Battle at the River

The others looked to Fallon who pointed to a tree along the riverbank. It was an adolescent Sprint, the ugly bulbous red head and black pincers emerging from the leaf canopy as it stepped along the riverbank. As Fallon turned toward Erthen, he saw Alpen upended as Drindl threw him off. Bebe and Alithea, both carrying the egg pouches broke away from the river and the Sprint and out into the open meadow.

Fallon grabbed Erthen off the travois and hurried after Bebe and Alithea. To his side, Drindl emerged naked from the water and moved toward the travois. Fallon looked back and saw Drindl take his sword from the travois and the pouch of flechette stones. Fallon turned to the river to see Alpen spluttering as he emerged onto the riverbank. Fallon yelled at him and pointed to Drindl, who had already tied the hunting pouch around his waist.

"Aaaaaeeeeaaahhh!" came the battle cry from Drindl as he ran from the travois to the Sprint. The boy who had frozen in catatonic fear at the sight of a Sprint was now a blood curdling warrior in full musth. Alpen would not get to him in time to stop Drindl's rush toward the creature.

How many inexperienced warriors had Fallon seen cut down by the barbed leg hairs  of a Sprint? Too many. This one was not fully grown. It's waving leg hairs were only two feet long, but still long enough to cut through skin and flesh. A warrior might stumble at the first deep cut, then the scissor-like pincers would come down and behead him. Fallon had seen a severed head fall to the ground, its mouth open in full scream, but silent, the breath still imprisoned in the body now parted from the head.

"Where's my travois?" Alpen asked as he hurried to Fallon's side. Fallon pointed to the travois two hundred yards away. Alpen cursed in frustration. "Where is your sword?"

"That's it," Fallon said. "Drindl has it."

Alpen turned in the direction of his travois. "Drindl is done. We need to protect our eggs and the others. There's nothing we can do."

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Alpen was right. Fallon had a duty to get Erthen as far from the Sprint as possible, but backed away slowly because he couldn't take his eyes off Drindl. The young warrior was screaming at the Sprint. Fallon couldn't make out the words but he could hear the anger in Drindl's voice. Not fear. Not anger. Rage. The purest rage. Then the Sprint returned Drindl's scream with its own and Fallon covered Erthen's ears. An Alsace bird issues a paralyzing kill scream as it attacks. This was like a hundred Alsace birds and Fallon's head hurt from the intensity of the sound.

Alpen paused on his way back to the travois. Alithea and Bebe were already far away but they turned as well to the scream that caused a person's soul to turn to jelly. Fallon expected Drindl to continue his rush, brandishing the sword, rage driven by the musth. Drindl paused outside of the circle of the Sprint legs and pincers, then reared back and threw one of the flechettes. The sharp stone sliced into one of the Sprint's eight eyes. The creature screamed again, but Fallon knew that this would barely disable the creature.

Drindl threw another stone and it cut into the joint of one pincer. It was a throw of remarkable precision and now the creature could not close its pincer. Emboldened by those two strikes, Drindl charged into the circle of the Sprint's reach. Its legs did not move but still the barbed hairs waved like deadly cutting wires.

Drindl screamed his rage at the Sprint and waved the sword. The creature brought its other pincer down to attack Drindl and closed the jaw of its pincer around the sword. Drindl pushed the sword's blade into the joint of the pincer, cutting his hand as he forced it hard into the crevice of the joint. Blood splattered from the hand but Drindl's musth and battle rage had numbed him to pain.

He reached into his hunting pouch, removed a flechette and threw it at the creature's eye. Another scream and the Sprint brought its pincer to its head to protect itself. With that gesture, the creature stabbed the blade into its head and again erupted into a scream that caused Fallon so much pain that his head seemed to split apart. Then the creature backed up to the tree where it became entangled in the fork of two branches.

Exhausted by the effort and his rage, Drindl sank to his knees. Alpen rushed past Fallon and toward Drindl. The trapped Sprint frantically waved its legs but Drindl was out of reach. Alpen lifted up the bantam warrior, grabbed Fallon's sword and together they stumbled through the tall grass back to Fallon's travois.