Beyond the Draak’s Teeth

by Marcia J. Bennett

Bhaldavin was the first to wake the next morning. Nature called, and he could not ignore her summons. He forced stiff cold muscles to work and stood up. He stepped over Lil-el’s legs and leaned down to pull their shared blankets up around her chin. She stirred at his touch.

  “Time to get up?” she asked sleepily.

  He glanced outside. The sky was light to the east. “Might just as well,” he said. “Wake the other two. We have an important decision to make.”

  He stepped over the dead embers of their fire as Lil-el turned and nudged Theon awake. Theon grumbled, and poked Diak.

  “Gringers?” Diak asked, his rheumy eyes peering up over the top of the blankets he shared with Theon.

  “He’s not back yet,” Lil-el said.

  Theon joined Bhaldavin outside. The dawn air was cold and still. There was a thick blanket of clouds below the escarpment.

  “If that gets up here,” Theon observed, “we’ll be in for some more snow.”

  Bhaldavin stamped around, trying to jar some feeling back into his toes. “Do you think we should try to follow them?”

  Theon was looking for signs of movement down along the edge of the escarpment. “It’s either that or sit here and freeze to death. I would just as soon get moving.”

  “I agree.”

  Theon slapped Bhaldavin’s shoulder. “Then let’s get going, Little Fish. I want down off this mountain!”

  Lil-el and Diak agreed with the decision to try to follow Gringers and Hallon. Breakfast consisted of a handful of nuts that had to be softened in their mouths before they could be chewed and a strip of nida that was so brittle it could be snapped off in bite-sized pieces and sucked on as they walked. Unable for the past three days to keep food down, Diak settled for several mouthfuls of water.

  Progress was slow but steady their first few hours out. The downgrade Gringers and Hallon had followed upon leaving the summit led back from the escarpment’s edge, then ran parallel to the cliffs for a good distance. The wind had shifted a dusting of fresh snow across the tracks in several places, but the trail was easily discernible. All of them were thankful for the hard crusty snow that held them up.

  Diak’s legs finally gave out on him early in the afternoon. Coughing and gasping for breath, the old man simply crumpled.

  When Lil-el suggested they stop and rest awhile, Theon wouldn’t hear of it. “We’ve half the day ahead of us,” he snarled. “We can’t stop now.”

  “What do you suggest?” she demanded angrily. “Just leave him here?” She had been helping Diak along when he collapsed at her feet.

  Theon glared down at the old man. “He’s not going to make it anyway. Look at him! He’s half-dead already.”

  Bhaldavin knelt beside the old man and put an arm around his shoulders to help him sit up. Diak’s face was pinched and mottled with grayish-white patches; there were dark smudges below his eyes and a fleck of red in the spittle at the side of his mouth.

  “Go on,” he gasped. “Leave me! I—can’t make it!”

  Bhaldavin had no love for Diak, but he knew he couldn’t leave him alone to die. The six of them had shared too much time and pain together; it had forged a bond that would not be easily broken.

  He turned and looked up at Theon. “We can leave him,” he said meaningfully, “but Gringers won’t like it.”

  “He’ll understand,” Theon protested.

  Bhaldavin stood and faced Theon. “Will he? I wonder. They’ve been friends a long time.”

  Theon growled a curse and swung around, looking down toward the broken path in the snow ahead of them. “All right,” he said a moment later, turning back around. “All right. We take him with us, but we can’t carry him.”

  “We could pull him as long as it’s downhill,” Lil-el said. “We could wrap him in one blanket and pull him along on another. Here, let me show you.”

  Theon and Bhaldavin followed Lil-el’s instructions, and soon they had a cloth carrier rigged. Tied at both ends with rope, the blanket formed a cradle of sorts. Theon took the front end, Bhaldavin the back, and Lil-el walked ahead, keeping watch on the trail.

  The downward slope was gradual at first, then it grew steeper. Sometimes the trail wound around huge outthrusting boulders; at other times it followed a reasonably straight line. After a while Lil-el relieved Theon in pulling the blanket carrier, then Theon relieved Bhaldavin.

  Ra-shun and Ra-gor passed over the peaks, and by late afternoon the weary travelers were in deep shadow.

