by Marc Secchia
“Sort out? What does that mean?”
“Good grief, could we cut the cross-cultural learning? Bad Human girl … kill … nasty, dangerous Gryphon.”
Sanu laughed, patting Zara’s neck briefly. “Your storms are so whistle-able. Slow down a touch more. Wait … wait … got him!”
Downing the Gryphon took three more shots and several minutes, during which Zaranna was forced to run the steeplechase with the incentive of a three-foot beak snapping at her tail. This Gryphon was fast and powerful, but even she – according to Sanu, the females being bigger and stronger than the males – eventually succumbed to the poison and kicked up a dust cloud where she collapsed.
A hug now followed on the heels of the patting. “Good run, Zaranna.”
Being a horse was a peculiar angle on the matter of being friends, she decided, walking on for a minute as she struggled to catch her breath. Zara panted, “Nice shooting. You’re a natural rider. Warrior-trained from birth, did I hear Elder Tirkuu say? It shows.”
“But not much trained in the matter of having –” Sanu stopped abruptly. “We’ve a job to do. Focus on that, Horse.”
Having a friend? Sanu was right. She must focus on the present, on keeping her rider and these Humans safe, if at all possible. Why had she not simply unleashed a thousand Storm-Pegasi upon Worafion’s forces? Surely destruction was the simple, irrefutable answer? Yet the idea sat wrongly with her heart. To nurture a lust for obliteration was to become another Worafion. Would the Pegasi even ride for the wrong motives? She did not know. Her parents had always stressed the need to follow her heart – but not just any whim or desire. The heart must be tested, guarded and refined like metal purified in a forge. Power could corrupt, she reminded herself. When in her life had she imagined she would ever possess a magnitude of power to fear its corrupting influence? She must question Illume. He would know the history of Equinox’s Dreamers. He would know their penchant for good or evil.
“There they are,” Sanu said. “By the Ancestors! Three tribes, maybe more.”
Zaranna looked up. Several miles off, an area appeared to be under heavy attack by Darkwolf Clan and several Gryphons. The dark, shaggy figures of wolf-men stalked an unseen foe. “Tayburrl,” she whispered.
“You see him?”
“No … but he’s – I feel him. I think.”
Sanu bobbed up and down on her back, probably nodding. “Your magic is untrained, Plains Horse. Trust those instincts. You’ve been right so far.”
“Thanks. What’s the plan, o mastermind of battle?”
“You have to ask?” Sanu sounded amazed. “We attack, of course.”
“That’s thirty Darkwolf –”
“Seventy.”
“And at least three Gryphons –”
“Eight.”
“Heavens’ sakes! I do have eyes in my head, you know.”
“You’re just not used to the lay of this land.” Zaranna was about to comment on Sanu’s uncharacteristic sweetness, when the girl added, “See, I can be generous with my praise. Actually, I’m amazed anyone could be so oblivious to what’s plain to see in hill and gully.”
Grr! But the Plains Horse followed her directions, trotting purposely over the bed of shiny black pebbles lining the next gully, which led them toward the battlefield without exposing them to casual observation. A mile later, the gully petered out.
“Knives sharp and – well, hooves, sharp?” Sanu enthused.
“Sure …”
“Then charge! Go!”
One more slap on her withers, and Incorrigible Pest was so going to receive the walloping of her life! Zara surged over a low rise covered in glistening black pebbles and found herself just a few hundred feet shy of a troop of Darkwolf Clan warriors. How? Had the battle moved? To her surprise, Sanu was even mastering the idea of directing a horse with her knees. Clearly, she was far too talented at everything related to hand-eye coordination for her own good. As she proved now. Sanu had the longbow over on Zara’s right side when a wolf leaped from cover at her front left quarter. Without wasting the vital moment necessary to switch sides, she simply tilted the bow and shot sideways past the Plains Horse’s neck. The wolf’s snarl swallowed the shaft up to the feathers.
“Close pass,” Sanu cried, lining up a Darkwolf warrior. Most wore solid leather armour that covered the torso, neck and upper thighs, but left the heavily muscled arms free for combat. Leather vambraces protected the forearms, and they wielded a variety of longswords, double-ended staves tipped with scimitar-like blades and even huge war hammers. A few Darkwolf Clan wore silver plate armour – perhaps Captains? She spied Tayburrl on the far side of the battle, wading into a knot of Humans. He brandished a double-headed battle-axe in either hand, and his huge paws made them look like toys. One massive swing of his left arm lopped off a head; a second swing with the right arm picked up a Human warrior and flung him over twenty feet through the air.
