Mant’er
“You went out in stillseason? In your first year of hunting?” Chair Ghen’s tone was daunting, but I suppressed my discomfort and returned his gaze evenly.
“Everyone knows you’re a fine hunter, Mant’er, despite your youth,” he said, with an air of tried patience. Again I was silent. My triad had brought home four large harrunt’hs, during stillseason. They were being butchered and smoked by less capable hunters as we spoke.
“...but you owe it to your parent to sire a child before you take unnecessary risks.”
“Because my parent died on a stillseason hunt doesn’t mean I am at risk,” I replied. He had aimed low with that barb and drawn my anger. I saw the sharp scales that rose over the ridge of his spine tremble slightly as he struggled with his own temper. When he looked up again he was calm.
“You will go to Festival Hall tomorrow and choose a Bria. You will not hunt in stillseason again until you have a youngling. I say this on behalf of all Ghen.”
I bowed my head. When Chair Ghen invoked that phrase, his word was law. I had intended to go at any rate, but it irked me to be ordered about like a child. Even as I acquiesced, I murmured, “I hunted for all Ghen.”
“You hunted for yourself!” he said, and turning sharply, left me.
*
I noticed Ocallis and his sibling at once when they entered Festival Hall. Rukt’an led them in as pleased as though they were his younglings, not merely those of the Bria with whom he’d joined. They sat in the seats he led them to, catching their breath.
I turned back to my conversation with Igt’ur, for Bria must wait when Ghen discuss the hunt. Igt’ur is small and only a mediocre hunter, but Igt’ur notices things. Not only the track and spoor of the prey; Igt’ur notices tendencies, changes. The “hunting wind” he calls it, and “the wind is changing” is what he had to tell me. I realized as he talked that I’d noticed the same things myself: the harrunt’h herds drifting northwards, the flocks of plump terriad’hs that nested along the rivers diminishing, even the small sadu’hs, such prolific breeders, were becoming fewer. Not enough to be worrisome but something to keep an eye on, we agreed.
Igt’ur’s gaze shifted slightly. When I turned, Ocallis was standing behind me. I saw him bite into his first taste of wild corn coated with liapt’h egg and I saw the taste of it please him. He was a hunter also, in his own way.
The thought amused me. I admired the tawny curls of his pelt, the long, slender legs and willowy body, the plump, soft belly and firm, enticing breasts. A heat rose in me as I watched the languorous movement of his body, the slow sway of his hips, the knowing laughter in his eye. He was the most beautiful Bria in the room and instinctively sensual.
I chose Ocallis not only because he was beautiful, but because he knew it, and knowing made him strong. I wanted my youngling to feel that strength while he was in Ocallis’s womb.
*
When my child was born I named him Heckt’er after the fabled Ghen who saved us from extinction by the Broghen. Why should my offspring not be as great as Heckt’er? He was strong and he had me to teach him.
Even as an infant Heckt’er was fearless. I had to pry his claws from the flesh of the Broghen infant at their birth, not the other way around. At one, he cried for meat and I gave it to him. He was already as big as a two-year-old. I would have had him weaned early but Ocallis said he needed milk as well as meat. Ocallis held him too often, but it pleased Ocallis to do so and didn’t seem to weaken Heckt’er.
During the stillseason before he turned two, Heckt’er climbed the ugappa in front of Ocallis’s house and leapt upon an unsuspecting bird. He missed his footing and fell to the ground. From treetop to ground he never lost his nerve, neither cried out nor loosened his hold on his prey. He was a worthy youngling for me!
When he was two I took him with me to the Ghen compound. He didn’t cry to leave Ocallis and yet I know he felt affection for him. He asked me to tell Ocallis not to worry, that it was time for him to learn the forest. His words surprised me; of course Ocallis knew it was time. Ocallis had his Bria offspring to train and I had mine. What more was there to say? Nevertheless, I passed on his strange comment and Ocallis blinked in pleasure. As I turned to go, Ocallis signed, “Try to love him, Mant’er.”
Love him? Hadn’t I taken him along the wall and into the woods more often than any other Ghen parent, only returning when he was so tired he stumbled, though he tried to hide it from me? Didn’t I praise him, perhaps overly, when he sniffed the wind and answered my questions well? Bria foolishness, I thought, and signed, “I will make him a great hunter,” so that Ocallis would be reassured.
*
Heckt’er understood the forests of Wind instinctively, as I did. I taught him the ways of the timid sadu’h, no taller than my knee, with their large eyes and soft, furred pelts, and showed him how to track them to their burrows. I pointed out the feathered terriad’hs flying back from their migration in the mountains to mate with the anhad’hs, waiting for them in the eastern wetlands. I described the majestic harrunt’hs, a third again as tall as I, fleet on their powerful legs and sharp-hoofed, formidable for all that they were herbivores.
