by D. A. Metrov
“Our son is barely seven years of age. You would imperil his life before he understands the dangers involved?”
“I do know, Mother. Not to worry. I’ve been watching Vada for a long time now.” Brighton had known inside that she would not heed him in the slightest. At the same time, he’d fought the tangle tightening in his stomach.
As expected, she’d ignored him. She had moved with savage grace, like some wild jungle cat, toward her husband. Her eyes had scowled with rage. “You don’t care about him. You don’t care about anything but your own pride.”
Brighton had battled the voice in his head that had been suggesting his mother was more than upset. The voice that said she’d long been teetering on insanity brought about by unhappiness and isolation. As much as he’d wished she would lighten up, she’d only grown more intense.
“I should take the boy back to Baldore. Back home, where people are civilized. You wouldn’t even notice, would you, L-o-r-d Aviamore?” She had drawn out the word “Lord” in such a taunting manner that Brighton had grown nauseous from the truth: her mind was truly gone.
“You worry yourself with undue cause, my lady,” Lord Aviamore had said, at the same time stroking Fumor to keep him calm.
“I worry, my lord, that you will be the demise of us all.” And with that, she had stormed off, lifting her long, tattered dress off the ground even though it was already filthy from neglect. Passing Brighton, she’d shot the boy a glare that would have sent chills up the spine of the most black-hearted picaroon.
Brighton had watched her go, his heart filled with angst.
“Your mother’s from another world, Brighton,” Vada had said. “A world of wealth, soft and easy, where men prefer to waltz and play parlor games with their women. She’s still adjusting to life here on Perpetua. This is a land for adventurers and those who love freedom. She’s a fine woman though. She’ll adapt… someday.”
Brighton had wondered if Vada was being honest with himself. But now Vada was gone, and the boy had to face her alone.
He saw their lodge in the distance. And his mother, marching with purpose toward the mountains. Where is she going? Lady Aviamore was dressed in an extra layer of clothing, a bundle slung over her shoulder.
“Mother!”
She kept walking. She doesn’t hear me. “Mother!” he cried out again, this time at the top of his lungs. She shot him the quickest glance, but never lost stride.
Why isn’t she stopping? Brighton hurried his pace. He felt the pain in his shoulder now, and realized the gash had started to bleed again. She seemed to walk faster, as if trying to evade him. He ran. He got close enough to see that her eyes were crazed as ever, her jaw set tight.
“Mother.” He was out of breath. The word barely made a sound. He had to stop her. He was ready to collapse. He reached out and grabbed her cloak.
She spun around. “Stay away from me!”
He dropped to his knees, and could see the black light radiating from her eyes.
“You don’t understand. Father…” he gasped.
“Your father got what he deserved.”
He couldn’t believe his ears. What was she saying?
“Yes, boy. I saw. Did you think you could deceive me? I followed you this morning, and saw the entire bloody event. It was inevitable, wasn’t it?”
Brighton knelt there, wide-eyed, incredulous, speechless.
“’You worry yourself with undue cause, my lady.’ Isn’t that what he’d said? And now look. It was only a matter of time before that monster butchered him. You’re lucky he didn’t murder you as well.”
She stormed away again. “Don’t you dare try to follow me!”
Brighton realized he was trembling so badly he had to grab his own shoulders to stop himself. His eyes welled up with tears that felt like blood. Unable to move, he could only watch her disappear into the woods. Where is she going? Will she come back? Who can I turn to?
He knew the brutal truth. His father was the last Falcon Rider. His family was the last of the missing voyagers who’d settled the Drakton Plateau five generations ago. There was no one else. No humans anyway. Only the mutants on the other side of the island. The other side—a surreal land where the animals had moved into the ancient town once inhabited by men. Animals who’d learned to use weapons and speak! Animals who had manifested their own impossible world. No. It was insanity there. He could not turn to them. He was alone.
He was crying now, crying so hard, it hurt.
Stop it! Stop your crying. You’re a man now. And you have a man’s work to do. He swiped the tears off his face, and got back to his feet. He made his way to the barn to find a shovel. Work to do.
