by Garry Ocean
Nick noticed a flyer on approach to land. An eight-seat Lightening touched the ground noiselessly, and a merry company of young people rolled out of the open door. There were twelve of them. Nick could not figure out how they all fit in there. The last lanky guy started to throw out of an open hatch the gear for graviboards, and everyone else tried to catch their board flying at them, cracking up jokes and fooling around. One of the girls, pink-cheeked with excitement, saw Nick and waved at him happily, “You need to go to the Katun Ridge, you won’t regret it! The best slope now is at the northern part of the Kolban Mountain.”
“Don’t listen to her,” a large red-haired guy said, picking up the girl and carrying her in his arms. “It’s tough without special training. Black tracks, you’d break your head like it’s nothing.”
“For you even a children’s playground slide is black tracks!” the girl playfully pounded her fists on the guy’s chest. “Put me back on the ground, you, Yeti!”
Nick smiled, giving way to the merry party. Every one of them patted him on the shoulder while passing him, and whished the strong tailwind and soft snow. They clearly took him for a beginning adrenaline junkie. He’d let them have it: No need to explain to them that he’d spent his entire childhood here.
The destination was less than half an hour away. The flyer cruised above the Korbu Mountains, flew along the coastline of the Teletsk Lake and landed, with a quiet rustle, near the administration office of the Altai Reserve.
“Oh, Nick, long time no see!” he heard the voice of Veronica, his grandmother’s assistant, in the spacious hall of the first floor. “Olga Nikolaevna is not in her office right now, didn’t you check in with her?”
“No, I didn’t,” Nick gestured in confusion, as if he didn’t even think about it. “I am here just for one day. Decided to drop by, wanted to make it a surprise for her.”
“She is at the Lower Base now. Our forester, Oleg Grigoriev, you know him too, is there. He trapped a grizzly bear this winter, you know. We were all awed. Where would it have come from,” Veronica’s eyes were wide with surprise. “And with no biochip! Can you imagine? So, Olga Nikolaevna went there to check everything out. You understand, right, a bear on the tourist rout, and not registered!”
Nick never figured out what Veronica was awed by: the bear himself or the fact that he had no biochip. Although, of course, it was weird: the sensory chips are implanted into the bears, and all other predators, when they are born. The Lower Base was not too far away, only about fifteen miles on a straight path. Nick was happy to have a reason to run through the pine forest.
“All right, Veronica, thank you. I’ll go,” he winked at the girl as if she was a part of his plot, and asked her in a low whisper, “but don’t tell grandma I’m here, OK?”
“Yes, of course, Nick. I understand, it’s a surprise,” she smiled at him in response, and shouted, when he was already leaving, “Take the flyer, it’ll be faster!”
“I have had enough flying,” Nick waved her good-bye and started to jog along the hill toward the forest.
*****
The trail disappeared, as always, quite unexpectedly, and Nick found himself in a small meadow. Right in the center of it, there was a black matte hanger. Behind it, Nick could see a little hut made of rough logs. Nick remembered that this hut had been built by Oleg Grigoriev himself, the man of a great physique. He had been a forester here for many years, very rarely got back into civilization, preferring to spend all his time in the company of wild taiga animals. The national reserve staff believed him to be weird, but treated him with great respect and even slight reverence. In his childhood, Nick loved visiting with the forester. They used to walk the hidden forest trails, and Grigoriev happily taught him how to read the animal tracks and traces, set up traps for small game, and find his way without the tools in the endless taiga.
Nick headed straight to the hut, but, having noticed a warning sign reading “Beware of a predator!” stopped in his tracks. He guessed this was the place where they kept the grizzly bear. Curiosity took the upper hand over his cautiousness, and Nick touched the panel with his hand. The door hissed and opened to the side.
