by Brandon Mull
Uraza backed away slowly, her muscles quivering feverishly. Something was sapping her strength, weakening her with every passing moment. Now the Conquerors advanced, forming a ring with their spears pointing in at her. This was how tribes like the Vendani hunted lions, not a Great Beast like her. This was an insult.
“I am Uraza, undisputed queen of the grasslands,” she bellowed. “You will leave my lands, or I will kill every one of you.”
The leader of the Conquerors motioned, and the circle tightened. She was a tall, imposing woman, with teeth sharpened into points that matched the serpentine crest on her helmet and the lizard curling around her neck. “Be a good kitty, and lie down nice and easy,” she said.
Uraza roared and charged forward, but she was greeted by a cluster of spearpoints and was forced back. The poison-tipped weapons left several new wounds in her coat. She knew that a Great Beast’s body would adapt to this substance, but it would take time. That wouldn’t help her now. Her feline instincts told her that she didn’t have the strength to defeat this many. She turned to run, but they had her surrounded.
As her vision became blurry, the circle tightened. She gave a feeble roar and attempted to charge for the weakest point in the ring, but her legs buckled. The enemy advanced, spears lowered and dripping with the black poison.
She lashed out, but the more weapons pierced her, the more the burning grew, coursing through her legs and making her shoulder muscles spasm. She fell down into the grass, and struggled to stand again. Her legs refused to respond. She could do nothing but snap her jaws at the humans.
The last thing she saw before a curtain of darkness descended was the Conqueror woman’s crocodile grin as she advanced.
The floor shook unsteadily and was decorated with bars of light. Uraza drifted back to consciousness slowly as her body healed itself. She raised her head as her vision cleared, and saw the bars of a cage had cast the pattern on the floor. They were massive — each as thick as one of her forelegs.
She stretched and stood, barely able to extend to her full length in the confines of the cage. She pushed her head against the bars, testing their strength. The cage was held in a massive wagon, pulled by a team of a dozen oxen.
The Conqueror woman walked up alongside the wagon with her spirit animal, a foot-and-a-half-long tuatara lizard that wrapped around her neck. “Ah, the kitty is awake,” she said cheerfully.
Uraza growled. “Who are you? Who would dare to hold a Great Beast against her will?”
The woman smiled, revealing her pointed teeth. “I’m Samilia, the woman who will be queen of Nilo. And I can’t have any competition from you, can I?”
The impertinence of this woman was shocking. Did she not know who she was speaking to? Uraza threw herself against the bars with a snarl. The bars slammed back into her, sending her reeling. The wagon shook only slightly, and the bars were undamaged.
“Oh, don’t bother. I had this cage built especially for a big, nasty kitty like you.”
Uraza clawed at the door to the cage, but succeeded only in leaving tiny scratches in the metal and dulling her claws.
“You’re my ticket to owning all of Nilo, you know,” Samilia continued pleasantly, ignoring Uraza’s increasingly frenzied attempts at escape. “I used to be the leader of a small band of brigands in Zhong. Now the Reptile King has given me an army large enough to conquer this land and pacify it. And all he asks in return is that I deliver your talisman to him. With you out of the way, I’m sure my troops will have no problem scouring your territory to find the little trinket.”
Uraza raged, smashing herself against the bars again. “The people of Nilo will not accept this insult. They will not tolerate you capturing their Great Beast. I am Nilo.”
The woman just laughed. “We’ve eaten their livestock, burned their villages, and stolen their crops. And in all that time, you did nothing to help them. They curse you as much as they curse me, if not more. Did you know, at first the prisoners we captured threatened that you would come to their aid?” She shook her head. “But you never did, you bad kitty. So we don’t hear that much anymore.”
Uraza glared at the woman.
“But you don’t have to suffer. You don’t have to be part of this war. Just tell me where your talisman is, and once I have it, I’ll let you go. You see? There’s no reason we can’t be friends.”
