Excerpt:  Heroes Arise

Excerpt from uncorrected proof

Chapter Five
Prepare to Die

Saliva dripped from Gundack’s tongue.  His bare feet pounded the barren stretch of plateau toward Zel and the other sandship lizards.  Sweat wet his chest and belly skin.  He matched Sem’s frantic pace across stone-studded ground.  Cold wind hit his cheeks, a welcome relief.  Ahead, Zel’s scarlet and green head plates glistened, like kettleplant leaves wet with dew.  The gods had created desert krens to tend to the daily needs of sandship lizards.  Caravan leaders and drivers had fulfilled this role for countless generations.  In turn the large beasts fought beside their krens in battle.  Loyalty flowed in the veins of both beings.  Zel bellowed a comrade’s war call to Gundack.   

The pack animals stood in a semicircle in the middle of the plateau, their heads facing outward and stomachs close to the ground.  Zel arched her long, scaly neck and roared an anxious greeting.  The beast’s spiked, green tail drummed dirt and fine gravel.  Her squat legs, knees bent at right angles to her elongated body, rocked.  Big lizards had pulled the gods’ mighty ships through deserts before the red dunes had formed.  Zel looked as majestic as her ancestors must have been.  She would be battle-ready on time.  How good to inhale her foul breath and taste the air’s rancid flavor.  Gundack’s father had raised this animal.  A friend was a friend.

Sem clicked instructions to the waiting drivers and grabbed a lantern, barely breaking stride.  He panted hard and dashed toward the shorter black cliff of the Steeps, the one Tarr’s krens controlled.

“Give me your torch,” Gundack said to the nearest driver.  “If Zel’s blood needs more warming, you’ll have to rub her legs.”

Gundack hurried after Sem, holding the burning torch high.  The oily odor of pitch smoke filled his nostrils.  His side ached and chest heaved hard.  The soles of his feet stung.  He needed to stop and catch his breath, but there wasn’t time.

More raiders gathered on top of the Steeps.  How lusterless these krens’ head scales were, almost devoid of green pigmentation.  Even the reds appeared faded.  One raider carried something heavy.  Gundack opened his eye membranes.  Wind tossed sand into one eye.  He blinked until the stinging subsided and the membranes slid back to a half-open position.  Now he could see the raider and the prize he carried.  The kren had a rope anchor.  These vermin would descend faster using lines.

Raiders bellowed death threats from the cliff above and secured several ropes with sets of sturdy iron hooks.  They would maneuver well on their descent, far better than they could if crawling or with a grapnel line.  Cloth covered their mouths and noses.  Tarr’s krens not only expected fire, they had prepared to pass through smoke and swing clear of flames as they neared the ground.  But had they anticipated burning mottleflower?  Still, there were so many.  Gundack’s ears flattened against his head and the base of his tail throbbed.  The skirmish at the narrows had been nothing.  The real battle gathered ahead, like an approaching sandstorm. 

#  # #

Dew still coated the morning.  Sem thrust the lantern into brush and set the first clump ablaze.  The fire took hold far faster than Gundack had expected.  Flames crackled louder than an angry old kreness could click her tongue.  The gods must have wanted this. 

The heat of the fire didn’t reach Gundack.  Brush was sparse near the approach to his climb.  These flames would not jump to his robe or tunic now.  Still, a shifting wind would send unwanted smoke in his direction.  And Tarr’s krens would descend the ropes soon.  He must reach the cragweed and accomplish his task while conditions remained favorable.  Gundack edged up a steep cut in the rock face.  He hugged the cliff, each step a new challenge.  The chilly morning air carried the war chants of raider krens, yet no spears flew in his direction.  Probably the angle was wrong, and the raiders wouldn’t waste their efforts or weapons.

He moved higher.  The odor of burning leaves and thorns blended with the oily scent of his torch.  The curve of his path led him above a section of the thicket fire.  Heat warmed his torch arm.  A shower of cinders landed on a ledge below.  Gundack could still accomplish his task and remain unscorched, as long as the wind didn’t shift and gust.

