**********
With Simon on her shoulders, Beni steadily followed the tracks of the malcoons for several hours that evening. She had left the castle far behind her, and she was determined to see the freed prisoners returned to their homeland with Crush. She came to a spot on the trail where the tracks were muddled, and bending down close to the ground, she examined the odd way that the malcoon tracks had milled around as if they had stopped briefly. She then noticed a small trail that led away from the tracks, too small for a malcoon, but perhaps the right size for a group of people. The tracks headed off into the brush and disappeared from view, as if there had been two paths chosen. There was a separation of the group of humans, yet she determined that the malcoon tracks plowed ahead perpendicularly over the next hill.
“What has happened here?” she wondered to herself as a bird call whistled through the air from in front of her. Simon sensed the unusual call as well, and he hid beneath the locks of her hair in anticipation. Another call answered somewhere behind them, and Beni tensely gripped the handle of the blade at her side as she crept over to hide behind a tree. She stood to her feet against the rough bark, and she waited for the inevitable. She closed her eyes, and sweat rolled down her forehead as she took in a deep breath to relax. Her inner strength had waned since her emancipation from the pendant, and she searched herself to measure whether her inner force was sufficient to allow her an escape. The power was there, she determined, but it was not without its limits. She would have to conserve her energy in case the dragon stood in her way.
Opening her eyes, she studied the woods and watched carefully for any signs of movement. For the longest time, she waited patiently, and all that she observed was the glowing orange from the flames of the castle that littered the night sky. She listened carefully, and the few sounds that she could now hear were the echoes of the dragon as it stamped out her birthplace, her castle, and she wept. Silently, the tears of sadness streamed down her face, and she wiped them away with her glove. With a sniffle, she looked out into the sky, and she prayed for the nightmare to end. She prayed for help in this cruel world, and when she opened her eyes, she saw something reflecting the dimmer light of the night sky. It was a face, or only one half, and the other half was masked in darkness. It was another giant’s face, a warrior’s face, scarred and weathered, and it stood still as death as it watched her from under the cover of the brush. Beni caught her breath again as she returned the stare, and then it blinked.
As fast as a jackrabbit fleeing from a hawk, she bolted from the side of the tree and followed the path of the malcoons only to find a giant warrior blocking the path. When she revolved to run back, another giant barred her way. At last, she had been found, and she dropped to her knees and broke out in tears of frustration. The warriors surrounded her, and when Beni looked up to face her captors, she recognized the hardened face that had been staring at her from the forest.
“What do we have here?” asked one of the warriors.
“A present handed right to us in the forest where no one can hear,” another announced, and Beni’s anger began to well within her. She was no one’s plaything, and she would make sure of that.
“Quiet, Rodrick. This lady needs our help,” the weathered warrior commanded, and the others remained silent as he knelt down on one knee and grasped her hand gently in his own. “Is there anything that we can do to help you?”
“Yes, Captain,” she replied as she determined his rank from the markings on his uniform. “Your duty is to your Queen, and if you will look through the trees, you will see that our castle is under attack. Please do not waste any more time or effort on me,” she urged him and pulled her hand gently away from between his palms.
“Yes, Captain Colere,” Rodrick scoffed. “We really should be on our way,” he said with an air of veiled menace as he placed his hand on Beni’s shoulder. Simon, who had been deathly still since the encounter began, crept softly under her hair and further away from the giant’s menacing hand. “I will be glad to come back and take care of this later.” Beni knew a threat when she heard one, but she was no helpless lady as they surmised. She shrugged and wiped Rodrick’s hand from her shoulder as if it was a flake of dandruff, and she chose to ignore his impotent intimidation, for the time being. The men had been on deployment for an extended period of time, and misbehavior in the field was not unheard of in the courts of the castle, yet she believed that there was never an excuse for intimidation of a perceived weaker individual. Perhaps he deserved a lesson from one of the weaker sex, but there was no time for that now.
“A dragon awaits you and your strong right forearm, scout. Though your calloused hand does nothing for me, one stroke across the scales with it might make the lizard shiver, I would imagine,” Beni parried, and the other men laughed as Rodrick’s upper lip turned on one side. “You do realize that you are addressing the Princess and Queen Dowager’s sister,” she announced, and the scout’s face turned white with embarrassment. Captain Colere had been searching the night skies for the sign of flames, and he was sure that he had sighted the anomaly that lit the night sky before the last statement crossed her lips. He was as surprised as anyone else that the princess was still alive, and he immediately wondered how this could be so.
“Princess Beni? She has been missing for too many months now,” Colere replied and tensely snapped his feet together when he recognized her. “I will send my men to the castle immediately, my lady. But by virtue of the oath which I have taken, I cannot leave you alone in these woods. Rodrick, gather your wits about you and lead the men to the castle. Search out the Queen and give her your protection.” Rodrick nodded his head in agreement with his Captain’s orders and disappeared into the forest with the other men following. Captain Colere stayed behind and stood uncomfortably still at Beni’s side as she nervously flicked a sharp stone into the brush with her boot.
