117 - My Little Union Organizer's Left Nut

Dukir stood in his stirrups, reins slack. It wasn't just that the rains were coming. There was something off this fall. Something very, very wrong in the air. The hiding and hunting exercise had to be called off and called off now.

He thumbed the stinger in his ear and said “Your Radiance. There's trouble. If I may have your permission?”

The wind picked up, flinging thorns and dust into the air all around him. He couldn't see the other Amirs or either of the boys hunting the zardukar in this rough ground, for all that he was on a relatively high point.

“Of course. Call them in!” A click and the contact went dead.

He wheeled his bird then and raced back to the sledge base where young Archibald had his code set up, sweeping over the badlands, hunting the cuddle flock as if he were one of Prime's flying vehicles.

“Cancel this exercise!” He snapped. “Call them all in. Something's wrong with the weather. Something's badly wrong.”

Archibald blanched. “Is it another airstrike?”

“No... I don't think this is Prime. We do need to get everyone under cover.”

“Yes, Naser! I can do that!” Archie bent his head over his stone tablet and the dust in the air became an enormous mist curtain screen, showing Archie and Dukir, but a hundred metres tall.

“Call them in, Naser! They'll hear you, despite the wind!” He said, grinning.

“ALL ZARDUKAR, ALL HUNTERS, ALL AMIR, ATTENTION! THIS EXERCISE IS CANCELLED. COME IN, COME IN NOW. I REPEAT, THIS EXERCISE IS CANCELLED!”

On the heels of his weirdly amplified bellow the wind howled in across the desert blowing larger bits of vegetation. Then everything went completely still.

**

Dag heard the bellow from the valley and risked a peek to see if Kyrus hadn't just pretended to move on, so he wouldn't see her trick with the trees.

She couldn't see him or hear his bird's harness so she shot a dozen pebbles out, ducking under the crack of the motherthorn over her head and urged Silly out of the grove. They were clear and she was preparing to mount up when she heard Kyrus as he crested the hill. “Ma!”

“I heard, son,” she said calmly and mounted Silly. “They wouldn't have called us in before nightfall for less than a good reason.”

Their two birds raced up the side of the swale, claws screeching against the rock, up and over.

“Oh, endarkened!” Kyrus pulled up and pointed into the sky. A flock of bushies flew overhead, and past the wadi, past the possible den-sites for them, near water. Fleeing. But what could make bush dragons flee? Flee en mass?

“Stop gawking and let's ride,” she snapped, and gave Silly his head. The young bird, pleased to be allowed to try and outrun the older riding bird, flared his wings and ran.

They could see the cuddle flock coming in, could see the massive dust screen at the valley edge. Archie was saying “I can just expand my view... oh my little union organizer's left nut.”

The view in the screen retreated up and up and up and they were looking at what looked like an orange and yellow, red and green striped marble, with what looked like an enormous white eye spreading over the whole southern half of ... was that their continent?

“Oh my little union organizer!” Archie almost wailed. “That's a storm. That's a storm spinning off tornados like a kid spitting out melon seeds. That's a storm big enough to take your Lainz city and rip it right off the top of its butte!”

“Shut up, kid. We need to get everybody safe down into the valley into those shelters of yours.” The Amir next to Archie turned to face them, looking out, through the screen as if he were a hundred metres tall. “EVERYONE GET HOME. GET THE FLOCKS INTO THE NEW BIRD BARN. I DON'T CARE IF ITS ONLY NINE TENTHS CURED. EVERYONE GET UNDER COVER!”

Kyrus risked a glance back over his shoulder as if he could see what threatened them, and he could. It was like a green haboob all across the sky. “Enlightened and endarkened.” He put his head down and tightened his hands to catch up to his ma.