Uraza snarled at her and turned away.
“Very well. I’ll just find it myself,” Samilia said with a shrug, then turned to walk to the other end of the caravan.
The wagon rolled along a dusty road, past the wreckage of war. The great cat watched through the bars as they passed encampments and lines of marching soldiers. As they caught sight of the caged leopard, many cheered. Uraza growled and hissed at them, but that only encouraged them.
They rolled past fields, barren and unsown. Past villages burned and destroyed. Past lines of prisoners, proud warriors who had been forced to surrender by the invading army. She saw the colors of many tribes, universally tattered and weary. Some looked at her with disappointment, some with despair, and some with contempt. Others simply looked past her, eyes dead and defeated.
That night, Uraza’s wagon was parked at the edge of a large encampment. They offered her no food or water, not that she would have accepted it anyway. A group of Conquerors stood guard, led by a large bald man with an eye patch.
Slowly, the camp fell silent as the Conquerors finished their meals and went into their tents. The moon rose, flooding the savanna with blue light. Uraza threw back her head and roared her fury into the night.
Uraza tried to pace, nervous energy overcoming her. But there wasn’t room even to move the length of her cage, and she had to make do with walking in circles. Her legs quivered impatiently. She should be running through the grasslands, hunting for her next meal. No leopard was meant to be caged, least of all a Great Beast.
It was well after midnight when Uraza turned around to hear shouts at the edge of her camp. Her eyes adjusted in the dark. A human would only have been able to make out vague shapes, but as Uraza’s eyes focused, she took in the whole scene.
The Vendani boy she had met just before she was captured was charging across the camp. The Conquerors were drawing their swords, but he was moving too fast. Not quite the speed of a leopard, but close. He was charging straight for her, but what was he doing? Humans. She admired his bravery, but he had the dumb loyalty of a dog, not the cunning of a cat.
The large one-eyed man stepped in the way, drawing a nasty-looking scimitar. Tembo stopped, glancing at Uraza. She turned her nose up and looked away from him.
“Stupid boy. You can’t defeat all of them,” she called out as he faced off with the large man.
Tembo simply grinned at her and raised an eyebrow. Then he threw the spear. It sliced into the large man, who stumbled back. He must not have expected that the boy wearing the green cloak would give up his only weapon. The bald man screamed in pain and fell to the ground.
As the other guards charged, Tembo danced to the side and started running again, back away from camp. A group of the Conquerors charged after the boy. Uraza watched as he reached the top of a hill, pulling away from the pursuit.
Uraza scraped her claws against the bars of the cage in frustration. If this boy thought he could kill an army of Conquerors one by one, he was more of a fool than she thought. Even as his pursuers disappeared on foot into the distance, another group was saddling up horses. A moment later they raced off into the night, urging their horses to go faster.
Uraza lay down in the cage. The Conqueror woman had been right about the Niloans not rising in her defense. And now there was nothing one foolhardy boy could do. Should she have done more to help them? Things had been simpler in the time before humans had spread to every corner of the continent.
The camp was in an uproar. The sound of the injured guard’s shouts as an
other Conqueror removed the spearhead filled the air. Uraza watched out of the corner of her eye as a small shadow detached from one of the tents and dodged through the crowd, making its way to the injured guard. While the bald man screamed, the shadow grabbed something from its belt.
The shadowy figure then zigzagged its way between the legs of the Conqueror soldiers.
Uraza turned to look directly at it. It was the goat thief’s monkey, Omika! The creature nimbly dodged past the men and jumped onto the wagon. In her teeth, she held a key ring.
Uraza stood, flexing her muscles. “Open it,” she demanded. The monkey squeaked back in reply.
Unseen by the Conquerors, Omika slid the key into the lock, and the cage door swung open. The leopard jumped out of the cage, sending any unfortunate Conquerors who happened to be nearby flying. With a few swats of her paws, she dispatched those who tried to fight her. The rest fled, sprinting for the relative safety of the camp.
