Crystal Gorge

“Having somebody—anybody—between them and their enemies seems to be very important to the Atazaks,” Longbow agreed. “Personal safety seems to be their main concern.”

Then Rabbit straightened and shaded his eyes from the light of the rising sun. “The little venom-spitters seem to have decided that they don’t want to play anymore. They’re crawling off through the bushes all over down there. Of course, once Dahlaine had shut off the wind, they weren’t at all useful anymore, and that probably irritated old Holy no end. Irritating a crazy man isn’t a very good idea, is it?”

“Longbow!” Padan called. “We’ve got the breastworks pretty much out of the way. Do you need us here for anything else?”

“Not that I can think of,” Longbow called back. “Get your men out of there.” Then he glanced down the dry riverbed. The bison were still milling around, but they hadn’t gone back to grazing. “It’s time to toot again,” he told Rabbit. “Let Keselo know that it’s all right now to start the bison moving again.”

“I thought you’d never ask,” Rabbit replied, lifting his horn.

There were scattered clouds hanging over the eastern horizon, and the sun, which as yet had not risen, touched them with glorious color of many shades. Longbow was still not comfortable in the treeless meadowland, but he had to admit that the sunrises and sunsets of the region were beautiful beyond belief.

He pulled his thoughts away from the scenery and peered on down the dry riverbed where Keselo’s fire-missiles were dropping with great splashes of flame no more than twenty paces behind the terrified bison. The massive creatures were fleeing up the dry riverbed in wide-eyed panic.

It was quite obvious to Longbow that bison were not as clever as the deer of Zelana’s Domain were—nor as timid. A herd of deer could vanish into the forest at the slightest sound. Bison, on the other hand, were not particularly timid—as long as nobody was throwing fire at them.

Then the herd of bison crested the ridge top just to the north of the small knoll where Longbow and his friends were watching.

“I hadn’t realized how big they are,” Rabbit said, sounding slightly awed. “They aren’t likely to come up here, are they, Chief Two-Hands?”

Tlantar shook his head. “They’ll take the easiest route, and that’s down the slope. I’m sure that they’ll want to get a long way away from that fire, and they’ll run faster when they start going downhill.”

“Are there any bison herds over in Atazakan?” Athlan asked.

“I’ve never been there,” Two-Hands replied, “but I rather doubt it. Bison eat grass, not trees, so they wouldn’t be very interested in forest country.”

“The Atazaks have probably never even seen a herd of bison, have they?”

“It’s not very likely. And even if there were bison over there, Holy Azakan and his Guardians live in the city of Palandor, so about the only wild creatures they’ve ever seen have been birds. They probably won’t even realize that they’re in any danger until it’s too late. I think it’s called ‘learning the hard way,’ and that’s the worst way to learn anything.”

“They’ll be much wiser for the rest of their lives, though,” Rabbit noted, “which might even be as long as about five minutes.”

As Two-Hands had predicted, the stampede of the shaggy bison picked up speed as they fled on down the slope. The “Guardians” stationed near the upper end of the slope stood gaping at the huge creatures bearing down on them, and then they turned and tried to run away. The ones stationed farther on down the slope, however, met them with spears and commands to return to their positions.

The discussion didn’t last very long, though, because the herd of terrified bison ran right over the top of both groups.

Then, in a final demonstration of his insanity, Holy Azakan rose from his ornate chair—or possibly throne—and raised one hand in a commanding sort of way. “Come no farther!” he ordered. “I am thy god! Kneel down before me lest I destroy thee, one and all. If ye do not obey me, I will punish ye all, and great will be thy suffering. I will command the earth to open and swallow ye! I shall even command the sun—which is my father—to burn ye down to ashes. I do tell ye, one and all, that ye have seen your last day, and great will be the lamentation of all of thy kind—for truly . . .” He broke off and looked around, his eyes widening in horror as he realized that he was all alone. His “Guardians” had either fled in terror or vanished, screaming, under the sharp hooves of the terror-stricken bison.

“Mother!” Azakan cried out. “Save me! Rescue me, please, mother, please! Don’t let them hurt me!” Then his voice became a shrill scream of absolute terror, but the bison paid no heed, and Azakan’s shriek was lost in the rumbling thunder of a thousand hooves.

“Most appropriate,” Chief Two-Hands said.

“I don’t follow you,” Longbow admitted.

“I couldn’t really swear to this, friend Longbow,” Tlantar said, “but the word reached Asmie a long time back that the very first thing Azakan did when he assumed the throne of Atazakan was to order the execution of his mother and all her other children. Now that all came home to roost. He died begging his mother to save him, but she wasn’t there anymore.”

“There were a few of them who managed to stay alive, Chief Two-Hands,” Tladak reported along about noon. “They were the ones intelligent enough—or maybe lucky enough—to hide behind large boulders on down the slope. We rounded them up and took their spears away from them. What do you think we should do with them?”

Two-Hands shrugged. “Tell them to go home,” he suggested. Then he scratched his cheek and turned to look at Ekial. “You might want to tell the commoners that ‘Holy Azakan’ isn’t around anymore and that most of his ‘Guardians’ are dead. Let them decide what to do with the survivors.”

“After the way the Guardians treated then, the commoners aren’t likely to treat the survivors very nicely.”

“That’s up to them,” Two-Hands said. “We have other things to attend to right now.”

Longbow walked a short distance away from the others. “Are you there?” he sent a silent thought out to Zelana.

“Of course I am,” her voice replied. “How are things going up there?”