Chapter 33
When the open-mouthed hiss of the bole-beast finally sang through the air, Brine Denbauk found himself jumping in place. His eyes, which had been closed in prayer, popped wide open. His hands, which had been gripping his wauk and counting the braids, jerked down so hard they nearly ripped the shank from his skull.
He hadn’t intended to pray so fervently that he lost focus on the wilderness and the Lathians. He’d actually planned to use his prayers as a means to appear preoccupied until Owndiah provided him with an opportunity to sneak into the cave, a part of his subterfuge.
The rationale went something like this: If he was, in fact, being detained, it stood to reason that a disciple who appeared content with life and at peace with his station would be much less likely to warrant the attention of his captors than a disciple who, let’s say, appeared upset with his lot and planning his escape.
By Brine’s way of thinking, there was nothing that screamed, I hate this place and I want to escape, like a long-faced traveler slumped in the sand and frowning at his sandals. In other words, he and his teacher needed a hobby.
As usual, Godfry had no issue appearing preoccupied. Even before Brine had reached his conclusion, the old man had shoved his face in the Wogol and was reading like a mad imp. Brine’s pastime, however, was not as easy to come by.
With his pack abandoned to the bole-beast half-a-league to the south, there were really only three plausible options afforded him: He could use his finger and draw pictures in the sand, he could lean over Godfry’s shoulder and read from the Wogol, or he could pray to God and count the braids on his wuak.
After giving it some thought, he decided against the drawing. He wasn’t much of an artist anyhow, but it was the idea of lower his head to the ground (and away from the Lathians) that presented him with a deal-breaker.
As for reading the Wogol over his teacher’s shoulder, he steered clear of that option because he was afraid the Lathians might see the proximity of their heads and worry that they were conspiring against them (something the Jashians had already done).
In the end, he decided to go with counting his prayer braids and giving thanks to Owndiah. To be perfectly honest, if was going to pull this escape off without a hitch, he was going to need all the prayer he could get. Also, it seemed like the best choice of the three for averting the attention of the Lathian horde…or so he thought.
When he first began, and the Lathians took notice of his moving lips, the negative attention was in abundant supply. A few of them pointed and glared, a couple shook their heads in disgust, and one even threatened to come over and tie the ponytail around Brine’s throat if he so much as whispered one of his prayers. Brine nodded that he understood and quickly lowered his head.
All in all, he thought the ploy was a magnificent success. Despite the negative attention he initially attracted, none of the Lathians actually made good on their threats to hang him with his wauk, and with time all of them forgot he and Godfry were even there.
Just one more provision, he thought, and decided to honor his maker by mouthing the words to one of the more inspirational prayers. It was from the five-hundred and fifty-third chapter in the Book of Havitt, written after the prophet’s cycle-long estrangement in the Desert of the F’kari and detailing the Almighty’s faithfulness to meet the prophet’s needs.
Before long, Brine found himself engulfed by the meaning of the words and felt himself being set upon by the sweetness of Owndiah’s peace, not quite the peace that surpasseth all human understanding, but a very deep and relaxing peace none-the-less, one that whisked away all troubles and cares.
It was only later, when the bole-beast released its breathy cry into the sky, that Brine remembered why it was he was reciting the five-hundred and fifty-third chapter of Havitt and, as a consequence, pulled down hard on the braid in his hands.
Ouch! Ouch! Ouch!
Scratching feverishly at roots of his wauk, Brine sat erect in the sand and grabbed his teacher’s arm. Godfry mumbled something to the tune of, “What’s this, now,” but his head never left the Wogol.
Brine ran his eyes along the lumpy bole-line to the north, the direction of the hissing, and searched for the swollen outline of the bole-beast as it came streaking from the tongues. He could not see the creature as of yet, but the breathy hiss was still passing through blinding blue of the sky.
And we all know how much this thing likes to tease.
