by Dragon Lance
Kukul rode after him, leaving Hoten with Beramun. Looking down, the older man said, “You’ve caught the eye of our chief, girl. Mind what you do, and you might come out of this far better than you imagine.”
Beramun, who had been staring at the ground in embarrassment, raised her eyes to meet the raider’s. Though she didn’t understand just what the raider chief had in mind for her, she thought it had to be better than slavery or death.
*
The sun went down, and still they squatted on the east bank of the river. The bored laxity of their guards encouraged some prisoners to think of escape. The younger men on the other leash worked their way into the midst of Beramun’s group. A red-haired fellow Beramun’s age pushed in shoulder to shoulder with her and Roki.
“Name’s Opet,” he whispered. “The raiders caught my family southeast of here, in Khar land. They’re heading for their own camp, so we better escape if we want to live. Are you with me?”
Roki and Beramun exchanged looks. “Yes,” they said in unison.
“Good.” He slipped a hand under his buckskin shirt and drew out a small, sharp chip of obsidian. “When they settle for the night, we’ll cut our bonds and go.”
“Is that your only plan?” Roki said, shaking her head. “You won’t get six steps before they spit you like a partridge!”
“We’re not gonna run,” said Opet, eyes shining. “We’ll jump in the river. They won’t be able to use their horses to catch us. Can you swim?”
“Yes!” said Beramun, feeling a surge of hope. Roki’s wide shoulders slumped.
“I can’t swim,” she muttered. “I’m probably not the only one here who can’t.”
Beramun clasped the downcast woman’s hand. “I’ll help you!”
Roki shook her head. “Have you seen that current? Your ancestors will bless you if you manage to make it across by yourself!”
Opet frowned. “We have to try. The raiders are waiting for something – maybe another band to join them. If we don’t act soon, we’ll likely be surrounded by even more of them.”
Roki’s eyes flickered between their captors and the racing river. At last she nodded. “I’ll try. If it’s the will of the Great Spirits, I’ll make it across.”
Word of the plan passed among the prisoners. Opet’s sharp black stone was likewise passed from hand to hand. On his advice, the rawhide ropes were cut just to the point of breaking. At the right moment, all the captives had to do was snap the last bit of thong and race to the river. As Roki had feared, some of the prisoners could not swim, but all vowed to chance death by drowning rather than face whatever fate the raiders intended for them.
Raiders moved among them at sundown, bringing water and evil-smelling jerky for a meager meal. The captives submitted meekly to the jeers and kicks of the raiders, biding their time till the planned escape.
Time seemed to crawl. Many of the weary captives fell asleep, as did quite a few of the raiders. Lutar, the red moon, rose from its resting place and cast a sanguinary light over the plain. All was still. Even the spring crickets were silent.
Opet crept up to Beramun and tugged at her elbow. “Time to go!” he hissed. His hands were free, and with a sharp tug, he broke the weakened thong around Beramun’s wrists.
Quietly, the prisoners stirred their sleeping comrades. No more than twenty paces separated them from the rushing water. Beramun gathered her feet under her, poised to flee.
Opet slapped her on the back, and she took off like a rabbit, sprinting down the stony riverbank. The time for stealth was over. Her footfalls and those of her fleeing comrades were loud in the quiet night.
The noise roused the raiders. Some tried to mount their horses while still weighed down by sleep and fell heavily to the ground. Zannian, barefoot and bareheaded, shouted orders as he wrestled with his nervous gray stallion.
Beramun reached the water first, with Opet close behind. She dived in, surfaced, and waved for Roki to follow. “Come on!” she cried.
Roki hesitated only a moment before fear of her captors overcame her terror of water, and she charged into the river. She floundered close enough for Beramun to grab the back of her shirt. Swimming out from the shallows, the two women were hit by the rush of the current. Roki panicked, pounding the water with her feet. Beramun had no breath to spare for soothing words. Tightening her grip on Roki’s clothing, Beramun crawled against the powerful rush of the river.
