Chapter 18 Nasrin #2
“Definitely not,” I agreed quietly. It sounded like one borog had already caused a colossal amount of damage to this tribe. What the hell could two do?
“Keep me posted,” Valeria said. “If it comes down to it, I can start moving women, children, and the elderly out of here on my shuttle. I’ll get some info from Gahn Thaleo and make sure we have everything ready to do it at a moment’s notice if necessary.”
Arton merely grunted at that, likely not thrilled with the idea of his own mate getting ferried away in our weird vehicle out of their ancestral lands. But all the same, I detected a bit of grateful relief in the spin of his sight stars.
“We do not need to worry about it now,” Zaria said, placing a loving hand on Arton’s cheek. “Let us go see Linnet and the brolka.”
“Yes,” Arton agreed. “My grandmother has a rather indestructible way about her. It makes one feel like no bad can befall them when they are with her.”
I knew exactly what he meant. I had a sneaking suspicion that Linnet could survive just about anything these mountains threw at her.
“That’s decided then,” Zaria said cheerily. “Let us go!”
We followed the same path around the mountain as before, picking out way through the blue and purple valleys until we made it to Linnet’s territory. The lake was just as brilliant beneath the sun as it had been last time, and I thought about going swimming again today.
“Who goes there?” came the loud call, followed by Linnet’s emergence from her cave up ahead. This time, Arton didn’t bother to introduce himself as her grandson, instead gesturing to the newcomers.
“This is the new woman Valeria, and her Bitter Sea mate, Grim,” he explained.
“It’s good to meet you,” Valeria said briskly, nodding.
“You’re tall for a new woman,” Linnet announced, swinging her sight stars up and down Valeria’s six-foot-frame. “That’s good.”
She wasn’t as generous with her reactions to Grim, however.
“Well, you’re quite an unnatural looking creature,” she said.
To her credit, she didn’t seem afraid of the gigantic Grim, the scarlet lizardman standing at just about ten feet tall.
Even the most open-minded sort of person would probably do a double take when first encountering a Bitter Sea male.
“But you are also tall. Very tall,” she finally admitted somewhat grudgingly.
“So I suppose that is good. But watch those claws around my brolka!” she added sternly.
“I don’t want their wool – or any other parts of them – getting damaged! ”
“I will not damage them,” Grim promised.
“Besides,” Zaria said, “You have claws, too, Linnet.”
“But I know what I am doing with them,” she growled, shaking her bow/walking stick. “I’ve never met this male before. Nearly twice the size as a Deep Sky man, yet he may have only half the brains for all I know!”
“I can vouch for his brains,” Valeria said, very clearly trying not to laugh. Obviously, she was just as charmed by Linnet’s old lady crustiness as I was. “They’re in good working order.”
“Well, I’ve never met you before, either,” Linnet said imperiously. “And I know nothing of your standards when it comes to such things.”
“I imagine that your standards are very high indeed, Linnet,” Grim rumbled good-naturedly, apparently not minding all the conjecture about his brains, or lack thereof.
“They certainly are,” Linnet scoffed. “My own blood does not even meet them half the time.” She swung her bow in poor Arton’s direction, and he nearly dropped his basket. When he recovered, he sullenly held it out to her. A sort of peace offering so that she’d stop bullying him, I figured.
“We brought you moonbark and new spinner silk!” Zaria said when Linnet took it.
“Bah! What am I to do with such things?” she muttered.
But even so, she was already hanging her bow on her shoulder and rummaging through the basket, digging out an especially big piece of moonbark and popping it into her mouth.
Linnet the braxilk, whom I’d begun thinking of as Linnet the Second, approached on foot, bending her long neck with interest towards the basket.
“Here you are, you great goon of a creature,” Linnet said to her mount with gruff affection. She pulled out a bit of moonbark, then tossed it in the air. Linnet the Second’s beak closed on it with lethal precision. She snapped it down like a heron would swallow a fish.
“I am going to put this away,” Linnet said, indicating the basket.
“You may go see the brolka. But do not bother them.” She seemed to aim this comment solely at Grim, even though the big lug really hadn’t done anything to deserve it besides being big and scaly with a lot of sharp bits on his anatomy.