I told him of the three large predators on Wind: the cold-blooded liapt’h with their long, fang-studded jaws, that swim in the rivers of the wetlands; the fierce courrant'h, silent, four-footed mountain killers that mass as much as an adult Ghen; and most dangerous of all, the Broghen that rage along the seashore on the mainland, far to the south of our peninsula.
I taught Heckt’er to read the messages brought by the wind and how to avoid letting it tell of him. I taught him to move in silence, to leave no trail and to follow any trail, including mine. When he found me, I praised him, and when he failed, I waited. Many times we stayed in the woods all night while he hunted for traces of my passage. He never cried or called out. He never rested. He never quit. When I no longer had to leave a sign, when he could find me no matter how I tried to escape his notice, then I was satisfied.
When Heckt’er was four I sent him to a farm for stillseason. The Bria had retreated into their houses, unable even to tend their tame callans and farmborra. Heckt’er accepted the extra duty as he accepted all my training, even though farm work is despised. The farms are, after all, an affront to Ghen hunters, a lack of confidence in our abilities. However, Bria are timid, superstitious creatures, who fancy droughts and famines and what-have-you in every change of weather. We indulge them.
The city itself had spread to the edge of the Symba River, which abutted the farms. In fact, some of the farmland to the west had been converted into additional housing areas, and every few years more houses had to be built. As the houses encroached on the farms, so the farms encroached on the woodlands, and we cut back the trees to increase the callans’ pasturage. Someday we would occupy the entire peninsula.
I left Heckt’er on his own to care for the callans and farmborra on one of the large farms south of the city. I knew the callans would wander in their pastures, and a few would hide from him at sunset, some among the cappas, some in the river, evading the heat of stillseason. They would try to kick him every morning until he learned to milk them as though he were a calf himself.
The farmborra would hide their eggs from him and the cocks would wake him in the night until he came to understand their cries: the joke of false alarm or brief dreamstartle from the rare pitch of genuine terror when a mongarr’h had ventured from the southern woods in search of easy prey. I knew all this because in my youth I, too, had spent a stillseason on the farms.
“Become a callan,” I told Heckt’er when I left him. “You will only find your prey when you can think as they think. You’ll only draw close enough for the kill when you have learned to convince them that you are one of them.” If Heckt’er could come to understand these pitiful, tame beasts, which give the Bria their milk and cheese and butter and the fibres they spin into wool, or twist into rope, or weave into their delicate, dyed fabrics, then he could understand their majestic mating species, the wild harrunt’h.
The morning that the wind returned, I went for Heckt’er. I didn’t find him in the farmhouse or the barn or the roost-hut. He wasn’t in the farmyard or the near pastures. At last I went to the far pastures where the callans grazed. I grinned to think that he had felt the wind on his face as he drove them from the barn and it had drawn him with them into the farthest meadows.
I searched the ugappas that lined the callan trail and saw here and there a bent branch or twisted leaf that remembered his foot as he climbed to feel the light, cooling breeze. I searched the groupings of callans but he wasn’t among them, though I saw a disruption of pebbles where he had run with the young harrunt’hs. Soon they would be driven up onto the mainland to join a wild herd in the forest, leaving only a few to keep the callans productive.
I beat my way slowly through a dense copse of cappas, but Heckt’er was not resting in their leafy thickets. Along the bank of the Symba I thought I saw his imprint in the mud amidst the tracks of callans, who love to swim in the cool waters at midday.
Ghen don’t swim. There is no buoyancy in our heavy bones and muscular bodies and the weight of our scales bears us down. I shuddered to see the callans gamboling in the current, remembering the worst part of my stillseason on the farm when I was Heckt’er’s age: the evenings I had to wade into the swirling waters to drive the reluctant callans to their barn.
Three times I searched the meadows, the cappa copse, the ugappas; three times I returned to the farmhouse, barn, roosting-hut, before I stood again on the banks of the Symba. The sun was already sliding into the west. Bria, recovered with the returning breeze, were coming to round up their callans. I examined the gold-tinged waters anxiously.
And there I saw the tip of a slender, hollow reed moving as no reed moves, against the current. I could hardly credit what it must mean. Nevertheless, I plunged into the river and reached down. My hands closed over scales cold and slimy with the silt of the riverbed, sodden with long submergence. For just a moment, before I drew Heckt’er up to break the surface, I thought I had mistaken and held a fish.
*
Heckt’er returned with me to the Ghen compound. There was nothing more I could teach him without taking him out on the trail, so I set him up to learn firearm production. Normally, he wouldn’t have been studying this until he’d had his first hunt, but youths who showed interest were always welcome; the smithy needed apprentices. Not that Heckt’er would become one of those who made the firearms used by better hunters.
I had a new stock—one I’d carved during stillseason from the strong thigh bone of a harrunt’h I’d brought down that year. Heckt’er could observe the boring and rifling of the barrel, made from smelted bog ore; the insertion of the hammer and trigger; the placement of the crystal so the strike of the hammer would unfailingly draw a spark. A Ghen should see the construction of his weapon, and this would be Heckt’er’s after he had had his first hunt.
