Fractured Everest Box Set
Page 59
“I am having the same issue.” Zelquan’s chest heaved from exertion.
“Then don’t try,” Nima said. “You see them through your crystals, right? They look different to you, each one. So, Val you keep sensing for the grun and Zel can just focus on darkeels. Would that work?”
Val could have slapped his headcrystal it was so obvious. He nodded with enthusiasm. He began to focus on the pattern he knew to be grun, his crystal reaching out into the depths of the wood.
“Great thinking, Nima.” Zel’s blue crystal began glowing a bit brighter. “Ready when you are.”
Reaching out with his senses as his feet crossed the threshold into the wood, Val hoped Nima’s good idea would be good enough.
They found the cart overturned on the wooded pathway so soon, Val’s feet had not even begun to tire from running. Nima knelt next to the cart while Zelquan peered down the road, the Scrye strapped to his back. They had begun taking turns carrying the child at Val’s suggestion, making sure it was never with any of them for too long.
Leaving the Scrye back at Caenola was something he and Nima would not even entertain, leaving the city before the High Elder or anyone else could suggest it.
The cart was overturned, with several bags and satchels still lying on the road. Large hoof prints filled the pathway, some deep enough to contain rain water. One large foot appeared to have had left a package completely crushed, the fish and milkfruit inside reduced to paste.
“They ran,” Nima said, still looking at the cart. She pointed to two large holes in the side, the thin wood splinted around the impact. “We had beasts in my world similar to these grun. Yaks they are called. They are smaller and have fewer legs, but the horns are the same. The one we used to have on my farm would have tantrums all the time and would attack the barn. The holes looked just like these.”
“Anything, Zelquan?” Val asked. He was trying to focus his crystal to look through the forest, but concentration was difficult. His mother’s face kept entering his mind, mixing in with his father’s. His father had died in these woods, would his mother die here as well?
“No darkeels that I can sense,” Zelquan said, turning and looking into the forest.
Val looked at the child strapped to the man’s back, seeing the soft face and sleeping eyes underneath the hood. He wasn’t bothering to correct himself anymore, the Scrye was a child. To the tides with the teachings of the Elders, she truly was a little girl, a person given a task she never asked for.
“I can see some footprints over here,” Nima said. She had moved away from the overturned wagon and was now walking the edge of the wood.
At first, the tall trees and dense brush looked impenetrable as always, but then Val caught a glimpse of color in the dense maze of browns and greens. His hand shot out, grabbing a blue cloth.
“They went through here.”
Nima took a branch from the ground and used it to beat a small path past some of the more aggressive brambles as she waded in, not waiting for Val. He laughed softly, Nima’s decisiveness was something his father would have appreciated.
“Mind the baby, Zelquan,” Nima said, dropping her voice. “If we run into those things, you might need to run quickly.”
“Running quickly is the first thing I will do,” Zelquan said from behind.
Val chuckled at his friend, remembering when he, Nima, and Tanira had run from a grun in this very wood. He doubted Zelquan would find the experience as enjoyable as they had.
Opening a door in his mind to his crystal, he reached out into the forest again, feeling the low murmurs of life that were the bushes, the trees, the small creatures of the wood. Amongst them he could feel a larger concentration, a focus of life with a gravity all its own. The very animal he was looking for.
It was a grun and it was quite upset about something. He could feel its emotional distress in his crystal, his own heart beating accordingly for a moment. He practiced his breathing, remembering how his mother had taught him. It was too easy to fall in sync if you weren’t careful. Too easy to feel what they felt, instead of just hearing it. Val listened to the beast’s emotion come to him through the crystal, as he guided Nima by pointing.
It was afraid and angry. He could feel the two emotions bouncing back and forth in priority and intensity. Something had what the grun wanted, and it was afraid of losing it.
He could hear the snorting now, the stomping. Nima had stopped moving forward and was peering through the bushes. Val came up alongside her, letting his shoulder touch hers as he looked through the underbrush. He no longer needed to listen to his crystal to understand the situation.
Just past the brush was a small bowl-like clearing in the wood, almost perfectly circular. One end of the grassy area was blocked with a large cliff of smooth stone, rising at least to tree height. The first rocky signs of the mountain. The rest of the circle was rimmed by the wood, with a massive boulder rising from the center of the bowl, the somewhat flattened top of the huge stone no bigger than his hut.
Circling around the rock was the grun, stomping its hooves and shaking its horns back and forth. Looking down nervously, Val’s mother sat on top of the rock formation, three other elderly Caenolans with her, as they all sat clinging to each other.
At least she was safe, for now.
“A standoff,” Nima whispered. “It can’t get to them, but they can’t leave.”
“Likely it chose this spot for a mating site.” Zelquan knelt on the other side of Nima. “Maybe it chased them from the road and then found it.”
“Or maybe another grun chased them off the road.” Val said. “And they ended up here.”
“Doesn’t matter now,” Nima said. “Will it give up eventually?”