“Captain, I am headed for the mines. I tracked a couple of malcoons that are carrying prisoners who escaped from the castle earlier this last evening,” she said as she stood to her feet with her hand on her sword. She was unnerved that she was going to have to tell Colere the truth, but she was not an adept liar like her sister.
“The prisoners escaped the castle? But how? It is so closely guarded, and I know the warden quite well,” he expressed with sincerity.
“When the Princess frees the slaves, the number of guards matters not,” she said as she withdrew her sword and grasped it hardily as she stepped back to put distance between herself and the captain. “Do you swear allegiance to Queen Dowager or not?” she asked with the razor sharp point near to his face and twinkling in the night. The captain placed his relaxed hand on the blade to move it aside, and she allowed the gesture on his part.
“No matter the folly, my lady, you have my fidelity,” he answered, and she believed him at his word. By the light in his eyes, she thought he could be trusted.
“Follow me, then,” she said and put her sword away. “The trail that was made by the malcoons continues ahead into the forest. The prisoners are headed to the mines, and they will require our help if they are to survive their journey.”
“There is no doubt in your words,” Colere replied as he followed in step behind her. “The Queenmother that rules the mountain is a treacherous person to behold. It has been said that after she destroyed our castle . . .”
“. . . she was changed into an insect,” Beni finished his sentence for him. “Yes, I have heard of the curse that was brought on by the evil that she has sown. Do not also forget that my father, the king of the giants, also played a hand in his own destruction, and that to this day, my sister rules the giants with terror. We all share guilt and responsibility for the harmful circumstances that suffuse into our world, and we must learn how to turn from our crooked paths and make our ways straight.” Captain Colere listened intently as she lectured him on the straightness of one’s path, and he marveled that someone with suc
h a bright understanding of the interactions of living things could have been raised within the same household as Queen Dowager. The monarch had impressed her evil mark on everyone in the ranks of her guard, yet he kept his thoughts to himself as he followed Beni through the forest towards the perimeter of the mountain. It would do him no good to bring up his own political and philosophical beliefs in her presence. Since she had chosen him to aid her in this game of night time war, the best that he could hope for would be that Queen Dowager would allow him to live after they were caught. And they most definitely would be caught. He knew that Rodrick would squeal on him at the first chance he got, but Colere felt it was his duty to serve the castle royalty as he was commanded when he took his oath. Right now, he was simply obeying orders from the Princess.
Before long daylight began to break over the horizon, and the captain snatched Beni by the forearm and urged her to silence by placing his finger over his lips. They listened to the sounds of the forest, and somewhere out in the distance, high above the treetops, the whooshing sound of a bird flying overhead filled the forest as it grew ever closer. Louder and louder the sounds increased in intensity as it approached, and they guessed rightly that it was no bird, but a dragon that approached from a distance. The light of day grew, and Beni looked at her surroundings, and she noticed the two malcoons standing quietly behind the bushes at the edge of the forest. A green field stretched out ahead, and she motioned for the captain to follow her as she tiptoed quietly through the woods to join with the humans that had been freed from the castle. When she had reached the malcoons, the roar of the dragon echoed into the forest, and she and the captain fell face first against the ground to hide from the terrible wrath of the beast. As she lay there with her cheek lying next to the ground in front of a shrub, she caught sight of the humans hiding on the ground beneath the foliage, and she watched them scatter in fear of her gaze.
“My sister is to blame for this,” Beni told herself, and when the dragon had passed by overhead, she spoke to the large group of humans as they hid in the bushes.
“Freed people of the castle, do not be afraid,” she started. “It was Crush and I who freed you, and we are taking you to the mountain to return you to your home world.” Suddenly, one of the humans, a little girl, came running forward bravely from the forest to speak with Beni face to face against the urging of her fellow people. She was tiny in comparison even to her own people, and she had her hands clasped nervously together behind her back as she spoke.
“Miss Princess Beni,” she started with her head bowed down so as not to make eye contact. “Crush says that he is going to distract the dragon so that our people can go down into the mountain. I told them, and they are waiting for the dragon to disappear before they go out. Are you coming, too?” she asked with naïve innocence. When Beni considered this question, she gulped a breath in surprise at the revelation just as the dragon’s deafening roar blasted out across the open field. The princess covered her ears with her hands and rolled onto her back to look skyward. The funniest thing happened then. She watched as a bird darted by over the treetops and snatched a person up from the ridge of the field where the dragon was posted.
“He did it?” Beni mumbled to herself, and Captain Colere confirmed her suspicions.
“A bird just scooped up a human from in front of the dragon,” he declared. The dragon then jumped off the ground to follow the bird into the air. Beni nervously grabbed the captain by the biceps and shook him.
