Caldell cut left, heading toward the back of a row of brownstones. Looking over his shoulder, Saba waved to Eamon.
“Go around!”
Eamon and Partridge ran off to the left to swing around the front of the apartments. Timburgen followed Saba. Wizard Cameron had not been able to keep up and was quite a distance behind. Caldell ran right into a wooden slat fence as if he hadn’t noticed it. He fired once more at Saba and then clambered over. Saba scarcely slowed as he leapt over the top. Then he was only a few feet behind the fugitive.
With a dive, he hit Caldell in the middle of the back and they both crashed into a wrought iron outdoor table. The man tried to fight back, but Saba drove his forehead into the bomber’s nose, knocking all resistance out of him. Grabbing the pistol and tossing it aside, he rolled his prisoner onto his face and handcuffed his hands behind him. Timburger climbed over the back wall, and seconds later Eamon and Partridge came out the back door of the apartment, the occupants, a middle-aged man and woman, right behind them.
Saba stood up. Eamon and Partridge lifted the prisoner to his feet.
“All right you,” said Eamon. “What do you have to say for yourself?”
“I’ve got nothing to say,” replied Caldell, with a distinctly Freedonian accent.
“I’d say that speaks volumes right there. Don’t worry though, we’ve got people can get you to talk.”
“Chief Inspector,” said Partridge, looking at Saba. “Are you shot?”
“No. I don’t think so.” He looked down and found a hole in his jacket but there didn’t seem to be a corresponding hole in either his shirt or his body. It must have been hit as he was running, while his jacket swayed out to the side.
“Don’t you know it’s against regulations for a Chief Inspector to get shot?” said Timburgen to Partridge. “You don’t know the paperwork we’d all have to fill out.”
They marched Caldell through the apartment and out the front door. At the corner they met Wizard Cameron.
“Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t have much wind after that spell.”
“Don’t apologize,” Saba told him. “You did your part and we’ve got the bastard. You need to find someplace to sit down and take a rest.”
“You three run him in,” Saba directed Eamon and the two other constables. “I want him in a private cell under guard. I’m going to report to the governor.”
He found Mrs. Staff right where he had left her, though someone had brought out a chair for her to sit in. She looked tired. For the first time, Saba noticed that there were a few streaks of grey in her hair and a few fine lines around her eyes and mouth. She seemed to have aged ten or twelve years in the few minutes he had been gone. No, that wasn’t right. She had grown older right in front of him. He had just refused to see it before. It reminded him that his twenty-ninth birthday would be coming up soon, and his precious DeeDee would be turning four just after.
“What is it?” He shook his mind back to the present to find the governor looking up at him with a frown.
“Nothing. I’m just feeling old. We arrested the bomber.”
“Good work,” she said. “I knew you would. I can always count on you.”
Chapter Twenty: Power
Hsrandtuss watched the workers maneuver the two-ton square of stone up the hill. A few pushed while many others pulled with ropes wrapped around the block, and still others moved the logs used as rollers from the back to the front as needed. He flushed his dewlap in satisfaction. Things were looking good. The dam had been completed and the lake was filling up. Those workers freed from labor on the dam were now building walls—either the stone wall fortifying the hill or the wooden wall surrounding the entire town site. The bottom floor of the palace was under construction and there was even a single room with a ceiling in place.
“You are pleased, my husband?”
The king turned to look at Szakhandu, who ran her hand over the scar on his back. She had long since been allowed back into his hut and his good graces.
“It is good,” he said.
“Have you thought any more about Kendra’s plan?”
He narrowed his eyes. “What plan?”
“Her idea to raise her offspring from the time they hatch.”
“I was afraid that was the plan you were talking about. Have you been discussing it with her?”
“We all have.”
“All of you?”
“Yes.”
“And have you come to a consensus?”
“Sirris, Tokkenoht, and I like Kendra’s ideas. Sszaxxanna is against them. Ssu hasn’t expressed an opinion.”
