by Inmon, Shawn
She looked at Verda-eh, then shook her head at him. “Do you come here because you love Preta-eh, or because you love our beautiful girls that throw themselves at you?”
“I only have eyes for you,” he lied.
She laughed again, and said, “Of course I have a place for your friends.”
Alex watched Werda-ak stare at Reggie, then at Verda-eh, at least a little bit jealous. Of what, Alex was not certain. His effortless charm? The fact that he was about to spend the night with a beautiful young woman? Hard to tell.
Preta-eh tilted her head back and yelled, “Fenda-ak,” in a voice that echoed all the way out to the guards in the trees.
“Yes?” Fenda-ak said from directly behind her.
“Take the Winten-ah’s to the best sleeping room. If someone is in it, wake them up and move them.”
Alex opened his mouth to object, but Reggie shook his head slightly, so he closed it again.
Fenda-ak moved away at an alarming rate. Alex didn’t want to lose him, but he mouthed to Reggie, “Ask her!”
“I will!” Reggie mouthed back, then hurried to Verda-eh and put his arm around her waist. She towered over him by at least five inches.
Alex, Monda-ak, Senta-eh, and Werda-ak followed the old man across one platform after another, doing their best to keep their bearings.
Tonton-ah was built on a number of levels, and the old man went up and down the connecting ramps without breaking stride. Finally, he threw open a door that looked like any of the other doors they had passed.
“Here it is,” he said, and walked away, in a hurry, as though Preta-eh could holler for him again at any moment.
Alex looked inside and it was a nice room, especially considering the ground they had been sleeping on.
There were six bunks lined up, three to each side. One wall had three large windows open to the moonlight, with shutters that could be pulled closed in inclement weather.
Senta-eh and Werda-ak both dropped their packs by the beds farthest back and sat on the bunks. The mattresses were stuffed with feathers and softer than anything either had ever been offered.
They both laid down and stretched out with smiles on their faces.
Alex dropped his bag as well, but didn’t lay down. Instead, he sat on the mattress and put his back against the wall.
“Aren’t you going to sleep?” Werda-ak asked.
“Sure, eventually.”
“Are you keeping a watch?”
“Det.”
“Why?”
Alex nodded at the door. “There’s no way to bolt it from the inside. Anyone could come in while we are sleeping.”
Werda-ak laughed a little and said, “You are the ever-vigilant Manta-ak. I am going to lay down on this cloud and be the sleeping Werda-ak.”
“Good,” Alex said, then looked at Senta-eh. “Get some rest. If I get tired, I’ll either lay down and sleep, or I’ll wake you up for a watch.”
Senta-eh didn’t argue, but laid down, turned toward the wall, and sighed.
Alex sat comfortably, but not so much so that he would drift off. He turned the many challenges they still had ahead of them over and over in his mind—how to catch the invaders, and how to get Lanta-eh back when they did. Monda-ak climbed up on the bed and laid his head across Alex’s legs—the world’s largest lap dog.
His eyes quickly adjusted to the darkness and the moonlight coming in through the open windows made the room light enough that he could see Werda-ak’s chest rising and falling as he evenly.
There was a shimmering crack of light at the bottom of the door that led into the room. Alex made a series of routine checks. Each window, one at a time. The crack under the door. All remained unchanged for several hours.
Then, he heard the softest of steps approaching. A shifting shadow appeared in the crack of light at the bottom of the door.
Chapter Thirteen
The Battle of Tonton-ah
Alex slipped noiselessly to the floor. He laid a hand on Monda-ak to warn him not to make a sound. The shadows that crossed the seam of light under the door continued to move.
To Alex, they looked like the shadows of many men preparing to launch an assault on a crew that was asleep.
He walked on cat’s feet, touched Senta-ah’s shoulder, and held a finger to his lips, pointing at the door. She knew instantly that if they were to be attacked, her bow would do her no good—the quarters were too close. She slipped her long stabbing knife from underneath her pillow and stood beside Alex.
