David: Savakerrva, Book 1

by L. Brown

  Edges curling, going dark, the note flashed into flame.

  Garth saw it, but the tiny fire couldn’t compete, was simply overwhelmed by the stomp, screech, and smash. Regretting he tried, wishing he still held the most wonderful words ever writ, he then noticed the grease in the bones sizzle through cracks; then watched as, one-by-one, they began to ignite.

  The juveniles perceived it first, they’d never seen a creature so bright. Nor, it seemed, had they ever smelled smoke. And neither had Kong, so pausing his stomp and wrinkling his nose, he turned, nearly entranced, to the birth of this unusual prey. But as the bone fire grew, so did the smoke, and though Garth tried to play dead, he couldn’t help it, he coughed.

  Its fascination disturbed, Kong bellowed at the boy, then swiped at the smoke. But instead of the usual feel of bloody flesh, the Beast felt nothing at all. So that confused, made it think hard, for whatever this new invader, golechs had little experience in losing to prey, not in the wild and certainly not here, not before juveniles deep in its den. But like most alpha males long on pride and short on sense, Kong welled up with rage, then simply stomped.

  But thick-leather’d soles or not, the grease-sizzled fire not only burned, it stuck.

  Leaving the flame with an agonized howl, Kong launched back to the ceiling, to the height that always protected and always would. Yet as the fire below devoured more fuel, as flame spit from bones to hides to the fat-slabbed flanks of still-living kills, the smoke also spread, and to the consternation of every widening eye, the swirl grew from murky curiosity to roiling black threat.

  Astonished by it, reeling from the speed of the fire creature’s growth, Kong raged from his overhead perch. But catching some smoke, he sputtered a bit; a noise, to juvenile ears, associated not with strength, but sickness, a sign of the weak. Suddenly off-balance, the juveniles backed off, shied away from the three-headed horror of light and heat and choking black smoke.

  Garth didn’t move, just stared at Kong while smoke coiled and constricted and abraded his eyes. He watched the Beast try to hold on, but its claws started to slip, and when they lost their grip, Kong howled from above and crashed down beside. But instead of the boy who conjured the monster, the Beast challenged the thing itself; and charging headlong, it attacked the flame.

  Kicking and clawing, stomping the dragon rising up from the bones, Kong the Beast unleashed on the ghostly hot bite. But the monster eluded, slipped through his claws, and though Kong did stomp out some fire, his fury and flail just scattered more. Immune to all chomp and slash, the flame only grew, and as grease from the U-bones popped and spit, sticky hot shards splattered Kong’s chest.

  The golech replied with an unholy howl. Fearing the Beast more than a burn, Garth backed through the smoke now coal-powder thick. He could stand the heat, at least for now, but the flame now spreading moved too fast, and as Garth stumbled without intuition or sight, he became as senseless as Kong.

  Or perhaps not quite as much, for as a bull alpha Beast, Kong had never experienced retreat, didn’t quite know how. So he stood his ground, just raged at the monster now raking his hide and thrashed and battled like never before. But as the grease fire billowed and nerve endings cooked, an inconceivable sense took hold, the intuition of defeat. An enflaming awareness even worse than the burn, it made Kong mad for victory, for something more easily killed.

  Garth crawled through smoke. Gripping his blades and slashing ahead, he hunted the exit, that gap in the rock. But blinded and choked by the billowing swirl, he found only rock and carcass, creatures ablaze and some still alive.

  Two smoking feet smashed down beside. Needing a kill, some countering win, Kong also hoped, in some dim golech way, that if it tore Garth apart, the fire might die as well. Time to prevail, reclaim his throne, so just like every final strike, the Beast readied its howl with a deep inhale.

  But instead of air, it sucked only smoke. Convulsed and clawed by the dragon’s black breath, Kong staggered and wheezed over its scared, easy prey. A prey, the golech perceived, now swinging the blades straight for its chest.

  Stabbing without pause, ripping and driving with a savagery unknown, Garth snapped to a state as primal as Kong, just slashed and attacked until the seven-foot Beast teetered and crashed and no longer stirred.

  But Garth fell as well. Rasping and hacking, chasing the air least foul, he resumed his crawl.

  Then stopped.

  Go! ordered his rational side. Get out!

  He had to go, no choice, and if he didn’t leave now, he’d leave like Kong. But if he left without it and somehow escaped? All of this, everything would have been for naught. And for the rest of his life, no matter how short, he’d bear the guilt of three more deaths.

  Excluding Logaht, maybe just two, but then it didn’t matter, he’d already turned, was now going back. Then pausing at Kong, he sawed into the Beast’s bull-muscled neck.

  Trying to ignore the quiver, the twitch of muscle and shiver of hide, Garth knew this golech would, like every monstrous cliché, roar back to life. So returning to savagery, to his own beast within, he hacked and sliced until finally, it fell.

  Coughing hot blood with his throat burning up, Garth grabbed the great head, then crawled for the exit, where he knew it must be.

  He slammed into stone, a solid cave wall. And now, you’ll die, sighed his same rational side.