The older woman calmed when she realized she wasn’t drowning. Also heartening was the sight of mounted raiders trying but failing to urge their horses into the river. The animals would not advance beyond the firm footing in the shallows, so all the raiders could do was hurl spears at the fleeing captives. The long weapons made poor projectiles and fell short of the swimming prisoners.
All at once the night sky blossomed with an eerie green light. Beramun slung wet hair from her eyes and saw that a pine copse on the far shore had burst into flames. She continued her desperate swim, certain her eyes were deceiving her. How could flames be green?
Without warning, Beramun slowed her strokes, and Roki promptly sank beneath the surface.
Rising again, the older woman sputtered, “What are you doing?”
“Look there!” Beramun cried, treading hard to keep her head above water. She stared with wide-eyed terror at the western shore.
Hovering in the air above the burning trees was a huge, winged creature, many times the size of the largest horse or ox. Its long, skin-covered wings moved up and down in broad strokes, fanning the green flames consuming the pine copse. Four muscular limbs dangled beneath the creature, and a long, serpentine tail balanced an equally sinuous neck.
“What is it?” Beramun cried in horror. “What is it?”
Roki clung to her, eyes fastened on the fantastic creature. “Stormbird!” she replied.
The monster alighted on the riverbank. Shouts went up from the assembled raiders, and Beramun wondered if Zan’s men would fight the gigantic creature or flee.
Opet and some of the stronger swimmers were nearly to the other side. They too had seen the stormbird and were trying to give it wide berth. The creature reared up on its hind legs and waded into the water. It struck as swiftly as a viper. Raising its head again, it held a man trapped in its jaws.
The sight was too much for Beramun, and she panicked. Seeing this inconceivable monster killing a fellow plainsman struck terror into her heart. When she froze, the current rolled her and Roki over until they were both choking for air. Once, when she surfaced, Beramun saw the stormbird transfer the screaming man from its jaws to one taloned claw, then its head darted down and seized another man.
A sandbar in midstream rushed up, and Roki managed to plant her feet, stopping their headlong rush. They clung to the sandbar and watched in terrified disbelief as the monster crushed a man in each claw, then dropped the bodies in order to capture two more screaming victims.
Upstream, Opet and a few others gained the shore out of reach of the stormbird, but they weren’t safe from its wrath. The creature opened toothy jaws wide and, with a roar greater than a hundred panthers combined, expelled a stream of green vapor from its throat. The cloud swallowed the escaping plainsmen. Some dropped where they stood. Others stumbled forward a few steps then collapsed, writhing in agony. Ten men soon lay dead.
Only Roki and Beramun remained in the river. Over the noise of rushing water they heard Zannian yell, “Come back, you women! You can’t get away!”
“We must return,” Roki said, her chattering teeth not hiding the bitterness of her words. “Better those two-legged beasts than the stormbird!”
Beramun, nearly fainting from exhaustion, didn’t move. “I don’t think I can make it to either side.”
Roki hugged her friend closely for both warmth and comfort as the stormbird dropped onto all fours and prowled down the bank toward them. When it was opposite their position on the sandbar, it halted. Roki’s arms tightened convulsively on Beramun.
“It’s comi
ng!” the older woman gasped. “Spirits, save us! It’s coming!”
The creature did indeed rise up on its hind legs and spread its wings, but it did not take to the sky. Instead, it brought its foreclaws together, talon to talon, and slowly furled its wings tight to its back.
Before Roki’s fear-filled eyes, the river calmed. The current slowed to a gentle flow. When the stormbird pulled its claws apart, a channel opened in the water, growing deeper and wider as it approached the sand spit. Water receded from the sandbar, leaving a walkable passage in the raging river.
“What’s happening?” asked Beramun groggily, trying to lift her head.
Roki swallowed hard. “The monster is parting the river!”
Soon there was a dry channel as wide as four horses abreast. Zannian led his men into this trough without fear or haste. By the time he reached the sandbar, Roki had pulled Beramun to her feet. The two women stood waiting for him.