Alex took one step toward Werda-ak, but before he could wake him, the door swung open noiselessly.
Giving up on stealth and no doubt hoping to inspire confusion, men came boiling into the room, a bloodthirsty scream on their lips. Alex flicked a hand signal at Monda-ak, who launched himself at the first warrior through the door, knocking a heavy spear from his grasp. The man’s scream turned from war cry to fear as hundreds of pounds of snarling, snapping canine landed on top of him.
The attackers showed some discipline. They knew they had the advantage of numbers, but did not get in each other’s way, all trying to burst through the door simultaneously. Instead, they entered two at a time, hoping to overwhelm their intended victims with sheer numbers.
The second man through tripped over the massive body of Monda-ak as he chewed on the first man’s defensively outstretched arm. The third saw that pileup and managed to jump over it, but his momentum carried him too close to Senta-eh, who grabbed his outstretched arm and used it to whirl him face-first into the back wall of the room, putting him down for the count, at least momentarily.
Werda-ak awoke, bleary-eyed and stunned, which was the state the attackers had hoped to find them all.
Alex was armed with his knife in his left hand and his stone hammer in the other. The hammer was attached to his wrist with a leather thong, and as the next man through rushed him, he realized the quarters were too close for such a heavy weapon. He let it dangle from his wrist and slashed at the man with the knife in his left hand. He drew blood, but it was a superficial wound.
Meanwhile, more of the attackers poured into the room. Another man joined the fighter grappling with Alex and between them, they forced him back onto the bed. When Alex saw he was falling, he went with it, pulling one of the men along with him. When he hit the soft cushion of the bed, he pulled the man toward him, planted his knee in the man’s midsection and lifted him over his head.
He hoped the man would continue on and fly through the window, but he wasn’t moving fast enough and stuck half in and half out. While he had him at such a disadvantage, Alex plunged his knife into the man’s buttocks and cut down with all his strength, hoping to disable him.
The other man pressed his advantage and swung his own hammer at Alex, connecting with his left arm. Alex instantly lost all use of the arm and the knife clattered to the ground.
We’ll never survive, outnumbered, and crowded in a closed space like this.
While he wrestled with the man who was trying to slit his throat with a knife, Alex grunted, “Monda-ak! Kill! Out!”
The dog opened his jaws wide and closed them on the throat and head of the warrior struggling to escape his suffocating weight. The man struggled no more.
Meanwhile, the room was a whirlwind of violence and it was nearly impossible to tell who was who. The attacking warriors fought slightly more conservatively, knowing they might be attacking one of their own.
Werda-ak grappled with a warrior who had burst through the door carrying a heavy killing spear. The unwieldiness of the weapon was likely the only reason the boy was still alive, but he was losing ground fast.
Senta-eh was circled by two opponents. She made short jabs with her stabbing sword, not connecting, but not allowing them any closer.
When Monda-ak heard the command “Out!” he abandoned the man he had just killed and ran directly at the man guarding the door. He hit him at almost a full gallop, lowering his immense head and plowing into the man’s midsection.
The man flew out the door with so much momentum that when he hit the rail of the deck outside, he toppled over backward. He screamed for a long moment until his body hit the ground with a sickening thump, silencing him.
Alex saw the opening and redoubled his effort, twisting his attacker’s arm until the man released his hold on him. He put his foot in the man’s chest and pushed with everything he had. The man flew across the room and smashed into the man trying to kill Werda-ak. They both collapsed into a tangled heap of arms and torsos on top of the boy, who managed to wriggle out from underneath.
Alex picked up his knife. It was a crude instrument, with a sharp edge, but not well-balanced. Nonetheless, he threw it at one of the men attacking Senta-eh, aiming at the middle of his back. The knife hit him in the skull, not killing him, but momentarily disabling him. Senta-eh lunged at the other man, who parried and stepped back to avoid the blow, tripping over the legs of the two men who were rising off Werda-ak’s bed.
