8.2 - drop back and punt, part 2

In the weeks that followed Fuz led many more skirmishes into the wilds without the caverns. They freed another twenty flyers, most of them women, and killed dozens of the Sullen. The enemy was ruthless and stern, but they knew very little about fighting. Perhaps their naked sorrow made dying easy. Easier than living. Fuz refused to feel pity as he struck them down. The skies were fouled by their worship. He didn't understand how he ever lived without beauty, and now Fuz wanted more. Leaving scarlet blood upon the bare rock of this decrepit world was only a beginning.

The Summer solstice came, and they barely knew it. No sunlight penetrated the thick layer of smog. Even shadows began to starve.

Still they celebrated, gathering together as one hundred flyers and fifty. Emerald rode again upon her translucent with flowing streamers and bright leathers. She dipped and curled high in the vast dome under the mountain where currents from the frothing inner chambers swelled. After the day they set guards upon the slopes, though they hummed in the gloom and fought sleep after the pleasantries of an afternoon's festivity.

Emerald and Fuz retired to their chamber, and they slept for awhile. Fuz grew restless in the night, though, and dressed in the darkness. He slid a stone knife into his leather swath and strode out to the main cavern. In the center of the chamber a stalagmite bubbled and frothed what was to them a holy water. It fed their souls and sweetened the air. Without it they would have long ago perished. Fuz bent to the fountain and sipped, just as he had many years ago with his father. Would his father understand the path he, Fuz, had chosen? If they could meet again, would they have to fight, and die, upon one another's spear point? He heard a noise, which became a clamor. “Awake!” Fuz shouted loudly, then ran to a large stone column where he seized a wooden club and began to pound at the rock. A huge boom rang out, drowning out hollow echoing drips of the long tunnels. The flyers stirred and half dressed they grabbed up any weapon close to hand and rushed out into the open.

“With me,” shouted Fuz, and a group of fifty at least rushed to the narrow gate. Outside a fierce battle had begun, but the defenses were doomed to failure.

As they had celebrated earlier, forgotten, in a corner, Knot sulked with a cup and watched the flyers play in their haven. He was tolerated, but never accepted. The flyers set him to mundane tasks but more often than not left him to his own pleasures, which were few and mind numbing. He wandered the corridors and scrabbled among the boulders outside. The food he procured was meager and barely kept him alive. Knot seethed in the dark spaces where no one could see, knowing his true purpose, relishing the perversity he would thrust upon these people. Tonight. Knot fingered the blade he had stolen, thought back to that thrust of a knife into the surprised back of the prisoner flyer those many weeks ago now. He conjured a vision of Fuz, and of blood welling up and spouting from his stunned grimace. The image kept him alert. Now was the time to act, as the plan decreed.

Knot, after the flyers had dispersed, slithered out into the rocks among the hidden flyers. He knew exactly where they stationed themselves. Before the Sullen attackers could make the pass, Knot had snuck up upon two and slit their throats, but the third cried out and before he died the others rose up. Knot hefted the knife and sent it catapulting into the chest of an advancing flyer, then grabbed up a fallen spear and hurled it into the eye of another. The dead flyer took a last step and fell against Knot. He pushed off the bloodied man and wrenched out the spear, sending spits of dark ocher into the night, then turned back to the cave as his sullen comrades hurried over the path, shouting and slaying flyers as they jumped out from their holes. “They're coming,” Knot yelled as he flew into the open chamber – Fuz had already gathered a small army and rushed past the pale man.

“Warn the others,” growled Fuz and then disappeared, leading his men into the fray beyond.

“Indeed,” glowered Knot. None had noticed the spear he carried, or the red beads that ran down its length to pollute the floor. They filed out to the fight, and Knot spun about to gain the inner chambers. The main chamber was immense, but smaller rooms lay deeper in. They were still impressive and some rose to dizzying heights. Knot ran through the corridors, they snaked and split into a maze, but he knew them well enough. He took one tunnel specifically and it led to an open cavern that towered into a spacious concavity. The last remaining translucent hovered there, dozing in the eaves. It had traversed overhead passageways and arches to find this dome and rest nightly. Knot reached behind a pillar and gathered a rope into his hands, which he unraveled. At one end was attached a hook, and he swung the rope out into ever widening loops, then hurled it into the air at the floating beast. The hook took hold, biting into the diaphanous flesh of the translucent. It quivered, startled out of sleep, and began to wail. Knot had never heard such a noise before, few had, and the cry echoed in the chamber and throughout the latticework of tunnels and fissures. He started to pull on the rope, hand over hand, hauling it down.

