Dashyl's Quest: The Tournament Plains

"Did you really think I wouldn't find you wallowing in this ditch," asked the man in black armor. "Did you think I would just keep walking down the road hoping to come across your corpses?" He didn't wait for a response. "I knew how you escaped the second I came across this ditch. It was just a matter of following it away from the road." The man never took the aim of his arrow off of Soern. Soern never took his eyes off the archer.

"Let me guess," Soern spoke finally, "you're a Sarion. A deadeye from Tanglefern. Am I right?"

"Bullseye," answered the deadeye. "Now, which one of these little twerps is Dashyl?"

Dashyl sucked in air when he heard the question and Fretly's head snapped sideways to look at his friend.

"Ah yes, the younger one," the man said as he studied the boy. "Are you Dashyl," he asked.

Dashyl looked at Soern but the warrior still did not take his eyes off the archer, so Dashyl looked at Fretly. Fretly slowly shook his head.

"Why do you want to know," Soern asked the man.

"I have been hired to find him," the man admitted. "I have been looking a long time for you," the man addressed Dashyl directly. "My waiting has finally paid off and now I can get paid," the man said, chuckling to himself. He turned his attention back to Soern. "I am only getting paid to find one Sarion boy and you, my Kirzan friend, are no Sarion boy, I'm afraid."

As the man pulled back on his bow string, Soern yelled, "Rush him!"

Dashyl froze, unsure of what he should do. He saw Fretly jump over to his backpack and look for something inside. The archer fired his arrow as Soern charged him, screaming. The arrow pierced Soern's left hand and the warrior fell to his knees clutching his hand with the arrow stuck halfway through.

Fretly had found Dashyl's knife and flung it at the deadeye, but it bounced harmlessly off his armor. Fretly followed up his throw by throwing himself through the air at the man. The archer deflected the leap with his left forearm, knocking his attacker to the ground. The deadeye reached behind his back to grab another arrow. Fretly took the opening and grabbed the bow with both hands and hugged it to his body as tightly as he could. The archer tried to shake the bow free at first. He dropped the arrow he was holding and started punching Fretly in the face and head, but the urchyn would not let go.

While Fretly and the deadeye wrestled, Soern stood up and with a great bellow pulled the arrow all the way through his hand. He snapped the arrow in two and dropped the back half. "Fretly, move aside," roared the huge Kirzan. Fretly let go of the bow and rolled away. Soern then charged at the deadeye ramming the middle of his armored chest with his shoulder. The man fell down with Soern's big bulk on top of him. The old warrior held down the deadeye.

"Who hired you," the warrior asked the man.

"I'll never tell, he could make my life a living terror, you can only kill me," the man answered.

"What does he want with Dashyl," Soern asked.

"Save your breath, old one, I'm not one for conversation,"the deadeye said, obviously struggling under the warrior's weight.

"I see. Then that's that. Fretly, open the visor on his helmet," Soern calmly commanded.

Fretly did as he was asked and turned away as he realized what Soern was going to do. Dashyl watched, however, as the Kirzan stabbed the broken arrow into each of the man's eyes, then stood up.

"Try finding your way back to Tanglefern, now, deadeye," Soern said as the man rolled on the ground and screamed in agony.

"Get on your igwazas," Soern again calmly said, "we're getting out of here."

"We can't just leave him here like this," Dashyl pleaded.

"Look," Soern said sternly, "he's a hired assassin. He would have killed us and maybe you. We are showing him a mercy he would not have shown us."

"Mercy? But..." Dashyl protested, but words failed him.

"Let's go, Dash, Soern's right," Fretly consoled.

Soern bandaged his hand as the other two gathered their gear quickly. The three travelers mounted their runners and headed back toward the road. The deadeye ran after them for a short ways, pleading for them not to leave him, but he couldn't run far without tripping and soon they were out of range of his cries.

Dashyl's Quest: The Tournament Plains

A gentle chorus of trilling and chirping soothed Fretly as he slept. A smile crept on his face as the sound grew louder and louder until it woke him up. Through sleepy eyes the young man saw a group of birds hopping and scratching at the ground on both sides of the ditch. Then Fretly remembered his watch duty and he jumped up, shaking off the grass stalks that had been covering him. He spun around to see Soern laughing at him.

