In an instant, the young Barbic was on his feet, his sling in his hand, looking around wildly at what it was that was casting the shadow of a giant.
As it turned out, it was a human, and there was more than one. Notaku gaped. The smallest of them was easily twice Notaku's height! Five of them stood in close proximity, surrounding the young Barbic, looking down at him with varying degrees of amusement. "It thinks it's a warrior," one of them said in a dialect that was crude even for English.
"Are it the one we need?" asked another.
"Yes, I think so. Grab it, and see if it's got the gem."
As the human spoke, Notaku spent the time desperately trying to shake his mind out of the shock it seemed to be in. The skeleton he had seen in the caverns did not even seem as big as this! To a child who has seen only the small-statured folks of his tribe, and who was quite small for his age, such humans seemed to be giants.
But to his credit, he recovered quickly, and he could easily see that the human giants considered him anything but a threat. To the back of his mind he put the fear, and the indignation of being referred to as "it", and being spoken of as if he were not there. Or perhaps too dull to understand. As long as their legs were, he would not be able to outrun them, and so the only thing left was to fight.
He could take out one, maybe two with his sling before the others moved in, making it impossible to use his distance weapon. Lightning quick, these thoughts and observations flashed through his consciousness, so that as the first human finished telling the other to see if Notaku had the gem, his hand had darted into his ammunition bag, grabbed a smooth, round stone, and hurled it at the biggest of the lot.
The man bellowed as the stone hit him, before he could register what had happened, and Notaku was reaching for another stone. He was lucky to get off a second shot, as the humans gaped at him in astonishment. The second human did not go down, but he yelled in pain, grabbing his arm, which looked as if it had gone nerveless.
"Get him!" one of the humans growled, and the remaining three lunged.
Notaku yelled in alarm and dodged to the left as one of the smaller humans dove at him, leaving the human to concentrate for a split second on not sprawling on the sand. A shadow behind the youth alerted him to a second attempt, and he was able to dodge that one, as well. But the advantage he had of being underestimated would not last too much longer, now that he had demonstrated his skill. He had to get away from them, on the outside, so that he could face the lot instead of being surrounded by them!
In ensuing chaos, the boy darted between the legs of a tall, skinny man, dodging a fist and a kick from the other humans. He spun, drawing another stone from his pouch as he did, and loading his sling.
He now faced four angry humans. The one he had struck lay on the sand, out cold so far as Notaku could tell, and the others had drawn their weapons. An outsider might have seen the ludicrousness of the scene that played itself out under the fierce sun. Four armed humans, facing a bear cub that was less than half their size, and as things stood then, the cub had come out the better.
"Give it up, wretch," one of them growled, and Notaku's fur bristled at the insult. This human was a lean, muscular man who held a short sword in his hand. He seemed to be the leader, and certainly the most intelligent sounding of the lot. "Give up the gem, and we shall spare your life."
Notaku growled angrily at the human who had spoken, and glared at one of the smaller ones, who was going through his pack. "What if I don't have it?" he asked, challenge in his voice.
A man who held a mace smirked unpleasantly. "Ye either has it, or ye knows how to get it."
Another swordsman spoke. "And woe betide you if you don't give us what we want."
"It's not here," reported the man who had gone through Notaku's belongings. "Unless it has it on its person...or whatever you'd call it, he doesn't have it."
"Well then," said the leader. "Let's just find out." And with that, he lunged with his blade. Taking his lead, the others let out yells of challenge and charged.
There was a whiz and a crack as Notaku's third sling round sought its target: a man's knee. The man howled and stumbled to the side as Notaku slipped under the slice of a blade. The boy had one advantage at the moment, and that was, ironically, his size. Gummi bear cubs were generally quick, and trained in fighting as Notaku was, these combined to allow him to dodge most attempts to strike or catch him. He caught a fist in the shoulder once that nearly made his knees collapse, and a slight graze from the mace that sent him sprawling against the boulder he had used for shelter.
There are some that say a Barbic feels no fear, but this is not true in the slightest. If it were, the Barbic clans would be full of fools. But when they do feel fear, they don't show it, and Notaku was no exception. He growled as fiercely as he could (and admittedly, it wasn't all too grand a snarl) and jumped up onto the boulder, to get a bit more of an even footing if nothing else. He had the horrible feeling that he was going to come out the worse in this fight, and this filled him with a crushing sense of dread. He if died, his clan would die, unless they could somehow send another cub out. But how would they know? And even if he were only captured, that was a delay he could not afford. He had only six weeks to complete his quest, and already a week and a half had gone by!
The higher position might have helped Notaku, but the boy did not get the chance to find out. A whiz through the air gave him only a split second to turn, when something thunked into his shoulder hard enough to knock him from the boulder. He sprawled, dazed in the sand, where a sharp, sudden pain blazed where he had been hit. He scrambled into a sitting position, staring in shock at the arrow shaft that now protruded from his shoulder. A sniper! Those miserable, cowardly humans had an archer hiding somewhere among the dunes!
