D. MacHale - Raven Rise

It was a quig. A freakin’ quig! We had won Denduron. Its turning point had passed. Why was a quig guarding the flume? The monster stumbled. It may have been done, but I wasn’t. I had to make sure. I let go of the dado rod I had drilled through its brain and grabbed another. The beast fell onto its side. I didn’t hesitate. With my one good arm, I raised the third rod high and stabbed it down through its chest, where I imagined its black heart was beating. Now that I look back, I’m sort of ashamed to admit this, but writing these journals is about telling the truth for the ages, right? I stabbed the beast once, pulled out the rod, and stabbed it again, and again. I don’t know how many times I pierced the monster. More than I had to. At that point it was more about anger than self-preservation.

With each thrust I gritted my teeth and snarled, “I…am…not…done…yet!”

I stood over the dying beast, covered with blood, not sure how much was mine and how much was the monster’s. I had beaten it. I had survived. I wanted to stumble back into the flume and get out of there, but that wasn’t an option. Saint Dane had said that the first domino of Halla to fall would be Denduron. I thought we had prevented that many years before. As I stood looking down at the dying quig, I knew I was wrong. Denduron was back in play. I was in the right place. I also realized that Alder was on Denduron. The dado weapons were proof of that. They were the weapons he was supposed to return to Quillan. Why he hadn’t done that, I had no idea, but I was glad he hadn’t. They saved my life.

Once I calmed down, I realized I wasn’t out of danger. Far from it. If there was one quig, there would be more. If they smelled blood, they’d come running, looking for a frenzy feed. Since I was bleeding, I’d be on the menu. I had to be gone. I started to go for the leather and fur Denduron clothes that were lying around the flume cave, but soon realized I had a bigger problem. I was seriously hurting. If I wanted to make it out of that cave and down to the Milago village, I had to stop the blood flow. I pulled off my Ibara shirt, which wasn’t easy, because my left arm was useless. The pain from the slash felt like fire. Loque’s shirt was a rotted mess. That helped. I was able to half-pull and half-tear it off. Once I wrestled off the shirt, I saw two deep gouges that ran across my shoulder and my left pec. They were deep, too. Muscle was cut. I was in a bad way. How the heck was I supposed to bandage that up? Since my arm was useless anyway, I used the old shirt like a bandage and wrapped it around the top of my arm. That only covered half the wound. I looked around the cavern and saw some wide leather straps that could have been belts. I tied those under my armpits and around my chest. Would that stop the blood flow? I didn’t know. It was better than nothing.

The next trick was to get dressed. I knew it would be freezing outside, and I had to protect myself, so I worked my way into some of the leather clothes I found lying around. The toughest part was lacing up the leather shoes. At least my left hand still worked. Between that, my good right hand, and my teeth, I was able to strap myself up. The final touch was a furry cloak that I threw over my shoulders. I hoped it would be enough. There were no sleds in the cave. I was going to have to walk down that mountain, through the snow. It was going to be cold. Really cold. I picked up the final dado weapon, thinking I could use it as a walking stick. I leaned on the long rod, testing to see if I could hold my own weight. It wasn’t perfect, but it would have to do. It was time to get going. As I stepped out of the dark cavern, into the bright light of the three suns of Denduron, I had real doubts about whether or not I would be able to make it down that mountain.

My confidence bottomed out when I saw the bony spikes of quig spines sticking up in various places around the snowfield in front of me. At least they hadn’t yet smelled the blood that was pooling inside the cavern. I knew that would only be a matter of time, and wind direction. I had to move. Walking across the snow was hard. There was a thin crust of ice on top that wasn’t strong enough to hold my weight. I’d take a step and plant my foot, but as soon as I put weight on it, I’d break through the top layer and sink down to midcalf. Every time. Over and over. It was like walking in cold mud. I was glad I had grabbed the dado rod. It was the only thing that kept me from toppling. If I had gone over, I didn’t think I’d be able to pull myself back up.

I chose a route that kept me going downhill and as far away from the dormant quigs as possible. All I needed was for them to catch a whiff of my blood, and it would be like: “Come and get it!” Each time my foot broke through the snow with a loud crunch, I winced. Did they hear that? Would they hear the next one? I trudged a few hundred yards before clearing the final, buried quig. Huge relief. From then on, each agonizing step took me farther from danger…

And closer to exhaustion. I was freezing. Literally. My feet were so cold I couldn’t feel them. The bleeding had almost stopped, but I don’t think it was because of my makeshift bandages. I think it was freezing up. It would have been a tough trip even if I’d been healthy, but after losing all that blood I was getting weaker by the second. After a torturous hour I still couldn’t see to the end of the snowfield. I had made this journey a few times on a sled, traveling ten times as fast, and it still took a long while. When I came back up the mountain, it had been on horseback or in a mechanized dygo. I had never done this on foot. I was in trouble.

After another hour, things started to spin. I think I was being pulled forward more by gravity than by my own horsepower. I stopped thinking about what I might find on Denduron. I pretty much stopped thinking about everything. My brain was too blood starved for that. Colors swirled. I knew that I would soon pass out. Far ahead I saw the snow was thinning, giving way to brown dirt. I would soon reach the end of the snowfield. I was also reaching the end of the line. I wasn’t going to make it to the Milago village.

Far up ahead I sensed movement. In my dazed state it looked as if the distant trees were moving toward me. That didn’t make sense. Or did it? I couldn’t think clearly about anything. The trees seemed to be moving in a line toward me. I still had enough sense to realize that was impossible. Still, there was no other explanation, other than the fact that maybe I had lost my mind. Or maybe it was a mirage? Do mirages only appear in the desert? I didn’t know. I was too dazed to think straight. Instead of looking at the moving trees, I should have been looking where I was stepping, because my foot hit a small boulder. It couldn’t have been more than six inches high, but it was enough to trip me. I fell forward, face-first, and slammed onto the gravel-covered ground. It didn’t even hurt. I was too far gone for that. I couldn’t move. My energy was gone. My feet were frozen. I had lost the will to move. I kept looking down the mountain at the moving trees, which of course weren’t moving trees at all. They were Bedoowan knights on horseback. An entire line of them. There had to have been thirty across, followed by another line and another. They walked in tight formation like an army.

An advancing army. My throat clutched. Why were the Bedoowan knights marching up the mountain? “There!” I heard a voice shout.

A lone knight charged forward, headed for me. He galloped up the steep slope, his horse’s hooves kicking up small pebbles in his wake. For a second I thought he would trample me. To be honest, I didn’t care. The knight pulled up a few yards short and leaned forward on the horse to get a better look at the strange, frozen, bleeding guy who was nearly passed out miles from nowhere.