by R J Theodore
It sounded more ominous within the trees than it ever had from the safety of the docks. Talis tried to imagine getting Dug up off the ground and on the move again. Her limbs protested that they did not remember how such things should happen. Where would they go, anyway?
Another noise joined the din, at first more faint until Talis became aware of it. Sophie’s voice, calling her name. Then Tisker’s. The tocks’ calls ceased as if they, too, were listening for the sound.
“Well, we made it halfway, anyway.” Talis fetched the grapple cannon back out from the bag she’d just packed it into and loaded its last canister.
“Get up, Dug. Sitting here, we’re a plated meal, and I’m pretty sure the way I smell is just ringing the dinner bell to bring them in.”
As he stirred, grumbled, and rolled onto his knees, she aimed the cannon up into the tree above them. It fired with the same awful percussive blast as before, and Talis worked her jaw, mourning the loss of her hearing that had just started to return. The grapple held, and she waited to learn who would follow the sound. Or who would reach her, first.
Dug held a hand up. “Something is moving toward us.”
She loaned him her forearm to pull himself up, and she almost collapsed against his weight. She was exhausted. She didn’t have another escape in her—she didn’t think.
“The grapple’s hooked in those trees if we need it.” She’d tried to keep her voice low, but Dug hushed her with a finger held next to his head. Clearly, she didn’t know how loud anything was with the five-times-cursed ringing in her ears.
He took a tentative step in the direction the sound must have been coming from, then stiffened, tilted his head, and took a step back. He reached out as if to shield her behind him. As if he wasn’t the one who had just been stabbed and vulnerable for most of the evening.
“Up, now, into the trees.”
She slipped her arm into the cannon’s elbow strap, seized him from behind, and triggered the winch. She twisted as they were yanked backward and up, trying to take the brunt of the impact as they slammed into the tree. Dug hissed in pain, and she bit her lip, tasting blood. Her neck, shoulders, and wrist burned from the abuse. The winch above spun still, whining, but they rose no farther.
“You still with me?”
Dug coughed, which sounded as though it came through water. “It would seem.”
“Did you see what was out there?”
He shook his head, and his feathers and hair tickled her nose. “It should be below us if you did not frighten it off.”
He hooked a leg over a nearby branch and got his weight out of her arms. Talis followed and, straddling the tree limb, unclipped herself. The winch’s strained sound relaxed as the cannon accelerated again and zoomed higher into the ancient tree.
Talis shook her head as they watched it go. “Not sure it wouldn’t have given out on the way back down again, but I would have liked to give it a try.”
“Talis, look.” Dug was watching the ground.
Sophie and Tisker were scrambling at the base of their tree. As she watched, they looked up, spotted them, and fired their grapple cannons to make the same retreat from whatever had them looking back over their shoulders.
Talis put the last of her energy into a wry smile. “Glad you could join us. Now we’re all in a tree.”
“Did you see those things?” Sophie struggled to speak around her breathless panting.
Dug shook his head. “It seems that you did?”
“She wanted to pet one, at first.”
Sophie elbowed Tisker, making him tilt on the branch he’d mounted until he had to catch himself by grasping her arm. “I just said they were adorable. I wasn’t going to pet them. Anyway, they started howling and spear-shaking soon as they saw us.”
“How—you’re talking about the tocks? They have spears?”
“Aye, Cap, and face paint and jewelry and armor. We thought you’ve seen ’em before?”
Talis shook her head and leaned over to look below again, past their dangling feet. It was farther to the ground than the drop from the shafts belowground would have been. “Only heard their packs howling at each other from a distance.”
“I believe they are getting closer. Perhaps we should be quiet.”
“Do you think they know we’re up here?” Sophie leaned forward until she was lying flat on her stomach, knees locked around her branch and chin resting on her folded arms as she watched the ground.
The cries increased in pitch as a flurry of shapes ran past the tree, jumping and launching themselves over the large roots covering the ground below. The motion was fast, too fast to count individual lizards or judge their size. But it had to be the tocks.
“Apparently not.” Dug shot Talis a look, but her ears seemed to be working, and she was fairly certain she had figured out how to speak quietly again.
Then another lizard trailed the others, its movements more deliberate and independent of the pack’s pacing. It weaved its head from side to side over the ground. Talis knew a tracker’s methods when she saw them.
It reached the place where the crew’s boots had last touched the earth, then looked straight up at them. Without hesitation, it let out a rasping squawk, then stood expectantly beneath them as its companions circled back around to join it.
“They can’t climb, I hope.”
“Shh, Tisker, you’ll give them ideas.”
There were a dozen or so of the therapods, each armed with a crude spear or cudgel made from sticks and rough-hewn stones, their faces streaked with powdery white and stained with purple beneath vine and feather crowns. They nipped at each other’s heels or hindquarters, each trying to reach the spot where their scout read the crew’s scents. Even from as high as Talis was, she could hear the nasal breathing, in short puffs, as they lowered open mouths to the ground and pushed their noses into the loam and moss at the base of the tree.
