Excerpt:  Heroes Arise

Excerpt from uncorrected proof

Chapter Three
As Though the Air Burned

“Fire,” Gundack rasped.  “Tents ablaze in the merchants’ encampment.”

The palm of his claw hand pushed against Rheemar’s shoulder.  The sleeping human mumbled and twitched one hand, as though brushing away an insect.  Gundack shook him harder.  Rheemar roused, groggy and eyes half closed.

“Your camp’s on fire.”  Gundack slapped the human’s cheek with his friendship hand.  “Fire.  In the tents below.”

“My gods.”  The human scrambled and groped for his lantern.  “We’ve got to go down there.  We’ve got to warn people.  Warn krens.  Do something.”

“Hides don’t burn well.  This fire spreads too fast.”  Gundack raised himself to standing.  “Fire resin.  Some fool must have left a burning candle near a sack of flammable resin.”

Why weren’t the merchants’ sandship lizards roaring the alarm from the opposite side of the encampment?  Gundack had seen twenty or thirty of the beasts this afternoon.  Another sound, a distant cry, iced his blood.  A neglected candle hadn’t started this fire.  The encampment was under attack.

“Prepare to defend,” Gundack called.

“What are you talking about?” Rheemar said and stood motionless.

“Don’t you hear it yet?”  Gundack clutched Rheemar’s arm. 

“Hear what?” Rheemar said.  The human blinked several times, with a rapid jerky motion.

“Those distant roars,” Gundack said.  “Raider krens.”

Raider krens rarely launched attacks at daybreak and never in the middle of the night.  Why now?  Would they limit their onslaught to the merchant’s camp?  Or advance to this plateau?  What were they after?

Drivers stumbled here and there in the darkness.  They clicked their tongues and prodded sandship lizards.  The beasts growled, yet no harness bells tinkled.  The animals weren’t moving into the necessary semi-circular defense formation.  They weren’t moving at all.  Wind chilled Gundack’s face and cut through his cloak, robe and tunic.  Neither a campfire nor sunshine warmed their cold-blooded muscles.  That was the problem.  The sandships had gotten too cold. 

“Zel,” Gundack clicked, “get the other sandships into position.”

Zel had better do her job as lead pack animal.  And fast.  The lizards, with their heavy jaws and long rows of sharp teeth, must face the approach path.  Gundack slapped Zel’s rump with the back of his claw hand.  Zel rasped an anxious growl.

“Where can you use me best?” Rheemar asked. 

His hazy outline included his walking stick.  He leaned on his spade staff as though his legs might buckle.  Did a potion muddle his mind?  What about that tainted water he had tasted at the encampment?  No sounds, no screams of pain or terror came from the merchants’ camp.  Only the war cries of raiders.  Gundack’s ears flattened against the top of his head.  A traitor must have added a sleeping potion to all of the merchants’ water supplies.  No one inside the tents would escape.

“Go where you won’t fall down a hole,” Gundack said, “or get slashed to shreds.”

“I can do something to help.”  Rheemar tapped the spade end of his staff.  “And I’ve got a hand sling.”

A sling?  The weapon of human farmers and herdsmen was good at a distance in daylight, not at quarter moons in the dark.  Besides, human eyes didn’t work well while the sun slept.  This human was no better than cold and lethargic sandship lizards.

“If you want to help,” Gundack said, “stay with the sandships.  Rub their legs to get them warm.”

“You don’t understand,” Rheemar said.  “I’m really good with a sling.”

“You’re the one who doesn’t understand,” Gundack said and turned toward Jular Plain.

“But,” Rheemar said.  The human tugged on the bottom of Gundack’s cloak.

Why was this human so uncooperative?  Gundack growled a throaty warning.  Rheemar jumped backward, his black eyebrows pulled a third of the way up his forehead, as though strings controlled them.  Maybe now he’d do as told.

Gundack stared into the night.  Flames rose from all of the central tents and spread.  Fire would destroy the rugs, the woven robes, the perishable valuables the merchants had brought.  What reward would the invaders gain?  Then Gundack’s mind whispered the answer to his own question. 

“They’ve come for you,” Gundack said.  He reached out and pressed the palm of his claw hand against Rheemar’s cool shoulder.

“Tarr.”  Rheemar’s voice quavered.

“Tarr’s krens.”  Gundack scanned the blackness.  “I doubt Tarr would give us the pleasure of his company.”

Rheemar knew Tarr’s secret.  If he died before revealing it, Gundack could not avenge Talla this year.  Maybe not ever.  There had to be a place to conceal the human and sequester his odor.

