by Angus Watson
It ran on, bounding across the rocks on colossal-thighed back legs. Its three-toed feet had black claws as thick as a tree trunk sharpened into a wicked point. Its feet were exact but larger versions of, Sassa realized with surprise, a chicken’s.
Incongruously, its forelimbs were tiny and undeveloped, as if its front legs had been replaced with a weedy man’s arms. It ran on its hind legs, little forelegs flapping. With a mouth like that, Sassa reckoned, there probably wasn’t much need for arms. That gob could have picked up Erik’s giant bear and swallowed it in one gulp.
Another lizard king came charging up from its birth pit, then another and another, all scrambling desperately over the collapsed mountain. Butting aside boulders that they could have run around, shrieking all the while, they charged towards the Calnian army.
Yarg Lobster ran towards the Badlands in the front rank of the attack, tossing his spear from one hand to the other every twenty paces to prevent either arm becoming fatigued. He’d told the others to do the same, but had they listened to him? Had they bunnies. They were jogging along with their spears always in the same hand. So they were going to reach the fight with tired spear arms. Idiots. Worse, some of them had chosen hand axes instead of spears. Attacking an enemy up a hill with an axe? What the bunnies was the thinking behind that? There was no thinking, and that was the problem! For the love of Innowak, it was enough to make you weep.
The trouble with getting older, Yarg had realised a while back, was that it became clearer and ever clearer that everyone but him was an absolute moron. When Yarg saw a problem, he saw a solution. And when did he start working on that solution? Right away, of course, while everyone else stood around with their mouths open or, worse, got in his way.
His wife was the worst. Great hairy bunnies, she was such an idiot. She couldn’t prepare for things, she was never ready when she was meant to be and when you got there, you could be certain she’d forgotten at least one vital thing. Like when they’d been to visit her parents—her parents, mind, so it wasn’t like it was a treat for him even though he’d organised everything—she’d forgotten to bring enough food for the three kids. Yarg had seen the solution immediately, of course, and left her bleating about Innowak knew what while he’d made and set up snares. Then, of course, because she’d let the kids muck about near the snares, the snares hadn’t worked and they’d ended up eating the berries that she’d collected. She hadn’t said anything, but he could tell she was thinking that she’d solved the problem, when she hadn’t, she’d just fucked up the best solution by letting the kids go near his traps and had them eating boring berries instead of delicious rabbit. Other people! They were such tits.
He knew she didn’t like him changing his name from Yarg Loster to Yarg Lobster, either. She didn’t get it. The Owsla all had clever animal names that reflected their strengths, and he was as good as the Owsla. He gripped problems like a lobster gripped its prey. It was pretty fucking simple, for the love of bunnies.
“Do you mind me changing my name?” he’d asked her once.
“What can you do?” she’d said.
“What can I do?” he’d replied. “I can do anything!”
It wasn’t just his wife. He was gallant enough to admit that she probably wasn’t any thicker than everybody else, he just spent more time with her so he saw more of her stupidy. Everybody else was at least as lack-witted. None of them had the nous to realise that his solutions were always the best. Did time move more slowly for him, or was he simply blessed with being able to see how things worked and interrelated more quickly and clearly than others? One of the few mysteries he could not fathom was the source of his own genius.
So, because he couldn’t trust anybody else to get it right, he was leading the attack on the Badlands. Not leading leading—he wasn’t a captain or anything like that—but he was one of the foremost warriors running towards the wall of rock. He had to be, because he would have to show everyone else how you got up a wall of rock and killed Badlanders. He wasn’t sure himself yet how he was going to do it, but he knew he’d see the problem, analyse it in an instant, realise the solution and act. That was what he did.
He ran on, men and women all around him. He’d never been happier. By the end of the day they’d all owe their lives to Yarg Lobster. Finally, they’d all see him in action. Finally, they’d know. They’d toast him around the fires. Ayanna would ask him to be a captain. Would he accept her request? Would he bunnies. The captains were the biggest idiots of the lot of them. Yarg didn’t need a title to be head of the pack. People followed him by instinct.
