Joash glanced over his shoulder. The sabertooths were already hidden. He wondered how long until hyenas spotted circling vultures and came to investigate the kill. He breathed deeply. He was tired. They’d been running hard today. He didn’t really want to wade through any more marsh either.
“This way,” Ard said, climbing onto solid ground.
After a long, circuitous route, they pushed through tall bulrushes and came upon a clearing. To their amazement, they saw silver-haired Elidad and his chariot driver. Elidad sat on the chariot, reading something like a scroll.
“What’s he doing here?” Joash asked. “Lord Uriah said chariots are always supposed to drive in teams.”
Ard snorted. “So go tell Elidad that.”
Joash didn’t want a whipping. Elidad wasn’t like Herrek. Elidad lived the difference between Elonite nobility and everyone else.
As they approached Elidad looked up. It seemed he scowled, but Joash was too far away to tell. The warrior thrust whatever he read into his broad belt, jumped up, and patted his driver on the back. The chariot soon rolled toward them.
The two-man chariots of Elon were light and maneuverable, a terror on the battlefield. The chariot flooring had matted weaving like a basket, which helped absorb shock when the wheels struck rocks or uneven ground. The wheels were bronze-rimmed with four narrow spokes and balanced toward the rear of the cart so it could turn sharply. Because of its light construction made for speed, a warrior like Elidad or Herrek could carry such a chariot on his back for many hours.
“Where’s my stallion?” Elidad demanded.
Neither runner said a word.
“Speak,” the charioteer said. He had long, silver hair, bulk like a bear—although nothing like Balak—and he had too many battle scars to be called handsome.
Joash nudged Ard.
Ard bowed his head. “Lord, sabertooths pulled down the stallion.”
When Elidad didn’t start yelling, Joash looked up. Elidad was an impatient warrior, known for his temper, although few were braver. He wore gem-encrusted bands from Ir around his thick arms, and a sea-green Shalmaneser cloak fluttered from his shoulders. His eyes appeared glassy, perhaps from too much drink.
“The stallion is dead, Lord,” Ard said.
Elidad shook his head and grinned. “Climb aboard,” he told Ard.
The unwritten custom among charioteers was that low-ranked runners always ran, never rode, in the chariot. Starting from the bottom, the hierarchy was runner, groom, driver, and the pinnacle of an Elonite warrior’s career, charioteer.
“Did you hear me?” Elidad growled.
Ard scrambled to obey, and hopped aboard the chariot.
“What about me?” Joash asked.
“Return to the hill,” Elidad said. “Some grooms are waiting for you to straggle in.”
Joash grabbed Harn’s collar and dragged him along.
“Not that way!” Elidad shouted.
Surprised, Joash looked up.
“Leave the clearing,” Elidad said, “and head directly onto the plains.”
“Yes, warrior,” Joash said, knowing that meant going through the marsh.
Without another word, Elidad nodded at his driver. A whip cracked, and the chariot pulled away, taking Ard with it. As Elidad headed north, Ard and Joash exchanged a last worried glance at the charioteer’s odd behavior.
* * *
Curiosity won out over obedience. Joash didn’t head directly onto the plains as ordered. First, checking that Elidad had left, Joash hurried into the clearing. He followed the chariot-wheel tracks of crushed grass and flowers, two parallel lines of flattened plants that slowly rose to their former position. Some stalks had snapped, like a tall dandelion white with seedpods. The bottom of the snapped stalk oozed milky fluids, and it would never rise again.
Joash halted when he saw the skeleton, and knew at a glance that this is what Elidad had wanted hidden. The bones were white, cracked with age, and spotted with dry lichen. It was a giant’s skeleton, with a smashed skull. Footprints showed where Elidad had walked around it. Upturned soil and scattered finger-bones indicated that Elidad had taken something from it.
“It’s ancient,” Joash told Harn.
The lion-colored dog wagged his tail.
“Why didn’t Elidad want me to see this?”
Harn sniffed the skeleton.
In the distance, an auroch-horn blared. Joash could tell its type by the low flat note. A warrior’s horn would have pealed higher. He snapped his fingers at Harn and headed onto the plains. He wondered how the roundup went and which warriors had roped the most stallions.