In an eerie, synchronized movement, the entire group looked up, directly at them. The one with the largest leaf-and-feather crown sounded a sharp cry, and the rest chirruped in response. Then they ran off, back the way they’d come. The tracker stayed behind and began to pace around the trunk.
“Now what’s it doing?” Tisker asked Sophie as though she were an expert in tocks just because she thought they were adorable.
“Whatever it is, I don’t think we should stay here.”
The remaining tock began pounding a strange rhythm on the ground with the butt of its staff, then paused to scrape the sharp tip of it along the tree trunk. Around and around the tree, again and again,until Talis could see a line appearing in the chipped tree-bark and scored heartwood.
“Perhaps we should go before its allies return.”
Talis nodded to Dug. “Agreed. Sophie, I’ll take that spare grapple cannon, please. Ours is up higher in the tree somewhere, and we just about stripped its gears.”
Sophie pushed herself upright and slid the spare cannon off her back. “Sure, Captain. Guess it wasn’t rated for that much weight after all, huh.”
“I wouldn’t say that, but we put it through three out of five hells to get to this point. You did good, Soph.”
That earned Talis a beaming smile as Sophie handed it over. “So, who drops first?”
“Can I trust you to cut the thing down instead of hugging it?”
Sophie stuck her tongue out, then produced one of the kitchen knives from her bag. “Stuffed and mounted would be a lot easier to hug, Captain.”
“That’s my girl.”
Sophie reached back out to hook her arm through her cannon’s elbow brace and propped her feet against the tree trunk with her finger poised over the winch’s control pin. She nodded to Talis, took a deep breath, and started to descend, reeling herself out cautiously a few lengths at a time. The lizard below stopped its circling, but not to look up at the new sounds. It bark
ed a few short grunts, which were answered almost immediately by a distant—but not as distant as Talis would have liked—matching call.
“Sophie! Get back up here!”
Sophie was about a third of the way back down to the ground, but that just meant she could see the approaching tocks, and her hand was already moving to reverse the winch without need for her captain’s encouragement.
“There are a lot more of them now, Captain!” She reached level with their perches again and landed with a whuff on the branch beside Tisker. “I don’t think we’re getting back down that way.”
Tisker craned his neck around. “Trees aren’t spaced to let us stick to the canopy, Cap. Might be able to use the grapple lines to get from tree to tree, though.”
Talis nodded. “Dug, I’m going to strap you in with me, and I want you to protect that wound best you can. Last thing we need is your stitches opening up any more than they already have.”
The four of them stood, carefully bracing themselves against branches above, or across multiple branches, or gripping the trunk as their positions allowed. Talis grit her teeth. She was not looking forward to this. But the group of tocks at the base of their tree had tripled in size. At that rate, they’d soon have a crowd large enough to prop each other up and get at their ankles.
“Which way?”
Talis squinted through the trees. “Nexus is full in the sky, which means we’re on the wrong side of Vuur Artak. We’ll have to head down to the coast and trace it around to the docks. If we can get far enough ahead of them, maybe we can lose them as we descend. They don’t come near the beach on their own.”
She scanned the slope of the ground, then lifted her chin toward what she hoped was the island’s edge. “Looks like we want to go that way.”
The tree lurched. Tisker nearly tumbled as the center of balance moved out from beneath them.
“Captain, look!”
The tocks had connected some kind of stone-toothed strap around the tree, along the line marked by the single tock that Talis was seriously wishing she’d just leapt upon earlier, without all the planning and discussion. Each tock had shouldered against it, and were circling the tree, scrambling their lizard-dash pace a full turn at a time. Chips of wood flew from the tree as they did so, sawing into its trunk. Then they’d stop to let more of the lizards shove at the trunk, back and forth, worrying the wood that remained at this new stress point. As the crew watched, the lizards repeated this over and over until the toothy strap cut so far into the tree as to disappear from view, leaving a pale gash of abused wood.
“They’re . . .”
“They’re clever little bastards.”
Sophie was entranced, watching them use their rudimentary tools. “They’re so organized . . .”
“Okay, let’s admire them in our memories.”
Tisker patted Sophie’s shoulder, and she shook herself free of her reverie. “Aye, Captain.”
It felt now as though they were held aloft on stilts instead of an old-growth tree. There was a definite sway now, enhanced by the efforts of the tocks pushing at it from below.
“Might be faster to take the ride they’re offering us,” Sophie said.
“Let them fell us? Are you serious?”
Sophie nodded. “Look, if we grapple from tree to tree, they’re going to be able to keep up with us.” She jerked her thumb to indicate the narrower branches above them. “But if we grapple up, the height of this monster might give us a real head start on them.”
“We’ll be bucked loose, Soph!” Tisker’s gaze darted toward Dug’s injury.
“Unless you’ve got a plan that involves getting picked out of the canopy by an airship—which I am very open to if you can arrange it—I don’t see any way down that isn’t messy.”
Dug nodded as the tree shuddered again. “I do not like any of these ideas, but with the progress that the lizards are making, I believe Sophie’s plan may give us the best hope. If we had more than cutlery, perhaps I would prefer to face them on the ground.”