Zaranna swerved slightly as her hooves clattered over the bare rocks, taking them between two shoulder-high obsidian boulders. The bowstring twanged beside her ear, again and again, as Sanu picked three Gryphons in quick succession for her opening salvo. Heavens, some of these Gryphons rivalled elephants for size. At this range, the huge predators were hard to miss, particularly as several had taken to ground combat, the better to throw their massive weight at the Humans, many of whom defended grimly behind a circle of shields at the base of a small dip. Their weapons of choice were spiked hammers and crossbows, Zaranna saw. The defensive tortoise shielded at least one hundred pregnant women, children and old-timers.
As several Darkwolf Clan warriors whirled to engage the attackers, their grey, furry faces screwed up in vicious snarls, Sanu made her shots count. One folded up over an arrow in the belly, while another choked on an arrow fired through his throat.
Twang! Twang! Sanu delivered a load of poison into the flank of a massive black Gryphon.
“Away, Zaranna! Dodge!”
She did, taking them beyond the sweep of one of those massive hammers and more directly toward Tayburrl. She saw the Darkwolf leader frown in her direction. He stood loose-legged, as though ready to spring into action at any moment. Indifferent. Concentrating on her progress; on Sanu taking out another three of his troops in the seconds between hoofbeats. Then, without warning, he raised his right fist and made a punching motion toward her.
A brutal force struck Zaranna upon her right shoulder, knocking her clean off her hooves. She skidded on a bed of loose scree for dozens of feet, feeling the skin of her shoulder tear and burn, but Sanu hurtled away from her as though shot from a crossbow. The Plains Horse crashed to a halt against a low clump of bushes. The first thing she saw was Sanu lying a few dozen feet further on, unmoving.
Tayburrl’s roar belled out over the clash and clamour of battle. “Destroy them all!”
Chapter 19: Azoron’s Gorge
Rolling onto her knees, Zaranna thought for a dislocated moment that she had been struck by another train. She smelled jasmine and sulphur; remembered the fluttering of Rhenduror’s wings above their car. Then her eyes fixed on the Gryphons wheeling above the Humans, striking with sharp flashes of their own fire which sparked from their talons, and she saw three Darkwolf Clan rushing toward Sanu’s prone body, slavering in anticipation of the feast.
She did not recognise the creature which made the groan she uttered then. A plea, or a summons? At once wings surrounded her, flashes of crimson and yellow and turquoise, rushing through her soul in a wild torrent. Yet the compulsion rose from within her, not from the outpouring of magic.
“Sanu!” Her scream seemed to originate deep within the rock beneath her hooves.
Zaranna charged. Careless of a badly skinned shoulder and left hip, the Plains Horse called upon the magic to charge with her. She could not believe the thunder her hooves produced. It was as if a hundred invisible horses galloped with her, hooves pounding against obsidian rock, the wind of their passage stirring up a stinging dust storm.
Hurdling Sanu, she burst upon the three wolf-men with the same massive force she had unleashed in swatting her mother across the train tracks, crushing one with the impact of her rock-solid chest and hurling the other two aside. Inability to feel pain hardly mattered if one could not breathe, or if one’s neck was broken.
Curving the path of her charge around the Human enclave, Zaranna bore down on Tayburrl. He stood his ground confidently. She fully expected him to leap aside. Her muscles were on hair-trigger alert to catch that movement left or right, but what the Darkwolf leader resorted to was a simple reprise of his punching trick. She cleaved straight through the force. Too strong. Possessed of too much magic. The huge, armoured Darkwolf had an instant to register surprise on his handsome face, to begin to swing his axes, when with the scream of a hundred magical horses, Zaranna bulldozed Tayburrl Darkwolf to the ground, leaving two parting hoof prints on his muzzle and forehead by way of salutation, perhaps improving his looks.
