'Change him,’ commanded the monarch.

  'I can't.'

  'Or won't more like it.'

  'That too, but the fact of the matter is I cannot.'

  Rexus growled impatiently. ‘Because?'

  'I'm missing a ... body part that'll give me the strength to conduct the Transformation. Without it, I can't even change my mind.'

  'What happened to this bit of you then?’ the peevish king sought to know after straightening, unsettled by the thought of detachable appendages.

  'It was taken from me during the course of my abduction. I did inform Tank about the theft.'

  'And he's such a sharer of information,’ grouched Rexus. ‘Orn!'

  The attendant Fastclaw snapped to attention. ‘Yes, Your Kingliness?'

  'Do you know the whereabouts of Shadower's day lair?'

  'Er, sort of, Your Horridness.'

  'Either you do or you don't. Which is it?'

  'Shadower doesn't like sleeping in one place for very long, my liege. He's gotten into the habit of shifting his lair rather frequently and is never in the same spot for any length of time.'

  'Can you find his current hideaway?'

  'I think so.'

  'Don't think, just do.'

  'Right away, Your Terribleness!’ Orn slowly rubbed his toothless beak, wrestling with some dilemma. ‘What will I be doing once I get there?’ he nervously asked.

  Rexus did an admirable job of maintaining his cool. ‘Retrieving whatever it was Shadower filched off Gideon,’ he snarled through clenched fangs, turning to the alien afterwards and instructing him, ‘Tell this nincompoop what you need back.'

  Gideon proceeded to describe his Energy Dome in terms the Fastclaw scatterbrain could relate to. He made Orn repeat the description to make certain the reptile understood exactly what he was being sent to reclaim.

  'A half-moon of crystal rock that glows yellow like the Life-giver,’ Orn restated correctly.

  'Be careful how you handle it when you pick it up,’ warned the Berranian. ‘It's fragile, like an egg.’ He was careful to hide his exuberance. When the Energy Dome was restored on his wrist, Gideon could finally put an end to his imprisonment.

  The Killjaw king dispatched the Fastclaw on his errand with an imperative nod, goading him on with the harsh words, ‘Fail me, Orn, and don't bother coming back.'

  The striped runner jogged unconfidently from the clearing, having reservations about his chore. Was it a task or a test? His master's tone made it clear Orn's life depended on his succeeding. The perturbed Fastclaw gained the trees and pressed on. He would return a hero or be forced to keep running. Either way his life was going to be forever changed.

  'Purely out of interest, Gideon,’ wondered Rexus, ‘where does your stolen appendage fit on your body?'

  'That's private,’ returned the alien.

  'You don't give much away, stranger.'

  'I'm not going to give anything away, Rexus. Just because you're recovering my strength provider doesn't mean I'm going to employ it to do your bidding.'

  'I can be very persuasive.'

  'I'm sure you can, but bullying won't get you anywhere with me.'

  'We'll see.'

  Luthos, bored stiff by the conversation, was pacing unnoticed behind his father when he unexpectedly exploded into violent action. The Killjaw prince operated on base instinct and hunger drove him to attack the skinny, defenceless alien without provocation. Lunging past his surprised sire, he shoved his fanged jaws at the equally startled Berranian, who stumbled mindlessly backwards. Gideon found himself caught on the tip of the charging carnosaur's monstrous snout as Luthos, failing to gain a grip with his knife-sized teeth, jerked his head upwards to send his victim sailing through the morning air like a thrown rag doll. The alien would have set a new distance record for prey tossing by a Killjaw had he not impacted against the log throne with a sickening crunch of breaking bones.

  'Rexus, call off your stone-brained son or I'll make you childless!'

  The king tore his eyes away from the sight of Luthos bearing down on the landed outlander long enough to fix his malicious gaze on the bellowing Clubtail lumbering from out of the trees as fast as his armoured bulk allowed.

  Rexus reacted instantly. ‘Luthos, stop playing with your food and step away!’ he barked at his errant son.

  'Aw geez, you never let me eat when I want to,’ the prince moaned, thinking twice about biting the limp alien lying prone beside the woody dais before backing off. His father was the one Killjaw not to be trifled with.

  'Quit your bitching and get out of the clearing. We're both in dung up to our hips, thanks to your stomach.'