Soon, Joash spotted two people near the cedar-topped hill. He shouted and waved until they jogged toward him.
It was Eber and Nestor, the latter a tall groom with a red band around his head. “You’re late,” Nestor said.
“Where did everyone go?” Joash asked.
“To the birch tree,” Nestor said. “We’re supposed to bring water. Oh, and make sure you keep Harn out of danger, especially from attacking sabertooths. Those are direct orders from Lord Uriah.”
“Why would he order that?” Joash asked.
“A Kenaz charioteer told us a new pride of sabertooths was spotted prowling around the cooking-wagons.”
“More new sabertooths,” Joash said.
“What’s that mean?”
Joash told them about the sabertooths, the marsh and the black stallion.
“And you think this is another new pride?” Nestor asked.
“I’ll tell you if I’m going blind,” Joash said.
Nestor stroked his beak of a nose. “There’s nothing we can do about it now. You can tell Herrek later. Ready? Let’s go.”
Big Eber lifted two water-skins. Nestor slung one over his shoulder and gave the lightest to Joash. They followed chariot-wheel tracks, avoided thistle patches, and kept a sharp lookout for sabertooths. They came across a lone set of chariot tracks. The grass-crushed lines headed north instead of east with the others.
“Who headed north?” Nestor asked.
Eber shifted his water-pole. “Are we stopping?”
Nestor nodded, and they crouched in the shade of thorn bushes.
“I wish we would have come during winter,” Joash said, as he wiped his sweaty brow.
Nestor chuckled. “My brother came with Herrek ten years ago. The steppes howled with blizzards then.”
Joash studied movement along the eastern horizon, the direction they were traveling. A strange cry came from there.
“Are those hyenas?” Nestor asked. His eyesight was poor.
“They slink like them,” Joash said.
“I hate hyenas,” Eber said ponderously.
Joash didn’t know of anybody who loved them.
* * *
Old Three-Paws the sabertooth bitterly hated hyenas.
The hatred had started long ago. He’d been a cub then, barely able to eat solid food. His mother’s mouth had become swollen from giant porcupine quills. She’d wasted away, and had finally lain down, as the pride had padded away to hunt mammoths. Sensing her weakness, hyenas had come in their howling pack. As a cub, Old Three Paws had squeezed into an abandoned jackal hole and had snapped and clawed at the hyenas who had tried to worm in after him. The nightmare still haunted his sleep.
A pack of hyenas prowled in the reeds, watching him eat the stallion. Three-Paws roared, spittle flying from his bloody mouth.
Although past his prime, Three-Paws was still the pride leader and grotesquely powerful, over nine-hundred pounds in weight. Bad-tempered and mean, his long-ago wounding by a two-legs fueled his constant rages. For all his cruelty, however, Three-Paws kept the pride safe from foreign sabertooths. He also had a fanatical loathing of any beast that came near the sacred cubbing den.
A new sound filled the clearing: a blistering roar. The sabertooths looked up in alarm while the hyenas fled with their tails between their legs. In the reeds moved a creature that dwarfed the sab
ertooths. The creature roared again.
Old Three-Paws cowered, his ears laid flat against his head. The god-creature that had driven them here sounded angry.
One by one, the sabertooths slunk on their bellies toward the god-creature. Three-Paws hesitated. It enraged him that the god-creature wanted him to leave meat. He’d fought the god-creature a week ago and had lost. Now, he must obey, even as he’d obeyed the god-creature’s orders to leave the cubbing den and come here. Three-Paws finally slunk on his belly and licked the god-creature’s snout in submission. He endured the harsh snarls and the buffets to his head.
Attack the two-legs now, the god-creature ordered. Obey.
Three-Paws and his pride hurried away. Three-Paws dared look back, and saw hyenas dashing toward the horse carcass. Terrible anger filled him, but he obeyed the god-creature.
His crippled paw soon throbbed with pain. Combined with his belly-rumbles, he knew growing hostility toward the god-creature. Never, since he’d become the pride leader, had he been driven from his meat. It left him baffled and enraged.