"Oh boy, way to keep watch, there, watchman," Soern said as he laughed his signature belly laugh.

Fretly scratched his head. "I guess I fell asleep before the end of my watch. Sorry," he said before yawning. "What are all these birds," he asked, coming over to sit next to Soern.

"Rockhoppers. They know razorwig swarms will knock grass seeds from the stalks and the rockhoppers follow them out of the woods to feed on the bounty," Soern explained.

"Oh yeah," Fretly said, "these are those birds that can't fly. They sure are tame here, I've never seen them come so close to a camp."

"Not many people around to hunt them here," Soern replied.

"How's Dashyl," Fretly asked.

"I'm fine," answered the boy who also had just woken up. Dashyl sat up and rubbed his jaw. "I can move and I can talk, I guess that means I'm doing alright." He winced and felt the sutures on his cheek and then explored the wound on his neck. "Still hurts all over," Dashyl said.

"Now you know why a razorwig swarm is so dangerous," Soern reminded him.

"Oh, thanks, for a moment I forgot why I feel like this," Dashyl snapped.

"Now, now. You're lucky to be alive. We all are," Soern said. "Eat some rations and let's make a plan of action so we can move on soon. Maybe we can catch whoever set off those explosions and put the swarm in motion towards us. I'm going to feed the igwaza while you two eat."

The two friends ate their breakfast in silence. Dashyl had to eat gingerly due to the cuts on his cheek and neck. Soern returned from feeding the runners and crouched down with the others to begin discussing a plan. Before he could say anything, a loud screech pierced the air followed by a soft thud and an flurry of feathers spinning in the air near them.

"Whoa," Fretly said, startled. "What was that?"

"Look, it's a merlyn, it must have dive bombed a rockhopper," Soern pointed into the air. "There, it's got one in its talons as it flies away."

As the three travelers watched the merlyn rise into the sky with its prey, something whizzed over their heads and struck the merlyn, knocking it from its course. It released the rockhopper it had killed and both birds fell from the sky like deadweights. The rockhopper's lifeless body fell right at Dashyl's feet. The shocked companions were staring at the dead bird when they heard a strange voice.

"Greetings," said a man wearing black armor and a green mask with what looked like a large orange eye on the front. The man stood on one bank of the ditch and was wielding a bow with an arrow notched and ready to fire. "Any of you move and I will put an arrow through your throat."

Dashyl's Quest: The Tournament Plains

"Soern, hey, Soern," Fretly repeated as he shook the old kirzan where he sat against the dirt wall of the ditch. "Don't fall asleep now," he pleaded.

Soern opened one eye that didn't really focus on anything and pushed Fretly away by the face.

"Wake up, Soern," Fretly yelled.

"Why," Soern mumbled.

"Because, we can't stay here," Fretly said as if it were obvious.

"What," Soern asked as his head bobbed up to listen.

"Somebody made those explosions happen. Somebody who wanted to hurt us, maybe," Fretly reasoned.

Soern blinked his eyes a few times then stared straight at Fretly. "Hupht," he spat, "you're right. Those explosions could have been deliberate. The chances of someone taking this road with any kind of unstable radia that would just happen to go off just at that point are very slim."

"Right," Fretly confirmed.

"That someone is probably going to follow the swarm after a while to look for our dead bodies." After Soern said this, both he and Fretly looked at Dashyl lying motionless in the moist dirt of the ditch. They then met each other's gaze with a new resolve despite being exhausted.

"We've got to move farther down the ditch to get away from the road. With any luck, our pursuer was not watching from afar and failed to notice our escape," Soern said. "Even if there is no one on our tail, it will be good to rest in this ditch overnight, heal and set out just before first light."

"Right," Fretly agreed.

The two stood up and started getting ready to lead their igwazas away from the road. Fretly readied Dashyl's igwaza as Soern crouched over the boy, asking him questions.

"Are you awake, son," Soern asked.

"Uh humph," was all Dashyl could answer, still unable to move his jaw.

"Did you hear what we just said," Soern continued with his questions.

"Uh humph."

"I'm going to pick you up and drape you over the back of your igwaza. We'll make our way away from the road slowly. Are you good with that plan?"

"Uh humph."

"Fantastic. Up we go." Soern grabbed Dashyl's body and gently rested him on the back of the boy's runner. "Is that fine," he asked, patting Dashyl's head.

