“Yes,” he said, reluctantly, and I know his reluctance was only because of Suri and his child.
“Gather anything large and flammable; flat, broad, dry leaves, grass, wood, whatever fits and cover the holes in the ceiling.”
“And what will you do?”
“I’m going to do the stupid part.”
* * *
STARTING A WAR
* * *
“Do you think this will work?” Zash asked, nervously after I’d told him my plan.
“Even if we fail, it’s going to get someone’s attention. And maybe generate change. If it comes to that, I’ll be the dead one, and you can go back to your family and pretend it never happened, or finish what we start. Your choice”
“Brandon, no. I am bound to you since you saved my life…”
“If you’re bound to me then you have to do what I say and I order you to start a fire in that hole in the ceiling, keep it burning and stay long enough to jab the Grigori and Ingonghus back if they try escaping. No matter what you hear happening down here, stay up there and keep these assholes penned inside this chamber. And then—when it’s all over—go back to Suri and your child. You’re bound to them more than you are to me.”
Zash looked reluctant, then shook his head in frustration.
“But your mate… your Nova. And whatever family the two of you might have…”
“Nova would understand. In fact, she would probably think less of me if I didn’t do this. I know I would.”
Zash nodded, understanding, and said, “be safe, my friend,” then moved quickly away, down the ladder and out the hole we’d come through. I turned back to the ghastly scene still playing out at the center of the pool.
There had been another circle through the depths and the other arm was gone, and as I watched there was still another, and the breasts disappeared, another and a part of her face—I felt the agony the victim apparently couldn’t. But I wouldn’t intervene. Not yet. The poor girl was dead already, and stopping the ritual might wake her from her trance, and in doing so be more cruel and horrible than letting the Grigori finish her off.
The other terrified women on the little rock islands sat trembling, awaiting their fates with covered eyes. A few shrieked at each horrifying reveal, but too many of them seemed sadly accepting of their own inevitable fates.
Feeling incredibly frustrated I circled around the edge of the inner wall of the amphitheater and considered my next move, and where best to make it. After some careful consideration I decided that there was no good plan, just a plan that was likely to be less disastrous than the others. Making my decision, I got into position and waited.
Finally the queen submerged longer than she ever had before, and when she arose she came alone, swimming sleepily toward her boulder. She moved as if completely exhausted, and lay out on the rock preparing for a long nap in the thin shaft of sun that glowed through the opening above. As she settled herself, I noticed that shaft narrowing, the room growing gradually darker, and I knew it was time. I leaped from behind my wall, having decided to start at a point nearest the queen’s ‘royal throne’.
Coming down fast and hard I smashed a foot onto the lolling head of one of the queen’s pet flying lizards, crushing it into the stone, blood and brains bursting out in all directions. Then I raised my bone-weapon and slammed it through the skull of the ghastly Grigori leader. Her sleepy eyes snapped open, rolling around in their sockets trying to see and understand what had just happened. Her wings flapped maniacally, her head pinned by my pressure on the spear, arms and legs jerking in frantic spasms, her brain already dead, her body slow to realize. As her twitching corpse flailed about me her second winged pet became aware of what was happening and shot toward me, its neck snapping out like it was spring-loaded, wicked beak clamping down through the air and snapping closed where my arm had just been.
I stomped my foot on the Grigori queen’s neck and yanked my weapon free, snapping her vertebrae and ending her struggles, spinning around as I did to shove my bone-spear into the side of the still attacking Ingonghu. The reptile’s mouth clamped down hard on my shoulder as the spear impaled it through the stomach, to explode out its back. Blood gushed over my hands in warm rivers, as the Ingonghu viciously chewed my shoulder, probably clenching more from the pain in its gut than any actual attack. Fortunately it couldn’t hold on long, died quickly, and fell into the water at the base of the throne.
