Shasuryu’s rest was filled with tossing and turning, the warmth of the night air over his scales and the rough feel of the bark that his tail clung to, none of that was a problem. But what troubled him most in the tumult of his dreams were nightmares. Nightmares of the burning hunger and the war that went with it. Even now, confronted by the real danger of the frogmen tribes that dominated most of the northern area of the lake, the past remained in the ever present moments of his mind at rest.

Fire licking at the sky, the broken walls of a village of lizardmen, crackle, crackle, crackle, the noise the fires made, and there was always fire in war, even beside the lake. He awoke with his eyes flying open, his chest pounding with the echoed scream of a lizardman on fire beside a child with its head bashed in and blood seeping out to turn already moist ground into dark, ugly mud. When awareness returned to the tribal chief, he still didn’t fully leave the nightmare behind. ‘How many of us died… we can’t ever let that happen again… how strong would we be against the frogmen if we had all those lost lives back?’ It was the sort of question you asked, knowing you’d never get an answer.

Shasuryu then relaxed the hold of his tail on the tree and scrambled down a few limbs distance before he released the hold of his claws on the bark and pushed off in a hop to land at the base again.

The grass barely made a sound, a mere ‘whish’ noise when he hit the soft ground in which it grew, he then went from one tree to the next and knocked his fist against it to wake his sleeping warriors.

The sun wasn’t yet up, and if what he knew of the fragment held true… ‘We can catch them off their guard.’ It was a desperate hope, but it wasn’t an improbable one.

Each in turn his fellow lizardmen descended from their places in the trees and then raced after their chief on short, swift moving legs. They skittered forward through shadow and darkness, not content with the darkness before the dawn, they hid amidst the brushes, behind trees, and avoided any indication of regular activity by any intelligent being, even if that sign was so much as a single lone camp or a cut log.

Shasuryu’s forethought about where to sleep and how, paid off quickly. Within another hour’s travel they were on the outskirts of Crusch Lulu’s village.

What was left of it.

The walls were toppled, some in whole, some in part or broken into splinters. The huts he could see through the gaps were fallen heaps with little more than their raised foundations remaining. In the center of what ‘had’ been the village, a massive frogwoman stood with her back to Shasuryu and his warriors.

Arrayed in a curved pattern at her front and side were the frogman warriors she was speaking to, and part of the lizardman chief knew he should have been concerned with what she was saying. But something else drew his focus.

There were two battered and bloody lizardmen bound to stakes nearby, their arms were broken, and they were obviously in pain. They sat barely stirring with their legs out on the dirt while a guard stood by holding a long wicked looking spear with a single jagged toothed edge.

Others bore spears with a similar look to them, but the number of ‘teeth’ secured to the sharp edge varied, with the largest number being held in the towering body of the frogman chief. ‘Teeth on their spears might denote rank.’ Shasuryu considered the possibility and filed it away for later.

He raised his hand and moved it in a half moon shape. ‘Avoid being picked up by the wind…’

They were skilled hunters, they would understand, he reassured himself, and they began to move, only the smallest rustles giving away their presence as they searched the perimeter of the fallen village for their prey.

Shasuryu found it right enough, a frogman standing on his two long, powerful legs with one wart covered green slimy webbed hand holding the center of a spear. The other folded behind his back, his big round throat bulge expanding and contracting with every breath.

‘How can there be so many? These have got to be the ugliest creatures in the world!’ Shasuryu thought. The frogman was clearly unaware of their presence as they drew closer, closer, and closer.

Inch by inch within the dense foliage they made to position themselves. Shasuryu then, crouching in position, pointed to each one of his warriors in turn and then tapped a part of his own body. ‘You hit there, you hit that, you hit…’ So he commanded without a word, and they nodded in common obedience to the guidance of their chief.

Then they were popping up to their feet as one, a single rustling of the bushes and their clubs were brought back, then hurled forward end over end.

The frogman warrior had only a moment or two of blank incomprehension. One moment he was staring into the shadows, the next at the shapes of lizardmen who sprang up from the ground like they’d been planted there.

His big wide mouth opened to call out for help, then the pain hit. A blow to each of his knees, a blow to each of his elbows, then he felt a pain in his temple, and then nothing, finally he knew only darkness.

“Take him!” Shasuryu whispered to his warriors and they scrambled to obey, rushing over the space to snatch the unconscious figure and retrieve their weapons.

“Two take him back… the rest, we leave a false trail, they will pursue their own. Carry it over your shoulders…” Shasuryu gave the orders before they’d even finished binding the broken limbs and binding the big mouth of the frogman guard. “Get back safe, I will meet you at our village when I’ve laid a false trail.”

“Chief… you have…” Shasuryu shook his head, “Other than my brother, I’m the best at this, the rest will come with me to lay the trail, you two,” he pointed to the lizardmen binding the captive, “take him back now. No more time remains, get that one back and find out what he knows, and pray to our ancestors that it isn’t too late!” He hissed so harshly that his tongue slipped out and wiggled for an instant.

The rest of his little band snapped their jaws shut, and then they broke apart, going in two different directions. Shasuryu let his eyes linger for a moment on the withdrawing pair, they held the frogman under arms and legs, and they weren’t very cautious about it. He winced, ‘I don’t envy that one when he wakes up.’

They vanished into the foliage and then he pointed to the other four, “Now, we lay a false trail, break twigs, but not many, press one foot heavier into the softer places on the ground, but rarely. They will chase us… and possibly, just possibly, their confusion will keep them off the other villages for awhile.”

It was a bold hope, perhaps a mad hope, but it was the only one Shasuryu had at the moment. ‘So the albino female wasn’t lying, how many were there? A dozen of our villages worth? Two? And those were all warriors… we may need help… help and time. Lots of both, even.’ The chief of the Green Claw tribe swallowed hard, and the four of them vanished into the shadows where they would become bait for Heketi and her frogmen.