CHAPTER ONE. Reconnaissance
Rain swept across the Deadlands, sharp and spattering. Eleri crouched behind a mound of boulders, hiding from the predators’ sight line.
“Get back here!” Tortha hissed. “They’ll see you.”
The young triceratops glared at Eleri, her expression as sharp as her horns. A born warrior, Tortha had spent her life training to serve the Prairie Alliance in battle.
Eleri hesitated. A vast crater lay before them, flickering in the moonlit rain. Like the rest of the Deadlands, this area was a barren waste, obliterated fifty years ago by the Fallen Star. Now, the last surviving dinosaur kingdoms battled for scraps of territory on its outskirts.
But inside the crater, a cool oasis rippled in the rain. Water glinted, ringed by stunted trees and ferns. And in that foliage, a platoon of raptors was lurking.
Eleri’s heart thudded. As clouds shifted, moonlight crept across the wastes—and with a twitch of his tail, he retreated into deeper gloom.
“They didn’t see me,” he whispered.
Tortha glared. “Obviously not, dirt muncher, or they’d be servin’ you up as their appetizer right now.”
Eleri didn’t protest the insult. As a young oryctodromeus, he wasn’t built to fight. He was built to hide in burrows—or if all else failed, to run for his life. “They seem less mobile than usual. Two sentries posted on the outskirts, and the others are in strange positions. I don’t like it.”
“What’s to like?” Tortha muttered. “A bunch of sniveling carnivores gettin’ ready to attack our battling kingdoms?”
“All we need is proof. Something to take back to our herds—to prove the war is a sham.”
“Easier said than done.”
She was right, of course. It had been two months since Eleri was exiled from the Mountain Kingdom. Since he had struggled through the Deadlands, almost dying before he joined a herd of other young outcasts.
Since he had learned the truth.
Back home, it had all seemed simple. The Prairie Alliance was evil. Vicious armies of triceratops and ankylosaurs banded together to lay siege to Eleri’s homeland, the Mountain Kingdom. Back home, Tortha was his enemy.
But out here?
Here, Eleri had learned the truth. The war was not truly a fight between two kingdoms over territory. In reality, it had been contrived by the Carrion Kingdom—a secret cabal of carnivores lurking in the Deadlands—to provide a killing field of herbivores to feast on. And in exchange for their protection, the kings of the Prairie Alliance and Mountain Kingdom had committed the ultimate betrayal, allowing the carnivores to feed on their herdmates.
In response, Eleri and Tortha had thwarted the carnivores’ plans, creating a rockslide that had devastated their army.
Or so they had thought.
The carnivorous army was battered but not broken. It had taken only weeks for their platoons to regroup—and for their scouting parties to resume patrols of the Deadlands. And every night, packs of pterosaurs flew overhead, their claws full of carrion from the battlefield.
“We’ve been spyin’ on this outpost for days!” Tortha hissed. “All we’ve learned about are troop movements and scout numbers; that ain’t enough to prove our kings’ve sold us out to the corpse munchers.”
Eleri tensed. “Be quiet.”
“We oughta try something useful, like attackin’ the Fire Peak. If we want to bring down the Carrion Kingdom, we oughta go for their headquarters, not their outposts. All this sneakin’ around is—”
Eleri grabbed her. “Tortha, shut up.”
The rain fell harder. Tortha must have detected the fear in his tone—she leaned in closer, barely breathing. “What’s wrong?”
Eleri wasn’t sure. Not yet. But his senses tingled—and his instincts screamed that something was amiss. “Something’s … different. I can feel it.”
“Well, that’s a reliable military tactic. Glad we’re basin’ our reconnaissance mission on what a piddlin’ little storyteller reckons he can feel.”
Eleri ignored her. It was true that he was a storyteller, not a soldier. He lacked Tortha’s military training and her strict regard for protocol and hierarchy. But even so, he had learned to trust his gut.
“Most nights, they swap sentries every hour or so. But those two have been still all night, and the others…” Eleri shook his head. “Why are the others even here? It’s an oasis outpost, nothing valuable to guard. I’ve never seen a full platoon in a place like this.”
A cool wind curled across the crater, splattering rain into their faces.
Tortha looked uneasy. “Reckon it’s a trap?”
“Could be.”
Eleri and Tortha retreated, folding back into the night. They kept to the shadows—but as they darted between boulders, Eleri glanced over his shoulder, half expecting signs of pursuit.
Right now, the rest of their herd hid in the Grotto, waiting for the nightly report. It was their underground sanctuary, a short trek from here, buried by the desert sands. A river ran through it, watering a feast of ferns and sweetmoss.
