Nu rested his paddle to keep the boat on course. He had no such option for resting his thoughts. No wonder zaqenim get cranky—to have so much experience when nobody listens to you. I’m turning into Pahpi!
Only three sub-clans out of Urugim’s twelve had shown up at the dock-house. The boats carried more supplies than they did people. Suddenly Iyared’s death-bed prophecy took on grim new meaning.
They would need either to cache much of the stores or make two trips along the steep portage route through the Gihunu River’s Canyon of Terror. Nu figured a hoard somewhere on the lake’s southwest bank made more sense. From what he had heard, nobody traveled through the Canyons of Terror more than once if they could help it.
By mid-morning, the flotilla reached the entrance to the Gihunu, above the rapids. Serene hoots and honks from a pod of marsh-drakes on the opposite bank serenaded the unpacking of the boats. Two male dragons hopped into the water to establish their territorial limits. Nu was more curious than concerned. Although bipeds like the lethal wurm-kin, draken kinds ate only wild vegetation or the occasional fish they snapped up in great duck-like bills. Dragon-slayers did not even bother much with them; drakes normally kept shy of human habitations.
A cave in the lower foothills discovered by one of the youngsters from Sa-utar served well as a cache. It was not far from the beginning of the portage trail that led down into the canyon. After the noon meal, they began the arduous over-land journey with four men to carry each boat. Women and children were loaded down with as many packs as they could haul.
Twelve longboats snaked through the lower foothills down into the gorge, a marching column of elongated turtles. Fallen rocks littered the path, which skirted steep drops, both making the already exhausting task of portaging boats extremely hazardous. Nevertheless, Nu thought the name “Canyon of Terror” an overstatement. He would have described it as “The Canyon of Back-breaking Loads and Sweaty Grime.”
A’Nu-Ahki and his acolytes carried one of the middle boats—the only one to be portaged right-side-up because it had Atum-Ra’s inner sarcophagus bolted inside. Nu took the port beam, close to the rim of a vertical drop to the rapids hundreds of cubits below. The women and children marched between the boats with the packs.
The acolytes, apparently unused to working so closely with someone of A’Nu-Ahki’s rank, kept silent. Nu tried to lighten the mood by making small talk. Well into a hopefully amusing story, an air-ripping screech above stopped him mid-sentence. Other hopes far more important quickly died.
The shadow swung down from the heights, over the trail, and arced out into the ravine. It tore through the air so quickly that it was impossible to make out its form until a pair of great webbed wings thundered outward, as if from nowhere, to slow the gigantic creature into a glide over the gorge. Another shadow followed; this one with a croaking hiss.
Nu stood transfixed by the lethal symmetry of the odd gargoyles, until one swooped past and carried something out with it from the line of boats ahead. A woman’s shriek echoed from the canyon walls.
Then it rained falling shadows, as voices in the wind whispered and squawked like a vulgar ghosts.
The vultch gryphons dove from their roosts above. Dull gray, and hard to spot when perched, nobody knew they were under attack until the woman screamed. Swarms of wings opened all at once over the ravine in a staccato of wind slapping leather. A gryphon had lanced the wife of one of Urugim’s sons in the stomach, carrying her over the gorge as it curled its pelican-like neck back over its own body to center the weight.
Nu watched her struggle against her skin-kite tormentor as it floated on the breeze in sickening slow motion. Far larger than the red variety he had seen on the Aeden trail, these air dragons had an adult wing span of some twenty-five cubits—well able to provide enough lift to carry a person. It clamped her body to its long skewer with its lower jaw.
The woman wailed and beat her fists against the bony awl that impaled her, while the dragon circled down toward a rocky perch by the rapids below to make a meal of her.
Nu hardly realized that he had frozen, while everything slowed to a syrupy pace. His eyes met those of the doomed woman, as foamy blood began to replace the shrieks in her mouth. Her twisted face sailed past him almost close enough to touch. Helplessness drove him to his knees against the boat, then belly to the ledge, when he realized the piercing shadows still fell. Everybody else dove for cover beneath the other boats, while Nu’s acolytes pressed against their vessel’s outer hull on the other side.
