Slave in the City of Dragons (Dinosaurs and Gladiators Book 1)

by Angela Angelwolf

  His last conscious thought, as the mental fog closed in, was that he should have given his yast a name.

  Chapter 10. The Slave Revolt

  Tol’zen, Pashera and his guards started running sloppily over the uneven ground when they heard the three whistle blasts. They ran past confused knots of captives and the warriors guarding them, then finally caught up with the main body of the army just as it smashed the renegades and sent them streaming back toward the river.

  The army gave chase. The surviving dragon troopers led the way – “just try and stop us,” one shouted – though one dragon stayed behind to make sure their wounded, including Serdar Kro’brin, were properly cared for.

  At the shores of the river, the renegades turned and made a last stand. They fought with ferocity born of desperation and no hope for quarter. The battle was fierce. But slowly, inch by inch, superior numbers and weaponry gave the advantage to the saurians.

  Still, the surviving sky pirates peeled off from the battle over the fortress and came down to wreak what havoc they could. Commander Dal’ger saw a warrior only a stone’s throw from him picked up in the terrible, crushing claws of one of the helleckers and then dropped in the river.

  But the bat-folk followed, and whereas the helleckers were blundering in the dark, the bat-folk were brutally efficient killers.

  That’s when Guadalquivir nobles riding atop giant hunting spiders final caught up with the battle. Howling as they rode past the saurian foot soldiers, they tore into the renegades with a blood-frenzy.

  It was a slaughter.

  By dawn, when the dust cloud had finally settled and the bat-folk winged their way back to the hollow mountain Ishardayth, the battle was over. Fully one in four from their original number wasn’t flying back. But the bat-folk considered the debt of revenge paid in full.

  Among the troopers who made up the body of the army, taken from Dragon Gate, casualties were surprisingly light. Discipline and armor had saved the day. On the other hand, all but three of the dragon warrior shock troops were either dead or so wounded they had to be carried back. And then there were the three scientists – slain by renegade elements. But no one liked the scientists, anyway.

  Commander Dal’ger clapped Tol’zen on the shoulder as the sun rose over the river. “What a victory,” he said.

  Pashera looked at the bodies of dead humans around her. And she bent over and retched so hard it felt like her insides were coming out.

  “War isn’t for everybody,” Commander Dal’ger observed.

  Still, pitiful cries, moans and even animal noises came from the rubble all around them. Pashera begged Tol’zen to help.

  “These are our enemies,” he told her. “They would destroy us.”

  “But you can’t leave them buried alive,” she pleaded.

  He sighed, then called to Dal’ger. “Commander, put your warriors to dig through the rubble and pull out any slaves they find. We always need more.”

  The troops were exhausted after a night of fighting, but if they had any complaints, they kept it to themselves. Pashera’s heart lifted the first time the warriors pulled a young child, obviously alive, from the rubble. Then another living body – a woman Then another, then another.

  It was steady, methodical work. Excitement hit when a warrior rushed up and shouted “Lord Tol’zen! We’ve found something.”

  The officers went to investigate. In the core of the remaining tower – which was only half its previous size – they found rows upon rows of large eggs. “Hellecker eggs,” Dal’ger said. “They must have taken them from the mothers so they’d keep flying and fighting.”

  “We can rebuild our flying force,” Tol’zen said. “Tell your warriors excellent work. I want a full accounting of the eggs.”

  Meanwhile, the people pulled out of the rubble were triaged. Some were so badly hurt that the warriors just granted them swift passage. Those who could be patched up by the medics went to the field hospital. And those that were just covered in dust and banged up were trussed up and lined up for the march back to Guadalquivir.

  Shortly after noon, Dal’ger came to see Tol’zen. “We have done what we can,” he said. “The soldiers are exhausted, and it’s a while since we pulled one out alive.”

  “Shh!” Pashera said. “Be quiet everyone, and listen.”

  Some of the nearby warriors looked at each other sideways at the sight of a slave giving orders, but they obliged.

  Faint sounds carried on the wind.