My shoulder hurt like hell, my left arm already weakening as my fight was just beginning. The attack had sent a signal to the other Grigori and they all leaped into the air, circling overhead, hissing like furious, broken steam engines. The room had darkened from Zash’s plugging of the holes in the roof, but I could still see by the dancing light of the flickering fire he’d obviously set. Smoke was already filling the upper areas of the chamber, which caused the Grigori flyers to panic and shriek.
“Into the water!” I yelled to the remaining women, and they all moved quickly, diving, slipping, falling from their little islands to dip below the pool’s red surface. “Get low, and move toward that wall!”
They did as commanded, staying remarkably calm as panic began to spread rapidly among the Triassic bat-things circling above them. Fear and terror could obviously shut down the superior intellect of a Grigori as easily as it did a human.
One or two of the dominant race slammed into the flaming debris covering the escape holes in the roof, but couldn’t succeed in breaking through. One even caught fire, and fell screaming into the waters near the women. To their credit they avoided the thing as it thrashed and churned the bloody waters, and kept moving toward the wall I’d told them to hug.
“Over that wall is a ladder leading down to an escape hole!” I shouted to the closest women, one of them an Angara.
They nodded, quickly and efficiently clambering up what had been until recently the Grigori box seats. They deftly hefted their pregnant bodies over the ledge, then turned around, the first helping those behind, then leaving those women to help the next in line as they themselves disappeared behind the stone wall, hopefully exiting to safety.
Finally the terrified Grigori attacked. They certainly hadn’t heard or understood my instructions being as deaf as they were, but they could plainly see the women moving toward some kind of escape, an escape they had to hope would work equally well for them.
I thrust up my bone spear to stop the first attacker as she swooped over me toward one of the women at the top of the wall, its speed and momentum causing it to rake along the length of my weapon, open its own gut and spill its contents over several of the frightened females. Its nearly empty body fell in a heap on two of its former victims, and they bravely kicked the carcass aside, then continued their escape.
I climbed up on some of the lower stones, scrambling higher so I could have a better angle to protect and serve. I knocked aside another attacking beast with just my fist, then found myself slammed backward by two panicking Grigori whose crazed claws shredded my weakened and already damaged arm, and digging into one of my legs. I stabbed ferociously with my bone weapon and eventually managed to sink the thing into one of the Grigori’s eyes, but then it’s head jerked back in pain before it died, taking my knife with it, and suddenly I was unarmed. Unarmed and fighting for my life against a second enraged beast.
Its open maw was pushing toward my face as I shoved back with hands about its neck, but its legs were doing the most damage, clamped about my torso, extended claws digging deep into my soft flesh where it’d already been torn open back in Emibi. The thing’s force jammed me back against one of the women who turned to see my struggle, and valiantly smacked the Grigori in the face, repeatedly punching the thing in an eyeball. But still it wouldn’t let go.
It was strong, and strengthened all the more by panic and mad fear. I was weak and getting weaker. My only advantage had been surprise, and that was long gone. Now the battle was speed and strength, and I was clearly outclassed. Not only were these damn things
probably smarter than me, they were tougher and quicker. Dominant race, for sure.
As I pushed, as the woman punched, joined by others who were doing the same, the battle was clearly being lost. At least by me.
“Go!” I told my helpers. “Save yourselves!”
The woman who had first come to my defense stopped punching and stared at me with a surprised, hopeless, saddened expression, glanced around quickly at the others, then up at the rest of the circling, screaming, diving Grigori. She touched the shoulder of one of the other pregnant females, a monkey-woman with a tail like those that had captured me when I first arrived in Pangea. Slowly—reluctantly—continuing to watch me struggle—they all backed away, toward the wall.
I watched them scramble to safety with concerned, fearful glances back in my direction, saw my fate in their eyes, and smiled. I had achieved something in my lifetime. I had saved a generation to come for these women, and perhaps even freed them to return to their homes. Maybe they would talk about the stranger who had fought for them—not just the humans—but for all the females at risk that day. Maybe it would lead to understanding. To change. To cooperation, and a better life for every sentient being in Pangea.