The raider chief gestured, and Hoten appeared with new bonds. This time the raiders not only bound their wrists, but hobbled the women’s ankles as well. Unable to take more than short, shuffling steps, Roki and Beramun made their way down the sandbar to stand miserably beside Zannian’s horse. Roki was still supporting the younger woman, and Beramun’s violent shivering shook them both.
Zannian’s eyes narrowed. Reaching behind, he pulled out his bedroll – a coarse, horsehair blanket – and dropped it across Beramun’s shoulders. Thumping his bare heels against his mount’s sides, he rode on.
Beramun stared after him in surprise. “Why did he do that?” she asked as they pulled the rough blanket around themselves.
Roki gave her a disbelieving look that slowly changed to sympathy. “You don’t know, do you?” she said gently. “You’re a good-looking girl, Beramun. Beware of him, especially when he’s kind to you.”
The surviving captives came shuffling toward them, hobbled and chastened. Beramun and Roki fell in at the back of the line.
When they reached the west bank, the prisoners were ordered to stop and forced to kneel in the cold mud. The stormbird, near enough they could smell the lingering stench of its poisonous breath, broke the spell on the river with a twitch of its scaly shoulders. Water crashed back into the trough and resumed its course.
A common tremble ran through the captives, now under the black eyes of the stormbird. Zan and his men didn’t seem afraid of it. In fact, the young chief rode up to the beast and saluted with his spear.
“Hail, Master!” he exclaimed. “Your arrival was well timed.”
“Lucky for you,” intoned the monster in a rasping but surprisingly humanlike voice.
“We would’ve caught them again,” Zan said. “Not as easily as you, great Master, but we would have. We thank you.”
While Zan reformed his men, the stormbird gazed down on the cowering captives.
“Why do you rodents try so hard to escape?” it asked, tail tip switching back and forth. When no one dared answer, the monster seized a captive plainsman. The man was bound to the next prisoner, and he to the next, and so on, so the entire line of terrified captives was dragged aloft.
The man in the taloned claw screamed piteously. His tormentor looked at him with the glee of a child holding a captured beetle.
“Why do you risk death to escape?” rasped the monster, shaking the man. The fellow’s head snapped back and forth. “Why, little beast?”
“To b-be f-free!” the man blubbered.
The stormbird tossed its head toward the empty plain. “You’re not free out there. You must hunt and scrounge and fight every day to keep the breath in your flimsy little bodies. How does that make you free, eh?”
“Because we go where we will!”
The words were torn from Beramun’s lips by a surge of anger. That anger changed to fear as the monster dropped the terrified man and thrust its reptilian face to within an arm’s length of her own.
“And where do you go?” the creature asked, showing entirely too many ridged yellow fangs.
The hot, stinking breath on her face made her sick. “Wherever —” It came out so faintly, she had to clear her throat and begin again. “Wherever the Great Spirits guide us.”
“Spirits? Ha! Who are these spirits?”
Why had she spoken? Beramun wondered miserably, terror welling up inside her. Yet the stormbird expected an answer, so she stuttered, “They are th-the makers of all things – the s-sun, the moons, the plants, and the beasts of plain and forest.”
“And I?” said the hideous creature, its face coming even closer to hers. “Was I made by your Great Spirits?”
“Yes,” she said faintly, her legs wavering like grass in a strong wind.
The black, slit-pupiled eyes widened. The monster threw back its head and roared. It took Beramun a heart-wrenching moment to realize the beast was laughing. Curiously, this display of mirth made the raiders draw together, anxiety evident on all their faces.
“Pretentious vermin!” the stormbird bellowed. “No one made the dragons! We were born from Chaos, forged of fire and fury! The world is ours, and you worthless insects are merely pests to be tolerated or exterminated as we see fit.”
The monster stretched up to its full height. “I am your master now. I am Sthenn, the Wakeful One, the Shadow Who Does Not Sleep, called Greengall, Deathbringer, and the Terror of Night. You live by my whim alone, and my whim is that you serve me. Is that clear, vermin?”