  “Can you hear that?” Pashera said. “At least one, maybe two of the helleckers is alive. Those awful noises they make are so pitiful. And listen closer – there are a couple of people and … do you hear it?”

  The sound of a baby crying was unmistakable. It wailed, seemingly far away, but depending on how much rubble it was buried under, Pashera knew it could be close.

  “Pashera,” Tol’zen came to stand in front of her. “We aren’t going to dig through rubble to find helleckers just to put them down.”

  “But the baby,” Pashera said insistently. “I can hear it.”

  “We’re done here,” Tol’zen said flatly. “Good job, Commander,” he said to Dal’ger who nodded.

  “Fifty-six, sir,” one of the warriors said.

  “What?”

  “We salvaged 56 eggs.”

  Tol’zen smiled. “The king will be pleased.”

  “But the baby!” Pashera wailed.

  Tol’zen noiselessly took her by the hand and led her off the field to a waiting yast.

  The sound of that wailing haunted her as they rode toward the city.

  That evening, Lord Tol’zen rode a mount into the city at the head of his troops, with Commander Dal’ger by his side. Kro’brin could not ride, but said he’d make the party if he had to be carried in.

  Directly behind Tol’zen and Dal’ger rode the surviving dragon troopers. Then carts carrying chained captives. Then the officers riding on their horses. And then came the main body of the troops, still ashen-faced and dust-coated from the battle.

  The saurian common folks turned out to line the streets, showering the troops with flowers and well-wishes, and heaping scorn upon the captives.

  At the palace, Tol’zen, Dal’ger and selected heroes were seated at a long table in front of Kro’tos’ throne. The ladies of the court hovered around Tol’zen and Dal’ger like bees around sweet flowers. Kro’tos’ queen, Lak’shmi, herself led the flattery brigade, much to his chagrin.

  On his throne, Kro’tos’ face worked furiously. An onlooker would have glimpsed a mix of emotions ranging from satisfaction to rage.

  The source of Kro’tos’ rage: Tol’zen had another victory under his belt! And that idiot Thal’tos had assured him that the fliers were not suitable for the attack. Kro’tos had expected a more protracted conflict, something where he could ride out from the palace and save the day. But the war was finished in a matter of hours!

  At least his nephew had stolen some of Tol’zen’s thunder. At least that was something.

  There was something else, too. The chief of the sky pirates was captured, as were some of his top lieutenants. They’d all been dismounted and seized in the battle by the river. The chief, small like all his breed, eyes dark with hatred, was dragged in in chains. His feathers were torn and broken, his loincloth and his black flesh smeared with a clotted mixture of blood, dust and ash.

  The chief’s name was Ommeng. His beard was ornate, with a fierce moustache. The chains weighed heavily on his small, wiry frame, but the hate in his eyes shouted defiance. He gave short, bitter, sarcastic answers to all the questions Kro’tos put to him.

  Tiring of the pirate leader’s lack of entertainment value, Kro’tos made a dismissive gesture with his hands. “Take this one to a cell. We’ll have more sport with him in the summer games.”

  Spitting venom, Ommeng kicked as he was dragged off. Kro’tos ordered the remaining sky pirate lieutenants beheaded right there, that their skulls could decorate the festivities. Fo
ur poor devils were quickly dispatched, and their heads raised on poles to the cheers of the crowd as hot blood pooled on the floor.

  The king surveyed the high and mighty around him. “Where is Thal’tos?” he asked in what he hoped was a light-hearted fashion. “It’s not like him to miss a celebration.”

  “He foot-dragged through the entire operation,” Tol’zen said. “It’s not likely he sees this as a triumph.”

  “Ha!” the king slapped his knee a bit too heartily. “I hear he howled for hours over the loss of those fliers.”

  “They were barely able to fly,” Dal’ger said. “One missed the target entirely.”

  “Perhaps that’s it,” Tol’zen said with a smile. He paused, and the others looked to him.

  He added: “I promised Thal’tos they would land just where we wanted them to. Seems I was right only about two out of three.”

  The king’s mouth gaped, then he laughed uproariously, a noise that was picked up and echoed around the hall.