“Go to the base of the Steeps,” Gundack said to Rheemar.  “Follow the cliff to the far end of this plateau.  Find a cave or the cavity in a large boulder.”

“You wouldn’t climb behind a rock like a coward,” Rheemar said.  “Why should I?”

Why couldn’t this human do as he was told?  Gundack needed to focus on a defense strategy.  Distant crackles of fire intensified.  The smell of burning hides did, too.

How had the raiders approached the merchants’ encampment without pack lizards detecting them?  Gundack’s own beasts would have filled the night with roars.  Unless the kren who had poisoned the water and started the fire had been a trusted driver already in the camp.  The traitorous driver could have fed merchants and sandships a potion.  Then set fire with resin and lamp oil.  Yes, it must have happened that way.

But, what was this?  Gundack stared down from the plateau and blinked.  Balls of flames moved beyond the central conflagration, floating like spirits through the air.  Raider krens, holding torches, moving out of the merchants’ encampment.

“They’re headed this way,” Rheemar said and moved toward the edge of the plateau.

“Stay clear of the sugarthorn,” Gundack said.  “That’s where holes plunge to the ancient caverns.  You’ll fall into one.  Stand back.”

“I’ll be fine,” Rheemar said.

Would he?  Gundack strained to count the number of torches.  More than fifteen.  Maybe twenty.  Twenty would make too small a group for raider krens.  Forty to eighty would be more likely.  Probably half to three-quarters of the warriors carried spears instead of torches.  How many carried metal or leather shields?  Spears and shields would make them formidable foes, day or night.  Gundack’s krens had daggers, and only a few spears and the usual walking sticks tipped with trenching spades.

“Gather every weapon we’ve got,” Gundack called to Sem and turned toward Rheemar.  “Come this way.”

“I’m thinking,” Rheemar said.

“Then think in a safer place.”  Gundack had wasted enough time on Rheemar.  “Come.”

The tinkle of harness bells multiplied in the darkness—the beautiful, uneven rhythm of ten lethargic sandship lizards consenting to stand and form their defense line.  Metal objects clinked and webbed feet shuffled.  Drivers removed spears and spades from their packs.  They dragged mats and supplies behind the line of sandship lizards in the dark to protect possessions from torches.

Could anything else be set afire?  Jular Plateau was treeless.  Bushes grew only on one side, against the base of the Steeps.  Mountain sugarthorn was thick along the plateau’s open edge and sparse everywhere else.  Little more than packs and living flesh could be set ablaze.

Gundack groped through his own pack and found his two silver daggers.  He tossed off his cloak, then strung both knife sheaths on the sash of his thigh-length robe.  Krens did close combat with their claw hands alone.  Mountain krens were smaller than their desert counterparts.  Most raiders were mountain dwellers.  Their dull-colored head scales absorbed less of Father Sun’s divine energy.  Two to three would rush Gundack at once.  A well-aimed dagger would bring one down.

Torches below brightened and appeared to reshape.  The raiders had cleared the encampment and changed direction.  They chanted in unison.  Too far away to decipher the words.  The translucent membranes protecting Gundack’s pupils slid toward the corners of his eyes.  He focused on the torchlight, as though the flaring represented a giant pulse, a life force.  Now, he could almost see the raiders’ claws sharpened for the kill.  He could almost hear their webbed claw feet pound the ground.

Gundack’s group would be outnumbered, even if all their knives and spears hit the attackers.  Trenching spades might slow down a few more.  Rotten odds at best.  The raiders advanced cloaked in blackness toward the base of an incline and the trail leading to Gundack and his krens.  Sem’s deep voice rasped out another order.  More dragging sounds followed.  All of the supplies must be behind the lizards by now.  Gundack needed a more comprehensive strategy.  What would work best?  Or, at all?  It was time to assign defense stations.

# # #

An uneven line of fiery torches cut through the darkness on the plain below, as though the air burned.  Raiders headed for the plateau and Gundack’s encampment.  He must hold them back.  He signaled for Sem to kneel beside him on the stony ground.  Rheemar joined him, too.

“I’ve got an idea,” Rheemar said. “We need to divide into two groups.  One unit should stay here and warm the sandships so they can fight.  The rest need to go where they can slow the raiders’ advance.”

“The raiders will be the most vulnerable,” Sem said, his eyes fixed on Gundack, “when they climb the approach path.” 

Sem slid the back of one claw finger across his moonlit throat.  Gundack grunted.  Sem’s advice always was valuable, and Rheemar’s suggestion actually sounded reasonable.  Maybe the human had seen battle before, despite his young age.

“Let me think,” Gundack said.

