Paul Cook: Brother of the Dragon

The older woman calmed when she realized she wasn’t drowning. Also heartening was the sight of mounted raiders trying but failing to urge their horses into the river. The animals would not advance beyond the firm footing in the shallows, so all the raiders could do was hurl spears at the fleeing captives. The long weapons made poor projectiles and fell short of the swimming prisoners.

All at once the night sky blossomed with an eerie green light. Beramun slung wet hair from her eyes and saw that a pine copse on the far shore had burst into flames. She continued her desperate swim, certain her eyes were deceiving her. How could flames be green?

Without warning, Beramun slowed her strokes, and Roki promptly sank beneath the surface.

Rising again, the older woman sputtered, “What are you doing?”

“Look there!” Beramun cried, treading hard to keep her head above water. She stared with wide-eyed terror at the western shore.

Hovering in the air above the burning trees was a huge, winged creature, many times the size of the largest horse or ox. Its long, skin-covered wings moved up and down in broad strokes, fanning the green flames consuming the pine copse. Four muscular limbs dangled beneath the creature, and a long, serpentine tail balanced an equally sinuous neck.

“What is it?” Beramun cried in horror. “What is it?”

Roki clung to her, eyes fastened on the fantastic creature. “Stormbird!” she replied.

The monster alighted on the riverbank. Shouts went up from the assembled raiders, and Beramun wondered if Zan’s men would fight the gigantic creature or flee.

Opet and some of the stronger swimmers were nearly to the other side. They too had seen the stormbird and were trying to give it wide berth. The creature reared up on its hind legs and waded into the water. It struck as swiftly as a viper. Raising its head again, it held a man trapped in its jaws.

The sight was too much for Beramun, and she panicked. Seeing this inconceivable monster killing a fellow plainsman struck terror into her heart. When she froze, the current rolled her and Roki over until they were both choking for air. Once, when she surfaced, Beramun saw the stormbird transfer the screaming man from its jaws to one taloned claw, then its head darted down and seized another man.

A sandbar in midstream rushed up, and Roki managed to plant her feet, stopping their headlong rush. They clung to the sandbar and watched in terrified disbelief as the monster crushed a man in each claw, then dropped the bodies in order to capture two more screaming victims.

Upstream, Opet and a few others gained the shore out of reach of the stormbird, but they weren’t safe from its wrath. The creature opened toothy jaws wide and, with a roar greater than a hundred panthers combined, expelled a stream of green vapor from its throat. The cloud swallowed the escaping plainsmen. Some dropped where they stood. Others stumbled forward a few steps then collapsed, writhing in agony. Ten men soon lay dead.

Only Roki and Beramun remained in the river. Over the noise of rushing water they heard Zannian yell, “Come back, you women! You can’t get away!”

“We must return,” Roki said, her chattering teeth not hiding the bitterness of her words. “Better those two-legged beasts than the stormbird!”

Beramun, nearly fainting from exhaustion, didn’t move. “I don’t think I can make it to either side.”

Roki hugged her friend closely for both warmth and comfort as the stormbird dropped onto all fours and prowled down the bank toward them. When it was opposite their position on the sandbar, it halted. Roki’s arms tightened convulsively on Beramun.

“It’s coming!” the older woman gasped. “Spirits, save us! It’s coming!”

The creature did indeed rise up on its hind legs and spread its wings, but it did not take to the sky. Instead, it brought its foreclaws together, talon to talon, and slowly furled its wings tight to its back.

Before Roki’s fear-filled eyes, the river calmed. The current slowed to a gentle flow. When the stormbird pulled its claws apart, a channel opened in the water, growing deeper and wider as it approached the sand spit. Water receded from the sandbar, leaving a walkable passage in the raging river.

“What’s happening?” asked Beramun groggily, trying to lift her head.

Roki swallowed hard. “The monster is parting the river!”

Soon there was a dry channel as wide as four horses abreast. Zannian led his men into this trough without fear or haste. By the time he reached the sandbar, Roki had pulled Beramun to her feet. The two women stood waiting for him.

The raider chief gestured, and Hoten appeared with new bonds. This time the raiders not only bound their wrists, but hobbled the women’s ankles as well. Unable to take more than short, shuffling steps, Roki and Beramun made their way down the sandbar to stand miserably beside Zannian’s horse. Roki was still supporting the younger woman, and Beramun’s violent shivering shook them both.

Zannian’s eyes narrowed. Reaching behind, he pulled out his bedroll — a coarse, horsehair blanket — and dropped it across Beramun’s shoulders. Thumping his bare heels against his mount’s sides, he rode on.

Beramun stared after him in surprise. “Why did he do that?” she asked as they pulled the rough blanket around themselves.

Roki gave her a disbelieving look that slowly changed to sympathy. “You don’t know, do you?” she said gently. “You’re a good-looking girl, Beramun. Beware of him, especially when he’s kind to you.”

The surviving captives came shuffling toward them, hobbled and chastened. Beramun and Roki fell in at the back of the line.

When they reached the west bank, the prisoners were ordered to stop and forced to kneel in the cold mud. The stormbird, near enough they could smell the lingering stench of its poisonous breath, broke the spell on the river with a twitch of its scaly shoulders. Water crashed back into the trough and resumed its course.

A common tremble ran through the captives, now under the black eyes of the stormbird. Zan and his men didn’t seem afraid of it. In fact, the young chief rode up to the beast and saluted with his spear.

“Hail, Master!” he exclaimed. “Your arrival was well timed.”

“Lucky for you,” intoned the monster in a rasping but surprisingly humanlike voice.

“We would’ve caught them again,” Zan said. “Not as easily as you, great Master, but we would have. We thank you.”

While Zan reformed his men, the stormbird gazed down on the cowering captives.

“Why do you rodents try so hard to escape?” it asked, tail tip switching back and forth. When no one dared answer, the monster seized a captive plainsman. The man was bound to the next prisoner, and he to the next, and so on, so the entire line of terrified captives was dragged aloft.

The man in the taloned claw screamed piteously. His tormentor looked at him with the glee of a child holding a captured beetle.

“Why do you risk death to escape?” rasped the monster, shaking the man. The fellow’s head snapped back and forth. “Why, little beast?”

“To b-be f-free!” the man blubbered.

The stormbird tossed its head toward the empty plain. “You’re not free out there. You must hunt and scrounge and fight every day to keep the breath in your flimsy little bodies. How does that make you free, eh?”

“Because we go where we will!”

The words were torn from Beramun’s lips by a surge of anger. That anger changed to fear as the monster dropped the terrified man and thrust its reptilian face to within an arm’s length of her own.

“And where do you go?” the creature asked, showing entirely too many ridged yellow fangs.

The hot, stinking breath on her face made her sick. “Wherever — ” It came out so faintly, she had to clear her throat and begin again. “Wherever the Great Spirits guide us.”