Closer and closer they ran and still no sign of the enemy. The Badlanders were idiots as well, surprisingly enough. A couple of sallies out from their rock wall would have put the bunnies up most of the Calnians (not Yarg, obviously), but they were staying hidden, waiting for Yarg to work out how to kill them.
They were still a couple of hundred paces from the Badland cliff when a huge section of it came tumbling down.
Did a massive rockslide faze Yarg? Did it bunnies. You’d think it might, since he’d never seen a rockslide before. But it didn’t. He’d never seen a cliff this high before either, but it was still nothing to him.
“Come on! To the breech!” he shouted. Without missing a step he altered his course to the north-east, towards the collapse.
Of course, he found himself out ahead because he hadn’t dithered. He’d seen the problem, the cliff, and he’d seen a solution, the rockslide. Everyone else was scratching their arses thinking, Oh, wow, a rockslide? That’s unusual, why would a rockslide happen now? How does that affect us? Yarg had had all those thoughts and more in less than an instant and now he was leading the way. It didn’t matter why the rockslide had happened, it didn’t matter that it was unlikely. It mattered that they could use it to ascend into the Badlands. The sooner they did, the more likely they were to catch the enemy before they’d reacted to it.
He got that.
By Innowak’s bouncing bunnies, why was everyone else so thick?
A very weird roaring scream did slow him for half a moment—he wasn’t perfect, he’d be the first to admit that—but he ran on (because he wasn’t a long way off perfect).
He’d deal with whatever caused the noise when he came to it.
He didn’t turn, but he knew they’d be faltering behind, which was good. They’d see him and know how much braver, how much more capable, he was.
There were more roaring screams. It was probably trumpets, meant to scare them, meant to slow them while the Badland defence adapted to the rockslide. That sort of bollocks wouldn’t work on Yarg Lobster, no sir. Adapt quicker than Yarg? As if! Adaptation wasn’t his middle name, but it should have been.
He ran on towards the cloud of dust where the cliff face had been, and, he had to admit, got a bit of a shock when a monster the height of a tall tree ran out of it.
For a moment, possibly an entire moment, he faltered. And then sped up again. He’d seen the problem—a twenty-pace-high monster with teeth like giant knives—and he’d seen the solution. Get under it, Yarg, he told himself, ram your spear into its guts.
How magnificent he must look, way out ahead of everyone, running towards a charging monster! It must have been a hundred times his weight—more—but did it scare him? Did it bunnies.
He tossed his spear from one hand to the other so as not to tire one arm—might as well teach them a lesson when he had their attention—and the beast was lowering its head, so that gaping mouth was coming at him like a tooth-lined net about to scoop up a fish, just a couple of feet off the ground.
He saw the problem, he saw the solution.
Paces away he slid, feet first on the slick grass. He watched the underside of the indubitably flummoxed beast’s jaw pass overhead, then he sat and raised his spear. He aimed the stone tip into the gigantic belly and jammed the butt into the ground. The monster’s own momentum and weight would do for it and Yarg would roll clear.
Spear tip met belly. Th
e shaft snapped in an explosion of splinters. The stone point thwunked harmlessly into the ground.
Yard regretted not making his own spear, as an enormous talon tore into his leg.
His quarry ran on. Yarg looked down at his injury. Oh bunnies, how annoying. Because that fool weapons maker hadn’t hardened the wood properly, the spear had snapped. Yarg had told him how to do it but the idiot must have ignored his advice. The failure of the spear had distracted him and he hadn’t rolled clear as planned. And now …
His leg was a mess, but it didn’t hurt. He could see his thigh bone. The parted flesh and muscle was oozing blood, not gushing, so no major bloodstreams had been severed. He’d live, and he wouldn’t need the help of a healer. He could already see how the wound should best be treated.
He tried to stand. Agony lanced from his leg and he fell back into a sitting position, facing the Badlands.
