Lynette set her jaw and hastily packed up her equipment. “Well, I think we’re done here,” she said, avoiding looking at either of them. “I suppose the next thing we have to do is wait for the road to be cleared and then head up the mountain. I should go and get a bag ready to treat the men up at the mine.”
“Lynette, wait,” Koradan called, as she was already walking away.
“I have work to do,” she called over her shoulder, quickening her pace.
“Lynette! Wait!” Koradan jogged to catch up with her, stepping in front of her to make her stop. “Please, Lynette, just… Why are you so angry with me? I know I took Paul without your permission, but I brought him back again unharmed, just like I said I would. And I thought that with freeing some of the men this morning, we would have made more progress than this. Please, I’m doing everything I can to try and help you. So where am I going wrong?”
“You are a demon,” Lynette snapped at him, feeling a desperate urge to cry that she stomped down hard on. “You are a plague upon our world-”
“I am not a demon.”
“Youarea demon!” Lynette yelled at him. “You have horns and tusks and… and… dragons!” She gestured violently behind herself to where the vreki were waiting quietly. “And you want to know how I know you’re a demon? My husband was a warrior. He defended the Gate of Chalandros from your kind. He held back the tide of evil that eternally threatens to swarm into our world, and he gave his life for it, in a brave and noble sacrifice. He fought your kind on a daily basis foryears, and you even being here is an insult to his memory. You disgust me. You, and your blue-blooded vreki, and your fanciful lies about wanting to help us and save our men’s lives. Because you are a scourge on our world and I would like nothing more than for you all to be cast back into hell where you belong.”
She stood there glaring at him for a long moment, waiting for him to fight back, to call her names, to denounce Kai’s sacrifice. But he said nothing, simply gazing back at her impassively. With nothing left to say to him, Lynette turned on her heel and marched away.
CHAPTER TEN
It was just after lunch when Koradan heard a rumbling bellow echo off the side of the mountain. “Heads up,” he said to Rodgard and Melowin. “What are they up to up there?”
They were sitting in the paddock out past the end of the village, steering clear of the humans to avoid upsetting them. Out of the three vreki, Bnaa was the closest, so Melowin turned to him. “Bnaa? What’s happening up on the mountain?”
Bnaa stood up, then gave a long, low bellow, a deep sound that would have vibrated all the way up to the mountain road. They waited, and then an answering rumble came back, followed by a couple of high-pitched screeches, then a long keening sound.
Bnaa made a trilling noise at Melowin, which was no doubt accompanied by some kind of telepathic message. Melowin laughed. “They’ve got the second boulder off the road,” he told them. “That was Lign’s victory call. Bel’s clearing the last of the rubble now. The road should be passable fairly soon.”
Sooner than Koradan had expected. Perhaps he should listen more carefully when Sigmore said his vreki could do something. “Let’s go tell everyone to get ready to go,” he said, standing up and brushing the crumbs from his lunch off his lap. Hetti had supplied a plate of what she’d called ‘sandwiches’ to the salases just after midday, and after having had a relatively palatable breakfast, Koradan had taken the food without too many questions.
He’d regretted it the moment he’d taken his first bite. The outer layer was dry and crumbly, like eating fluffy sand, and the filling – slices of a firm, yellow substance – had been unpleasantly pungent. There had also been some kind of salted meat in the sandwich, which would have been nice enough on its own, but in this case, it had just about rescued the rest of the mess enough for the three of them to gulp it down.
Thankfully, the meal had also come with three round fruits which Hetti had said were apples, and these had been entirely delightful. In Chalandros, there was something similar called grenfruit, but the apples were sweeter and juicier.
They were just gathering the empty plates and getting ready to return to the village when Peter came hobbling over. “Nice place for a spot of lunch,” he said amiably, giving them a toothy grin. “But what I can’t figure out is whether you’re out here because you don’t like the humans, or because you think the humans don’t like you.”
“Someof the humans most certainly don’t like us,” Koradan said. “We’re simply trying to avoid making waves.”
Peter snorted. “Well, sometimes waves need to be made. Still, I don’t blame you. This village can be a cantankerous lot when something serious is going wrong. And given the number of winter storms and spring floods, that can make for quite a lively situation. What did you think of lunch?”
Koradan debated his answer for about half a second, then said, “It was very nice, thank you. We appreciate the generosity.”
Perhaps, if it had been Lynette or Ann asking the question, that would have been the end of it. Peter, though, had so far seemed far more open minded than the rest of the humans, and perhaps that was why Melowin decided to probe a little deeper. “If I may ask, what were the yellow slices inside the sandwich? We don’t have that sort of thing in Chalandros.”
“Oh, that was cheese,” Peter said. “It’s a fermented food made from goat’s milk. We keep a flock of them – mostly for meat, but we milk a few. If you look over there, past the old barn, you can see them.”
Koradan turned to look, seeing a flock of medium-sized creatures with horns on their heads. So animals were allowed to have horns, but people weren’t?
“You drink the milk of other animals?” Melowin asked, managing to sound intrigued, rather than horrified.
“Yes,” Peter said. “A lot of people milk cows, but goats are far easier to manage. Smaller and less likely to kick you when you’re milking them.”
“How interesting,” Melowin said.
Koradan felt his gut lurch at the very idea, and he made a mental note to avoid eating any cheese from now on. “The team up on the mountain says the road is nearly clear,” Koradan told Peter, to avoid any more discussion of the food. “We should go and let everyone know.”
“Is that what that bellowing was?” Peter asked, looking oddly delighted about it. “That must be useful, to be able to communicate over such a distance. Well, come on then,” he said, turning around and beginning the slow hobble back towards the centre of the village. “I dare say the men in the mine will be glad to hear the news.”
Half an hour later, the village was gathered, with every able-bodied person carrying some kind of tool or a bag of supplies. They had food and water, nails and hammers, ropes, extra picks, sledgehammers, planks of wood and lanterns with extra jars of oil. There were even a couple of children with small packs strapped to their backs, which had been loaded with lightweight items like matches or bandages. Lynette was there, though she’d avoided speaking to any of the salases so far. Morgan had returned from the mountain road about fifteen minutes ago, having been part of the team monitoring the progress up there for the last hour or so, and she’d reported that the road was indeed passable, though they would need to proceed past the blockage one person at a time, since the cliff was still unstable and they didn’t want to risk the whole group being caught in another landslide.
“The vreki will need to fly up to the mine,” Koradan advised Morgan, who seemed to be taking on more of a leadership role, while Lynette was focused on ensuring they had enough supplies to treat the miners’ wounds. “It’s too hard for them to walk up the road. Lign and Bel will need to take a break, as well. They haven’t eaten all day and they’ll be tired and hungry.” Food had been taken up the road for Sigmore and Rigolard, but hauling half a tonne of vegetation up for the vreki had been impractical.
