Chapter Five
Deceived
One year later
Drip. Drip. Drip.
Splat!!!
I heard the gob of saliva fall and I knew that the mouth of the monster had opened. I ducked out of my hiding spot at the knowledge that my location had been found out. A screeching wail of great magnitude erupted as I broke cover.
I heard a sound like thunder clouds clapping in a storm as the huge jaws bit through the tree I had been hiding behind. It was after me then with a ponderous stumble of heavy steps even as it wailed out its avarice to kill me.
I ducked into a tight grove of Avarno trees and the fallen order beast howled in rage and began to smash its way ponderously through the soft pulped and closely grown trees. The trees were slowing it down, which gave me the time I needed to make it to the clearing. This was so much easier when things went according to plan, such a blessing was rare so I always planned accordingly for the chance of things going wrong.
I broke free of the rain forest and out onto the lush grass of the valley’s main grazing pasture. I was a powerful runner and my life of surviving and fighting had made my body hard. I had the scars and enough near-death experiences to prove it too. The high order animals busy grazing on the lush grass of the valley picked up their heads in alarm as a wail of aggression broke out from the forest behind me.
The fallen order beast was clear of the Avarno trees and would be after me swiftly now. Faster than I could run.
Okay, which one was it going to be, I contemplated to myself, as I ran straight toward a group of three horned Tricans. Kuri had taught me many things, one of which was that some of the high order beasts could still be communicated with. I cried out my need from within and for a moment the herd of giant three horned beasts came to a standstill.
They blinked their large eyes at me out of their heavy armor plated skulls and then I saw their gazes shift to the forest edge behind me. I glanced over my shoulder to see one of the fallen order kinds explode out of the heavy vegetation on its two massive rear legs as its short upper arms grasped the air in their eagerness to get a grip on me.
I glanced ahead as all the high order beasts of the plain began to run. It would be a short day for me if all my available rides ran off and left me here.
A young female Trican surged free of the pack of stampeding prey animals and headed straight for me. It was a brave move and one for which I was supremely grateful. To face the threat, coming up fast behind me, alone meant certain death for her, yet she was coming full on as the herd forsook her and headed off down the valley.
To the herd there was no overcoming the beast behind me without greater numbers and so, listening to their fear, they gave flight, but there were still special ones like the big female before me that still listened to directions given to them by man.
Kuri had told me that all the animals had once been so responsive to the dictates of man and had even spoken in a common tongue, but that ability had been lost at some point in the distant past. The Tricans could still detect dire emotional context though and one had listened and heeded my cry for help.
It appeared she would run right over top of me for a moment, but at the last moment her great head dipped downward and I vaulted upwards to land standing on her lower horn, with my body poised between her two upper horns. Great chunks of sod went flying through the air as the young female in her prime peeled off to the left in a desperate lunge to avoid a head on course with what was behind me.
The change of course successfully made the Trican beneath me begin to put forth the greatest effort of her life. I looked up and over her raised protective neck frill of sinew and bone to see slavering death just behind us.
I vaulted upward to stand on her upper horns and then I flipped over her neck frill to land on her neck. Looking up, I saw that the fallen order beast was gaining on us. It seemed unnatural to me how it could be faster than the beast I rode, which had the benefit of four legs and less overall bulk.
The fallen order beast may be faster, but it would not eat us this day. It was the last of its kind and I intended to see it die just as all the others had over the past year. I had nothing against predators in general, but this fallen kind Kuri had marked for slaughter as it was nothing but a mouth that knew only endless hunger and was never satiated, but killed for the joy of killing.
I pulled my bow off my back. It was a powerful bow and the muscles of my arm stood out in stark relief as I fitted an arrow shaft to it and let it fly. The arrow sped true and launched deeply into the gut of the beast all the way up to the feathers of my fletching.
The pain the beast experienced drove it to new heights of hatred for me and I called out in my mind to the big female beneath me to change course. Obediently she surged off to the left side in a display of several tons of weight in action, even as the fallen beast’s teeth raked furrows through the dirt where we had just been.