Three more monsters were coming. They were the same as the first, perhaps a little larger. The foremost of them saw him sitting there and slowed.
He saw a problem. He saw the solution.
He lay and rolled over, so he was face down. This was how one survived attack from humped bears, and that was the largest carnivore he’d previously come across, so he guessed the same applied here. Black bears were a different story; you fought those, but with bigger carnivores you played dead.
He heard the beast slow. He closed his eyes. He was too brave, too certain that he’d been right about playing dead, to be scared.
He felt teeth pierce his side, and then an extraordinary strength crush his torso. Stupid animal! It was meant to sniff him and move on!
He was lifted. He saw swinging grass and sky. The teeth released him and he was flying for a moment, up and then down, into the beast’s hot mouth. Darkness came as his chest was squeezed. There was a moment’s relief, then he was crushed again. He felt his skin split, his bones snap, his innards burst and spill.
He was being chewed. Why wasn’t he dead yet?
As Yarg Lobster became the first animal to be eaten by a lizard king in sixty-five million years, he cursed the spearmaker for his unhardened spear, he cursed Ayanna for attacking the Badlands, he cursed his fellow soldiers for holding back and he cursed his wife for letting him head off with the army. On that last thought, an image of his wife’s smiling, bright-eyed face filled his mind and suddenly, overwhelmingly, he realised what a dick he’d been for all of his adult life.
Oh bunnies, he thought.
Ayanna stood atop a dome of rock to watch her men storm the Badlands. Chippaminka was the only person at her side. She was going to double the size of the Calnian empire in a morning and ensure them all a place in fireside histories for evermore. None of the useless generals had contributed to her and Chippaminka’s plan, so they didn’t deserve to be at her side to see it bloom.
The tactics were marvellous in their simplicity. Run into the Badlands, kill anyone who resisted. Her army outnumbered the Badlander warriors by ten to one, so any more sophisticated schemes would have been folly.
Luby Zephyr’s Owsla killing squad was on hand to take on Sofi Tornado and her women if necessary, but Ayanna was nearly certain it wouldn’t be. Somehow Beaver Man had cowed her Owsla, but forcing them to attack the Calnian army was a different matter. All of those women, with the possible exception of Morningstar, would kill themselves before killing Calnian troops.
She watched her warriors charge, swarming round the bizarre yellow-red outcrops that pocked the grassland. They were headed for the road that cut across and up the rockface to the Badlander stronghold.
She scanned the cliff for the enemy, and raised her eyebrows in mild surprise when a large section of the massif collapsed. An unimaginable weight of rock crashed to the ground with a rumbling roar that rolled out across the plain and shook her rocky perch.
What was this? The timing couldn’t be coincidental. Somehow, Beaver Man had managed to knock down a huge section of his own defences. Surely it was why he’d been so confident. No doubt he’d been planning to wait until the majority of her force was committed and kill them in a rockslide. And the fool had gone early. Instead of crushing her warriors, he’d opened up a broad path into the heart of the Badlands.
She’d been optimistic before, now she was near-euphoric.
The Calnians charged, one warrior out ahead of the others.
As the dust cloud from the rock fall bloomed up into the blue sky, the loudest and strangest animal roars Ayanna had ever heard reverberated out from the Badlands.
Her confidence took a dip. When a monster thundered out of the dust, it took a dive. More and more of the beasts ran out of the dust cloud and raced to catch up with the first. The second of them stopped to snatch up and eat her foremost valiant but doomed Calnian.
The animals were huge, like monsters from a nightmare, but they were still animals. Stick enough stone in them and they would fall. The lone warrior hadn’t had a chance against them, but grouping together to defeat animals more powerful that themselves was what humans did best of all. The Calnians would prevail.
Squads of club and axe warriors fell back, spearmen pressed forward and did not falter. She would reward the survivors and the families of the dead.
The monsters came on, charging at her army as if ordered to do so. How did one train such beasts, she wondered? It seemed almost a shame to kill them.