Forced to watch over the cliff, where the gryphon circled with its struggling prey, A’Nu-Ahki’s prayers turned to mush. The woman’s cries became a gurgle as their eyes met again. All he could do for her was to get a quivering mental grip, and silently plead for her end to come swiftly and mercifully.
A battle cry broke through the wing-flapping maelstrom. A spear flew from the trail just ahead. It pierced the dragon’s wing and tore the thin membrane like ripped linen. Vultch gryphon and woman plummeted, broken kite paper and sticks, to the rapids below. They separated during the fall, the gryphon striking the stony bank. The woman’s head exploded on a rock in the middle of the torrent. Nu watched her body slide away in reddened foam.
The other gryphons landed along the trail to peck and scratch at the overturned boats. Everyone but Nu and his men managed to crawl beneath the upturned vessels in safety.
The crew of Atum-Ra’s boat reached inside the gunwales between gryphon lance jabs. They grabbed for their spears, which they then held up to fend off the webbed wings. Nu fumbled for his, only to push it further into the boat. He managed to draw his sword and hack at the talons and bills careening around him. His left hand clutched the boat’s port gunwale to keep himself from rolling off into the chasm, while his right swung against the squawking demon heads. He thought he heard them calling his name.
Pain stabbed his left hand.
Nu almost released the gunwale and tumbled off into the gorge. Somehow, he forced himself to hold on. Again the pain struck—a dagger that repeatedly jammed into the tendons below his fingers. This time he clenched his teeth and pulled himself up to face his attacker.
The vultch gryphon perched atop Atum-Ra’s coffin, wings flexed wider than the boat’s full length, generating a wind sufficient to blow Nu over the cliff. He barely had time to raise his sword before the creature’s pointed head shot at him. His blade poorly poised for a good swing, all Nu could do was deflect the end of the bill just enough to prevent it from puncturing his face. The dragon’s wing-blast and his own momentum almost sent him tumbling backwards into the ravine. Nu’s sword fell to the rapids as he clasped the edge of the boat with both hands.
Head and torso above the gunwale, he had served himself up as a helpless meal to the enraged gryphon, whose neck coiled for a second strike.
The creature’s head flew forward.
A’Nu-Ahki closed his eyes rather than watch it pierce his flesh. When seconds passed and nothing happened, he risked another look.
The spear of the young acolyte on the other side had skewered the monster from behind. The beast lay draped; its unfolded wings an unholy burial shroud over the bloody sarcophagus of humanity’s first father.
Nu looked around and saw that the rest of the gryphons had landed. They pecked and scratched at the other boats to try to get at the soft flesh curled like snails within. His acolytes, way ahead of him, had already noticed the vulnerability of the distracted dragons. The young men began to spear them one by one. Nu grabbed his own javelin, and began to attack the beasts near the next boat behind his. Soon a tally of some ten dead gryphons lay by the nearest three boats.
Once the remainder of the swarm saw their danger, they took off over the canyon and circled out over the rapids to wait for the humans to move on so that they could feast on their own dead.
The boats began to prop open like cautious clams. A’Nu-Ahki leaned on the gunwale and panted to keep himself from vomiting. From the corner of his eye, he saw
a large, dark-skinned man moving toward him from the front of the line. The approaching one stepped carelessly over gryphon carcasses, and kicked several off into the ravine with cursing shouts. Huge bulging eyes smoldered like coals in his face as he drew closer.
Nu managed to stand up again just as the dark man reached the sarcophagus boat.
The man with the burning eyes stood silent for a moment with arms folded, his thick lips curled downward at Nu. Then he spoke. “Tell me something, O fifth level Dragon-slayer, how long were you going to let my brother’s wife squirm like a fish on the end of that devil’s spike before you picked up the spear laying right next to you and used it?”
The Dark Man’s words stunned Nu speechless. He now saw, several boats forward, the man’s brother laying belly-down on the path, head over the ledge, shrieking his wife’s name with hysterical tears, as her body tumbled out of sight. Tunnel vision! Why didn’t I see him before?
Perhaps because I’ll soon be doing the same over my Emza!