“Ssu has no opinion,” said Hsrandtuss, “because Ssu has no thought in her head. That is why she is my favorite wife.”
“Ssu is not your favorite,” said Szakhandu. “Tokkenoht is.”
“What makes you think that?”
“Lately, she has held most of your confidences.”
“She has proven herself both valuable and reliable. That doesn’t mean she is my favorite. However the fact she, as well as you and Sirris, agrees with Kendra settles it for me. We will build a private nesting area for you to use. One of you will be the royal egg keeper and will watch over all of your nests.”
“This is well done, my husband.”
“It is an experiment,” he said. “We will try it for a season, but we don’t need to spread it around. I’m not sure how other people will take it. Talk with the others and decide who might make a good egg keeper. I’ll make the final decision after hearing your advice.”
At that moment a young male came running to the king. He stopped and quickly placed his hand in front of his dewlap, palm out, in a sign of respect.
“Great King,” he said. “Great Yessonar has been spotted in the sky.
He pointed off just above the distant horizon.
“Excellent!” boomed Hsrandtuss. “Tell Straatin to prepare a place for him, with something comfortable for the god to sit upon. And tell Chutturonoth to form an honor guard to accompany me.” He turned to Szakhandu. “Get all the wives. They must come too.”
A short time later, the king marched out from the partially constructed city, leading his six wives and a dozen warriors, all painted in their finest form. He could see Yessonar circling above the other side of the plain. He was mildly surprised that the dragon hadn’t simply landed by Yessonarah, but he wasn’t bothered too much about it. After all, a god could do whatever he wanted.
It wasn’t long before it became obvious what the dragon was doing. He was circling over a herd of sauroposeidon. The huge herbivores ranged in size from those only recently having reached adulthood and weighing not much over ten tons, to the old matriarch who was more than 150 feet long and weighed well over 60 tons. They skirted the edge of the pine forest. The dragon picked the one that he wanted and with a quick flip upward to gain speed, turned, and shot toward the ground like a missile. Hsrandtuss and the other lizzies were almost lifted from their feet by the force of the great reptile hitting his prey, a forty ton adult female. The sauroposeidon scattered before regrouping and hurrying away in a group.
By the time the lizardmen reached the site of the attack, the dragon had consumed a good portion of the dinosaur. He gave them a quick glance, but continued eating, raking off giant pieces of meat with his great clawed hands. The other reptilians stayed well away, outside the range of the constantly whipping barbed tail, but Hsrandtuss marched forward until he was actually standing in the dragon’s shadow.
“Great Yessonar,” he said. “I would gladly have had a fire made and cooked this for you. I know you like your meat the way the soft-skins serve it. Truth be told, I eat it that way myself sometimes.”
“Takes too long,” said the dragon, his mouth full. “You wouldn’t believe how hungry I get flying.”
“It doesn’t seem quite fair, does it?”
“What?” wondered Yessonar.
“I have noticed that pound for pound, a soft skin will eat two or three times as mu
ch as I do. For some reason, their bodies need a great deal of energy. I would imagine you eat two or three times as much as they do, pound for pound I mean. And here you are, as big as two tyrannosauruses. How many of these do you have to eat in a day?”
“Two or three, depending on how active I am.” He took another bite, blood dripping over the shiny steel scales of his chin. “You are a funny fellow, Hsrandtuss. You have a very inquisitive nature and you are always looking for ideas. You remind me of a human in that way. That’s why they need so much food, you know. It’s their brains. That and the hot blood. They are always thinking.”
“They think too much,” replied the king. “Who wants to think all the time? Clearly it is the quality of the thinking and not the quantity that’s important.”
Hsrandtuss could feel the dragon’s laughter vibrating in his bones.
“Your city is coming along.”
“It will be a great city,” said Hsranduss. “It will be great and beautiful and we will build many temples and dedicate them all to you. We will worship you and make many sacrifices.”
