This is a sneak peek preview chapter from Silversion (Wood Cow Chronicles, #3). Volume Three in the Wood Cow Chronicles fantasy series, Silversion in now in final edit, and will be released in January 2015.
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At the conclusion of The Overending (Wood Cow Chronicles, #2), Helga and her comrades unleash dragons on Tilk Duraow’s unsuspecting forces, causing carnage and chaos that enables them to conquer the fortress. In the aftermath of the dragon rampage, with the fortress fully under rebel control, Helga and company celebrate their victory, assuming that no further resistance or imminent threats exist…
As ThunderUp looked down on the celebratory feasting from his perch high atop Tilk Duraow, his mind was firmly fixed on other images…
He saw rows of low, squalid log and mud cabins, snails covering everything in layers four and five deep. The air red with the glow of a massive furnace, blazing as he shoveled snails into the fire as fast as he could. So prolific were the snails that, left to grow by themselves, everything would slowly disappear underneath ever-increasing layers of snails.
Beasts for generations before him had shoveled snails just as he had, and just as his father had, and his father before him. Most ended up maddened with the crustiforia sickness that inevitably ate away the minds of snail shovelers. Everyone knew that every beast who shoveled snails eventually began sneezing bits of rock-hard snot. As time went on, the sneezing became more frantic and the beast became less and less able to function. First speech was lost, then muscle control, and finally basic mental functions. Crustiforia gradually turned a beast’s brain into sand. No one knew what caused crustiforia, but everyone knew that snail shovelers got it. Yet the snail must be shoveled. This he knew. It was the sustenance of the world. No snail shoveling, no slaving. No slaving, no work…
“Who do those beasts below think they are,” he scowled, his thoughts coming back to the sight below him. The end of Tilk Duraow would be the end of everything he held dear.
Despite a hard life coming up in a family of snail shovelers, ThunderUp, being unusually large for a Badger, had gotten a lucky break. With a little help from a friend of Lickspittle, the Wrack Lord’s Standing-Lash, he had landed a job as a Shark Lugger at Tilk Duraow. He now carried huge sides of shark to and from the Midge Reserves. It was hard work and took enormous muscles to do the job. And ThunderUp was enormous—at least a head taller than any other beast he’d ever met, solid muscle all the way. By far, he was the biggest, strongest Shark Lugger ever seen at Tilk Duraow. It was all in a day’s work for him to carry as much as five other beasts.
“Load up Thunder! Load up Thunder!” Hearing that all day every day, it just got to be easier to say, “ThunderUp”—and so he got his name.
Tilk Duraow had provided him the best life he’d ever known and now these stupid beasts wanted it to end. Sitting on the roof of Tilk Duraow, watching the happy beasts below, he judged they must be either ignorant or consciously trying to kill his way of doing things. “Either way. Either way,” he fumed. “Snugs and Tilk Duraow—keep it that way or things get crazy. Touch either of them, and you’re a crazy beast.”
The snails that covered everything in Wrack, as ThunderUp’s home area was called, were not just any snails. They were extremely valuable—a veritable golden goose. When heated to high temperature in a furnace, the snail shells shattered into thousands of identical razor-sharp flakes. The flakes worked perfectly as tips for the small throwing lances—known in Wrack as snugs—favored by the Wrackshee folk.[1] And, as luck would have it, the liquid that boiled off of Wrack snails as they heated in a furnace was a highly effective poison. A drop of the poison brought death within hours—the unfortunate beast going mad with thirst, eyes bugging, bleeding the color of grass. A drop on the tip of a snug made an excellent instrument of death.
In the beginning, the Wrackshees used snugs only for hunting the Giant Fire Toads and Slumber Newts that were staples of their diet. But as work on Maev Astuté, the great castle of the High One, expanded, they learned it was convenient to prey on beasts who did not want to die, bleeding the color of grass. And it was also pleasant for the High One that the Wrackshees learned to be excellent slavers. Thus it was that a “tidy little trade” developed to the benefit of the High One, the Wrackshees, and a myriad middle-beasts in between.
Little of this history was in ThunderUp’s mind as he watched the festivities below with hate-filled eyes. One thing focused his thoughts, “Snugs and Tilk Duraow—keep it that way or things get crazy.” Snugs and Tilk Duraow were Belonga to the Wrackshee—the essence of daily life, no way to have one without the other. That was it. End of story. Mess with Belonga and you were messing with the basic way of life in Wrack. Mess with Belonga and you were messing with tradition and culture. Mess with Belonga and you were messing with ThunderUp way down under his skin. The cap he always wore said it all: Belonga. Nuf Said.
Considering what could be done to break up the party below, ThunderUp decided it was best to bide his time awhile. His desperate escape from the dragons ravaging the kitchens below had left him badly burned. He had just finished delivering the last sides of frozen shark for the day to the kitchens, when the dragons rushed in, slashing and snapping. In moments, kitchen workers were being cut in half with single snaps of the dragons’ jaws. Lifting a massive soup pot directly out of the hearth, ThunderUp heaved the contents squarely in the face of a charging dragon. The boiling liquid had the desired effect, sending the dragon backward, wailing in pain.
Having staved off the most immediate danger, there was no time to lose if ThunderUp hoped to save himself. It was clearly too late for any other beasts in the kitchen. Looking frantically about, he saw the only certain escape route—up the chimney. Fortunately, the fire had burned low in the hearth, where the soup pot, moments ago, had been simmering over dying embers.
Wrapping towels around his burned paws and arms, and quickly stepping into the embers with this boots, he reached up inside the chimney. Grabbing some outcropping stones, he pulled himself up. Bracing his back against one side of the chimney and pushing upward with his legs, he was able to inch his way up while sparing his burned paws. Wheezing and coughing in the smoky air, the huge Badger gradually worked his way to safety.
By the time he reached the top of the chimney he was dizzy and nearly passing out from the noxious air. The moment his head rose above the chimney, gasping for breath, he sucked in huge lungfuls of air. For several minutes, he just hung there, catching his breath, collecting his wits.
What on earth had happened? How had dragons suddenly been unleashed in the kitchen? Treachery. Betrayal. Corruption and traitors had somehow wormed their way inside Tilk Duraow. But who? How? Why had there been no alarm? Treachery. Betrayal. Traitors. It must be so, but it seemed impossible to imagine.
After pulling himself together, ThunderUp pulled himself out of the chimney and, with intense pain and distress to his burned limbs, climbed down the outside of the chimney. Finding a safely concealed perch on the roof, he settled down to wait and observe what would happen below. Before taking any action, he needed to understand what was happening. But he knew also that despite the horrible burns he had sustained, he must take action. If the Belonga was at stake, as it seemed to be, no pain was too great to stop him from doing what he could.
[1] See Helga: Out of Hedgelands, Wood Cow Chronicles, Volume One, for more on this.
Text Copyright © 2014 Rick Johnson
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