  The dullard heir to the decaying royal seat was even more confused than usual and hesitated. The king actually sounded scared.

  'Now!’ roared Rexus. ‘Before its too late to save your troublesome hide.'

  Luthos bolted from Killjaw Clearing with the speed of a frightened Fastclaw.

  Rexus prudently stepped back from Gideon's prostrate form as the oncoming Clubtail huffed and puffed his way over to the rotten log like some scaly steam locomotive. Tank visibly did not exercise much.

  'What have you done?’ the logician wheezed accusingly at the tyrant-king, prior to looking the senseless alien over.

  'Saved Gideon, that's what. I seem to have gotten into the habit of rescuing my enemies from an early death of late.'

  Tank did not buy Rexus's heroics for one second.

  'You schemed this,’ he stated, his laboured breathing growing shallower. ‘Brute force won't persuade the offworlder to change your brat any quicker.’ He had already worked out what the devious king was up to.

  'I did tell Luthos he could rough up Gideon a bit if he didn't play along,’ acknowledged Rexus. ‘The boy got a little carried away. Luckily I was here to put a stop to it for you.'

  'I'm so grateful,’ thanked the Adviser, the sarcasm oozing from his snout. ‘Never mind the fact that it was you who endangered Gideon in the first place.'

  'He was never in any real danger.'

  'Could have fooled me. Look at him, Rexus. He isn't exactly the picture of good health.'

  The monarch edged nearer to his throne. Gideon was face down and unmoving in the moist dirt around the crumbling tree remains. Rexus prodded him with his good foot and expressed genuine concern when asking in a fearful whisper, ‘Is he dead?'

  'You couldn't plan your way out of a magnolia bush,’ evaluated Tank, ‘but you have the luck of the old Platebacks.’ The extinct Platebacks were the butt of endless jokes in the world of reptiles and much maligned for their stupidity. ‘Gideon seems to be breathing still.'

  Rexus sighed with relief. An instant later he was his familiar, heartless self. ‘You'd better keep him that way, Tank, if you know what's good for you.'

  'I'm no healer. That is Orn's job.'

  The Fastclaw dogsbody, among his many functions, was unofficial court physician on occasion. Since Killjaws abhorred weakness and considered the scars of old wounds to be personal battle trophies, there was not much call for a professional healer. Orn subsequently lacked practical experience and sucked at doctoring, but he did do at a pinch in an emergency.

  'He's not here right now. You'll have to make do.'

  'What if I can't?'

  'Then you'll be joining One-eye in death.'

  'We're all going to die, or had you forgotten?'

  'I can make yours come painfully sooner.'

  'Don't threaten me, Rexus.'

  'That's not a threat, Adviser. It's a promise. I need Gideon alive to perform his miracle when Orn returns. You see to that or else things will turn unpleasant for you.'

  Defiance crept into the Clubtail's otherwise imperturbable rumble. ‘You're the one who's messed your own nest, mighty king. Why should I lick it clean?'

  The tyrant-king rattled off his irrefutable arguments. ‘Because you wish to extract further knowledge from that alien brain of Gideon's before the end of all life. Because you feel responsible for leaving him unattended and wide-open to exploitation. Because I misread the signs and you formed an unlikely attachment to your charge.'

  Rexus paused and leaned close to the silent Clubtail, his hotly repellent breath in Tank's stony face, his last justification ringing with the irony of logic.

  'Because Gideon is the closest beast to a friend you've ever had or are likely to have and you can't bear to let him die.'

  Tank hung his head low and looked down at the beaten alien. Rexus was correct on all counts. He had allowed the Berranian to get under his thick skin and form a bond of companionship. How could he have been so naïve?

  Rexus left his glade in a strangely lightened mood, his insane laughter tolling in the ears of the formerly unfeeling Clubtail earnestly willing a stranger from the stars to live.

  * * * *

  'Has she finished yet?'

  'Why don't you ask her yourself, Orry?'

  The impatient Shieldhorn took the healer's advice and did just that. ‘Are you done browsing, Bronte?'

  The Thunderfoot swallowed a last mouthful of conifer needles before nodding yes.

  'I've never seen anyone consume so much,’ Alphie remarked softly to Hettinor. He was perched on a branch opposite the pair of partially denuded trees. Bronte had stripped off half their waxy greenery.