He continued to dart his eyes along the distant rumple of black, confused by the information his ears provided. Hingle’s screams, before they had ended, had come from the wilderness to the south, from the other side of the rock spur. Assuming the screams were elicited by the monster, why then were the beast’s cries coming from the north? Had it skirted the desert in search of them? Were there two of the wretched things?
Brine clenched his teeth at the latter possibility and turned his eyes to the defensive arc of mercenaries. If one of the bole-beasts had managed to kill ten of them, could the remaining twenty survived against multiple creatures? From the looks of those scurrying around the horseshoe perimeter, Brine wasn’t so sure.
As he watched, several of the cutthroats were still scrambling to make their feet, some climbing up spears, others kicking up sand. Those already on their feet when the cry was made were now tripping over each other in a mad dash for the spur, the whole of the horseshoe formation seeming to collapse in on itself as all men (seated, standing, or somewhere in between) went backpedalling from the boles.
Overhead, the warning cry came to its resonant terminus and an unholy silence returned to the desert.
Brine went stone still and held his breath, as did everyone around him. He could hear the crunch of sand as a few straggling men jockeyed for position, then a few muttered curses at both gods and mothers alike, but for the most part the silence held sway.
Again from the north came the old familiar taunt of, “…Khaut-Khaut-Khaut…,” then the silence descended like a veil.
Brine could hear the blood-pump in his chest thumping like mad, but in the limp, snake-like tongues to the north, he heard no sound or movement. Checking the Lathians once more, he saw they were mimicking the pulsing stillness to the north, their breathing shallow, their jaws clenched.
At the far end of the stunted horseshoe formation, movement caught Brine’s eye. A man with a pale face and sweaty complexion was doubling over his ample gut and splattering both boots with a warm breakfast of cornmeal and beef. He splattered the boots of the men to either side of him as well, but neither man took their eyes from the distant flora.
Brine joined them, turning back to the motionless queue of boles and listening for the sound of movement or taunting. He heard only the internal drum of his own heart.
And then it hit him.
This is it, he thought. This is our distraction, this is the answer to prayer.
Very slowly, he turned and cocked an eye behind him. Balthus the Vultureman was still maintaining his composure on the rocks, still overseeing the disturbance like the pajama-clad scavenger he was.
Brine pictured himself helping Godfry to his feet and making for the cave, pictured Balthus alerting his thundering cronies and having one of them stick a hipbone into Brine’s side. Brine watched himself sailing through the air like a dusty rag only to have another man step on his neck and a third drive a knee in his back. He turned back to the wilderness and forced himself to breathe.
We’ll wait, he thought. We’ve got nothing but time.
In contradiction to this claim, a second, “Haaaaaaaaaa…,” came rolling out of the northern tongues.
Brine tensed and drew Godfry’s arm a little closer. He heard a mumbled, “Hmm,” from the old man, but nothing more. Across the sweeping tract of charcoal sands, the flaccid band of vegetation remained unchanged.
He checked the men around him to see if maybe he was looking in the wrong place, but they were all looking north as well, the only deviatio
n being the type of look they made.
The archers closest to the spur were staring down the shafts of their arrows with grim and hate-filled eyes, the tips of their bolts sweeping from one end of the horizon to the other. Out in front of them, at the collapsing bow of the defensive arc, there were a lot more hysterical grimaces and panic-stricken gapes. Only one man seemed to be immune from them.
Brine squinted at the fellow and saw that he was standing at the very fringe of the arc, a man with a pock-marked face, a shock of red hair, a dagger in one hand, and a sword in the other. The man’s lips were twisted in the kind of snarl one expected to see on a rapid dog and he was shifting his weight from one boot to the other, his upper body rocking with movement.
Brine’s gaze lingered on the orange-red of the man’s hair and thought it fitting. The golden hoop in his left ear, however, he wasn’t so sure about. Such a fanciful decoration seemed out of place on a man with such obvi—
From the previous night, a memory flashed in Brine’s head, a memory of a silhouetted man tugging at his ear, his left ear. Then, before he could put a name to the red-haired menace, he heard the man speaking to the others and all speculation ended.
