The Flight

by Travis Perry -

“It is the wrath of Lallah. We must flee it!” exclaimed Shoo. Back in the nomad camp, all the men had formed a circle around a small fire of lavabrush and bug bristle. Ross had been included this time without question…and now Shoo had just pushed her way into the circle.

“Grandmother,” said the young man standing just to her left, eyes lowered in embarrassment. “Please, this is the council of men…” his voice trailed off into a gurgle.

Shoo looked around with bright eyes, “Yes, I suppose that would be why there are none but men here!”

“Grandmother, please,” said the young man on her right—this one really was her grandson.

“This is a simple thing, dear men. Hear me out and I shall quickly leave you in peace.” The sweet old hag grinned toothlessly.

Markas looked across to the oldest man in the council, meeting his eyes…who happened to be Shoo’s husband. The grizzled elder simply shook his head with a cough that nearly formed a laugh.

An expression crossed Markas’ face that might have been a wave of annoyance, but it soon disappeared as he faced her, his eyes blazing. “You may speak, woman, but then you will return to your place.”

“Good you hear me, young man. Good you hear. For it is recorded in the tales of the old women that if the mountain will not come to the prophet, the prophet must go to the mountain. And in times of trouble, ‘Flee, flee, always to higher ground.’”

“So we are to run then? That is your advice?” Markas spoke the last word with a sneer.

“What will you do instead? Fight? The righteous shall be saved from the wrath of the Holy One, but only if they heed the word of Lallah, given to the community of the righteous, to both the men and yes, the women!”

“The old women’s stories,” replied Markas in faux-deference.

“Stories I was teaching when you were still sucking at your mother’s milk,” answered Shoo in firm determination, her hands on her hips.

“Very well, old woman,” said one of the elders. “We hear you. Please leave now.” Soon others echoed this plea. Moments later, the chorus of voices rising, Shoo stepped out of the circle of men as abruptly as she’d entered it.

Ross found it interesting to note that after hours of deliberation, even though none of the men repeated anything Shoo had said—not in the way she’d said it, anyway—the council agreed the tribe needed to flee…up into the mountains of the volcanoes of the Five Rims…until such time as the wrath of God had passed them by.

The Cause

by Travis Perry

Markas stood over his aspbug. Three of its legs had been torn from its body before Markas had killed the flailing mount himself.  Ross stood beside him with the other two nomads, surveying the damage. One aspbug and all five buzzies dead, but the humans were still alive.

Ross could see in their eyes that nomads respected him more for having fought for himself. But he’d only been trying to stay alive. He tried not to flinch in pain as Markas bound his wound with a cloth, stopping the bleeding. He did his best to keep his hands from shaking—he thanked God he’d peed not long before the attack, or else he probably would have wet himself.

Standing next to Markas, Ross shifted his feet back and forth to hide the shaking of his legs from the tribesmen, none of whom seemed shaken at all. He watched Markas use his knife to open the body of one of the beasts who had attacked.

The inside of its carapace was crawling with white little moving shapes, like carrion fly larvae, but with legs like spiders. “See, stranger?” The nomad’s voice rasped in a hard whisper. “These are the cause, the reason the buzbugs ran yesterday, the reason they attacked just now.”

“I see them. What are they?”

“They are a sign of the wrath of Lallah. They come to execute His judgment on all that lives.”

“How do they do that?”

Before Markas could answer, one of the small white bugs leapt of out of the body of the dead buzbug onto the nomad’s right hand, the one holding his knife. Immediately the small creature began burrowing into the skin of his hand. With surreal calmness, Markas switched his knife to his left hand and held up the back of his right in front of his face. For a moment he watched the bug dig itself under his skin. And then with the knife in his left, he slashed at the bug, removing it and half the skin from the back of his hand.

The Attack

by Travis Perry

Ross rode behind Markas on his aspbug mount. As much as the nomad did not seem to like him, the man clearly expected Ross to hang onto to his body. The discomfort most Eclectia men felt about touching one another was clearly not something nomad men experienced. Ross found himself more comfortable reaching under his own thighs to grasp the rough saddle strapped across the bug, even though this made staying put in his seat awkward.