Talis shook her head. “There are more than just the one nest. I’ve heard them get into nasty sounding squabbles over prey. There are bound to be more on the way already. Tisker?”
He shook his head. “You’re going to get me killed, but I’m with you, as ever.”
“Decided, then. Let’s go.”
They grappled to the highest branches they could snag with Sophie’s machines. Talis’s shoulder felt like it was going to twist apart like the joints of a roast chicken, but she tensed her muscles, grit her teeth, and kept her complaints to herself. If, someday, Sophie wanted to reengineer them with the actual intention of being used by people, then she could provide her feedback. The cannons had saved her life twice already that day and might do the same a few more times before they were safe on a ship. Though, with the ship they were headed for, there would be even more work to do before they were truly safe.
She gave Dug a pat on his shoulder with her free arm. “We’re almost there.”
“Perhaps we save the celebration until we are sure we can survive it.”
“If we aren’t going to survive it, you best believe I’ll celebrate it while I’m out under open skies again, surrounded by my crew, and doing what we do best.”
“Running away from hungry lizards?”
She gave him another pat and mussed his overgrown hair. “Live a little, Dug.”
And then the tree tilted out from under them.
Talis tasted sap and felt the whip of bony leaf stalks across her face. Her eyes were squeezed shut, and she desperately wished for her uncomfortable Rakkar goggles as she waited for the ground to crash into them. Dug had seized the trunk as they started to tilt, slowly at first. Talis managed to get her feet tucked behind her, away from the crushing end of the fall, and then it was just a matter of trying to fuse herself to the tree so as not to be rattled loose or scraped off. All she could hear was the tree’s death groan and the crack of what wood remained, snapping where the tocks had sawed at its ancient base. More cracking as the enormous tree took the branches of other trees with it, and the muted rush of branches cutting clumsily through the air.
She heard Sophie yell something but couldn’t make it out before the entire universe rose up to crash into them.
Her head was ringing, her view was full of stars, and half of her body felt numb. She tasted copper and juniper. Nexuslight blurred around the edges of two Sophies and half a Tisker.
When Dug unclipped her from the harness and growled, “Talis, please get off my stomach,” reality snapped back into place, at least long enough to get up to her feet. Her vision flared again as she tried to remain upright, assuming she was judging ‘upright’ correctly.
She held her head with both hands and stared at the ground until it stopped spinning. “We all together?”
Sophie was holding her shoulder, her breathing very deliberate. Tisker pulled their bags out from under the branches. One of the straps tore free of a seam as it snagged on the twisted edge of branch.
Dug rolled over to get his knees under him, rising slowly. Sophie gasped. His bandage was crimson with fresh blood.
Talis swore. They’d end up only helping to get it infected if they tried to treat it now. At least flowing blood would keep the wound clean. They just had to get him help before he lost too much again.
Dug teetered as he stood the rest of the way. So had Talis, though, and she was fairly certain she was in one piece. Hard to tell. Her head still rang, and her mouth still tasted of metal and earth. Dug stayed on his feet, though, so she left him to calm his own ringing bell while she judged the terrain.
The tree had given them a boost in the direction they’d have to travel to the coastline and also appeared to have slid downhill as it fell. Finally an advantage. Hard to call it a blessing, though, with Dug bleeding again and enough of a hike still ahead of t
hem. They were all banged up. Scratches marked diagonal red lines across any exposed skin, and their clothing was torn to expose what skin had once been protected. Something felt off in Talis’s left knee and ankle, and Sophie clutched her shoulder any time they stopped moving for a moment.
“Don’t think we’re lucky enough to have lost their interest after all that effort. Shake yourselves off. Let’s move.”
No one argued. Sophie inspected the damage to the grapple cannons and, without a word, left them behind.
The ground was treacherous, and they went as slow as they dared to avoid twisting anything in the ditches that lurked beneath a layer of moss and undergrowth. They didn’t speak much, pointing to pitfalls they spotted, keeping their movement as quiet as possible, and their attention tuned for the sounds of tiny lizards. It had been some time now with nothing but the crunch of their own feet among the twigs and roots. Not even birdsong, which was what troubled Talis.
Then came the cry of a gull, and Talis realized she’d been hearing the dull murmur of wind for a few hundred lengths.
Sophie breathed an appreciative murmur. “I didn’t think we’d make it.”
Talis didn’t say anything. She had been walking behind Dug the whole way downhill, keeping an eye on him. They hadn’t made it yet.
Soon, they could see the dark purple of open skies through the tree line. Tisker and Sophie began to walk faster.
Talis knew they all wanted to run to the shore, to break free of the danger of the forest, and none of them more than she, but Dug’s knees had begun to wobble, and Talis adjusted her pace to walk at his side.
It almost didn’t startle her when a line of two dozen tocks leapt out over an old felled tree that was so covered in moss it was barely more than a small hill. But it had provided the small theropods enough cover to get in front of them. The little monsters were clever, and their number was growing.
Add that to the long list of reasons not to miss Heddard Bay.
She looked beyond the tocks, over their heads at the stars twinkling out past the island’s dust motes; then she stooped down to grab a broken branch at her feet, hefted it, and charged them.