The Grotto was safety. It was home. But if the predators were closing in …
“Pick up the pace, dirt muncher.” Tortha raised her voice over the rain. She seemed more confident now.
“Keep your voice down,” Eleri whispered.
They stumbled into the Tangled Pits: a knotted maze of ravines and craters that pockmarked this part of the Deadlands. It was a precarious descent, slow and jolting, as they searched for clawholds on a crevasse wall.
Slipping and skidding, they finally reached the bottom. The moonlight was weak, and Eleri strained his eyes in search of danger.
“To defeat an army, you’ve gotta chop off its head,” Tortha went on. “If we attacked the Fire Peak, I reckon we could take down a few of their sergeants, maybe even a general if we’re lucky…”
Eleri blinked water from his eyes, squinting through the night.
A shape exploded from the dark.
CHAPTER TWOLinger and Lurk
The Grotto herd slumbered, lit by the shine of glowing fungus. Despite the quiet, Zyre was nervous.
Foliage bristled, trailing the soft scent of sweetmoss through the shadows. A drumming sound suggested heavy rainfall outside.
That was unusual, here in the Deadlands.
Zyre shifted her weight, adjusting the empty starfleck pouch that hung from one claw. As an anurognathid, she was the smallest member of the Grotto herd. The tiny pterosaur was barely the size of a warmblood bird—even Eleri could crush her with a claw swipe.
Speaking of Eleri, how long had he and Tortha been gone? Hours, it seemed. Zyre flicked her gaze toward the entrance tunnel.
All was still.
They’ll be fine, she told herself. Tonight was a simple scouting mission.
Zyre glanced at her two companions, who loomed like giants above her. Sorielle and Lerithon might be young, but the ankylosaur and sauropod still towered over Zyre. If they had been carnivores, either one could swallow her whole.
“How do you think the others are doing?” she asked tentatively.
Zyre knew they didn’t fully trust her—and she couldn’t blame them either. She was a spy. She was a liar. Not too long ago, she had almost sold Eleri’s life for a pouch of starflecks. The exiles had accepted her, but they had no faith in her.
Not yet, at least.
“Oh, I expect they’re having a lovely time!” Sorielle said, cheerful as ever. As far as Zyre could tell, the ankylosaur didn’t have a bitter boneplate in her body. “Eleri will be telling all sorts of stories, I expect, and Tortha will have a jolly go at practicing her soldier drills.”
Lerithon took longer to respond. “Beneath the night, our comrades hide.” His voice was a slow roll of words, as deep as a ravine. “Where all the earth is sand, all the sky is stars. But darkness lends her shield to all—and where friends may linger, foes may lurk.”
Zyre tried to decipher this. If Lerithon were anyone else, she would dismiss his ramblings as nonsense—but the young sauropod was no fool. As an Eye of the Forgotten, he saw visions of the world before the Fallen Star had struck. He often spoke in strange riddles, but there was always wisdom behind his words.
Foes may lurk …
Lerithon was right. The Deadlands were riddled with enemies—and Eleri and Tortha had been gone for too long. They couldn’t be complacent. If the exiles could spy on the carnivores, the carnivores could spy on the exiles.
And then she heard it.
The noise echoed down the river tunnel, which wove away into the dark subterranean maze beneath the Deadlands. Perhaps it was the splash of a fish, or a slicerfin hunting its prey. But it came again—sharp and unmistakable.
Scratch. Scratch. Scratch.
The sound of clawsteps.
A narrow bank ran beside the river, just wide enough for a small dinosaur to creep along. Could it be Eleri? No, he had no reason to return that way. Besides, she could hear more than one set of claws.
Zyre’s throat clenched.
She was a trained spy. Her kind made their living by flying across Cretacea, stealing military secrets and selling them to the highest bidder. They were known as windwhispers in the Old Stories—and for good reason.
“Wait here,” she said, “and keep quiet.”
She fluttered across to the river, pausing only to pluck a luminescent frond. It was reckless to fly through a tunnel in darkness—if Zyre hit a wall, she might snap a wing, or even her neck. But that scratch, scratch, scratch coiled in her belly, overriding caution.
She flew swiftly, flicking her eyes from wall to wall, roof to river, constantly checking for obstacles.
As she rounded a bend, her heart stopped.
She faced a squad of raptors—at least seven predators, skulking along the riverbank in single file. They clutched starflecks in their claws, speckling the water with a constellation of reflections.
“… been lookin’ forward to this,” one of them muttered. “Too long since we tasted fresh meat, if you ask me. It’s all right for the generals to keep their bellies full, ain’t it? Always gettin’ the pick of the larder…”
Copyright © 2023 by Skye Melki-Wegner