  “Lil-el!” Theon called ahead. “Start looking for a place to stop for the night. We can’t go on much longer, and it will be dark soon.”

  Lil-el waved to indicate that she understood, and kept walking. Then suddenly she stopped, sure that her eyes were playing tricks on her. Something was moving off to their right, farther down the trail.

  She stood still, blinking, wanting to believe, but afraid to. Theon and Bhaldavin approached from behind.

  “What’s wrong, Lil-el?” Bhaldavin called out.

  She pointed to the dark spot that was moving toward them.

  Theon took one look and let out a whoop that echoed off the cliffs surrounding them.

  The small black spot stopped, then began to move again.

  “There’s one,” Theon said, starting past Lil-el, pulling on the blanket with renewed energy. “But where’s the other?”

  Gringers and Hallon were too much of a size to be distinguishable at a distance, especially when they were bundled in layers of clothing. Theon, Bhaldavin, and Lil-el continued downslope, exhaustion pushed aside in their need to see who had come to meet them and to find out what had happened to the other one.

  Theon’s stride lengthened as the distance closed between them and the one below. Bhaldavin had all he could do to keep up. Lil-el finally fell behind.

  “Gringers?” Theon yelled. “Gringers—that you?” There was an unmistakable tremor of fear in his voice.

  Bhaldavin wasn’t surprised when Theon dropped his end of the blanket carrier and ran the last few paces toward the man who waited for them at the bottom of the slope. He still couldn’t see if it was Hallon or Gringers.

  The man opened his arms to Theon and greeted him with a hug.

  “Gringers?” Lil-el said, catching up.

  “Yes,” Bhaldavin said.

  She stepped around Diak and picked up the end of the blanket Theon had dropped. “Let’s go find out what happened to Hallon.”

  Gringers greeted them all with a smile and a hug, then eased their fears about Hallon. “He’s all right,” he said, kneeling beside Diak. “There was no sense in both of us making the climb back up to you. Diak? Diak, wake up!” He slapped the old man’s face sharply.

  He looked up at Lil-el. “How long has he been like this?”

  “He collapsed early this afternoon. We couldn’t carry him, and we wouldn’t leave him.”

  The old man’s eyelids fluttered. It took him a moment to focus on Gringers. Somehow he found the strength to smile.

  Gringers unwrapped the blanket. “Come on, Diak, get up. You’ll freeze lying there.” He helped the old man to his feet and steadied him as he took a few steps.

  “Can’t feel my feet,” the old man complained.

  “Walking should help,” Gringers said. “Hallon and I have found a place to stay the night. It’s not much, but with a fire you all can thaw a bit.”

  “We haven’t much wood left,” Lil-el said.

  “We’ll have to make do,” Gringers replied.

  “Have you found a way down?” Theon asked.

  “We think so. It’s near a ravine that cuts back toward the escarpment. Come on, let’s go. When we reach the shelter, we’ll build a fire, heat some water, and make a stew. Then, with a good night’s rest, we’ll start down tomorrow morning.”

  Theon came up beside Diak and helped Gringers steady the old man as he walked. Gringers looked at Theon and smiled. “I’m damn glad you didn’t wait for me to return. You saved me a long climb up.”

&nbs
p; “We should’ve gone with you in the first place,” Theon said reproachfully. “It would’ve saved you the trouble of coming back this far.”

  “What if we hadn’t found a way down, and we had to go all the way back to the summit and try the other way?”

  Theon looked over Diak’s head, straight into Gringers’s eyes. “I don’t like being left behind, even if it is for my own good.”

  Gringers met Theon’s glance. “I’ll remember that,” he said carefully.

  Chapter 19

  BHALDAVIN SAT ON THE LEDGE WAITING FOR GRINGERS’S signal. He felt a tug on the rope around his chest and turned over onto his stomach, slowly pushing himself off the ledge. Hallon caught his legs from below and guided his feet onto the shelf of rock beside him. Next came Lil-el, Theon, and Diak.

  Everyone looked up as Gringers made the drop last. He inched his way off the ledge and hung by his hands, his long arms and greater stature giving him the height he needed to drop free to the ledge below. Hallon was there to steady him just in case he needed it.

