One of the old trollkin seated with Jata grunted, leaned toward her, and grumbled something privately. The others scowled and frowned. Jata looked no happier.
“You would liken your schoolteacher to Muthgar Preymaker, the great hunter of legend?” Jata asked.
In for a penny, in for a crown, thought Lynus.
“Your scribes and chroniclers retell the deeds of Muthgar and other great heroes so your warriors can try to live up to them. Viktor Pendrake lives up to that legend, and lives beyond it. The only reason Pendrake’s epic song isn’t already sung louder and farther than Preymaker’s is because I’ve been keeping good notes and preventing exaggeration. Also, I don’t sing. But I promise you this: if there’s a fantastic, extraordinary, or otherwise monstrous creature troubling you, you have no better counsel, no better sword arm, no better general than Professor Viktor Pendrake.”
The gathered elders nodded, murmuring what sounded like assent.
Jata’s scowl deepened, and she glared—not at Lynus, but at Horgash. “You. I don’t know how you did it, but you suckered me into inviting a chronicler to speak. And a good one, too.”
“What?” asked Lynus. “I’m not a chronicler.”
“Actually, I think you are,” Edrea said.
Jata stood. “I am convinced.”
Lynus smiled.
Jata continued. “I am convinced that if the Mirkar kriel is to be saved, Viktor Pendrake must stand and fight with us, and lead its defense.”
Lynus stood agape. He thought he’d given a pretty good speech, but this was not how it was supposed to turn out.
Pendrake looked over his glasses at Lynus. “It was the sword-arm line. You were doing fine right up until that point.”
Edrea laced her boots on, glad to be back in her own clothing, even if it wasn’t especially clean. There had been plenty of coverage in that trollkin wrap, but her Iosan skin wasn’t well-suited to the coarse swath. Or maybe, she admitted to herself, it had less to do with race, and more with having grown to like soft leathers.
“Lynus, Edrea!” Pendrake called out across the lodge. “Let’s put our heads together. Crack the books. We are not going to fight a gorgandur without a plan.”
Lynus pulled the contents of his satchel out and began spreading them on the table in the center of the room.
“You mean ‘put Pendrake in charge’ isn’t enough of a plan already?” Horgash asked with a wry smile.
Lynus’ face fell. Edrea suppressed a grin. He really was adorable when put upon like this.
“It would be a fine plan,” said Edrea, stepping to Lynus’ side, “if Pendrake were actually in charge. Then he could very sensibly lead us on a northward or westward exodus.”
“Indeed,” Pendrake said, stepping to Lynus’ other side and putting an arm around him. “With my valor so excellently touted, I’m no longer afforded the option of exercising discretion, which is ever its most critical element. So let us dispense with wishing for retreat and figure out how to fight.”
“We’ve never seen a gorgandur in battle,” Horgash said. “Any tactics we devise are stones laid on a foundation of thatch.”
“Hmph,” said Lynus, brow furrowed. “How much stone does it take to smash the thatch flat?”
“That’s not the point, chronicler,” Horgash said.
“Okay. How much stone does it take to smash a frame house flat? Like in Bednar? How much weight does it take to cause the ground to ripple into berms? Because I think that is exactly the point.”
Horgash frowned and fell silent.
Edrea considered the puzzle and sighed heavily. “I audited Professor Kilgore’s Rudiments of Physical Mathematics lectures two semesters ago. I wish I’d paid more attention. Or brought my notes.” She looked at Lynus and shrugged. “Still, I might have something to contribute.” She pulled a blank sheet of paper free of the spread and took one of Lynus’ pencils.
“I think it can be worked out in cross-sections, using common figures for density.” She laid out the multiplication and quickly spun an answer out on the page.
“I’ve done something wrong,” she said. “It’s coming out too heavy by far. At this size and density, it weighs over forty tons per pace of length. Based on the rippling we saw, I think it’s about fifteen paces long. If it’s that heavy, the ground would have been much more torn up. Also, I don’t think any creature of that mass could move under its own power.”
Kinik cleared her throat and thumped a finger against the haft of her war cleaver. “The shaft is hollow, for strength. Maybe the monster is hollow. Needs room to eat things?”
