In the moment’s silence, Mobious interrupted. “I can tell you anything you want to know, Konifer.”
Before the Vize could turn on his apprentice, Deg swung his muzzle round. “The lander guarde aren’t trained for combat, Konifer. They are trained to settle disputes and find solutions in times of emergency. For the landers, they serve much the function that you serve in our community.”
“It’s also an opportunity for landers to redirect their aggression into positive behaviors.” Hendry, the young hatcher who had been fascinated by that concept, added. “Their ancestors moved here to get away from constant fighting because Nature didn’t create a Vize for them to help find peace with their enemies.”
“Thank you, Hendry, yes,” Deg pulled Konifer’s attention back to himself, “from everything Hardt has told us, the landers don’t want a war. If they are marching now, they must feel it is in self-defense.”
Just then, before Konifer and Hardt could again lock horns, the three scouts returned to verify Tally’s report, and the Vize’s attention was drawn to the entire gathering of dTelfur.
“We have to go destroy them!” Tally was trying to rally the angry masses but he was loudly countered by Nahni and Tian.
Konifer stood by and watched the argument rage, letting his own anger and immediate fear settle. He allowed the truth to rise to the surface that Hardt was right in everything he had said. The Vize had been provided with the opportunity to learn about the enemy well before now and he had no choice now but to trust the opinions of those who had taken advantage of the opportunity. Sophie, he thought, would have been a very helpful counselor on this day. dTserra always told him that Sophie had encouraged her to watch and learn all she could before fighting. She admitted that she had wanted to hit Konifer the first time he had approached her, certain that he hated her as much as everyone else in the village, but instead she’d taken Sophie’s counsel to heart and heard him out and so they’d become lovers, united in their isolation from the village. Thinking of her, Konifer realized that the same hatred and fear dTserra had initially harbored against him, he had harbored against Hardt and so he had isolated Hardt from his lander village when such an alliance could have helped the dTelfur and landers avoid reaching this point of war.
Regret and shame brushed aside, the Vize stepped into the melee and raised his hands for silence. “We will take an equal number out and meet the landers on neutral ground. Many of you know their language. We will talk with them.”
“No dTur can go.” Nahni added quietly.
Tally tried to regain control of the discussion. “But the dtur are the cause of the fear.”
“Exactly.” Nahni retorted. “The landers can’t talk calmly with us if they’re afraid.”
“And the dtur are in danger.” A telf yelled out from the crowd.
Konifer nodded sagely, “The dtur must be protected at all costs. When the telfs found peace with the dTur, we made a pact to protect each other. It is our covenant.”
“I see two options; take the dtur and strike the lander forces down,” Edwarg paused meaningfully, “or leave the dtur behind and try to start a conversation with the landers.”
Tally sat up, spreading his wings a little for balance and yelled into the crowd. “I say we attack and rent these lander animals from the land!”
Edwarg was blown back by the power of the dTelfur response to Tally’s violent words. The cry went up and many would have leapt into the air that instant to attack the approaching landers if they hadn’t seen their lander step into the crowd.
Hardt shoved his way through the fired-up mob and planted himself at Tally’s feet. “Start with me!” he screamed. “Rent me limb from limb. Take out my heart and rest it on the covenant stone if you will. But bury the remainder of my flesh and bone with Sophie whom I loved and spent my life with.”
He flung his arms to the sides, tilted back his head, and presented his body to the mob. “Kill me, Tally. Then fly off and kill all the landers you find. Then fly to Sophie’s bower and explain to her why you did it. But first, kill me.”
The screaming and bugeling trailed away into silence for not one of the dtur or telfs could touch the man they’d accepted as a neighbor and friend.
“So we’ll go and try to start a conversation.” Konifer broke the silence and turned to face Deg. “Will dTur come?”
It was not Deg or Nahni who spoke up, but Tian, founder of the festivals. “We will stay behind. The best way to protect our former enemies, the telfs, is to stay quietly behind.”
And so it was agreed.
The thousand were chosen by eliminating the oldest and the youngest of the telfs. Several telfs of acceptable sheddings were also left behind due to illness and injuries. Still everyone helped the chosen thousand to prepare. Food and water were gathered to supplement whatever they found as they marched. Hardt did counsel Konifer in the organization of lander guarde wings, recommending some similar duties be assigned to the dTelfur force. The Vize took his advice only in assigning marching hunters and farmers the duties of providents
Soon it became apparent that preparations were including the assemblage of spears, knives, arrows, and other weapons. The marching telfs were scared that talking wouldn’t work and the remaining dTelfur were scared that the village itself would be attacked. So Konifer called another full meeting centered on the hatching grounds to give his approval for all self-defense preparations.
Nahni stepped forward uncomfortably. “ I won’t fight. I won’t use my size and strength to hurt any skin, telf or lander, deliberately.”
“It would be self-defense.” Konifer pointed out.
