Chapter 8 - Firestorm
A light wind ruffled the needles of the surrounding conifers, and it brought the smell of sun-warmed pinesap. Tymos sat on a rocky outcrop, resting and letting the breeze cool him. Nearby, Kryslie was filling a water sack from the trickle spring and using the water that spilled over her hands to wash her face.
The stunted mountain pines grew thickly around the spring, allowing only intermittent shafts of light to reach the ground, and this meant that the alien aircraft overflying the area, would not spot them. Those aircraft were cloaked, and most of the engine noise was muffled, but still audible when they were very close.
The over-flights had been occurring frequently, ever since first light. It did not take an omnipotent mind to deduce that the aliens that had fled from Horst’s village had reported the presence of Royals there. The dark orange clad warriors, the subordinates of a second alien Warlord, had run directly back to their baseship - and made it easy for Tymos and Kryslie to track them and find its location.
Now, Tymos and Kryslie were returning south, intending to travel to the lowlands and the nearest city. From there they could request a long-range beam to take them back to the Royal Estate.
At first, they kept off the trail that they had used to reach the crest of the mountain range, so as not to encounter any of the orange clad aliens. Even when they had again descended past the last alien stragglers, they deemed it prudent to keep making their own trail.
Finding the spring had been fortuitous, for none of the mutants’ maps had extended that far up into the mountains.
The muted roar of yet another airship, made them look up automatically. They both felt a shiver like a cold breeze; the passing of a sensor scan. So far, the aliens’ instruments had not detected them, for surely, if they had, the aircraft would circle trying to be sure, or would have dropped some kind of bomb down onto them.
Tymos stood up, turning his head to listen to the receding noise. “That was a bigger ship than the others,” he said softly. He picked up his pack as he added. “And it came from a different direction. I think it is heading for the village.”
Kryslie stopped filling the water-skin, and capped it, even though it wasn’t full. She had shared her twin’s feeling of disquiet.
The village was still six hours away at a fast trot. As it was, in that untravelled part of the mountains, they would have to make their own trail over rocky and broken ground, and force their way through thick tree growth. Kryslie hooked the water skin into her belt, shrugged her pack back on and followed her brother.
“The village is deserted,” Kryslie thought at her twin, saving her breath for running.
“It wasn’t,” Tymos corrected her. His mind envisioned the bound alien commander.
“Surely his men would have returned to help him?” Kryslie proposed. “Obviously not those orange clad ones, but the ones in dark green - Kellex’s warriors.”
“There was a distinct sense of resentment for that Commander being in charge,” Tymos said. “Those two I killed, wanted him to fail. I would bet that one or more of those who ran off, reported the failure to Kellex.”
Disquiet blossomed into a full premonition.
Tymos went on. “If Kellex finds out that his Commander challenged us and lost, and we got away…”
“We will be lucky to find him alive,” Kryslie finished the thought. “Do we dare risk cutting through to the main trail?”
“I think we should,” Tymos agreed. “There is still a fair bit of tree cover, and these camouflage outfits should make us hard to spot.”
It took them an hour to reach the main trail, with its view down into the next valley, and they had not gone far along it when they heard a thunderous explosion and felt the ground tremble. Far to the south, a huge orange glare rose above the trees, the top fraying into thick black smoke.
They stopped running, inexplicably aware of the furnace like heat and the insult to the aura, that had occurred many miles away. Around them, the tiny rustlings of birds and creatures and the chirping of insects was replaced by silence.
The impression of destruction was almost overpowering. Kryslie controlled her anger and asked, “Was that simply to finish off one failed commander or did they think we would still be there?”
“It seems an act of spite and it might also have been intended as a warning to the mutants,” Tymos proposed. “If Kellex sent someone there to question that commander, he’d know the mutants were now siding with us.”
“You know,” Kryslie was thoughtful. “I reckon it was Kellex. I doubt that other Warlord would want to draw attention to this area.”
“Hmm. A fire that big would be apparent from the orbital satellites. Xyron will send in a fire control team, and fire bombers,” Kryslie proposed. “We should try to meet up with them.”