The Dark Man stepped forward and sneered in Nu’s face, “I had to let go of my boat to rifle for a weapon! I almost sent the other men into the chasm because of the imbalance, just to get a shot at the thing! What’s the matter? Weren’t you sure that the monster belonged to Dragon-prince? Or maybe it was just one of the wild dragons still doing whatever it is A’Nu put them out here to do?”
“I…” Nu began.
The man whose brother had lost a wife cut him off. “My name’s Henumil, son of Karmis, son of Tarkuni, son of Urugim. I worked with your brothers out of Ayarak fifty years ago, A’Nu-Ahki. They told me that you were a heretic who thought Dragon-slaying was a waste of time. A’Nu’s Comforter? You have too much of a reputation for bad fieldwork! But I’ve heard other stories too—questions about your real lineage that are no longer questions in my mind! You proved them here today!”
“Then why did I kill my share of these gryphons that litter the cliff?” Nu’s defense sounded lame even to him.
The Dark Man launched himself at Nu, knocking him backwards into the boat so that he slammed his head on the sarcophagus. The dead gryphon’s blood smeared across his face, into his hair and beard, mixing with his own from the split lump growing on his scalp. Henumil’s weight pinned Nu down, his huge face but a finger’s width from his own.
Henumil said, “I saw the whole damnable thing! You picked up your spear only after that green acolyte ‘tween-ager had the presence of mind to do what should have been second nature to you! Don’t you dare try to paint yourself the hero!”
A’Nu-Ahki’s mouth dropped as he stared up into space. He only distantly saw his acolytes pull Henumil from him.
It had not even occurred to Nu to try to kill the gryphon, and put the woman out of her misery. Not even the memory of her head shattered on the rock could undo Henumil’s common-sense conclusion. Nu could have done nothing to save her, but he could have done that much to end things more mercifully for her. It just never came to his mind in the heat of the moment. Why hadn’t he thought of it? Why had he crouched there so helpless?
The memory of his cousin Uruk from that crimson afternoon at the boy’s academy so long ago came flooding in again, unbidden but stronger than ever—I couldn’t fight! I didn’t fight! I tried to fight, but I was too slow! I’m always too slow! Always too late…
T
hree nights after they reached the base of the portage trail and took to the river again, the remnant of Q’Enukki made camp on a thinly wooded islet in the center of Gihunu’s stream. They hoped to avoid the larger hunting wurms that plagued the banks on either side of the ever-widening canyon floor. Shrieking monsters in the trees, and hidden leviathans beneath the water kept the refugees huddled close by the fires.
Even so, Nu kept to himself. Few, except Muhet’Usalaq and the acolytes assigned to guard the sarcophagus, would speak to him. It seemed that Henumil’s opinion was well-respected among Urugim’s clans. Even the priestly keepers of the Three Treasures, who had also joined their party from the Isle of the Dead, stayed clear of him.
“You are not to blame, my Elder,” said the acolyte who had saved Nu’s life by lancing the gryphon on Atum-Ra’s coffin. “Too much was happening—they are being unfair to you!”
“Thanks, Nestrigati. You’re very kind and generous to your captain. But truth is I should have thought to do what Henumil did. I was closest, with the clearest shot.”
“Then we would have had one less spear to take on the other draca.”
A’Nu-Ahki would have continued gently arguing the youth’s kind logic, but a woman’s scream from the center of camp brought both men to their feet and running at the source of the noise.
A ‘tween-aged girl about forty years old, from among the children of Urugim, writhed in the dirt near one of the beast fires, panting, shrieking, and beating the air above her as if trying to fight off something invisible.
“Nooooo! Get awaaaay! Not meee!” she wailed, flailing with one hand as she ripped at her own clothes with the other.
A stern voice split the night, as if a warrior of old had stepped from the shadows of legend.
“By E’Yahavah El-N’Lil, as Keeper of the Promise, I order you to leave this girl alone and trouble not the Clan of Seers!”
The girl ceased struggling, her shadow assailant vanquished.
Muhet’Usalaq stood over her, and held out his hand.
She took it, and he lifted her gently to her feet.
