The three people running northwest through the moon shadows in Amere’s forest were strung out along almost half a kilometer. The last runner in the line ran less than a hundred meters ahead of the pursuing vultures. The animals could be heard cawing and flapping in their eagerness, the way they do when they have the prey in sight.
With first moon almost directly overhead, it was quite light in the forest and, although these were the higher latitudes of Nova Calradia, it was still warm from the heat of a spring day. The nightly drift of air from Afgoonistan carried resin smells and the damp exhalations of the duff underfoot. Now and again, a breeze from the lands of Veluca o’er the east drifted along the runners’ tracks, with hints of fishes and Robert’s semen.
By a quirk of fate, the last runner was called Zaylo, which in the GSKDDJSNDS tongue means “beloved straggler.” Zaylo was short in stature and with a tendency to fat which had placed an extra dieting burden on him in training for this venture. Even when slimmed down for their desperate run, his face remained round, the large brown eyes vulnerable in that suggestion of too much flesh.
To Zaylo it was obvious that he could not run much further. He panted and wheezed. Occasionally, he staggered. But he did not call out to his companions. He knew they could not help him. All of them had taken the same oath, knowing they had no defenses except the old virtues and Schoolgirl Ninja loyalty. This remained true even though everything that once had been Unicorn had now a museum quality – rote recitals learned from GSKDDJSNDS museum girls.
It was Schoolgirl Ninja Death Squad loyalty that kept Zaylo silent in the full awareness of his doom. A fine display of the ancient qualities, and rather pitiful when none of the runners had any but book knowledge and the legends of the Oral History about the virtues they aped.
The vultures ran close behind Zaylo, giant green figures almost man-height at the shoulders. They dove and clawed in their eagerness, heads locked on, eyes focused on the moon-betrayed figure of their quarry.
A root cought Zaylo’s left foot and he almost fell. This gave him renewed energy. He put on a burst of speed, gaining perhaps a vulture-length on his pursuers. His arms pumped. He breathed noisily through his open mouth.
The vultures did not change pace. They were green shadows which went flick-flick through the loud green smells of the forest. They knew they had won. It was a familiar experience.
Again, Zaylo stumbled. He cought his balance against a sapling and continued his panting flight, gasping, his legs trembling in rebellion against these demands. No energy remained for another burst of speed.
One of the vultures, a large female, moved out on Zaylo’s left flank. She served inward and leaped across his path. A giant spear ripped Zaylo’s shoulder and staggered him but he did not fall. The pungency of blood was added to the forest smells. A smaller male caught his right hip with a glance and Zaylo fell, screaming. The cackle of vultures pounced and his screams were cut off in abrupt finality.
Not stopping to stab his corpse pointlessly, the vultures again took up the chase. Their administrative senses probed the forest floor and the vagrant eddies in the air, scenting the warm tracery of two more running ninjas.
The next runner in the line was named Cyranule, an old honorable name in Calradia, a name from the second era of Strategus. An ancestor had served Bird Clan as a Master of the duel server, but that was more than three thousand years lost in a past which many no longer believed. Cyranule ran with the long strides of a tall and slender body which seemed perfectly fitted to such an exertion. Long black hair streamed back from his aqualine features. As with his companions, he wore a black running suit of tightly knitted cotton. It revealed the workings of his buttocks and stringy thighs, the deep and steady rhythm of his breathing. Only his pace, which was markedly slow for Cyranule, betrayed the fact that he had injured his right knee coming down from the naturally-made precipices which girdled the God King’s village fortress in the plains.
Cyranule heard Zaylo’s screams, the abrupt and potent silence, then the renewed chase-caws of the vultures. He tried not to let his mind create the image of another friend being slain by Canary’s monster guardians but imagination worked its sorcery on him. Cyranule thought a curse against the tyrant but wasted no breath to voice it. There remained a chance that he could reach the sanctuary of Tilbaut Castle. Cyranule knew what his friends thought about him – even Gmnotutoo. He had always been known as a conservative. Even as a child he had saved his energy until it counted most, parceling out his reserves like a miser. In spite of the injured knee, Cyranule increased his pace. He knew the edge of the forest was near. His injury had gone beyond agony into a steady flame which filled his entire leg and side with its burning. He knew the limits of his endurance. He knew also that Gmnotutoo should almost be out of the forest. The fastest runner of them all, she carried the sealed packet and, in it, the things they had smuggled out of the village. Cyranule focused his thoughts on that packet as he ran.