“A good idea, if they are on this side of the fire,” Tymos considered. “But a fire that big will spread, and will come uphill faster than down. Do you think we can do anything about it?”
Kryslie considered the idea. “Air is too dry to form clouds,” she confirmed her brother’s realisation.
In their minds they considered all that they had learnt about fire control in classes and from all of the memories received from Governor Xyron’s mind.
“Can we remove the air from the fire?” Tymos suggested, and he didn’t need his sister to veto that idea. Images and ideas from their mind meld with the Governor’s - of smoke coming to them, and air rushing in from beyond the fire to replace the air they attracted. The fire would be pushed towards them even faster.
No other suggestion can to mind, until they began to hear a rumble like thunder, and more tremors shaking the ground. Unlike thunder, the sound was ongoing, and increasing in intensity. A muffled roar assaulted their ears, and a blast of foul smelling wind buffeted them.
“There!” Kryslie pointed upwards at the underside of a huge ship, rising over the crest of the last ridge. It blocked out the sun, throwing their position into deep shadow for almost a minute before it suddenly increased speed, from vertical antigrav thrusters to atmospheric propulsion. It cloaked as it passed over them and disappeared from sight, but the compression wave from the downward thrusters stripped leaves from trees, and brought down huge branches - the effect apparent in a line going downhill. The flames from the fire seemed to spread abruptly as the craft passed over that area.
“There must be something we can do,” Kryslie spoke aloud. “I don’t like the idea of it spreading down to the next nearest mutant villages.”
“No,” Tymos agreed with a shiver. “If we can’t make it rain and we can’t remove the air or fuel …”
Kryslie wiped her face where she was sweating from the heat she felt. She suddenly considered the sensation. “Tym, we are too far away to actually feel the fire, but the air here is so hot.”
She saw her brother adjusting his eyes, and through his mind, she saw the lines of energy over-lying the scene they saw.
“Heat is energy,” she realised, and the answer was there. “We remove the energy, not the air.”
“Let’s do this,” Tymos urged. “Like we did with the storm.”
He began the process, closing his eyes and seeing only the energy flows. He felt Kryslie link to his mind, and together they sought for the centre of the fire, where the roiling energies were strongest, and the insult to the aura most pronounced. Then they began drawing energy away from there, bringing it slowly towards them. They let it flow through them, and into the ground. They felt hotter and hotter, and the ground under them began to heat up. After a time, the sense of heat receded and Kryslie opened her eyes.
The orange glow was no longer obvious above the nearer trees, and the black smoke was fading to grey. From the changed position of the sun, several hours had passed.
In the distance, over the fires, several aircraft were circling. From them, a cloud of reddish chemical dropped. Tymos relaxed and said, “The fire chemicals have smothered most of the remaining fire. We should head down and try to meet the mopping up team.”
Kryslie took a drink from her half filled water-skin and passed it to her brother. He took it, with a grin of thanks. They both needed it after handling the heat energy.
“That’s all we have,” she warned him. “When that runs out we’ll have to drink the stuff in the gourd tree leaves. The next nearest spring, other than the one where the village was, is down where Vedric’s tribe is camped.”
She didn’t need her brother to comment, for they had already needed to drink from the gourd tree during their travels. The liquid was refreshing, even if slightly astringent, but they both preferred water.
They chose to continue down the main trail, trotting rather than running, with Tymos leading. After travelling about a mile, he stopped abruptly, and used a hand signal to tell her to do the same. His mind voice explained, “I thought I saw movement ahead - man shaped.”
Kryslie didn’t question his precaution. She used her own senses to try to find any trace of aliens. From a distance, most of them were hard to tell from Tymorean commoners, unless they had a trace of power. She was seeking traces of that warped power when she sensed furious malevolence.
With out consulting each other, they both edged into the low growth beside the trail, slipping their packs off, to minimise the disturbance of the leaves. They edged back to the trail, at ground level, to find a vantage to view the path. They used the aura to cover themselves.