  The hellecker eggs were wheeled in and the king and his court applauded their recovery. Then, true to his word, Kro’brin was wheeled in on a settee, much to the delight of the crowd.

  “Kro’brin the hero!” the crowd shouted. “Kro’brin the hero!” The ladies who had flocked around Tol’zen turned as a group and descended on Kro’brin, led by the lady in black who wore her top-feathers in a spider fashion. The only one who didn’t go was Queen Lak’shmi. She stayed between Tol’zen and Dal’ger.

  Again, the king was hopeless at masking his emotions. He was happy to see someone else steal Tol’zen’s thunder. But in this room, this cradle of his reign and the forge of his will, he hated, HATED that anyone but him should get any applause.

  Still, for form’s sake, he led the applause, and heaped Kro’brin with awards, trinkets and praise, despite the fact that the cast of his eyes said otherwise.

  One on side of the great hall, Pashera watched remorsefully. The war had turned her stomach.

  Her Long Spear tribe knew only two kinds of organized conflict. The first was raids. There had been only three of those that she remembered, and all three were stopped by the great palisade, the ferocity of the men of the long spear tribe, and the accurately thrown stones of the women.

  The other was the ritual of war. Those came every autumn. But the ritualized wars that the tribes fought were over honor. There were rules. Everyone came out to watch, and it was common for the women and children to cheerlead for their own side as the warriors fought in the middle. They took turns throwing spears or mounting individual challenges. People got stabbed – and oh, didn’t the warriors like to show off a wound – but it was rare for someone to actually die.

  But this war, the battle against the sky pirates, had been a war of extermination. It was a slaughter. Pashera’s mind reeled, especially because she’d been a key part of it.

  A figure at her side shocked her into awareness. It was Amaz. “Are you ready?” Amaz asked. “We should do it now while they’re speechifying. That could take hours.”

  Seeing Amaz again, and remembering the humiliations the other human women suffered at Kro’tos’ last celebration, toughened Pashera’s resolve. “Let’s go.”

  They walked with nonchalance out one of the serving doors. At the back of the kitchens – a tremendously noisy and boisterous place -- Tenrici and Rylo waited for them. With them were a handful of other women and assorted men. All wore the colors of palace slaves, save for two burly men in stable livery.

  “I have already served the guard drugged wine,” Tenrici said. “But the door is locked.”

  “Leave that to me,” Pashera said. “Do you have a pantellion?”

  Tenrici held up the device, her eyes shining with absolute mischief.

  “We must move fast,” Rylo said. “The others will cover for us as long as they can.”

  As they walked toward the armory, Pashera said to Amaz: “I have a thought. I can unlock the door from anywhere. But it’s best if people aren’t around, too many minds muddy everything up. Is there somewhere private?”

  “Kro’tos had a study right along this way that he hardly uses,” Amaz said. “He never reads. He uses it for trysts with his officers’ wives, of course.”

  They arrived at the study. It was locked, but the burliest of the stable hands, Tenfo by name, forced the old lock easily. The others looked at Pashera expectantly.

  “Count a thousand heartbeats,” she said, “then I will unlock the door if I can. Be in place when that happens.”

  “We will,” Tenrici said.

  “I will stay here,” Amaz said. “Something might come up. We can both join you later.”

  Pashera felt in her heart that Amaz didn’t trust her. But that was okay. She’d earn their trust. She’d earn all their trust. “Please do stay,” she said to Amaz.

  Opening the door, they found a fairly small room with walls and floors of dark wood. There were rows of wooden shelves stuffed with books, scrolls and pantellions. The rest of the room was taken up by a large desk that looked workmanlike but was clear of indications of applied thought, a leather-covered couch that had seen better days, a table and two chairs. The shelves seemed very dusty, as did the table and chairs. The couch and the desk were both well-used and covered with unidentifiable stains. A couple of silver goblets lay scattered on the floor.

  Wiping dust off the table, Pashera readied the pantellion. She sat down, cleared her mind, then spun the small globe while Amaz kept count. By the time Amaz reached 500 heartbeats, Pashera’s mind relaxed enough that, just like that, she was drifting along the Sumsentia.

