The other lands

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

If the tales were to be believed, she faced a winged monster. A dragon. A lizard thing of such massive proportions that the beating of its wings snapped trees and blew roofs off houses and sent unfortunate people swirling into the air. It swooped down and grasped cattle two and three at a time, flying loops in the air and tossing its prey like a playful cat. It swallowed cattle whole, in midnight. Its jaws and neck convulsed with the grotesque gluttony of a river crocodile. One farmhouse was destroyed when the thing landed atop it, plunging its claws to snatch at the inhabitants within. High up the southern basin entire herds of goats and their minders had disappeared. It had been spotted as far away as Tabith, which was grave news indeed. If it could travel that far, it might soon discover Bocoum and the bounty of human life all around the Inner Sea, including the isle of Acacia itself.

While Mena had focused her attentions on the tenten creature and on the scourge of the Halaly lake, small bands of Talayan runners had narrowed in on the new creature's lair. They compared one sighting with the next, slowly piecing together when it was on an outbound journey from its lair. It had not been easy to track its movements. The thing was aloft, and it could travel much faster than a person could run.

Still, they managed it, and because of their work Mena was awakened one morning to the news that it had landed a mile away from her new camp. She was up and jogging the distance with her officers immediately. Melio and the rest of her force followed, bearing with them the tools they would need and traveling with stealth. They were in a shallow dale west of Umae, in a land that benefited from the moisture that evaporated from the great lake, blew north on the winds, and then settled nightly to condense among the orchards and pastures that distinguished the country. The marching was easy, the cover good. The Talayan trackers, aided by local farmers and herders, moved them along in the shade of trees, using the lees of hills and the shelter of brush-banked streams.

In no time at all Mena approached the last group of spotters, men and boys with their fingers to their full lips. They indicated with gestures that they were near the top of a hill. Another few paces and she should crawl the last few feet and look over the edge. She did as they advised, awkwardly, with her sword at her side and a waist pack of supplies nestled against the small of her back. She ended elbow to elbow with a herd boy on one side of her and a Talayan tracker on the other.

"Look carefully and you will see it," the Talayan said.

All she saw at first was a wide vale filled with short, rounded, evenly spaced trees. A stream traced a meandering line through the center of it, and here and there she could tell the vegetation had been managed, lanes left open, ponds dug as water catchments. It took her a moment to spot any movement among the tranquillity of the scene, but then a serpentine head moved between two trees. It was there for a second and then gone, and so far away on the other slope of the vale that she was not sure of what she had seen. Squinting, Mena followed it, and was looking in the right spot to see its head rise above the crown of one tree, cock to the side, and, with gingerly precision, nip at the foliage. And then it was hidden again.

Something about what she had just seen sent tingles over her flesh. There was fear in the reaction but a hint of something else also. "What are those trees?" she asked. "How tall are they?"

The local boy whispered an answer in Talayan, two words that Mena repeated. She was quite fluent in the language, but she was constantly being thrown by the Talayan tendency to name things through descriptive use of other words. "Blood… heart?" she asked.

The tracker lying on the other side of her cupped his hand to her ear. "You don't call it blood heart. It's orange in your language, but orange with red inside. The trees are two men in height, some a little more."

"What's it doing here? Is its lair near here?"

He creased his dark-skinned forehead. "No, I don't think so. It just landed here. We did not expect it."

"Just a coincidence, huh?" Mena muttered. She squirmed forward a few more inches and looked back at the orchard.

When she spotted the creature again, it was somewhat closer. It stepped into a lane and paused, raking its head from side to side and then freezing. It was lean and light on its four feet. In that position it must have been no more than a person's height, but that changed when it reared up on its back legs and took in the orchard-again going still as a statue-from a higher vantage. She could see the reptile in it. It was there in the sinuous lines of its neck and the blue patches along its back and in the long, whiplike expanse of its tail. It was, she thought, akin to the sand lizards that lived right in the huts of Talayan villagers. Its eyes were shaped just like those of the harmless creatures. They were larger by many times, but their size did not completely obscure their origins. She had once thought them curious eyes, innocent, fearful, and yet full of mischief.

There was an avian quality to the creature as well: flares around its neck that seemed like feathers, a crest on its forehead that snapped forward and back with a mind of its own, like the plumage a peacock displayed. When it bobbed its head the motion was comical, like both the tiny lizard it reminded her of and the motion of birds. It moved into the trees again, hunting the juiciest oranges, apparently.

Moments later, down away from the hill, Mena tongue-lashed the trackers for the absurdity of what she had just seen. "Does it not seem strange that the scourge of Talay dines on fruit? That thing is the great dragon people have been speaking of?" The group of men and boys stirred uneasily. "It eats the fruit of trees and walks around bobbing its head as if to a tune. It's as dangerous as a hen! Is that truly the thing we hunt? Look me in the face and tell me that's the last of the great foulthings."