“Easy, now,” the man said, speaking in a rough and gravelly voice. “Hold easy, now.”
Brine went cold to the bones. It was him, all right. There was no mistaking the devilish timbre in his voice.
“It’s funnin with us,” Ardose told them. “Tryin to lurin us out an’ get us in the open.” He shook his head at the desert. “We ain’t fallin for it. We’re holdin here, right here. Nice an’ easy like.”
Brine knew the angry man wasn’t speaking to him, but he tried very hard to comply. The monster had gotten around to its choking cough—Khaut-Khaut-Khaut—and that strange noise was now playing on every one of Brine’s frazzled nerves. It was taking everything he had not to yank up his teacher and go bolting for the cave.
Speaking of which…
A quick glance to the right told him the old man was still huddled over his book, his yellow shoulders hunched, his bushy white beard peeking around the cover. He could hear his teacher muttering softy as he read the passages aloud. He closed his eyes and leaned a little closer and for one brief moment it was almost like Owndiah were speaking to him through his mentor.
Be ready, He was saying. Be ready, my good and faithful servant. The time of your provision is nigh upon thee.
Still listening to the voice of his creator, Brine heard the sound of footfalls at the end of the horseshoe formation. He opened his eyes and drew them to the disturbance, finding the man, Ardose, advancing from the queue and stopping several paces out. He turned his fiery head from east to west and from west to east, his suspicious gaze panning for the creature.
Brine could empathize. His woeful experience with wildlife included the stealing of kittens from the royal stables and the feeding of stray dogs at the monastery, but even he knew that something was amiss. This was not the behavior of a creature that exploded from tongues and snatched guides into boughs. This was something else entirely. This was something wrong.
Ardose stopped panning his head and studied the boles to the north. He raised his dagger to his throat and dragged the blade along his whiskers. The gesture made a soft grating noise amidst the stillness of the spur, the only sound to be heard save for the dull background noise of Godfry’s muttering.
Ignoring his teacher, Brine sank his fingers in the old man’s robes and drew him near, now hearing the sound of footsteps at his rear, the sound of an archer flanking the front lines and setting for a clearer shot. His feet made a swift poomp-poomp-poomp noise across the sand.
Brine did not turn to mark him. Partly, he did not wish to distract the man from his task, but mostly he did not wish to draw the man’s attention. Should the man become antsy or unnerved (as he was), Brine did not wish to be the first sign of movement the fellow saw.
This was why, when the man’s fingers finally succumbed to the tension and he dropped his bow to the sand, Brine continued to hold his eyes in the north. This might have been a larger cause for alarm, but the man at the front of the formation had dropped his axe five times already.
It was not until the man began kicking his boots at the ground and spraying the spur with sand that Brine Denbauk decided to risk being shot. With several of the other Lathians joining him, he turned around to have a look…and frowned hard at what he saw.
The archer was bent over backwards as far as his spine would allow, much like a man walking under a low-lying branch in an exhibition of dexterity. Why he was doing this, Brine hadn’t a clue. Nor did he understand the wild clutching motions the man was making towards his neck, at least not until he caught sight of the man’s head.
The man’s head was locked in the jaws of something smooth and black standing behind him, something pulling the man backwards as it crept quietly around the spur.
“Sweet Atra,” someone gasped, and amid the other shocked gasps and terrified cries, Ardose began to scream, “Shoot! Shoot! Shoot!”
The archers did, or they tried. The problem was that those farthest from the beast had to move around the other mercenaries to get a clear shot and those closest to the beast were hastily backing into everyone else.
“Shoot it!” Ardose roared. “Shoot the banning thing! SHOOT IT!”
