The Dark and Forbidding Land

by Wesley Allison

  “Go. No trodlent”

  “Is this lizzie causing you a problem?”

  Cissy glanced quickly around. This sentence seemed as though it was aimed at another human, but there wasn’t one around. It had to have been directed at her. Before she could say anything though, Shoss, his face beginning to turn dark with frustration hissed out an angry reply in his native language.

  “You stupid blind piece of excrement. You should be left in the forest so that the feathered runners can feast on your entrails.”

  Without warning Terrence pulled a revolver out of his pocket and fired. The bullet hit Shoss in his abdomen, and he dropped to the ground. The human gingerly kicked him with the toe of his boot, and once sure where he was lying, aimed the gun downward and fired four more times. Shoss’s body slowly uncurled, ending up in an odd and vaguely unsettling position. His eyes looked up blankly at the sky.

  “I only know a few of those words,” said the man, kicking the now dead lizzie, twice, hard. “I don’t need you to tell me I’m ghahkut. I know it every time I get up in the morning and can’t see anything. And I owe it to your kind!”

  Cissy hunkered down as small as she could go, but Terrence didn’t turn toward her. Suddenly they were surrounded by a dozen humans and lizzies. Mrs. Dechantagne grabbed hold of her husband around the waist, but he shrugged her off. Sisson bent down to check Shoss, but there was no doubt that he was dead.

  “What is going on here?” demanded Governor Dechantagne-Calliere.

  “No need to bother yourself, sister,” said Terrence, anger still hanging on his every syllable. “I was just disciplining the staff.”

  “Are you all right? He didn’t hurt you, did he?” asked Mrs. Dechantagne.

  “Where’s Tisson?” called Terrence.

  “Here.”

  “Get this piece of ssotook out of my garden.”

  * * * * *

  “Um, hello,” said Mr. Jex, tip-toeing down the last few steps into the parlor.

  “Hi,” said Senta, as she took off her coat and hung it on the hook.

  “Is it safe to come down?”

  “Actually this is probably the safest part of the house,” said Senta thoughtfully. “Come on down. I won’t hurt you. I’m just a kid.”

  “What about the dragon?”

  “He won’t bother you,” she said, glancing at the steel dragon, sleeping in the corner. “How is the painting coming?”

  “I just finished. I think it is some of my best work.”

  Senta murmured noncommittally.

  “Not that it was the easiest. Zurfina was…”

  “Let me interrupt you there,” said Senta. “Don’t mistakenly think that just because Fina is three stories above us, she won’t know it if you say something bad about her.”

  “I was just going to say that she didn’t always remain still.”

  “I would imagine that’s true. Do you want something to eat?”

  “Um, Zurfina told me to leave.”

  “She told you to leave now?”

  “She said it’s because you are home. She doesn’t want you to be upset.”

  “Well, that’s kind of nice. You can’t leave now though. It’s after dark. You’ll be eaten by a predator.”

  “Oh, um, what should I do?”

  “Hey sleepy-head!” Senta called to Bessemer. “Get up and walk Mr. Jex home.”

  The dragon stood up, stretched, and then moved quickly to the man’s side.

  “Are you sure it will be okay?” asked Mr. Jex.

  “Everything will be fine,” said Bessemer, and Senta burst out laughing.

  It took the painter a few minutes to get his cold weather gear on, and then he was gone, the steel dragon at his heel. Senta put a pot on the stove, and then sat down with a cup and her primer.

  “It’s about time you were back at your studies,” said Zurfina, appearing at the bottom of the stairs.

  “Every time I try to start, something comes up.”

  “Well, I won’t interrupt you. Carry on.”

  “Fina, why did you send your… painter home in the dark?”

  “It’s apparent that you don’t want me entertaining men here while you are at home. I suppose I have to respect your wishes.”

  “But he could be eaten by the tyrannosaurus.”

  “Well,” said Zurfina, turning and starting up the stairs. “The painting was done anyway.”

