by Paul Cook
“Give yourself up, and I will spare your life!” he shouted.
She did not move. “I won’t ever be your slave again!”
Zannian notched a dart into his throwing stick, but before he could fling it, a block of red sandstone grazed his horse’s neck. The startled animal bucked, forcing Zannian to drop his weapon and hold on with both hands to avoid being unseated. While the gray stallion danced and twisted, more stones flew down. One struck Zannian squarely in the chest, and he fell into the mob of fallen raiders.
Hoten saw his chief go down. He took command, calling for darts. This forced the villagers to quit their place atop the rocky mound. They fled up the gorge on foot. The raiders couldn’t pursue because of the continuing barrage of stones and spears.
Hoten ordered half his men to dismount and scale the cliffs. They ascended steadily, protected from projectiles by the overhanging peak. Moments after they reached the top, the bombardment ceased.
After sending the unconscious Zannian to the rear, Hoten led fifty mounted warriors after Beramun and her comrades. They quickly caught up to the fugitives. Spurred by their chiefs promised reward, the raiders concentrated on Beramun. Her companions dueled with the raiders until their backs were quite literally against the canyon wall.
“Slay all but the black-haired girl!” Hoten roared.
The raiders closed in. Their reluctance to harm Beramun bore against them. With no such compunction staying their hands, the villagers drove back the first wave of raiders. Hoten called for darts, but his men feared hitting Beramun and losing the bounty, so their attack came to naught.
Many of the villagers had lost their spears in the previous attack and were reduced to throwing stones at the enemy. The youth on Beramun’s right went down, felled by a spear in his chest. Two raiders jumped off their horses and tried to grab her. She hit one on the head with the shaft of her spear. The pole snapped, but the man went down. The second raider caught her by the wrist and delivered a vicious backhand blow.
Beramun slammed into the canyon wall and slid to the ground, dazed. The raider who’d felled her reached down to claim his prize. His triumph was short lived. A deafening roar filled the tight confines of the gorge. Rocked by the terrible sound, Hoten and his men looked up to see Duranix hovering over the gorge, his wings flapping hard to keep his enlarged body aloft.
The bronze dragon roared again. As one, the raiders dropped their weapons and leaped on their horses to flee. Duranix lowered his head and blasted them with a bolt of lightning. The ground shattered beneath them, dust and rocks flying in all directions. Most perished, and the few survivors raced down the canyon on foot. The dragon landed in front of them. Jaws gaping, he incinerated them, one after another, until not a man or horse stood upright.
Beramun pushed herself onto her hands and knees. A weight on her arm turned out to be the raider’s hand still gripping her wrist. It had been burned off above the elbow. Paharo helped her pry the dead fingers loose.
The smell of singed flesh filled the air, and the view downstream was obscured by drifting smoke and dust. The surviving villagers approached the dragon.
Beramun called, “Well timed! Another ten heartbeats, and we’d have been done for!”
Duranix whirled, his burnished scales flecked with soot and blood. The swiftness of his movement and the ferocity of his expression caused them all to shrink back in alarm.
“I don’t want your thanks!” he snapped. “Do you think I enjoy slaughtering Sthenn’s worthless slaves? Do you?”
“We’re grateful you saved us,” Paharo said humbly.
“Amero asked me to. Thank him. Now get back to the bridge. He’s waiting for you there.”
The villagers started back to Yala-tene. Duranix remained, staring at the empty vista before him. Seeing him linger, Beramun turned back and said, “What are you waiting for?”
Duranix looked down at her. “Sthenn is near. I feel him. Don’t you?”
She touched the front of her tunic, fingers resting atop the green mark on her chest. “I’m not his creature,” she insisted. “I’m a free woman.”
“Go, before I forget Amero’s wishes and kill you right here!”
Infuriated, she yelled, “Stupid beast! I’ve done nothing wrong!”
Duranix lowered his huge head until it was only a handspan from her face. “Perhaps you don’t know the evil Sthenn has planned for you,” he said. “But anything is possible — sedition, betrayal, murder. I won’t let you harm Amero.”
