Giliad

Giliad was many things, but he wasn’t a coward. Two powerful tri-horned rhinos didn’t worry him. Two men hiding in the bush did. Zuma and the bandit couldn’t outrun these massive beasts and Giliad realized he couldn’t carry them further. He was reckless and behaved foolish at times but at the back of his mind he replayed Sul’s warnings, ‘forest wants to kill you with everything it has. Respect it or die. We aren’t immune like Royalbloods, so watch out for…’

It’d been the time when his friend had believed him a commoner. Sul had instructed Giliad how many little things could go awry and turn deadly in the forest. This situation could go easily from a nuisance to a disaster. Weren’t the bandit’s hands already infected by something? Giliad had given his companions only a brief look. He needed to eye the beasts before him. Their charge was swift and the sonic booms difficult to defend against.

Neither of them moved for a long moment. He’d hoped to draw Urusa away from Zuma and the bandit, but the arrival of another rhino and Yamil complicated things. They won’t leave us alone. I must do it the hard way.

Giliad charged the rhinos, head on. The beasts lowered their horns, readying them for sonic booms. Ten feet from the rhinos, he used a broken trunk to give him footing and turned sharply, splintering the trunk in the process. The rhinos didn’t fall for the easy maneuver and tracked him, as he circled them. Their bulks and close proximity to each other made them stumble a little, giving Giliad an opening. He jumped more than ten feet into the air and landed between them.

I’m sorry about this.

He clenched his fists to a breaking point and then drove them down before the rhinos could react, smashing them into their thick heads. Giliad could break in two a foot thick tree with his fist alone.

The rhinos didn’t seem to notice his attack. So I wasn’t really pretending to lose to her. I was never in a position to beat Ursa. This left a bad taste in his mouth, this knowledge of his impotency.

The opening offered by the animals closed, they turned their heads his way, horns toward him. He felt something indescribable a split-second before two sonic booms erupted from the horns. He wasn’t a coward but he certainly was an idiot. His hands shot forward grabbing the horns the exact moment they went off.

Such coordination…

The brutal force hit his insides and he grunted in pain. His vision blackened, then he flew, shoved by the larger rhino. Giliad barely registered the impact against the ground.

One would think that this point constituted the end of the challenge. He lost after all. It was not the case for him. Long after Tayyi had died, in the moment of struggle and a point of his greatest despair, Giliad promised himself to never turn away from the fight.

To fight.

Always, to fight. ‘…how’s that you always run then, boy? From this empire, from the past…’ The words of a drunkard from Kauri City, immediately countered his resolve.

“Giliad!” Zuma’s voice pierced the thick mud in Giliad’s skill. “Giliad!”

These sonic booms weren’t healthy, Giliad thought as he rose, eyes locked on the larger rhino.

“Zuma, get moving. Run south.”

“South? Why? That’s not the right way!” Giliad paused for a moment. He liked the innkeeper but believed him a coward. Hearing Zuma now, reminded Giliad about Tzin and his mission to save her. Every second wasted here, put her life in greater danger.

“Run.”

“The bandit’s unconscious.”

The monkeys returned then. They sneered and laughed grotesquely. Good. He charged the rhinos again, then stopped and climbed a tree. The monkeys squeaked shocked by this turn of events. Not giving them an inch of space to think, Giliad got to them, grabbed two monkeys, and threw them against the rhinos.

The stunned monkeys just watched him as he prowled through their herd. Until he slipped on the wet branch of a slick tree. Though Giliad managed to land successfully Urusa was already at his side, her horns ready for the sonic boom. He punched it first and felt his bones rattle. Whatever the horns were made of, it wasn’t ordinary stuff. Urusa's eyes became distant. Was she knocked out? She didn’t move…

The larger rhino huffed, pushing clouds of steam out of his nostrils. Something in the way he stepped made Giliad’s blood cold. The beast had stubby legs and yet when it charged Giliad, its speed made Giliad’s eyes go wide. The Royalblood didn’t get a chance to evade and when the sonic boom went off he just accepted it. None of the earlier attacks had this … this intent. The moment the sonic boom touched him, he felt immense anger. Such force was unleashed that many farther trees were flattened and for a couple of seconds rain stopped. This saved Giliad from major embarrassment as he’d doubtlessly smash into one of the trees. Giliad somersaulted and landed on the wobbly legs. This attack inflicted some damage. His visions either blackened or doubled, bones rattled and muscles lost its fast responsiveness.