The hangar was dimly lit. Nick stood there for a little while, letting his eyes adjust to the semi-darkness. The odor was the one you’d expect in a cage of a large predator. And there it was. In the depth of the hangar, to the right, there stood a high metal cage. Inside, a brown hill was that of a bear. Nick carefully advanced to the cage, subconsciously estimating the thickness of its iron bars.
The animal was in the far corner, seemingly asleep. Nick suddenly felt a chill running up his spine. The bear turned from side to side, stretched, yawned, and licked his paw. When Nick saw the animal’s might, yellowish teeth and dimly glistening blades of bear claws, his palms sweated and knees weakened. He jumped to the side and heard a voice behind him, saying, “So, there you are. Your beloved grandma can’t wait for you to show up. The samovar4 is ready, and you are befriending a predator here.”
Smiling Grigoriev stood at the door, his powerful body taking up the entire doorframe.
Nick wiped the sweat off his forehead so that Grigoriev couldn’t see it, and, wondering if the latter noticed his weakness, extended his arm for a handshake, saying as innocently as possible, “Yeah, Veronica told me that you had caught a lost bear the other day, and I thought I should stop by and take a look.”
“Aha,” Grigoriev shook Nick’s extended hand, looked him up and down as if he saw him for the first time, felt out his shoulders and biceps. Nick relaxed and then tensed his muscles, as if showing them off.
Grigoriev seemed to be pleased, “You’ve grown.”
He pushed aside a big bucket with his foot, and slightly pushed Nick to a wooden table, adding, “Take a seat, since you are here.” Then he pulled a crudely made stool and sat on it across from Nick. “Veronica and Olga Nikolaevna are setting the table up, so we have a couple of minutes to catch up.”
“Ah, Veronica, Veronica,” Nick mumbled with fake disappointment, “I asked her not to tell so that it’s a surprise.”
“Aha,” Grigoriev agreed happily. “I heard you are going to join the Space Military Academy? Follow in your father’s footsteps?”
“Well, I am not sure,” Nick was suddenly embarrassed. He was sure that not many people knew about his secret. And now it turns out that this was no secret even in the farthest corners of taiga. “Getting in is hard, it’s a tough competition.”
“You’ll get in, don’t worry. You, the Sobolevs, are determined. I didn’t have a chance to meet your grandfather in person,” Grigoriev paused, as if remembering something, “not counting zero-communication, of course.”
Grigoriev frowned, as if suggesting that he does not welcome the modern civilization advancements, and then continued, “I wish I did, though. He seemed like a worthy man.”
Grigoriev paused again, and then added, “But I know your father quite well. You guys are a rare breed. I used to think they don’t make them like this anymore. You do not understand the bear, but nonetheless fled from the case, so you feel danger with your skin. People think that the bear is short-armed and clumsy, but they are mistaken. He would have grabbed you like a cat catches a mouse. But I can see he likes you. That is, I understand it, but how I understand it – I cannot explain.”
Grigoriev rubbed his muscular neck, got up, scooped water out of a barrel with a large pot, and came up to the cage. The bear could not get up in it to its full height, so he sat, propping the cage ceiling with his huge head, and stuck his paw out between the iron rods. And this was when Nick understood what the forester tried to explain to him. The bear’s paw extended and retracted, like a telescopic antenna. Nick glanced at the blades of his claws, estimated where he had been standing just minutes before, and unbuttoned the shirt on his chest.
*****
“Get up, Nick, we are in big trouble!” someone was pulling his shirt. He did not want to open his eyes. “The ferry, Nick, the ferry is d
eparting!”
“The ferry? What ferry, to hell with it?” Nick sat, looking at Sith in confusion, speaking in Interling.
“Did you get hit in your head again?” Sith looked at him apprehensively. “Talking in a strange language again, I can’t understand you!”
“Just a bad dream, Sith,” Nick frowned. “So, what about the ferry?”
“Let’s go, quickly, to the eastern tower, everyone is already there!”