“If you feel you must.” He looked down at the body of the sauroposeidon. There was very little left of it. “I’m going to wash off in your little lake. Then I will visit your town.”
“We will have a place of honor for you.”
Seemingly without effort, the dragon shot into the air, across the plain and past the city site, disappearing behind the trees near the river. The king turned around and looked at his eighteen companions. They were all staring at the spot on the horizon where Yessonar disappeared.
“What are you just standing there for?” he demanded.
That evening the young god lay comfortably on a huge pile of soft grasses, as he watched the post-feast dancing around a great bonfire. Hsrandtuss sat just to his right, leaning back on Ssu while Sirris fed him little pieces of roasted meat and raw fruit.
“Is this not wonderful?” he asked the dragon.
“Very nice.” The great, clawed hand lifted up the bucket that he had been using as a drinking cup, shaking it back and forth to indicate its empty state.
“More ssukhas!” Hsrandtuss called.
A female quickly carried out another bucket, exchanging it for the empty one. The dragon sipped his drink and then lowered his head to the ground, watching through half open eyelids either the dancers or the fire or both.
“You should stay with us for a long time,” said the king. “I will have the workers stop what they are doing and build you a nice permanent place to sleep. We will make a great sleeping mat for you.”
“I’m going to sleep for a few days, and then I’m going to leave. I have several other stops to make before I visit my sister.”
“Sister.” Hsrandtuss rolled the word around on his tongue. “That must be a human word, even though it sounds like one of ours, because I don’t know what it means.”
“A female child with the same parentage,” explained the dragon. “Senta.”
“Oh, I know the sorceress,” said Hsrandtuss. “I remember her well—a funny little thing with a white tuft of hair on top of her head. But you didn’t call her this word before—sister.”
“She’s all grown up now,” said the dragon. “She’s taller than any of your wives.”
“I don’t think about the soft-skins growing, but I suppose they do.”
“Yes, they do. She always felt like a sister to me, but I never thought about it while Zurfina was alive.”
“The witch woman,” Hsrandtuss mused.
“I miss her so much,” said Yessonar quietly. “I suppose that I’m the only one who does.”
The great steel beast closed his eyes. He slept three days. Hsrandtuss ordered guards around him, not to protect him, but to see to any needs he might have when he woke. People had become so used to him lying there snoring while they walked past, that when on the fourth day he suddenly rose up and stretched his mighty wigs out, several dozen lizardmen were startled enough to trip over one another or drop their burdens. Hsrandtuss hurried down from where he had been supervising the construction of a watch tower.
“Great Yessonar,” he called. “I have a present for you.”
He sent for the present, but it took some time to fetch it. The wait seemed interminable. The dragon rolled his eyes around, looking bored.
“Well, where is it?” shouted the king. He glanced nervously toward the young god.
Finally, he saw Szakhandu running toward him, leading six females carrying three large tubs. They set them down on the ground before Yessonar.
“Color me intrigued,” said the dragon. “What is it?”
“A human delicacy—egg salad. Two hundred fifty eggs. We were unsure of the other ingredients, but my sixth wife assures me the taste is a good approximation.”
The dragon picked up one of the tubs, which looked ridiculously small in his hand, and licked out some of the contents with his forked tongue.
“Too bad we don’t have some of Mrs. Finkler’s bread.”
Hsrandtuss just shrugged. He didn’t know the meaning of the words “missus,” “finklers,” or “bread.”
The dragon ate all three tubs of egg salad in a very few minutes. Then stretching out his wings, he said, “Thank you for your hospitality, Hsrandtuss. I will be back again this way.”
“Good bye Great Yessonar,” said the king, but before the words were completely out of his mouth, the young god was so high in the sky that he was almost no longer visible.
“I don’t think he liked the eggs, said Hsrandtuss.
“He ate it all,” Szakhandu pointed out.
“That doesn’t mean anything,” said the king dejectedly. “Get this area cleaned up.”