Notaku staggered to his feet as his assailants came around the corner to apprehend him, and he looked up at them in alarm. Gritting his teeth, he snapped off the arrow shaft and tried in desperation, to run for it, to find cover enough to rest a moment and recover his focus, but his mind was registering the full effect of the pain. And it was slowing him down. Needless to say, the young bear had never taken such an injury, and it was something he was finding difficult to deal with.
The leader lunged at the boy, and tackled him back down to the ground, making him yell loudly in pain. He fought like a demon, and it was not until a second human came to help that they were able to pin the boy face down on the hot earth. Notaku yelled furiously at the top of his voice as he fought with all of his strength, but the humans had finally overcome the youth.
Panting, the leader issued instructions. "Ashdown. Get the horses and bring Fletcher here, I will have to reward him for his marksmanship. Taylor, go see if Gregor is all right, he took a hard hit from this little wretch's sling." He then looked down at the furious cub, and narrowed his eyes. "You caught us by surprise. But it won't happen again."
As the others did as they were ordered, the leader continued. "We'll take it back to camp, and see what it knows there."
"We'll have to tend that arrow wound then, if we need to keep him alive."
"That can wait. For now, I want him bound and secured. This boy fights like a demon." Notaku did notice that "it" had turned to "he" in their speech.
"Maybe he is a demon."
"I suppose we'll find out."
Notaku had stopped fighting...for now. The pain in his shoulder was making it nearly impossible to continue doing so. Panting for breath, his parched throat so much more prominent after such exertion, he listened to the two humans talk. He felt vaguely flattered that they considered him such a threat, him being outnumbered not to mention out-sized. But he also felt a sick cord of fear about what they were going to do to him. He also hoped that maybe the two humans would loosen their holds on him a bit so that he could perhaps squirm away, but that did not happen. The leader nearly had his full weight on the cub, and he showed no intentions of letting up.
The sound of clopping hooves caught Notaku's attention then, and as he peered up between the humans that held him pinned, and for just a moment his fear, and anger, and pain were taken from his mind by sheer awe and astonishment. Horses. Human-sized horses. There were six of them, and any one of them could have trodden on Notaku and crushed him right then and there. He could not imagine a beast being so big.
But then the two humans each grabbed one his arms in a cruelly tight grasp, and hauled him to his feet. "Gregor is dead," one of the men reported grimly.
Notaku looked at that man, his eyes very wide, a sort of horrified disbelief washing over his mind. However he felt about these humans, he had never intended to kill any of them. Killing was something that a boy should never have to do. The human who had reported this, the one called Taylor, was looking at Notaku with an expression of hatred, but Notaku scarcely noticed. He was trying to process the idea that he had killed a man, had taken a life.
Slowly, as if approaching from a distance, the sound of the men's conversation came to Notaku's ears. They were discussing how they were going to transport Notaku to their camp, since it was clear he intended to fight them at any opportunity. One of them suggested knocking the cub out, but the leader nixed the idea, not wanting to risk killing him. "The wretch is our only link to this gem," he said.
"I'm not a wretch," Notaku growled, his voice hoarse from not taking enough water the past few days.
The leader narrowed his eyes and shook Notaku hard. As he was holding the arm whose shoulder was injured, this made quite a strong point. "Silence," the human growled. Clenching his teeth, Notaku said no more, and only glared daggers at his captors.
Finally it was decided that Notaku would be bound to Gregor's horse, and he would have a guard alongside him the whole way. Obviously, Notaku fought this, but with five humans surrounding him (including the archer that had shot him), his fighting had little effect. He ended up sitting on the vast saddle of one of the horses, the one that had apparently once belonged to the man Notaku had killed. His hands were tied tightly enough to the pommel of the saddle that it hurt his wrists.
"Brooker!" one of them called to the leader. "Should we bind his feet?"
"Aye! Tightly!"
The man nodded, and grabbed Notaku's left foot, having another man grab his right, on the other side of the horse. Notaku was not nearly big enough to straddle the horse to ride him normally, and so they ended up tying his feet to the pommel, too. This was a highly uncomfortable position.
The cub miserably watched the humans gather his belongings, cramming them all into the duffel he had carried. He realized suddenly that he had lost his glasses in the struggle, which explained why he couldn't seem to focus his eyes. "My glasses better not be broken," he growled, though it was a rather weak attempt at ferocity.
"What, ye means these?" one man said, picking something up off the ground. He considered it for a moment then dropped the object on the ground, stomping hard on it with his boot. The dismayed cub heard the crunch of glass against sand, and growled in frustration. He would be a worthless shot with his sling, if he couldn't see! "Oh, by the gods, my mistake," said the man, mock regret dripping from his words. "I do believe I mighta broke 'em. Pity, that is."
Too incensed to speak, Notaku glowered furiously as the man got up onto his own horse.
The leader, Brooker, called then, once he saw that his men were ready. "All right men, to camp!"
The horses broke into a trot then, making Notaku clench his teeth as the sudden jolt of the giant beast. He glanced down at his shoulder, which was red with blood, and for a moment he nearly panicked. But he remembered something his father told him once, that a wound almost always looked worse than it really was. Still, seeing the fur on his shoulder soaked crimson, with the wooden shaft of an arrow sticking from it, was a very intimidating sight.