Beramun’s back was against the cliff wall. She could only stare into those huge green eyes, her throat too dry to speak.
Suddenly the dragon whipped his neck around, head thrusting skyward. Mouth gaping, Duranix roared.
Beramun dropped to the ground, clapping her hands over her ears in a futile attempt to block the powerful sound. The rocks beneath her resonated with the endless roar.
Through a red haze of agony, Beramun saw a winged shape fly overhead. She knew that shape and why the bronze dragon roared. Sthenn had returned.
Duranix continued to bellow a challenge to his ancient nemesis. Stones cascaded down both sides of the canyon, plunging into the river and piling up along the canyon walls. The terrible sound grew so unbearable that Beramun screamed. She couldn’t hear her puny cry over the omnipotent voice of the dragon, but she screamed and screamed until her throat was raw.
The thunderous roar finally ceased as Duranix spread his wings. With two running steps, he vaulted into the air. The tips of his wings scraped the walls on each side of the canyon, but he cleared them and soared aloft.
Breathless, Beramun forced herself to her feet, her back braced against the canyon wall. She was surprised to see another figure rising from the debris some paces away. One of the raiders had survived: the bald one, Hoten.
Looking fully as battered as she, Hoten regarded Beramun blankly for a moment. In unison they turned their faces skyward, where Duranix was climbing to meet his enemy in a final duel. Soon the paths of both dragons took them out of sight.
Without a word or sign of acknowledgment, Hoten and Beramun stumbled away: he, back to his chief, and she, to the Lake of the Falls.
Chapter 19
By the time Beramun returned to the valley, Yala-tene’s defenses were in place. Boulders and logs had been piled across the mouth of the canyon, making it difficult for the mounted enemy to ride directly to the bridge. Villagers armed with spears and stones were in position atop the stone towers that anchored each end of the bridge. Barricades of timber and thorn bushes blocked the north end of the bridge. When Beramun arrived, tired and battered, Amero and the village elders were in the midst of an argument.
“We must prepare the bridge to fall,” Amero was insisting. “If the raiders get the better of us, we’ll have to destroy it. The river’s too deep to be forded, so they’ll have to take the time to build rafts.”
“Destroying the bridge means abandoning the orchard and gardens to the enemy!” Jenla protested. “The greatest part of our food supply lies in those fields. How can we give them up?”
“We have food stored in the town caves,” said Huru.
“How long will that last?” demanded Tepa. The usually mild beekeeper was red-faced and sweating. “Without food, we can’t stay inside our wall for long!”
Then Amero spotted Beramun. A look of vast relief crossed his face. He called out to her, cutting off the elders’ angry debate. Jenla and the rest fell silent as the Arkuden ran to meet the nomad girl.
Beramun slumped tiredly against a felled log.
“Here, take this,” Amero said, handing her a dipper of cool water. “I was beginning to think you were lost. What happened?”
“Duranix,” she said between gulps of water, “saved us.”
“So Paharo said. What was the roaring we heard?”
She winced at the memory. Her skull still ached from the awful noise. “Duranix saw the green dragon in the sky, bellowed a challenge, then flew after him.”
“Flew after…?” Amero cast a quick glance at the village elders and lowered his voice. “He’s gone?”
Beramun drained the gourd dry and wiped her lips with the back of her hand. “I saw the look in his eyes. He won’t return until Sthenn is dead.”
“Say nothing about that!” he whispered to her. “Our people may lose heart if they hear their protector is gone.”
Jenla called for Amero to rejoin the elders, and he did. The argument began anew over whether the bridge should be destroyed. Standing in the midst of his contentious people, Amero looked more tired and strained than Beramun had ever seen him.
The screech of a falcon caused her to look up. The feathered hunter wheeled in lazy circles across the flawless blue vault of the midday sky. Somewhere up there in the boundless ocean of air, the two dragons were winging toward their final destiny.
*
After Duranix cleared the canyon rim, he climbed as rapidly as he could, never losing sight of his foe. Sthenn continued to glide in a vast, lazy circle, five thousand paces above the mountain peaks. Filled with barely contained fury, Duranix retained enough presence of mind to know this wasn’t right. For all his age and cunning, Sthenn was fundamentally craven. It was completely unlike him to wait patiently for Duranix to catch up. The evil beast must be up to something.