From that low vantage, they waited to see if the figure would climb the hill, and pass them. Just when they began to think the figure had moved down towards the fire zone, Kryslie sensed that the inimical mind was very close. Only by adjusting their eyes as they did to see the energy aura, did they see a faint orange glow walk past them, going up the hill.
“His stealth field is almost perfect,” Tymos thought at his sister. “He must be an important alien, to have such protection.”
“More important than a Warlord? When Kellex snuck onto the Royal Estate, his stealth suit wasn’t that good,” Kryslie disagreed. “And I doubt that another Warlord would be skulking around here.”
“He has good mind shields,” Tymos thought at her.
“They don’t block out his emotions. He has just found our tracks on the main trail. I sense elation, and a malicious pleasure.”
“We need to move - we can’t fight him if we can’t see him.”
“What about our packs?”
“Leave them. We might be able to hide in the aura, but he can still trip over us. While he is up the trail, we need to get away. We can’t assume he will follow the tracks very far. If he finds our packs, he will search around here.”
Kryslie sensed her brother was itching to go, and the feeling infected her. She did a brief inventory of what they were each carrying. They had knives, one empty water skin, no food and no spare clothes. The tech weapons they had taken from dead aliens were low on power, and useless weight. They could manage without food bars and clothes if they were going to meet up with the fire team.
“Krys, can you tell what that creature is doing?”
“He is moving away, following our back trail, I think.”
“Okay, we parallel the trail till we get to one of those rock outcrops that cross the trail,” Tymos decided. “And we minimise tracks on the sandy areas.”
They edged backwards from under the low bushes, and Tymos grinned when he saw his sister tear a flexible small branch from one of the bigger ones lying on the ground. “One advantage of that big ship going over. With all the broken branches, our passage will be less noticeable.”
“Hope it is enough. We need to report to President Reslic about this creature. There might be more of them about.”
Kryslie followed her brother, keeping her mind open to the uncontrolled emotions of the invisible alien. Tymos was watching where he was moving, as well as trying to sense the fire control team.
They knew that the team would have to patrol the perimeter of the fire area, so they had two ways they could go - down the trail towards the village, or cut around above it. Since the alien was on the trail, they decided to make their own way around the top of the fire zone.
Knowing that the alien was probably hunting them, they moved with extreme caution, keeping to rocky places, and when they couldn’t, Kryslie used the branch to sweep away their tracks.
From their memories of fire control practices, they expected that the fire control team would want to be sure the fire did not reignite and burn down towards settled areas. They would be busy on that front for some days.
Tymos and Kryslie, due to their sensitivity to the aura, knew that the fire was safe. It would probably smoulder for days, especially in the centre, and it had burnt a very large area.
They were gradually moving down hill towards the fire perimeter, even as they were circling above it. Evidence of the fire was apparent with not only the still thick pall of smoke, but with large flakes of ash and half-burnt leaves drifting down. They saw places where another fire might have started, had they not taken the energy from the fire. The actual edge of the burnt area was still several miles down hill, the edge of the chemical treated area would be closer.
As they neared the fire edge, the vegetation grew dryer, as if the fire had sucked all moisture from the trees and plants, making them tinder dry and ready for a spark.
“This whole mountain could have gone up,” Kryslie thought. “I reckon Kellex didn’t care if it did.”
“If he knows the mutants have changed allegiance, this is probably his revenge,” Tymos agreed.
Not far onward, the bushes were coated with orange powder. This rubbed off onto their camouflage overalls, mottling the brown and green with orange. They reeked now of the suppressant chemical, but the smell of scorched and burnt wood was getting stronger. A short distance further on, the orange-coated trees gave way to a landscape of black and orange, with stark black tree skeletons poking up from a dense layer of ash. Faint wisps of smoke rose from ash and blackened wood.
With unspoken agreement, they did not enter the blackened area, but continued circling the edge.