For the briefest of moments, no one was trying to kill them.
“Run!” Alex said.
The three of them ran through the door and followed Monda-ak, who led them through the twisting maze. None of them had any real idea where they were or how to get anywhere else. They didn’t know who the attackers were or why they were trying to kill them. They didn’t know if everyone in Tonton-ah was going to do the same or not.
Lacking information, they chose to do the smartest thing they could—put space between themselves and their known attackers. They did not have much of a lead, though.
There were eight attackers, but Monda-ak had killed two. Alex had at least partially disabled one and Senta-eh had done the same.
When he took a glance over his shoulder, he saw five warriors pursuing them, one with blood running down his face—undoubtedly the one Senta-eh had slammed into the wall.
Of the three humans, Alex was the only injured one, with his dangling, useless left arm. Senta-eh had a cut across her collarbone, but it was only a scratch. Monda-ak was unscathed.
The pursuing warriors closed the gap as they ran and jumped down ramps and around corners. They were no doubt more familiar with the layout and less worried about plummeting to the ground each time they turned a corner.
Monda-ak led the way. It wasn’t so much that Alex thought the dog had some keen understanding of the layout of the place, but just that since he had told him to run, he had been unable to catch him.
The din in the middle of the night had finally started to rouse the sleeping population of Tonton-ah. Here and there a head popped out and said the Tonton-ah equivalent of ‘Hey!’ as Alex and his crew ran by, closely followed by his pursuers.
They turned a corner, ran over another ramp, and found themselves facing a dead end. It was a good-sized deck, bigger than their bedroom, and still lit by a few torches, but there was nowhere to go. There was a waist-high railing that surrounded it, but when Alex peered over the side, he saw there was nothing below them but a long drop to the ground. They had run to the edge of the city in the trees.
Alex whirled but there was no time to backtrack. They were trapped.
When their pursuers saw they had funneled them into a dead end, they slowed and prepared to close in for the kill. The one with the broken nose, who was having a harder time breathing as he ran, finally caught up to them. The one Alex had stabbed in the butt was nowhere to be seen.
Alex’s left arm was still useless, so he was thinking what he would and wouldn’t be able to do in the coming moments. Miraculously, he still had the stone hammer tied to his wrist with the leather thong, so he would at least be able to defend himself.
Senta-eh wished she had been able to grab her bow and arrows on the way out of the room. She could nock an arrow, shoot, and nock another quickly enough that she could have picked each of them off as they ran toward them. Instead, she was left holding her stabbing sword.
Monda-ak looked at Alex with a guilty expression, apparently sorry that, in his enthusiasm to run, he had led them to a bad end. He turned to face their attackers and a tremendous growl started deep inside his ribcage.
Werda-ak was the worst off of all of them—whippet-thin, untrained in hand-to-hand combat, and unarmed.
Now that Alex could get a good look at their attackers he was able to confirm what he had suspected as soon as he had seen shadows grouping outside his door—it was the men who had given him the stink-eye at Reggie’s concert.
Reggie! Where are you, my fellow time traveler? Right about now, we could really use one more set of hands to help us not die.
The five men formed into a well-organized wall. By the way they formed up and how they held their weapons, Alex could tell this was not their first battle together. They would be formidable.
Alex turned his body to protect his damaged left side. Quietly, so only Monda-ak could hear him, he said, “Not yet, not yet.”
When the wall of men was only two spear-lengths away, a familiar, high-pitched voice rang out commandingly.
“No!”
Preta-eh, wrapped in long, flowing robes, strode onto the deck, her commanding presence enough to stop even five warriors filled with blood lust. One of the five nodded toward Alex and barked a command in a strange language. The wall took another step forward.