Or maybe not. But it gave me hope, and a sense that my coming death had more meaning than if I’d died a janitor at APL.
* * *
GRIGORI BETRAYAL
* * *
I turned and continued to push with what little strength I had against the Grigori’s neck, but I was losing, and the thing could sense it, now. It spasmed and attacked with renewed strength, its jaw snapping less than an inch from my nose. I was going to die. I was never going to see Nova again. Her, or Milton, or Zash, or the outer world, my mother, my sister… no one and nothing. All anyone would ever know is I might have been inside Milton’s mole, and maybe I’d died deep in the darkened shaft somewhere, miles below APL.
But none of it mattered as much as never again being able to see Nova. To prove to her how much I loved her and how sincerely I believed that she was the most beautiful thing inside and out that I’d ever known. She might live a lifetime never realizing how much I’d really loved her.
Suddenly an arrow split through the Grigori head and stopped a hair’s breadth away from my right eye. I jerked back in surprise, and the Grigori fell limp in my grip, its claws releasing my torso, its body now nothing more than a sack of lifeless goo.
I shoved it aside and through the thickening smoke saw a Chutanga man—not Zash—waving to me from a hole in the ceiling. He smiled, then shoved a torch into the face of an approaching Grigori. As the thing flew off in terror, the Chutanga notched another arrow and took aim at a different flying beast.
I stood and saw Zash and two other Chutanga men fighting fiercely beside me on the rocks and in the pool, protecting the last few escaping females. Arrows flew, spears impaled, dark, green bodies fell on all sides.
As fast and as fiercely as it had begun, it ended.
We stood quietly in the middle of the carnage, looking around carefully for survivors. An Ingonghu spasmed limply over at the pool’s edge, and one of the Chutanga men sloshed through the red waters to crush its skull. As he did, Zash moved closer to me and put a hand on my shoulder.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
“Why?” I said, smiling. “Don’t I look all right?”
Zash grimaced back at me.
“No, actually, you look awful.”
“You say the nicest things,” I said, laughing. “Who are your friends?”
“Sen, Bana, and Chá. Friends of mine. Better friends than even I knew.”
He smiled at the two walking towards us.
“Thanks,” I said.
One of them waved me off, dismissing it as nothing.
“Always happy to help a man too stupid to help himself.”
I laughed. “Yes, looking back, diving into a den of Grigori may not have been the smartest thing anyone’s ever done.”
“Maybe now you’d like to go out and stick your head in the mouth of a Latha?” Zash asked, laughingly.
Before I could even ask what a Latha was, the third Chutanga stuck his head over the wall leading to the ladder, a stunned expression scarring his face.
“Zash!” he said, insistently. “You have to come see this.”
Zash looked at me, curious. I just shrugged, and we followed the other man out of the amphitheater.
WE WERE ALL STUNNED to see her. She must have been hidden back in the deeper shadows of the tomb, cowering behind the others, or just low and mixing in with the crowd. She was nearly a foot taller than her equally pregnant companions—all of them eight or nine months along, I could now see—her dark, golden skin and long, sun-lightened blonde-brown hair making her all the more striking and noticeable. How could we have not seen this Chutanga woman before now?
Zash was less surprised than the others. The Grigori had not honored whatever treaty had existed between them and the Chutanga tribes. They were not only taking Chutanga slaves, they were eating them, and their unborn children.
“Will your chief listen to you, now?” I asked.
“He will,” said the snarky Chutanga named Chá, “or he will no longer be chief.”
As the other Chutanga men stepped forward to learn the woman’s name, and tribe, Zash pulled me aside out of earshot of the others.
“Thank you, Brandon,” he said, softly. “You forced me to do what I should have done years ago.”
“I can be annoying that way.”
Zash laughed, then quickly became very serious.
“You need to get on your way to finding your woman,” he said.