Val sighed. “My mother used to call me ‘stubborn as a rutting grun.’ If it has chosen this spot for mating, it might leave to chase a threat, but other than that it will stay here.”
Nima put her arm around Val’s shoulder, squeezing him tightly. The feeling was an unexpectedly pleasant one, enough to distract him for a moment.
“Then we will have to give it a threat, won’t we?” she asked with a grin.
Val looked out at the beast, larger than a mistwhale as it angrily stomped around the frightened women.
“A distraction?” he asked Nima.
She nodded, quickly closing one eye at him as she did so. Val was unsure of the meaning of the gesture, but it made him feel a bit taller, a bit stronger. He was noticing he often felt that way around Nima.
“Exactly what I was thinking,” Nima said.
“What?’ Zelquan’s whispered voice squeaked a bit with frustration. “What are you thinking?”
Val almost laughed. Poor Zel, so at home with a fishnet in his hands but out of his element in fast-moving pursuits. He turned to his friend.
“Zel, Nima and I will enter the clearing and attract the grun. We will yell and shout until it perceives us as a greater threat than my mother and her friends. We will let it chase us into the woods to draw it away.”
“That is madness!” Zelquan said. “You plan to enrage a grun? During mating season? That beast will crush you, or impale you.”
“That is exactly the plan,” Nima said. “Except for the crushing and impaling, I hope.”
“It is either that.” Val looked his friend in the eye, shrugging his shoulders. “Or we allow the elderly to perish. I know you do not want that, Zel. So Nima and I will distract the beast and lure it away from here. With fortune, we will lose it in the woods. Then we will circle back to you here.”
“I understand,” Zel said, nodding. “And I will wait here until you get back.”
“No,” Nima said, smacking Zel lightly on the top of the head. “Once we get the grun out of here, you go get the old people off the rock. You keep the baby safe and the old people safe.”
Zelquan nodded, appearing tense but focused. “I see. And I will keep myself safe as well.”
“Yes,” Val and Nima answered as one.
Val charged into the field, Nima right beside him. He could feel the fear, but it was different than before. His heart pounded, his skin felt so dry he could feel his scales turning, but he was doing something. Even if he was afraid, he was acting.
Not knowing what else to shout at the grun, he began shouting a shelling song he had heard Zelquan sing many times. It was a bit off color in its lyrics, but he figured his mother would forgive him. Next to him Nima was simply yelling, shouting strange words he had never heard of, perhaps curses from her own world.
Out of the corner of his eye, he briefly saw his mother look over, pointing and shaking the Caenolan next to her. He didn’t have time to call to her, but it was good to see the look of hope in her eyes.
A look he put there by acting. By not standing by and waiting.
The grun faced him and Nima. It was no longer moving, a cloud of dust still settling where it had planted all six legs and come to a complete stop.
It stared at them, slowly waving its head back and forth. The horns atop the grun’s skull looked sharper than any hook or trident Val had ever seen, and each seemed twice as long as his body.
As one, he and Nima locked their eyes on the beast and the whole clearing became silent. The only sounds came from the woods where the insects continued to chant. The grun dragged one front hoof across the ground, its head lowering.
“What is that a sign of?” Nima asked from beside him.
“It is the sign to get ready to run,” Val whispered back. “We have its attention. As soon as it moves, we will run into the woods to the right, next to those cliffs.”
Val didn’t bother looking at Nima. There was nothing else to discuss or plan. Val tensed his legs, cast one eye quickly to left, where Zelquan nodded back. The elderly women on the rock clutched each other as they waited for the scene to unfold. The next move would be the grun’s.
Zelquan cried a warning, then all sound was drowned out by a crash through the trees to the left of the grun as a second beast pushed its way out of the woods and into the clearing, its head already lowered, horns pointed at them.
The newcomer headed toward Val and Nima at a full run, the first now grun to charge at them as well.
“Run!” Val shouted, turning and heading toward the cliff. There was no time now to make a new plan, no time to think or chide himself for not checking the area with his crystal.
Val crashed into the wood with his head down, brambles and thorns scraping into his arms and legs.
A quick glance allowed him to see the second grun furiously following Nima into the woods while Zelquan ran towards the rock, preparing to lead his mother and the elderly Caenolans to safety.
It worked! He felt a burst of pride, sending fresh energy to his tiring limbs. Now we just need to survive this plan.
He heard the beast behind him, trampling through growth and pushing small trees aside in an attempt to reach him. Val was able to dodge and weave through the pines, milkfruit, and birches, while the beast had to barrel through.
Still, experience told him the grun would catch up to him eventually. This was mating season, Val would surely tire before its rage ran out.
Ducking to avoid a low hanging branch, he reached out with his crystal hoping to find what he needed. Something that would infuriate the grun even more than Val had.
The forest was awash in life and movement, emotion and instinct. It was too hard to get a focus on what he was looking for.
He tripped over something. A root perhaps, or a stone. It didn’t matter. He stumbled to one knee and got running again, the grun close enough that he could hear its breath, the heavy, wet panting sounding like damp thunder.