Noticing the look on Notaku's face, the archer that had shot him rode up alongside the cub's horse. "Too bad I only got one shot off, eh?" Fletcher said with a smirk. "You just got ter a-perseeate how the razor sharp edges of an arrowhead can slice through skin...just like that." He made a motion like an arrow sticking into his chest, and laughed.
Notaku was not amused. I can see why the grown-ups warn us against them, he thought miserably. They're even worse than the stories say...
It was a two day journey back to the humans' camp, and it was a long, miserable trip for their young captive. The pain from the arrow wound was enough that he could not keep from crying by the end of the first night, though his fur was so damp with perspiration that it was not noticeable. The humans ignored him for the most part, except for the couple of times they gave him something to drink. They didn't want him dead, after all, and the heat was fierce.
When they stopped for the night, Notaku was left tied to the horse, and the humans took it in turns to guard him. Notaku had tried to loosen the bonds, but found that they were far too tight. In addition to all of this, the position they had tied the cub in was making half his muscles cramp up.
All in all, after the two day trip, Notaku was not a happy cub.
The humans' camp was not much in the way of campsites, but it did look as if they had anticipated quite a long journey. There was a wagon there, designed to be drawn by four horses, though for the moment, none were hitched to it. They had managed to find a straggling little stream to camp by, which gave them enough water for the horses and themselves, Notaku supposed. Yet another human was there at camp, guarding the supplies. A crossbow was slung over his shoulder, and his face was heavily battle-scarred. "What's all this, Brooker?" he asked.
The leader gave a humorless smile. "This...Gummi here...he's the one our Seers described. He can lead us to the gem of power."
The scarred man raised a brow. "Really. Interesting. I expected someone a little bigger than that. Is it even an adult?"
"I don't think so," said Brooker as he dismounted. The others humans were also getting off their mounts, leading them to the stream to drink, and some of them drinking water from their canteens. Notaku would have liked some himself, not having gotten a whole lot during the trip, but he would rather die of thirst than ask. Brooker then walked up to Notaku's mount and looked at the cub. Weary from the heat, and his injury, Notaku could not muster much of a glower. About the most he could manage was a sullen glare. "Well," he said. "First, to tend that wound of yours. Wouldn't want to kill our little font of information, would we?" Notaku did not answer, only watched the human rummage in a basket that sat in their cart. He came out with several clean rags. "Fletcher, catch a cup of water from the stream there, will you? Bring it over here?"
"Aye." The archer did as he was asked, and brought over a ceramic cup filled with stream water.
Brooker took it and set it on the cart, then grasped Notaku's arm firmly, while the boy was still bound and not likely to fight him. Notaku frowned, wondering just how he was going to be "tended." But when the human reached for the stump of the shaft that was buried in the boy's shoulder, he understood at once that he was just going to rip it out. "No, wait-" he croaked, but was cut off by a dizzying shock of pain. He screamed, not able to help it, as the wound began to bleed into his fur once more. While Notaku was still dealing with it, Brooker cleaned the wound with water and bound it tightly with the rags.
For several minutes, Notaku noticed very little, and only concentrated on not passing out. He suddenly let out the breath he had been holding, and had to control himself to not hyperventilate. He didn't even notice when his legs were unbound, and a metal shackle tightly affixed to one of them.
He didn't protest when his hands were untied and he was lifted from the horse, though he found he could not stand just yet; his cramped muscled refused to obey his brain's commands. He was lifted by the scruff of the neck and carried easily to the wagon, to which the chain on his shackle was affixed.
For the time being, he was left alone, for which the boy was grateful. He crept under the wagon to gain some shelter from the sun, and lay down wearily on the sand, trying to slowly persuade his muscles to loosen up. It seemed that the humans wanted to eat a meal and recover from their unexpected battle; Notaku could see that the one he'd hit in the knee was limping badly, and overheard him say that he thought his knee had been broken. And all of them had at least a bruise from the fight.
This brought Notaku back to the fact that one of the men, the biggest one he had first hit, had not come back with this party. He lay some two days behind, never to return to his home. Notaku glanced down at his bandaged shoulder, and the bruises he himself had sustained in the fight. He had a cut over his left eye, and a swollen lip. And still he found himself regretting the human's death. Death was not something to be taken lightly. Cub or not, Notaku understood this fact well.
Sometime after noon, a large mug of water and a bowl of what looked like sand soup was placed next to the wagon, and Notaku sat up under the wagon to investigate. Moving stiffly, he drank half the water, then picked up the bowl. No one in his clan had ever made anything like gruel, as the Barbics ate mostly greens, and berries, and meat. But when he sniffed the contents of the bowl, he realized they were edible. The first taste did not impress him in the slightest, but at least it was better than nothing. He had not been fed the entire trip here.
"Rest while you can, cub," said a voice outside the wagon. Notaku peered up to see the blurry form of the leader standing there, looking almost philosophical as he gazed towards the place where the sun would set. "Because come nightfall...I intend to get some answers."