by Matthew Lang
“What happened?” Adam asked. “The dragon’s not following us?”
“No,” Darius said tightly as he urged them onward. “Her wings would get tangled unless she came in on foot, and she won’t risk that.”
“Why not?”
“Because she does not know if we are accompanied by zombies,” Xavier said, looking over his shoulder at the clouds of smoke drifting upward into the canopy. “And thanks to Esmeralda—Her Royal Highness, Princess Esmeralda,” he corrected when Darius glared at him, “she does not know exactly where we are, even if she were to come in.”
“Okay, I get the magic thing the princess is doing, but where do the zombies come into things?”
“Did you not feel it?” Xavier asked. “The dragon is not dangerous because she is a great fire-breathing lizard. We could deal with one of those. We have dealt with those in the past. Khalivibra is dangerous because she attacks your mind.”
“You mean the feeling that your brain is about to dribble out of your ears?”
“That is just the start,” Xavier said. “In some cases that passes, and then you serve her will. To everyone else you appear perfectly normal, but in the past… we have had people lead their families to the surface to be taken by her, herders leaving their flocks out for her to eat… once a sentry even let an invading band of kanak into our tunnels.”
“And how did you find out about it, then?”
“Observation,” Xavier said. “And postmortem examination in some cases. In others the people confessed after being caught. We have always known that dragons possessed the ability to influence people, but never on such a great or insidious scale.”
“And you defend against this with zombies?”
“They have no will but their maker’s,” Xavier replied. “And you can leave them with simple commands that prove very handy.”
“Like ‘fire this ballista at any dragon, kanak, or giant spider that comes within range,’” Darius said tightly.
“And then hit the alarm gong,” Xavier agreed.
“And Esmeralda—Princess Esmeralda—is defending us from the dragon right now?” Adam asked.
“Yes,” Darius said. “But we need to guide her while she concentrates. We need to keep safe until the next downpour—Khalivibra doesn’t like to get her wings wet.”
“We’re going the wrong way, though,” Duin said. “We should be going north dark along the riverbank.”
Darius shook his head. “Too dangerous. The bank is too exposed, and she’d pick us off one by one.”
“We can manage,” Xavier said confidently. “We can pick our way deeper into the forest and then cut back toward the river once the rains come.”
“If we travel when it rains, she should lose our track completely,” Darius agreed.
“I knew you were going to suggest that,” Xavier said. “I asked myself what the most unpleasant plan you could come up with would be, and of course you suggest it.”
“Well, I’m not very keen on it either,” Adam said. “But it sounds like the best plan we have.”
“We’ll be fine,” Darius said confidently.
“I’m not so sure,” Duin said, his body tensing. “I think we have entered slasherclaw territory.”
Chapter 8
DARIUS PAUSED and looked around. “What makes you say that?”
“On your left, there are claw marks on the trees. The gouges suggest the alpha male of a slasherclaw pack, and the white splatter would be its spoor.”
Darius’s eyes swiveled left. “Up the trees, all of you,” he said, urging them into the lower branches of the rainforest giants.
“These slasherclaws,” Adam asked as Zoul easily climbed up a large tree trunk. “Can they jump?”
“Oh yes,” Duin said. “At least as high as you are tall, if not a little bit more.”
Adam glanced over the edge of the thick branch. “How far would you say that drop is?” he asked.
Duin smiled. “At least twice your height, Adam.”
“Good. Wait, can they climb?”
“You know, I really have no idea.”
“Oh. Great.”
Once again Adam found himself guiding Zoul through the three-dimensional maze of the forest canopy, going from branch to branch in a long, slow meandering course above the ground, which eventually took them back to where they could hear the sound of the river, and Duin indicated the rain was about to come.
Venturing to the forest floor to find wood and bamboo for a shelter had never felt so nerve-wracking. Adam and the other men worked together, alternating between keeping watch for slasherclaws and cutting and hauling supplies. Luckily they were able to gather food among the canopy, snagging various fruits and large nuts that had a spongy inside reminiscent of nougat. They also managed to catch some flitterfish by hanging netting between two branches and chasing the flying creatures into it. They weren’t quite ready when the rain started, and they were soaked through by the time they’d got the roof up. It wasn’t until the rain was falling in sheets around them that Esmeralda stopped chanting, the light fading from the stone in her hand, and she slumped forward, her chest heaving as she gulped in great breaths of air. Carefully, Duin unbuckled her from her saddle and helped her down, supporting her trembling frame against his own.
“Are you all right, Your Highness?” he asked.
Wearily, Esmeralda nodded and accepted the waterskin he offered.
“Get out of your wet things,” Duin suggested, holding out a blanket to her. “I’m sorry, but we did not build a fire.”
“Fire would have drawn the slasherclaws to us,” Xavier pointed out.
“Slasherclaws?”
“We haven’t seen any yet,” Xavier hastened to reassure her. “But we have seen signs that there is a pack in the area.”
“A fire might also have brought her attention back to us,” Darius said.
As one they all looked out in the direction of the riverbank, invisible behind the sheets of rain dropping down from the sky. “Do you think she’ll come back?” Adam asked.