The three bugs rode hard to the west, their riders chasing the buzbugs that had charged off in a frenzy toward the setting sun. The wind whipped hard and the ash blocked out the stars. Ross had no idea how the men knew where they were going.

A cold winter morning revealed a bleak rocky horizon, the distance scattered with a few pygmy lavabushes. Markas glanced back at him without slowing the aspbug’s trotting pace. “You see them, stranger? There, by the hill on the left.”

At first he saw nothing…but then his eyes caught sight of five or six buzbugs charging east in the direction of the rising sun with the same ardor with which they had run last evening, but no longer bleating. He wondered what happened to the rest of them, the other dozen or so bugs…

Markas and the other two riders angled off to the left. The long legged aspbugs soon brought the men to in line with the charging buzzies.

Normally a buzbug would come to a stop near an aspbug, or at least change direction out of fear of the much larger beast. But these buzbugs, each one an herbivore, charged straight at the much larger mounted animals.

Markas, leading the riders, brought his mount to a quick halt, too late to respond to the charging buzbugs, who now voiced a sound Ross had never heard before. A sharp hiss. They leapt at the aspbugs, their mandibles chopping, attacking the Markas’ aspbug. One leapt high and pain lanced through Ross’s right calf as the mouth of the frenzied herd animal pierced his flesh…

The Council

by Travis Perry

Markas’ hard eyes shifted away from Ross toward the western horizon, toward the buzbugs still charging that direction. “A day’s ride and I can bring them back. I’ll need two other men with me. Useful men who can ride.” After addressing the tribe, his angry glare returned to Ross, who found himself flushing red.

“Oh, no, child,” interjected Shoo. “You must not go! They are harem.” Ross would have thought from his knowledge of the tribe that an old woman would not be allowed to publicly speak to an unrelated adult male as she just had done. But apparently Shoo played by her own rules…the word she used, “harem,” Ross of course knew, but she had used it in a foreign way, totally unlike the meaning he was familiar with. He wondered what she had meant…

His chain of thought ended when a young man shouted, “Keep yourself quiet, grandmother! Your open mouth shames us!” Shoo’s face set in anger and the shocked reactions of both men and women told him that her grandson had just violated a rule weightier than a woman addressing a man.

“Calmness and peace,” snapped Markas as his aspbug mount shifted and grunted. “We need to meet in conference over this matter—strangers not included.” The last phrase he uttered while staring directly at Ross.

#

Ross sat at the edge of camp during the conference, on an outcropping of flat rock. Next to him sat Shoo’s grandson, unspeaking, his elbows on his knees and his chin resting in the palms of his upward-reaching hands. They did not speak to one another.

At one point, one of the herd boys passed Ross, his face still pale and sweaty, like the time several months ago when the same boy had thought he’d seen a ghost. “What happened to the herd?” he asked, guessing this to be the cause of the boy’s anxiety.

“Bugs just started running, the same ones who are still running I think. They scared the rest of the herd before we could do anything. Bugs jump sometimes, but a dozen, all at once? I’ve never seen that. There was nothing I could do.”

“I’m sure you did your best,” said Ross. “The tribe won’t blame you.” These words brought a small smile of relief to the boy’s face.

After a bit more conversation, the herder returned to his beasts. Not long afterward, Markas approached Ross. “All is well with Shoo, I trust?”

Markas paused before answering. “She was never in any danger of reprimand—but you have charmed her, it seems. For she defended you and gave her reasons as to what happened to the herd. She says it is not your fault.”

“Praise Lallah. I’m glad to hear that.”

“I would not praise yet. You are to come with me and we shall see if her words are true. If they are not, you will not be returning to the tribe.” As he spoke, perhaps unconsciously, Markas moved his right hand to rest on the pommel of the dagger in his belt.