nianki herself went to one of her fallen comrades and helped the injured woman stand. “Back to the houses — but slowly! Slowly!”
Under jeers and missiles, the slender line withdrew to the outermost ring of houses. Nianki gave the nomad she’d rescued to some householders, who took her inside. A few of the older villagers, who remembered fighting like this from their younger days, joined Nianki’s defenders. They were armed with whatever came to hand — wooden rakes, shovels, staffs. Not one in ten had a stone-headed weapon. With no other options to hand, Nianki put them quickly into the line.
The renegades who’d ridden down the shore of the lake turned in to the village and began throwing torches at the housetops. One by one, the roofs caught fire, the families running outside to escape the flames. Hatu’s riders let them go, racing inside to plunder the burning house before the roof fell in on everything. The terrified villagers ran to the foot of the falls, under the very mouth of the dragon’s cave, and prayed for the aid of their great protector.
Into this scene of terror came Amero. He directed those fleeing to take shelter by the falls and moved on against the screaming tide. A few horsemen were harassing the fleeing villagers, tripping them with their spear shafts or knocking them around with their horses. Furious, Amero stormed at the nearest bully. The laughing nomad was chivvying an old man and teenage girl, pushing them this way and that, not letting them get clear to run. Amero rushed the nomad
from his blind side and thrust his spear into the man’s armpit. The horseman’s head snapped around, totally astonished. He fell from his horse. Freed of its rider, the animal galloped away from the battle.
Villagers surrounded Amero and praised him for his prowess and courage. Impatiently he said, “All I did was stab a man when he wasn’t looking! Go!”
A pair of riders bore down on Amero. He flattened himself against the side of the cairn just in time to dodge simultaneously thrown javelins. One came close enough to cut the waist of his trews.
For the second time in as many days, Amero found himself going up the side of the cairn. At least the horsemen couldn’t reach him up there. Rocks and axes flew thick and fast as he scaled the sloping stone side. A few thumped him with glancing blows. Wincing, he kept his grip and made it to the top.
The dark sky was lightening to blue. Keeping low to avoid missiles, Amero crept to the other edge of the cairn and saw the battle raging among the houses.
Nianki’s line had become a circle, bounded on all sides by stoutly defended houses. In the gaps between, her warriors and the armed villagers who remained fought tenaciously. The narrow lanes between the houses reduced the mobility of the renegades’ horses, and many dismounted to fight on foot.
From his perch, Amero spotted Nianki. Her closely-cropped hair made her easy to pick out as she stood in the center of the besieged circle. She directed the defense with cool words or fierce cries, as needed. Amero was deeply struck by this image of his sister. He’d seen her duel with Sessan, but he’d never before witnessed her commanding in battle.
A head bobbed up over the edge of the cairn, a long-haired nomad. With surprisingly little remorse, Amero put his foot in the man’s face and sent him tumbling to the ground. Two others tried to scale the platform and reach him, but he fended them off with his spear. Amero felt a growing confidence in his fighting abilities. Another quick glance over at his sister and he thought proudly that warrior blood did run in the family.
A heavy pall of smoke wafted between the cairn and Nianki’s position. Renegades on the outer edges of the battle were setting more and more roofs afire. When the flames reached the houses making up Nianki’s defenses, her line would fragment, and the defenders would be cut up and defeated piecemeal.
Scooting back to the center of the platform, Amero knelt and bowed his head. Concentrating as hard as he could, he formed a single thought.
Duranix! Help us, or we are lost!
The blazing roof on the house nearest the cairn — Konza’s home — collapsed. Inside, the wooden posts and flooring burned ferociously, tongues of flame spurting from the second-story windows. The heat was so powerful it drove Amero to the opposite end of the cairn. He fervently hoped no one was left inside the tanner’s house.
Pakito, fighting with the long-handled axe so dreaded by his foes, cleared a swath in front of him. Through the smoke he saw Amero crouching atop the dragon’s cairn.
“Karada!” he bellowed. “Isn’t that Arkuden?”
Nianki spared a glance in the direction he indicated. She saw Amero, wreathed in smoke and flames. Her heart seemed to stop; her instinct was to fly to his defense. Instead, she said, “We can’t reach him — there’s too many on us!”
“I can reach him,” Pakito said, planting his fists on his hips.
A fierce smile briefly lit her dirty face. “Do that, and you can name your own reward!”
The towering warrior jabbed a thick finger at his chief. “Remember those words, Karada!”
Gripping his axe, he strode past the line of smaller warriors — though all warriors were smaller than Pakito — into the lane between the rings of houses. At once he was set upon by a mounted renegade wearing a wood-and-leather breastplate: Tarkwa.
Tarkwa tried to ride Pakito down, but the big man was not about to be trampled under. He threw his left arm around the horse’s neck and brought his axe up in a wide swing. Tarkwa tried to parry with his spear, but the heavy axehead shattered the shaft and Tarkwa’s forearm as well. Howling in agony, Tarkwa tried to wrench his horse’s head loose from Pakito’s grip. The three of them — man, horse, and rider — skidded in a tight circle, slamming into the wall of a burning house.
