jw-johnson.com

Chapter Two
“Stay away from his head.” I told her as we neared the raptarian in his stall.
“God he is beautiful.”
Standing nearly ten feet tall with powerful hind legs and thick body, he was a strange brew dreamed up by some mad creator. Part bird, part reptile, his green scales flickered to gold as he moved over to me to be petted. Pulling a treat out of my pouch I fed a piece of meat into his sharp beak, crooning softly to him as I stroked the short, bristly, feather like scales along his neck. The small hands on his wings softly touched my arm and shoulder as he peered at my new companion out of one of his large golden eyes. A cruel joke by his creator, his small wings were useless for flight and his small, bat like hands, only good for holding his prey while he ate it.
“His name is Parafague.”
“He’s magnificent. I’ve never seen one this close before. Is it safe for me to get near him?”
“You should be safe as long as I am here, but it doesn’t hurt to be careful. They are bred for war you know. I’ve raised him since he was a baby and he is my best friend.” Parafague bent his head and sniffed her as she came up by my side.
“Ooh. He is softer than I thought he would be.” she said while petting his neck. “Can he carry both of us?”
“Oh yea. You’d be surprised.” Moving over to the back of his stall I picked up my pack and slung it over his back just in front of his wings while securing it across his chest. Picking up my lance I put it in the scabbard specially designed to ride just beneath his wing, next to my bow and arrows and shield. Tapping him lightly on his knee, he quickly squatted down and let me climb up on his back. Using the pack as a seat, with the great axe strung across my back, I reached down and held out my hand. “You’re going to have to ride in front of me.”

*****

“Which way?”
Looking back at the town and then up at the noonday sun she pointed away from the route to Kyzil over the black sands at a distant shadow on the horizon.
“Over there. Past those mountains”
“Mountains? I didn’t know there was anything over there. I always thought it was just more desert.”
“Trust me. It’s just a long ways away.”
“I hope your right.” Looking back at the oasis I could see the group of Turliks, swords glittering, crowding out of the ally we had just left, and looking in the direction we were going. Raising my hand I gave them a big wave as I kicked Parafague gently into a long gliding trot.
“Thanks for saving me. I can’t believe you killed him in front of all of them and they didn’t do anything about it.”
“I think I just took them by surprise seeing as how it was spur of the moment. It was more bluff than anything. I really hate to fight.” A loud peel of laughter rang out from my guest in front of me.
“You have to be kidding me. A big burly guy like you carrying all this armor and riding a rapterian no less , and you hate to fight?”
I had to smile.” I guess I just hate having to kill. It’s really all I know. Maybe someday I’ll get to put these down and lead a normal life like a merchant or innkeeper.”
She gave a short “humph” in front of me. “If you figure out what normal is, let me know. So what’s your name?”
“Dan’L. And yours?”
“My name is Lelee.”
“I almost think that crowd of Turlicks has grown. That’s weird. I’m not the only faro who has ever killed a Turlick in self defense before. Usually they don’t get up from their beers.”
“I think your right. There must be nine or ten of them by now. He must have a lot of friends. We should get out of here.”
Turning his head towards the distant shadow we started our travel across the vast desert, the oppressive heat and speed making speech difficult.  Parafague ate up the distance with a long smooth stride, his endurance showing little signs of diminishing. For his size, two riders were just a mere inconvenience. Having been well fed and watered in Tunasia and having a couple of days of rest, he didn’t start to slow down until the end of the day. Recognizing the signs I gave him his head when he started paying too much attention to something on his left.
“What is it?” Lelee asked.
“He smells something.”
Passing between two smaller dunes he followed an outcropping of rock until we spotted some plants and trees growing at their base. A small pocket of water laid nestled in the shade.
“Time to get off. This looks like a good place as any to camp.”
“Isn’t it a little too soon to be stopping? They can’t be that far behind us.”
“It gets dark quick out here in the desert, and I don’t want to push Parafague too hard. He needs a chance to rest and hunt for his dinner.  Besides, we don’t even know if they will come after us.”
“They will come,” she said. ”Do you think they will be able to find us back here?”
“Most Turliks I know are pretty good trackers. It’s going to hard to miss a reptarian’s stride that’s about twelve feet in length. What are they riding?”
“Sogaroth’s”
“It figures. They will be hard pressed to catch us riding those. They may be able to wear us down, but there is no way they are going to out run us.”
Sogaroth’s, wide bodied reptiles that stood about as tall as Parafague’s shoulder, born and raised in the desert and used by merchants to haul their caravans. Traveling on four squat, muscular legs, they didn’t cover as much ground as Parafague, but their endurance would wear him out in the end.
After letting him drink I pulled the pack off of Parafague’s back, and let him loose to hunt for his dinner, while I filled our water gourds. Finding enough scrub for a small fire, I set up camp a short ways up the dune away from the waterhole. Darkness had come quickly to the desert like I had predicted and I could see a faint glow of a fire off in the dunes in the direction we had come from.
“Is that who I think it is?” she asked looking at the distant glow.
“I think so. It looks like we put some distance on them. They are going to have a hard time catching us now.”
“Is that why you moved us back here?”
“One of them. We are not the only ones who need water.” Pulling some food out of my pack, I made dinner for me and the girl. Looking at her small bag of belongings, I realized she didn’t have very much.
“Where is the rest of your stuff?”
“This is all I have. I was a slave until just a few days ago.”
“Really? Why? How did you get free?”
“My master died. I don’t know what happened. He was an older Turlik who had always had good health but a few days after we reached Tunisia he became deathly ill and just seemed to wither away. He called the magistrates and set me free just shortly before he passed away. Those Turliks I was with were his new partners.”
“I was wondering how you came to be with them.”
“My master wasn’t anything like them. Slavik, the one you killed, was their leader. He was always mean to me when my master wasn’t around.”
“Not all of them are like that. The Turliks that raised me were always kind. The Aracen of the Husaikian Desert found me alone in the middle of the desert and raised me as their own.”
“Alone? How could you be alone? Don’t you know what happened to your parents? “
“No. I guess I was just too young. The Aracen are pretty superstitious and never would talk about how they found me.”
“Do you even remember your parents?” she asked.
“No. Living with the Aracen is all I remember. They taught me everything I know; how to ride, how to fight, how to survive in the desert. They even taught me how to tame a rapterian.”
“I remember my parents I think. I remember a large room with two tall chairs near a huge fireplace, with rugs and tapestries all over the walls, and a large, well dressed man with a beard, and a beautiful, dark haired woman in a long dress, smiling at me. At least I think they were my parents. I remember I had to go to bed and some lady came and put me to bed, but then some Turliks came and I was taken away for days and days to another city where I was put in with a lot of outworlders at a slave auction and ended up being sold to my old master.”
The light blue of Groendok’s first moon, Vierdra, already joined by the lesser yellow glow of her second moon, Thasra, cast a light turquoise tinge over our campsite and the desert. Lelee, looking in the blue green light like the child she used to be, smiled over at me.
“But that is all that I remember of them.”
“That’s terrible. How old were you?”
“Five or six I think. I don’t really remember.”
“Well– at least you remember them. “ I said poking the fire. “The Aracen raised me but I always knew I didn’t belong there. I guess that’s the reason I left when I had the chance.”
“Maybe someday you will make it home.” she said. The light of the fire and the aquamarine moons glowed exotically off the dark, bare skin of her shoulders, neck, and bosom. Her low cut dress showing the ample swelling of the top of her full breasts.  Her eyes and teeth gleamed as she smiled at me across the fire.
“Now—what kind of payment are we talking about? I asked her.