The pride crossed the stream and headed onto the plains. The scent of two-legs, horses, and hounds lingered. Three-Paws’s belly rumbled, and the thought of hyenas feasting upon his kill made him angrily shake his head. Each time he set down his injured paw, he yearned to stop and rest. Just then, Three-Paws noticed a distant flash of light. He thought it might be a two-legs and his sun-reflected hide of bright skin. A low rumble sounded in his throat. The flash came from the same direction as the cubbing den.
In Three-Paws’s feline brain, an odd and imprecise contest took place. The terrifying god-creature had a strange right to demand obedience from the pride. Yet Three-Paws had little intention of obeying anything other than his belly’s constant demand for meat. His crippled paw throbbed anew. Old Three-Paws stopped and tried to make the others turn north. The pride followed Yellow Fang instead, sensing from the young male that the god-creature must be obeyed. In disgust, Three-Paws followed too.
In time, the pride came across a lone chariot track. Three-Paws sniffed it. A two-legs headed toward the cubbing den. He roared savagely and tried again to turn the pride north. Once again, the pride followed Yellow Fang.
Eyes blazing, Three-Paws attacked the smaller male. Yellow Fang tried to submit. Three-Paws bit and clawed him. Yellow Fang finally hissed in alarm, leaped up, and trotted east, driven from the pride.
With Three-Paws in the lead, the pride reluctantly turned north. Three-Paws wished to find the lone two-legs and slay him, and slay any who came near the cubbing den. Yet, what if the god-creature returned…? Old Three-Paws glanced nervously over his shoulder. He increased his pace in order to leave this strange and sinister territory.
CHAPTER THREE
The Giant
A champion named Goliath, who was from Gath, came out of the Philistine camp. He was over nine feet tall
— 1 Samuel 17:4
Joash, Nestor and Eber topped a small crest and jogged down into a dry riverbed. They crunched across smooth stones and climbed the bank and into the noisy roundup camp by the lone birch tree. Chariots and cooking-wagons stood in parked clusters. Unhitched Asvarn stallions, aurochs, and half-domesticated long-horned cattle, grazed nearby. A horde of wagon masters, hunters, beaters, trumpeters, grooms, and runners milled about the camp as they chatted and did their chores.
The chain-mailed charioteers sat near a fire where tea boiled. They sat under a leather awning, shaded from the sun. Each warrior sat erect on a mat, cross-legged, with his spear laid on his right and with his sword beside it. Herrek had wrapped his belt around his sword’s scabbard. The silver buckle was shaped like a lion’s head, the fangs acting as securing clamps.
At the southern edge of camp steppe ponies shifted nervously. Ropes attached to their bridles secured them to stakes. Their eyes were wild. Blood welled from the rump of one brown stallion. Perhaps a sabertooth had raked him.
Joash hurried to pick out burs from Herrek’s dogs. He took a thorn out of a paw and smeared smelly ointment on it. When the dogs were all clean, he took a leather bucket and poured water into it. The huge dogs jostled each other as they lapped liquid. Joash then went to Nestor, who was busy watering the horses. Nester gave him a sack of meat. Carrying it, Joash led the dogs from the horses before he cut and tossed them bloody chunks. When the dogs were done eating, he leashed the two leaders to stakes and told the others to stay.
Since no warrior had brought falcons or eagles to look after, Joash helped Nestor with the horses. Not all the grooms were here, and Nestor needed help. Joash brushed horses, and with a pick, he cleaned hooves. These were Asvarn stallions, bigger and sleeker than the steppe stallions.
“Joash!”
He looked up, with a horse’s hoof cradled between his knees. A stoop-shouldered man with a dangling mustache motioned for him to hurry near. The man was Gens, Herrek’s chariot driver. No one could miss lean Gens, one of the greatest drivers of Teman Clan.
Joash dusted his clothes as he ran to the leather awning. The charioteers still sat in a circle and drank tea. Herrek patted the ground beside him.
Joash took his place in the circle, gingerly accepting a cup. It was a small ceramic cup, but thick, so he could hold it without scalding his fingers. As steam rose from the tea Joash could smell its rich aroma. He blew over it, causing ripples, and the steam to float away from him.
“Nestor tells me you saw a new sabertooth pride,” Herrek said.
“Yes, lord,” said Joash.
