The High Counselor remained out of sight.
Addie began to shake as she watched the fight from her sitting position. The Timpho grass juice had temporarily revived her, but weakness began to overcome her tired body. She was cold, and she convulsively clutched Ihr to her belly like a heating pad.
Zoark delivered another hard blow to Net’ok’s face.
Chapter 41
Ihr struggled in Addie’s hold. Struggled in earnest. She forced her hands to relax, and the small animal flew from her grasp making a short low sound. Frowning, Addie raised her face to the sky where Ihr joined her sister Ehr, and where both of them began a fast circling around and around. Other Yuux were already flying in low, urgent circles.
Addie knew the pattern. She had seen it before.
Terror hit her hard.
“Wrennlins,” she said out loud in a hoarse reedy voice - the best she could manage.
No one paid her any heed.
“Wrennlins!” she said louder and rolled to her knees to stand up. Pushing out a breath that stuck in her lungs from fear and weakness, she screamed, “Wrennlins!”
Ehr’s unmistakable hoarse screech punctuated her alarm.
People turned, blinked as if coming out of a trance, slow to catch on.
But Zoark had heard her, and he was already in motion, lunging for the weapons he and Net’ok had discarded at the end of the arena.
“At arms! Prepare to deflect!” he yelled as he dove for his axe.
“Abandoning the challenge!” Chemmusaayl appeared out of nowhere in a cloud of undulating yellow robes. “Forfeit!”
His answer was a geyser of rocky dirt that erupted in the middle of the circle where the fight had been taking place only moments before. Chemmusaayl fell to the side and scrambled like a crab to hide behind a boulder.
Now people screamed and shouted as they snapped into action, women grabbing children and running, dodging high mounds of dirt that kept appearing, leaping over yawning holes that spewed out rocks and terrifying, twisting monsters. Men rushed to arm themselves and began a strategic defense, some of it rehearsed and but most still improvised.
A hole opened near Addie, wide as a crater, and a massive gray worm began to emerge. Its eyeless, noseless head with a wide mouth filled with teeth was jerking right and left, right and left, sensing, seeking. Hungry.
Addie crawled opposite of where Chemmusaayl had disappeared, mindless from fear. She knew she wouldn't be able to sit it out under the skins this time around. She had to get the hell out of here.
She stood up, shaking badly from fear and so damn weak. Taking a sweeping glance of the settlement, she saw mayhem. Wrennlins were emerging from under every rock and bush, dozens of them, and they were massive.
Zoark and Net’ok, their fight forgotten, stood shoulder to shoulder, welding their axes in synchronized moves to hack at a beast that completely emerged and was pecking at them from both its ugly ends. Hunlath and Vuskas moved in from behind to double the effort. Beyond this line of defense, Mekni and Oma ran, their arms full of Mekni’s three children.
Sand rained down, spewed out of the ground by wriggling beasts. Rocks flew from all directions.
Melmie appeared from behind a curtain of dust. “Run, Addie, go!”
Teepees toppled in the haze of kicked-up dirt with the sounds of tearing skins, breaking poles, and snarling Wrennlins.
Addie coughed. “Where’s Oh’na?”
“I don’t know! Your teepee is gone. Run!”
Melmie flew past, narrowly avoiding a seeking muzzle.
Addie shrunk back, looking frantically for Zoark, but the men weren’t where she’d seen them seconds ago; only the dead Wrennlin’s body remained, and another Wrennlin was already feasting on it, tearing off chunks of flesh with its two mouths.
Someone screamed in agony behind her, but Addie refused to look. She forced herself to move, to jog across a narrow strip of the ground that was still intact. Something rose to her right, and she ducked, but it was only a post. With Qalae still tied to it.
“God, Qalae.”
