The Far Side

by Wylie, Gina Marie

  Melek turned and looked. He wasn’t used to storm clouds like those! Sure, towering thunderheads -- he’d seen those. He’d seen rain clouds from horizon to horizon. But these were storm clouds, filled with lightning, looking like a giant wall, not regular clouds.

  Ezra started trotting to the northeast, and Melek told Collum and another man to come with him. It was nearly a half mile before they found the dralka, dead in the rocks. As he got close, Melek saw a hole the size of his fist in the middle of the creature’s back.

  Ezra walked right up to it, his weapon ready, while the rest of them hung back. Ezra kicked it solidly in the head and the dead predator didn’t twitch.

  Melek walked closer knelt and pulled its head up. There, in the chest, was a dark hole the size of his thumb. Ezra met his eyes when he looked at the stranger, and Ezra nodded to confirm that this was what his weapon had done.

  One shot! One of whatever it was that Ezra had used had killed the dralka with one shot, hitting it squarely in the chest, the most heavily armored portion of the predator! How fast could he get shots off? Melek remembered the finger snaps. Would Ezra exaggerate?

  Melek didn’t think so. His actions were exaggeration enough!

  “Sergeant, there’s one to the north and another to the northwest,” Collum reported. “Four and five miles.

  “Back to the rookery,” he told them. He could sense the hesitation, but there were also a lot of glances at Ezra. It was, he thought, a safe choice with Ezra along.

  They started trotting and he was pleased that Ezra could run with them without tiring. He reported to Lieutenant Menim who glanced northwards and then pursed his lips. The good news was, as Melek had already noted, the two dralka had turned away. The bad news was that they looked like they were going to find a roost for the storm, and that as soon as things cleared, they’d be back -- and if they weren’t hungry now, they’d be hungry then. Of course, then there was Ezra.

  “Lieutenant, Ezra fired one shot from his thunder rod and it smote the dralka in the chest and out the spine, just behind the head. It must have died instantly.”

  “We have to disarm them,” the lieutenant said, a little desperately.

  “Lieutenant, earlier Ezra said he could shoot as fast as a man can snap his fingers. If we caught him by surprise, we might be able to take him. Perhaps we could cow the women as well -- because I think those things under their arms are smaller versions of the big thunder rod device. Lieutenant, if it went wrong, all or most of us could die, and if any others from where these people came from learned of our treachery... it would not be good. It would not be good at all.”

  “Treachery?” the lieutenant bridled.

  “Treachery, sir. We’ve been treating them fairly. To change our minds without something from them that suggests hostile intent on their part would be treachery. They’ve shared a little of their food with us.”

  “And turned up their noses at ours,” the lieutenant snapped.

  “Lieutenant, any sane individual would turn up their noses at our field rations.”

  There was, of course, always that.

  “So, what are you saying?”

  “Ezra has a device which will kill a dralka with one bolt or arrow. The two young women probably have them too. The little one has built one device that will do the same thing for us, and has nearly finished another. I’ve watched Collum and talked to him. He says he thinks he understands how to make it now, himself. Lieutenant, this could be a tremendous advance in weapons. One that might even be able to kill dralha. Dralha, sir!”

  The lieutenant subsided as Melek knew he must. “I hope Corporal Destu is careful, Landrew as well,” the lieutenant whispered.

  “He is the best of the corporals, sir. He’s fought dralka since he was a boy. He will be fine, and Landrew is a careful man as well. Three dralka together like this, have to be a cadet flock. The one Ezra killed was a female, so there is a still a male and another female in the group. Hopefully, Destu saw them and will report the fact. If the dralka had found him and killed him, they wouldn’t be flying now.”

  In fact, he doubted if they were flying now, because the wind had picked up a lot and there were sheets of rain just a few miles away now. Even a few feet back from the entrance occasional rain drops would hit them.

  Ezra and the two young women appeared and looked out at the storm. Kris, the one Melek thought was senior, asked Ezra a question and Ezra shrugged. Ezra turned to Melek. He pointed west, out where the ocean was. “Water.”

