John Dalmas - The Lion Returns

It was a thick-boled tree, but well equipped with dead branches, and gripping them, Chithqosz began to climb. When he paused, ten feet up, his bodyguard shoved him, and he climbed again; the rakutu would not let him stop. The booming grew louder, more alarming, and he no longer needed urging.

At twenty feet he saw it: a wall of water ten feet high, carrying at its front a crest of fallen trees, like battering rams. Men were swept off the road and disappeared. Chithqosz realized now what the booming was-great boulders carried rolling and bounding downstream by the torrent. One struck his tree a heavy blow,: the shock almost dislodging him, and for a moment he feared the hemlock would be torn from its roothold. Swiftly the water climbed the trunk, and panicking, Chithqosz began to scramble upward again, into green branches, pursued by the water.

He spent the evening and night there, the rain never stopping, though gradually it slowed. Exhaustion and hypothermia weakened the prince, and long before midnight he'd have dropped into the river, had it not been for his bodyguard. The rakutu somehow got out of his own breeches and used them to tie the prince to the tree. Then, clinging to the trunk with powerful arms and hands, the half-breed jammed a broad shoulder under the prince's rear, for support.

Numb with cold, Chithqosz slipped into a sort of sleep, dreaming, but always aware of the rain. Were he not tied to the tree, he'd have fallen. At some point he became aware that his bodyguard was no longer there.

Eventually the rain nearly stopped, and although he couldn't see it, the water level had dropped somewhat. It seemed to him he was alone in the gorge, his whole army drowned, carried away. He was sure he would die.

He was wrong on both counts. Dawn thinned the darkness. The river was less loud, and he heard shouts! Then the sun came up! The sun! Sections of the road had remained above the flood. Men had retreated to them. Others, where the slope allowed, had scrambled up out of the gorge. The base of his tree became visible, then the road surface beside it. With his dagger he cut the breeches that held him in place. Then, with exaggerated care, he climbed unsteadily down from the tree.

He was shivering with cold and shock. Other voitar found and fed him, and together they worked their way down the gorge. In places the road was still under water, and they waded, or waited. Late in the day they came to the ruined bridge. Some soldiers had crossed on the deck cables, holding on to the hand lines. Others had butchered horses and cows, and lacking dry wood, were eating the meat raw. Many were coughing, harsh hacking coughs rooted in shock and hypothermia.

Using his communications aide, a colonel had reached the hive mind, and reported the catastrophe to the crown prince's headquarters, then to the brigadier left in command on the Scrub Coast.

Meanwhile they ate, stashed raw meat in their packs, and took their turns crossing on the cables.

Two days later, coughing, wheezing, wobbling, sweating with fever, Prince Chithqosz emerged from the gorge. A remarkable percentage of the troops who emerged were similarly ill. Someone had ordered camp set up near the stone dock, with fires and crude lean-tos. The weather was clear, the nights cold, even frosty. They ran out of the meat they'd brought with them. Many died of pneumonia.

A relief column arrived from the coast. Ships from Balralligh came up the river channel through the great swamp, and loaded men at the dock.

The magnitude of the losses in the gorge would not be sorted out for another week. Nearly six thousand men were missing or known dead.

And of course, the army had a new enemy, though it occurred to no one that their significance would go beyond this one encounter.

Many of the bodies snatched away by the flood were swept out to sea by the current. There, some were taken by sharks and other marine scavengers. Many were carried along the coast by offshore currents, then deposited by waves on the beach, to be scavenged by an assortment of beach fauna, from gulls to vultures, crabs to possums.

One very long corpse, face down in the sand, was examined curiously by a fish crow. Earlier scavengers had reduced the clothing to shreds, the body to bones and cartilage. Lying beneath the ribcage was a shiny stone-a blue crystal, round and polished, about the size of a hickory nut with the husk on. The fish crow walked around the ribcage, looking for a way to get at the stone.

Circling above, a great raven watched, large as a vulture but incomparably more intelligent. Deciding to investigate, it swooped down. Complaining, the fish crow flew off a few yards and waited.

The great raven grasped the rib cage with its large powerful beak and tugged, tugged, and tugged again. Then reaching, it picked up the stone and flew away with it.

An Early Winter

Charisma is spiritual, but at the same time it is an artifact of being incarnate.

In the case of Curtis Macurdy, nearly all the variables, including an imposing body, predisposed him to strong charisma. Before his first transit of the Oz Gate, it was not conspicuous. Afterward, almost every experience strengthened it, culminating with his victory at the Battle of Ternass, the defeat of the elder Quaie, and the negotiation of peace. All within a few days.

Afterward he retreated somewhat from that charisma, particularly during his return to Farside. But when he exercises it, he is difficult to resist.

This guarantees neither his success nor his survival. Certainly not in conflict with Crown Prince Kurqosz, who apparently is also charismatic, and has far greater resources. But it will enable our friend to forge alliances, and to contend.

From a brief conversation between

Vulkan and Lord Raien Cyncaidh, before Macurdy's departure from Duinarog

29 Reunion

A great raven receives its first name when fresh from the egg. After leaving the nest, it commonly renames itself or is renamed by others, a process sometimes repeated over the decades. The ancient bird with whom the King in Silver Mountain wished to speak, had come to be called Old One. The great ravens of the east admired Old One more than any other, and though he had no formal authority, they deferred to him.

When a dwarf king wanted to communicate with the species as a whole-perhaps twice a century-he did so through the most respected of them. And Finn Greatsword wanted very much to communicate with them. Enough that he came out into daylight because Old One wouldn't go into the mountain.

The great ravens flew widely and saw much, and they had the hive mind. Thus Old One knew things about what had happened in the gorge that Finn Greatsword did not. Nonetheless the bird listened patiently and with interest to the king's description. And when the dwarf had finished, added for him what the great ravens knew, but not the dwarves. "There was carrion enough to fatten us all," he finished, "right down to the sand crabs. To the gulls it was paradise.

"But all that is in the past." He stopped then, waiting for the dwarf king to tell what he wanted without being asked. Unlike many great ravens, Old One was always courteous. Even when being blunt, he put things respectfully.

"Aye. Now it's time to look to the future. Ye know, of course, of the human called the Lion of Farside. And what he accomplished in Tekalos and the north."

"We do. Including what he did to become 'dwarf friend.' It is in our hive mind. One of us was his companion then."

The king nodded. "He has returned, riding about on a great boar now. I'm sure ye know that too. It's even told he fought a duel with a troll, and called down lightning from the sky to win it. He's visited the kings of all the Rude Lands, and the emperor in Duinarog. And myself, in the Mountain."