THE REALM

Chapter Eight

  I blinked, only to see Kuri standing between me and the sun. How had he covered so much ground so quickly?

  He moved then and I blinked against the harsh glare of the sun. Kuri sat down beside me in the sand. His hand fell on my knee as he said, "It is good to have someone to teach, who is willing to listen."

  I looked at him as my mind puzzled away at something that remained just out of reach. Slowly I said, "It's good to have a teacher, who knows how to make me listen."

  Kuri smiled and slapped my shoulder before getting up and then pulling me to my feet, "Come along then. We're too exposed out here in the open. We'd easily fall prey to a pack of Evanik hounds tonight."

  It was a sobering thought and it gave energy to my tired body to once again move forward briskly. I keenly felt the tiredness of my earlier fast paced travel, but I also felt richer for it. I didn't understand a lot of things, but I was learning.

  As weary as I felt, Kuri seemed to have gained in energy and before long I felt his hand slip around my shoulders as he helped aid me along, even as the sun began to dip beneath the western horizon. Where had the day gone?

  It had been morning, but soon it would be night. Had I run for that many hours today?

  I can't remember making camp after darkness fell. I remember drinking, then eating, and then falling asleep.

*****

  My eyes opened only to see that it was still night, but there was enough light given off by the moon to see. We were camped on the flatness of the plain!

  The reality of that fact had me coming to full awareness in short order. I looked around and in the faint moonlight I saw Kuri standing there. Then I heard the howl, which was soon followed by many more.

  My heart had frozen at the first howl and it all but shattered at the sound of the voices of many. They had found us and we were without ability to take cover from them out here on the plain.

  "Slip beneath the sand as you did before, Benaiah, and leave this to me," Kuri said softly.

  "I can help."

  His gaze turned to me and somehow I felt pressed back into the sand by the authority that he seemed to manifest at times, but even though his gaze was overwhelming his words remained calm, "I have not yet taught you how to fight Benaiah. To let you attempt to help me now, in your inexperience, would be to put your life at peril. Do as I say and trust in my protection until you are able to handle more."

  I said nothing more and began to start scooping sand overtop my legs and then my torso. The frenzy of crazed yips had gathered in force out on the plain. Submerged under the sand I waited to see Kuri torn to pieces by the mob of glaring eyes that I could now see all around us.

  There was no sense to these dogs. They were always starving and yet killing many. Why did they run in packs of 40 or more, when they ruled the night uncontested?

  Their eyes glowed blue and their howls made me long for the sound of a wolf's howl instead.

  "Remember to stay down, Benaiah, and do not speak." Kuri said. He stood alone in the dark as the snarling horde drew closer and closer.

  What was holding them back? Why did they hold back from a man alone?

  I heard the grate of steel leaving its sheath and my eyes opened to see Kuri pulling his sword free to hold it up before him. The moonlight glinted off the blade lending a sheen to the night as blue-eyed glares closed in for the kill.

  Kuri did something then that I would never have expected. He began to sing. At first it was only a deep hum and then it rose into a wordless song. It's pitched resonance seemed to impact the sand around me, as if the sand wanted to join in with the rhythm of the song.

  The singing did not dissuade the horde, who seemed to become incensed by the lack of fear of the opponent that they had singled out in the night. Evanik dogs leaped forward with huge canines bared for Kuri, who suddenly wasn't where he had just been.

  His feet seemed to slide along the sand in a whisper of sound, as the sword flashed left and right seemingly everywhere at once. Unholy howls rent the night, for it was said that every one of the horde had a demon in it.

  Demon power or not, I watched from beneath the sand as a man unlike any warrior I'd ever seen stood his own against a howling storm of viciousness. Although I heard the sound of the dogs, what I heard most of all throughout the fight was the deep resonance of Kuri's voice continuing in soul stirring song that seemed to bring life into the dark of the night.

  As I watched the fight I noticed that there was a rhythm even to it. Even as I had run today faster than ever before, I now watched a sight unlike any I had ever encountered. Evanik dogs fell and shrieks rang out and yet the bloody flashes of the sword by moonlight never stopped as they carved up every attacker that came near.

  There could be no warrior such as Kuri in all the seven Kingdomer Nations or beyond for that matter.

  There were too many slain bodies to count laying upon the ground as dark shadows in the night. I heard the last of the pack give up the fight and run away across the desert.

  Kuri stood there alone in the dark in the stillness that followed. Never had I heard of a pack of Evanik dogs giving up a fight.
There was something about Kuri that had gotten to them where other men had failed.

  Kuri turned and walked to where I lay beneath the sand. I watched by moonlight as blood continued to drip off the blade hanging at his side.

  He squatted down beside me, but his eyes remained focused on the flat expanse of moonlit desert that stretched out all around us. His face showed little of the exertion of battle and I marveled all over again.

  "Tell me, Benaiah, do you fear me now?"