Uraza stretched, savoring her freedom. Their poison would be useless now. She would tear this camp apart, and show them the folly of angering a Great Beast.
But the monkey jumped in her way. Omika squealed and tossed a handful of grass at her, then pointed at the savanna.
Uraza growled at the shrill little demon. “The boy. You want me to help him?” He might outrun the Conquerors who had initially chased him, but he would surely be run to ground by the mounted ones who followed.
For a moment she considered simply swallowing the insolent monkey whole, but surprised herself by circling around and changing course. The boy had risked his life to help her escape. And the Conquerors chasing him deserved her wrath just as much as the ones in the camp.
She turned and loped into the grasslands. Uraza was hunting again.
When Uraza caught up to Tembo, he was at the end of a ravine, in the rocky outcroppings between the grasslands and the veldt. She crept to the edge of the top, looking down on the humans and animals below. He was cornered by a group of armed Conquerors and their animals, mostly dingoes, emus, and other animals from Stetriol.
Tembo had somehow gotten hold of a spear and was backed up against the wall as the Conquerors advanced.
“Just give up, boy, and we won’t hurt you,” one of the Conquerors was saying.
“I’m tempted to make you the same offer,” Tembo answered. “But I don’t have time or patience to escort a bunch of prisoners around. I guess I’ll just have to kill you.” He hefted the spear threateningly.
The Conqueror laughed. “Brave boy, thinks he’s funny. Now he’s going to be a dead boy.”
The soldiers advanced, and Tembo fanned his spear in a wide arc, trying to hold them back. They pushed forward anyway. But as the first Conqueror swung at him, Uraza dropped to the floor of the ravine, laying the lead attacker out with one paw. The others drew back. The giant leopard roared, shaking the ravine with the sound.
“It’s the cat!” one of them yelled.
“Run for it!” another answered.
Within seconds, the Conquerors were running out of the ravine, armor clanking as they slammed into each other in their haste to escape.
“Thanks for the help,” Uraza growled to Tembo in a low voice, then turned to charge after the fleeing enemy.
“Don’t chase them. We don’t have time,” Tembo said.
Uraza turned back to him. “We? You helped me. I just helped you. We’re even.”
Tembo grinned. “Really? I stole you from my rivals. By the laws of the Vendani, you belong to me now.”
“I’m not one of your goats, boy,” Uraza growled, advancing on him.
“If I had done nothing,” Tembo continued, “I would be safely in the grass and you would be in a cage.”
Uraza gave him a hard stare.
“Fine,” Tembo said. “We can argue about how great a friend I am later. I was spying on the Conquerors all day, and I heard their plans. That woman with the filed teeth, Samilia, is leading a force into your hunting grounds. One of the elders told them where your talisman is hidden.”
“None of you know that,” Uraza answered, looking back out into the grasslands. “No human has ever laid eyes on my talisman.”
Tembo shrugged. “So no one knows it’s buried in the Red Orchard?”
Uraza turned back with a roar. “How do you know that?”
“Don’t blame me,” Tembo answered. “I just heard them talking. But we need to go now, in order to stop them. We have a better chance if we work together.”
Uraza simply laughed. “Stay out of my way, little warrior,” she rumbled, then leaped out of the ravine and disappeared into the night.
The giant leopard prowled under ancient red trees. She had been expecting to find soldiers, spirit animals, and tents — but the orchard was deserted. There was no prey here, but their signs and their musky scent were everywhere.
This had been her hunting ground since ancient times, and now it was desecrated. Trees were reduced to splintery stumps, chopped for firewood. Trenches had been dug for latrines, and the grasses were trampled by scores of boots.
Uraza raced through the orchard, heart beating faster with each step. When she reached the tallest tree, where her talisman was buried, she slowed. Someone was there.
She crept forward with the sort of grace that only a Great Cat could command. Then she stopped short.