I let loose with another arrow and caught it in the neck. These things were hard to bring down and this last one of its fallen kind was putting up quite the fight as if it knew what was at stake. It dove at us again, and again at my direction the big female Trican dodged off to the side as I put arrow after arrow into our pursuer.
Suddenly the chase was over and I was shocked by it. Badly bleeding the fallen order beast completely broke off pursuit and headed as fast as it could go towards the open mouth of the valley where the valley opened up into the arid wastelands that surrounded the Holy Mountains.
Never before had I seen such behavior from one of this kind. When they attacked there was no let up until it or its victim was dead.
I didn’t give it much of a chance in terms of survival, as my arrows had found their mark, the evidence left behind in a trail awash with blood. There was so much blood that I marveled that it still had the strength to run. Again, there was just something unnatural in the moment.
I calmed the beast I rode as it was still in full flight and slowly she came to a stop, her sides heaving hard as she took in great gulps of air. Then I asked the impossible of her and she listened to me. Turning, she began to follow after the hunter of us both at an easy lope that shook the ground.
*****
I couldn’t even see the beast we trailed anymore, but its blood lay dumped out on the ground in a trail that was unmistakable to see. There was just something about this that I did not like, but the desire to understand what was going on had me urging the big female to go a little faster.
The amount of blood grew less and less and then I knew that I was dealing with something beyond the physical realm. Under natural circumstances no animal of such great bulk could go on with so little blood left in it.
“El Elyon help us!” I said, as I urged my increasingly reluctant steed to continue on.
A half-hour later the bulk of the beast we had been trailing came into view. It had run completely out of the valley and was laying upon the parched sands of the Wastelands.
Creatures of the valley rarely if ever left it, as what value was there in roaming the Wastelands that had little to offer in terms of food. That said, why then had this fallen order beast run so far to reach this desolate spot?
There wasn’t even a blood trail anymore, which was perhaps most eerie of all. Something had driven this animal beyond even the limits of its obscene killing abilities to do the impossible.
It was windy outside of the valley and sand tornadoes were kicked up here and there all around us.
I quickly saw that the sand in the air had hidden the real reason for the monster’s desire to bring us here. We were completely surrounded by Saber Cats!
I felt a quiver course down my spine at the sight of so many of them. I had thought that Kuri and I had killed them all, but I had been wrong. Very wrong, as we were literally being encircled by hundreds of them.
These must be the leftover pack remnants of all those we’d spent a full year killing. They closed in from all sides; an unbroken wall of unnatural teamwork on full display.
It was normal for these big cats to run in packs of 30 or more, but never so many as this. They were united in purpose to kill me, one of the perpetrators of their demise within the valley beyond, which they had once ruled.
Although they had the appearance of other big cats such as lions they were partly something else. It was not sure what that was. Their unnaturalness also lay in both the size of the packs they kept and their most obvious feature which were the elongated canines that came down from their upper jaw and went a long way into giving them a ferocious appearance.
For all the fear the oversized canines evoked, they were absolutely useless. The canines were so long that the cats couldn’t open their mouths wide enough to properly bear down on anything and the teeth themselves were very prone to breaking off, which was the saving grace for many of the creatures.
With canines in place they couldn’t get a good bite on anything. Even though they were larger in size, they couldn’t win by themselves in an upfront confrontation with a lion of smaller stature because they couldn’t use the power of their bite.
Their way of coping with the limitations imposed upon them by their teeth was that they ran in very large packs and would attack en-masse. They had killed all the other big cats and high order predators in the valley over time with their large pack mentality. Only in the higher ranges of the mountains did a few scattered and much smaller numbered packs of lions continue to survive.
Those lion prides were coming back down to the valley now as our war was not with them, but rather with these freaks of nature all around us that had hunted almost all of the smaller prey within the valley to extinction. They, like the Evanik dogs, never had enough to eat.