She ran through a dust storm, the wind suddenly picking up with sharp gusts, spraying fine grey particles into her eyes and plastering her teeth with grit. The Gryphons and wolf-men cried out in alarm and confusion. What? She could not see what was happening, but she still heard hooves all around her over the wind’s whistling. She hurdled a prone, battered wolf’s body. Zaranna circled more slowly, clobbering one unlucky Darkwolf Clan she happened to run into in the gloom. Were they fleeing? How peculiar.
She cast about for several minutes. Where was that dratted wretch now? Hadn’t she left her around here somewhere? She bled freely from a deep cut in the left half of her lower chest. Tayburrl had left her a greeting of his own – witless canine!
Abruptly, she heard Sanu’s voice raised in anger. “Then you can make payment when we reach Azoron’s Gorge! Now move, curse your withered reptilian brains!”
Definitely Sanu, as delicate as a bud.
Zaranna slipped up behind her in the sandstorm and nipped her friend’s shoulder playfully.
The girl whirled, whipping her dagger around, then re-sheathed the weapon quicker than Zara’s eyes could follow. “Don’t tempt me.”
“Handy storm, isn’t it?” the Horse suggested innocently. “Shut your mouth, Sanu, or you’ll swallow a bucket load of sand.”
The rangy, bearded man facing Sanu did a double-take. “What’s this? Equine treachery?”
“No,” said the girl. “Just the horse who sent all of these Darkwolf Clan and Gryphons fleeing like craven curs. Come, Borguu. Bring your people. We’ve a miracle to show you.” She cast Zaranna a dagger-sharp glance. “And it does not come with four hooves and a smug grin.”
* * * *
Sanu and Zaranna’s busy morning did not finish there. The Darkwolf warriors were not as defeated as everyone had hoped, for when they emerged from the strangely localised sandstorm looking like charcoal statues from the blasting of glittering obsidian dust, a few squads of Tayburrl’s wolf-men were still charging about, causing trouble. The Gryphons had retreated due to the dust clogging sensitive eyes and ears, Sanu claimed. Zaranna found that hard to credit.
There were remnants of five Outland Human Tribes represented in the group they had rescued – Borguu and Takuu were the only surviving leaders, along with Eraduu, a leader’s eldest son. At just fourteen years of age, his ‘dagger of leadership’ was unseasoned. But these people were as tough as the land which had birthed them. They formed up rapidly into family and tribal groups and marched at once toward the place Sanu had indicated, where Illume concealed his presence just below the lip of Azoron’s Gorge and the great slide was hopefully proceeding well.
Then Zaranna took her rider on a wide sweep to the West and North, gathering up a few dozen more survivors and tangling with a lone Gryphon. The Horse earned another puncture-wound near the base of her tail during that altercation. But, more importantly, they learned that the northern Tribes had been devastated. There were no survivors apart from these few.
At last, toward noon, they completed their wide arc and cantered the last stretch along the great cliff-edge, hoof-weary, thirsty and in pain, to where Illume fought a pair of Gryphons!
Sanu groaned for both of them. “Earthen Fires! Run, Zaranna …”
Digging deep, she forced her weary legs into a gallop, thinking, one advantage of not having legs was that they could not possibly hurt like this.
Illume the Stars hovered just off the main landmass of the Obsidian Highlands, controlling a long, hissing tube of grey air that snaked so far down into Azoron’s Gorge, the base appeared to be no more than a vanishing thread in the haze below. Zaranna could just about make out the specks of people down there. Under attack now, the Dragon’s magic sputtered and wavered, but did not fail. From her back Sanu shouted insults and curses at the Gryphons as they approached, but the massive Green Gryphons were intent only on mauling the Dragon.
Spotting a deep crack ahead, Zaranna whinnied, “Holy … hold on, Sanu!”
A powerful leap took her right over the yawning emptiness. Zaranna briefly flew above a few gaseous clouds, drifting across the endless blackness of the Abyssal Plains or whatever lay below the gorge’s volcanic floor, realising that this entire area stood upon a huge overhang. Fly on a wall. Specks falling endlessly into darkness … she gasped as her hooves struck sparks off the rock a mere six inches over the gap, and she careened at a crazy speed right along the lip of that awesome canyon. Maybe she was mad.
Poor Illume, he looked as if he had been tumbled over a waterfall or spat out of a tumble-dryer, moth-eaten and ragged of scales. He had taken a terrible beating.