  'Aye, the gal's a hearty eater alright,’ the healer whispered back with a note of approval. ‘It's a good sign.'

  'Time for a chat at long last then,’ declared Orridus.

  Alphie noticed that the crusty hermit circumspectly waited for Hettinor's consent before commencing. She duly gave it with a gracious nod, but only after first dressing her patient's wound with a fresh mudpack. The ancient Shortfrill was about to begin questioning Bronte when Cragg himself interrupted.

  'I'm afraid we've run out of time, old friend.'

  Orridus lifted his horned snout to the murky heavens. The faint lightening of the gloomy skies indicated noon was near and the sitting of the Bonehead council with it. Time had been frittered away by the Thunderfoot's gluttony. ‘We'd better talk on the way,’ he grumped.

  'I hate having to eat and run,’ complained Bronte, returning a little to her former self.

  'That can't be helped, lass,’ said Cragg. ‘It's best not to keep the Deciders waiting.'

  Bronte stamped a massive forefoot on the ground, winced from the residual pain in her bitten flank, and rumbled, ‘Tough.'

  Cragg blinked in surprise. ‘What did you say, lassie?'

  'I said tough. I'm not budging anywhere until I get a few questions answered for myself.'

  Bronte had put her foot down, literally and figuratively.

  'I'm sorry for sounding rude and don't want to appear like I'm slapping my tail in your snout for the kindness shown me, but I have only a vague idea of who you all are and where I am. I want to know how I came to be here and why.'

  Rather than take offence, Cragg was sympathetic to Bronte's stance. ‘It never hurts being late once in a while,’ he conceded. ‘Shall I make formal introductions then, Orridus?'

  'Be my guest.’ The Shieldhorn felt happy at the delay. He was getting his chance to speak with Bronte.

  'You already know Hettinor,’ commenced Cragg, ‘and I'm her life-mate, Cragg—chieftain of the Highrock Clan in the Valley of the Boneheads. But we'll come back to your whereabouts a little later. The furry watcher on the tree branch above you is Alphred Treefur.'

  'You can call me just plain Alphie,’ the marsupial told her.

  'He's a very recent friend of ours, as are you, Bronnie,’ Cragg went on. ‘The Shortfrill we've known a lot longer. Don't be put off by his gruffness, his bellow is worse than his charge. Bronte meet Orridus, your protector for your journey here, so I believe.'

  'The big half, that is,’ Alphie spoke up. ‘It was a team effort.'

  Bronte inclined her neck and head. ‘I am indebted to you—both.'

  'Thanks are not necessary,’ said Orridus. ‘We plant-eaters must after all stick together to fend off the Killjaw menace.'

  At mention of the hated meat-eaters a floodgate in Bronte's mind opened and an outpouring of ghastly memories gushed over her. She was once again re-immersed in the bloodbath out on Fernwalk and reeled from the combined slam of horror and grief at losing family and friends in that ordeal. Never again would she see the familiar burn scars on the hides of Balticea and Rosade, poignant reminders of her stormy hatching and deceased mother.

  'This interview is over,’ Hettinor abruptly decided, steadying the trembling girth of Bronte with her strong hands.

  'We've only just begun!’ protested Orridus.

  'It's too soon, Orry. I shouldn't have allowed this to take place so early in her recuperation. Bronnie is not yet ready.'

  'I'll be fine,’ contradicted the Thunderfoot cow, forcing the ghastly images from her mind. ‘I'm just a little shaky, that's all.'

  Hettinor threw Orridus a sharp look and amazingly relented.

  'What's your last recollection?’ he asked Bronte.

  'Of gnashing teeth and stumbling blindly through dark trees.'

  'That about sums up your flight from the massacre out on the plains.'

  Bronte stared hard at the Shieldhorn. ‘You know of my herd's slaughter by the Killjaws.’ Pain, like an open, festering wound holing her heart, made the giant cow's rumbly voice scratchy.

  'I watched the whole grisly episode from the forest, youngster.'

  'Were there any survivors, anyone at all?’ she asked, desperation bringing a note of shrillness to her query.

  There was an underlying note of fatality there as well. Kin and acquaintances perished side by side that day, their bodies mangled in the Killjaw shredder. It was inconceivable that any of those she cared so deeply for managed to slip through the net of jaws and claws Rexus had cast over Fernwalk. She despised the predators for their bloodthirsty nature. The attack was more than a feeding frenzy. It was overkill in the extreme.