Brine ducked, and fell to his side, but by the time the first bolt was fired, the black hump of the bole-beast was nearly out of sight. A few quarrels sparked off the rocks, several more blurred off into the clearing, but only one or two managed to hit the choking man trapped in the creature’s maw.
Blue feathers sprouted in the man’s thigh, stomach, and chest—followed by a distinctive red stain spilling down his front—and Ardose began to scream, “No, no, no, you’re hittin our man, NOT our man!”
The choking man stopped clawing at its head and his arms slumped down to his sides. The bole-beast dragged the dead man a few more paces then spat him out and leapt behind the spur. Brine could see a sliver of boney white snout peeking around the corner.
“Khaut-Khaut-Khaut!”
The archers went mad. They fired one volley of arrows after another, firing as Ardose shrieked for them to, “Hold your fire, Hold you fire,” firing as their wooden missiles popped and exploded against the rocks, and firing even as the crouching bole-beast remained hidden behind the stones. When the volley’s ended, it tore around the corner and charged.
Brine saw the line on his side of the horseshoe formation collapse like a house of cards, the creature coming right into its midst. The Lathians were scurrying to make a counterstrike, but none of this entailed any swinging or jabbing. They were only running, and to make matters worse, they were running into each other, slamming men who had reloaded their bows and raised their blades.
One such man, a fellow with black and blue feathers in his hair, toppled over Godfry’s left shoulder and knocked the Wogol from his grasp. Eyes wide and searching, Godfry gave the man a bewildered look and made for his book, reaching only his arm halfway before Brine yanked him flat against the ground. Godfry managed an inarticulate question and then he was spitting sand as someone sat on his head.
Trying to shield him from further damage, Brine threw himself over his teacher and listened as something like a bear trap snapped in the air a mere finger-length from his head. Holding his teacher tight, he could see black movement in the corner of one eye, something like a moving bole slamming a man in the side and sending him sailing.
Brine watched the man land in a sprawling heap, then watched a black paw—a webbed paw—streak through the crisp morning air and rake four white icicle claws through another man’s chest. This man fell on Brine’s back, knocked the wind from his lungs, and pinned him to the ground as a whole slew of other men went flailing over him, various parts of their anatomy stamping or crushing various parts of his: a sword hilt to the head, a boot heel to the gut, fingers to the eye.
When it was finally
over, Brine lay there in a stew of shock and disorientation, gasping for breath and trembling all over. He couldn’t be certain—not with his freshly-bludgeoned brainpan—but it sounded as though the symphony of destruction was receding into the boles. The Lathian curses were drifting off, the shouts were dying down, the bestial poomp-poomp-poomp dwindling from the desert.
He sat up and looked around, and the hissing-thing was gone. He knew this not because the creature was nowhere to be seen, but because he could hear a man shrieking on the other side of spur. He could also see a group of men reacting to the screams on this side of the spur. They were moving towards the screaming man, and they had their weapons in hand, but they weren’t exactly racing to intercept.
Hoping to take his mind from those cries, Brine looked to his teacher. He found the old man staring at him with a questioningly look on his face, like he’d come face to face with the mother of all equations.
Brine, who was sure his own face looked no better, nodded at him. After a time, his teacher nodded back.
“I have sand in my hair,” Godfry observed, leaning forward to retrieve the Wogol from the ground.
“Me too,” Brine said, reaching over his shoulder to retrieve his wauk from his back. He caught sight of something by the rocks and stopped his hand where it was. The rocks were empty.
Balthus had descended from his perch and was engaged in a heated discussion with Ardose over by the dead archer. The discussion was about the dead man at their feet—the one the other archers had turned into a human pincushion—but more importantly the discussion was taking place away from the cave.
Brine felt a flush of warm air pass within his core. Aside from a handful of casualties—and, of course, he and Godfry being trampled like dandelions—this was shaping up nicely. He grinned to himself and thought he heard a voice speaking in his mind.
Oh, thou good and faithful servant, the voice was saying, thy time is nigh upon thee.