“I will not,” he said gravely.
“He won’t. None of us will,” Valeria promised.
Linnet eyed her, then gave a grunt of approval.
“Very well. You look as if you can keep him and the others in line.” She waved her tail towards Zoren and Ox, indicating the “others” she thought might need wrangling.
Apparently, Tilly and I didn’t count too much.
Probably because a brolka could totally take one of us out if it really wanted to.
While extremely cute, they were also pretty damn big, and strong from climbing and jumping around on the mountainside.
As Linnet returned to her cave, the rest of us went around the shore of the lake to see the brolka. They were grazing as they had been the last time. A small one came towards me at once, and I was fairly certain it was the same baby I’d been petting the last time.
“Hi, cutie!” I crooned, leaning down to pat its downy head. “We’re back!”
Our little group dispersed a bit then, the others wandering around to visit with the other brolka. Grim said something to Valeria about the water, and she told him to go have a swim if he liked, an offer he took her up on immediately.
“So, what have you been up to?” I asked the small brolka who seemed to have become my buddy since the last time I was here.
“It’s been a whole week! I think you’ve grown!
” It bleated at me in response, and I nodded as if giving serious thought to its answer.
I was about to pet it again, when it suddenly bleated much more squeakily than before and danced out of my reach, bolting back to the brolka I assumed was its mother.
“Oh. OK. Guess we’re done, then. Bye, cutie!”
But the baby brolka wasn’t paying any attention to me now. In fact, none of them were. They all began crowding into a tight formation, the smallest ones at the centre. Tilly and I looked at each other in bewilderment. Surely they weren’t cold.
“Something’s coming,” Arton shouted from closer to the lake’s shore. “Everyone, get to the cave!”
“What the hell?” I whispered to Tilly as we hustled down the slope towards the shore and the cave.
“No idea,” she replied. “But if there’s anything I’ve learned on this planet, it’s that when a Deep Sky – or Sea Sand or Bitter Sea – warrior tells you to move, you fucking move.”
The brolka continued screeching louder and louder, the ominous wail of an alarm. Linnet came barreling out of her cave, an arrow already notched against her bow.
“What is it?” she shouted at Arton, who was currently directing Zaria to get in the cave and wait.
Tilly and I hustled over to join her. Meanwhile, Grim was pulling himself out of the lake, and Valeria, Oxriel, and Zoren had formed into a tight cluster on the shore, weapons in their hands.
Spears for the Sea Sand guys and Grim, and a gun for Valeria.
“I do not know,” Arton said to Linnet. “The brolka became suddenly frightened, and-”
A roar split the air, like an earthquake in the valley, drowning out Arton’s reply. My heart plunged to my feet.
“What the fuck is that?” Valeria shouted, spinning first this way, then that, her gaze scanning the various nooks and crannies of the valley before moving to the sky. “You three!” Valeria said, catching sight of us. “Get inside!”
Zaria, Tilly, and I were almost at the entrance to Linnet’s cave now. But before we could reach it, a huge shadow fell over us.
And a monster landed on the stone incline above the cave.
“Borog!” Linnet screamed. “Linnet!”
At once, Linnet the Second was at her side. She mounted with liquid ease and urged her into the air.
But the borog followed.
“It has wings!” Tilly gasped, flinching and covering her head as the colossus heaved itself away from the stone. “Nobody said that borogs could fly!”
“They can’t!” Zaria screamed, her sight stars fraying with fear. “At least, no other has before!”
Well, this one fucking could.
It was so huge it seemed to blot out all the sky. Dread turned my veins to ice at the sight of it.
The closest thing I could compare it to was something like a dinosaur, or maybe a winged Komodo dragon on steroids.
Its grey, scaly body, including a heavy, powerful tail, had to be at least twenty metres long.
Even the giant Grim was dwarfed by the sheer scale of the thing.
It had four powerful, reptilian legs, and a shovel-like head the size of a goddamn minivan.
And the wings. Holy shit, it had wings.
Despite its wings, though, it wasn’t as nimble as the Linnets were in the air. Linnet the Second dodged and dove like a dart.