Now, as I looked around, I realized that I had been set up by forces beyond any at work within the physical realm. I stared into the faces of the encroaching Saber Cats and knew a moment of anger the likes of which I’d never experienced before.
The knowledge that these animals were being used by demonic forces to bring about my death, because of my beliefs and faith in El Elyon was material for my rage to burn upon. Something of my intense anger telegraphed out of me into the big Trican beneath me, who began to grunt aggressively and stamp its feet.
Under normal conditions the Tricans were under no threat from the Saber Cats because of their tough armored hide and aggressive herd instinct, as the Tricans held together under a Saber Cat attack and charged on them instead. But one Trican against so many was a doubtful thing.
It didn’t matter. I cared less about living right now than I ever had before. The urge to fight out against this pressing darkness that destroyed all that was well and good was overwhelming.
I had no more arrows so my bow was no longer of use to me. I unhooked my bowstring and tied it off to my spare bowstring. I then tied the one end of the elongated string to my belt. Turning I tied off the other end of the string to one of the bony projections of the female’s neck frill.
Tether now in place, I pulled the sword that Kuri had helped me make out of its holster which lay along my back. One hand holding onto the sword and the other on the neck frill of the beast that I rode I cried out, “Let’s ride!”
The big Trican half reared up for she seemed infused with the same killing passion that I was. She came down with crashing force and took off at a lope for the wall of snarling Saber Cats.
My intention was not to escape. No, my intention was to do war with the unnatural forces at play within the misguided flesh which surrounded me. The Sabers let off with a concussive roar and lunged forward toward us.
The big Trican, far from being put off by the sound of the Sabers’ roars, let out a roar of her own as she picked up speed. Not 10 or even 20 sabers would be enough to bring her down, but a 100 or more was a different story.
Our certain death was far from our shared thoughts as we plowed into the enemy line of fur and teeth. Saber Cats went flying or were crushed underfoot, while one was gored through by the big female’s lower solitary horn.
With a shake of her big head the Trican dislodged the gored wreckage of life and hunted for more. Her feet churned the desert sand in a wide arcing turn as she sought to run down the line of Saber Cats before her.
They ducked out of the way to avoid her dangerous horns and crushing hooves. As they peeled off to the side they pounced and latched on to the big female’s flanks as they tried to bring her down by weight alone.
I explored the length of my tether as I ran back and forth across the shifting platform beneath my feet. My sword swung faster than I had ever wielded it and my sharp regret of the moment was that I did not have two swords to wield.
Saber after Saber launched to land on the flanks of the big female. Some fell off to be churned under, but others hooked in with their massive forepaws and held on. I severed Saber after Saber of its forelegs in my bid to keep the Trican rolling forward unencumbered by the weight of the horde.
Occasionally Sabers managed to claw their way up onto the broad back of the Trican to attack me. They came at me with deep chested roars and I hacked away with true savagery, until the back of the big beast I rode ran red with blood.
My footing on the bloody surface became treacherous and I slipped many times, until I fell. My cord brought me up short of hitting the ground, but there were snarling Sabers all around me taking swipes at me.
The big female turned sharp and brought her head to the right and I leapt toward the proffered horn hanging out in space, even as I sliced through my tether with my sword.
I grabbed the horn, but a massive paw slammed into my shoulder and sent the sword flying along with my breath. I held on to the horn through sheer force of will, as my ride brought her head around and charged on as more and more Sabers fought to latch on.
My breath had come back to me and I pulled myself up and over her horns and past her eyes to stand against her neck frill, only to duck a paw swipe aimed at my head. I dodged back up to be met with the snarling visage of a Saber. I let him have my fist to the side of his head with all the strength I could muster.
The Saber’s eyes glazed and he tumbled off the Trican. Wearily, I flipped up over the neck frill and landed on my feet as I pulled a pair of long knives from my belt. There were at least four Sabers on board and they were all surging toward me.