  Melek nodded. Ezra mimed drinking water, and again motioned west. Melek shook his head. Ezra licked his lips and grimaced, then motioned west a third time. This time Melek agreed. Yes, salt water.

  Lieutenant Menim spoke up. “Sergeant Melek, how in the world to you understand their jibber-jabber?”

  “I’m patient, sir. Right now he’s asking if the ocean is fresh or salt water.”

  “Salt water of course! Is he stupid?”

  “No, sir. Perhaps there are large bodies of fresh water near his home. There are legends from the times of the ancients, that our original homeland had many such.”

  Ezra waved in the direction of the ocean and held his hands apart, like measuring a distance. He had a question on his face and Melek nodded. “Yes, it’s a ways away, two miles from here.”

  The other nodded and then pointed eastwards. He held his hands apart like before, and then asked Melek, “How many?”

  Melek swallowed. The official rules were, no stranger could learn of the Fingers and their geography. Any barbarian invasion was going to have to find their own way. Yes, the Fingers were connected by roads. But those roads were simply two palisade walls that stretched for hundreds of miles. Those walls could be pulled down at any time, and after that, passage west would become extremely hazardous, as hundreds of his ancestors had died proving.

  The fear had always been that the barbarians would come with ships, and it was why Arvala, the sole surviving city of the East, had dozens of galleys -- to prevent just that.

  The silence stretched and Ezra laughed then. “Things,” Ezra said. “Many things be talk things. Many things, maybe no-talk things. Tell me no-talk and I no ask.”

  “What is a no-talk thing?” Menim asked.

  “Secrets. He wanted to know how far the ocean is to the east. I didn’t tell him.”

  “No, you mustn’t do that. They have to be barbarians from the east.”

  “Except, Lieutenant, according to the tales, those barbarians were supposed be black as night and tall and extremely powerful warriors who favored axes. These range from much shorter than we are, to about the same size as we are. Their skins are the same color as ours and not an axe to be seen. They don’t seem very bloodthirsty, either. They were just curious about the storm.”

  “The storm is some sort of portent,” Lieutenant Menim said, sounding important. “My grandfather used to talk about the portent storms that signaled the failure of the rain. This could be those again. Perhaps the rains will return.”

  Melek wanted to spit in the man’s face. And how was this going to improve discipline among his soldiers?

  About two hundred yards away, a lightning bolt hit between them and their observation post, deafening them all and dazzling them as well.

  “We need to get back from the entrance, sir,” Melek observed.

  They did so, and they all spent the last hours of the day watching as the light faded and the storm strengthened. They were about to call it a night when the two men left in the observation post came in, soaked and terrified.

  “Water is coming into the observation post, Lieutenant,” Corporal Kissom told Menim. “We waited as long as we could, but the water was rising fast, Lieutenant Menim. It was waist high, sir, when we abandoned the post.”

  “Abandon,” of course, was the wrong word to use around the lieutenant.

  “We’ll have to reoccupy the post at first light, Sergeant,” Menim told Melek.

  Melek nodded, but mentally reser
ved the right to make sure it was safe to go outside come first light.

  It wasn’t. Every hour during the night he had soldiers scan the interior of the former rookery. The only place where water was running was a joke -- it was flowing in the waste pit of the field latrine, created a hundred years before. The smell wasn’t pleasant, but compared to going out into a nightmare of gargantuan lightning bolts and rain that pounded out of the sky, it was downright invigorating.

  Ezra and the two young women greeted the day at the rookery entrance.

  Two hours later, Collum pointed out that it was getting light to the southeast. Melek peered through the wind, rain and lightning and agreed that it seemed so.

  It was Ezra that brought him up short. “Sometimes, big storm, no-true stop. Maybe like, but no-true!”

  Melek frowned and was completely disbelieving when the clouds parted and the sun shown down on them brightly.

  Ezra was clearly upset and dragged Melek a distance from the rookery. He waved in all directions. Huge walls of clouds obstructed the view everywhere. Even as Melek watched, the clouds to the northwest grew further away, while the black angry clouds to the southeast were coming on inexorably.