Gundack had used one battle arm for stability when he had returned from Rheemar’s tent and climbed the steep, uneven path.  Raider krens would do the same.  Their friendship hands would hold their shields.  Friendship arms could not reach and protect all vital parts of a kren’s frame.  Ascending the trail would make those mountain vermin susceptible targets.  Gundack and his drivers must strike while the raiders climbed.

“Yes.”  Gundack rose, took a deep breath, and motioned to the others.  “The path narrows where it winds between the sentinel stones.  A good place for an ambush.”

The gods had once promised that desert clawkren would rule the Red Sands forever.  Yet he stood near the passage to the Divider Mountains, far from his desert home, far from ancestral Red Sands.  He might not have the right to ask the gods for this victory.  Once a soothsayer had predicted that Gundack would call forth a hero.  Surely now was the time for an ancient hero.  A prayer to the one who had rescued Father Sun might be appropriate.  Gundack would invoke Talla’s spirit, as well. 

Now for the weapons.  He had two daggers.  Rheemar had only a spade staff and sling.  The human had refused to hide from Tarr’s krens and would need something more.  Gundack loosened his sash and stepped closer to the merchant.

“My father purchased my knives in the northlands.”  Gundack handed Rheemar a sheathed dagger, hilt end first.  “This might bring good luck,”

“Thank you,” Rheemar said, chin tilted upward.  “I believe I was meant to be here tonight.  If I hadn’t noticed that someone had tampered with my water skin . . . ”  He threaded his waist sash through the top of the knife sheath, then bowed his head. 

“My father,” Gundack said, “slept beside his sandship lizards and drivers on every trading journey.  He chose safe places to spend each night.  If not for his teachings, I would have slept in a tent tonight or bedded down my lizards with those of the merchants.”  He re-knotted his sash around his waist.  “The old ways—desert ways—are best.”

“Then tonight,” Rheemar said, “I’ll fight for the desert.”

A lofty idea.  More likely the human would fight for his life.  Gundack moved toward the sandship lizards and clicked his tongue.  His tribal kin gathered in front of Zel.  Pale moonlight textured Rheemar’s face.  The hexagonal head scales of the drivers appeared bordered with gold.  Attackers’ claws might soon bloody them all.

“Hold the raiders on the incline of the approach path,” Gundack said, his voice low.  “Sem, you and your cousin cover one of the sentinel stones.  Elar and I will take the other.  Position your three brothers-in-law up the incline.”

“If they get past you,” the eldest brother-in-law said, “they won’t escape us.”

“The rest of you—including Rheemar—stay with the sandships,” Gundack said.

“What if,” Rheemar said, “some of the raiders actually evade all of us?  They could double back to the sentinels and get you from behind.”  Rheemar was now a disembodied voice in the night.  “What if they reach us before the lizards are ready?”

“Then we had all better pray,” Sem said with deep rasps, “that the sun rises early and our sandships fight well.” 

Spear in hand, Gundack edged from the plateau down the approach path.  Feet crunched gravel behind him as the others moved toward their assigned positions.  He mounted a broad, flat rock, shifting his tail for balance.  This formation would lead to one of the monoliths.  He reached up, felt the smooth rock face, and set his spear in a long, high crevice.  His claws dug into cracks.  He scaled upward, edged the spear to the next level and pulled himself higher.  Could the raiders hear his movements?  No, they would still be too far away.  But he could hear them.

“Death to our foes,” a raider called.

“Victory to Tarr,” another said.

Between the words came the crackle of torches flaring, followed by the smell of burning pitch and the reek of their bodies.  Stinkweed, their cooking oil, fouled breath and sweat.  Gundack could see their shifting light again.  The first line of raiders had reached the turn, half-way up the incline.  They would ascend to the narrows next.

Gundack crawled onto flat stone, the surface smooth as new glass.  He had reached one of the sentinel formations.  He crouched near the monolith and panted, detecting the odor of kren and human blood.  Dead merchants.  Blood had spilled onto murderous claws and dried by the heat of fire.

Gundack reached for his amulet.  Of course it wasn’t there.  Why had he done that?  Kan had stolen the silver charm two years ago, then fled the desert.  Only a coward would have run away.  Gundack might die tonight while defending himself and his friends.  Yet death with honor would be better than any life Kan must lead.

Gundack gripped his silver dagger.  May desert krens rule the Red Sands forever.  His eyelids raised high, allowing translucent membranes to part.  May he live to father krenlings with Eutoebi.  His pupils focused.  May they together continue their family lines.  His arms prepared to strike.  Surely the gods would forgive him for praying with open eyes and an unbowed head.

© 2008 Laurel Anne Hill, All Rights Reserved

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