CHAPTER TWENTY-Seven:

SANCTUARY

 

          Tyree approached Verdanta without caution. Riding a Logalla horse instead of a snow pony made blending impossible, even in the heavy snowfall that had come up. But riding a Logalla horse allowed him to also wear a Logalla cloak, so Tyree drew on his previous success at disguising himself as a Logalla and galloped into the mists.

          How incredibly stupid the Logalla were. They seemed to lack the ability to transfer, reference, or recall events. They didn’t seem able to take control of their slow-witted march to a doomed civilization. Tyree felt so superior as he slew the two Logalla lookouts that were in his path, and four more camped a short gallop within the mists. He didn’t ride cautiously over the misty terrain pocked with sizzling holes and fissures. He rode hard across the thaw grass fields toward the place he knew would be his son’s last refuge: the colossal rain catchers.

          The Logalla had surrounded the parents and old warriors who were using the four rain catchers as anchor points of a sizeable fortress. The huge central storage tank’s weight and rotund shape needed much scaffolding. It offered the best hiding places, and held most of Verdanta’s drinking water. It also held all the children.

          The corpses of many Tranca and Logalla lie about the outer defense ring. The Logalla were methodically closing in on the children’s hiding place in the reservoir scaffolding. The Logalla were being killed by arrows shot down by the old warriors and children hidden among the beams, and met sword-to-sword by the last of the parent warriors on the lower walkways of the reservoir. Tyree, his quiver of arrows renewed after his last fight, sent several into the backs of the Logalla. The Logalla turned to face Tyree, who threw off his Logalla cloak. Cunning had deserted him. His only strategy was a trust that the wind would carry the fight his way. Without considering the odds, nor using his inbred stealth, Tyree’s only purpose was saving the boy.

          Boozagloo, called The Scar by those who dared, stood afoot at the rear of the force attacking the reservoir. When the Logalla on either side of him found arrows in their backs, Boozagloo turned with the rest of his men. He blanched. He knew the face of Tyree. Was this a ghost? The Scar’s eyes widened even further, as if an even greater threat had come to mind. Tyree was not aware that behind him, riding out of the mists like the riders of the apocalypse, a Tranca army was also riding hard to rescue those in Verdanta.

          Shortly after Tyree left the Tranca, Shuyah received word of the breakout, the direction the Logalla were heading, and their number. Equally worried about her son, she led a contingent of five thousand volunteers in forced ride to Verdanta. They entered the mists moments behind Tyree. Tyree should have sensed them, but he was too busy slashing his way toward his son—and now The Scar stood between them.

          The armies met in a fury of ringing sword, flashing arrow, and thrusting lance. The war-worn Logalla were no match for the Tranca. Suddenly, Logalla cavalry fought their way in from the northern flank. They brought with them many saddled battle horses for The Scar and his closest cohorts to use in their escape. Boozagloo ordered half his army to hold while he took the rest north, out of Verdanta, at full gallop. His new goal was to make for the twisted forest where a battered army could hide. The way lay open, now that Shuyah had divided her forces. The Scar would lead his meager force into the thickest, most impenetrable part of the forest where even Kodiak eyes could not see them. There would be no returning to the Logalla’s main encampment where twenty thousand widows and twice that number of fatherless children awaited the return of a defeated army.

          The slaughter in Verdanta was quick and complete. No Logalla were left alive. Shuyah reached Tyree’s side as they climbed over the bodies to desperately, wordlessly, mount the reservoir walkways. The refugees hidden there came down, slowly, tentatively. The first Tyree and Shuyah saw were Koleefus and little Valaar.

          “We knew you’d come!” the weary boy shouted. Then he collapsed into the arms of his relieved parents.

          Thus concluded the most heartbreaking episode of the war. Four hundred Tranca children had been orphaned at the rain catcher defense. Almost all the parents and most of the old Tranca warriors were dead, leaving many weeping. Koleefus found the bodies of Thrabok and his wife, parents, now, of seven orphans. Tyree and Shuyah rounded up these abandoned souls and marched them away from the ring of corpses surrounding the rain catchers, corpses that included their parents.

