A gigantic golden eye glowered in at them from beyond the campfire on the eighth, ninth, and tenth nights. Each evening it moved a little closer. By late afternoon of the eleventh day, no one had yet identified the creature, though few doubted it to be anything less than a wyverna or a gryndel—both carnivorous biped wurms of immense size.
Muhet’Usalaq ordered his tiny fleet ashore, as bloody sunset draped the river mist. Soon, one by one, the beast fires crackled to life. Nu was about to brew his squad some amomun tea when a shriek came from the north side of camp, where a fire had yet to go up.
A’Nu-Ahki turned in time to see an enormous gryndel’s head disappear backwards into the foliage with the bottom half of a watchman’s body hanging from its mouth. The creature’s dagger-like front teeth had snapped the man’s spine instantly.
Nu gave the alarm. Within seconds, a band of spearmen followed into the green darkness to give chase. He sensed they would not want him along, so he stayed back with the main company to guard the women and children. Nobody knew who the widow was for sure until the hunting party returned an hour later with only the belt of the victim to show for their efforts. They had never even caught sight of the gryndel.
Henumil, who had led the huntsmen, shuffled past A’Nu-Ahki and flashed an accusatory glare in his direction, though he said nothing.
The following afternoon, Muhet’Usalaq ordered the boats ashore two hours before sunset to ensure plenty of time to light enough fires before half-light. Once he secured Atum-Ra’s boat, A’Nu-Ahki helped the women unpack the cooking supplies, since none of the men wanted him around.
All the while Muhet’Usalaq kept to himself, unless called upon to settle disputes or make major decisions. He said nothing to alleviate Nu’s pariah status. Nu figured the Old Man did not want people viewing him as taking sides. Maybe the Prime Zaqen saw the gorge incident as a fulfillment of all his warnings to A’Nu-Ahki about keeping up his hunting skills. Nu hoped not. Salaam-Surupag was clearly another world. Raised in the Haunted Lands, there would never have been any question in Nu’s mind about such priorities, demons in dragons or no demons. Here dragon-slaying was still a common-sense way of life for survival.
Ready for his evening amomun, Nu took it upon himself to start the cooking fire. He scraped off some resinous pine bark with his utility knife and brought it over to a makeshift pit, which was just a slight depression in the earth between a couple rocks. He barely noticed the child playing beneath the low branches of the pine to his left, while he began to hack at some dry kindling with his knife.
A loud snap of dried undergrowth drew Nu’s eyes upward. He saw nothing until an earsplitting bellow came from the direction of the pine trees and the playing child. Not again! Oh please, E’Yahavah, not this time!
The boy cowered by a tree trunk, sheltered by a meager spread of branches. Towering over him, its maw filled with bristle cones, the furious gryndel tried to shake its teeth free of the sticky splinters.
Nu clenched his utility knife between his teeth, and lunged toward the wurm before he could even think.
The beast, occupied with purging its mouth of the pine twigs, did not notice the puny man that scrambled beneath its shadow. Just at the height of A’Nu-Ahki’s face, the gryndel’s tiny arm-claws flailed uselessly. What followed took place in an instant.
Nu clasped the nearest claw, and tried to bend it backward the way his father had done in the dream up on Seti’s Sphinx.
The thing would not budge.
Nor could he gain the footing necessary to offer enough leverage to use his full strength. He bet Lumekki could have, though; but as always, he was far from being Lumekki! Then he realized that his father was no taller than he was; that only height could give him that kind of advantage. His moment—and his life—were now up.
Great! Fooled by a dream that paints my father bigger than life!
“Quit whining!” said a silent voice from somewhere beyond the inner reaches of Nu’s mind. “If I had put you in the dream as the dragon-slayer, you would not have taken it seriously! Do what you know to do!”
The gryndel now knew of his presence—in that one place where its jaws and mighty tail could not reach. Before the dragon could react, Nu clamped his arms around the beast’s armlet, pulled his legs up, wrapping them rope-climber style around its other mating-claw, and held on.
