From Across the Clouded Range

by H. Nathan Wilcox

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  Ipid watched a group of riders racing down the road in a storm of dust that would soon be in his nose and carefully noted the way they had ridden. From what he could gather from the conversations between Arin and his advisors, the trip across the mountains had drained most of the army’s supplies, so Arin continuously unleashed small groups of ten to twelve riders to loot the holdings that were off to the sides of the road. This set of riders demonstrated what Ipid was calling a ‘full sprint,’ one in which the rider lays himself flat on the horse and gives full rein so that they can maximize their speed over a short distance. The verb for such a ride was ‘yulute’.

  Ipid recited the word over and over so that he would remember it when they stopped and was again able to write in his book. Arin was in the process of teaching him all the Darthur words for ‘to ride a horse’ – apparently there were dozens of such words – and insisted that each group of riders demonstrate a different form. Ipid was preparing to recite all the riding terms he had learned thus far when the words died on his lips.

  A black blur caught the corner of his eye and drew his attention to the side. He followed it and saw something in a nearby clearing that nearly unseated him without Arin’s help. A huge, inexplicable creature was settling on the ground. The thing was the size of a horse, but its body was that of a thin dog with two large heads at the ends of long necks. It had great gaping jaws that bulged with so many teeth that it could not fit its lips over them and huge wings of black feathers like a raven. The thing was easing itself to the ground where six triple-jointed legs, each of which ended in a single curved talon, were preparing to grasp the earth like a hand might hold a ball.

  Ipid shook his head in disbelief. He told himself that he was delusional, but the creature did not fade. It just hovered above the ground until a man in a black robe steered his horse off the road and into the clearing. The man motioned the creature down, and it approached the earth as if afraid then grabbed it with a sudden violent motion. One of the huge heads turned to the black-robed man, and the two of them appeared to have a conversation.

  “Te-adeate!” Arin growled just before the stick snapped across the top of Ipid’s hands.

  He almost dropped his reins from the pain of the blow and immediately turned his attention from the clearing. He returned to listing the terms for riding a horse, but Arin had followed his eyes.

  The sight of the creature brought a smile to his lips. He gestured toward the terrible thing. “Stoche.”

  Ipid nodded in disbelief. Arin knew about this thing and was giving it a name. “Stoch - ah,” he repeated.

  Arin smiled again. “You have stoche here?”

  “Certainly not!” Ipid’s wonderment made him speak before he thought. The disrespectful tone earned him a welt across the back of his head.

  “Meeny stoche come wit’ Darthur. You stay far. They for te-am’ eiruh.” Ipid did not know what Arin’s last word had meant, but he certainly planned to stay away from anything that looked like that thing in the clearing. Arin gestured at the black-robed man who was talking to the creature. “Te-am’ eiruh.”

  Ipid repeated the words. The black-robed men – he now saw that there was a large group of them behind the first unit of the phalanx – must be the ones who controlled the creatures. He did not begrudge them the job. Still, he thought he recognized the words that made up their name.

  He looked toward Arin. He was receiving a message, so Ipid rifled through his book for the word ‘eiruh’. He already knew that ‘ta’ meant ‘they’ and turned to ‘those’ when it went to ‘te’. ‘Am’ was a shortening of the verb ‘amate’ which meant ‘to bring.’ In Darthur, it was common to combine a pronoun and a shortened verb to create a new word. Thus, te-am’ meant ‘bringers’. That just left ‘eiruh’. Ipid was certain that he had heard that word before. Finally, he found it. Scanning down the page he saw, “ei-ruh; destruction.” He put the words together and turned to look at the clump of black shapes behind him: ‘bringers of destruction.’