The Ten Clans Chronicles

Chapter 7: Rescue

Black flints glinted everywhere. These flints peered through the shrubs, trees, and grasses, sparking as if they would set them afire any second. Kero and Ritters snarled, baring their fangs and brandishing their curved daggers defensively against the cold black gazes surrounding them.

"I tol' yer this was a bad idea mate," Ritters hissed as the giant lizards leapt out at them from every side, belaying the unfortunate rats.

Kero gulped as one of the reptiles brought a fearsome spiny club dangerously close to his throat. "'Ow was I ter know?" he hissed back. "These monsters look like they've come from some-beast's nightmares. 'Ow could I 'ave known?"

"'Le's loot this 'ere camp,' says you," Ritters continued to berate him in a mocking tone. "'Ose ter stop us?' Well, jes' look around!" They were being prodded and shoved from all directions with those spines.

"I di'n't know!" Kero yelped as several of the spines from one club grazed him. "'Tain't my fault! An' wot 'bout yew anyway? Yew was all fer it."

"I usually foller your lead, remember?" Ritters shot back. The dragolles were tightening their circle around the two hapless rats. In a desperate attempt to be brave, Kero lunged at the nearest monster with his dagger outstretched. At least, the attempt was brave at first. A moment later, however, he could not tell whether it was bravery or just for his own life's sake, nor did he pursue the matter. The dragolle plunged its club downward.

Kero somehow managed to dodge the spiny weapon and slew the offending reptile with his own blade. However, one of the spiny clubs aimed at him did not miss its target. It struck the rat from behind just as he felled the first dragolle. On impact with the club, the blade flew out of Kero's paw. He fell to his knees with a horrible shriek. All of the fight had fled from Kero at this point.

His courage had failed him. Ritters, on seeing that Kero had succumbed to the dragolles, dropped his own dagger and quailed beneath the weight of the dragolle horde that bore down on them. This did him little good.

Roused by Kero's attack, another dragolle reacted ferociously. The cowering Ritters was suddenly thrown ears-over-tail as the reptile's massive spiny club struck him full in the face. His dull, watering eyes peered fearfully from between his claws into the seething mass of dragolles, not daring to move from the place he had landed. The images were blurring together, fading.

Ritters blinked, trying to overcome the pain and clear the blood from his vision, but nothing worked.

Both rats cowered together in a single, quivering huddle as the dragolles circled in closer, thrusting their spiny clubs at the pair. The savage reptiles slithered slowly and silently, almost gloatingly, around them, periodically jabbing their clubs at the prisoners as though in rhythm to weird music.

Kero cringed further into the ground where he crouched. Sensing his fear, Ritters shrank into him. His vision did not clear; he had been blinded by the spines. He could not see. This frightened him even more than the pain lancing through his head. None of them attempted to speak now.

That would do no good now. As it was, the two dragolles that were the closest, almost perched atop the sniveling pair, raised their clubs over the rats' heads. Kero trembled and shoved upwards at the air as the fearsome brutes brought their spiny weapons down to deliver the final blows.

The spines never reached them.

Both dragolles fell back with expressions of shock frozen on their barbaric faces. Kero did not look up at first to see what had happened, why he was still alive. When he did finally look up, he did not himself understand the scene any more than the reptiles did. There were suddenly lithe creatures that somewhat resembled sandy, black-masked mongooses.