The beast began to bird-hop around the camp glade, trying to shake him loose. Neck-jarring pain seared down Nu’s spinal cord, as cold scales made gravel-paper against his skin. He bent his right arm around the gryndel’s left claw, snaking his forearm in to clasp the monster’s twitching limb at its base. Hop! Thud! Rattle! Jab! He applied pressure to the armlet’s artery with his thumb. Snap! Buckle! This freed up Nu’s left arm—almost.
A coiling spin almost shook A’Nu-Ahki loose. The wurm, no doubt hoping to smash its tormentor off, rammed him instead into a cushioning tree that allowed him the split second needed to get a better grip.
With Nu’s legs now locked like a vice, the gryndel could no longer move its right arm-claw either. By now, A’Nu-Ahki’s one-armed snake-hold on the left armlet had cut off its circulation completely, making it easier to free up his own left arm to pull the utility knife from between his teeth. He eyed the soft yellow hide underneath the beast’s weakening arm—the one area of its body not covered in scale armor—one of two places where blood steadily engorged itself because of the blocked flow to the armlets.
Nu leaned his right shoulder in toward the gryndel’s torso, learning now to ride the thrashing, and take advantage of its increasingly predictable cadence. A blur of faces swept by—Muhet’Usalaq and the Dragon-slayers with spears aloft, as though none of them dared to get close enough to jab.
A’Nu-Ahki drew back his arm and struck.
The spray of hot pressurized blood in his face almost blasted him from his hold, when the knife dove deep into the gryndel’s side. A howl broke from the monster’s snapping jaws, and it nearly rolled over into a coiling mass on the ground to crush its stinging antagonist. It must have stopped short only because it caught sight of other man-creatures moving in with their terrible needle-sticks. Surely, the gryndel knew by instinct that if they struck at its vitals while it rolled on the ground, it might not have the strength needed to stand up again and face them.
A’Nu-Ahki drew back his knife and struck again.
This time something sinuous gave way, and another gush of blood, darker but less pressurized, surged down the gryndel’s side. The ostrich-snake dance steadily slowed. It became harder for Nu to grip the arm-claw because of the lubrication from the creature’s life fluid. He felt the wurm’s breath growing labored as it stumbled and almost fell on top of him.
He drew back his blade for another plunge. This time he thrust it so far in that some spasm of the gryndel’s deep torso musculature sucked it clean from his grasp. The motion must have severed another major artery, perhaps the one that led up into the creature’s neck.
The wurm staggered like a drunken man, slippery in its own redness. Nu dropped from his hold and landed between two wobbly three-taloned feet. They supported pillars of iron-bone about to cave in on themselves and him. Remembering the escape route taken by his father in the dream, he scrambled between the legs, and rolled into some ferns as far out of range of the tail as he could reach in one leap.
For a long moment, the gryndel simply stood there, its life flow draining out, as if in disbelief that something as insignificant as a man could take down the matriarch of wurms.
None of the Dragon-slayers dared thrust a spear, as if by doing so a sacred moment in the history of their order would somehow be defiled.
The gryndel wobbled once then staggered sideways toward the spearmen, who leaped away at its approach. It made one last effort to right itself, but it had simply lost too much blood too quickly.
The beast crashed to earth right on top of the fire pit where its slayer had thought to brew tea.
Nobody made a cheer. Nobod
y made a sound.
Nu crawled from the ferns drenched in blood and caked in dirt. Slowly, in a reverential procession, the Dragon-slayers surrounded him with their spears held aloft in solemn military salute—all but one.
Henumil stood off, a scowl twisting his huge face, while his spear stuck in the ground with a contemptuous wobble.
The circle broke to admit their Zaqen, who walked over to A’Nu-Ahki, and saluted his grandson as a junior salutes a senior. Then he reached down his hand to give Nu a lift up.
“In the history of Seti’s Brotherhood, no man, even on an armored tricorn mount, much less armed with only a utility knife, has ever taken down such a gryndel!” Muhet’Usalaq said. “Truly we have had among us the greatest Dragon-slayer of all time, and we have not esteemed him!”
The company of Seti’s Brotherhood broke into delirious cheers, and repeated salutes with weapons presented front.