Zannian rode up, his skull-topped hood propped under one arm. “Patience, Master,” he said, an edge in his voice. “They all struggle at first. They wouldn’t be plainsmen if they didn’t try to escape, but they’ll give no more trouble, I promise you.”
Sthenn gazed down at the mounted man for a long moment, and his angry posture relaxed.
“More and more,” he said, “I understand Duranix’s interest in humans. Such amusing, infuriating creatures. It will be delightful to discover whose are best – mine or his.”
Beramun understood none of this, but seeing the stormbird’s anger fade helped her own fear subside, and her heart slowly resumed a normal beat. When Sthenn had reared up, she thought her life was over. Fortunately, the great beast was easily distracted, as Zannian’s intervention proved.
She looked again at the youthful chief as he got his band moving again. Thief and killer he was, but he was brave, facing the dragon’s rage like that. In some savage way, he might even be honorable.
Drawing the borrowed blanket close around her shoulders, Beramun hobbled along with the rest of the captives. She did not notice Roki frowning at her, nor did she remember the older woman’s warning about being wary of kindness from her human captor.
Chapter 3
The sun shone several days, then the clouds that had been lurking on the mountaintops like a pack of gray wolves swept down into the Valley of the Falls. A damp mist clung to every surface in Yala-tene, and when the feeble sun set, the dew turned to ice.
Repairs on the foundry came to stop. Stone blocks grew too slick to handle safely, and visibility fell to just a few paces. Amero and his workmen tried to carry on, but the cold made their fingers stiff and clumsy, so Amero called a halt, dismissing the men with a sigh. He soon stood alone in his ruined workshop.
Lately life was so full of delays. None of his recent projects had come to fruition. The town wall, though well advanced, should have been finished a year ago, and his bronze experiments could not resume until the foundry was repaired.
When he was younger, it seemed he had all the time in the world to solve the questions that surrounded him. Now there was little time for anything but daily work.
Shaking off his gloom, Amero resolved to visit Unar, the man whose eye had been injured when the furnace blew apart. He left the shattered building and stepped out into the frosty night.
Finding a house in the warren of streets wasn’t easy, even on a bright, sunny day. To identify themselves, most householders painted their family’s totem symbol on their doors. Amero came at last t
o the door with the hook-billed turtle and knocked on the worn cedar panel.
The door opened. Highlighted by fire was a face he knew well. It was Unar’s widowed sister, Lyopi. She held a flaming brand.
“Amero,” she said. She was one of the few people in the village who called him by his given name.
“I’ve come to see Unar.”
“He’s sleeping, but you’re welcome.” Lyopi stood aside, and Amero entered the warm interior of the house.
The ground floor was a single large room, as in most houses in Yala-tene. A dull red fire crackled on the hearth. As Lyopi dropped the burning stick onto the fire, Amero saw Unar was propped on a heap of furs, a soft willow poultice on his injured eye.
“How is he?” Amero whispered.
“The eye is lost,” Lyopi replied. “Old Memmet the healer removed the stone chip, but could do nothing for his eye.”
He took her hand and squeezed it gently. “I’m sorry. Better it should be my eye.”
“Don’t say foolish things.”
She pulled free of his grasp and moved to the dark periphery of the room. Without a word, Amero followed.
Lyopi seated herself on a stool by the wall. Not seeing another chair, he sat on the floor at her feet.
For almost a year, Amero and Lyopi had been together, as intimate as mates but still undeclared to the rest of the village. Some gossips believed he was taking advantage of a lonely widow, but in fact, it was Lyopi’s choice that they remain apart. By custom, to be Amero’s mate, she would have to live in his house and give back her first mate’s property to his kinsmen. Because Lyopi did not want to relinquish her home, she and Amero remained friends and occasional lovers – a situation that suited her fine and Amero found tolerable.
She pulled the thick, loose braid of her chestnut hair over her shoulder and leaned back against the stone wall. Her brown eyes, usually so warm and full of life, were dull as they regarded her injured brother.
The silence stretched for several long seconds, until Amero asked, “Why so sad, Lyopi? Unar’s strong. He’ll live.”