“Do you know what this means?!! Crush has bought us some time! We have to get these people up the hill and down into the mineshaft before the dragon comes back!” she shouted at the warrior. The captain did not have a complete understanding of all that was actually going on yet, but he was very capable of following orders from a superior officer. He nodded his head in agreement, and they both set about transporting the weakest of the people up the hill first. The rest followed on their own. The captain reached the mine entrance first, and he was greeted with spears by the two kilted guards. With one kick of his foot, he brushed them aside and relieved them of their duty, and then he placed the handful of people down in front of the cave. Beni arrived next, and she did the same, though she was disgusted at the bloodshed that waited at the front door. She hated the practices of slavery and the devaluing of life that her father and sister had practiced, and she liked combat even less. If she had not been interrupted by the dragon and reminded of their urgency, she would have had some choice words for the captain’s disregard for the guard’s lives. She quickly unloaded her precious cargo and ushered them into the tiny mouth of the cave before turning to search the skies above for the dragon. The scaly beast was flying straight down from the heavens toward them on the ground when she looked, and Beni realized that even though everyone had not completed the journey uphill, their time had most assuredly run out.
**********
Crush felt the squeeze of the talons that wrapped around his midsection, and he knew that he had placed himself in a dangerous spot this fine morning. Before running out to meet the dragon, he had spotted the bird on the cliff side above, and though a dragon was present, he had guessed rightly that the bird would not turn down an easy meal. Now he was faced with the task of changing his fortune from prey to predator. Crush dangled between the talons behind the speeding bird’s tail like meat on a hook, and he looked on the dragon that trailed close behind with dread. The beast stretched its neck forward and with a wide open mouth, the great lizard snapped its jaws shut and barely missed the bird’s tail feathers. If Crush did not act soon, he would be swallowed by the dragon and digested along with the giant bird. With the sharp edged roots of the dragon’s tooth, Crush inserted it between the bird’s toes and pried open a gap. He then slipped his feet between the gap and dropped his body down through the hole that he had created. When his midsection had passed through the space, his body fell quickly down with no effort, and he found himself holding onto the roots of the tooth with the world far below. He was now stretched even further behind the bird’s body, and the dragon laid his eyes on his kill then. The serpent’s head stabbed at him three more times, narrowly missing him but getting closer with each bite, and Crush was on the verge of panic when the bird’s direction of flight abruptly changed. The feathered creature flew straight down, and the dragon soared past with an angry roar, missing them both by mere feet.
For an instant, it seemed to Crush that he was weightless as the bird plummeted toward the ground, and the tooth that had been lodged between the bird’s toes was let loose to fly through the air. Crush stretched out his hand and pulled the dragon’s tooth close into his body, and then he stretched his other hand out in an attempt to catch the bird’s tail feathers before all was lost. One particularly crooked feather protruded much farther out from the bird’s body than the others, and Crush grabbed this one just as the bird altered course to fly horizontal with the ground. Crush’s momentum swung the bird’s backside downward with him, and the feather released from the bird’s skin. Unwilling to lose its breakfast so easily, the bird swooped back around at Crush’s falling body with an open beak and a determination to make a meal of the cat-man before the dragon returned. Crush dropped the useless tail feather and avoided the bird’s open maw, but he knew that he had to save himself from splatting on the ground. When the bird’s beak clamped shut, Crush caught the edge of its mouth with his claws and ripped into the dense skin and soft feathers of its face. The great bird squawked a cry of pain, and it shook its head furiously to agitate the climber’s hold. The shaking did little good as Crush perched on its body with his arm and claw firmly dug into its neck, and he tolerated no more of the bird’s rebellion. The bird’s overall flying speed had decreased dramatically with the struggle, and this allowed the dragon to swoop in behind the bird and grin with delight at his craftiness.
“At last I have you,” the dragon said as it congratulated itself with a job well done, and the beast clo
sed its eyes and opened its mouth wide to swallow the bird and Crush together in one bite. Crush squeezed the bird’s sides with his legs, and the bird instinctively relieved itself at that instant. The droppings lingered there in the air for a moment as time seemed to stop, and with some satisfaction, Crush watched as the excretions splattered across the dragon’s open mouth and face.
With a smile and a laugh that could only be enjoyed for a twinkling of a moment, Crush beamed with delight. Before he could celebrate for more than an instant, he felt the bird’s primal urgency to survive kick in suddenly, and he tightened his grip on the bird’s neck feathers. The bird jerked its legs together and dove downward to gain speed, and Crush’s neck snapped back with the effort. They were plummeting headlong toward the ground, and it took every ounce of strength that Crush had to hang onto the giant bird. Through the torrent of wind that rushed past his face, Crush saw two giants on the ground from a distance: one female with long blond hair that he recognized as Beni and one male warrior whose identity was a mystery to him. They had knelt down in front of the mine entrance, and through his squinting eyes, Crush could see that they were funneling the escaped prisoners quickly into the mountainside. He then ventured a glance back to discover the dripping saliva and oversized uvula in the open mouth of the dragon as its head darted to swallow the bird and himself along with it. With his feet braced securely, Crush bounded off of the bird’s back perpendicular to the flight path in the air, stepped over the dragon’s wet nose, and skidded across its scaly back. With his back now turned away, he missed seeing the serpent gulp down the bird, but he did get to see the poof of feathers that trailed in the sky behind. Fortunately for Crush, the dragon had its mouth wide open and its eyes shut completely when it swallowed the bird, and the great beast failed to notice the cat man’s escape with the tooth in the process.