Robert Hughes - The Power and the Prophet

By the time they got halfway down the mountain, Pezi felt rather proud of himself. In fact, he was even feeling kindly toward Admon Faye After all, but for the slaver’s insistence, Pezi would be missing this glorious moment. As it was, he had the best of seats for watching the final victory. He cackled as the warriors below caught sight of his descending beasts and broke ranks. The slaver had been right, of course. After the destruction of Kam’s castle, no one would be fool enough to challenge Pezi’s beasties.

He would certainly receive an exalted place within Flayh’s expansive dominion. After all, using tugoliths as battle beasts had been his idea! When the history of this time was written, Pezi felt sure he would loom large upon the pages.

What realm would he be awarded? Lamath, perhaps? He could imagine himself sealed upon the throne of the grand old palace, surrounded by beautiful courtesans! Each of them would be holding trays piled high with the most succulent of victual delicacies. He could almost smell the mingling aromas of rare meats and subtle but substantial vegetables…

So lost was Pezi in this delicious daydream that he didn’t notice the onrushing rider. Chimolitha had to point Bronwynn out to him.

“Man?” Chim called. Try as she might, Chimolitha simply could never remember Pezi’s name—and her memory was exceptionally accurate. “One is coming toward us.”

“What?” Pezi grunted, his eyes still closed. “One what?”

“A rider.”

The startling thought caught Pezi off guard. “Ridiculous!” He snorted as he opened his eyes. Then he beheld the oncoming queen, and angrily shouted, “Absurd!” She refused to disappear. “Help!” Pezi squealed. He stood up on Chimolitha’s head and scrambled around to look back over her tail in search of an escape route. All he saw was a column of gleaming horns. One of those, he knew, belonged to Thuganlitha.

“Man,” Chimolitha complained with long-suffering patience. “You’re standing in my eye.”

“Sorry,” Pezi said, and he sat down quickly and pivoted upon his huge rump to face forward again. Then he cringed in fear. Despite the fact that he sat atop what was currently the most powerful weapon in the world, over which he held at least nominal control, and the fact that the lone warrior he faced was a rather slightly built woman, Pezi’s heart quailed. Gloom descended upon him. And when Bronwynn spat out her brisk challenge, he was too distraught to argue.

“Stand still!” Bronwynn commanded the tugolith. When the beast heard no countering command from above, Chimolitha obeyed. “Where are you going?” the queen of Chaomonous demanded.

When Pezi still didn’t answer, Chimolitha decided she must. “Down,” the tugolith replied.

“Why?” Bronwynn asked sharply.

“To kill those people,” the tugolith said, waving her horn toward the plain.

Once again, Bronwynn demanded to know, “Why?”

Chimolitha, while quite bright for a tugolith, was hardly quick by human standards. Nevertheless, the greatest genius among generals could not have given a more intelligent reply. “I don’t know.”

“Did someone tell you to?” Bronwynn asked.

“Someone was going to,” the tugolith answered.

“Who?” Bronwynn inquired, and the huge animal rolled her eyes upward to indicate the mass of quivering flesh that trembled atop her skull.

“Pezi!” Bronwynn spat, as if his name was a piece of sewage. “So it’s you, is it?”

“What are you going to do with me?” he implored.

“What am I going to do with you? You appear to hold the reins of power, seated as you are astride this massive living weapon. What do you intend to do to me?”

Her question jogged Pezi somehow, reminding him what enormous power he did indeed possess. “Eat her!” he shouted to Chimolitha. “Eat her now!”

Chimolitha again rolled her eyes up to look at him. “Why? I like her.”

A great deal of suffering and bloodshed might have been averted then had certain tugoliths up the hill exhibited a tiny bit of patience. But tugoliths were not a patient breed, being short on understanding and long on means of expressing irritation. Fifteen tugoliths up the road, Thuganlitha expressed his by homing the beast in front of him. A chain reaction of homings ensued.

When the tug behind Chimolitha rammed its single gleaming

tusk into her hind quarters, she reacted instinctively. She jumped forward several paces. Her huge body landed only a couple of feet in front of Bronwynn’s horse—or rather, where Bronwynn’s horse had stood.

At the sight of that monster hurtling toward him, Bronwynn’s steed turned tail and raced back down the Down Road. The queen could not control him, which was perhaps a good thing. Thuganlitha had not been content with homing his predecessor just once. As the gored flanks multiplied, the herd of tugoliths stampeded down the remainder of the incline. Bronwynn would surely have been tossed aside or crushed, had her terrified horse not carried her out of the danger.

They broke onto the battlefield, a phalanx of rampaging, wounded monsters. They fanned out across the plain, some running aimlessly, others with deadly purpose. They drove before them a long wave of fleeing warriors warned to run. Some had nevertheless hesitated to watch Bronwynn’s conference with the beasts. Those who had delayed too long now paid with their lives.

Oblivious to the thunderlike pounding of tugolith hooves around him, General Joss flogged his war horse toward Bronwynn’s side. He avoided being trampled in the same manner he’d avoided being skewered by an arrow in times past—by ignoring the danger and attending to duty. He rode with the fatalistic assurance that when it was time for him to die he would die, and no sooner. He reached his queen’s side just as she managed to regain control of her spooked animal. “My Lady, we must—”

“Get to the leader!” Bronwynn screamed, cutting him off. “That’s the only way to turn them!”

Joss craned around to look. “Which one?” he cried.

“There!” the queen shouted, spurring her horse forward. “The one with a fat lump on its head!”

Pezi clung to Chimolitha’s scaly hide by every means available—arms, legs, toes, fingers, and teeth.

He’d even buried his nose in a crevice between two scales. He heard the wind swishing around him, but he didn’t feel it. He was in shock. He wondered where they were, but dared not raise his head to look.

For a while, he feared that they would race on forever, but soon he felt the beast below him slowing down. He pleaded around teeth clenched upon a bony projection that she not stop suddenly.

Chimolitha came at last to a standstill, and the fat merchant warily raised his head and looked around.

What he saw made him weep with frustration. The interfering woman was riding toward them again! He wasted no time in getting down from his perch. He didn’t know what Bronwynn’s intentions might be, but they certainly could include nothing advantageous to himself. He’d been fortunate enough to survive one headlong charge across this battlefield. He wouldn’t subject his overworked heart to another. It took only a moment for him to establish the quickest route back to the Down Road. Then Pezi started running.

Chimolitha seemed rather embarrassed as Bronwynn raced up to greet her. “They stuck me,” she started to explain.

“No time for that!” the queen cried breathlessly. She threw up her hand and pointed at those tugoliths who were gleefully mauling warriors. “Can you stop that?” she cried.

Chimolitha swivelled her head to look, then turned back to the queen and shrugged her enormous shoulders. “I will try.”

For a beast that appeared so clumsy and slow, Chimolitha moved with amazing speed. Bronwynn charged along in the tugoliths’ wake with Joss in frantic pursuit. The animal obviously took her commitments seriously. One by one, she chased down her peers, got their attention with a quick prick of the flanks, then demanded they stop squashing people. Only one gave her any real objection. Not surprisingly, that one was Thuganlitha.