Somehow, the pip-squeak boy had gotten there first. He stood underneath the branches of her favorite tree, staring at a hole in the ground.
“You!” she hissed. “How are you here?”
The little warrior gave her his obnoxious grin.
“A leopard, a gazelle, a zebra — you all run so fast. But you tire out. A Vendani warrior can run all day and all night, slow and steady. When we hunt, we chase until the prey just can’t run any farther.”
She advanced. “Where is the talisman?”
Tembo gestured at the hole in the ground. “If it was here, the Conquerors have it now. We’ll have to track them down.”
Uraza drew closer, her massive head dwarfing the boy’s small frame. “It’s my talisman, in my hunting grounds. Go fight your battles somewhere else, little warrior.”
Tembo shook his head, seemingly unconcerned with the enormous jaws inches from his face. “Really? What’s your plan, then? Defeat an entire battalion by yourself?”
“I am a hunter. They are prey,” Uraza answered, her voice low and full of menace. “They will regret their theft.”
“Great,” Tembo answered. “And while you’re doing that, I’ll be retrieving your talisman, which will be packed away in an iron wagon behind three locks. I saw it come off the ship last week.
“Don’t worry,” he said as she bared her fangs. “I’ll give it back to you immediately. I just need to make sure they don’t keep it.”
“And how do you expect to do that?”
The boy shrugged. “A goat thief who can pick the lock on a paddock or barn can steal an entire herd in a single night.” He leaned in with a conspiratorial air. “Before the Devourer attacked, my family had the largest herd on the savanna.”
Uraza stared out into the fading light of the evening, where a herd of water buffalo was lazily grazing. Was she really going to accept help from this little human? She sat back on her haunches and sighed.
“Very well. But if you betray me . . .”
“You’ll snack on my entrails? I’ll warn you, I might be a bit stringy,” Tembo answered, nonchalantly leaning in to examine the row of fangs still bared in front of his face.
They tracked the wagon trail through the night and into the next day, Tembo jogging easily alongside the Great Beast’s long strides. Omika perched on the spear warrior’s shoulders, chattering her wordless encouragement. From the freshness of the tracks and scents, Uraza could tell that they were gaining.
Evening fell as they reached the top
of a rise. They found the wagon in a hollow below, empty and abandoned. Tembo knelt as Omika leaped around, poking and prodding.
“They camped here last night,” the boy said. “And they left the wagon behind to move faster. They must have gotten word that we were free and likely hunting them.”
Uraza nodded as she sniffed the ground. “Then they split into four groups, each going a different direction.” She left unspoken the real problem: Even if they separated and she somehow trusted Tembo, they still would have no guarantee of catching up to the talisman.
They examined the tracks in silence for several minutes, while Omika gleefully raided a bag of feed left behind in the wagon.
Tembo stood up, looking into the distance. “They brought the talisman this way.”
Uraza looked at him disdainfully. “How could you possibly know that? Any of these two-legged thieves could be carrying it!”
Tembo clucked at her with a scolding air. “Don’t be so hard on thieves. We’re not all that bad.”
Uraza just snarled irritably, violet eyes flashing.
“Their leader, that woman Samilia,” Tembo said. “I’d bet that she would keep the talisman herself. She has a great lizard for a spirit animal — her men called it a tuatara — and this group has a set of lizard tracks next to it. It must be hers.”
Tembo started off following the set of tracks, with Omika trailing along, jabbering at him in her monkey nonsense. Tembo looked at her and nodded, as if he could understand the monkey’s noises. Humans might speak with words, but Uraza had often thought that the sounds that came out of their mouths were equally meaningless.
As they drew farther away, Uraza looked around the camp. Then, with a noncommittal grunt, she lowered her head and padded along after him.
That night they stopped, and Tembo collected branches and built a small fire.
Uraza sat on her haunches and watched him quizzically as he spun a stick in a pile of tinder.
“That will attract attention,” Uraza said. “If whatever you’re doing to the poor stick actually works at all.”