The shelf he climbed tapered, no longer wide enough for both feet and became nearly vertical.  He could never scale straight up the Steeps with a torch unless rope dangled from above.  If the gods wanted mottleflower to burn and confuse Tarr’s krens, they would have to show him a better way to reach the cragweed.  To continue facing forward, he would have to shuffle upward with one foot, then drag the rear one into place, heel to toe.  Shifting wind pushed against his back.  Gundack gripped the cliff tighter with his friendship hand and the claws on his fingers and toes.  Loose rocks crumbled in his grasp.  The shelf disappeared into the cliff.  He could go no farther.  Time to change his strategy.

Ragged lines of cragweed grew below the largest one he had hoped to reach.  If he started the fire on the lowest line, flames might jump to higher levels.  He stood on his claw toes and angled his extended torch arm over his head, reaching for the bed of cragweed.  The plants caught, probably the dried undergrowth.  The gods of wind and fire—and perhaps Talla’s spirit—were giving him a chance.

A whirring, nearly hidden by roars, rasps and growls, made his ears perk and tilt upward.  The sound, intermittent, cut through the air.  Gundack glanced up.  Pointed blue-green blades of cragweed overhung a ledge that blocked his view.  The whirring came from behind him.  Behind, and above, too.  He had heard that sound before, yet not in battle.  Still the sound brought no clear image or meaning to mind.  And his attention needed to stay with the task at hand.

Wind fanned the flames along the line of cragweed.  The roars of krens swelled.  He couldn’t focus on what was happening up the cliff.  He had to get away from the fire and smoke before mottleflower in the deeper recesses ignited.  Mottleflower never affected judgment, sight or balance immediately.  But he didn’t know how much delay or impairment would occur after he inhaled the plant’s smoke.

He edged backward, the hands on his right side gripping the cliff.  But he wasn’t moving fast enough and couldn’t see where he placed his feet.  He hurled the torch downward, then faced the cliff.  Brush smoke grew strong.  He coughed.  The wind probably had changed direction.  Now the smoke carried a sweet and spicy odor, a smell his father had once described.  Burning mottleflower.

Gundack shut his mouth and nostrils.  He skidded sideways down the shelf, his feet and four hands scrambling against crumbling rock.  His tail thrashed this way and that.  His feet found wider footholds.  He took steps now, no longer sliding.  Then the surface became smooth, stable rock.  He had reached the lower half of the climb.  He leaped from the shelf, arms and legs spread, and landed with a thud on the plateau.  Oh, how his chest ached for air. 

Pain raced up his spine.  A spasm rose in his chest.  He coughed as though his lungs turned inside out.  Certainly the raiders must be on their way down the cliff by now.  And there was that humming noise again.  He whipped around and faced the opposite direction. 

A lone figure stood near the edge of the right cliff, the higher one.  Rheemar.  There he stood, legs apart and knees flexed, his head turned to the side in line with his outstretched arm.  Rheemar curved his other arm and worked a hand sling.  The weapon hummed, cut a broad circle through the air and launched a stone across the rift between cliffs toward the opposite side.  The human’s black braids shifted with his body’s forward thrust.  Even as the rock hit a kren in the throat, Rheemar whirled the next stone and another. 

A kren staggered on the shorter cliff.  Another dropped to his knees.  A third fell off the top of a climbing rope and plunged to the burning thicket.  Rheemar had such deadly accuracy and power.  Gundack had seen herdsmen work slings, but not with Rheemar’s strength and coordination.  He stood alone on the equivalent of an island in the air.  The only way to reach the table was to scale the cliff’s steep face, the way he must have done.  Raiders threw few spears in Rheemar’s direction.  He was beyond their range of accuracy.  Tarr’s krens took cover behind boulders and rock spires. 

But a dozen raiders mounted ropes.  The thieves slid downward, legs wrapped around the lines.  They pushed their feet against the rock face and swung outward, past the rim of burning cragweed.  They would reach the ground in mere moments.  Rheemar could not pelt them all.  Gundack signaled his krens to prepare for hand-to-hand combat. 

How many of Tarr’s krens had come here?  Would the thieves have inhaled any of the smoke from burning mottleflower?  How many had Rheemar hit?  Gundack could see figures—maybe twelve or so—slumped above on the Steeps.  Some moved.  Some didn’t.  Rheemar had felled a few on the climbing ropes.  Close to forty remained in fighting condition.  Five of Gundack’s krens were still at the narrows.  That left five others plus himself.  Yet Gundack had Rheemar on his side.  At least, until the human ran out of stones.  Maybe the sandship lizards would have warmed up enough then to join the battle.

