Someone snarled. Kagur’s comrades understood as well as she how daylight diminished their chances. But they’d come too far to do anything but press on.
They burst out onto the shelf above the water. Hissing voices clamored overhead as xulgaths on the upper tiers caught sight of them. Pivoting, squinting and blinking, Kagur looked for their canoes.
They were nowhere in sight, nor were any xulgath boats of comparable size. Evidently, more than one opening led into the ziggurat at lake level, and the raiders had emerged on a different side from the one on which they’d landed.
But one of the larger xulgath boats sat some distance down the shelf with several of the reptiles moving around on deck. Either the craft was just about to depart or it was just putting in.
Kagur had no idea how to manage such a vessel, and was sure her companions didn’t, either. But she sprinted toward it anyway, and the other raiders pounded after her.
For a few blessed moments, the xulgaths aboard the boat seemed oblivious to the fugitives’ approach. Then something—most likely the cries from the upper tiers—roused them to action. One cast a javelin, but the hasty throw fell short. Two more pushed the boat away from the pyramid with poles.
Like most natives of the tundra, Kagur had never learned to swim, but she didn’t let that balk her. She ran even faster, leaped off the tier and over the water, and thumped down in the prow of the boat.
At once, a xulgath spearman lunged at her. But she’d landed well, with her balance intact, and she parried the thrust and slashed the reptile’s neck. It fell with blood pumping from the wound.
She pivoted and looked down the length of the vessel, at more xulgaths preparing to hurl javelins—and at the human and orc rowers bound to their oars with coarse lengths of rope or vine.
She shouted to the latter: “You can be free! Just get the boat closer to the ledge!”
The captives gawked at her. Then a grizzled orc covered in lash marks both old and new roared, “Do it!” Other slaves dipped their oars into the water.
Hissing and screeching, xulgaths swung cracking whips. A couple even jabbed with spears or chopped with hatchets. Still, the rebellious thralls swung the vessel back toward the ziggurat, near enough for Kagur’s companions to jump aboard.
The xulgaths were dead a few breaths later.
“Now go!” shouted Kagur, still to the slaves. “Get us to shore!”
“Which shore?” asked one of the human slaves.
“The closest one without a xulgath city sitting on it,” panted Vom.
Kagur looked back at the ziggurat and all around the lake and decided they actually had a good chance of reaching safety. No xulgath boats were giving chase. Only one was even in view, and it was just a speck on the shining blue water, too distant to intercept her vessel even if the reptiles onboard somehow realized it had fallen into the hands of their enemies.
That meant she had no one left to fight, no more decisions to make, and no more mysteries to try to comprehend. In fact, since she wasn’t rowing, she had nothing to do, and with that realization, she suddenly felt how sore and weary she was.
She flopped down in the bow of the boat with her back against the gunwale. There, spent though she was, she set about wiping the blood from her father’s sword.
Grubby green feet planted themselves in front of her, and she looked up. Swaying slightly with the motion of the boat, a quiver of javelins swinging on his back, Nesteruk stood before her.
“You’re the leader,” he said in a tone of sullen contrition. “It was for you to say whether we fought or run.”
Kagur sighed. “Sit.”
He did.
“Your mother was a brave warrior,” she said. “So was my father. We will avenge them, and it will be a better vengeance than what we could have had in the pyramid. The blue giant and a pile of xulgaths will be lying dead while we’re still alive to eat, drink, laugh, and hunt. Do you see?”
Before Nesteruk could answer, Dalk came thumping down the walkway that ran the length of the boat between the rowers’ benches. “Look!” he said, pointing back at the ziggurat.
Kagur scrambled to her feet. A point of brightness danced atop the pyramid in the way that only metal could catch the sun.
Eovath was up there brandishing his greataxe. Using it to work magic like Holg employed his staff.
Kagur turned to the rowers. “Faster!” And although they’d already been pulling the heavy oars vigorously, they picked up the pace a little more. But it still wasn’t fast enough.