  Chapter Fourteen: The Day of the Daggers

  The next few days grew progressively warmer. It was as if the land couldn’t wait for the return of spring. Senta certainly couldn’t wait. The snowdrifts between the great redwoods disappeared, and she began to wander through the forest around the tower. Sometimes Graham came with her, but it was impossible to coax Hero beyond the relative safety of the road or the yard.

  Three days after Mr. Jex had completed Zurfina’s painting, Senta got up early in the morning and went to the Hertling home. She hoped that she could lend a hand with household chores, supposing that this might endear her to Hero’s sister Honor. She had forgotten though that it was the Zaeri Sabbath, and the Hertlings, like the other Zaeri, were attending shrine, or rather the neighborhood lot on which they hoped to have a shrine built sometime in the future. She considered joining them, as non-Zaeri were allowed to sit in the back, but the prospect of an hour or more of she-wasn’t-too-sure what in a dead language she couldn’t understand dissuaded her. She stopped by the Dokkins house hoping to find Graham, but he wasn’t home. More and more, he had been getting odd jobs around the dock, and a ship had come in from Freedonia the day before.

  Senta skipped down Bay Street, which was one of the two parallel roadways that ran south from Town Square. The earliest flowers had popped their heads up to enjoy the new sun. Blue ones and white ones, they were all very tiny compared to the blossoms that would appear later. The girl didn’t know what they were called, but she instinctively knew that they heralded the return of spring, and this put lightness into her heart and step. In no time, she had gathered together quite a bouquet and had reached the southern limit of the road.

  Beyond was the wilderness. It had been uninterrupted forest just a few years before, but now the land for several miles from where she stood was a ragged looking plain having been logged extensively by the colonists, with only a few copses of standing trees here and there.

  “You shouldn’t be out alone,” said a heavily accented voice. She didn’t need to turn around to recognize its owner, but turn around she did.

  “I thought you were hiding in your apartment,” she told Streck. “I heard you got quite a scare on your hunting trip.”

  “This place is a hell-hole. It’s not fit for a civilized man, and it won’t be until the monsters and the Eidechse are wiped out.”

  “The Eidechse? You mean the lizzies? You can’t wipe all of them out. There are millions, not just the lot around here. They have some big cities to the south and west. I’ve seen one.”

  “You would be surprised what can be done.”

  “What do you want anyway? You want to finish our duel?”

  “Oh, I have seen your shield spell and I am suitably impressed. It is clear you are a gifted, if boastful, child.”

  “I think I asked already… what is it you want?”

  “I’m just here to say goodbye, little bit.” Streck smiled. “My ship is here and I’ll be leaving soon.”

  “Good riddance then,” said Senta.

  Steck’s face turned even more sour. “I am inviting you to come with me. Not only will you learn to respect your elders, you will learn the true magic—far more than you will ever learn with your Zurfina.”

  “What is it with you exactly?” asked the girl. “Do you want to open up my brain and scoop out the magic, or are you one of those weirdoes that like little girls?”

  “I want to join the Reine Zauberei.”

  “I thought you were one already.”

  “I was, but I didn’t advance as fast as I should have... as fast
as I could have. They suspended my studies and I was left to work as a solicitor. But now I have a chance to return, you see. The Reine Zauberei will appreciate you. They appreciate power, and you have more power than I, at first, thought. Even if you can’t do all that you say you can, a shield spell from one so young will be impressive enough. And in return for my bringing you to them, I will be reinstated.”

  “So, you want to use me for your own benefit.”

  “Oh, it will be good for you too, little bit. In the Reine Zauberei, you will…”

  Steck’s voice trailed off and his mouth went slack. All the color drained from his face. At the moment Senta realized that he was looking at something behind her, she heard the tremendous bellow. Turning around, she saw not one, but two tyrannosaurs striding quickly toward them. One was smaller, perhaps only ten feet tall and thirty-five feet long. The other was a huge fifty-footer, and judging by the scarred and uglier-than-usual face, it had to be the one that she had hit with the fireball a month earlier. It opened its mouth wide and roared, its teeth looking like a hundred daggers.

  “Run, you wanker!” shouted Senta, rushing past Streck and making a diagonal path toward the edge of the road.