  Lieutenant Menim wanted to inspect the observation post, but Melek stood his ground, saying that there might not be time. Menim shook him off and headed back to the post.

  Collum looked at Melek and Melek shook his head, gesturing at the roil of clouds that were rapidly approaching. Only Collum had any thought of going after the lieutenant; the others took one look at the storm and withdrew back inside.

  * * *

  Andie looked at the sergeant, who was uncomfortable with his officer going off alone. “Ezra, tell him that the southeast quadrant of hurricanes are the strongest part of the storm. It’s going to be half again, or more, as strong as the last few hours.”

  She watched him sketch a sign with his hands a couple of feet apart, pointing north, south and west. To the southeast he held his hands as far apart as he could and said the word that Andie decided was the word for “strong” or whatever.

  The sergeant moved suddenly, pulling his bow off his back, stringing it, nocking an arrow, and firing it towards his officer in a series of well-practiced moves. The arrow was caught by a gust of wind and flew a couple of hundred yards wide of the man.

  Without hesitation, Ezra fired his rifle into the air. That got the man to turn around and, seeing Melek with another arrow drawn and aimed at him, the man started back, furious.

  Andie had no idea what the sergeant said to him, but it had to be superfluous. The sky was aflame with lightning, and the wind gusts were enough to stagger them, even if they were partially sheltered inside the cave entrance. They went back into the cave and watched from at distance from the entrance. This time the wind was blowing directly towards the entrance and Andie could feel pressure building up around them.

  Debris pelted those close to the outside, and everyone had to retreat further inside, around the corner of the dogleg.

  This time the bulk of the storm was passing in daylight and it wasn’t a pleasant passing. The wind whistled and roared, and passing waves of air could be felt even deep inside the cave. Lightning cracked and thundered all day, at times, Andie timed it, thirty strikes in a minute. Actually, that had to be a minimum because the thunder was almost continuous, and sometimes it wasn’t possible to tell when one peal stopped and the next picked up.

  Only the geography of the cave was saving them, she saw. Rain was blowing in freshets, and the cave, which she’d thought was level, actually tipped slightly down towards the entrance, and the water ran out there. The latrine had been unpleasant the day before, but now it was cleaned out, down to the bare rock. There was a six-foot-deep stream of rushing water. She’d listened to streams in the mountains that were flooding, and this one seemed to be free of the deep thuds of rocks and boulders being rolled along by the water.

  As a display of raw power, it certainly was more than impressive. As night fell again, the storm continued. “Wow!” Andie told Kris.

  Kris laughed. “They’ll probably blame this storm on global warming too.”

  Andie joined in the laugh. “The fuckers probably would! But I get the impression that these guys think they’re the top of the food chain. They don’t carry themselves like they have an inferiority complex.”

  “I don’t know. From what Ezra was talking about this morning, I’m not sure. It’s sure obvious that they’ve never seen a hurricane before.”

  “Kris, girl, I’ve seen hurricanes before, but none of them were like this!”

  Ezra joined them. “Melek’s busy trying to keep the men from going crazy. This is a hell of a storm.” He paused. “Melek is worried. His lieutenant sent two men north shortly after they found us, thinking we are spies from across the ocean that is somewhere off to the east. With dralka and this storm -- well, I’d say he has good reason to be concerned.”

  “And what happens when those men report back to wherever is they’re going?” Kris asked him.

  “Melek just shrugs. I’m sure they’ll send a stronger force under an officer of more rank than this lieutenant to investigate us. Melek thinks his officer is just fine to line men up and march and set up a watch schedule. The first time things went out of nominal he fell apart. It’s good to know, of course, but still a pain when things have fallen apart.”

  “And by investigate, what do you mean?” Andie asked him.

  Ezra sighed. “Well, a lot of questions. Eight will get you ten, in a day, maybe two at most after they get here, we’ll be headed north.”

  “We can’t let that happen if we can possibly prevent it,” Andie told him.