          Husbandless old women now became the guardians of parentless children. Weary, saddened, they were all camped at the fertile center of Verdanta when the first rumblings began. The tremors were stronger than any ever felt in this lush paradise. One of the rain catchers fell as a fissure opened right through the mass of dead. Molten fire issued forth from the fissure. Lava bubbled to the surface and the dead were set afire.

          “It is the vision I have foreseen,” Koleefus said. “We must away from Verdanta! Quickly!”

          “I did not need your premonition to realize this,” Tyree said. “We must go as far away as the wind will allow. The wind has thoughtfully provided many Logalla horses. Every one will be mounted. Leave all else behind!”

          The living packed all they could, staggering with the growing quakes, then leaving paradise to the dead, for there was not time to bury them. They still had not reached the interior wall of the mists when the three remaining rain catchers caught fire, burning like torches of the gods. Even when the reservoir collapsed and spilled its precious water upon the inferno, the growing lava pool simply shot a huge geyser of steam high into the air, and drank the water to quench its fiery thirst.

          Led by Tyree and Shuyah, the Tranca rode out through the mists and far away until the quakes were bearable. When they turned to look back at their beloved Verdanta, the Tranca saw that a wide column of thick gray smoke and ash now replaced the pleasant white mists. Great booms echoed across the plains as bursts of molten magma blew up out of the earth and Verdanta was swallowed by it. It was the same melted rock Tyree first saw when he was fourteen and called to be a forge tender for Golanka’s brave iron mining mission to the volcano fields in the north. It took place every thaw migration. It was also the migration on which Grandfather died.

          Germs nearly did not exist in the wilderness. Illnesses were rare, and most deaths came at the hands of the enemy or the claws and fangs of one of the many deadly predators that roamed the snow. Brisk, preserving temperatures, fresh clean air, hearty natural meals gleaned from the earth, all these resulted in long human life spans. Even the snow ponies lived to be thirty or forty years old. Tyree’s grandfather was a hundred and five when Tyree took his turn on Golanka’s brave iron mining expedition.

          Old Valaar’s age and status had long made him exempt from such extra duty, but he insisted on going. It would be Tyree’s first stint at the lava field mines, and one through which a grandfather should guide his fourteen-year-old orphaned grandson. It was on this trip that Tyree and his grandfather practiced blending with the smoke which billowed from the cracks in the black rock hard earth. These same cracks served as forges for the processing of brave iron armor.

          The Kodiak believed in promptness. One of their inbred senses was the ability to pace themselves when keeping on a schedule. The very morning the forging and molding of the sets of armor, swords and spearheads was done, the main body of the Kodiak clan caught up at the volcano fields, and novice warriors found their brave iron weapons, shields and armor cooling in the snow.

          After allowing them a day’s rest, Golanka then led the entire clan north to wait out the thaw. On the third day out, Grandfather became short of breath and slumped in his saddle. Tyree quickly dismounted and helped Grandfather down from his snow pony. Tyree sent word on the wind. Golanka, the oldest living son of old Valaar, heard Tyree and ordered the expedition to make camp early. Golanka then rushed to the rear and to his father’s side finding young Tyree already feeding hot soup to the ailing old warrior. They had a small fire, which Golanka stoked, adding wood from the pack on his snow pony. Night came quickly. Golanka and fourteen-year-old Tyree sat on either side of the sleeping Kodiak elder, during what would be his final rest.

          “Is there anything we can do for you?” young Tyree sniffled, holding the gnarled old hand that possessed five fingers.

          “My sword,” the old man replied, the effort causing a quiver to roll through his body.

          “Here, Grandfather,” Tyree said, holding the old blade.

          “Keep it as your own,” old Valaar rasped, “it knows how to find the enemy’s heart. All my ponies, my lances, my cloaks—they are yours, Tyree. Begin the journey.”

          Young Tyree wasn’t sure what the old man meant, but he hugged his grandfather’s sword to his breast.

