Bird's Eye

“Stay low, stay low!” a woman in a hushed voice called out to those around her, face covered by the shadows. Dozens of them, all clutching bows with notched arrows like their lives depended on them squatted in the shade of a towering wall. The day was hardly halfway through, but not a single thing could be heard besides the wind rattling through windows all throughout the town. It was an uneasy silence, not a natural one, as if something dark needed to be spoken but no one had the nerves to do so. One of the men shifted uneasily, asking the only one who would know.

“How close and how many? Can you see ‘em good now?” Like hers, his voice was a practiced quiet, a step through dead brush that made no noise.

“Fourteen Kargaroc, about a hundred meters out or so still, keep your bows steady,” the watch-woman replied slowly, her eyes peering through a slit in her cover. They all knew the drill; break cover too quickly and the birds might get away to who knew where. They seemed to be in Ganon’s blind spot sometimes, but that didn’t mean they didn’t have secrecy to keep in Ruto. The town was a fortress, by all rights, but if they could stay out of harm’s way by keeping a low profile, so much the better. Everyone in the town was a survivor in their own right, but the monsters of darkness were savage indeed.

The watch-woman raised a hand slowly, signaling that the sky vermin were drawing nearer, and every man and woman shifted with anticipation. She held up five fingers up, and all eyes locked on them. One dropped.

Four.

You could afford no mistakes when surviving in a place like this. The desert was harsh, but a jagged halberd through your chest was harsher. Another finger dropped.

Three.

Hylians and Gerudo, mostly, the people of Ruto had learned to survive like anyone else in the south. Every inch of dirt they called home now was paid for in blood.

Two.

Those who couldn’t survive in this wasteland were food for moblins, carcasses for Kargaroc . There was no standing military now because everyone counted. Even the children were taught to survive.

One.

You didn’t have to be the best, but you had to be able to survive the worst. People covered each other’s backs and gave them a hand when they slipped, but your bones had to be read to take any fall.

“Fire!”

Hundreds of figures with bows stepped out of the shadows simultaneously, pulling their bows back all the way and letting a barrage of shafts loose. That familiar, piercing scream of the Kargaroc filled the skies as surely as their arrows did, each target a pincushion of projectiles plummeting toward the ground. Cheers erupted from the men and women all around the camp, and the woman giving the commands lowered her own weapon and wiped her brow with relief. Those tense moments took everything you had.

Slowly, the woman made her way toward the wall again, giving an affirming nod of safety to a woman peeking her head out. Within minutes the town would be in a roar again, back to work as usual out in the strange oasis desert. Mounting the sandstone steps on the wall, she quickly climbed to where her scouts had already begun to gather, scanning the horizon eagerly to make sure no more villainous creatures were nearby. One of her men seemed quite fixed on something to the northeast, though.

“We got them all, Krome. What do you see?”

The watchman grimaced, placing his hands on the crenellations of the huge wall that surrounded all of Ruto. The oasis ended shortly out of the reaches of the town they had all rebuilt, and miles and miles of the Tantari Desert stretched on endlessly in every direction, a perfectly blank sky stretching on until it met at the horizon. The man was silent for a long moment until he finally reached a hand up, grabbing the woman by the shoulder and pointing his finger to the horizon. “There,” he all but whispered.

Was that a cloud, he was pointing at? So small, so dark, it looked just like a speck on the horizon, but Krome had masterful eyesight. She squinted, looking as hard as she could. That was certainly a cloud, but it was darker than midnight. They didn’t get many storms out in these parts, but she almost wondered if that could be as far as to the sea she didn’t have vision of. Something had been changing, the last several weeks. She couldn’t put her finger on it, but she knew it was something. Time to be proactive about it.

“Double the distance on the scouts. Something’s happening, and I want to know what.” She didn’t know any more than her gut told her, but sometimes that was the most vital organ you had out here.