The Exodus Page 6

  “That’s enough, Nick, stop it,” the hunter patted Nick on the shoulder, smiling. “This is mandra. If you make it mad, it may not let us out of here at all.”

  The big man caressed the rough trunk with his hand, surprisingly and uncharacteristically tenderly. Nick could not tell if he was joking, but Valu added, “Besides, there’s no better place in the Forest to hide from all the hungry beasts.”

  Later, Nick couldn’t stop thinking about the surprising quality of the mandra bushes. He remembered a rare Earth plant that had a similar ability. As far as he could recall, it was only growing in Cuba on Earth. In any case, this was where he saw it for the first time. The plant was remarkable because it recoiled on contact, folding back its leaves as if it were scared or ashamed. This was probably why the locals called it a humble plant or touch-me-not.3

  However, a low creeping plant covering the ground like a rug is one thing. This pseudo-grove was a completely different matter. Nick had been searching for a proper term to describe it for a long time, and decided to use pseudo-grove for now, even though it was not really fitting either. It was a pseudo-grove of hundred-feet-tall giants spreading for several miles in all directions.

  Nick was relieved then to leave the grove, thinking, “This is a strange place, indeed. Dead. No birds, no animals. Not even tree fruits, either. And this nagging feeling that someone’s always watching you.” Nick shivered then; using all his willpower to shake off the eerie images created by his overactive imagination, and ran to catch up with the hunters, whistling something carelessly but out of tune.

  *****

  The wave of gobblers was approaching swiftly. Now it was obvious that they were leaving nothing behind, except for lifeless soil and a settling dust storm. It seemed like a huge razor was shaving off to the ground level not only single trees and bushes, but also the grass and turf.

  The chirring sound was becoming louder. When the wave was only about several hundred feet away from the pseudo-grove, Nick noticed that the gobblers’ order was lost. He was under the impression that the first rows started to slow down and disperse, as if trying to avoid the contact with the mandra. But it did not last long. The creatures in the back were pushing forward and in a second their wave entered the grove. Loud crackling started, and Nick saw how the tall crowns of the mandra trees started to sink and fall as if there was a huge chainsaw working under them.

  “They gobbled it up,” Nick heard Sith’s muffled voice. The boy was standing next to him all this time, observing. “Nothing left behind but a smudge,” Sith said in a colorless voice. It was not clear what he was feeling at the moment.

  Nick focused his eyes. Indeed, all that was left of the grove was a dark spot, the exact shape of its perimeter. Something was moving there, but it was impossible to see what exactly, due to the great distance.

  Horns howled loudly. “Danger alert, to warn of the approach?” Nick thought quickly.

  “It’s coming, it’s coming!” echoed along the fortress wall.

  “Over there! Look!” Sith grabbed Nick’s wrist, pointing to the distance.

  Nick followed his finger. But of course! While he was observing the approaching gobblers, a new dark wave appeared at the horizon.

  “More gobblers?” dumbfounded Nick asked Sith.

  “Why gobblers?” the boy was sincerely shocked by Nick’s ignorance. “More like scarifiers, or even worse.”

  At that moment, Gorr showed up at the landing of the western tower, together with his squad. Whisperer followed them from the spiral staircase arch. Nick overheard the last part of the unresolved argument.

  “I’ve told you, we’ll let them through!” Gorr was gasping for air from his brisk stride. “We need to save the moats till last.”

  “But they will eat up the entire protective stockade!” Birr was trying to find new counter-arguments. “And reach the crossing easily, for sure!”

  “That’s not your concern! Rekk will meet them there,” Gorr waved to the side dismissively, signaling that he wouldn’t change his decision. “I will let you fire up the rear defense moats, if there’s a need, but not the frontal ones. Rich, come over here!”

  They stepped to the side and started to talk in lower voices. Nick was curious, so he started to listen intently.

  “What kind of trouble should we expect from these gobblers?”