  Snow and biting winds had plagued them as they began their descent but, linked by rope, they had slipped, slid, and crawled down to a point where they could stand and proceed on foot.

  After two days in the ravine, the wedge of sky overhead grew wider and the rocky slopes opened out into a great chasm that brought them out below the escarpment. The climb down from that point on was by no means easy, but as they left the snow and ice behind, their spirits rose considerably.

  Diak began to cough. Bhaldavin saw Gringers offer the old man some water. Diak’s breathing had improved slightly as they descended the mountains, but he was still a very ill man; weak with altitude sickness and unable to eat, he was simply wasting away.

  As Gringers helped Diak to his feet, Bhaldavin realized that without Gringers’s and Hallon’s strength to call on, Diak never would have made it that far.

  “And he isn’t the only one,” he said softly, unconsciously brushing the empty sleeve of his coat. How many times had the two men reached out to help him over some difficult place?

  Lil-el came up beside him. “Did you say something to me, Bhaldavin?”

  He shook his head. “Just thinking aloud.”

  “About what?”

  He glanced up at the mountains. “About climbing that mountain again. You and I would never make it back alone.”

  She followed his gaze and knew what he was thinking. “Then we’ll simply have to return another way, won’t we?”

  Another way. The words echoed in his mind. Why not another way? Suddenly he felt as if a great weight had been lifted from his shoulders. There was no real reason for them to climb back over the Draak’s Teeth. Surely there was a way around them. It might take time, but what did time matter?

  He turned to find Lil-el smiling at him. He reached out and pulled her close. “Are all females so smart?” he asked softly.

  She laughed. “The majority of us are.”

  “Lil-el? Bhaldavin?” Gringers called. “Are you ready to go?”

  They turned and saw that Hallon and Theon had already started out, working their way over a mound of rock that led down to the next shelf below. The two Ni stepped into line, leaving Gringers to follow with Diak.

  The clouds overshadowing the lower valleys lifted by late afternoon, and strong gusts of warmer air funneled up through the chasm, bringing the smell of pine trees. It was late afternoon as they approached the timberline. Hallon was in the lead.

  He stopped suddenly, and Bhaldavin walked into him. “Look at that view!” he exclaimed.

  Bhaldavin had to agree that the scene before him was not only extremely welcome after several weeks of seeing nothing but snow, rocks, and ice, but also breathtaking.

  The forested slopes that ran down from the mountains were dark blue-green in color and had the appearance of a hand-woven carpet, and as the eye followed the contours of the lower hills down to the valleys, the colors faded to warm greens with shades of yellow sprinkled in mosaiclike patterns.

  Hallon pointed to the left. “Look! Water! It’s a string of lakes, and they must be large to be able to see them from here.”

  Gringers came up from behind and studied the scene before them, his glance returning to the lakes. “Some of the pictures in the life recorder were in and around a large body of water. Let’s plot a course toward the lakes and see what we can find.”

  They reached the timberline before dark and celebrated their arrival with a large fire that helped melt the last of the ice from their bones.

  Later that evening, Bhaldavin sat beside Lil-el soaking up the fire’s heat. The stump of his arm had ceased to ache, and though he was exhausted by the last push downslope to the trees, he was filled with a sense of peace. He had climbed over the Draak’s Teeth and had lived to tell about it. Frostbitten fingers and toes would be sensitive for a long time to come, but he had come through alive, and now he was free. Gringers had promised. He and Lil-el would stay with Gringers until they found Barl-gan; then they would go their own way.

  Theon brought Lil-el and Bhaldavin a bowl of stew made from the last of their food, which meant that they would be foraging from then on.

  “Eat up,” Theon said. “There’s a little more, if you want some.”

  Lil-el looked across the fire to where Gringers and Hallon sat. Diak lay between them. Gringers had carried the old man on his back the last part of the way.

  “How is Diak?” she asked Theon.

  “Gringers is trying to get him to eat a little of the broth. Time will tell if he can keep it down.”

  “It’s been a long time since he’s eaten,” Bhaldavin said. “It’s a wonder he’s made it this far.”