This was a battle for survival. With a roar I ran toward them.
The desert wind was blowing again and I was grateful for it, because it had blown sand all over the blood on the surface of the Trican’s back. I could tell the Trican was tiring, but gamely she kept on as at least 30 Sabers were climbing up her sides, tearing into her thick hide in search of a perch.
I ducked under one paw strike and ripped my knife along the Saber’s flank. The Saber fell over the side and dislodged two of its brethren on the way down. Another Saber was before me, rising up to give me a fanged hug, and I stepped into the embrace of its paws and rammed both blades deep. Its paws shrugged off my shoulders even as the insane light in its eyes faded into darkness.
Another Saber swiped at my legs and I heaved the dead one before me over to fall onto it, knocking the newest aggressor free of the Trican’s back. Out of the corner of my eye I saw a Saber in flight and I let the momentum of my heave of the dead Saber carry me over backward.
I landed hard on my back. Numbly I thrust one knife upwards just in time to gut the Saber passing overhead of me.
Awash with blood from my gutted victim I scrambled up to my feet, only to be startled from my fight for survival by the loud bellow of the big female. It wasn’t a cry of death, but of war, and then the air seemed to ring with the sound of my friend’s cries only manifested in greater volume.
It was almost comical to see the way the heads of the latched on Sabers swiveled forward. They abruptly let go of the Trican’s flank and dropped to the ground.
I turned my head forward to see what had provoked such a reaction. The entire herd had come to us. Not just the female’s herd, but all the Tricans of the valley. They were strung out in a long unbroken line running at full tilt with horns down. Sand kicked up behind them forming a wall of dust 50 feet into the air. It was a beautiful sight.
My head turned back to see the rest of the Sabers, numbering almost two hundred, running in the opposite direction. They weren’t going to make it.
The battle line before us opened and the horned host swept along past us at a full gallop. Tired Sabers dodged left and right to miss being trampled or gored, but the tight-pressed line of Tricans didn’t falter in its intent to destroy all. Each of the Tricans held its place in the line as they swept back and forth with their projecting horns in search of a target, even as they trod other Sabers underneath, into the sand.
The big female came to a lumbering halt, her sides heaving for breath. Somehow I found myself suddenly sitting on her back instead of standing and absentmindedly I patted her back. It was doubtful that she felt my touch, but I had to show my appreciation in some way.
She was all cut up from where sharp claws had managed to penetrate, but she was young and with rest she would recover. The herd was coming back to us.
I continued to sit, feeling quite done in by everything. I saw Kuri then. He was riding a big bull, which diverted from the herd to come towards us.
Kuri stood there at the frill above the horns and regarded me somberly for a moment before a smile broke free, “I believe we have accomplished the goal that we set out to do a year ago. I think you’re ready for the next and final step of your training.”
Trepidation for what that next step would be rose sharply within me, “And what would that be?”
“Civilization and in particular, the art of diplomacy.”
I could’ve laughed out loud then, “You had me scared there for a moment, Kuri! I was expecting a new level of death-defying import.”
My good humor faded quickly away though at the somberness reflected in my teacher’s face. What had I said wrong?
What could be so hard about diplomacy?
Kuri’s ride drew close and Kuri broke the somberness of the moment by saying, “Do not be deceived by appearances Benaiah. The fight today, indeed this whole past year, has been a battle ever before you. You’ve always been able to see, feel, or even sense it and then respond to the threat, but it is different in the realms of man. There, nothing is certain and almost everything you see is a lie. Where in nature the weak die off against superior foes, in the realms of man the weak kill the strong by stealth and subterfuge. The evil inside can be hid in the form of a friend, who will stab you in the back when you least expect it. Men and women are ever deceptive in revealing their true intentions. To them you would appear as naïve, an open scroll to exploit. You have much to learn Benaiah. There is a way to talk that does not give away too much and yet speaks only that which is true. There is a way to evaluate the truthfulness and motives of others and yet still remain friendly. There is a way to avoid the pitfalls of those weaknesses common to mankind by which many are snared and pulled down to a place of everlasting torment. No Benaiah, this coming year you have as much, if not more, to learn than you did these past two years put together.”