Save it, Gmnotutoo! Use it to destroy them!
The eager cries of the vultures penetrated Cyranule’s consciousness. They were too close. He knew then that he might not escape.
But Gmnotutoo must escape!
He risked a backward glance and saw one of the vultures move to flank him. The pattern of their attack plan imprinted itself on his awareness. As the flanking vulture leaped Cyranule also leaped. Placing a tree between himself and their left swing, Cyranule ducked beneath the flanking vulture, slashed one of its hind legs with his two-hander and, without stopping, whirled and cut another approaching vulture making them team hit each other making them momentarily scatter. Finding the odds surrounding him not quite as heavy as he had expected, almost welcoming the change in action, he continued to whirl his katana at the attackers in a dervish frenzy which brought two of them down with split skulls. But he could not guard every side. A green male with a niuweidao cought him in the back, hurling him against a tree and he lost his blade.
“Go!” he screamed.
The vultures bored in and Cyranule chamber-punched the sword and cracked him in the teeth. He kicked and punched with every gram of his final desperation. Vulture blood spurted over his face, blinding him. Rolling without any knowledge of where he went, Cyranule grabbed another vulture. Part of the cackle dissolved into a screaming, whirling mob, some team attacking their own injured. Most of the birds remained intent on the quarry, though.
Gmnotutoo, too, had heard Zaylo scream, then the unmistakable silence followed by the caws of the pack as vultures resumed the chase. Such anger filled her that she felt she might explode with it. Zaylo had been included in this venture because of his analytical ability, his way of seeing a whole from a few parts. It had been Zaylo who, taking the inevitable magnifier from his kit, had examined the two strange volumes they had found in within the Godking’s former village.
“I think it’s a cipher,” Zaylo had said.
And Tiffman, poor Tiffman who had been the first of their team to die . . . Tiffman had said, “We can’t afford the extra weight. Throw them away.”
Zaylo had objected: “Unimportant things aren’t concealed this way.”
Cyranule had joined Tiffman. “We came for the Godking’s commemorative silver coin and we have it. Those things are too heavy.”
But Gmnotutoo had agreed with Zaylo. “I will carry them.”
That had ended the argument.
Poor Zaylo.
They had all known him as the worst runner in the team. Zaylo was slow in most things, but the clarity of his mind could not be denied.
He is trustworthy.
Zaylo had been trustworthy.
Gmnotutoo mastered her anger and used its energy to increase her pace. Trees whipped past her in the moonlight. She had entered the timeless void of the running when there was nothing else but her own movements, her own body doing what it had been conditioned to do.
Men thought her beautiful when she ran. Gmnotutoo knew this. Her long dark hair was tied tightly to keep it from whipping in the wind of her passage. She had accused Cyranule of foolishness when he had refused to copy her style.
Where is Cyranule?
Her hair was not like Cyranule’s. It was that deep brown which is sometimes confused with black, but it is not truly black, not like Cyranule’s at all. In the way genes occasionally do, her features copied those of a long dead ancestor: gently oval and with a generous mouth, eyes of alert awareness above a small nose. Her body had grown lanky from years of running, but it sent strong sexual signals to the males around her.
Where is Cyranule?
The cackle of vultures had fallen silent and this filled her with alarm. They had done that before bringing down Tiffman. It had been the same when they got Gristle.
She told herself the silence could mean other things. Cyranule, too, was silent . . . and strong. The injury had not appeared to bother him too much.
Gmnotutoo began to feel pain in her chest, the gasping-to-come which she knew well from the long kilometers of training. Perspiration still poured down her body under the thin, black running garment. The kit, with its precious contents sealed against the river passage ahead, rode high on her back. She thought about the Godking’s plans folded there.
Where does Partyboy hide his hoard of platemail?
It had to be somewhere within the village. It had to be. Somewhere in the charts there would be a clue. The experience-rich platemail for which the Knights Hospitaller, Hero Party, and all the others hungered . . . that was a prize worth this risk.