It was dark by the time he returned to the killing ground. He’d left the lantern behind on purpose so he wouldn’t have to see his father’s remains. Still there was a faint glow in the foggy night air, as the moon was on the wane.
He climbed the ridge where he knew his father lay. By now, he’d made himself hard—hard and cold. He’d forced away his childish emotions. Forced away the truth of what had happened. But when he found the body, the retching came all over again. Over and over he heaved, even though his stomach had been empty all day. He didn’t know it was possible to feel so miserable.
He drove his shovel into the ground, and tried not to look at Vada whose eyes stared beyond the night’s dark mist. Brighton tried not to see the empty ribcage that was now caked with blood and dry gore. He tried in vain to ignore the shreds of entrails that lay scattered on the damp crimson ground. He dug harder and faster, like a machine—retching, digging, retching, digging. He kicked at the insects crawling to and from the corpse, doing what, he didn’t want to know.
Maybe I should bring him back to the lodge. Bury him there within sight. Carve a proper gravestone. He heard a mosquito buzz past his ear. No. No time. Got to get this done. I’ll chisel a marker and bring it back up here. He would prefer this—to be buried on higher ground—with a view. Yes. No. Keep digging.
He dug with fervor until his father’s burial pit was half a leapspan deep. When he was satisfied, he put the shovel down. He looked at Lord Aviamore’s remains. How different this was. Different than anything he’d known before. Vada had always been a source of inspiration and joy and good humor. Vada had been his teacher, his guide, the only wellspring of love the boy had ever known. The man had been a pillar of strength and vitality. And now he lay there, lifeless, empty, a mere shell of a human being.
What does it mean to be a person? One day alive, full of feeling. The next day nothing but dried flesh. Some mummy-like thing. There must be a spirit, some invisible twin, hiding inside. Where did it go? Are there secret worlds for these phantoms? Worlds where souls go on—hunting, laughing, loving?
Get this done, Brighton told himself. He dropped the shovel, and without another thought, dragged his father’s body into the grave. He was surprised by its lightness, an indication of how much the Magradore had devoured. Don’t think about that. Just do your duty. Your duty, Brighton.
He did his best to empty his mind while he shoveled dirt again to refill the pit.
Brighton Aviamore buried his father that night, his beloved Vada. The loss would cause him grief and torment. He would face years of inner discord about being a Falcon Rider. He would have to decide whether to continue admiring the mighty Magradores. Or to hunt them down and kill every last one.
Chapter Three
INVASION OF THE TUNNEL DOGS
The nine years following the death of Lord Aviamore passed like a procession of titans, sad and mournful, climbing skyward ‘til they disappeared in the blazing sun. By then, Valkyrie Heights, on the far side of Perpetua, was under siege. The citizens had managed to hold the aggressors back from the township, thus containing the fight to the Inland Ridge that separated the sea cliffs from the mainland peaks. The fighters on both sides were exhausted, so the battle moved in unreal, almost lackadaisical rhythms.
What made the warfare especially dreary
was the fact the fighting could only be done at night. The enemy retreated daily at the first hint of dawn, back into the tunnels that led to the heart of the mountains. There was no haste, no frenzy, not even the loud, crazy cries of heroism one would imagine in war. The fighters moved about the steamy battlefield as if it were just another day at the fish market. Sure, there was always hollering in the distance, and the occasional kaboom of a boulder bomb. But mostly there were only the hollow-eyed soldiers carrying away the wounded and the dead.
The bulk of the Valkyrie army consisted of several hundred monkrats. Scruffy creatures resembling giant lemmings, the monkrats fought with crude bows and arrows, pitch forks, and primitive, steam-powered catapults. Many of them had fashioned their own war gear—goggles, holsters, bandoleers. Some wore cooking pot helmets. Others donned footwear, which consisted of nothing more than willow grass bound with kelp rope. Soldiering was not their customary occupation by any means, but they’d had no choice except to defend their homeland. After all, the monkrat had occupied Perpetua Isle longer than any of the others save for the Lizard King and his brethren who some said were older than stone.