“That makes sense,” said Edrea, “but we can’t measure that directly. We can only guess.”
“The berms,” Lynus said. “They were about three feet high. How much weight does it take to pile a berm like that?”
Edrea stared at the page. Then she looked up at Lynus. “That part where I said I wished I had brought my notes? I’m sure there’s a formula for lateral displacement, but I don’t know it.”
“Soil gets pushed like that underfoot when we’re moving stones,” said Horgash. He frowned and scowled in frustrated concentration, an unintelligible murmur rattling in his throat.
His eyes went wide. “Quarry spars!” he announced.
“Is that a formula?” Edrea asked.
“Horgash is jumping ahead, and isn’t showing his work like you did,” said Pendrake with a grin. “Good thinking, old friend.”
Edrea was no stonemason, nor had she spent any time around them. “Professor, I still don’t understand.”
“If the thatch doesn’t want to get crushed by the stone, the thatch needs a way to push back. The thatch needs leverage.”
Edrea sat on a hay bale near the stables with Lynus and Kinik, watching as six trollkin with six fifteen-foot spars pushed against a nearby house. The house was winning, in that it was not moving. Quarry spars, as it turned out, were heavy wooden poles used for levering big blocks of stone into position. Horgash and Pendrake stood to one side of the house, coaching the spar crew.
“If Horgash had said ‘polearms,’ we would have caught on immediately,” Lynus said.
“Horgash was a little put off by the mathematics,” Edrea said. “And I don’t think he understands leverage. Those trollkin aren’t using the spars as levers. They could push against the house just as hard, probably even harder, using only their hands.”
“No, no,” said Kinik. “If the house is the snake, and the snake rolls, a trollkin using hands is too close, and gets flat. A team with spars can pin it, push it. Maybe pinned, the snake can be killed.” Then Kinik sighed heavily. “But not that team.”
Edrea noticed Kinik clenching and unclenching her grip on her war cleaver, scowling and frowning.
“Kinik,” said Edrea, “Horgash and Pendrake don’t really know how to teach pole fighting, do they?”
“No. The grips are wrong. The feet are wrong. Even the eyes are wrong.”
“Get down there and take over the lesson.”
Kinik’s eyes went wide with fear. “I am a student, not a teacher!”
“Good students are also teachers, and you know more about this subject than anybody down there. Go show those old trollkin how to swing a spar and knock down a house.”
Kinik nodded, set her jaw, and strode across the village.
“Pole fighting can’t be taught in a day,” said Lynus after the ogrun was out of earshot.
“Probably not, but let’s watch.”
Kinik stepped in among the trollkin and said something, bowed to Pendrake, then handed her war cleaver to Horgash. She took a quarry-spar from one of the trollkin, hefted it experimentally, and adjusted her grip.
She then began lunging and thrusting with it, first thumping the wall of the house, then tapping the other spars, knocking two of them from the hands of the trollkin who held them. Pendrake laughed, his enthusiasm audible from across the village.
The next ten minutes appeared to be a lesson in grip, stance,
and coordination. Within fifteen minutes, the trollkin were following Kinik’s lead, thrusting together and slamming the spars into the side of the house in unison. Dust shook from among the stones. The house’s victory was no longer certain.
“Lynus,” Edrea began. “They might just be able to pin the gorgandur, but if they do, how are we supposed to kill it?”
“You remember what Pendrake wrote in the Monsternomicon, don’t you?”
Edrea did remember. “‘I’ve never heard tell of one of these beasts being slain, nor can I even imagine how it might be done,’” she said, quoting the passage as best she could.
“And I can’t imagine it either. The weight of the thing, hollow or not . . . its hide has to be incredibly durable just to support itself.”
Edrea thought about the articulated armor suits she’d seen. “If the wurm can move, then that durable hide might be segmented. It might have gaps in it, Lynus.”
“They have six of those poles, and maybe two dozen trollkin with any measure of skill with swords or axes,” Lynus said. “From the tales, the gorgandur could swallow that many people all in one go.”