Captains arranged spear warriors into wide-spaced formations and sent archers onto the pinnacles and domes of rock. Good, thought Ayanna, exactly what she would have done.
“What are these animals, Chippaminka?” she asked. “Have you come across anything like them in your travels?”
“I have never seen anything like them. But I’m sure the spearmen and archers will bring them down.” Chippaminka pointed to the track that cut through the spiked wall of the Badlands. “I don’t know what these are either.” Something—some things—were running down the path a good deal more quickly than a person could run, kicking up a plume of dust.
Oh no, thought Ayanna. What was this new horror?
Tansy Burna galloped her cat downhill, leading her squad of six dagger-tooth riders behind Rappa Hoga’s. Others had clubs, bows and knives. Rappa Hoga had his great obsidian axe. Tansy Burna had only her blowpipe with sixty poison darts slotted into the leather belt across her chest. She’d tried fighting on catback with melee weapons, but found that all the jumping about and swinging around put her cat off her stride, plus the dagger-tooth cat was perfectly good at killing anybody within reach without the help of its rider. Besides, they didn’t want to kill the Calnians. Their orders were to dart as many as possible for collection and captivity. The spider-box makers had been working day and night for weeks.
To the south, the lizard kings were galloping towards the enemy army, kicking up great clods of prairie grass and soil with monstrous clawed feet. Tansy found it hard to tear her eyes away from them and focus on the path ahead. The lizards were astonishing, the finest creations so far. The way they roared! It was an entirely new sound, like a mountain shrieking or a god shouting. What was next? Surely the lizard kings couldn’t be topped? But with the life force of so many of the Calnian army who they were going to capture today, where was the limit?
The track swung southwards onto its final section, down to prairie level. Ahead, Rappa Hoga reached the grassland and steered his cat eastwards along the base of the massif, followed by his squad. The dagger-tooth cat riders’ role was to follow after the lizard kings and hit the reeling survivors with a flanking sweep, peppering them with darts and keeping them terrified until the moose riders hit them head-on.
Tansy Burna grinned and dug her heels into her cat.
Watching the exchange between the empress and Beaver Man, Luby Zephyr had seen the expressions on her fellow Owsla women’s faces. Back in Calnia, Morningstar had once been punished for leaving their training compound and shagging a couple of guys. It had been the eve of the Owsla’s first ever fight against live capti
ves, the first time they’d got to actually kill anyone. Morningstar had been barred from joining in, but allowed to watch. She’d looked the same that day as she did today—seriously pissed off and desperate to kill.
No, somehow Beaver Man was controlling them and it probably wasn’t a coincidence that they all had little wooden boxes strapped to their necks.
She had to get to them.
When the huge beasts charged from the Badlands, Luby saw her chance. She left instructions with her deputy to try to keep clear of the fighting and sprinted westwards. If she could skirt the Badlander attack, she might be able to find a way up into the Badlands undetected, find the Owsla and free them from whatever enchantment or threat was binding them.
Ayanna watched. The first monster hit her waiting warriors, plucked up a hapless woman with its great mouth and threw her ruined body up into the blue. It wasn’t finished there. It kicked and stomped, destroying, disembowelling and crushing. Men and women rushed to attack but it didn’t seem even to notice. It must have killed sixty or seventy people before the second monster joined in. Then the third beast trampled its way over her warriors, then another, and another.
Archers loosed swarms of arrows, but the missiles bounced off. Accurately hurled spears fell to the ground without denting the foe. Men and women ran in underneath the beasts and thrust upwards with stout spears, but even they couldn’t pierce the monsters’ hides.
Still the brave Calnians attacked, still the monsters stamped, bit, hurled and ripped. As if discovering a new trick, the great lizards now began to swing their thick tails, sending groups of people flying to crash down dead or disabled.
Ayanna could not believe what she was seeing. Every moment was a disaster, and the moments kept coming. The only end she could see to it was the total destruction of her army.
The monsters waded on towards Ayanna, leaving scores—hundreds—slain and maimed.