  “They can’t climb the walls,” Whisperer was playing nervously with his beard, as he always did when he was thinking. “That’s for sure. But I don’t understand, why so many of them? It’s not just a coincidence. The Forest never does anything without a purpose.”

  “True. Last time, they were running around in flocks along the bank for a whole day, and then disappeared by the morning. And that was it. As if they never came.”

  “This time, everything will be different. But I still don’t understand,” the old man smirked, confused, “even if they gobble everything up, including us, they will still be hungry. So, why so many of them then?”

  “All right, I guess we will find out soon enough,” Gorr peered into the horizon. “And what is that, over there in the distance? Whom else is the Forest sending at us?”

  Whisperer closed his eyes for a minute, and stood there motionless, as if listening to something carefully.

  “Lots of things. Different ones,” he sighed quietly. “Something new is coming. Very hungry.”

  Whisperer grimaced as if he was in pain and started to rub his temples, saying, “You are doing everything right, Gorr. The moats with the hot tar should be saved. We will need them later, but very soon!”

  “Well, I also have a couple of more surprises for these beasts. We’ll hold!” Gorr patted Whisperer on the shoulder. “If you feel something else, let me know.”

  *****

  “Sith, run down and bring me a mat or something to sit and lie on,” Whisperer rolled a small barrel to the wall and sat on it with obvious pleasure. There were several of them near each loophole. Whisperer added, “I think we should spend the night here. And it’s not good to sleep on uncovered rocks.”

  “I’ll go with you, Sith,” Nick suggested. “Together, we will fetch everything at once.”

  He looked down again. The picture did not change. The entire space in front of the fortress wall was covered in gray, a constantly moving and loudly chirring mass of gobblers. The same thing with the other walls, too. The live wave of small creatures, having reached the Tower, spilled over its hill and rolled around, proceeding further to finally stop at the river the locals called the Rapid Waters.

  At first, the guards were pouring the hot tar down on the gobblers. They also used the barrels stuffed with an explosive mixture. They lit a wick in the barrel’s bottom and then, when the wick caught on fire, they would throw the barrel down. The barrel would explode, making huge gaps in the raging hordes of gobblers.

  They burned really well, crackling like wood. The flamethrowers were particularly effective. These devices caught Nick’s attention a lot earlier, and now he could see them at work with his own eyes. Their mechanism was quite primitive, but for the local civilization’s level of development it must have been quite a breakthrough in military engineering. Each flamethrower was worked by three specially trained guards. The first one, using a manual pump, created the pressure needed for the aiming reservoir; the second was the aimer. The device was quite bulky and heavy. The flamethrower’s socket had to be aimed with the help of special transmission mechanisms. The third guard was the shooter proper. He regulated how wide the flame’s stream would be, thus adjusting the range and area it could reach.

  After what seemed to have lasted an eternity, Gorr finally ordered them to stop the firestorm. The gobblers did not scatter in different directions from the fire, like other animals would do. Instead, they quickly filled in the empty spots created by the fire. They didn’t even wait for the fire to go out, they immediately crawled into the bold spots formed by the flaming tar, thus putting the fire out with their bodies. Once Gorr realized
how futile the effort was, and most importantly, that they gobblers did not present danger for the people hiding behind the tall tower walls, he ordered everyone to stop.

  *****

  Nick could not sleep that night again. Perhaps, the reason was the non-stop chirring and chirping under the fortress wall. Sometimes it went louder, making everyone nervous, but then it always turned out that the gobblers would suddenly go against each other and tear each other apart. Then, after a short time, they would calm down, and then everything repeated again.

  Or perhaps, the reason was Nick’s deep-seated anxiety about the approaching second wave of the creatures? But Whisperer said that they wouldn’t show up at the Tower until noon the next day. Or, perhaps, Nick was annoyed by the overwhelming death-green light from the heavy Dominia looming just over his head?