“Incoming!” shouted one of the furry fighters. A group of monkrats ducked as a fire bomb blasted a pit in the dirt.
“He’s gonna soak himself in the morning. Soak all day, why not. Dirty dogs using fire like that,” said another monkrat.
“They learned it from Valkyrians,” shouted the first.
“Come to battle soaking wet?” said a third.
“Maybe it’s not a bad idea,” shouted a fourth. “He’s sick of being singed. Blackaerts!” And with that they charged back into battle, joining the dwarols who fought overhead.
The flying pine dwarols were the monkrats’ reluctant allies. A cross between the handsome tree dwarf and miniature mountain troll, the dwarols were forest dwellers who’d domesticated Perpetua’s giant cliff sparrows.
Living with their birds in mud huts in the upper pine branches of the deep forest, dwarols preferred solitude. But because of their fiercely territorial dispositions, they had voted to join the monkrats of Valkyrie in order to drive back the invaders who’d arrived three years earlier. They rarely spoke, these boyish bird men, riding the backs of their speedy mounts, and whirling sabers over their heads. But they filled the air with such squealing, it had the effect of scrambling the enemies’ brains.
The Wolfstalk fighters, though less than two dozen in number, were Valkyrie’s most feared defenders. Tall and thin as the evergreens that bordered the village, the odd-looking giants were deceptively strong. Their lupine heads were a confusion of timber wolf and lop-eared spaniel. Their torsos were covered with dark brown dog hair. From the waist down to their long, humanoid feet, they were coated with spotted fur that resembled leopard skin. They spoke a language no one had ever been able to translate. To a human outsider it might have sounded like some balderdash of Polar Bear and Chinese.
And though they moved in painfully slow fashion, they possessed unsurpassed stamina, hurling boulders as they went with the same force as the catapults.
Wark, a jet black, Gothhoven raven, flew into a moonlit cloud. His species averaged a full leapspan tall when standing upright (approximately ten feet by common standards). For just a moment, he closed his eyes and felt the chilling mist flutter his feathers.
Wark had been elected Town Chancellor. He was a master of foreign literature, brilliant at the game of nutgammon, and a successful walnut grower. The last thing he wanted to be was commander of a ragtag army. Or any so-called army, for that matter. His favorite activity, to the dismay of his wife, Lady Eleanor Sharpeye, was to sit on his porch with a pipe in his beak, and do nothing but watch his orchards grow. The closest thing he had to experience in warfare was once winning the “Walnut Drop” contest at the Valkyrie Fair. The trophy he’d earned that day still stood, covered with dust, on a shelf in his work shed. Lady Sharpeye would no longer allow it in the house. She took pride in her decorating skills. And, in her uncontested judgment, that silly tin cup was simply out of fashion.
Wark emerged from the cloud and opened his eyes again. He cocked his head toward the battlefield below. Bloody dogs have been a mere trickle ‘til tonight, he thought. Now, they’re flooding out in manic swarms. Are they intensifying their offensive? Heaven help us if they are.
Then, cawing with all the gusto he could muster, he tucked his wings, and dove like an arrow. Straight down into the smolder of warfare.
Besides the intrepid pine dwarols and their sparrows, the air was filled with flying robots. The peculiar wooden machines were mounted on cart wheels. They propelled themselves through the air by steam-driven canvas wings.
They wielded swords and blew shock horns embedded in their chests. The pitch and frequency of the horns was powerful enough to shatter stone. Though awkward in flight, the small robots were a deadly nuisance. Wark always said they resembled mechanisms found in the sketchbooks of a famous, faraway inventor known even here as the Great Leonardo. There were other myths about their origin, but not a one of them true.