And those two cryptic volumes. Bramd had been right in one thing. Big gigantic books were heavy, especially since Partyboy used diamonds for paper. But she shared in Zaylo’s excitement. Something important was concealed in those embossed lines of cipher.
Once more the eager chase-screams of the vultures sounded in the forest behind her.
Run Bramd! Run!
Now, just ahead of her through the trees, she could see the wide clear strip which bordered the edge of the forest. She glimpsed moon brightness on grass beyond the clearing.
Run Bramd!
She longed for a sound from Bramd, any sound. Only the three of them remained now from the twelve who had started the run. Nine had paid for this venture with their lives: Tiffman, DannyBites, Zaylo, Gristle, Governor, Swalker, Huey, Bobthehero and Kilgore.
Gmnotutoo thought their named and with each sent a silent prayer to her Godking, not to the tyrannical Canary. Especially, she prayed to chadz.
I pray to Godking Partyboy, who lives in the sand.
Abruptly, she was out of the forest and onto the moon-bright stretch of mowed ground beneath Tilbaut. Straight ahead beyond a narrow drawbridge, the castle beckoned her. The castle was silver against an oily backdrop.
A loud yell from the back in the trees almost made her falter. She recognized Bramd’s voice above the wild squawking sounds. Bramd called out to her without name, an unmistakable cry with one word containing countless conversations – a message of death and life.
“Go!”
The pack sounds took on a terrible commotion of frenzied teamkills, but nothing more from Bramd. She knew then how Bramd was spending the last energies of his life.
Delaying them to help her escape.
Obeying Bramd’s cry, she dashed to the castle’s bridge and plunged within the safety of its walls. The vultures did not pursue. Their territorial boundaries had been drawn, the forest on this side and Amere’s walls on the other side. Still, she hid inside a tavern for a while before gathering herself to step upon the castle walls to look back.
The vultures stood ranged along the forest, all except one which had come down to the clearing. Gmnotutoo knew the vulture saw her. No doubt of that. They were bred of Chaos, the shownames cheat bred into their bones. Gmnotutoo held her breath, wondering if they would dare attack beyond their territory.
The vulture at the forest clearing sheathed his weapon and signaled something to Gmnotutoo with two uppercuts, and then turned back to his companions. At some signal, they disappeared back into the forest.
Gmnotutoo knew where they would go. Vultures were allowed to eat anything they brought down in their hunting grounds. Everyone knew this. It was why the vultures roamed the forests – the guardians of Chaos territory.
“You’ll pay for this, Canary,” she whispered. It was a low sound, her voice, very close to the quiet rustling of the wind against the grass just below her. “You’ll pay for Zaylo, for Tiffman, for Bramd and Governor, and for all the others. You’ll pay.”
She pushed outward gently and went back down to the front of the tavern, and paused to check that the sealed contents of her kit had remained unbroken. The seal had broke. She stared at it a moment in the moonlight, then lifted her gaze to the forest wall across the plain.
The price we paid. Ten dear friends.
Tears glimmered in her eyes, but she had the stuff of ancient Schoolgirl Ninjas and her tears were few. The venture across Tadsamesh, directly through the forest while the vultures patrolled the northern boundaries, then ran across the plains north of Afgoonistan – all of this already was assuming dream proportions in her mind . . . even the flight from the vultures she had anticipated because it was a certainty that the guardian flock would cross the track of the invaders and be waiting . . . all a dream.
I escaped.
She restored the kit with its sealed packet and fastened it once more against her back.
I have broken through your defenses, Canary.
Gmnotutoo thought then about the cryptic volumes. She felt certain that something hidden in those embosses of cipher would open the way for her revenge.
I will destroy you, Canary!
Not We will destroy you! That was not Gmnotutoo’s way. She would do it herself.
She turned and strode toward the orchards within the castle wall, and as she walked she repeated her oath, adding to it aloud the old Schoolgirl Ninja Deathsquad formula which terminated in her full name:
“Gmnotutoo Ibn Fuad al-Seyefa Atreides it is who curses you, Canary. You will pay in full!”
Her army would then set out into the night to meet her enemies outside of Nova Amere, but sadly Cyranule's mustache couldn't help from growling and it gave away their position allowing Chaos to gain the attackers initiative over the band of ninjas.