Something jolted the boat from behind. Kagur staggered. Men cried out, and then another impact jarred the vessel.
Kagur exchanged her sword for her bow and peered down into the water. Nesteruk reached for his quiver.
“No!” she said, then raised her voice to carry down the length of the boat. “No lightning! Not unless it looks like the beast is truly going to sink us!”
She didn’t check to see if her comrades were obeying. She kept her gaze on the water. Come on, she thought, show yourself.
When the creature obliged, it was swimming away, and for an instant, she wondered if Eovath’s magic had lost its grip on it and it had decided to break off the attack. Then it wheeled, and she realized it had swum under the boat, then risen to the surface to ram the bow as it had previously slammed into the stern.
It was every bit as long as the boat, with the fins of a fish but long reptilian jaws somewhat like those of a spearbeak. If it failed to knock a hole in the vessel by banging into it, it might well be capable of chewing one, or just seizing hold of the boat and flipping it over.
Kagur shot an arrow into the scaly hide above one eye and reached for another shaft. That one pierced the flesh a little farther back on the head. Vom and Dalk threw javelins.
The creature dived deep enough that missiles were unlikely to hurt it and glided under the bow. “It’s coming back at you!” Kagur shouted to the warriors at the stern, and they hefted their weapons.
But the creature didn’t simply swim all the way down the length of the vessel as it had before. When the boat jolted upward, Kagur realized their foe had given them a bump from underneath.
Fortunately, that attack didn’t crack the hull or capsize the boat, either. But it boded ill that the beast was already trying new tactics.
She tried to think of a new tactic of her own. Then something else burst out of the water.
Bounced around to the extent their bound hands would allow, their oars tangled and their rhythm disrupted, the slaves had stopped rowing, allowing a serpent-like head atop a long, twisting neck to rear up between two of the sweeps. It plunged down and snapped a man’s head off, splashing his bench mate with his blood.
Kagur loosed at the new threat. One arrow stabbed into the reptile’s neck just beneath the jaws. It screeched, and chunks of the head it had just bitten away spilled between its fangs.
Her next shaft drove deep into one of its nostrils. It roared louder, twisted away from the boat, and plunged back under the surface of the lake.
Had she killed it? What had become of the other beast? She looked around, and then Vom shouted, “Behind you!”
She whirled to find the long-necked creature’s head plunging at her with bloody jaws agape. It had swum under the boat to reach for her from the other side. She dodged toward the stern, and at the same instant, the vessel lurched as the fishlike reptile rammed it. She reeled backward, and the gunwale caught the middle of her calves. She realized she was going over.
She threw her longbow into the middle of the bow. Then she plummeted and splashed down in the water. Dislodged from her quiver, an arrow floated in front of her face.
Hoping that what she was doing was swimming, or at least an approximation thereof, she flailed. Her head broke the surface, and she coughed out water. But before she could suck in a fresh breath, she slipped back under the surface.
Fighting not to panic, to see and to think, she suddenly registered the row of oars sticking out of the side of the boat. She’d splashed down just a short distance from the vessel, and the nearest sweep was only a couple steps away, if stepping were only a possibility.
Her chest aching with the urge to breathe, she kicked and pulled at the water and dragged herself forward. Her fingertips touched the rounded oar shaft, and then it jerked away from her as the fishlike reptile rammed the boat. The next oar in line clipped her shoulder.
She tumbled, and the dregs of air left in her lungs erupted from her mouth in a burst of bubbles. Half stunned, she just barely glimpsed yet another oar coming at her as momentum carried the boat along.
She clutched hold of that sweep and dragged herself up its smooth length until her head broke water. Then she clung and gasped until the fire in her chest cooled.
Meanwhile, its four flippers stroking and tail rippling, the long-necked reptile swam under the boat. Then it turned in her direction.
Javelins flew over Kagur’s head and pierced the creature’s back, but they neither killed nor distracted it. It surged forward, this time without lifting its head. It didn’t need to when most of her body was under the water, too.