Hsrandtuss went back to supervising the construction, a task that had occupied most of the three previous days. It still looked far too much like a big pile of rocks for his taste. He was trying to imagine what it would look like when finished, when Sszaxxanna stepped up next to him.
“So, you are going to do it, are you?”
“What are you talking about?” he asked.
“Letting Kendra and Szakhandu raise their offspring themselves.”
“Yes I am. Ssu, Sirris, and Tokkenoht as well. And you too if you have a mind to.”
“Well, I don’t. It’s unnatural. The soft-skins are good for some things. We should be trading for their tools, but they are mammals.” She said the word like it was something nasty on her tongue. “Their biology isn’t like ours.”
She stopped as another great block was moved up the pathway to the construction site. Waving her hand in front of her face, Sszaxxanna spat onto the ground.
“I had some ideas about the palace I wanted to share with you,” she said. “Can we walk through here later, when we don’t have to breathe all this dust.”
“We will come back before bed,” said the king. “It will be nice and quiet.”
Hsrandtuss didn’t eat much that evening. There were plenty of people eating and a few dancing, and there was some ssukhas drunk, but the king was feeling pensive. When most of the others had gone to bed, he walked up the hill to the construction site for the palace. Here he found Sszaxxannah waiting for him as promised.
“I take it you have news from Hiissierra?” he asked her.
“Tokkentott has taken over control of the area that was ours, but it doesn’t matter. That place is the old place. This is the new.”
“We need to keep contact with Tistakha. He will be important for his connection with the humans.”
“True,” said Sszaxxannah. “And we must watch Szisz. He is between the soft-skins and us now. He would love to cause trouble. But it is not them that I wanted to talk to you about.”
“Oh?” said the king. “So you have some other plans you want to share with me?”
“Oh, I have plans,” said Sszaxxannah.
Pain shot through the king’s head as he was knocked off his feet. Everything went black for a moment, but Hsrandtuss fought against th
e fog of unconsciousness. He could no longer see out of his left eye, and he felt blood running down onto his shoulder, but he staggered back to his feet. Chutturonoth stood next to the king’s first wife, the club he held still had a bit of Hsrandtuss’s skin stuck to it. Sszaxxannah reached down into a small bag she carried over her shoulder. The king’s stomach turned over when she pulled out one of the small weapons the humans made—the kind that killed from a distance and made the sound of thunder.
“Where did you get that?”
“From the human trader,” said Sszaxxannah. “Now Chutturonoth will be the new king and I will be his only wife.”
“You can’t make Chutturonoth into a great king, just by killing me.”
“Why not? I made you a great king by killing that fool Hkhanu.”
Hkhanu had been the witch doctor of Hiissierra. He had struggled for control of the village with Hsrandtuss and then Yessonar had killed him when it seemed that he had poisoned the god’s young companion, Senta.
“It was you?”
“Yes,” said Sszaxxanna. “I poisoned the soft-skin priestess and blamed that witless witch-doctor for it. I took you from being the chief of a small tribe to the beginnings of an empire. Now it’s time I took the next step.”
“What will the people say if you kill me?”
“They will say nothing when they find out the great prosperity that awaits them. Chutturonoth has already traded gold to the humans, and the humans want more—much more.”
“You stupid eggless female,” hissed Hsrandtuss.
“I am not eggless,” said his wife.
“I was talking to Chutturonoth. You two have ruined everything! That gold hat is mine!”
Hsrandtuss dived into the larger warrior, biting, ripping, and tearing. Chutturonoth had size, strength, and youthfulness on his side, but the king had experience and more importantly, deep seething anger. He tore the younger warrior’s dewlap with his teeth while his claws raked at the soft underbelly. Chutturonoth fought back at first against the unexpected ferocity, but it soon became clear that his tail wasn’t in the fight. Hsrandtuss pressed even harder. At his first chance, Chutturonoth crawled out from beneath him, jumped to his feet, and ran.
The Sorceress and her Lovers Page 25