  “You’ve already talked about it and that’s about all we can do. If we took them by surprise, we could probably kill all of these guys. I just can’t do that, Andie. They’re just guys doing their job. Even their boss is no different, and even he would just be doing his job. Yeah, if I thought they were going to hurt us, I’d do something. But I’m not sure, and I’m not going to preempt.”

  “Even if they drag us away?” Kris asked levelly.

  “Kris, these people treat women with exaggerated deference. Melek was genuinely shocked and angered by that room.”

  Andie spat on the ground. “Yeah, but ask yourself, Ezra -- if such things don’t exist in his society, how come he knew what that room was all about?”

  Ezra closed his mouth with a snap, and he bowed his head. “I have to admit, I never thought of it that way. Yeah, that is a concern. I’ll ask Melek about it, and pay attention to how he answers. You’re right, we need to know.”

  Kris watched Ezra later, trying to talk to Melek, both of them gesticulating with their hands.

  “What a can of worms, Andie,” she said, turning to her friend.

  “Yeah. But I know something else neither of you noticed.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yeah. Look at the back of Melek’s left hand closely.”

  “There’s a tattoo there,” Kris told her. “So? I couldn’t figure out what it was. I wasn’t even sure if it’s one or two tattoos -- the two parts aren’t connected.”

  “Yeah, well, think stylized short lengths of chain and a manacle at either end, the chain broken.”

  Kris frowned. “I don’t understand.”

  “At one point or another I think Melek’s people held slaves -- but the abolitionists won. He’s an abolitionist.”

  “Then why ask, if that’s what you think?”

  “Kris, girl! That isn’t something you want to take chances with! As I recall in the Lord of the Rings, Isuldur’s heirs’ symbol was a broken sword -- the sword that one day would be reforged. A Quaker might think it was a sign that they abjured fighting, when it was a vow to continue the war.”

  “I keep hoping to hear that air horn,” Kris told her friend.

  “Yeah, me too. On the other hand, I know Linda will come if she physically can.”

  “You knew her for just a few da
ys, Andie,” Kris told her friend.

  Andie chuckled. “The first thing I thought when I saw her was ‘Where have you been all my life!’ The second thing was I never wanted to be parted from her again. Wow! You have no idea! Wow, double, triple and quadruple wow!”

  Kris smiled. “I hope to meet someone like that, one day.”

  “Hey, my fucking old man won the lottery! Now I’ve won the lottery of life! No fucking way is fate, karma, much less that old fart, God, going to take it away from me!”

  “Can you make a fusor here?”

  Andie shook her head. “Maybe one chance in a hundred million. Yeah, I know, my old man beat those odds. Still, there are so many things they’d need to know that I’ve not seen any signs of... I just don’t see it as possible.”

  The storm was just a few random gusts and occasional rain showers the next morning. Some of the rain showers were heavy and Melek was cautious. Ezra simply told Kris and Andie that it was “still too sporty out there” to be safe and to remain inside.

  Since he stayed with them, there wasn’t much they could say.

  About noon, Melek and the others were back. It was impossible to miss that the lieutenant was pale and shaken. Kris stood at Ezra’s side while Ezra and Melek talked.

  After a few minutes, Ezra turned to her. “As near as I can tell, they’re messed up royally. Their outpost -- and all of their supplies and equipment -- is gone. And from what Melek says, completely gone. He says it’s a river now, with no trace of anything.

  “They have exactly zero food and water.”

  “Well, water shouldn’t be a problem in the next few days,” Kris told him.

  “For a few days,” Ezra agreed. “Then it’ll get interesting. We’re going to have to share.”

  Kris felt faint. “Ezra! How? They have seven people and we have three. We had three months of supplies. Add seven more mouths to feed and we won’t even have one month, no matter how short we go on rations.”

  He nodded. “As near as I can tell, they send a column a couple of times a year to relieve the guards here and these men haven’t been here long. They bring along a convoy of a half-dozen wagons, all loaded. They get here and the men they’re replacing turn those wagons around and go home. He says it’s three weeks by wagon each way and it’ll be several months before they would otherwise return.