Everything was clear without explanations. The elders were standing on the eastern fortress wall that overlooked to the Rapid Waters. From above, it was possible to see that the people’s only chance to save their lives was slowly but gradually disappearing in the morning fog.
“Let’s go to the pier,” Whisperer seemed calm, but his eyes were burning with anger.
Half an hour later they were at the pier. What they saw there was a painful reminder of what Nick saw earlier on the fortress walls. Mutilated human bodies and piles of burned corpses of the beasts. Passing by the defense mound, where a silent flamethrower, covered in black soot, was idling, they heard a weak moan. The hunters pulled a bleeding guard from the pile of bodies, and it took them time to recognize Rekk. His face, with its grayish earthly color, was not much more different than that of the corpses that surrounded him.
Whisperer took a knife and used it to pry open Rekk’s tightly clenched teeth. Then he poured some thick concoction into this mouth. Rekk coughed for a long time, but soon his blood started to circulate better, the deathly paleness went away. As he explained, at night a revolt happened. The legionaries revolted and declared that they were not going to die protecting the doomed foresters. Rekk tried to stop them, but they hit him on the head and he lost consciousness. They probably thought he was dead and threw him into a pile of dead people. Rekk was afraid that the other guards who stayed faithful to the oath they had given to the Guardians might have been killed in the revolt as well.
The hunters inspected all the defense mounds and found about two dozens of other wounded guards. They provided them with first aid, put them onto soft mats, closer to the fires. They decided it was useless to carry the wounded into the fortress. It was clear that they all would meet the same end by the same evening.
Nick looked at Whisperer. The old man hunched his back even more, his wrinkles deepened, which made his face look even older. Despondent Sith was sitting next to him and kept silent.
“We could try and hide the children at the lighthouse,” Whisperer said, but his voice betrayed that he himself didn’t believe it could work.
“I will turn the ferry back!” Nick shouted.
“How will you turn it back, Nick?” Whisperer looked at him with the same expression that Sith gave him in the morning.
“I will, I’m telling you!” Nick tightened his lips stubbornly. He did not have a finished plan in his head yet, but, as his father used to say, the problems need to be tackled one by one as they come. Nick made some estimates in his head and added, “When the Orphius is in its zenith, be ready. I will give three horns from the other bank as a signal. Meanwhile, harness the sloths to the carts. Get the women and children ready. They will take the ferry first.”
Not giving anyone a chance to say anything, he ran up and jumped from the pier into the river.
Chapter 6
Cleo was sitting in her chambers, looking out the window. She needed to make a decision, but she was delaying it. In the morning, a confidant brought her a message she had been waiting for five days. Then, as it seemed to her, she had already made the decision. But now, when the long-awaited information was in her hands, she started to have doubts. One thing was to plan, think through and imagine one’s actions in one’s head. Implementing the plan in reality was quite a different thing.
It all started with the Exodus Celebration and that barbaric Ritual, damn it! Everyone in her court was looking forward to that event. Why wouldn’t they? It had been happening only once in ten years for almost three hundred years now, starting at the time of Archie the Wise. Now it was hard to discern what the original intent of that wise ruler was when he established the celebration. But in our times, it was a manifestation of strength and victory over the Exodus for all the City residents and the adjacent lands. Cleo smirked: Five hundred years ago people were fleeing from the Forest’s wrath, abandoning the places they had settled in a long time ago. And now, it seems, the Forest is after them again. But no one understands it yet. Even the Guardians, who through the centuries started to believe in their omnipotence, have forgotten their original purpose themselves.
Cleo’s thoughts had made a thorny circle and returned her to her half-brother again. “Oh, Leo, Leo! How right you were in your thinking! You used to say, ‘Only by studying the Forest we can find protection from it. We are all like a fool who, instead of putting out the fire in his house, is hiding under the bed.’ But no one, even Father, listened to you. And you went to the Forest and disappeared. How unfair is that fate! As if the Departed Gods are playing with me,” Cleo thought.