She drew up her legs and heaved with her arms. Together, the two actions sufficed to keep her whole for another moment. The bite that would have clipped her feet off gnashed shut just under them instead.
Now that Kagur was mostly above the surface, the reptile’s head came curling up between her perch and the oar in front of it. The beast snorted, and red mist sprayed from the arrow wound in its snout.
“Row!” Kagur bellowed.
She didn’t expect everyone to hear or heed her amid the general chaos, and in fact, some oars didn’t move, while others, caught on one another, cracked or snapped outright when the slaves pulled them. But the sweep behind her gigantic assailant curled through its normal action and clouted the reptile in the back.
The beast jerked its head away from Kagur to see what had struck it. She pulled her longsword from its scabbard, leaned out as far as she could, and cut with all that remained of her strength.
The blade shed sparkling droplets of water as it whirled through the air. The reptile started to look back around, and then the edge sheared into its neck.
The reptile convulsed and slipped lower in the water. The next sweep of the oar cracked bone when it slammed into its head. The beast stopped floundering and sank.
“Kagur!” called Vom. She looked around to see his shaggy head and broad shoulders sticking up over the side of the boat. “Climb!”
She slid her sword back in the scabbard and shinnied up the oar. When she was close enough, Vom reached over the size of the boat and hauled her into the space between one rower’s bench and the next. She was clumsy with exhaustion, and her feet bumped one of the slaves.
Then she heard three crackling sounds in quick succession, and a frenzied splashing in the water. When the noise subsided, Passamax, who was now standing in the bow, shook his fist in the air and bellowed.
Kagur started to clamber up onto the elevated walkway that ran between the benches. Vom moved to help her, and she waved him away.
She hurried up the deck and beheld the cause of Passamax’s jubilation. Floating, or maybe just sinking more slowly than its long-necked ally, the fishlike reptile now looked equally inert.
Kagur sighed. “You had to do it. But—”
The orc raised a scarred hand still bloody from all the killing he’d done since arriving on the ziggurat. “I leaned over the side and tossed the javelins low so the boat blocked the view from the pyramid. And the flashes don’t stand out in the sunlight as much as they did in the dark.”
She blinked. “You understood what I was thinking.”
“Why wouldn’t I? Orcs aren’t just tougher than humans. They’re smarter.” He bared his teeth, and she realized he was joking.
She turned and looked down the length of the boat. Someone had cut the bindings of the gray-haired orc. Standing on his bench for a better view, he was directing his fellows in their efforts to untangle fouled oars and jettison broken ones. Under his supervision, it only took a little while to get the boat moving again.
Kagur looked across the water for new threats. She didn’t see any.
But she did spot Holg, sitting with his back against a gunwale, eyes closed, looking gaunt and wrinkled as she’d ever seen him. Afraid some harm had befallen him, she caught her breath—and then he mocked her anxiety with a soft, rattling snore.
Tired as she was herself, she couldn’t imagine how anyone could fall asleep so soon after they’d all been fighting for their lives. But maybe it had something do with the fact that she was young and he was old.
She sat down beside him, and dried her father’s sword and her brother’s knife as best she could without a scrap of dry cloth anywhere about her. Over time, the rhythmic rocking of the boat loosened her tight muscles almost like a massage, and the warm sunlight eased her, too.
Maybe she could sleep if she permitted it. Some of her comrades had settled down to doze. But she preferred to keep watch until they all were safer.
Watching was all she did, though. She was happy to leave it to Rho and Nesteruk to work their way down the length of the boat and cut the captives free.
The oarsmen brought the craft to shore by the swift expedient of running it aground on a white sand beach. The resulting bump jarred Vom, Dalk, and other warriors awake and made them rear up blinking in confusion.
The former slaves spoke to their bench mates, gripped their hands, or even embraced them, but all of it quickly. Then they started jumping off the boat and scurrying toward the green jungle beyond, scattering as they went.