Tymos stopped abruptly. Kryslie was aware that something on the ground had caught his attention. She looked down, once she caught up to him and saw the overlapping paw print tracks of one of the huge felines. It had reached that point and been reluctant to go on.
“Fresh,” Tymos thought. “Made since the chemical drop.”
Kryslie moved to where she had a view across the devastated area. Without the trees to block them, she spotted several of the rock out crop landmarks they had used for navigation, only a few days ago. “Perhaps it has a lair in the caves. Maybe cubs too.”
“If so, I hope the cave protected them. We had better keep moving.”
They pushed onward, stopping twice when they found some gourd leaves that were still slightly bloated. Using their knives, they made a nick in the leaf just near where it had joined to a branch. From there, they sucked the remaining liquid from it. There wasn’t much, but it soothed their throats, which were parched from the smoke and the rising heat from the fire zone.
In the late afternoon, when the sun was slanting through the blackened trees, they cut across more tracks made by a feline predator. This time though, the cat was tracking injured prey.
Paw marks overlaid, marks made by a boot and a dragging foot. Rough round marks, paralleling the boot prints, suggested the injured person was using a branch as a crutch.
“Blood too.” Kryslie pointed out several drops in the sand where the cat had sniffed, and other smudges on the desiccated bushes crowding the trail.
Tymos back-tracked the boot prints in the direction of the fire. Kryslie followed a short way in the other direction. She stopped at an area of disturbed ground, where it seemed the cat had attacked the injured person.
Tymos joined her. “Who ever that cat was after, came up the hill. The chemical stuff has settled into his tracks.” He studied the scene that Kryslie had found. “No sign of the cat dragging something away. More like someone crawled away.”
Without discussing it, they began to follow the drag marks and blood. In their mind was the thought that it was more likely that the injured person was an alien, and whilst they abhorred the damage the aliens were doing to Tymorea, and had killed some of them, they could not leave this one to die.
Vague ideas of finding the alien, questioning him and taking him back to the Estate warred with the realisation that the alien might not want their help, if it meant being captured and questioned. However, it was worth trying to win an alien over to the Tymorean point of view, and to provoke questions in him about the rightness of the undeclared war.
They climbed up the hill, noting that the amount of blood was increasing, as if the injured alien was moving more slowly.
“If that cat attacked him, something must have scared it off,” Kryslie surmised.
“The explosion, or maybe the fire coming at it,” Tymos guessed. “This alien had his gods watching over him. He obviously couldn’t have outrun the fire if we hadn’t quelled it.”
“Then he already has one reason to thank us. He must be desperate though, to keep forcing himself onwards, and upwards.”
“Hmm. However, he is heading into the territory of one of those cats. I can smell the cat musk around here, even over the chemical stink.”
“At least we will not smell like something edible,” Kryslie noted, only half in jest.
As dusk was turning the sky darker, Tymos thought at his sister. “There, just ahead.”
They hurried their pace to reach the alien who was still stubbornly trying to crawl along. Without even thinking about it, they adjusted their eyes so they could see in the deepening dark.
As the reached the injured man, definitely an alien from the tatters of his uniform, he tried to push away from them, but he was too weak. He spoke a few pleading sentences in his native language; it was not too dissimilar to some of the older Tymorean dialects. His terror was evident in the fully dilated eyes and rapid breathing.
“Hush,” Kryslie said softly. “Sound carries once it gets dark, and we are still within the range of the big cat. We are not going to hurt you further. We will help you.”
The alien tried to brush away the hand that Tymos was moving slowly and gently down his prone body.
“Don’t move,” Tymos ordered, unconsciously using ‘command’ voice, as he sensed the extent of the alien’s injuries.
“Why didn’t you kill me,” the alien finally pleaded, speaking in the Tymorean dialect. “You killed Loksoon and Rentin. Why did you let me live? I would have let you be killed if you defeated me.”
“Hush,” Kryslie repeated. “I knew you did not like the orders you were following. You were not like those we killed to save our own lives and those of the mutants.”
In her mind, she heard Tymos say, “We will need to clean his wounds, some are already becoming infected.”