Outside the battle grew fierce. The Sullen were many, but the flyers were better fighters. Soon on the slopes of the mountain a very few remained and standing on a boulder with his spear stuck into the throat of a gurgling soldier, Fuz watched his men kill the last of the enemy. Only ten flyers remained, staggering with fatigue over hundreds of lifeless pallid attackers. He drew a knife and tossed it to a flyer. “Slit the throats of any who still breath,” then he turned and ran back into the cave.

The translucent fought against the pull of the rope, but slowly it sank ever lower into the clutches of Knot, who grinned savagely into the air. His spear leaned against a column, standing ready to pierce the beast and silence forever the echoes of yesterday's heavens.

“You will not live to see this done, stranger,” said Fuz, rumbling deeply as he entered the chamber. He strode up to Knot and released his anger, backhanding the traitor across his face. Knot lost the rope and the translucent escaped to the heights. He staggered back against the pillar as Fuz put his hands up to the Sullen's throat, crushing it savagely. “You did this, you brought death into our home. I should have killed you at the start.”

Knot wanted to answer, but no noise would ever leave his lips again. Surely, he agreed, death would have been prudent, but wisdom failed Fuz that day, as it would this day. Knot reached out, his eyes began to bulge and soon he would lose consciousness. He grasped the spear by its haft and brought it around, plunging the weapon deep into Fuz's side. Fuz gasped and blood spattered from his mouth onto Knot's ashen face. For a moment he refused to relax his grip, but then Fuz moaned and his arms dropped, and he fell to his knees. Knot kicked him away like an afterthought and turned back to the rope that dangled down from the spires. He began to reel in the translucent again.

–

“Fuz.” She cradled him in her arms as the life drained from his ruptured side. There was no stopping it now, the end. And there could be no stopping the enemy either, or the growing disparity between life and death. The gloom beyond these rock walls, this haven, was growing. Emerald could never now take her fight to the Sullen, to finish the madness and cleanse their world. They had no choice but to retreat into the darkness and wait for death. “Oh, Fuz. Why didn't I listen to you?”

He opened one eye and gasped against the pain, but the agony was subsiding, quickly, and Fuz knew he was leaving. “What happened?” he managed to ask Emerald, but faded, never hearing her answer.

Emerald had heard a commotion and woke to find Fuz missing. His dressing was gone, and the long stone knife, but his spear remained. She gathered a wrap around her body and grasped the spear as she fled the room. First, Emerald ran into the main chamber, but it was empty and she heard some scattered noises outside. As she neared the entrance the fighting grew more intense. There was little she could accomplish out there, so Emerald turned her attention to the tunnels, intent on gathering any within for defense, if it came to that. She found some children and women gathered in the deep recesses, and told them to stay there. There was no way out, that they had discovered, other than the cave entrance. She remembered the translucent, and Emerald backtracked. Perhaps she could fly them up to the higher ledges, where they would be safe for awhile, until escape was possible.

She was too late. Emerald entered the chamber as Knot was pulling down the translucent, and Fuz lay unconscious on the cave's floor. Knot didn't hear her. He was cursing as the beast bucked against his efforts. Then he felt the jarring blow, and felt the shaft chafing the ribs it was displacing as the spearhead pushed out amid a gush of blood from his torso. His crushed windpipe allowed naught but a rasping cough and a torrent of blood flushed out of his mouth and nose as he loosed the rope and sank into the gravel dead before he hit the ground.

The few flyers that remained gathered in the tunnel and watched as their queen sobbed over the fallen hero. He lived and fought beside them, now they would fight and die alone. The translucent meandered in lazy circles, wispy foam like the steam rising from late summer marshes flowed from its wound, and the hook slowly worked its way out then dropped alongside the looping rope until it clattered onto the stone floor.

part 9