  She looked back over her shoulder to see that he hadn’t moved at all. The horrendous beasts were almost on top of him.

  “Uuthanum rechthinov uluchaiia!” she shouted, pointing. A bolt of lightning flew from her fingertip, past the Freedonian, hitting the smaller dinosaur in the chest. It dropped onto its face, rolled across the ground, in a cloud of mud and dirt and then clambered back to its feet.

  Streck seemed to have finally woken up and began to cast a spell. He was not finished though, when the larger tyrannosaurus reached him, and without so much as slowing down, scooped him up, chomped twice, and swallowed him. It then turned slightly and continued on its way, directly toward Senta.

  “Kafira!” she cried, turning and running off the road and into the trees.

  The girl dodged in and out of the tree trunks, mentally thanking Zurfina for laying out clothing that didn’t restrict her running. She could hear the nine ton monster behind her, loud snaps as it broke tree trunks with its body, its breathing, interspersed with a peculiar coughing grunt. Keeping her head as best she could, she ran near the largest of the redwoods and maples, knowing that the large predatory dinosaur did not like moving around in the woods. She chanced one quick glance behind her and squealed in fear as she saw it had gained on her. The creature indeed was having trouble negotiating the woods, but each step was many times longer than one of the ten-year-old’s.

  She began casting the fireball spell as she ran. “Uuthanum uluchaiia uluth…ah!” She was interrupted when her foot caught on a root. She managed to keep her feet beneath her, but the spell was lost. Then suddenly, her head exploded in pain. Not only did the spell not work, but she was suffering the ill effects anyway. Her foot slid in the muddy soil and she went tumbling down a small ravine, coming to a stop on her stomach. Pressing her face into the ground, she hoped the rich peaty smell of the soil would hide that of the blood she could feel oozing from her nose. Placing her hands over her neck, she whispered “uuthanum,” hoping her body would be completely camouflaged by the obfuscation spell.

  She could hear the dinosaur as it came to a stop. She could still hear the breathing and the coughing grunt. It sounded like it was right on top of her, but she didn’t look. She didn’t move. She didn’t know how long she lay there. She didn’t even know if she had managed to stay conscious through the pain. At last, after what seemed an eternity, the throbbing in her head began to ebb and she realized that she no longer heard the grunting. She no longer heard the breathing. Ever so slowly, she turned her head and looked. There was nothing there. She crawled on her belly up the side of the ravine and looked over the edge. The tyrannosaurus was gone.

  * * * * *

  “There is no way Mr. Haarhoff,” insisted Mayor Korlann, “that you can place any of the blame for what happened to your hunting trip on our militiamen.”

  “I have been hunting all over the world,” blustered the Bordonian hunter, his face becoming progressively redder. “I have never had this kind of disaster. Therefore the fault must be with either your men or these lizzie guides they hired. We should never have camped where we were.”

  “As I recall,” said Saba, “it was you who wanted to be as close to Iguanodon Heath as possible.”

  “But I am not a native. How could I know?”

  The men crowded into the Mayor’s office had been shouting accusingly at one another for almost half an hour. In addition to Haarhoff and Saba and the Mayor, Sergeant Clark and Private Croffut sat around the desk.

  “Mr. Haarhoff,” said the Mayor. “No one is more sorry than I for the deaths of your friends, but I don’t know exactly what you want me to do about…”

  He was interrupted by Private Manring bursting in, followed closely by Mayor Korlann’s secretary Miss Gertz.

  “I’m sorry, sir. I tried to stop him.”

  “It’s alright Cady.”

  “Two tyrannosaurs at the south edge of town!” shouted Manring. “Ten minutes ago!”

  The militiamen all jumped to their feet.

  “Two sections, full gear,” Clark ordered, and Saba and Croffut pushed their way out the door.

  “Well Haarhoff?” said Clark. “Here’s your chance. Coming or not?”

  The hunter gave a quick nod and followed him out.