          “I’ve missed them,” Grandfather rasped after a time.

          “What, Grandfather?” Tyree quickly said, both he and Golanka leaning close.

          “These,” the old man said, holding up the hand with which he had read the wind for over a century, and which now was without fingers. “I’ve missed them.”

          In the pitched darkness, the fire crackled and shadows played over Grandfather’s fingerless hand as he held it high from where he lay wrapped in furs upon the snow. He turned his disfigured hand so the firelight glowed over it.

          “You shall have your fingers back when you reach Shooshinka,” Golanka said, as if dying were a relief.

          “I was a hundred thaws upon the snow when they suddenly turned black and painful, and had to be removed.”

          “You never should have wet them,” Tyree said, sniffing back tears that were freezing on his cheeks even this near the hot little fire. “Your fingers. With your saliva. Every time you read the wind. That’s why they froze!”

          After a moment, “Nonsense,” the old man said.

          Golanka laughed. Not because it was particularly funny, but because it was Kodiak custom to make light of death, and to find reason to laugh, even during a death watch. “In all your thaws, have you not seen how winter turns even the great sea into ice?” Golanka pointed out. “Does your spit find more favor in the wind than does the great sea?”

          “Yes, it does, for I am a snomad. I live, I breathe, I, like no other creature, am aware of death’s promise. The deer, the bear—they do not know we are going to kill them even as we approach with our bows,” the old man went on. “And the great sea? It knows nothing.”

          “What of the wind, father? Do we Kodiak not believe that the wind is of life?” Golanka asked, knowing these question and answer rituals were Kodiak tradition, the chance for a dying elder to put forward his philosophy one last time.

          “The wind brings us the warmth of the thaw, the cold of winter. It tells the future, what lies ahead. Reveals to us the disposition of the enemy. How many men, how many horses, what weapons. Yes, the wind is alive. It is our ally. The sea is without such miracles.”

          “Your many thaws upon the snow have served us well, father,” Golanka said. “Sleep, for the wind is calling you.”

          Then Grandfather spoke his last words whispered upon the snow. “My only regret is that I did not die in battle.” Life then left Grandfather with a sigh.

          They buried him beneath the ice. The thousand warriors in the Kodiak clan thumped their swords against their shields a thousand times. Mighty Golanka stood at Tyree’s side over the grave of grandfather and father, one weeping, one not allowing even his proud lip to quiver.

          “You’ve lived fourteen thaws,” Golanka said to Tyree, holding in the same emotions that Tyree was letting out in great sobs. “A good age to be on your own.”

          It was the next day that Golanka came to young Tyree’s hut, which was his grandfather’s hut, and presented him with a stunning new brave iron sword.

          “The most carefully and recently forged,” Golanka said. “Chose it from the new batch myself. Perfect balance. Very sharp. When you fill out a bit, we’ll make your armor.”

          “Thank you, uncle,” Tyree said slightly amused, for he and Golanka had never been close, what with Golanka being the Kodiak military commander and Tyree an orphan living with his grandfather. “To what do I owe this honor?”

          “You are in the line,” Golanka shrugged. “While the politicians have long replaced royalty in our clan, Kodiak military commanders still come from our family. We believe this quality of leadership is in our family’s blood. Direct descendants of the Legendary Ones.”

          “Who else is in the line?” Tyree smiled, most pleased.

          “My sons,” Golanka said, counting on his fingers, “The three sons and daughter of my sister—”

          “Aunt Beroona.”

          “Right, my other sister’s two girls, and the twins—”

          Then Golanka stopped, for he realized that Tyree knew full well who was in the line, and how his family of warriors would always be provided with the finest armor.

          “I offer you this sword in order to ask of you a favor.”

          This time, young Tyree was truly astonished.

          “What favor could the great Golanka want of me?”

          “Take it in place of the sword Valaar gave to you,” Golanka said, jutting out his chin to show his resolve. “I would like the sword of my father to hang inside my hut.”

 

LOOK FOR CHAPTER 28: “FIRE”

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