Eventually, several affirmed that it was what they hunted. When Mena pressed them as to whether that exact creature was the one they had seen time and again over the last few weeks, they admitted it was. When she asked them why they had not corrected the rumors about its size and ferociousness they let a long silence sit, before a man answered that it was still dangerous. It was much fiercer than it looked. They had seen it in flight and-

"It flies without wings?" she snapped. "I saw no wings. Did you? Has anyone here fought it? Have any of you seen it take cattle, squash homes, terrorize villages?"

When none of them could explain the discrepancy, she turned from them and walked away a few paces, exasperated. Melio followed her, almost laughing, but she hissed, "This is a farce! Do they know how we've prepared? All the precautions? The worry we've lived with-all because of a giant sand lizard? I should have known: dragons have never lived and never will! What's happened to our reason?"

"Well," Melio said smirking, "you know, I did hear about a group of young men caught poaching near the southern basin. Might be that-"

"Poachers? People have been poaching while we risk our lives to protect them?"

Melio shrugged. "Somebody will always take advantage, Mena. On the day that anything happens in the world without somebody finding a way to cheat a profit out of it I'll dance a jig naked before any who will come and watch. Don't sell tickets, though. I doubt I'll ever be called to make such a show."

Leaning toward him, Mena exhaled a long, fatigued breath. She slipped one hand up around his side, feeling the flare of his back muscles. "Okay," she said, "that lizard is our last monster. It's no dragon, but we still must do something with it. Do we toss fruit at it or kill it? Perhaps we could walk up and put a leash around its neck."

Melio returned her embrace. "You're funny, Princess. Some people-not you, of course, but some sane people-would view this as a boon. Think about it. You woke up this morning ready to risk your life battling a terrifying beast. Instead, we've been given a gift. It's all but over, Mena. We can leave here and get on with our lives. I for one will be very happy to go home and warm your bed for weeks on end. I hope you'll join me. Think of it! We can go home and then you can stop taking those herbs. You'll do that, yes? Stop and be fertile again. I'll plant a child in you and-"

"Don't," Mena said, softly. "Don't talk about that now."

"And we can live our lives," he completed. "Why not now? Now is exactly the time to remember it. I have loved you since the afternoon I saw you striding along the dock in Vumu, bare chested and all, a priestess of Maeben. I loved you then, and I love you now. You are angry you're not going to die today? Put that aside, Mena. Let's go finish this, and then go home.

The preparations took very little time. Her officers had been readying the men and supplies from the first news of the sighting. By the time Mena confirmed they were to proceed, the troops were arriving, weapons in hand. Not wanting missiles to end up zinging willy-nilly through the orchard if the creature bolted, she chose her twenty best crossbowmen and explained to them a variation on the original plan. She sent the trackers and extra soldiers to ring the entire vale to keep the creature hemmed in. With the main group she followed a contingent of excited local boys who led them through a hidden wash and in toward the center of the orchard, low enough to remain unseen by the creature. They crept with increasing stealth, which was no easy task considering the way they were encumbered.

The bowmen walked with their weapons pointed toward the sky, each of them connected by a cord that ran from the bolt and into coils held in their seconds' palms. The line did not stop there, but trailed farther to a third, and sometimes fourth, assistant. These men carried stones cradled to their chests. A few had them in slings over their backs. Some of the rocks were large enough that two men strained to carry them, waddling together, their muscles taut and brows dripping with sweat. Each of these stones had a hole through it. It was this to which the cords from the bows were secured.

Mena kept them all in a tight group, close enough that she could communicate with gestures: a raised palm, a clenched fist, just enough of a beckoning motion with her fingers to move them forward on silent feet. When they reached the final rise that separated them from the grove the creature was feeding in, she made eye contact with them all, touched a finger to her lips, and then turned and led them forward. She drew her sword carefully as she did. She moved into the ordered rows of orange trees, smelling the tang of them, the sickly ripeness of the split fruit that dotted the ground.

Her hand snapped up. Without looking, she heard the group behind her pause, not so much a sound but the sudden absence of whatever sound had been there before to indicate them. She had spotted the foulthing. It was but fifty yards away, on the hillside facing them. It moved casually through the trees, its long neck curving selectively among the branches and leaves. Its back was to them. Mena waved her fingers in the air, and the group moved again, more stealthily now than ever.

As they got nearer, Mena had the hunting party fan out to either side. She slowed the center and let the flanks swing forward, making the group a crescent that half surrounded the foulthing. She knew they could not hope to get much closer, but she moved on light feet, thankful for every inch gained. She could now see that the creature was feathered, a close, tight coating that revealed the muscled contours and bone structure beneath a slick sheen of light plumage.