  Whatever the reason, Nick couldn’t fall asleep. Carefully, lest he woke up his friends sleeping next to him, Nick got up and came up to the edge of the watchtower. A little bit lower on the walls, the guards on duty were quietly talking to each other. On the other side, two guards, as if playing, were throwing down empty barrels. Even before the barrels hit the live rug, a whole swarm of creatures would jump out at them and gobble them up in the air.

  Someone screamed behind Nick. It took him a second to realize it was Sith. Did he have a bad dream? Then Whisperer started to cough strenuously. Suddenly, he bolted, holding his head in his hands.

  “You want some water, Whisperer?” Nick jumped right up to him. “Here you go!”

  The old man immediately started to gulp the water from the wineskin Nick gave him.

  “Wake Sith up!” he finally groaned.

  “Why, what happened, Whisperer?” the boy was already up.

  “Run to Gorr, right now. Tell him to get ready. The flouds are coming

  Chapter 5

  They became noticeable only at dawn. The guards, ordered to wake up and stand ready, spent half a night intently looking at the dark horizon. They were about to start a quiet revolt when a loud horn on the south watchtower broke the silence. It was almost immediately echoed first by the western, and then the northern watchtowers confirming the approaching danger.

  The flouds were moving slowly, in several rows. Nick was surprised to notice that they were flying not at random, but in the neat pattern of a chessboard. He even started to suspect that they were sentient, but then immediately discarded the thought. The Earth’s cranes also fly in a beautiful V-shaped geometric pattern, but no one would ever think to make a conclusion they were sentient.

  When the flouds reached the place where the mandra bushes were growing just yesterday there was just a dirty spot and the flouds’ order changed. At least a dozen of them hovered over the spot and started to snuff it with their trunks.

  “They will sink now,” just as Whisperer finished the sentence, they all dropped down at the same time.

  Nick decided nothing could surprise him anymore, so he was just watching. The remaining flouds restored their neat pattern and continued to move. From time to time, individual flouds would leave the flock, hover over the ground, and then, as Whisperer said, sink.

  On the tower walls, the guards were getting ready to deflect what would be, most probably, the first ever air attack in this world. At night, Whisperer and Gorr had been discussing at length all possible ways to resist the flying monsters. In the morning, the fortress walls were provided with baskets with arrows, in addition to the cauldrons of boiling water. Now the guards were quickly attaching to the arrows’ ends various rags and other flammable materials. Nick, recalling their unpleasant recent encounter with one of the flouds, observed all these preparations with skepticism. His brain was frantically working on a more effective way to protect themselves from the flouds. But he could not come up with anything beyond looking for cover in the tower structures.

  “The most important thing is not to let them sink!” he heard Gorr’s commanding voice.

  The commandant was standing at the very center of the frontal fortress wall, giving the last-minute orders to his people. In one hand, he was holding a funnel-like tool, as Nick understood, to amplify his voice. Enforced by the natural acoustics of the fortress, his commands were reaching the most remote corners of the Tower.

  Just like the gobblers before them, the flouds were moving in a wide orderly front. This was somewhat hopeful. Only about a dozen of them were floating toward the Tower. The Tower defenders were incredibly lucky that the mandra bushes turned up in the flouds’ way first. At least half of the flouds moving toward the Tower sank into the remains of the pseudo-grove. The people in the fortress froze in deadly silence. The only thing that could be heard was the increasingly loud hum coming from the inside of the flouds and even louder chirping under the fortress walls.

  The flouds hovered over the edge of the first protective moat, filled to the edges with the thick flammable liquid. Now the moat was covered with a dirty and dense layer of dead gobblers that had been moving in the first rows. The beasts following them ran over the corpses of their brethren stepping on them to get over the moat.

  “Three, four, five,” Nick heard Sith’s voice behind him. The boy was quietly counting the flouds that were preparing for the air attack, “Six.”

  When the boy noticed that Nick was looking at him, he said, “Why are your standing here like that, frozen? Take your bow, quickly, the fun will start right now!”