A’Nu-Ahki’s conscience howled, This isn’t right!
He understood their need to vent. Nevertheless, he held up his hands to ward off their adulation. “No! You don’t understand!”
The cheering subsided to a confused murmur. A’Nu-Ahki noticed that even Henumil in the shadows perked up to hear what he had to say.
“This thing is of El-N’Lil! You all know me—I’m a lousy hunter! I couldn’t spear a behemoth at ten paces…”
The spearmen and Muhet’Usalaq began to object loudly.
Nu saw that things were getting out of hand. Joy should have flooded his senses with vindication. Instead, the cheers of his kinsmen screeched in his ears like a cacophony of locusts while the mist-shrouded earth wheeled sideways into a twisted nightmare. Then he remembered the saged example of their great leader, Iyared. “Shut up all of you! Listen to me and use your heads!”
The company rumbled to a perplexed silence. They were his to command, but he had never wanted to command them. Now that he had their attention, the surreality of the situation snapped him up, as the wurm should have done. Nu stammered out his first few words. “Up on Seti’s Sphinx, when I went to meet Father Urugim, I-I had a dream.
“In that vision, I saw my father kill a gryndel in a way similar to what happened just now—he twisted off one of the creature’s mating armlets and it ruptured a major artery. I hadn’t the strength or leverage to twist anything, but the dream showed me where I might strike to sever a main blood vessel. Think! I saw this in a dream sleeping under the Great Sphinx! E’Yahavah told me what to do! I can’t take honor for that kind of work. Look at my past field record! What Henumil says I should have done up in the gorge is true, though not what he says about my lineage…”
A’Nu-Ahki instantly knew that mentioning Henumil was a mistake, but the words were already out. The saluting Dragon-slayers now turned to face the big hunter, and began to murmur against him whom they had believed without question until just a gryndel kill ago.
“The gryndel was only a whelp!” Henumil shouted, as he pushed through the circle formed around A’Nu-Ahki.
Muhet’Usalaq turned on the big hunter, and struck him across the face with the back of his hand, as he would a mouthy child. Henumil raised his fist, but stopped himself before striking back.
Muhet’Usalaq stared Henumil down with heavy-browed eyes that carried the authority of over six centuries and a seer’s spirit. “I grant you pardon, only because of the loss your brother suffered up in the gorge. Any novice can see that this wurm was entering its prime. And another thing,” he added. “You have been spreading ugly rumors about A’Nu-Ahki’s lineage—rumors that should have died centuries ago! I am the one who went to Paru’Ainu and got the story on A’Nu-Ahki straight from the mouth of a holy Kherub. Have you ever seen a Kherub, Henumil?”
“No sire.” The hunter grimaced, rubbing his face.
“You would not forget one if you had. But since I am an eyewitness and you are not, I suggest you keep your wagging tongue in its mouth! Maybe you from Sa-utar have not heard? In my court, tale-bearing carries a heavy penalty of restitution—and I am one of the few Zaqenar who is not afraid, at need, to employ the death penalty for treason.”
The others began to murmur the word uneasily under their breath.
Their Elder continued, “None of you are unaware of the prophecy spoken about A’Nu-Ahki by Iyared before he died. This man is A’Nu’s Comfort! I do not think our highest earthly authority would choose the son of a fallen Watcher to carry the cask of Atum-Ra! I trust this matter is closed.”
Henumil looked down and stood at attention, though he spoke through clenched teeth in the Formal Voice; “I ask forgiveness, my Father, and did not intend treason. It was but grief and the heat of the moment.”
“Then we shall speak no more of it,” commanded the Zaqen, who then turned to the others listening on. “And neither shall any of you!”
T
hey saw the sentinel three days after A’Nu-Ahki killed the gryndel.
The watchman stood atop a large rock, where the river, having run due west for most the day, turned suddenly northward on its alluvial plane and emptied into a wide lake. He called out for them to enter the lake and make directly for its opposite shore, where a thorn-enclosed camp awaited.
