Tak

Childhood's End - Part 4

     As the day wore on they saw smoke from other burning homesteads rising into the deceptively calm, blue sky, and once they heard the sound of fighting coming from far away, somehow made more terrible by the fact that it was just barely audible in the still air. They heard snarls of rage and wild, bestial laughter. The clash of steel on steel and the shrill screams of children. Tak's father, after pausing to guess the direction from which it was coming, turned the wagon in the opposite direction and whipped the horses into a gallop.

     None of them said a word, but they carefully avoided each other's eyes as if afraid of seeing their own shame and guilt mirrored there. There was nothing they could do to help the stricken homesteaders and they all knew it, but it wasn't easy to just leave them to their fate. Mercifully, the thundering hooves of the horses drowned out the terrible sounds, and when Tak's father slowed them to a walk again they were too far away to hear it. By unspoken agreement, none of them spoke of the incident, although it was a long time before any of them could find the spirit to speak of anything at all.

     The yellow sun set and they spent another sleepless night in the wagon. The next day, though, the land began to change, the level ground beginning to rise and fall in wide, shallow ridges and valleys. Tak's father kept them in the valleys as long as he could, although it took them a little out of their way, and when he had to cross a ridge he whipped the horses into a gallop, cursing the need to expose themselves to every eye within a dozen miles.

     As they crested one ridge, the wheels bouncing with dangerous force on the uneven ground, Tak looked back the way they'd come and saw a group of tiny black specks on a hilltop far behind them. He mentioned this to his father, who cursed and took the steep way down into the next valley, almost overturning the wagon in the process. Then he leapt out and ran back up the ridge, dropping to his belly as he neared the top. He wriggled the rest of the way up, then spent some time watching what Tak had seen.

     "Shologs?" asked his wife when he returned.

     He nodded. "Following our trail. The forest's our only hope now. We may be able to lose them there."

     "Can we make it in time?"

     "We'll have to, but we can't afford the luxury of carrying all our worldly possessions with us any longer. From here on we leave behind all unnecessary weight."

     He unhitched the horses, his fingers flying across the buckles and straps. "Hurry up!" he cried, beckoning for his family to jump down, then helping his wife to climb up onto the horse's back. Laira sat behind her, and Tak sat behind his father on the other horse. Riding bareback and without reins was tricky and dangerous, and his father yelled at him to hold on tight as he kicked his horse into a gallop, looking over his shoulder to make sure his wife and daughter were keeping up.

     Without the wagon they were able to make good speed, and Tak's father kicked them to a full gallop, gambling that they would reach a place of safety before the horses collapsed from exhaustion. At around midday the land began to drop away as they left the high plateau on which the children had lived their whole lives. The land became rugged and uneven, forcing them to slow again or risk a horse going lame, an occurrence that would almost certainly mean the end of all their lives.

     They began to see the occasional stunted, windswept tree, which cheered them enormously, but just when they began to think they'd almost made it they topped a rise to see a wild, raging river ahead of them, the water roaring as it was broken into white foam by jumbles of jagged boulders. "We've come too far north," cried Tak's father grimly, turning his horse to follow the bank. "We've got to follow its curve around to the south. Drass! We didn't need this!"