  Nick nearly blushed in embarrassment. While he was thinking where it would be best to hide, the boy had fetched two combat bows, for Nick and for himself and a full basket of arrows. “When did you have time for that?” Nick thought about the boy affectionately.

  The flouds attacked all at the same time. Nick was surprised by their actions’ perfect synchronicity, as if they exchanged messages over a radio system of their own. They let out several trunks, humming like bee swarms and started to picket the fortress.

  “Fire up!” Gorr’s command was a little too late.

  The guards were already setting the flammable rags on their arrow tips on fire. In a second, the air was saturated with smoke and decorated with fiery arches. It was impossible to miss these monsters and all arrows indeed reached their targets. Several flouds turned sharply to the side; others soared up and started to make a U-turn for a new attack. It did not look like the arrows caused them any damage.

  “Fire on command only!” loud and strong, Gorr’s voice could be heard over the swoosh of hundreds of arrows and echoed along the fortress walls. “Birr, assign the shooters to the targets!”

  The archers quickly re-arranged into several equally sized groups of forty to fifty each. Since they did it quickly and in an organized manner, Nick thought that they had perhaps rehearsed this maneuver the day before. Something told him that Whisperer was a part of this plan, too.

  “Fire up!” Gorr raised his sword. “Aim for the center, the three first ones!” He held a pause, letting the monsters get closer. “Now!”

  This time, the effect was a lot stronger. The flouds were pierced through by the fiery arrows making gaping holes in them. The closest and seemingly the largest one suddenly broke down into many disjointed parts. For some time, they were chaotically flying around, mindlessly hitting each other and falling apart on impact into even smaller formations. Then they started to drop on the ground in small humming chunks. On the ground, the gobblers started their gruesome work, greedily chirping while chewing.

  The other two flouds started to pulsate quickly, taking in turns the form of an almost perfect sphere and an elongated spindle. Then they gravitated toward each other. For a short moment, they tangled into one, giving out a loud crackling sound. Nick thought that he saw the sparks of many electric charges. The humming reached its peak and then stopped sharply. The flouds started to fall apart, but not into smaller formations, like the first one. Their bodies started to discharge large oily drops, and in a moment they fell down in the form of rain. A winning cry rolled over the fortress walls like a wave, and alm
ost immediately calmed down. The remaining live monsters made a wide U-turn and were coming back fast, as if determined to avenge the people for the death of their brethren.

  This time, the flouds dispersed, as if they had a mind and thought this through, and started to attack simultaneously from different directions. The western tower, where Nick and Sith stood with three dozens of guards, was attacked by two monsters at once. They approached so quickly that the people managed to make only three chaotic fire rounds, not inflicting any serious damage on them.

  Nick’s intuition did not fail him: the floud consisted of small spindle-shaped creatures, keeping closely to each other. If one died, the others immediately filled the gap and restored the order. Even if a hundred or two hundred were killed, if they were in different parts of the huge body, the monster was still staying alive. It was a different matter if a large piece of it was taken out at the same time. Then, theoretically, the floud would lose its whole cohesiveness and die.

  Nick had managed to grab Sith by his waist and roll toward the wall’s corner. It went dark over their heads, and the small twisters predictably started to move over the watchmen. Someone screamed. Cursing was heard from all directions. Some guards were screaming at the top of their lungs and then abruptly fell into silence. Nick pressed his feet against the stone ledge of the loophole. His eyes, irritated by the dust rising everywhere, were full of tears. A loud revving was coming from above his head. Nick’s memory suddenly brought up a school trip to the museum of ancient aviation. The similar revving sound was made by pre-modern fighter plane propeller engines. Sucked in by the twister force, Sith was being dragged to the side and Nick, arching with his entire body, managed to grab the boy by his ankle. Then in one sharp pull he drew the boy close and covered him with his own body, pinning Sith to the stone floor.