As he reached the halfway point in his climb, Duranix saw Sthenn drop his right wing and glide off to the west, away from the Valley of the Falls. So that was his game! He wanted Duranix to follow him away from the valley, leaving Yala-tene alone against Zannian’s host. It was a brutal, unsubtle stratagem, and it showed how well Sthenn understood him.
As he continued the pursuit, Duranix told himself the loss of a few hundred humans was worth the destruction of the vile green dragon. It came down to a cold calculation: It was better for Sthenn to be dead than for Amero to be alive. There would always be more humans. They bred like rats, died often and easily, and kept the world constantly stirred up. Amero was a good fellow for a human — amusing, engaging, and thoughtful, and he conceived a constant stream of schemes and ideas. It was possible he’d find a way to cope with the raiders on his own.
Sound, logical reasoning. So why did it feel so wrong? Why did Duranix have a thoroughly irrational desire to wheel about and descend upon the advancing raider horde?
He couldn’t break off the chase. He couldn’t allow Sthenn to escape. If fortune favored him, he might finish his enemy and return in time to save Yala-tene as well, but if the chase took too long, if Amero died before he could return, then Duranix vowed that Zannian’s band would not long survive the death of their master.
As Duranix’s mind wandered, so did his navigation. Unconsciously, he fell into a slow northward bank, which would eventually bring him full circle, back to the Valley of the Falls. While he wrestled with his conscience, he failed to see the green dragon also changing course, doubling back toward him.
Duranix’s instincts saved him. At the last moment, he sensed danger and turned sharply away, and Sthenn’s outstretched claws found only empty air. Laughing, the green dragon pulled out of his dive.
“Little friend, do I have your attention?” he sang in the ancient dragon tongue.
Duranix’s answer was a bolt of white-hot energy. Sthenn maneuvered out of its path and returned the favor with a stream of poison gas. The green dragon’s breath could kill any warm-blooded creature. To Duranix it was merely a noxious irritant.
“Come, come!” Sthenn said, hovering. “I expect better from you than this!”
“Taunt away,” Duranix replied, laboring hard to maintain his position with wings shorter than Sthenn’s. “Use up all the witticisms you have, Sthenn. The time is coming when your dead, stinking carcass will be the only joke you have left!”
“Excellent! So it’s death you want, little friend?”
“Death for you, wyrm!”
Sthenn drew his dangling limbs up close to his body. Duranix saw one foreclaw missing. A blackened stump was all that remained. A smile curved his brazen lips. The arrogant Tiphan must have hurt the green dragon after all.
“Come,” Sthenn said with unusual gravity. “I give you this one chance. The world is wide. Follow if you can, and we shall see who finds death first.”
Sthenn rolled away, heading due north. Duranix briefly considered throwing another blast at his back but chose instead to conserve his strength. The bronze dragon flapped hard after his speeding quarry. Nothing else mattered now. He would not give Sthenn up, even if it meant chasing him to the end of the world.
Night fell. A profound silence enveloped the Valley of the Falls.
To deny the raiders help in locating them, Amero decreed no fires should be lit in the camp around the bridge. The villagers ate cold food, raw or dried, as their parents had done when wandering the vast plains.
“You know,” Paharo said, chewing a thin strip of dried elk meat, “I really hate raw flesh. I don’t see how you old folks stand it.”
“You children are spoiled,” said Jenla, sitting on a stone between Tepa and Paharo’s father, Huru. “I never even tasted cooked food till I was thirty.”
“Why didn’t you cook before you lived in Yala-tene?” asked a young woman behind Paharo.
“No one thought of it,” Amero said. “On the plain, once you made a kill, you had to butcher it on the spot and carry away what you could before wolves or panthers came to take it away from you. There was no time to do more, so taking up flint, building a fire, and cooking your meat never came up.”
“On a hunt we always roast our catch,” said Paharo.
“Spoiled,” repeated Jenla.
An owl hooted close by. Conversation ceased. Everyone listened intently until the owl hooted again, farther away.