She replied in kind, “We have no water, and we are still in the range of one or more of those cats.”
“Stay here with him. I will look for some of the gourd leaves and somewhere safer.” Tymos moved off silently into the night, and the injured alien tried to see where he had gone.
“He is looking for somewhere safer and something to use on your wounds, to stop them festering.”
Kryslie sensed the alien becoming a little less tense as he realised that he was not about to be tortured. Then they both heard low growling and the sound of something big pushing its way through undergrowth.
Xan heard the cat noise, and his mind recalled, too vividly, the tawny beast that had sprung at him and mauled his leg. Every muscle in his body went tense, sending waves of pain through all his hurts. He should have been dead already, four times over. Right then, anticipating the cat mauling him again, he wished he were.
The girl with the soft, gentle voice was kneeling close to him with her hand resting lightly on his shoulder. Part of his mind was pleading, “Holy Jyx, let the cat take the girl, instead of me. It isn’t fair. If I was meant to die, why did you let me live after Villeni finished with me? He left me for dead, my back like bloody meat, an invitation to the scavengers.”
The scavenging canines in the village had been scared off by the branch he swung at them. They slunk off to find easier meat. The feline had found him after he had left the village, when he thought he was safe. It had started to feed on his leg, but the bomb had dropped. That and the scent of fire had scared it off. Xan knew that the bomb was to destroy the village. It was punishment for the mutants, and to finish him, but he had left there. He had forced himself to move, when he should have just given up. He was nameless, a nobody, a disgrace.
The fire had roared up the hill; he had seen the flames through the trees, had begun to suffocate from the smoke, had seen death racing at him, and his mauled leg made trying to run impossible.
However, there had been cool, fresh air down near the dirt, and he had seen the fire stop moving forward. Against all logic, it had died down, stopped burning - leaving smoking ash and blackened trees, and a sharp delineation between desiccated tinder dry trees and dead, burnt ones. It was a miracle. Then a faint breeze had blown from down the hill, clearing the smoke.
Now there was another feline, perhaps even the same one…
He tried to move, to crawl away, and couldn’t. He could not even lift his cheek from the gravelly ground. His body went into a spasm again, reigniting the pain of all him injuries, and elevating it to a higher level of agony. He moaned, though he tried not to make a noise to bring the cat there faster.
Xan felt a gentle hand on his forehead, and seemed to feel that cool ground breeze again. After a few moments, he felt the agony receding.
“Holy Jyx,” his mind thought in awe. The girl was doing something, he didn’t want her to stop, but why did she care? She knew that there were feline predators around, why didn’t she run, and get away from it?
She was one of the hated Tymorean elite, the ones who had refused to help his people. The ones who lived apart on their lofty Estate, and lorded it over the common people. And hadn’t she and her brother left him tied up, and a disgrace to his warrior’s oath?
Thinking of the words Villeni had spoken to him, the final ignominy before he had delivered the punishment Warlord Kellex had ordered for him - they hurt worse than the punishment. He deserved the punishment - deserved the pain.
“Try not to think of anything,” the girl’s voice seemed to say within is head. The pain that had pulsed back, receded again. “If you must think of anything, recall that you are alive, and all that tried to kill you have failed.”
It was a doubtfully positive thought. He had not wanted to die, but what would his life be like, without identity, without friends, and injured on a world of enemies.
His body went rigid, as he heard the louder growl. The cat had found them. He felt the girl remove her hand, but heard, “If you lie still, and be quiet, you will be safe.”
He could not believe her; the cat was walking directly towards him. The furry face and the protruding front fangs, the eyes fixed on him, the mouth opening to roar in triumph. He smelt its fetid breath, the sickeningly strong musky odour.
Then, unbelievably, the girl walked between him and the beast. He could only see her legs, and her hands were beside her, hanging at her sides, and she had no weapon in them.
The oddest of thoughts came into his mind. He had to be hallucinating. Surely she wasn’t talking to the beast. She should be running. Was she mad?