It took the rest of the day to paddle across, each moment of which was an eternity for Nu. Would Emzara be there to meet him? He had not recognized the sentinel, and had been afraid to ask him—or had he simply been afraid of the answer?
The nightmare of Emzara’s blood gushing in rivers from her throat haunted, but also prepared him for the worst. Since the gryndel dream had come true, there seemed no reason to think that the vision of his wife’s corpse would prove any less so.
Since learning of Salaam-Surupag’s fall Nu had quietly repeated to himself that he would meet Emza again, if only in the restored Orchard after the end of the world. But the whispered words came each time as crunching ashes on his tongue, which froze like water-cooled lead at seeing the sentry.
Without a body or a witness to a body, there would always be the nagging doubt that maybe she existed somewhere in forced prostitution to some Samyaza giant. Also without knowing, there could always be hope that somehow only the gryndel part of his dream was inspired, and the other a mere accident of stress. After the sarcophagus boat passed the sentinel, Nu cursed his own inability to decide whether to prolong his ordeal with the demon of not knowing, face the demon of knowing, or worse yet to discover the demon that there was no longer any way to know.
Sunset maroons bathed the lake, as beast fires guided the tiny fleet to rest. The acolytes pulled his boat onto the beach, just as Nu saw the heavyset silhouette of his father standing against a backdrop of flames.
Lumekki embraced Muhet’Usalaq first, and exchanged a few hushed words before he turned to his son.
The moment rushed with the blood from Nu’s head in that last second of hopeful ignorance. Pain glimmered with the refracted fires in his father’s eyes. It told him all he needed to know before Lumekki spoke.
“Emza’s dead, isn’t she?”
His father looked down. “Yes, son. I take full responsibility.”
A’Nu-Ahki had prepared himself for this, but it struck him like a blow to the diaphragm anyway. Then the relief of knowing—ultimately the lesser of his three demons—brought forth tears like a cleansing waterfall out of Aeden. His ordeal had been too long and exhausting for anything other than the brokenness of acceptance to come along and claim him like an orphaned waif on life’s battlefield. At least he knew she was gone. There would be no haunting. Healing would come someday, but not today.
When Nu composed himself, he laid a hand on his father’s shoulder and said, “You couldn’t know the Samyaza Cult was coming. The best intelligence you had told you to expect an assault from the west.”
Lumekki shook his head near hard enough to snap his own neck. “So like a fool, when I heard the first alarm horn, I rallied the women and children to the eastern escape routes without confirming the direction of the sighting! M
y scouts on the west road had not reported in, so I figured they’d been captured or killed in a rapid self-propelled chariot advance…”
“Pahpo, it’s not your fault…”
“I thought the direction of that first alarm horn sounded wrong! I could have confirmed it! By the time word reached my headquarters that the invaders were to the east and not west, it was already too late. I had sent them like trusting sheep into the mouth of the dragon!”
“Father, you couldn’t have known…”
“It was my job to know! Based on our assumption that Lumekkor and Khavilakki were attacking, I knew it would not take long for them to surround the city with their self-propelled siege engines, and that it would be a race for our people to reach the forest cover. The plan had been for them to march into a deserted city. Instead, the Samyaza giants charged into a melee of unarmed women and children!”
The Tacticon spoke with an accustomed military detail with little attempt to spare Nu’s sensibilities. In fact, Lumekki seemed to be trying to provoke his son’s anger—perhaps out of self-punishment. Nu understood his father too well to let him succeed. I will not make that mistake again!
“How do you know Emzara and the girls were not captured?”
The Old Soldier sighed. Nu had never imagined what defeat could do to a man like Lumekki—the beaten dullness in his eyes, the slouch of his back, and even the smell of distilled liquor on the breath of a man who hardly ever drank wine, much less while in the field.
“I led a force through the northern forest rim southeastward to try and outflank the titans, but found that more of them were crossing the river with a well-guarded supply line. Any attempt to break through would have stalled into a pitched battle where my light infantry would have been outnumbered ten to one by at least two divisions of heavy tricorn, and four of medium unicorn cavalry.
Dawn Apocalypse Rising (The Windows of Heaven Book 1) Page 11