“It would be fear.” She responded. “I won’t kill anyone for fearing me. They just don’t know us. This mutual hatred bred of misunderstanding is exactly how I imagine the telfs and dTur lived for centuries. But I can’t comprehend a life without telfs, or a village without a Vize. I love Konifer despite our differences and I am glad that he is around to look out for me. I love Nyah and Dorat, Edwarg, Sesch, Janen, and Mobious. And what would life be without our sweet little dTella and furry Annie stumbling all over each other in the nursery? Just as much and more so do I love Hardt. Sophie lost her dTserra to a frightened lander, but she held no grudge and for it she found a friend in her enemy. I will live by her example. I will not defend myself. I will not fight.”
Odrine lifted his head, “I will follow Sophie.”
“Me, too.” Akai sat up beside her partner.
“And me.” Tian piped up. “I wouldn’t want to hurt a friend of Hardt’s.”
Hendry, crouched by Deg and Danny, rose hesitantly, “I won’t fight for me.” He spoke haltingly, struggling against the pressure of so many judging eyes. “But I… I promised to protect the eggs.” Hearing the words out loud gave him courage that what he said was right. “And if they go after our hatchlings, I’d have to do something.”
Edwarg turned back to the Vize. “Is there some kind of protection spell you can do, Konifer?”
The Vize thought for a moment, his eyes taking on the glazed look of a soul travelling very far away. “Not so long as the dTur are able to harm others. I can’t make anyone invincible. It’s not…” he searched for a word that would match the feelings he heard from nature, “not fair.”
“Put us to sleep.” Odrine looked around the crowd of faces for any comprehension. “Like when I was hurt. If we’re asleep we can’t hurt anyone and so you can protect us.”
Tian perked up with sudden inspiration, “And if we pile up around the village our bulk will protect the telfs who are left behind.”
“We don’t know how long we’ll be gone.” Konifer pointed out.
All eyes, some more nervous than others, turned to Odrine.
“I was asleep for about two moons and I woke up fine. A little confused, but otherwise I felt fine.”
He looked to Kerander and Fieara, the dTur healers for confirmation but it was Nyah who spoke up. “He was stiff and cold. But some massage and exer
cise quickly took care of both problems. In every other way he was in perfect condition.”
Deg, who’d been conspicuously silent during the discussion, turned his great head and raised his eye ridges at the small woman.
“Well,” she conceded, “considering, of course, the condition he was in when he went to sleep.”
“His wounds healed more slowly while he was in stasis.” Kerander added this in the spirit of being totally honest, but in case he sounded skeptical he quickly added, “I will happily lay down and go to sleep for a while if it’ll help us peacefully settle things with Hardt’s people.”
Deg sealed the plan. “I feel the lander negotiations will take longer than any of us think but still, I will sleep until our Vize knows that the landers are ready to meet us.”
And so, when the thousand telfs between the ages of one hundred and three hundred fifty had said their farewells and gathered by the river, the dragons, to a soul, lay down along the eastern edge of the village, older dragons flanked on both sides by younger dragons with Annie and the other hatchlings tucked deep in the middle, often under the wing of an extra protective elder. The four hatching dragons were protected on their summit by others who piled up, laying chest on back to create a higher wall around the eggs. Annie was tucked into the crook of Deg’s neck with Danny’s solid body cuddled against her backside on the hatching sands. Odrine, still crippled from his injuries, lay himself down on the second row of the dragon wall beyond Danny. He turned his head so his get Annie, though distant, was in his sight. Akai placed herself in the outer ring of dragons, two lengths from Nahni who sat up until the very last minute.
It was Nahni who saw Mobious trying to hide among the departing villagers and ratted him out to Konifer.
After a less than tender speech impressing the boy with his responsibility for the safety of the village, the Vize sent his get clambering back over the dragon bodies to find, and stay, with Hardt of all people.
All the murmuring and nervous laughter stopped, spreading silence like a wave down the long lengths of reclined dragons. Farther than Nahni could see, dragons lay nose to tail over the village and far to the north and south. Carefully, she lay down and turned her eyes to Konifer.
The darkness fell gently through the ranks. Some sighed as tensions drained from them and there was some resettling of bodies as muscles relaxed. To the telfs, holding their breaths in fearful anticipation, the air seemed suddenly empty and the telf hatchling Kahrier, who had snuck into the piles to cuddle against her Kiely, wailed at the sudden overwhelming sense of loneliness.
Even Konifer was disturbed by the easy dampening of so many souls. He turned and immediately led the thousand east.
“Let’s go” and he added quietly, “So we may swiftly return.”
Time dragged on with no news of the departed dTelfur. Most of the remaining telfs, about three hundred elders and hatchlings, spent their time underground in the burrow playing games or speculating on the fate of the five hundred or so telfs and dTur not accounted for in the roundup. All the telfs searched for something to get the disturbingly still mound of dragons out of their sight and four days into the waiting, a pack of younger and healthier elders took many of the hatchlings off to the west for a hike.
Hardt assumed Mobious went with the hikers and the hikers assumed the boy was staying with Hardt and dTella and Edwarg. So the vizet never actually lied to anyone, he simply gathered his courage and a travel sac, climbed over the dragon bodies and headed out for the east, easily tracking his sire and the thousand others.