Despite the need for everyone to vanish, Kagur hadn’t expected people to depart quite this hastily. Fortunately, they weren’t gone yet. “Stop!” she shouted.
Some of the rowers looked back to smile, wave, or nod. Then they kept going.
She looked to Vom and said, “They can’t leave yet!”
The Dragonfly warrior shook his bearded head and replied with words she couldn’t understand.
The charm that allowed her to communicate with the cave dwellers had worn off. She pivoted back toward Holg. Now more lying that sitting, he was still snoring, sleeping so soundly even the jar of running aground hadn’t woken him.
She squatted and shook him by his bony shoulders. “Wake up!” she shouted.
He opened his milky eyes partway. “What?” he mumbled.
“I need you to cast speaking magic!”
Alert now, he frowned and sat up straight. “I slept some, but I haven’t meditated. That’s generally—”
She hauled him to his feet and waved her hand to indicate the departing rowers, some of whom had nearly reached the tree line. “I need to talk to them! Otherwise, we lose, and Eovath wins!”
Holg grunted. “Well, we can’t have that. Stand clear.” She did, and he chanted, shifted his staff back and forth, and clutched her shoulder at the end of the prayer. Abruptly, she understood the conversation of the warriors who were looking on wondering what she was so agitated about.
“Stop!” she bellowed. “Please!”
The rowers turned.
“I need to talk to you,” she continued. “For all our sakes.”
They exchanged glances and then tramped back down toward the water, and while they did, she decided the bow of the boat was as good a place from which to speak as any. When they were clustered beneath her, she began.
“Holg—the old man with the white eyes—and I come from the same faraway place as the blue giant. We attacked the pyramid to kill him.”
Standing at the forefront of his comrades, the gray-headed orc said, “I figured you and your band were a raiding party. Did the xulgaths cut you off from the canoes you came in?”
“Something like that,” Kagur said.
The orc grinned. “Well, I’m not sorry about how that worked out.”
“I’m not sorry about that part of it, either,” she replied. “But I’m very sorry we didn’t kill Eovath—the giant.
“While we were inside the ziggurat,” she continued, “the xulgaths figured out that most of us are Skulltakers and Dragonflies, and they mean to strike back at us. They’ll bring all their strength to bear to wipe out both tribes.”
The scarred orc grunted. “Tell the folk to scatter. With luck, the xulgaths won’t catch all of them, and some might find other tribes willing to adopt them. I’m Unlak of the Thirsty Knives. If Skulltakers come to our hillsides, I’ll speak for them.”
“That’s kind,” Kagur said. “But my companions are no more willing to dissolve their tribes and run from their enemies than the Thirsty Knives would be in their place.”
“What else can you do?” a woman asked. Her whip scars crisscrossed the black tattooed designs on her shoulders and forearms.
“Fight,” Kagur said. “Lure our enemies into a trap and kill them.”
“How?” called a man who held his hands before him with fingers half curled, like he was still gripping an oar. “If the reptiles attack with all their might, that means warriors from the stone cities, the blue giant and his shining axe, threehorns, longstriders—”
Kagur drew her longsword and raised it to catch the sunlight. “My blade shines, too. And as for the longstriders and other beasts, we killed the pair that just attacked us.” She turned. “Show them how, Rho.”
The boy took a javelin from his quiver and flung it a tree-fern some distance away. The weapon became a crackling twist of glare that blasted the plant in two. The top fell to the ground with a thump and a rattling of fronds.
Some of the rowers recoiled. They all gaped at the destruction and the little dancing flames it left in its wake. Rho grinned at their astonishment.
“The best part,” said Kagur, “is that the xulgaths don’t know we have this power. The ones who saw us use it in the pyramid are dead, and Passamax hid what he was doing when he killed the water beast.”
Unlak shook his head. “What are those things?”
“Weapons from long ago,” she answered. “That’s all we know, but all we need to know.”
“Until touching them brings a curse down,” the tattooed woman said.
