Fire Starter

I sat strait up .. drenched in sweat. Wiping at my face even as I felt the raw searing pain in my chest from the open wound and without looking I knew it was bleeding again. In a panic .. still a vestige of the dream .... I searched around me. The fire had become coals and the light it gave was low and red. A red that was mirrored back from the black forest of tem around us. I saw the sleeping bundle of Beo .. but the two Ubar's guard beds were empty. I startled up throwing the leather ground sheet aside just as I heard the scream. It sounded like a larl .. but the way it turned my blood to ice told me it was a man. A human ... a human so locked in the fingers of terror and pain that he no longer sounded human .. but something much more primitive. Something back much older than human ... an echo left from a place that had no rational thought or voice yet. A place where the darkness ruled because it was the highest life form.

Beo stirred and drew himself from his bed and came to crouch next to me .. I knew the question in his eyes was there though I could not see it distinctly. But what could I tell him? Something I myself had yet to understand? Beo had his bow and quiver and I grabbed the sheath of quiva and threw it over my shoulder. I could not use the lance to its best ability within the trees. We nodded to each other as we started out .. the only direction to go was the direction I had heard the scream. We split up .. though not too far ... and proceeded through the forest.

What we found would have caused any lesser man to retch the contents of his stomach out upon the leaves that were all ready wet and stained with splattered blood and tissue. What could do this to a man? I had only seen a Kur with this kind of chaotic destruction. But a Kur? Here? Was that even possible? We did not even have a chance to consider much before a wild insane scream rent through the night and there running through the trees we could see a torch .. the flickering of burning wood was weaving and starting small fires in the lower branches of the trees that it passed under. Only as it drew closer could we see the slave .. now free of her bindings ... running like a mad woman with the torch in one hand and a quiva in the other hand. Her eyes found focus on me and she made strait for me. Before I could stop him Beo drew back and I heard the twang as the arrow was let loose and the solid thunk it made as it split the slave's forehead and sunk deep within her skull. She was hit hard enough she was thrown backwards off her feet and the torch flew and spun setting the thick dry forest floor ablaze. Like a great inhale the trees sucked up the fire and it began to spread faster than we could move. Both of us spun on our heels and ran like ... well like our tails were on fire. We hit the camp even as the flames sprang up around us .. we were surrounded and the great roar of it deafened and made us scream at each other to be heard. Our kaiila were lost .. or dead ... and there seemed no way out of the fire .. we backed up until our shoulder blades almost touched and we faced outward .. as if the fire was an enemy we could conquer. Our skin glistened with sweat but the heat soaked it up before it could cool us. Both of us thought this was it .. without even saying it to each other. And we prepared ourselves for death.