She remembered the friendly and humble smile of Nick of the Westgayer clan. His open face, full of dignity and honor. She could not deny that there was an unexplainable attraction between them, even though for a very short moment. She remembered how his eyelashes fluttered when she ordained the Winner’s wreath on his head. His eyes… as if he was trying to remember her. She felt the same. Only later, a tad later, Cleo realized that it was him who she had seen in her dreams. Drivel? Perhaps. Whatever it was, he was a wandering warrior. Nonetheless, the one who had lived with the Near Forest residents for quite some time, and as Cleo understood, was very friendly with them. To have a guide like that in the Forest – she could have only dreamed about it! As soon as the girl thought that this was her only chance to set out in search of her missing brother, the subsequent events went out of control.
Nick at first declined to participate in the Big Hunt. And then he suddenly appeared in the Arena, by some miracle killed the monster collarhorn, and disappeared without a trace! That was inconceivable, beyond anyone’s comprehension. During the three hundred years of the Ritual, no one ever managed to become the Winner of the Big Hunt. And those few who were brave enough to go into the Arena and died there were still the subjects of odes and heroic ballads.
According to Archie the Wise’s commandment, the Big Hunt winner was to receive the youngest daughter of the Supreme Guardian as his trophy wife. And this Nick of the Westgayer clan disappeared just as quickly as he appeared in the Ritual, with no trace. The Judge’s snoops who went to look for him all came back with nothing.
Cleo fidgeted with a piece of paper she was still holding in her hand. It was a short report that one of her court servants delivered to her, risking his life. She skipped the beginning and the end and once again read the most important phrase, “The person you inquired about, accompanied by a boy and an old man, most probably residents of the Near Forest, departed on the ferry from the main pier on the fourth day after the Exodus Celebration. Allegedly, at present he is at the first defense Tower.”
“So what should I do?” Cleo asked herself for a millionth time. “How do I get there?”
Cleo started her day by reading the alarming reports that were pouring in from all the surrounding lands to the Guardians’ military headquarters. In the Middle Lands, panic ruled. Unknown flying beasts attacked vast areas along the Rapid Waters all the way to the steppes. Several of those made it all the way to the walls of the Great City. They could only be destroyed if they were burned at the core. There were some reports that they were sinking onto entire villages and then no one could be saved. And if they were not destroyed right away, the entire affected area was immediately populated by all sorts of unimaginable scum that hated everything alive.
Cleo could not tell how much of this was true and how much – made up. But the fact that people, whole villages, abandoned their houses in panic, leaving behind everything they had, was obvious by the number of refugees that were flooding t
he local roads. It looked like previously adequate and decent people went mad. Pillaging and robberies were happening everywhere. The Guardians had to issue an urgent degree: All major roads leading to the Great City were blocked by checkpoints with armed guards.
It was impossible to get to the ferry by herself and alone, as she had planned earlier. She only had one possibility left: To persuade Gunn-Terr. But it was not clear, which one was more feasible. Her austere bodyguard carried out all her orders without questions, only if they did not jeopardize, as he thought, her personal safety. In that case, no one could influence his opinion, even all five Guardians taken together.
Cleo inhaled deeply and went toward the door. This time the girl decided to change the long-standing tradition and not call the Alvar to her chambers. She’d go visit with him in person.
*****
Gunn-Terr was concentrating on sharpening his sword. It was not that the sword needed it, and he knew it perfectly well. The sword was as sharp as it could be, but now Gunn-Terr was trying to overcome his insecurity by doing something habitual and calming. This feeling was completely new to him. He could never even think that this would ever happen to him.
For some reason, today he was struck by long-forgotten memories, completely unexpectedly and out of place. Why did they emerge? For a true warrior, there’s no past and future, there is only the present. It is today that you have to perform your warrior duty. If you succeed, you’d be honored and dignified. If you die carrying out your duty with dignity – you’d be honored and glorified. This is what he was taught and this is what he was trying to teach his warriors.