  Half an hour later fourteen men gathered at the southern end of Bay Street. With them was Tassy, one of the two lizzie trackers who had gone on the hunting expedition. Though Haarhoff glowered at him, he appeared not to notice. As it turned out, there was not to be much need for a tracker. Signs of the tyrannosaurs were easily identified. Great footprints in the gravel road came from the south. There was a large scrape where some kind of tussle had occurred and one of the beasts had moved into the forest to the west, only to tramp back out and continue east with its smaller mate.

  “What are they doing?” wondered Clark.

  Tassy replied, using pigeon Breck.

  “These big fellows don’t like it in the heavy forest,” explained Croffut. “They can’t maneuver around. The woods aren’t as thick over this way. They may cut north and end up in Zaeritown or even by the Governor’s house or they might turn south back into the deforested area. There are quite a few game dinosaurs there.”

  “This is damned peculiar. Everything I’ve heard about the tyrannosaurus indicates they are solitary hunters.”

  “It must be a seasonal thing,” offered Saba. “There was more than one together at Iguanodon Heath too. Maybe they get together during the mating season. Spring is hard on, after all. Maybe we should be asking the lizzies about that?”

  “You don’t want to trust your lives to them,” said Willy.

  “Well one is bad enough,” said Clark. “Colbshallow, you take fire team one on the left, Croffut with fire team two on the right. The rest will come with me and Haarhoff down the center.”

  The militiamen set off into the forest, following the trail of the two beasts. This area of the woods had more than its fair share of massive redwoods and great maple trees. It was the smaller trees and much of the brush that was thinner here than in many places in the surrounding area. Saba followed along to the left of the others, just beyond the easily detectable path of the dinosaurs. His fire team consisted of Shrubb, Manring, and Cornish.

  About a mile from Bay Street, the path of the tyrannosaurs turned. Saba was pleased to see that they were turning south, away from the populated area. The tracks led thought the increasingly sparse woodland, and out into the scraggly plain. The land here was dotted with tree trunks, in between which grew an army of year-old saplings. The space between the individual footfalls widened as the dinosaurs had increased their speed. The soldiers were able to spread out, but kept roughly the same formation.

  After another mile, Croffut suddenly raised his hand. The entire party dropped down to
a squatting position. The creatures were several hundred yards away, the upper halves of their bodies peaking over a low rise, but once pointed out, everyone could see them. The larger one was feasting on a big carcass, while the smaller one was circling it. Neither was letting loose with the roar for which such creatures were justly famous.

  “Fire team one and two spread out,” ordered Clark quietly. “I want them in a crossfire. Now, let’s take it slow. We don’t want to spook them. I don’t want them getting away and I don’t want them to charge us either.”

  The fifteen hunters, human and lizzie, inched forward. It was slow and nerve wracking business, but about thirty minutes later they were in position. Saba’s team was on the left hand side of the small hillock that had partially obscured the tyrannosaurs. Croffut’s team was on the other side, out of Saba’s sight. The other six humans and the lizzie were visible at the top of the hill. Clark looked toward Saba and gave the “ready” signal, then turned, presumably giving the same signal to Croffut. Saba felt the smooth wood stock and smelled the familiar cleaning oil of his B1898 magazine-fed bolt-action .30 caliber service rifle. It was cool and comforting. A second later they all began firing.

  Saba had aimed at the smaller tyrannosaurus, and calmly discharged his weapon five times. Each was intended as a head shot, and Saba was confident that he hit his target. The dinosaur started to stagger. He lowered his sites to the creature’s body and fired five more shots, one after another. Pausing to drop his magazine and replace it with a full one, he continued to watch the targets. The smaller tyrannosaurus took several steps and then flopped down onto its stomach.

  “Kafira!” shouted Manring at his side.

  The air was rent with the horrifyingly familiar scream of the tyrant lizard, but it didn’t come from either of the monsters at which they were shooting. Saba looked to his left to see three more of the nightmares running toward him from the side. Working the bolt action to put a round in his rifle’s chamber, he began firing at the new targets. One of the creatures went tumbling to the ground, its neck vertebrae snapping loudly as it flopped over, tripping one of the other two. The second creature fell to the ground, but not badly injured began to roll to its belly to get up. The third ran straight toward Saba, its massive open maw perfectly on target to snatch him up into the razor sharp teeth.