The steam robots provided air support for the enemy—devilish heathens known to all as “gorpes” or tunnel dogs. They’d appeared in the foothills above Valkyrie one day having tunneled out from the mountains. It was widely believed they’d once been men, prisoners brought long ago from foreign lands. They’d been forced to work the mines when humans still ruled Perpetua. But when the ore had run out, they were abandoned by their employers. Left to survive on their own. They’d lived underground for so long, they’d become like the living dead. They had gray shriveled faces and humped backs. They were nearly impervious to the cold. They wielded steam-powered muskets and crossbows, as well as traditional swords. They could scramble up and down the rocky terrain, in bare feet no less, as if spawned by mountain goats.
“Hurry up with them candy canes,” shouted a devil. “It’s time we blew these rodents off the face of the earth.”
“Comin’, governor,” shouted another who was scurrying out from a tunnel with an armload of dynamite.
“And watch out for that black monster. He appears outta nowhere. Blackaert’s got a beak like a battering ram.”
Chancellor Wark rocketed straight down through the dwarols and robots. He ignored the flaming arrows that were meant to shoot him down. He flew so fast the wind burned in his wake. He swept up toward the gorpe bowmen, and succeeded in knocking a good number of them from their perches. The gorpes screeched ungodly screeches as they plummeted to their deaths.
Wark swooped up toward the heavens again. He experienced a rush that made him feel younger. He almost convinced himself he was actually as fit as he’d been at eighteen. In fact, he was now, in human years, fifty-nine years old.
He furrowed his brow, and cried out in triumph. “Kaughhh, kaughh, kaughhhh.”
The great raven flapped his way toward the Valkyrie lines. He flew headlong past the smoldering fireballs that hurtled through the air from the monkrat catapults. He was nearly eye level with the Wolfstalks. The giants marched with a-g-o-n-i-z-i-n-g-l-y s-l-o-w, but determined steps toward the enemy. Their boulders thundered into the mountainside, bringing cascades of rock and dirt onto the gorpes who took cover near the tunnel entrances.
An explosion, more powerful than normal, rocked the night. The blast blew another tunnel mouth from within the mountain, causing fissures to form all the way down to the battlefield. When the dust cleared, foul-smelling gases poured from the new cracks in the rock. And out of the gas emerged more gorpes. And more robots. And a gigantic, steam-boring machine. The enemy fighters were unfazed by the gas. They lived in its source—smelting chambers brought back to life deep in Perpetua’s belly.
The monkrat fighters couldn’t tolerate the stench. As hardy as they were, it made them dizzy and sick to their stomachs. It caused their eyes to burn—so badly they could barely see. They gagged and reeled. They couldn’t stay on their feet or cling to their swords. The gorpes who poured from the tunnels an
d fissures took advantage by slaughtering them in great numbers.
Wark circled above the catapult line, startled by the new offensive. The gases crept toward his fighters who were already retreating to the cliffs that lined the coast. A toad-like voice brought him out of his stupor.
“No one but Old Chisel-chin knows how many dogs in that mountain, Chancellor!” It was Gretch, unlikely commander of the dwarol flyers. (“Chisel-chin” was a popular nickname for the devil himself.) The ancient troll circled Wark on Malgor, his giant bat. He’d only recently joined the Valkyrians. He claimed he’d been living in solitude deep in the mountains. That he’d grown weary of the noisy mining operations encroaching on his habitat. Everyone knew him. No one trusted him. But since he was a distant relative to the tree dwarols, he’d been able to bring them back into the fight. They’d been losing spirit of late, and Wark desperately needed their support. “I say retreat,” roared the monster.
“I’ll pull back the infantry, but keep your flyers engaged,” Wark squawked. “They aren’t as affected by the gas. We’ll be done for if those hellfiends find their way to town.”
Gretch sneered at him, then grunted and flew off. Wark didn’t like him. But the raven didn’t have time to worry about Gretch at the moment. He had to save his ground fighters.
He flew above the catapults. “Pull back to the beach!” he called out over and over. One by one the war machines blew out final gasps of steam, then grew still. The monkrats were loathe to retreat, but they realized they had no other option. Most of them fled in droves down the cliff trails toward the sea.