“Almost certainly,” Esmeralda said, now rugged up in a blanket and taking a bite of a juicy red fruit. “She knows roughly where we are now, and I am almost certain she knows why we are here.”
“How did she find that out?”
Esmeralda shrugged and wiped at her eyes. “I do not truly know. She may have gleaned it out of our minds before I could shield us.”
“Let’s get some rest,” Darius suggested. “We’re going to need it, I think.”
Esmeralda yawned and nodded. “We will need to start out just about as soon as the rain eases,” she said. “Selune’s teeth, why did you set up camp so close to the river?”
“We needed the bamboo,” Xavier said. “And with the slasherclaws around, we dared not carry it too far.”
All in all, none of them got much sleep that rest time.
ADAM WAS woken from a light doze by a hand clamping over his mouth.
“Mmph?”
“Shh,” Duin whispered in his ear. “There are slasherclaws beneath us, and you looked like you were about to start snoring.”
Adam wanted to protest that he didn’t snore, but was honest enough to know that he did. Instead he nodded his understanding, and when Duin released him, he rubbed the sleep from his eyes and crept over to the edge of their tree house and peeked down to the ground below.
It took him a while to pick out the creature from the trees and the leaf litter, especially in the poor light, but he saw below the first true feathers he’d come across since tumbling into this strange world. The beast was a cross between lizard and bird, and at first glance he thought he was looking at a small emu. It was only when he caught the glint of a yellow reptilian eye, sharp teeth, and the large sickle-shaped claw on the big toe of each of the creature’s two feet that he was convinced it was not a bird at all. Other than a bright red crest, its feathers were mostly a reddish brown with darker arrow-shaped markings, the pattern being most pronounced
on the head, elbows of the much smaller forearms, and along the long, stiff tail that shot out behind the creature, probably for balance, poised as it was for perpetual sprinting. Adam could envision it pouncing, biting at the neck of some poor unsuspecting person while the claws came around for the kill. Then the slasherclaw raised its head and gave a mournful hooting cry that was answered by a vibrant chorus, and Adam saw that it was not alone.
The slasherclaws hopped onto the large, bulbous roots and the rocky boulders that littered the ground, their heads bobbing in a fashion that reminded Adam of a turkey—a nearly man-sized turkey capable of ripping his guts out and having him for lunch. The slasherclaws had congregated in a loose circular formation, darting quickly here and there, lifting their heads in turn to give out their hooting cries. After a short while, Adam noticed a marked dimorphism in the creatures gathered below. Most of them were fairly drab in color, their tan feathers accented in blacks and rainforest leaf green. The ones doing the majority of the strutting and hooting had crests of feathers almost as long as their jaws and colored a bright red. The males—or at least Adam decided they were males—were craning necks up tall and raising crests in a battle of plumage. Only once did the display devolve into snapping, and even then it was only a brief lunge when the slightly smaller male edged in too close. As sharp teeth snapped inches from the skin of its neck, the slasherclaw gave a yelp and scrambled away, running back into the dubious safety of the root network with his crest flat against his neck.
“It’s a courtship ritual,” Xavier breathed softly. “We may be the first people to witness something like this.”
“The first people to witness it and live to tell the tale, you mean,” Adam said, unable to shake the nagging feeling he should be Instagramming the display. “That’s assuming of course we do live to tell the tale.”
“They’re blocking our way,” Darius said flatly. “We don’t want to ride through that.”
“Can’t we backtrack around them while they’re busy?” Adam suggested.
“I’m not sure,” Darius said. “We don’t know how long they’ll be here, and it will take several slow cycles of your ‘watch’ for us to go back. There are too many fallen trees here for my liking.”
With the traditional candle clocks not being practical, or more importantly, available, the Aergonites had been quick to take advantage of Adam’s kinetic watch to keep track of time and progress. They had already established that there tended to be six hours—or slow cycles—of Adam’s watch in which they could travel, allowing for two hours to break and set up camp to avoid the four hours of heavy rain that came nearly on the clock. Xavier and Esmeralda were particularly perplexed by the timepiece, especially since Adam kept insisting that the watch was not a magical artifact. One rest, Esmeralda insisted on checking it for magic, and had been sorely disappointed when her tests—which involved a discarded feather dipped in a pot of boiled water infused with what, to Adam, had been a collection of random leaves and seed pods—yielded no result.
“Of course, one should remember that many of the most powerful magics do not register to that field spell,” Xavier had remarked sardonically from the sidelines. “Perhaps it is hiding its aura from you.”
“You know, Xavier, you were never very funny as a child,” Esmeralda had said icily, “and you aren’t any more amusing as an adult.”
NOW ESMERALDA was looking down around the landscape with increased scrutiny. “Is it just me,” she asked, “or has anyone else noticed that the fallen trees look like they fell to unnatural causes?”
“What do you mean?” Xavier asked.
“Well, all the uprooted trees we found prior to yestersleep have been rotted through the core, or smothered by other plants, or struck by lightning or something.”
“Yes, what’s your point?”
“The fallen trees here were all broken. Some of them had their trunks snapped; some of them were perfectly healthy, other than being uprooted.”