The rhino huffed again. You’re angry now. What is Urusa to you, huh? A daughter or a girlfriend?

“It’s over, beast,” Giliad called knowing that the rhino couldn’t understand him. “I won her challenge. Now, you should stay with her, if you care.”

Giliad half-turned and found Zuma pulling the bandit by feet. They were barely twenty paces from the previous blast’s reach. Too close.

“I told you to run.”

“I’m kind of running.”

“What’s with the bandit?”

“Don’t we need him?”

In truth, they didn’t. Finding a dirt road to Soto shouldn’t be a problem, right? They could recruit a guide or a hunter to show them how to get there. And yet, neither Giliad nor Zuma felt like leaving him to die. His companion killed Izin and you still risk your life to save him. Maybe I was wrong about you, Zuma. There is a side of you, hidden from sight. A side worth saving.

“We must go past the dirt road in the south.”

“Okay. Wait. That’s the dirt road Tucan-Taeka! Past it…”

“There is a huge cliff. The rhino won’t go there.”

“But—”

“No buts, Zuma. It’s this or to die to its relentless sonic booms.” Giliad swept them as he moved. His body was slower and weaker after the hit, but he still could carry two men. He really had no choice. Leaving them behind equaled handing Zuma back to Yamil and the old hag. Giliad felt that Yamil had worked for the Imperial Army in the past and possessed experience in dealing with the Royalbloods.

*

His black hair plastered to his face as he jumped out on the well-maintained dirt road leading to the regional capital Tucan. It was ten paces wide. He didn’t stop hearing the cracks and snaps behind. The rhino wished to wear him down and only then he’d deliver the final blow. That’d been Urusa’s way when they’d played in the skirts of Cape Town.

Giliad’s plan had only one shortcoming. They were already sixty miles away from Cape Town. His muscles burned and vision swam wildly. He realized this was the farthest to the south he’d ever been. The jungle beyond the cliff was uncharted until it met the coast a hundred or so miles from here. Hunters called it many dire names. Giliad was in no shape to defend them from any danger they might encounter down there.

Suddenly, the bushes and trees vanished and the world was filled with infinite grayness, it swallowed everything in sight. Trees below… What?

The cliff appeared out of nowhere. After all, Giliad didn’t know how far it was from the dirt road. It turned out it wasn’t even a mile. But it looked like a mile to the trees down there. Zuma screamed and the bandit chose this moment to regain consciousness. He lost it the next second.

I beat you, rhino. These were Giliad’s last thoughts before they hit the side of the cliff and began wildly roll down covered in mud and such.

Yamil

His arm throbbed, broken. He didn’t care. Alchemical medicine would mend it in a couple of days. He rose, feeling how unresponsive his body was. Most of his men were scattered, some groaned in pain, others laid silently, presumably dead. Curiously one rhino stood motionless in the middle of the destroyed area, the other was gone. Tri-horned rhinos possessed serious fighting capabilities. The Imperial Army had hunted them mercilessly before the old emperor died. But only after the emperor’s death the imperial alchemists were allowed to work on the weapons based on these destructive horns. Or so the story goes. Commoners in the army received only redacted information, passed down by their royal superiors. Anything beyond that had come from drunken Royalblood officers in form of rumors.

Yamil checked the rest of his body. It seemed bruised but fine except for the broken arm. He had to get the innkeeper back. Without the doctor and the innkeeper, their source of income would disappear.

“What kind of consequence we cause if suddenly ten years worth of the steady supply vanished overnight?” he asked aloud, his voice meaningless in the face of roaring rain. Millions of people were addicted to Yellow Sand. The withdrawal effect would cause turmoil in the Red Cities and other major places. He laughed to himself, picturing a revolt ensuing before his eyes. “Ah, doctor, you sneaky bastard. You left us nothing.”

“Headguard!” A handful of guards came from Cape Town. Despite the effort, they were a useless lot. “What, in the name of the forest, happened here, boss?”

They didn’t know about Giliad. Too risky to let this information circulate among them. One beer too many and this would spread like a disease after a battle. The last thing they needed was the attention of the Imperials.

He ignored curses and loud moans. He’d seen much and yet it made him shiver to see flattened trees and patches of raw black ground torn from beneath the forest bedding.

“Get everyone back to Cape Town,” he ordered. Pain from his arm began overpowering him. He needed to return to the village. Messenger birds needed to be sent. Yamil hated to admit it, but this Royalblood was too much for him. And I must know why the moonflower extract didn’t work on that boy.