"Uh humph."

The tired trio traveled in silence frequently casting furtive glances back toward the road, but they never saw anybody.

"Here is good," Soern announced after some distance. "The ditch has curved away from the road enough that we should be covered from the sight of anyone searching for us. Let's make some shelters out of the grass stalks before we eat and sleep."

"I'll take watch for as long as I can," Fretly volunteered. "Maybe our pursuer will pass us in the night and we will be pursuing him tomorrow."

"I hope so," Soern replied, then spat on the ground and rubbed it into the dirt with his boot.

Dashyl's Quest: The Tournament Plains

Dazed and upside down, Dashyl couldn't focus on anything that was going on around him. Overhead, an incredible jumble of razorwigs whizzed by, their bodies blocking out the sky until it seemed like thousands of lights were flashing before the boy's eyes. The noise was deafening, like he was about to be caught in the sharp, grinding gears of some dangerous machine. Dashyl closed his eyes and tried to move, but his body felt numb and tingly. He squeezed his eyes tighter and waited for the noise to stop roaring above him.

As quickly as the swarm had crashed over him, the last of the razowigs leapt over the ditch. The full light and sudden quiet cleared Dashyl of his confusion. He could see Fretly hiding behind his igwaza as it bit into the segmented body of a razorwig that must have fallen into the ditch. The igwaza easily crunched through the creature's exoskeleton as it became lunch for the runner. Beyond this fracas, Soern smashed at what must have been multiple razorwigs around him. The carapids were soon exterminated and Fretly ran to Dashyl's side.

"Dash, are you okay, oh my, are you okay," Fretly asked as he knelt next to Dashyl. At that moment, Dashlyl felt his heart beating hard in his throat and he had trouble moving his jaw. All he could do to answer was shake his head.

"Soern," Fretly yelled. "Dashyl is hurt. His neck has been slashed open and he is bleeding a lot."

"I am checking on my runner. Find some kind of cloth and apply pressure to his wound," Soern shouted back.

"Forget the igwaza, you dumb kirzan, Dashyl might be dying here," screamed Fretly.

Soern rummaged through his pack and retrieved a few strips of cloth and a pouch. He handed a piece of the cloth to Fretly. "Here," he said, "take this and apply pressure. He will be okay. Just don't let him bleed out." Soern changed his focus to Dashyl. "You'll be okay, son. Try to be calm. I've got to attend to my runner. If he has a broken leg, then its no use mending him. But if I can help him, we need him to cross the plains. The other igwaza are not big enough to carry me." "Besides, I can't afford to replace this igwaza," he muttered as he returned to his injured runner.

"Whatever you say," Fretly snorted as he held the cloth firmly against the gash in Dashyl's neck. "Your left cheek is cut pretty bad, too. Your chin is scraped up and your bottom lip is busted open." Fretly squinted as he continued. "I thought you would have seen us bolt for the ditch. We would have waved you down."

Soern came over and took Fretly's place tending to Dashyl. "The leg wasn't broken and I don't think there were any ligament tears. I sewed up the wound and he should be able to run again just fine. Now let's look at you." The kirzan held Dashyl's face with one of his big hands. "I'll have to sew up your neck and cheek. It's going to hurt. On the bright side, the razorwig's legs are so sharp that the wounds heal up with with hardly any scar. You'd never guess that I've been sliced up more times than I can count by razorwigs. Well, you might guess that I've been sliced up, but you'd never tell where the razorwigs got me."

Soern pulled out a needle and some threadlike material from his pouch. "Here we go," he said as he threaded the line on the the needle. "This needle is from the proboscis of another type of carapid. One carapid slices you open and another carapid closes you up. Isn't that life on Rynaga, eh?"

Dashyl didn't have time to consider an answer as he felt the needle bite into his flesh. He couldn't open his mouth to scream, so he screamed and hyperventilated through his teeth.

"Hold on, Dash," Fretly consoled. Dashyl calmed down and clenched his jaws tight. Once his neck was finished, he hardly felt the cheek being worked on, the numbness had reached the top of his head.

"Soern, look," Fretly called out as he pointed farther down the ditch. Three razorwigs were leaping down the ditch in their direction.