  Orridus thought back to that frightful afternoon. ‘Come to think of it, I did glimpse one or two Thunderfeet in the far distance as they fled north.'

  Bronte fastened onto that sliver of hopefulness. ‘Were they cows or bulls?'

  'Hard to say, you lot all look alike to me.'

  She took the mixed news in her stride, focusing on the slimmest chance that her beau had somehow avoided death. Her fragile sanity clung onto that precarious lifeline so tightly that she barely heard the hermit resume his tale.

  'When I saw you escape the carnage by heading for the trees, I tagged after in case you needed help. You move fast for your size when panicked, Bronte. I didn't catch up with you until the middle of the night, just prior to you being pounced upon by a particularly nasty Dwarf Killjaw.'

  'He did this to me?’ she surmised, waggling her smarting flank.

  Anger bubbled up inside Bronte. She felt violated by the attack, particularly resentful at having no recollection of such a personal invasion of her space. Having her loved ones slain before her eyes was an unrecoverable psychological scar. To suffer the harrowing ordeal of an attempted murder on her person added insult to injury.

  'And would've done a lot worse if old spike-nose hadn't stopped him,’ butt in Alphie. ‘It was a quite a scrap, as far as battling lizards go.'

  Hettinor was appalled. ‘Orry, you didn't take a life did you?'

  'He left me no choice,’ the Shieldhorn quietly said.

  'That's true,’ confirmed Alphie. ‘Lance-brow gave him plenty of room to tuck his tail between his legs and run. The dolt refused and pushed for a fight. Their duel was a bit drawn out, but your champion here stuck it to him good.'

  'Not funny, whiskers,’ griped Orridus, forced to relive his spearing Festur in every gory detail.

  Cragg was quickly supportive of his crabbed friend. ‘I'm sure you only did what you had to, old pal. Taking a life to save another is an honourable thing.'

  The Shortfrill oldster rejected exoneration. ‘There is no honour in killing.'

  'It seems I owe you my life,’ Bronte told Orridus.

  'Ahem!'

  The giantess angled her neck upward to regard the insistent Treefur. Rage began to be displaced by gratitude. ‘I'm not forgetting you. Exactly what part did you play in this drama?'

  'I was horn-head's assistant.’ Alphie twitched his whiskers thoughtfully. ‘Things weren't as simple as that. I overheard the Killjaws plotting to kill your herd and raced to warn them. I came too late, found you instead and decided to lend a paw to help the one Thunderfoot I could save.'

  Bronte felt overwhelmed. Why were these perfect strangers so willing to aid her? ‘My father was supposed to be trailing me,’ she mentioned. ‘Did either of you see him last night?'

  Alphie glanced uncomfortably at Orridus and squirmed on his branch. ‘Several nights have passed since then, longneck. You've been plodding around in a daze for all that time.'

  'Oh.'

  'You were the sole Thunderfoot we came across that evening,’ finished Orridus, dashing any hope she harboured of seeing her estranged sire again. Sorrin had plainly not ditched the pack of Killjaws he had waylaid to guarantee his daughter's breakout. Little did Bronte know that her father had finally honoured the promise made on Beliann's deathbed to look after their infant cow.

  'So how did I get here, wherever “here” is?'

  'You are safe in the Uplands. We walked you all the way here.'

  'That explains my sore feet.'

  Strained laughter went around the group. The cow Thunderfoot was as resilient as Orridus had predicted.

  Bronte's whereabouts abruptly sank in. ‘I made it, Dad,’ she whispered to herself.

  Cragg tactfully nudged Orridus with his lumpy snout. ‘We had best get to Stonejudge now.'

  The Shieldhorn looked poised to raise an objection but changed his mind and agreed. ‘You're the boss.'

  'That's what you boys think.’ Hettinor gave Bronte a sly wink. ‘Watch this, my gal. I'm coming too, Cragg.'

  'You cannot go,’ opposed Cragg. ‘It's a council assembly and only those summoned may attend.'

  'I'm going to accompany Bronnie in my official capacity as clan healer. Either I am permitted to come, or my patient stays put and you can call off your wee get-together until such time I declare her fit to be judged—which I could easily make several days from now. That is well within my powers of discretion.'