Edrea opened her mouth to respond, but was cut off by a rumbling sound. She looked at the house the trollkin were, literally, sparring against. It still stood, but the team with the spars stared at it expectantly.
She looked at Lynus, and he stared back at her, eyes wide.
“It’s starting,” he said. “The gorgandur is here, beneath us.”
Edrea stood and pointed at the team of trollkin. “If you’re right, they need to spread out.”
Lynus ran toward the spar-bearing trollkin, patting his hands across his belt and shoulder as he ran. His sword was slung over his back, ammo for the rifle he no longer carried was pouched at his waist, and his sample-taking kit was strapped to his left hip. If they survived this, he’d be able to take and preserve tiny shavings from a creature the size of a row of houses.
“It’s here!” he shouted. “Beneath us! Spread out!”
The spar-bearers looked at Lynus, confused.
Horgash repeated Lynus’ command in Molgur-Trul, and the spar crew complied. One of them shouted, “To arms!” far louder than Horgash could, and that cry spread quickly as voices like kettledrums boomed the repeated warning through the village.
Horgash drew both his swords and passed Lynus. Lynus stopped, puzzled, then realized the trollkin was headed back to the stables. He meant to ride Greta into battle.
Pendrake slid his unstrung bow from his back, slipped the bowstring onto one end, dropped that end against his boot, bent the bow, and finished stringing it – all in a continuous flowing motion.
“Thunder beneath us,” he said. “Definitely gorgandur.”
As if on cue, the rumbling sounded again, this time shaking the ground.
Kinik shouted, “LOW!” in Molgur-Og, and six spars thumped the ground, held out and down, ready to be raised in defense.
“Edrea said there might be gaps in the armor,” he said.
“We can only hope,” Pendrake replied.
“It gathers, then pushes in order to move,” said Edrea from behind them. “Thunder when it pushes, silence when it—” the rumbling and shaking of the ground cut her off.
“There!” a spar-bearer shouted, pointing. Lynus looked to where her outstretched arm pointed. A patch of ground a dozen paces across had swollen into a mound about four feet high at the center.
Lynus opened his mouth to speak. The mound exploded up and out, propelled by the eruption of a black cloud of something foul. Dirt and spattering drops of the black substance scattered for thirty paces in every direction, showering several trollkin, including the pointing spar-bearer.
She screamed, and Lynus stared in horror as her bluish skin began to smoke under the corrosive sludge.
“That wasn’t present in Bednar,” Pendrake said in an even tone. “But between the thunder and the sludge, this is definitely a gorgandur.”
As if summoned by the speaking of its name, the great wurm burst from the fresh crater. It was ten feet wide, roughly cylindrical, and had zigzagged segmentations running around its girth, defined by dirt-encrusted scales. Its eyeless head was heavily scaled, and its mouth folded open with three radially symmetrical jaws.
“The picture you drew wasn’t too bad,” said Lynus, striving to match the professor’s calm tone.
For several moments, it towered twenty feet in the air like an undulating, armor-plated pillar, and then it toppled toward the spar-bearers and slammed to the ground. Lynus’ teeth rattled, and dust rose from the nearby homes.
The wurm turned to face the screaming, sludge-spattered spar-bearer. A slight bulge had formed in the creature’s body as it bunched itself up some five paces behind its head. Then, with terrifying speed, it lunged forward and she disappeared into the creature’s open maw.
“Up!” Kinik shouted in Molgur. She charged the beast’s flank, the point of her war cleaver about eight feet off the ground. Three trollkin ran with her, and as one, the four of them slammed their polearms into the beast’s side just behind its head.
The wurm writhed, pushing back against them, but they dug their feet in and held firm. Lynus was amazed.
The ground shook again, and the wurm’s tail pulled up and out of the ground. The monster was easily twenty paces long, maw to tail. There was no way four poles on one side of its head were going to keep it in place.
Pendrake saw the same thing. “Spars to the other side!” he shouted in Molgur, loosing an arrow into the open mouth of the wurm to no visible effect. The two remaining spar-bearers grabbed their spars and ran, crossing in front of the beast.