  “His not eating doesn’t bother me as much as that cough,” Lil-el said. “If we could find some gillan root, we might be able to ease his breathing.”

  “We can look for some tomorrow,” Bhaldavin said, tasting the stew. “But I doubt we’ll find any growing up this high.”

  Their progress down the forested slopes to the lower valleys was slow at first because Diak simply wasn’t up to a fast pace. Also, to replenish their food supplies, part of each day was spent foraging for edible roots and berries that would sustain them until they could hunt and fish once more.

  Little was found their first three days in the forest, and everyone felt the pinch of hunger by the time they stopped each night.

  Lil-el brewed a strong tea that she made from the bark of a young sapling, and as she passed cups around, Bhaldavin drew a handful of short stalks from his pocket and offered one to Theon, then to the others.

  Theon eyed the stalk, frowning. “What am I supposed to do with this?”

  “Cut the round bulge open and eat what’s inside. Lil-el, will you cut one for me?”

  “What is it?”

  Bhaldavin glanced at Theon. “It’s a bee in the larva stage. They have a nutty flavor. They won’t fill you up, but it’s better than an empty stomach.”

  Theon watched Gringers, Diak, and Hallon each try one of the larvae, his glance darting from face to face to see their reactions.

  “Crunchy, but not bad-flavored,” Hallon said, holding out his hand. “May I have another, Bhaldavin?”

  Theon hesitated a moment, then cut his stalk open and, without looking at the creature inside, popped it into his mouth and chewed quickly.

  Gringers watched Theon out of the corner of his eye and hid a grin behind his cup as Theon made a face and swallowed.

  Bhaldavin divided the rest of the larvae and passed them around.

  Theon looked down at the three stalks in his hand and quickly handed them to Gringers. “Here. I’m not hungry right now,” he said, rising.

  “Where are you going?” Gringers asked as Theon turned and stepped away from the campfire.

  “Ah… nature calls,” Theon mumbled, moving into the darkness.

  Moments later they heard Theon being sick. Gringers caught Bhaldavin’s glance and grinned. “He has a delicate stom
ach.”

  Bhaldavin returned the smile. “So it would seem.”

  Gringers cut open another stalk. “Bhaldavin, if you have any other things like this you know about, tell us what to look for, and together maybe we can find enough for a real meal.”

  Bhaldavin nodded, pleased to be asked.

  The following days passed quickly. Time not spent walking was spent foraging and watching for landmarks that would match up with the pictures inside the imager.

  Lil-el found some gillan root and nightly dosed Diak with its pungent fumes, easing the old man’s cough. Everyone was very much aware of the frail oldster and did everything they could to try to help him regain his strength; even Theon pitched in, massaging Diak’s legs each night and rubbing him down with an ointment Bhaldavin had made from the thick syrup of the allbey runner, commonly known as tangle vine.

  “I didn’t know you were so well-versed in herb lore,” Lil-el said to Bhaldavin one day. “Where did you learn?”

  “From my mother,” he answered, thinking back on the many days he had spent learning one plant from another. His childhood seemed a lifetime ago.

  Lil-el started to say something else, but stopped, her hand clamping around Bhaldavin’s arm. “Smell!”

  It took only a second to recognize the odor. He turned full circle, closely scanning the nearby trees. He saw nothing.

  Hallon and Diak came up to them. Diak leaned heavily on a walking stick Gringers had found for him. “What’s wrong?” Hallon asked.

  “Draak,” Lil-el said shortly. “Bhaldavin, bring them along. I’ll run ahead and warn Gringers and Theon. Be careful!”

  “And you,” he called after her.

  The three hurried after Lil-el, ears and eyes alert for signs of draak. Upon entering the lower forests, they had come across several draak runs, but had not as yet encountered any of the large reptiles.

  The smell of draak grew strong as they worked their way down between the trees. Hallon kept a hand on Diak’s arm to prevent the old man from slipping on the pine-needle carpet beneath their feet.

  Lil-el’s voice rose through the air, the strains of “Nar-donva” filtering up from below. Bhaldavin waved Hallon and Diak forward, urging them on; then he turned and continued downward, slipping and catching at branches to steady his own descent.