Fortunately, he heard something else, faintly from his left ear. He hadn’t sensed it through his crystal, but he was pretty sure it would bring him exactly what he needed. Trickling water. A brook or stream.
Twisting toward the sound Val plunged deeper into the woods, racing for the water. Behind him, the grun roared through its long trunk, the sound like a horn blast. The ground shook as it turned and resumed its pursuit.
Val fell as much as ran through a dense patch of blue-bramble, finding not only the stream, but what he had hoped would be resting on its shores, a pack of darkeels.
He had only a second to glance, but he saw at least four of them sleeping on their backs by the water, cooling in the shade with their legs splayed. Upon hearing him, they began twisting into standing positions, hints of blue sparks arcing across their skin.
Val ran directly at them.
He wanted to shut his eyes, remembering all the nightmares he had as a child, being chased by darkeels. Their jaws clamping shut as they paralyzed him and dragged him away. He pushed those memories aside. He did not have time for the fears of a child.
He was nearly upon the group, the creatures rearing up and readying to strike, when they heard the sound behind him.
The grun crashed through the forest and into the stream, water splashing as it howled with its trunk again. The four darkeels took their focus away from Val, who took this opportunity to dive to his left, away from the water and eels and into more thick brush.
Darkeels hated to be disturbed when they were sunning, and they hated grun nearly as much as grun hated them. Normally they gave each other a wide berth. From his vantage point through the thick growth he could see it was working exactly as he had hoped it would.
The grun already had two darkeels clamped to it, one holding on to its trunk while the other pulled at a leg. The remaining two were at the rear of the beast, following it as it ran down the stream, launching small sparks of blue charge at it.
The grun and eels continued their combat deeper into the woods, Val completely forgotten by both.
Experience told him the fight would likely end in an impasse. The grun were too large for the darkeels to take down, the eels to agile for the grun to gore. They would break it off eventually, but it would take long enough.
Slumping into the brush around him, he allowed himself to exhale, still not ready to believe their plan had worked. Pulling a small thorn out of his leg as he stood, he traced the path back to the clearing in his mind.
Back to the clearing, that was what he and Nima had agreed. Despite that, he reached out into the wood with his crystal again, quickly locating the grun that had chased Nima.
He could still sense its anger, and it was still moving.
Stopping only to splash some of the cool water from the stream onto his face, Val ran toward the other grun.
Nima needed his help, so that was where he was going. He would just pull his fear along with him.
Long before she had ever climbed a mountain or even a hill, Nima had climbed trees. From her first junipers outside the village that her grandfather had challenged her with, to the tall, thin pines farther in the Khumbu valley, the branches of a tree had become a second home while growing up in Nepal. She had laughed in them, ran away from her mother to them, and even slept in them.
Never before had she clung to one for her life, her arms and legs wrapped around a small piece of wood five meters off the ground.
As she had raced into the dense forest with the angry grun on her tail, she knew she wouldn’t evade it for long. She may have been familiar with climbing trees, but being chased through a dense forest was something she had never done until coming to this world. Her calves and arms bore the bloody scratches from the dozens of thorns and brambles she had run through, her cloak’s sleeve ripped from where the beast’s horns had nearly pierced her.
She had run for the first tree she could find that looked strong enough to hold her. The sticky bark of the milkfruit tree actually helped her scale it quickly. Unfortunately, the tree leaned more than she expected as she scaled its height, her chest tightening with fear with each bend and shudder.
She had exp
ected the grun to give up once she was out of reach, maybe circle the tree a few times and then move on.
The tree shook as the beast slammed its head into the trunk again, more of the round, white fruits falling and splattering all around her. She clamped her arms and legs to the branch she hung from, gripping with all her strength.
She was desperate to get into a stronger portion of the tree, but the beast simply refused to offer her the opportunity.
The sweat running from her forehead was getting into her eyes, her hands were so damp that if the bark didn’t exude such a sticky sap she might have fallen already. She ground her teeth as her pulse flashed in her eyes.
Could this be it?
The heroes in her grandfather’s stories never ended up hanging from trees afraid for their lives.
The first time she had seen a grun, she said they reminded her of the yaks back home. Now it was clear she had underestimated these creatures, they were far more stubborn than any yak she had seen, even the horrible one on her Ama’s farm.
The grun slammed into the tree again, bellowing through its trunk in frustration. It was clear to Nima it was not going to stop, and eventually she would fall.
The time had come to go on the offensive. If the beast wouldn’t give up, maybe she could drive it off.
As it slammed into the trunk again, she stuck one hand out and was able to snatch one of the falling milkfruit as they rained past her. Carefully shifting her legs, she twisted her body around the thick branch, lining up a good shot at the beast’s head.
It had backed up to prepare for another charge, pulling its hooves across the leaves of the forest floor. She gripped the fruit tightly as it thundered forward, aiming for the creature’s left eye.
She let the sticky white sphere fly, grabbing onto her branch again. The fruit looked like a large egg as it completed its journey.
It landed uselessly several feet away from the grun, dropping on the ground with a wet splat.