“And almost all of them had deep gouges in their trunks and branches,” Duin said slowly.
“Exactly.”
“Wait, what are you suggesting?” Xavier asked.
“That someone drove us here,” Esmeralda said slowly. “To this specific tree above the courtship grounds of the slasherclaws.”
“Oh, come now,” Xavier scoffed. “Who could possibly have the power to do something like that?”
Adam and Duin exchanged a glance and bolted from the edge of the platform, rushing to load Zoul with his share of the provisions and their—or rather, Adam’s—personal luggage. Moments later, Darius and Esmeralda joined them.
“Seriously, what could—”
From behind them came a low, rumbling roar and the sound of huge wings beating somewhere out in the fog.
“Oh,” Xavier said softly and ran toward his mount.
“Backtrack?” Adam asked Darius as he passed the captain, holding two bedrolls.
“No,” Darius said curtly. “She knows where we are.”
“Besides,” Duin said from the far edge of the hut. “That’s where she’s coming from.”
Back along the line of trees they had traversed earlier, Adam could just make out a great dark shadow growing larger and larger along with the beating of those massive bat wings, blowing the post-rain fog toward them.
“Ride hard!” Darius cried, all thoughts of stealth forgotten. “Let’s hope the slasherclaws will be as surprised as we are.”
Duin reached Zoul about three steps before Adam did and hesitated.
“Get on!” Adam snapped, hefting Duin into the saddle. “You can drive just as well as I can, I’m sure.”
Scrambling up behind Duin, Adam only then realized the major problem—Duin wasn’t wearing the riding belt.
Cursing, he gripped the saddle horn with both hands as Zoul scuttled across the platform, nearly losing his balance as the great lizard descended headfirst down the tree. Then he all but squashed Duin against Zoul’s back and held on for dear life until he reached the almost level ground of the forest floor.
Captain Darius’s hope that the slasherclaws would be put off by the dragon Khalivibra’s appearance, looming through the trees wreathed in the smoke and flames from their overnight shelter, proved to be a futile one. The smaller feathered lizards stared at the five riders in curiosity for an all too brief moment, their crests rising and falling as they cocked their heads in eagle-like thought. Then the largest male bellowed a hoot with significantly more snarl to it, and the beasts rushed toward them.
Zoul responded with a dash of speed that just kept them clear of their hunters, although a cry off to the right indicated Darius had been less fortunate. Then there was a bolt of darkness as Xavier made a throwing motion, and the slasherclaw was writhing on the ground, yelping in pain as its body was wracked with magical energies. Darius spurred his mount onward, blood oozing from a gash on his thigh.
“Ride hard!” Darius cried as his mount shot forward, fear surely lending swiftness to its feet as much as the thumps of Darius’s heels in its sides.
Zoul was off and running, but Adam could see the slasherclaws keeping pace, two of them on either side, disappearing among trees and falling behind only to pop out of the root maze to trail them once more. For once, Zoul’s ability to literally run up the sheerest of surfaces was of little help. For every boulder scaled and every tangle of roots navigated, the feathered reptiles were either able to wriggle through or leap over, and in some cases Adam felt they must have leapt over six feet in the air, hitting the ground running in their relentless pursuit.
As they passed a narrow passage between two enormous tree trunks, Adam and Duin were treated to a demonstration of the slasherclaws’ abilities. Suddenly even the dim red light was being blocked out, and the feathered body of a large male was descending upon them, a leap from higher in the tree bringing him in for the kill. Adam cried out a warning and frantically ripped his sword free from its sheath across his back, trying to maintain his grip with his
knees and free hand. For the first time, he was grateful for the armor, its thick bulk suddenly becoming a bulwark against the sharp teeth and claws that landed just behind him. The animal snarled, and its breath was fetid and stank of carrion. Up close it looked more terrifying than before, a cruel cunning lighting its large reptilian eyes. It lunged at Adam’s back, and its yellowish teeth snapped just short of his head, small forearm claws raking at the backplate of his armor.
Half turning, Adam shoved hard at the slasherclaw, and would have sent it tumbling if its feet hadn’t been tangled in the netting covering their belongings and food. Arguably, however, that same netting had just saved his life, preventing the predator from latching on to his neck and bringing its wicked scything claws into play. Still, Adam knew the woven fibers wouldn’t be strong enough to hold the beast captive forever. As it worked one foot free, Adam swung his sword as hard as he dared, biting deep into the slasherclaw’s feathered shoulder and neck. The force of his blow toppled the beast backward, foot still caught and its body now being dragged alongside as Zoul struggled with the additional weight. Frantically, Adam hacked at the animal’s foot as well as he could, twisting across his torso as he tried to maintain his grip on Zoul.
However it wasn’t until Duin guided Zoul close to a rocky outcrop that the slasherclaw was torn away, the force of the impact also ripping a great section of the netting across Zoul’s back. As a good portion of their provisions tumbled to the ground behind them, Adam glanced back and saw the rest of the slasherclaw pack stopping to investigate the oilskin and forest fruits, as well as starting to devour their injured pack member. The weak, it seemed, were akin to food for a slasherclaw.