It was not until one of the hiking elders, Tezza, returned early with Kahrier who had insisted on returning to the village in case Kiely awoke asking for her that anyone realized Mobious was missing. That was nine days into the dragons’ nap. Another day of searching revealed the boy was nowhere to be found in the burrow. And so the bravest of souls ventured out into the eerie silence of the remaining above ground village and searched through the dragons’ bodies.
Edwarg and Hardt, searching together from the high ridge of Deg’s backbone were frozen by the sight of a small group of landers climbing over their sleeping friends. The landers were guarde, dressed much as Getek had been dressed at Hardt’s honor ring presentation with the added gleam of every possible weapon they could have draped on their bodies. Hardt feared what more they might have in their heavily loaded packs. He counted twenty-seven of them. A quick and quiet discussion left Hardt atop the dragons, watching the strangers from a distance while Edwarg scrambled back to hide everyone down in the burrow.
Hardt had thought to speak to them once Edwarg took off, but changed his mind as he watched the unnerved soldiers draw on each other time and again. Even suffering from the terrible loss of Sophie, he wasn’t ready to risk death at the hands of spooked landers. So he stayed at a distance, trying to make sense of the few words which floated to him over the uneven terrain of sleeping dragons.
“Let’s go back, Kraw. These dragons could wake at any moment and they’ll know what we’ve done!”
“We haven’t done anything, Jareese. We were too far away.” A man who wasn’t Kraw answered.
A third man spoke up, “We’re landers Our people killed all the dTelfur. And we would have been in there killing too if we hadn’t been assigned to protect the Kimoet.”
The man called Kraw gently took the woman, Jareese’s hand from his sleeve and spoke quietly to the rest as they gathered closer to him. All Hardt could hear was the end. “… went wrong with the magic so it is neither our fault nor theirs.”
“Then how is it, Kraw, that some of us survived and they are all gone?” The third man spoke again, quickly followed by outcries from the rest.
“We haven’t found a one of them!”
“What was that light?”
“Some of them must have been left behind, like us.”
“We killed them all!”
“We didn’t kill them!” Kraw finally raised his voice and yelled over the panicking guarde. “They disappeared. With most of our guarde and the queen too. So get over it and keep moving.”
With Hardt following, easily hiding from the frightened landers, the guarde climbed through the dragons, searched the sparse area of the village and discovered that there were, in fact, no dTelfur remaining. Kraw gathered a few of the elder guarde around him near one of the entrances to the underground burrow, which someone had hidden with the branches of surrounding trees. Hardt found it a simple matter to track through the thick forestation and hide behind a nearby tree.
“Here’s my analysis. Listen and respond.” Kraw began formally, his words slow and his eyes avoiding those of his wing. “What we thought were the initial dTelfur forces must have actually been the entire dTelfur people. We’ve utterly defeated them and there is no one left to compromise with. I say we leave these dormant dragons in peace and return immediately to the Partner with the recommendation that we go home. It was a lost battle for everyone.”
One by one he polled his counselors. One by one they each gave their heavy concurrence. Then they gathered the remainder of the searching guarde and hurriedly climbed back over the dragons the way they had come. One of the guarde hung back. Hardt couldn’t see well from his hiding place but he believed it was Jareese, the same woman who had begged Kraw to turn back. She stopped at the base of the sleeping dragons and tore all the weapons from her body, throwing them to the ground at Kerander’s muzzle.
Then she fell to her knees. “May the gods forgive us for what we’ve done!”
A few of the climbing guarde halted in their retreat and bowed their heads at her words. Then she scrambled up and joined them in escaping over the dragons as fast as they could pick the way.
Hardt crept back through the trees and again shadowed the wing as far as the eastern edge of the dragons. He crouched on Odrine’s high neck and watched until the guarde were all off the dragons and running for the river. Only then did he return to the burrow to find that Edwarg had been watching, armed, from t
he entrance.
“Hardt, come quickly. I’ll fill you in as we walk. While we were out searching for Mobious, Janen returned.”
“Janen? The architect? Didn’t she march with Konifer?”
“Yes. She must have been barely ahead of the guarde. She got into the bower and told everyone that the landers had destroyed our thousand and were marching here to kill the rest of us. The dragons are protected , so a whole lot of telfs have taken off for the western bowers. Most of the outlander elders just grabbed a hatchling and ran, didn’t even pack up decent supplies.”
“How many are gone? Should we go after them?”
Edwarg shook his head, pulling on Hardt’s arm to keep him moving as they rushed through the turnings of the tunnels. “We’ve got about a hundred telfs left in the burrow that we’ve been able to account for. When the dragons wake up we can go out and make sure the others are alright.”
“How are we going to wake up the dragons?” Hardt was panting, his chest tight with trying to keep up with the healer.
“There’s more. Mobious has returned. He followed the thousand to the battle and got back in the midst of the exodus. Rheay, the old nursery dam saw him stumbling through an abandoned passage and called him in to her. She’s been confined to her chair in Dorat’s rooms since we moved her in from the nursery and missed most of the excitement. Apparantly Gyari found him with his head in her lap, sobbing incoherently at the old woman. Rheay was dead.”
Hardt's Tale: A Mobious' Quest Novel Page 27