Dark Tower-Part 2

“Slow down!” cried the Shahset, in his voice that broke the roar of the fast-turning wooden wheels and the howling of the wind.

Brendon hung on the reins of his horse with one hand, while with the other he pointed to the stirrings among the poisonous bushes heaped on the side of the dirt road that spiraled up the tower.

“The knives.” said Shahset.

The red eyes of these rodent creatures, which feed on carrion in the tower, blazed like embers in the bushes we passed. The creaking of the wheels and the clatter of the horseshoes as they climbed the slope that circled the tower seemed to frighten them quite a bit.

A succession of lightning bolts now illuminated the carnivorous forests that surrounded the tower and ponds settled on the plains where coarse-grained material crumbled from stone blocks had accumulated over thousands of years.

Sticky tongues in the broad leaves of the thorny plants rooted in the cracks and crevices of the brown stone blocks used in the tower's construction were vibrating impatiently for a careless prey to bump into them.

The sides of the road, which was quite wide, were strewn with huge moss-covered boulders that had rolled off from somewhere above, often with small rodent creatures running over them. Birds of prey perched in cavities in the walls and mouths of caves huddled together with strange cries.

Caves were home to such animals as well as primitive humans. They generally lived by foraging and had the ability neither to make tools from bone nor to cut clothes for themselves from animal skins. Their deadliest weapon was no more than a clumsy swipe behind a speeding blade. There were great struggles from time to time with the blades for animal or human carcasses.

Their skins were too thick for the cold or poisonous plants to handle, so it was no problem for them to walk around naked. Their eyesight was not very good, as their habitat was the dark nooks of the tower and they were not engaged in hunting.

They had noses that were sensitive enough to smell a decomposing corpse from miles away, and like all creatures living in the tower, they could hear the wings of demons at great distances. They usually lived in groups of three or five, and getting together to form a tribe was the last thing they could do.

Since the wind and rain had slowed down, the stench in the air became even more palpable. When the two primitive humans, poking their heads in the cleft in the belly of a wormy horse corpse lying at length in the middle of the road, noticed us, they interrupted their feast and fled behind the rocks and broad-leaved vegetation by the roadside, but we were sure they and others like them were spying on us from somewhere.

We didn't care for them, for except that they were good at stealing, they were no more dangerous to us than a prickly weed on the ground, but Shahset nonetheless signaled the coachman to speed up, and then Duncan snapped his whip on the pulling horses. As the carriage drawn by the noisily sniffing horses reached us, the primitives began to utter raspy cries, and soon after, dozens of them rushed out from behind the rocks and vegetation and rushed into the caves.

We realized what had frightened them so much when there was a rumble in the upper part of the tower and the ground shook violently; poking its head through the swirling clouds in the sky, a demon was scraping one side of the top of the tower with its giant tentacles. He had obviously seen something delicious moving in that area. “Scatter!” exclaimed the Shahset.

The frantic horses reared up and began to run, and soon a few rocks passed us and crashed into the plain below. A huge block of stone hit the side of the road with a horseman and led him down. After falling in front of us, a rock coming downhill towards me passed me and took the man behind me with his horse.

The cart carrying the chest escaped from a rock block at the last moment thanks to Duncan's dexterous hands, but unfortunately, the man he threw down with his horse after the same block, which continued to roll, was not so lucky.

When the tremors ended and the dust cloud cleared, we saw that our losses were much greater than we had anticipated. The primitives, whom we did not realize coming out of their caves, had already gathered in order to fulfill their natural duties, on the heads of the dead who had fallen on the slopes of the cliff by the road and those who were not lucky enough to die.

Thank you for reading :)

You can find the first part of the story here-
https://read.cash/@Nidos/dark-tower-part-1-5425182c