Pakito found himself between the horse and the wall, for anyone else a bad spot. The giant warrior, however, drew his legs under himself, used the house for leverage, and threw the horse to the ground. Tarkwa rolled over and over in the sand, coming to a stop in the open doorway of a blazing house. Groggily, he sat up, just as the whole wooden interior of the house come crashing down on top of him.
Pakito moved on, swatting aside his former comrades as they tried to intercept him. After a few deadly swipes, they gave him wide berth, and he arrived at the cairn.
Coughing from the heavy smoke, Pakito called to Amero.
The young headman’s sooty, blood-streaked face appeared.
“Pakito!”
“I’ve come to take you to Karada.”
Such a declaration should have sounded ludicrous — battle and fire raged on all sides — but coming from Pakito, it was simply a statement of fact.
Amero half-slid, half-fell to the ground beside the giant. Pakito hauled him to his feet and propelled him forward.
Two of the six houses that formed Nianki’s defense line were on fire. The villagers inside had to climb out the rear windows to drop down among their neighbors and Nianki’s followers. By the time Pakito and Amero rejoined them, there were almost a hundred people in the shrinking circle.
Stumbling forward, Amero felt strong arms stop him. He looked up into Nianki’s smoke-streaked face.
“Bad day,” he said, taking her gently by the hand.
“Going to get worse,” she replied. “There’s a lot of people to kill.”
Even as she said so, a lull struck. The renegades backed out of spear-thrust range. Nianki’s defenders accepted the respite, some of them falling to their knees out of sheer exhaustion.
Hatu and Nacris rode forward into view.
“Karada! Arkuden! Can you hear me?” Hatu yelled.
“I hear only the screech of a vulture!” Nianki yelled back.
“What do you want?” Amero shouted.
“Lay down your weapons, and we’ll spare you.”
Nianki laughed derisively.
Hatu pointed over his shoulder at the falls. “There are a lot of helpless people over there,” he said. “It would be a shame to slaughter them all just to persuade you not to be stubborn.”
“Would he do that?” asked Amero, horrified.
“What do you think?” Nianki replied.
Amero started toward the mounted pair. “Then we must give up.”
Nianki gripped his arm in her hard hand. “If we stop fighting he’ll kill us all. He’ll not spare your villagers.”
“I can’t let my people die to prolong my own life!” he said, pulling free. He started for Hatu once more. Pakito blocked his way until a shake of Nianki’s head convinced the big nomad to stand aside. She turned away, unable to watch.
Amero walked slowly up to Hatu. “You tried to kill me once before,” he said. “Ten, eleven seasons ago. You and your brothers caught me here in this valley. You thought I was the dragon in disguise.”
“Sorry to keep you waiting so long.”
“It’s no good,” Nacris said anxiously. “It’s no good unless Karada comes out, too!”
“She won’t,” Amero said.
“Stubborn wench. Well, at least you’ll be out of the way.”
Hatu laid the flat side of his spearhead on Amero’s shoulder. The point was just a finger’s breadth from his throat. Amero closed his eyes.
Cries of alarm rose from the renegades on the shore. Nacris turned her horse around and met a pair of riders galloping up the hill.
“What is it?” she said.
“Something coming up the lake, coming this way!” gasped one of the men.
“It’s big!” his companion added. “Very big!”
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br /> Big? Amero thought. Hah! At last!
He knocked Hatu’s spear point off his shoulder and dropped to the ground. Hatu cursed and raked down Amero’s back with his weapon. Amero felt the sting, but he kept scrambling. He scuttled under some other horses before rising to his feet and sprinting for Nianki.
The renegades milled about in confusion. Some charged Nianki and her warriors, while others formed a rough line on the shore and waited for whatever was coming down the lake. Hatu and Nacris rode to the water’s edge to see for themselves.
The normally chill water of the lake was boiling. Waves propelled by some submerged object were surging down the lake toward the falls. As the astonished nomads looked on, trout, bream, and pike churned the water ahead of the object, some so frantic they flung themselves out of the water to escape. But to escape what?
The fast-moving mound of water drew abreast of the nomads on shore and slowed. Some of the renegades backed their horses away until drawn back in line by sharp words from Nacris. Twenty paces from shore the water split apart as a long greenish-gold neck rose from the depths.
“Duranix! It’s Duranix!” Amero’s cry was taken up by all the villagers until it became a roaring chant.
Fully half the renegades quit the fight there and then. The ones facing Nianki’s line simply melted away. Laden with looted food and other goods, they mounted their horses and galloped for safety. Nianki and Amero led their singed, tired defenders away from the burning houses, drawing up in circle on open ground beyond the cairn.
Duranix opened his mouth wide and let loose a full-throated roar that loosened stones from the cliff tops. Taking in the scene with one sweep of his head, he swam past Hatu’s position and climbed ashore between the renegades and the unprotected mass of children and old people cowering beneath his cave. Water rolled off the burnished scales of his back in silver sheets. He still wore the leather brace on his injured wing.
“Amero, are you alive?” he roared over the heads of the closely packed renegades. Pakito and another man hoisted the headmen onto their shoulders. Amero waved his arms.
“I am!” he shouted, grinning madly.