“I do,” I agreed. “Or do I need to get back to Emibi to save Milton’s mate, Elia, and their child? God, I wish I knew how much time had passed since I’d left them.”
“How much what?”
“Exactly.”
Zash stared a moment, and then shook his head, utterly confused.
“I’ll have to risk it,” I said. “First I’ll get Nova safely to Sa Fasi, and then head back to Emibi. Maybe some of the Nyala will help me.” I held up my well-chewed arm. “But I’m not at my best for wandering in the wilds of Pangea.”
Zash placed a hand on my shoulder.
“I will come with you,” he said. “To Sa Fasi, to Nova, and then to Emibi. I owe you that much.”
I held up a hand.
“You have a wife and child that need you. I can find Nova on my own. And she has a kingdom. She’s a princess, after all.”
He stared at me intently giving me no indication of an answer either way.
“Suri can give you creams that will help you heal,” he said, finally. “She is our tribe’s medicine woman in training.”
“Thank you,” I said, looking at the device in my hand. There was only one dot—purple. Captured. “And then I’ll really have to be on my way.”
Again Zash stared at me, long and hard, saying nothing. Eventually he lowered his eyes and did speak.
“I understand,” he said, sadly.
* * *
MY BELOVED NOVA
* * *
WITH NO STARS TO GUIDE ME it’s little wonder I became confused and lost in the labyrinth of hills.
Suri had given me the creams Zash promised, and hugged me goodbye, sadly. I’d kissed the little one, gotten a sweet smile in return, then Zash and I made our strange trek back to the shore of his island. He provided me with fresh supplies, an animal skin ‘fanny-pack’ carrier for my ‘GPS’, weapons like a knife, and a bow and arrows, and his canoe.
As I’d climbed in the little boat, I searched the nearby trees for Nala’s body, but I couldn’t see anything. Maybe we were on a different part of the island. I felt her loss, momentarily, then shoved the canoe into the sea.
I waved goodbye as he stood on the shore. He watched me for a long time until I could no longer make him out clearly on the sand. I had finally set off in the direction of the purple dot. Purple. Captured. My Nova—or whoeve
r it was—had been taken by Angara and was now on her way back to Emibi. I, however, would reach them long before they arrived at the Grigori city.
Unfortunately Mother Nature, or whatever passes for her in this bowl shaped world, decided to intervene. The straightest path between me and the purple dot never turned out to be very straight. Rivers, rocks, hungry creatures, tangles of brush, and sheer cliffs kept intervening, making my passage more difficult than I could have ever imagined. The purple dot kept moving closer to Emibi while I never seemed to get any closer to the purple dot.
Worse, an uncountable number of new, blue dots had begun moving in my direction from Emibi. A blue cluster, more like. I have to assume they were keeping track of whether or not the red dots turned purple—and stayed that way. Given that I and an errant plesiosaur had killed all my original blue dots, whoever decides such things had apparently felt it necessary to send a larger hunting party for a second go.
All I could do was pick up my pace, stop eating, stop sleeping, and make every effort to reach Nova as fast as possible. In a world with no time, time was of the essence. This meant I was rapidly exhausting myself under the never-ending heat of the noonday sun, and growing weaker with each step. If I did have to fight any Angara in order to free Nova, it wouldn’t be a battle I was likely to win.
Topping a low hill I ran headlong into another blockage in my path, a steep decline filled with twisted, spiky brambles and the sounds of some pig-like creatures living within them. I climbed a tree to see the best and fastest way around this latest barrier, checking my GPS against the surrounding terrain when something odd happened. The purple dot stopped moving, and suddenly turned back to red, with a single blue dot moving hurriedly away from it.
Then just as abruptly that blue dot also disappeared.
What the hell had just happened?
Had Nova—or whoever it was—found a way to kill her Angara captors? Had someone—or something—killed them for her?
The Hollow World: (Pangea, Book 1) Page 24