  Groping with his blades, he clattered left and right. But he only found rock, so not just asphyxiated, he was now also lost, and though both facts together prompted a rational just curl up, he railed at his body to get up and run!

  But nothing responded, no muscle moved, so here it would end and here he would die. He’d failed Eylahn, Dahkaa and Ioso and Logaht as well. And Retta Dahz?

  You failed that, too.

  Then, he moved. Not on his own, something pulled, and as it dragged him along, he knew it was a juvenile, an offspring seeking revenge.

  Smoke thinned, hot air cooled. Sensing transition, Garth felt the drag over bones yield to the smooth cool of stone. A sooty veil persisted, but enough vision returned to confirm he’d just come through the exit, that slaughterhouse gap. But as for what dragged, had pulled him out?

  Wobbly and emaciated, a gagging skeletal wreck, the black vaalik released its grip and collapsed. Then stared, with half-lidded eyes, straight overhead.

  A smoldering rainbow of orange-red hides, six juvenile Beasts hissed and tensed with imminent pounce. And when they did, Garth knew they’d finish what Kong had begun, for he couldn’t fight back, could barely lift his blades.

  But could he lift something else? Knowing he must, he summoned all nerve — “Go!” he rasped — then hoisted his prize by its horns.

  Hissing sputtered. Their invincible Kong reduced to a head, the gang of six bristled from orange and red to dull, muted browns.

  Sifting his thoughts on the black sand beach, Dahkaa paced near a tent. The only shelter around, it could have reminded of Kazakhstan, some shepherd’s yurt on the south Asian steppe. But Dahkaa saw only the great arched cave, its dead, dark mouth lit by two dying flames.

  “They laugh,” a gruff voice muttered. Ale sloshing his stein, the General of Ice approached.

  “All of them,” the General slurred, weaving as he nodded to the campfires behind. “Our brothers say you’re either foolish or touched, a brave Zahlen gone mad. Or such is the talk.” Pausing to sip, he then peered through his mask. “So tell me, Dahkaa, after all that’s happened — after what has not — you still believe it was him? The boy?”

  Dahkaa showed nothing, just held his stare. “I believe, General, in the Promise.”

  “Hah!” snorted the General, sipping again and shaking his head. “So did I, brother, so did I once and so did we all. But after all I’ve seen and what’s soon to come? At this inglorious end, I believe, brother, in only my ale.” And with that, he toasted the cave and drained his stein.

  “Time!” shouted someone else, and by Dahkaa’s sigh, he knew the source.

/>   Trailed by warriors, by Bengal and ten more, the General of Blood strode quickly, kicked up sand with enthusiastic steps. “His time, Dahkaa! Shall we check your light?”

  Replying in silence, Dahkaa opened his hand. And though he hoped for a miracle, the necklace vial held only darkness, the lantern fly was still.

  “I’m sorry,” Bengal offered, his hands on his blades. “But by Law, we have no choice.”

  “The choice,” mocked Blood, “was no one but Dahkaa’s. Did we choose his friends?”

  Sitting alone, Logaht gnawed fish by a fire.

  “And his woman,” Blood continued, “was she also our choice? And where is the black-eyes,” he demanded, now eyeing the tent. “Does she actually violate the cloth, our Retta Dahz roof?”

  “She was tired,” Dahkaa sighed, barely able to speak. “And, so am—?”

  An uvah horn wailed. Startled by it, then looking up, Dahkaa turned toward the cave.

  Yet the General of Blood turned instead toward the lookout, to the warrior blowing the horn. “Who mocks Retta Dahz, you dare sound the call?”

  The lookout ignored. Then another sounded his horn, and perhaps it was the noise, the summed vibrations shaking the glass, but the fly in Dahkaa’s vial not only buzzed, it blazed a red flash.

  A third uvah joined. Warriors blinked off their stupor and looked toward the cave, but as Logaht stopped chewing and turned the same way, the fish in his mouth fell to the sand.

  X-blades glinting, a stagger from the dark, Garth emerged with the head of a Beast.

  The Blood General’s eyes went bright with bulge. But then he peered at something else, at the scrawny black vaalik hobbling behind.

  “Enough!” shouted Ioso, storming from the tent. “I’d rather die than hear your horns, just kill me now!” But following the stares, she said no more, just stopped in her barefoot tracks.

  “Sah—?” Choking on the word, tears streaking his scars, Dahkaa grabbed Bengal’s X-blades, then hoisted them high. “Savakerrva!” he roared.

  And though the X-blades crackled and his shout was loud, though drums hammered and more horns awoke and a thousand Zahlen warriors thundered Mo-tahhh! Garth heard only thoughts, the unsettled consensus that — whoever he was when he entered, someone else had come out.

  Then leaving the Cave and passing the torches, the suddenly uproarious flames, he collapsed.

  The End — of Book 1

  Want to know what happens next? For a free and unpublished preview of Chapter 1 of “David: Savakerrva, Book 2” please visit our website at savakerrva.com. Your offer page will appear once you “Enter the River.”