Kagur indicated Holg, who was paying heed to the conversation even though, since he hadn’t prayed a second prayer on his own behalf, he couldn’t really understand it. “My friend is a shaman,” she said, “and he says the javelins aren’t evil or forbidden. Just strange.”
“And useful!” Passamax said.
Unlak leered. “I believe it. So why waste one on a tree-fern?”
“To show we have a surprise in store for the xulgaths,” Kagur said, “To prove we have a chance of crushing them if other tribes stand with us.”
The rowers looked back up at her. Then the tattooed woman said, “I’m grateful to be free, and my kin will be glad to have me back. But we live on the opposite side of the lake from the Dragonflies and Skulltakers. We barely even know the names.”
“And my folk,” called an orc, “have fought Skulltakers when we met them along the river. They’d laugh if I asked them to go to war to help an enemy.”
“Then don’t,” Kagur said. “Ask them to fight for themselves.”
Vom stepped up beside her. “The coming of the giant,” he said, “has inspired the xulgaths to try to kill or enslave every last human. They’re attacking the highlands like never before. The Dragonflies and Skulltakers have angered them, so we’re the next targets. But in time, they’ll pick off every tribe of humans and then move on to the orcs.”
“Unless we stop them,” Kagur said. “If we defeat them and kill the living symbol of their hopes, they’ll lose heart and give up their ambitions.”
“The xulgaths have always fought the peoples of the highlands,” said the man who held his hands like they still gripped an oar. “But they don’t try to take everything. That would be … new.”
“Sometimes new things come into the world,” Kagur replied. “The giant and his axe are new. So are my sword and the lightning spears. And when you go home, your kin will tell you life has changed for the worse. It’s up to us to change it back.”
Unlak picked a little crawling insect out of his gray and tangled mane. “By uniting the warriors of many tribes into one big war party.”
“Yes.”
“It will never happen. I wish it could. I’d take any chance to hurt the xulgaths, and I trust you, odd as you are. But folk who aren’t standing here with us today won’t feel the same. They’ll say, ‘We don’t know that the xulgaths will ever come for us.’ Or, ‘How can we trust strangers?’ Or, ‘How do we know any other tribe will even show up?’ Or—”
Kagur raised her hand. “But will you be my messenger?” She looked around at the other rowers. “Will all of you tell your tribes what I ask?”
They hesitated. Then the man with the curled fingers said, “Yes. But it won’t do any good.”
Kagur turned to Passamax. “Give me your quiver,” she said.
The orc glared. “They already said their tribes won’t come. That makes the lightning our only chance!”
“It’s not a chance. Not by itself. Even the mightiest weapons can’t win a battle if your side doesn’t have enough warriors.”
Passamax’s scowl deepened. “If this doesn’t work, the giant won’t have to kill you. I’ll do it myself.” He jerked the yellow metal cylinder off his shoulder.
Meanwhile, Holg gave Kagur a little nod.
She sheathed her sword, took the quiver, and jumped from the bow down into the sand. The shifting white grains were hot beneath her feet. She pulled out a javelin and offered it to Unlak butt first.
The orc’s bloodshot eyes widened. After a pause, he started to reach, then hesitated.
“It’s all right,” Kagur said. “A person can handle them without harm.” She waved to the other galley slaves. “Everybody, come take one.”
“Why would you give such things away?” Unlak asked.
“When you return to your tribes, you’ll find they’re worried about the xulgaths and want to strike back. They only need proof that it’s possible.”
Unlak frowned. “And the javelin will convince them?”
“Yes. Together with the tale you have to tell. If need be, throw the javelin and show what they can do. But if you can, save it for the battle to come.”
Unlak took hold of the weapon. “My folk will hear your request. That’s all I can promise.”
“Fair enough.”
Two of the rowers simply couldn’t bring themselves to touch a javelin. But the rest took one, some with bravado and some gingerly, then trotted for the trees and tree-ferns as they had before.
Kagur looked back at Passamax and hefted the quiver. “You still have a couple left,” she said.
The orc spat, and she wondered if his disgust was justified.