Chap. 90 Guardians of the steppe

Chap. 90  Guardians of the steppe

The "team", as they'd come to call themselves, had resumed their expedition of the steppe. Now fully aware of how quickly a tornado could come up, they paid close attention to the meterological hallmarks of the storm cells that could spawn them.

Today, was not one of those days. The air was dry and warm, yet there was a difference in the feel of it. The sky was a clear blue, washed clean by a recent rain.

K'ndar was amazed at how, in a few short weeks, the seasonal rains had changed the steppe from an arid, dry plain to one of verdant greenery. As far as the eye could see, the steppe was lush and green. The herbivores, both native and introduced, were out in force, filling up on the bounty.

They'd arrived just after a soft rain. Now the sun shone and sent a rainbow soaring to incredible heights, perfect from one end to the other.

"When I was a kid," D'nis said, "I tried to find the end of a rainbow. But it always seemed to keep running away from me."

"I saw an all red one, a couple years ago," B'rost said. "The setting sun caught it just right. It was red from side to side and end to end."

"By the egg, it's beautiful out here," D'mitran said. "Days like this make this work easy."

"Does it seem to you that it's cooler here?" K'ndar asked.

"Wouldn't surprise me at all," D'nis said, "we are getting further and further south. We're almost two latitudes south of where we started. We're getting closer to the pole."

K'ndar was looking through his handwritten notes. He'd gotten into the habit of re-writing them in a separate notebook, neatly, with maps and drawings, after a day of work.

That was for Landing's growing database. Raylan had made a deal with him, for every neatly written up notebook he donated to the Landing library, he got a new blank notebook in return. It was a deal he couldn't pass up. But he kept the original field notebooks for himself.

I wish I'd written this stuff up more neatly, he thought to himself, trying to decipher one of his scribbled notes.  Was it this spot? that they'd evacuated so quickly last time, and just before, he noticed that the grass had been eaten right down to the ground? 

"D'nis, is this the same spot we worked last time, before we skyhooted out of here when the tornado blew up?"

"Aye, it is. I'd made some mistakes in the readings, and I wanted to get everything in right, this time, without running like a scared cat from a funnel cloud."

"Thank you. I thought so." K'ndar began walking out from where everyone else had set up their gear. Something had been odd, something inexplicable. The grass had been eaten right down to the ground, but there hadn't been a single hoofprint. What in the world had eaten the grass?

He knelt down and began digging for the larvae he'd found last time. This time he'd  brought a net and several jars to collect them in. 

Siskin plopped down beside him, helping him dig. He remembered the tasty larvae he'd found the last time they'd dug here.

There were none.

Not a one. Odd. No signs of digging, either, other than what he and Siskin did. Where did they go?

He'd turned in several of the larvae to Landing, but had forgotten to ask if they'd been identified.

Far off, he heard horses whinnying. Far away, horses, cattle and wherries had been grazing contentedly. But now they were moving away, even further south. Not so much in a panic, but definitely moving with a purpose. Lions? Whers? Probably. 

He resumed digging, searching. 

Something is coming Raventh said.

The others heard the same warning from their dragons.

What is it?

I don't know. I've never seen or heard such a thing. But the animals are moving away.

"Ummmmmmmmmmmmm," B'rost said, "something looks weird, coming from the north."

K'ndar looked and saw a dark haze in the sky. It had definite borders, but it changed shape from moment to moment. 

"Not another tornado…?" D'nis griped. 

"Never saw a cloud change shape like that."

"Not by my datalink," D'mitran said, looking at his tablet. He aimed it at the hazy spot. 

"What? Bloody shards.  "Insufficient data". Arggggggg."

We should be in the sky. Let's get up into the sky Raventh said.

"All our dragons are afraid. Mine is saying we need to be airborne.'

"AGAIN? This is getting annoying," D'nis said, but he began packing up the gear.

It is getting much closer. Can't you hear it?

K'ndar, binos at his eyes, watched in fascination as the haze turned into a shiny cloud. 

Shiny? No. Flashing. Glittering. It was like snow, but it was far too warm for snow, and it looked dark. 

And it was moving in waves, now clumps, now bands,shifting here and there, breaking apart and coming back together.

Maybe it was his imagination, but he COULD hear something.  A whirring, clattering sibilance, magnified a million times. 

The cloud suddenly dropped to the ground, vanishing into the grass.

"Well, that was odd," D'mitran said. 

They paused in their packing of gear.

We need to be in the sky. Now.

Siskin began weeping, his eyes a frightened yellow.

"Okay," K'ndar said, "No matter, I'm getting aboard. Raventh is scared, and I trust his judgement more than the datalink."

He got no argument from the others.

Before he could mount, though, the grass came alive. A rolling carpet of clattering, metallic, creeping and flying insects came at them, by the hundreds. Then the thousands, and then the millions.

Their noise was of a million jaws devouring the fresh grass.

They were insects, he thought, as he ran for his dragon, with the sound of their jaws like a trillion scissors. The grass vanished beneath them, disappearing like ice in an oven. The creatures were mowing in vast hordes. 

B'rost was closest to the horde and was suddenly engulfed by hundreds of them.

He screeched as they began to devour his boots. He flailed at them, sending clouds of them into the air, surrounding him.

The dragons were next. 

RUN!!!!!!!!!!! someone screamed, and K'ndar leaped onto Raventh's back as the dragon bounded into the air, his legs covered in insects. 