Without really realizing she was doing it, Mena drew to a halt, staring, curious now instead of angry or excited or frightened. The creature had knobby formations high on its back, and an indication of violet crest feathers running up its long neck. Despite these avian features, it was equally reptilian. Its body stretched long and lizardlike, with a tail that tapered to a thin point. For the first time, Mena realized, she did not feel the stomach-turning nausea the other foulthings had always invoked. She suddenly wanted to watch this one, to study it, to call back the slow-creeping crossbowmen and reconsider. She did not get to.

In the end it was not sound that gave them away. It was the breeze. It shifted. Mena felt it happen, felt a playful arm of the wind reach out and swipe at them and pull their scent and sprinkle it over the creature. The others must have sensed it, too. They stood frozen, breathing hushed, eyes wide.

The beast stopped feeding. Its head sank a few feet, and then it lifted its snout and inhaled through a few silent nostril flares. Without moving its body, it turned its head around and looked over the ridgeline of its back, its neck as supple as a snake. It saw them. Mena knew it saw them both because it looked right at them and because its eyes grew larger.

They were near enough, Mena decided. She lifted her hand to signal the crossbowmen, but realized they might not see her, as focused as they were on the lizard bird. They might not see her, but the creature did. Its gaze snapped to her, met hers, and held her with an intensity that was both animal savage and intelligent. Again, Mena wished she could back away. She could not have said exactly why. This was a foulthing. It was unnatural. It was a threat that did not belong in the world. Before, each time she had looked into one of these mutated beast's eyes, she had seen a perverted malevolence that had to be extinguished. That was not what was looking at her now. She needed time to-

The creature, responding to the motion of several of the crossbowmen, who were setting up to take aim, spun around. Its mouth fell open, hissing, and the plumes along its neck bristled forward, framing its head in a violet, feathered mane. The creature shook its torso savagely, stepping forward as it did so. The knobs on its back cracked away and unfurled to either side. The motion was so rapid and dramatic that it sucked the words of command out of Mena's mouth. Wings! It did have wings! They rolled out as if the bones were joints of a curled whip unfurling. Each short length of bone snapped into place with an audible cracking and popping. It took only a second or two, but in that time the creature was completely transformed. Its wings stretched out above the tree height, enormous and delicate at the same time. The wing bones were finger thin, a skeletal frame that supported a membrane so diaphanous that Mena could see the world through it. It leaped into the air.

"Shoot!" Mena found her voice again. "Stop it from escaping! Shoot it now!"

Crossbow bolts flew up after it, cords trailing behind. Several missed. A few snagged in the trees. One punched through the creature's wing membrane. Two slammed into its belly. One sank deep into the flesh of its thigh. Another nicked its neck. The creature lost its upward momentum. It hovered for a moment, a confused target into which another bolt sank home. The creature arched against the pain. Its mouth gaped as if it were roaring, but no sound came out. It slammed its wings down with force enough to snap branches and send oranges raining down. The one stroke lifted it up, pulling the lines secured to it. The ropes snapped taut, yanking the stones from the ground. The anchors crashed through branches and bounced off tree trunks. One knocked a soldier from his feet. Another smashed an arm that had been upraised against it.

Mena yelled for them to fall back, but most were already diving for cover, running down the hill, hiding behind trees and in hollows to wait for the rock anchors to pull the beast down. That had been the plan: to weight the animal with so many stones that it could not fly, or could not fly far. They could then kill it at leisure, safely. When she thought it wingless, Mena had modified the plan, thinking a less numerous team could get close enough and then essentially capture it the same way.

For a few moments during the wing-flapping chaos Mena thought the plan was working, but with each wingbeat the creature seemed to gain strength and resolve. It strained against the ropes, yanking them through the branches. It would soon clear the trees. She shouted for more bolts to be shot, but the crossbowmen were struggling to reload while keeping their eyes upon the moving beast. She would have taken a shot herself if she had a bow. Something else caught her eye. The creature's tail hung near the ground. It snapped and curled and stretched beneath the flying form, like a living rope looking for a hand to grab it. So that's what Mena did.

She walked forward and grasped it in a clenched fist. She did not exactly plan to. It was so near, so easy to do. She did not think, but some part of her imagined she might hold the creature down. The narrow tip of the tail curled around her wrist, almost playfully, as if it had a mind of its own and would tickle her. She noticed this even amid the motion, even though it lasted only a few seconds.

That's all the time she had before she was yanked into the air. She knew then-as the earth fell away beneath her churning legs-that neither the stones nor her body weight was nearly enough to keep the creature earthbound. It soared upward, taking her with it.