“It wants my brolka!” Linnet shouted, firing arrows at the thing every chance she got. They pinged off the borog like little balls of paper.
She was probably right. The borog got tired of heaving its terrible body through the air and aimed itself downwards.
It landed in the shallows of the lake, creating a mini-tsunami that reached us all the way where we stood near the entrance to Linnet’s cave, soaking us to the knees.
The basket of silk and moonbark was lifted from its place on the floor of the cave, bobbing away on the water.
“Should we get inside?” Tilly asked anxiously, eyeing the now-flooded cave and then the nightmarish body of the borog in the valley.
“I’m not so sure,” I admitted. “It could trap us in there!” The stone walls of the cave would do little to protect us if it decided to come for us there. It literally made its home by burrowing through stone just like this.
“Nazreen is right. We need to leave,” Zaria said, tugging us frantically away from the cave’s mouth. “The warriors will distract it long enough for us to get back to the main mountain and alert the others.”
I wasn’t convinced of that plan of action, either. Even without the surprise of the borog’s wings, I had no doubt it could run us down on its legs alone if it wanted to.
But we obviously couldn’t just stand there gaping at it and waiting to get eaten, either. And Zaria was quite strong as she yanked at us, holding Tilly and I by our wrists.
Screw it. I’d rather take my chances running then getting trapped in a cave.
Together we sprinted to the steep slope of rock that led into the narrow valley beyond the lake.
Zaria finally released our arms so that none of us would lose our balance on the uneven, rocky surface of that sheer incline.
Naturally, this meant that Zaria pulled slightly ahead.
Even pregnant, she was faster. Her legs were so much longer than ours, her feet making easy work of the terrain.
My own feet, I could barely feel. My body was numb with adrenaline, my heart careening wildly, as if it wanted to outrun my own ribcage. Behind us, great crashes made the ground tremble, and the borog gave two more of its horrific roars.
When we reached the top of the slippery slope, I allowed myself one quick look back, to ascertain the borog’s current location and make sure everybody else down there was OK. Linnet was still on her braxilk. Everyone else was running towards us. Arton screamed Zaria’s name.
The borog was in the air again. And it was coming right for us.
“Jesus fucking- duck! Duck!” My throat was so dry and hoarse with fear I couldn’t even tell if my words made it into the air or not.
The borog was too big to land inside the narrow bottle neck of this part of the valley.
Instead, it landed atop the two walls of stone, the width of its body easily spanning the distance.
It raised its terrible head.
Then smashed it down.
Zaria shouted. Tilly and I grabbed at each other for balance. The thing was smashing into the stone above and on either side of us with all its might.
“Go, go!” I screamed at Zaria, pulling Tilly forwards. We couldn’t stay in this spot. The rocks were going to come down right on our heads. At least if we kept moving…
If we kept moving, then what? The borog would merely follow us and confront us on the ground where the way was wider.
Above us, it roared its fury, smashing its head down once more.
A man-sized chunk of stone was sheered away, landing a few metres behind us with a bone-rattling boom, blocking the path back to the others.
Two spears soon followed it – Oxriel’s and Zoren’s – obviously thrown at the borog with little effect.
“What do we do?” Tilly cried. “We’re trapped!”
Our only hope was that the borog would get distracted and fly away again, giving us precious seconds to escape. But that didn’t seem to be happening. The stone around us trembled with its attacks.
I might die here.
In that moment, I thought of Thaleo.
But only for a moment. More stone was cracking overhead – directly above Zaria.
Zaria, who’d been so welcoming and generous to us. Zaria, who was so blissfully happy now that she was mated to Arton. Zaria, with her precious little baby on the way.
I didn’t think about it. I didn’t even have to. I let go of Tilly and sprinted ahead, connecting hard with Zaria’s back and shoving her with everything I had, sending her stumbling forward.
When the rock came away from the wall, it was so loud that it sounded like gunfire. Maybe it was gunfire. Something hit the back of my head with the force of a bullet. There was no pain. Only a spray of bright stars across my sputtering vision.
No, not just stars. Sight stars.
Thaleo?
He must have caught me. I never felt myself hit the ground.