  She’d made sure of the location of the armory beforehand, and she was able to ride the Sumsentia through the maze of the palace to find it. The lock on the armory pulsed in the half-world of the Sumsentia. She touched it with her mind …

  … and she couldn’t open it. There was something missing. A ritual or a code. Pashera felt panic rise within her.

  “I can’t open it,” she said aloud. “There is a secret to it that I don’t know.”

  “Who would know the secret?” Amaz said, far away in the real world. “Think!”

  Who indeed? In her panic, Pashera flailed about for information on that, but none was coming on the Sumsentia. Then she realized: “Thal’tos!” she said out loud.

  Where was Thal’tos? The old coot of a scientist had been involved in the wonder weapons up to his topfeathers, he MUST know the code. She searched for him, drifting through the palace, then nearby buildings as fast as she could manage.

  Wait – the time fortress! She’d seen all those scientist minds clustered there when she previously explored the city via Sumsentia. She projected her consciousness to the time fortress.

  The first mind she became aware of was the hungry, fierce mind at the heart of the Time Fortress, the one she’d touched in her previous experience. It snapped at her, but she danced away, and skirted its edges while opening up herself to the many bright sparks of the scientists’ minds. Sure enough, after a few minutes’ search, she found a mind she knew had to be Thal’tos.

  She immediately guarded her mind. She knew the reason that the scientists called her “Kaledonia” on the hilltop. Upon reflection – and she’d thought of little else all day – she didn’t believe the scientists called for her head because of her mental power. It’s because they read her thoughts of rebellion when they touched minds, thoughts that had been foremost in her mind as helpless humans died while piloting saurian war machines.

  If Thal’tos, who had real cerebral power, read such thoughts in her mind, her little game would end in a hurry.

  She found Thal’tos lying on a couch. Not only was he mentally linked into the Sumsentia, he was projecting into the Overvibe. His consciousness was stretched across a million light years.

  In that state, Thal’tos didn’t notice Pashera. Not at first.

  Still, it was daunting. Entering his mind was like entering a library of a million books, bound in lizard-skin, dust
y with age and filled with knowledge. Theories about the origins of the universe mixed with long histories of his own great race, spilling out of the “books” and tumbling to tangle in a knot of stray thoughts on the floor of the “library”. She was in contact with a mind that she realized was much smarter than her own. It was terrifying.

  It was all she could do not to flee from his mind. He was too formidable, too intimidating. But she knew in her heart that the success of the revolt depended on her doing the unthinkable. Steeling herself, she imagined her mental toolkit – the one revealed by the Throne of Hearts’ Desires – sitting in front of her. She opened the toolkit and put herself to the task of mentally pick-pocketing Thal’tos.

  Working under cover of calmness, she planted an idea in his head to think about the wonder weapons. In response, she was buffeted by a flood of angry feelings about the war. Not anger over the fact that humans had been killed. Thal’tos couldn’t care less about any monkey. What sent him raging was the loss of the ancient and precious war machines. Even worse, Tol’zen – that hated and impudent Tol’zen – had come out of the war so well.

  She used her toolkit to inject more tranquility into his mind. And sure enough, thinking about the wonder weapons brought up the code. Pashera committed it to memory and then stealthily tried to exit the scientist’s mind.

  But that’s when Thal’tos noticed something. Perhaps her mind rubbed his in just the wrong way. His attention suddenly boiled to a fury, he broke the connection with the Overvibe, and he probed right back at her.

  Panicking for the second time that night, Pashera pounced like a beast from the jungle, hammering his consciousness with thoughts of agony. This was no contest of intellects; this was one savage psyche sucker-punching another. Painful lights exploded in his skull, and Thal’tos flopped on his couch like a hooked fish.

  Pashera waited. She kept any thoughts of herself, or anything that might betray her identity, out of her mind. Her attack left Thal’tos’ thoughts weak … scrambled.

  Just to be sure, she reached out mental talons and sank them into Thal’tos again. This time, it was his subconscious. Pashera unleashed a hate-stream filled with terrors real and imagined, and it shook him like a rag doll.