“I said, ‘No!’” Preta-eh said. She was not used to being ignored. That caused the attacking men to hesitate, which was their undoing. She took three long strides toward them, heedless of their weapons, grabbed one of the men by the seat of his pants and collar and lifted him over her head—a prodigious display of raw power. The man’s arms and legs kicked as she threw him effortlessly over the side.
Taking advantage of the distraction, Alex quickly closed the gap, swung his stone hammer in a flat arc, and slammed it into the ribs of the man directly in front of him. At the same moment, Monda-ak leaped forward, put his giant paws against the man in front of him, and knocked him roughly to the ground.
One of the two remaining upright warriors lifted his own hammer to strike at Monda-ak. Before the blow could be delivered, though, Preta-eh picked him up and threw him in the same spot she had tossed his companion a moment earlier. Again, the scream of the falling man was cut short by a meaty impact with the ground.
The final warrior turned to plunge his knife into Preta-eh, but Senta-eh was too quick. She leaped forward and, with perfect form, slammed her stabbing sword into his back. His knife clattered to the floor and he slumped down.
Preta-eh, apparently unruffled and not even breathing hard, turned, and said, “Thank you.”
Monda-ak looked to Alex for permission to kill the man he covered, but Alex said, “Kel.”
Monda-ak kept his weight on the man, who struggled beneath him. He laid his head on the man’s head as though he was nothing more than a comfortable pillow. The man continued to struggle and turned his face away, trying to draw oxygen into his lungs.
At least half the attackers were dead, and the rest had been neutralized or were dying.
“You have my apology,” Preta-eh said solemnly. “We welcomed you as a guest in our home. That should have been enough to keep you safe.”
“Who are these men?”
“They are travelers, like you. They passed through our village more than a moon-cycle ago. They brought us wonderful gifts and delicacies. They told us they would be passing through again, and they did. On that second visit, they asked us if these men could stay with us and rest for a time. I saw no reason to refuse them. They were good workers while they were here and more than earned their keep.”
“This group that came through, did they have a young girl with them on the trip back?”
“Ah. Lanta-eh. Yes. What a child.” Her eyes took on a faraway look. “She said a prayer over the river and the week after she left, we took more fish than we ever had before.”
Preta-eh turned to Alex and said, “Do you know these men?”
“No. Lanta-eh is one of our children. These men,” Alex delivered a kick i
nto the broken ribs of the man he had struck with his hammer, “came to our village, killed our own children, and kidnapped her.”
“And you have chased after them. I see.” She thought for a moment. “They left these men here to kill you, knowing you would come this way.”
“Yes, I think so,” Alex answered. “They’ve been doing everything they can to slow us down or stop us.”
Reggie, his torso covered only with a towel, burst onto the scene. In his excitement, he reverted back to English. “What the hell?”
Verda-eh was close behind him and when she saw the bloody scene, her hand shot to her mouth.
“Perhaps,” Preta-eh said, “we can get some information from these men that will help you in your search.”
I doubt it. If that was a possibility, they likely wouldn’t have left these men behind, in case they failed.
“Wait, don’t hurt them.” It was Verda-eh. “I know where they are from.”
The final, unaccounted-for warrior crept along the corridor. As Verda-eh said that, he raised his long knife and charged toward her.
Chapter Fourteen
Lusta-ah Revealed
Reggie saw the man rushing toward Verda-eh out of the corner of his eye. He dropped low to the ground and swept his leg out, tripping the man, who skidded face-first onto the floor.
Alex said, “Get him,” and Monda-ak was up off the man he had been slowly suffocating and put both his paws on the second man’s back, then rested all his weight on him.
The man he abandoned drew in a deep shuddering breath, and Alex said, “Just lay there, or I’ll bash your head in.” The man jumped to his feet, lightning-quick. Before Alex or Senta-eh could grab him, he ran to the railing and plunged over it headfirst. As he did, he locked his hands behind his back, making no effort to brace himself. This time, the fall was silent.
That kind of action speaks to intense training and indoctrination.