Amero stood, taking up his spear and shield. “I think I’ll have a look at the bridge.”
Nubis shrugged. “It’s still there, Arkuden.”
The villagers chuckled. Amero smiled and walked away. One of the sentinels atop the south tower looked down and waved. He waved back.
For almost twenty years the bridge had connected the halves of the valley. It had been one of Amero’s first successes. With no timber in the valley long enough to span the river, and with no way to join short planks together that would bear much weight, building a bridge seemed impossible. The solution appeared one day when Amero heard an old man complaining to his mate that his belt no longer fit, and he needed a longer one. She responded tartly that there was no sense wasting good cowhide on his growing paunch. Amero watched as the thrifty woman braided short lengths of rawhide around narrow wooden pegs, expanding her man’s belt.
He adapted the same idea to make the bridge. A series of planks formed the walking surface. Vines were woven around the ends of the planks to join them one to another. At each end of the bridge, the vines were tied to stakes on shore, anchoring the long, flexible structure. The bridge sagged under heavy loads, however, and it was Duranix who suggested towers or posts be erected with supporting lengths of rope running from them to the bridge. The first wooden towers were eventually replaced by stone pillars.
The bridge had served without fault for many years, and had borne countless villagers and wanderers to and from Yala-tene. When his sister, Nianki, left the valley with the remnants of her nomad band years ago, they’d ridden their horses across with no difficulty. Amero knew the raiders could do the same. They must not be allowed the chance.
He paused halfway across the span. The river was deep here, its dark water coursing swiftly beneath his feet. The water would make an effective barrier to Zannian’s horde.
He looked both ways to make certain he was not observed. The night hid him well. Drawing his bronze dagger, he sawed at one of the main support ropes that stretched from the stone tower on the north bank down through a series of wooden brackets and up again to the south tower. The braided vine was as thick as his ankle, and it took a good deal of effort to cut.
Casting furtive glances over hi
s shoulders, he kept up until the vine was cut over halfway through. Crossing to the other side, he repeated his work on the other rope. If the bridge were heavily strained — as by a mass of mounted raiders — it should collapse. If needed, a few strokes with a stone ax would part the ropes quickly.
He strolled to the north end of the bridge and called to the guards posted on the north tower. Neither one replied. Amero snorted. The fools had fallen asleep at their posts.
“Ho!” he shouted. “Wake up! Lookouts are meant to look!”
Something darted across the open ground beyond the barrier of timber and thorn bushes at the end of the bridge. Low and gray, its silhouette was definitely not human.
Amero froze. Pairs of red eyes gleamed in the darkness. An old fear, long buried but never forgotten, gripped his heart. He retreated slowly, not daring to turn his back on the yevi.
A quick flick of his eyes upward showed the sentinels hadn’t budged. He knew now they weren’t shirking. The lookouts were dead.
Amero backed another few steps, and a single yevi leaped over the barricade at the north end of the bridge. It landed lightly in front of him. He presented his spear and drew a deep breath.
“Wake up!” he bellowed as loudly as he could. “The raiders are here! The raiders are here!”
Both ends of the bridge erupted. Raiders and yevi who’d been lying in wait threw themselves at the barricade. Yevi sprang over the obstacle while hooded raiders attacked it with axes and poles. On the villagers’ side, Huru quickly mustered the townsfolk into a wall of shields five ranks deep. As previously rehearsed, the townspeople marched in close order to the end of the bridge and halted.
Amero meanwhile lunged with his spear but missed the yevi stalking him. The hump-shouldered creature snapped its heavy jaws time and again, trying to catch Amero’s spear shaft.
A second beast leaped over the hedge of thorns. Not wanting to battle two at once, Amero pushed his attack, slamming his shield into the first animal. It rolled backward into the second yevi, and they went down in a tangle. He quickly drove his spear into one, twisted it sharply, withdrew, and stabbed the second. He felt the flint tip pierce fur and flesh, scraping bone beneath. Giving a yell of triumph, he yanked his spear free. One yevi lay still, the other whined as it crept away, dragging its useless hindquarters.