A blood-chilling chorus of howls broke from the shadows on both banks of the river, drawing everyone’s attention away from the fire.
Muhet’Usalaq clapped his hands to regain their focus. He then hugged the girl into his mantle. “You did nothing but sleep,” he told her tenderly.
“I did nothing, my Father,” she said, tears running down her face.
The Old Man ran a weathered brown hand through her dark hair. “Have courage, child. I’m sure it was just a nightmare—the stress of traveling through the Haunted Lands. It gets to all of us at times.”
“Perhaps,” the girl agreed, as she rubbed her neck.
Nevertheless, when her hand came away from her throat, A’Nu-Ahki saw the gigantic suck mark there. Maybe it was just a bruise caused by her rolling over a rock in her nightmare. Even with all the traditions, it seemed a bit melodramatic and nonsensical to suppose that one of the fallen sons of the gods lurked in the Haunted Lands just waiting for unsuspecting maidens to assault—as if they had no better hunting ground.
Nu had lived long and traveled wide enough to know that the situation with the Watchers was more complex than that, that it played out in different ways in different parts of the world, some crude and tribal, others far more sophisticated. They always shifted with the times.
Nu wondered all the same.
For twelve years the Danes had themselves attempted to kill Grendel with conventional weapons… Yet his impenetrable hide had defied them all and Grendel was able to attack the Danes with impunity. Beowulf considered all this and decided that the only way to tackle the monster was to get to grips with him at close quarters. The monster’s forelimbs, which the Saxons called eorms (arms) … were small and comparatively puny. …Grendel, however, is also described, in line 2079 of the poem, as a muthbona, i.e. one who slays with his mouth or jaws, and the speed with which he was able to devour his human prey tells us something of the size of his jaws and teeth (he swallowed the body of one of his victims in large ‘gobbets’). Yet, it is the very size of Grendel’s jaws which paradoxically would have aided Beowulf in his carefully thought out strategy of going for the forelimbs, because pushing himself hard into the animal’s chest between those forelimbs would have placed Beowulf tightly underneath those jaws and would thus have sheltered him from Grendel’s terrible teeth.
—Bill Cooper
After the Flood
8
Wurm
B
y evening of their fifth day on the river, nobody, least of all Nu, felt any longer that the l
egends of the Haunted Lands had been overstated. Leviathans in the fetid mists menaced the boats by day; one of which sank suddenly with the loss of all hands when a tremendous set of jaws lunged at it from out of the fog. Nu heard the clamp of teeth into the boat’s gunwales, then wood snapping and people screaming, as the creature pulled it sideways into the churning waters and capsized it. The splash and gurgle of large bubbles into an instant heart-pounding silence made him want to scream.
In the evenings, a virtual wall of beast fires fed continually by an army of watchmen surrounded the river bank campsites. More than half the company stayed awake any given night. Few got the rest they needed to maintain strength and alertness for the hazardous days in the boats.
If the fires scared off larger predators, they attracted dragonflies in fanning droves—bugs longer than Nu’s arm with prickly spiked legs and veined mica-glass wings that sliced skin —that got tangled in hair whenever they lighted on somebody’s head. Crocodiles larger than the boats slowly worked their way in among sinister curling ferns. Spearmen constantly patrolled the river’s edge in pairs to drive them off.
None of the men except the sarcophagus squad would work with A’Nu-Ahki. He almost didn’t blame them, though it hurt to think that his own brothers had denounced him simply because he had doubted that all dragons were demonically possessed. It was a hard position for him to maintain in the Haunted Lands; especially when he thought he heard mocking evil whispering and squawking amidst the shaggy black trees. If he had such doubts, he kept them silent.
On their seventh day on the river, they began to notice a large predator stalking them on the western bank. It followed by day, hiding itself in the dense foliage except for the rustles made by the passage of its tremendous size. The eastern bank dissolved into marshy bogs extending far in from the stream, hiding still larger leviathans that ventured out onto the river by dusk. These sometimes shifted around the firelight like the shadows of moving mountains during the night.
Dawn Apocalypse Rising (The Windows of Heaven Book 1) Page 10