It whipped its head away from the poles pinning it, however, and the moment was lost. It rolled, twisted, slammed against a home, and then its head shot forward to swallow the two running spar-bearers whole. Their spars, too long to fit sideways into the monstrous maw, splintered as the jaws snapped shut.
The ground rumbled again, rattling Lynus, who shivered with fear. He’d been afraid before, but this was different, coming through the ground like a damp chill, reaching up through his feet to ice his soul. He wanted more than anything else to throw his sword to the ground and flee.
Kinik’s spar-carrying team threw their poles and bolted, and Kinik ran away from the wurm as well, though she kept a hold her war cleaver as she did.
“The fear is not your own, Lynus! It’s from the beast!” shouted Pendrake, loosing another arrow. “You can best it. Keep your sword and your wits.”
Lynus shook his head back and forth like a dog drying itself, as if fear were water that could be shed. It helped a little.
“What do we do?” he asked. The wurm was nearly parallel to them now, advancing into the center of the village.
“The spars would have worked,” said Pendrake, “if we had more of them, and seasoned troops who could swallow terror like so much cold stew.” He looked at the fallen spars and the scattering trollkin. “But we can’t pin it anymore. We need to figure out how to hurt it.”
A gunshot sounded from behind Lynus, to his right.
Edrea looked through the smoke along the sights of her rifle. There were definitely gaps in the armor plating, but she’d missed. Her round had spalled against the gorgandur’s scales.
“When it extends, the flesh beneath the armor is exposed,” she shouted over the rumbling. “I haven’t figured out the timing yet!”
“Don’t bother,” said Pendrake as he loosed an arrow against the beast’s flank. It bounced from the gorgandur’s carapace like a pebble thrown against a cliff face. The great wurm rolled, slamming into a stone home. Dust shook from among the stones, but the house stood.
“They overlap in a constant direction,” Lynus said. “You’ll need to shoot between them, from behind.”
Edrea nodded. Lynus was right. She reloaded by feel, her eyes tracking the gorgandur as it rippled through the village.
A female trollkin, barefoot, with an axe in hand and an
old shield strapped to her back, charged the beast’s flank.
“I doubt anything vital lies an arrow’s length in,” said Pendrake.
“War cleaver can reach vital,” Kinik said.
Edrea was pleased to see the ogrun had collected her wits, even if her recovered courage was ill-placed.
Horgash rode up on Greta. “I’d curse, but I don’t think invoking The Wurm amid our current company is wise,” he said.
Pendrake drew his sword, that ancient Orgoth blade that always stayed sharp. Sharp enough to cut . . .
“Lynus, Edrea . . . make sure to update the gorgandur entry in the next edition. Get Kinik admitted to the university. Horgash, you get these three and everybody from this side of the village through the Tharn.”
“Professor,” Edrea began. “You—”
“Won’t live forever? No, I won’t.” He pointed at the gorgandur’s flank, where the axe-wielding female currently hacked away, chipping flecks of scale. “That monster is going to feast on trollkin who don’t know well enough to flee.”
“Muthgar Preymaker didn’t know well enough to flee,” said Lynus.
“Well, maybe we didn’t get his whole story,” Pendrake said. “Now go! Punch a hole for us, and I’ll either be along shortly with rest of the evacuating kriel, or I won’t.”
Pendrake slung a satchel over his shoulder, adjusted his grip on his sword, and ran farther into the village, moving parallel to the wurm. Edrea watched him go. She remembered Lynus saying, just three hours ago, that he’d follow Pendrake anywhere in Immoren. He’d spoken for both of them in that moment, but here they were, not following.
“He told us not to follow him,” said Lynus, as if reading her mind. “I still meant what I said.”
“I know,” she answered.
“Enough tears!” said Horgash with an ugly yell. “Edrea, cast that seeing-spell and find us the holes in the Tharn lines.”
Edrea spun vossyl liumyn, closed her eyes—which were tearless, she had half a mind to say to Horgash—and when she opened them, the waning afternoon light and long shadows gave way to crisp details in grey.
Extraordinary Zoology Page 11