He filled his lungs with air and exhaled.  Several raiders pushed off the rock face, swung over the burning thicket and released the ropes.  The krens landed upright, feet thudding against gravel-coated ground.  One charged in his direction.  The rest headed towards his drivers or the base of Rheemar’s cliff.  Oh, to lick Eutoebi’s spotted lips one more time.  To explore the irregular texture of her delicate pointed ears.  May bravery rule his heart this day.  What would come, would come.  Gundack pulled himself to his full height and roared his battle cry.

Another call trumpeted from behind him and echoed off the Steeps.  Harness bells tinkled with a steady rhythm.  Zel.  Gundack turned his head.  His pack animals waddled, their arched necks bobbing forward and back with each lumbering step.  Their curled lips exposed sharp gray teeth.  The sandship lizards had no speed yet, but they were on their way.

Another horde of raiders swung off their ropes and landed.  Gundack dodged an on-coming raider’s claws, veered, and slashed flesh.  Blood flowed from the kren’s bell, and he doubled over with a how.  Gundack glanced to the left.  Sem clutched one shoulder with his friendship hand, chestnut blood seeping through his fingers.  His claws tore into a staggering opponent.  Zel’s jaws crunched the back of the disoriented raider’s neck.  Lizards roared and trampled assailants in their path.  Surely Gundack’s five drivers at the narrows could hear the sounds of battle.  Would they try to return to the plateau?  If they did, Tarr’s other krens would join the main battle, too.

Rheemar still worked a sling atop his cliff.  But several raiders crawled up the rock face to overtake him.  How foolish Gundack had been to think Rheemar might be Tarr’s ally.  If only he could help the human now.  But the next round of assailants sped toward Gundack and more swung off the ropes.  Few flames shot from the thicket, and the cragweed fire up the cliff had burned itself out.  The next attackers would not be poisoned by mottleflower.

“Prepare to die,” a raider with yellow eyes bellowed.  His red, green and brown coloration looked as dull as old pottery covered with dust.  Two of his comrades followed close behind.  All had deep notches in their ears.  Mountain kren.

The vermin lunged toward Gundack, his breath hot and foul.  His claw hand ripped though the air with a broad sweeping motion.  Gundack jerked backward.  Claws swiped toward his belly.  Gundack dodged again, using his arm for a shield.  Claws tore into his left wrist, then his forearm.  Pain shot to his shoulder.  Bright chestnut blood pulsed from his gaping wounds.  He thrust his body forward, aimed for the raider’s eye, and instead dug his other set of claws into his assailant’s cheek.  Gundack’s timing was off.  Still the raider roared and pressed the heel of his claw hand against his wounded face. 

Blood streamed down Gundack’s left arm and drenched the front of his robe.  His vision blurred.  How much blood was he losing?  Would he sink to his knees and became unconscious?  The two other krens—one with large green blotches on his forehead—moved in an arc, out of Gundack’s reach.  Their tactic was clear—slash him from behind.

Gundack cradled his bleeding arm against his stomach.  His friendship hands pressed hard on the jagged wounds.  He leaped backward to escape another thrust of claws, then sideways.  These two closed in fast.  He had to slash at least one of them in the throat.  Gundack braced for the next blast of pain.  It didn’t come.

Instead a tall, brawny raider approached Gundack.  He was larger than most mountain krens with deep notches in his ears.  His feet pounded the ground like thunder gods drumming in the sky.  His spotted lips curled in a snarl.   Gundack noticed something odd about the kren, something he couldn’t quite define.  Maybe the way the raider shifted his body while running.  Or the yellow tinge to his triangular red and green head scales.  Or his monstrous hands and yellow claws.  A questioning glare settled into the raider’s face, as though he too fought to dredge up a memory.  Then his yellow eyes exuded hate and contempt. 

“Gundack of the Red Sands,” the raider bellowed.  “Prepare to join Talla.”

The raider raised one arm.  A wide green band with amber and red-brown flecks rested around the raider’s first claw finger, the ring a polished emerald bloodstone.  Gundack’s ears flattened against his head.  This kren was Tarr.

© 2008 Laurel Anne Hill, All Rights Reserved

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