"Leave this to me," Soern said, grabbing up his hammer. The hefty kirzan waited calmly as the slashing carapids raced towards him. At just the right moment, he twirled his hammer in his hand twice then brought it down on the head of the lead razorwig. Wasting no time, he jumped into the air, spun around and smashed the other two hapless creatures with one great arcing blow.

Soern turned around, let his hammer fall to the ground and stood with his arms in the air and his face beaming. "Ha ha," he laughed, "I've still got the moves!"

"Oh yeah? What happened to your beard," Fretly asked, cracking a bit of a smile.

"What..." Soern asked as he frantically grabbed at the area under his chin where the majority of his beard used to be. "Blast, one of those confounded beasts sliced off my beard," Soern said before sputtering out a long stream of kirzan curses.

The old warrior trudged back to where Fretly was continuing to clean up Dashyl. "Here, let me feel your jaw," Soern said once again taking Dashyl's head in his immense hands. He rubbed Dashyl's temples and felt where his bottom jaw connected to his skull. Pain shot through Dashyl's head and he winced. "Hm, you might have broken your jaw or damaged your skull. We'll have to wait until the swelling goes down. Dashyl nodded and just tried to relax and not think about the pain that draped itself over every part of his body.

"Oh, I may still have the moves, but it takes more out of me." Soern let out a long, loud sigh and collapsed on the ground next to Dashyl. "Time to rest," he said. "Then we need to think about our next move."

Dashyl's Quest: The Tournament Plains

The igwaza Dashyl rode was considerably slower than the other two. Soern and Fretly were increasing their distance ahead of the boy and he had no idea how to make his runner run faster. "Goooo," he yelled and dug his heels into the animal's hide. The reptilian creature grunted and Dashyl quit trying to make it go faster. "You're probably already running as fast as you can," he told it. Dashyl turned around to take another queasy glimpse of the swarm on his tail. "But will it be fast enough," he muttered.

Facing forward, Dashyl noticed that Soern and Fretly had vanished. He could see no sign they were ever running in front of him or that they had ever been on the plains with him. Dashyl's mind raced faster than his mount, which was careening down the road so fast that Dashyl could hardly keep his eyes open. An even greater fear seized his heart and tears came to his eyes, not from the wind but from the fear that he was suddenly alone. 

All that was in front of the boy was the open road cutting its path through the unending grasslands. What was Dashyl rushing towards, he didn't know. But he did know he was running from a dangerous swarm of razorwigs, a type of carapid that could be deadly for some reason. He could now hear the faint noise of the swarm over the galloping of the igwaza's feet. The sound was not exactly a buzzing, it was a sound more like a thousand knife blades being sharpened simultaneously. 

Dashyl did not want to look back. He just wanted to close his eyes and let the igwaza take him where it would. Even with his eyes shut, he could hear the shhhkk, shhhkk, shhhkk sound growing louder, closer. But there was another sound, also growing louder, something familiar. His own name. Was the swarm calling out his name?

The bewildered boy spun around to make the madness make sense and immediately it did. Soern, calling Dashyl's name from the back of his speedy igwaza, was gaining on him. "Stop," he heard Soern bellow. Dashyl gave the command in kirzan to stop and the igwaza gracefully came to rest, panting heavily, eyeing the swarm behind it. 

"There's a ditch back there," Soern yelled once he had caught up to the boy. "We might be safe in it. Come on!" Soern's runner adroitly spun around on its hind legs and ran the other direction. Dashyl's igwaza soon followed. They were now running full speed towards the swarm. He could see the individual razorwigs now. The carapids shot themselves forward in great leaps using their back legs. Dashyl could also see the danger. The forelegs of the razorwigs had razor sharp edges that sliced through the grass stalks and presumably anything in their path. 

Soern disappeared into what must have been the ditch a little ways off to the side of the road. He popped up a moment later without his igwaza and waved his hands in the air. Once Dashyl realized his igwaza was headed straight for Soern and the ditch, he closed his eyes. The swarm loomed right above him now like the crest of a wave ready to break.

The massive wave of carapids crashed over the ditch just as Dashyl's igwaza leapt for safety. The boy heard Soern cry out and his igwaza gurgle in pain, then pain shot through Dashyl's cheek and neck and he cried out. His eyes shot open in time to realize he was flying through the air headfirst into the opposite side of the ditch. His chin hit took the brunt of the landing as his body slammed into the dirt wall and then crumpled into a heap at the bottom of the ditch. 