The blast of their wings blew the insects down back to the ground, and soon they were above the horde, high above. There the dragons circled, their tormenters having fallen back to the ground below.

K'ndar felt his heart racing, and was astonished to see the green grass beneath them disappearing in huge swathes, the creatures shining and flashing in the sun, so thick one could not see the ground beneath them. It was like a seeing a wildfire without smoke or flames.

D'mitran had the presence of mind to record it with his datalink. D'nis, too, had his camera going.

"B'rost, are you okay?" K'ndar called.

"Shards! K'ndar, my boots are almost gone. They ate them. They ate them like that!"

They bit me, too. Lots of little bites. I want to go home Raventh said.

K'ndar was still carrying the net. 

Dare I try to catch a few? 

Would you be willing to just skim over them, so I can catch them in a net?

Raventh hesitated.

Rath wants to try

"K'ndar! Throw me the net. Rath can do it."

"Ah, B'rost, you and your blue," D'mitran said, in admiration. K'ndar angled Raventh close to B'rost's dragon and tossed the net.

"Blue Dragons RULE!" B'rost yelled, and his dragon dived towards the ground.

Rath powered his way right over the heaving, clattering sea of insects, his wingtips just a fingerwidth above the grass. B'rost made several sweeps, filling the net to capacity within seconds.

Rath chortled in victory.

"Got 'em!" he yelled, and his dragon soared almost straight up into the sky.

"Pull the drawstring to shut it!" K'ndar called.

"They're eating their way out of the NET!!" B'rost yelled, horrified.

"Drop it, then, it's not worth getting bit."

"No! Toss me a jar…they can't eat through glass. Can they?"

"I don't know, I don't even know what they ARE!"

Again, thanking his Weyrling training, countless hours and days of which had been spent, training to toss things from airborne dragon to airborne dragon. K'ndar again swept alongside B'rost and tossed him a jar. 

It was a testament to B'rost's agility that he caught and was able to shake the net's catch into the jar just before the net was completely consumed.

"You're an incredible rider, you know that, B'rost!"

"I know. I'm a blue rider."

D'nis called, "We're going to have to call this the Forbidden Zone, my lads. That's twice now the steppe has told us to leave it be. Let's go to Landing to turn the insects in. I'd like to know just what the shard they are."

__________________________________________________________________________

By the time they'd gone between to Landing, only a few insects remained in the jar. They'd eaten each other.

A few days later, K'ndar was at Landing, turning in a neatly written notebook. 

"We did a DNA assay on the insects in the jar. They're the adult form of the larvae you brought in earlier." Raylan said. He had a large jar with him. One of the insects was in it.  It had grown quite a bit. Imprisoned by inedible glass, it wasn't as frightening as it had been when it was just one of millions. 

It looked shiny, like polished metal. Two pairs of large, scissor like jaws protruded from the front of its square head. It had six pairs of wings to match six legs. Its eyes were tiny and were probably useless. 

"It looks like it's mostly teeth," K'ndar said. "Like it's an eating machine."

"We have been feeding it grass. It takes it about fifteen seconds to eat every blade we give it. We weren't able to keep it from eating the others. By the time we realized what it was doing, the others were in pieces."

K'ndar shivered. 

"There's absolutely nothing in the database about these things. The closest it can come to identifying something even remotely close to these bugs is what was called a locust. It was a creature on earth that did exactly what you reported. Apparently, they live in the soil as larvae for years and years, and when the conditions are just right, they metamorphosis into these eating machines and move to other areas in vast congregations. They will, apparently eat just about anything organic."

"I'd like to read what the computer says about the locusts. It was scary, Raylan, to see millions of these things coming at you. They were flying in this huge cloud, the sound is like nothing I've ever heard. D'mitran recorded it on his datalink, I think. I was too busy trying to figure out what it was. It was like seeing the tide coming at you, nothing to stop it. Even the animals were running from it. The dragons were terrified."

"I don't doubt that. I am just glad they don't come up here. Apparently they only live on the steppe."

"If nothing else, now I know what was eating the grass without leaving a hoofprint. No hooves."

"You know, K'ndar, as you were the first person to find one of these things, you get to name it. That's quite an honor, actually."

"Name it using that language the Ancients used, Lateen?" 

"LatIN, and despite it being such a clunky way of categorizing living things, scientists have been using the system for thousands and thousands of years."

"What's Latin for "locust"? 

Raylan typed it in. "Well, no surprise there…locusta."

"You know, I've been wondering why, after all these years, people still haven't moved out onto the steppe," K'ndar said.

"Now I am beginning to understand that there's so many factors keeping it from being habitable. By humans, I mean. Not much in the way of water,  arid, sterile soils, only grass can grow out there.  Now there's these 'locusts'. I bet my boots if we go back there tomorrow, to the same spot, we won't find a blade of grass. Nor anything else. But it will come back.  

I'd hate to see the steppe turned into farmland. It's too wild, too beautiful in its own way. It's suitable only for rangeland, for raising horses and cattle and wherries. I bet that's what the Ancients figured out right away, and let their animals loose on it. 

From what I saw, these things, these 'locusts', were probably the primary herbivore for the steppe, long before humans brought in cattle and horses. I would bet these things even ate Thread.  If humans try to farm out here, these things will destroy every crop they plant. They…they protect the steppe. Like guardians.  

So..what's Latin for 'guardian'?'"

Raylan typed it in.

"Good name, K'ndar. Locusta custos. Guardian of the steppe."