The bow sang next to her ear. Sanu swore unhappily. Took another shot. Zaranna slowed, trying to steady her dash; the girl gave an appreciative squeeze of her knees and pierced one of the Gryphons right between its haunches. She crowed, “Right up the …” Zara voiced an angry scream to drown her out. The Gryphons banked, orienting on the sound.
The Plains Horse skidded to a halt. “Sort them out, Sanu!”
The Outland Human needed no second invitation, this time. Drawing with steady hands and a hunter’s eye, she loosed a barrage of shafts. Metal shafts, Zaranna realised, focussing on an arrowhead drawn inches from her left eye. They forged arrows from a lightweight metal? Odd. She could even see the faint purple smudge of poison on the tip. The Gryphons screamed right back, taking arrows in the shoulders, chest area and one right through the gristle of a round, stubby ear.
“Come on, jump!” cried Illume. The tube’s entrance, ten feet across, lay just a short leap out from solid land.
“Oh no,” Sanu wailed. She potted a Gryphon with one last arrow.
“Oh yes!” shouted Zaranna, gathering herself.
“Watch out!” bellowed the Blue Dragon. “Tayburrl’s right behind you!”
Hooves thudded against the rock. Muscles clenched. With a wild yell, Zaranna leaped, and Tayburrl’s magic scythed her legs out from beneath her. She tumbled away past the air-slide.
There was an unending moment when her stomach seemed to reach the top of a rollercoaster ride and her horror soared with it. Her hooves flailed and she became aware of Sanu losing her grip. Illume’s paw snapped out but missed them by a whisker. Behind, she heard the drawn-out roar of Tayburrl Darkwolf’s fury as his intended prey arced into space, away from his clutches. Zaranna spied hair and snapped up a mouthful of Sanu’s braid, flapping loose in the wind.
They fell.
The Dragon plummeted with them. His multi-jointed wings splayed to their utmost before pulling powerfully backward, almost striking his tail. Again. Zaranna saw flashes of sky, of the black, weather-blasted cliff face, of the gloomy chasm below and Illume’s gleaming, scaly length chasing them into the depths. Pin back the ears, she thought inanely, only he didn’t appear to have any. Hot wind howled through her mane. The atmosphere seemed endlessly wide and deep, and as cosy-warm as an infant’s cradle, yet she knew this flight could only end in grief. The majestic panorama of Azoron’s Gorge added an aching counterpoint of beaut
y to the ghastly rush of fear.
Imitating a fisherman netting his prey, Illume the Stars whipped the end of his air-tunnel over them from above and then heaved at the line, tumbling them about like beads in a shaker. Zaranna inadvertently clashed heads with Sanu before the thrashing of limbs and yells of pain turned precipitously into sliding. They whizzed away down an endless tunnel of grey, mostly translucent clouds, making a thrilling speed. She began to laugh between clenched teeth.
Sanu was laughing too, but she punched Zaranna in the ribs. “Let my hair go, you rotten clutch of quail eggs.”
Zara spat out the braid. “Ugh. Disgusting. Like chewing cactus fibres.”
“Alright, mad horse, what’s a cactus?”
Behind them Illume seemed to be drifting on the thermals, growing smaller and smaller as they sped away from him at an increasing velocity. Zaranna chuckled softly. Four miles. Perhaps the greatest slide in history, leading from the Obsidian Highlands above to the blasted volcanic plain below. Great, so all they had to worry about now was toxic gases, hostile lava horses, an exciting menagerie of poisonous snakes and reptiles, Earthen Fire storms, exploding geysers, a dearth of food and water, and a one hundred and eighty-mile march to the far side of the Gorge.
Top-class plan there, Prince of Ponce.
It also happened to be the only plan, which made it by definition a scheme of unspeakable brilliance. For to survive to speak about it, would require a miracle of equal brilliance.
* * * *
Zaranna shot out of the air-tunnel’s exit with a shriek of delight, sparks spraying from her hooves. To her shock, she landed amidst fighting. Well, spirited arguing – complete with daggers, kicks and fisticuffs. Had she expected congratulations? Well done, Horse, you saved all our necks? None of that. Spying Kesuu, she stormed over to him. At least he was not part of the brawl.
“What is this?” she demanded.
Kesuu looked her up and down. “Claiming the leaderless. It’s our tradition.”
“Well, it’s a stupid tradition!”