Dashyl's Quest: The Tournament Plains

Dashyl could barely feel the igwaza runner galloping beneath him. The tops of the golden grass stalks whipped by him in a mustardy blur, the wind deafened his ears, his heart felt as light as it had ever felt. Dashyl laughed and screamed, then let the wind force its way down his throat, puffing out his cheeks. Tears shot away from the corners of his eyes and his nose began to ooze, but he didn't care.

"This is incredible," Dashyl shouted to his companions who were ahead of him on their own igwazas. Dashyl's was the smallest and must have been the slowest runner of the three. Unable to contain himself, the young boy let out another yell, "Wooooooo!" Fretly turned around. He heard me, Dashyl thought, but Fretly did not focus on his friend who was following him. Instead, he looked past Dashyl, back toward the tree line. His eyes filled with fear before he turned back around and began urging his igwaza to run faster.

Reluctantly, Dashyl turned around to have a look. He instantly became queasy not looking in the direction the igwaza was running. Fighting the urge to close his eyes, Dashyl saw what he first thought was a line of smoke or fog obscuring the tree line far in the distance. But the cloud did not disperse or rise into the air. Rather, this cloud hovered over the tops of the grass stalks and was getting closer. Dashyl could look no longer and faced forward again. Even though the weird cloud moved toward them quickly, the igwaza could surely outrun whatever it was, he reasoned. Then Dashyl looked back once more. The cloud had moved closer than he figured. It must be moving extremely fast, he thought, but how? Dashyl's body suddenly pumped adrenaline due to fear instead of exhilaration. He finally understood, they were being chased by a razorwig swarm.

Dashyl's Quest: The Tournament Plains

"Let's just jog the igwaza at first as we go," Soern called out as he took the lead on the road across the plains. He said a couple commands in the kirzan tongue and the three igwaza started trotting at a medium pace. "We'll head due east," Soern continued. "We could run the igwaza the whole way across the plains, but then we'd have to rest a day on the other side. I would like to keep them fresh enough so we can keep moving and not stay in one place for too long out in the open. If we run into trouble, then we can run away from it."

The road they followed was flat and not heavily rutted. They slowly lost elevation after the initial steeper decline from the tree line. The sky was clear and even though the temperature was a little warm, the breeze from trotting was just enough to keep the riders cool. Dashyl imagined the sky being full of airships of every size and color. He had only seen them from afar, but marveled at their ability to soar high above Rynaga. Compared to the previous day's ride, today the young sarion felt like he was soaring smoothly through the sky on his igwaza.

"Riding this way is much easier," Dashyl announced.

"Igwaza runners are built for speed. The faster they go, the more natural the motion and the easier it is to ride them," Soern explained.

"Let's run. I want to run," Dashyl begged.

"Be careful, you may just get a chance to before long," Soern warned.

"It couldn't hurt to just run a little ways so Dash could get the feel," reasoned Fretly. "If we do have to go all out, he would be used to it and not freaked out."

"Good idea, Fretly, but why don't we wait a little bit longer. We can run them right before we break to eat," said Soern. Dashyl smiled at Fretly when he looked back at him and thrust his fist in the air. Fretly shook his head and laughed.

The three riders didn't say much for the rest of the morning. Dashyl now thought that jogging the igwaza was more hypnotizing than anything. Their motion seemed to rock him gently and almost lull him to sleep. The scenery didn't help either as it was all level grasslands as far as the eye could see. Behind them, he could still make out the thin, dark mustache of the tree line on the horizon. Dashyl started to ask if they could run when Soern stopped suddenly.

"Hush," Soern said sharply to Dashyl as he put his finger to his lips and squinted.

"Was that thunder," asked Fretly. No one answered, but there did seem to be a soft rumbling fading away overhead.

"Is that smoke above the tree line where we just came from," asked Dashyl as he pointed back down the road.

"That's smoke," Soern said as if he had a sinking feeling.

They heard another muffled boom from the tree line followed by more smoke billowing into the sky.

Fretly and Soern looked at each other and then at Dashyl. Soern said with urgency, "Boy, you're going to get your wish, now. We've got to run!"