I sighed inwardly. My bask in the glow of a great victory was over and I was once again humbled. Why did the circumstances of my life have to move along so fast?
Why couldn’t things proceed at a bit of a slower rate than they did?
Glancing at Kuri I felt a moment of guilt. It wasn’t right to question his teaching methods and I was sorry for my thoughts. I trusted Kuri and yet why couldn’t there just be a moment of rest now and then?
“Benaiah?”
I glanced up, knowing that he already knew what I had been thinking. He spoke softly, “Come down to the ground.” As Kuri spoke the bull he rode inclined its horned head lower and Kuri gracefully stepped down onto the desert sand.
I slid inelegantly down the side of my ride to tumble into the sand. Apparently I was as mentally tired as I felt physically in order to have misjudged how dismounting in such a fashion could’ve been a good idea.
Kuri helped me up as the two Tricans moved off. The big female stayed abreast of the bull, who was the herd sire. Her actions this day had just vaulted her, at an early age in the life of a Trican, into the dominant role of alpha female of the herd.
I was glad for her. It was nice to see her rewarded in some way for her gallantry today.
My eyes drifted to Kuri standing beside me. I’d reached my full height now and I could stare him right in the eye. There was a wealth of unsurpassed knowledge tempered with the warmth of a friend in the way that he looked at me. He made me feel special in a way that needed no words to express.
He spoke and I listened carefully, “Reward is coming Benaiah. But first, there is a war of the spirit to contend with that has spilled over into the lives of men. There are few willing to take up the sword and fight. I tell you now, Benaiah, that in the courts of Shamayim you are already known for your willingness to do what is right. One day you shall have great reward, but first comes the war of this life, for that is the will of El Elyon. The covenant enacted of old shall be completed and the separation of those who believe in that new covenant from life eternal will be abolished. The time is short, Benaiah. While there is yet time we labor. I know what I ask entails sacrifice, but it is the life of a servant of the Most High that you and I have embarked upon.”
Quite honestly I said, “When you put it all like that Kuri it doesn’t seem like much of a sacrifice.”
“Oh it can and it will be a sacrifice, Benaiah. The road we travel can cost us everything and yet we gain everything that there is of value to be had, which are not things of this world.”
I shook my head and asked a question that I had always wanted to, “Just who are you Kuri?”
He simply smiled and slapped me on the shoulder and said, “Your teacher, your fellow servant and your friend. Now, I do believe that our rides are here.”
Not understanding, I turned to look back out into the wastelands only to see two horses coming toward us, dragging their reins. I glanced quickly to Kuri. This wasn’t the first time he’d done something like this. How he had so much foreknowledge about everything I did not know, only that El Elyon must reveal it to him somehow.
As the horses came closer I couldn’t but help notice that they weren’t quite my picture of how I had envisioned my first ride into greater civilization. One was an older looking gelding and the other was a mare.
“The mare will be your mount. I’ll ride the other.”
My face wrinkled a little in disdain and Kuri noticed, “What is it Benaiah?”
I hesitated, but then spoke, “I just sort of imagined myself riding something a little more lively and bold like a stallion.”
“You didn’t object to riding a female steed earlier today.”
“That was different and you know it!”
Kuri chuckled and gripped my shoulder, “The time of war horses is coming, but for now you are working on, among other things, the art of diplomacy. I think you will find that we will attract far less notice in the places we are headed by riding mounts such as these than steeds of war.”
I turned from the horses to Kuri, “Is there anything you don’t already know?”
Kuri spoke slowly, “I know all that is given to me to know.” He mounted the gelding and I turned to my mare. He hadn’t really answered the question, but that didn’t really matter now. A new adventure was beginning.