“I thought you said the sabertooths we spotted today was a new pride, too,” Gens said. “That can’t possibly have been the same beasts Joash saw. Is it possible there are two new prides?”
“No, it is impossible,” said Karim. He was a shaggy charioteer with a long beard and opinions about everything.
Frowning, Herrek tugged at the laces to his leather wrist-guard. “Can anyone doubt the beasts are acting strangely? Consider how they led us into an ambush.”
Joash perked up. He hadn’t heard about that.
“You can’t believe the sabertooths planned it,” Karim said with a snort.
“Sabertooths ambush game,” Herrek said. “Why not ambush people?”
Karim laughed. “Yes, as game, but not in war.”
Herrek turned to Joash. “How can you be certain you saw a new pride?”
Joash’s tea had cooled so took a sip as he considered his words. “I saw a massive sabertooth with a crippled left paw. Until now…” He trailed off because all the charioteers stared at Herrek.
“A crippled left paw?” Herrek asked thickly.
“Yes, Lord. Old Three-Paws, I call him.”
The laughter had drained from Karim’s bearded face. “That sabertooth almost slew you once, Herrek. After all these years has he come back to try again?”
“That was more than ten years ago,” Herrek said, who had turned pale.
A trumpet sounded, indicating an approaching chariot. Relief flooded through Joash as he glanced up. He remembered the chariot-tracks headed north. He had been worried about Ard. Surely, this was Elidad returning, who liked to make a show.
As was their custom, the charioteers arose, although Herrek stared at the ground, perhaps in thought. The chariot came from the south, the direction of the main camp at Hori Cove.
Joash frowned. The approaching chariot-driver wore a burnished bronze helmet polished so it shone like gold. He had a red horsehair crest that blew in the wind. There was missing horsehair from the middle of the crest, no doubt where an enemy had once struck and chopped the holding slot. Elidad owned no such helmet.
Adah the Singer rode with the driver. She was a strange woman from faraway Poseidonis. She wore a blue cloak with yellow designs of starfish, shells, and sea-flowers. A small bow and a quiver, filled with parrot-feathered arrows, hung from her back. She was darker-skinned than Joash and had midnight-colored eyes.
Adah shouted, “Lord Uriah sent me. We need help. Sabertooths attacked t
he southern herd.”
That started a babble of comments among the warriors.
Adah was beautiful, and had short dark hair that curled around her face. She was Lord Uriah’s confidant, privy to many of his secrets. The parrot-feather arrows showed her exotic nature as much as anything. They were colorful, red, green, bright orange, and one with purple feathers. Joash hoped the fletcher had plucked tame parrots, and not slain birds with such beautiful plumage.
“Two stallions have been slain,” Adah said, as her chariot came to a halt. “It’s chaos back there.”
Herrek became stern. “It’s good you didn’t listen to Elidad then.”
“Elidad?” she asked.
“I sent him south with a message,” Herrek said.
“Elidad never spoke to us.”
“Did sabertooths intercept him?” Herrek asked, alarmed. “Quickly, we must—”
“Lord,” Joash said, tugging Herrek’s cloak. “Nestor and I saw chariot tracks headed north.”
Before Herrek could react, the small singer stepped off her chariot in front of him. “Tell me exactly what you saw.”
Joash blushed. The singer had never spoken to him before, and he found her exotically beautiful. Her eyes—
“Speak,” Herrek said, nudging him.
Joash stammered, describing what he’d seen, including the giant skeleton.
“Why would Elidad head deeper inland?” asked Herrek. “That makes little sense.”
“This is Giant Land,” Adah said. “Its ancient name is the Kragehul Steppes. Here mysteries are dangerous. Added to the strange behavior of the sabertooths, we must hurry back to Lord Uriah.”
After a moment, Herrek nodded. “Ready the chariots. We’re heading for Hori Cove.”
Grooms and drivers raced to hitch the teams. Joash ran to the dogs, unleashing the leaders. Wagon masters went to their wagons, servants and hunters ran to the captured stallions.
As Joash unleashed the last one, the dogs began barking, their hackles up as they glared at the dry riverbed.
“What do they sense?” Herrek shouted at Joash.
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