“A youth firearm,” I said to the smith, “and the youth to watch its making.” I was warmed by the flush of surprise and pleasure on Heckt’er’s face. He reached for the stock I’d placed on the smith’s table and examined it.
I’d kept it hidden because its size would have given away the surprise. A youth firearm was smaller, lighter than an adult’s. It had a shorter barrel and therefore a shorter range, but it was just as deadly. I’d outgrown my youth firearm quickly, as Heckt’er would, but I still had it. With that in mind, I’d taken great care in the carvings: liapt’h and courrant'h’h both on one side, and on the other, a Broghen.
“You’ll be master over every beast on Wind,” I promised him when he looked back up at me.
“Explosives?” the smith asked.
“Yes,” I said without hesitation. Many Ghen wouldn’t let their younglings observe the nitration of the fluffy seedballs produced by threadplants—so named because the Bria spun its fibers to make our woven bedmats. Occasionally, when a smith had failed to remove all traces of the nitric and sulfuric acids, the resulting nitrofiberballs could undergo spontaneous decomposition. This never happened to a master, and the smith accepted my compliment with a nod. Of course, I wasn’t simply being polite; a Ghen who didn’t know how to handle explosives didn’t deserve a firearm. Heckt’er wouldn’t be one such.
By mid-year the smith sent Heckt’er back to me, saying he’d learned all he could without apprenticing. Heckt’er couldn’t practice shooting until he was a hunter, but I showed him how to hold his firearm braced between his chest and shoulder. I let him catch the trigger with his claw and bend his finger over it till he could pull it back, sliding his entire hand along the side of the stock. I loaded it and, pointing to a distant falling leaf, shot cleanly through it. A fine weapon.
*
“He’s only four,” Prakt’um said when I asked if we could go with them on the last youth hunt of the year. Prackt’um was twenty, the leader of the party. He was taking his second youngling, Dur’um, on his first hunt. The others were all fourteen, a year older than I, taking their firstborns out.
“He’s ready,” I said.
“He knows more than I do,” Dur’um broke in. We hadn’t noticed him approaching us on the training field and Prakt’um frowned slightly.
“That’s beside the point, Dur’um.”
“He’s as tall as Dyit’er. They’re friends already, and Dyit’er’s coming with us.”
“I’ll ask the others,” Prakt’um said to me.
I learned later that Cann’an, a large, sharp-eyed Ghen who liked to boss those smaller than he, had opposed our coming. Timb’il had also expressed doubts, mostly in deference to Cann’an, because their younglings were in the same hunting triad. I snorted when I heard that. I had no use for Cann’an and less for Timb’il; he always followed the prevailing wind.
My request was granted, however, because Dyit’er’s parent, Piet’er, pointed out that another youth was needed to complete Dyit’er’s hunting triad. Since Dyit’er and Heckt’er had often trained together, Heckt’er was an obvious choice. I was glad to team with Piet’er. He was a good one to have at your back, strong and unhesitating. From what I’d seen, Dyit’er was like his parent.
We passed through the gate onto the mainland and headed north into the forest, twelve hunters with their twelve younglings. Far to the south lay the seashore, where we left infant Broghen. East lay the wetlands, where terriad’hs nested. Succulent fare, but we were after bigger game.
The forest was dappled with shadows, its silence broken occasionally by the calls of birds. The wind carried near and distant scents to us: the dank smell of moss and decomposing leaves on the forest floor, the sweet smell of ugappa sap, faint because it was no longer running but dried on the bark, the tangy scent of ripening cappa fruit.
At regular intervals one of the youths would climb a tall ugappa and sighting by the lean of the sun, confirm our direction. When it was Heckt’er’s turn he altered our course slightly. Young Dam’an had climbed before him and frowned, about to protest, but the adults concurred. We knew this route well although we left no path to mark our frequent traverse.
When the sun lowered the youths made camp, rolling out our sleeping mats, collecting dry twigs and branches that would burn well, with little smoke. Dyit’er emptied two canteens from our store of water into the pot on the fire and made a warming brew for us to drink with our dried rations.
During one of our stops Heckt’er had taken aside Bab’in, the smallest youth, to pick ruberries, which they now shared around. Bab’in grinned with pleasure when we thanked him, glancing sideways at his approving parent, Mart’in. We appointed them the first watch. I was happy, sleeping in my forest, and proud to be taking Heckt’er on his first hunt.
It was several days before we came upon the tracks of sadu’hs and even then they were scarce, hiding in their burrows day and night. The birds had also quieted. Occasionally, branches rustled overhead as mongarr’hs leapt from tree to tree away from us. Their dark skin made them almost invisible in the treetops, but once or twice I caught the malevolent stare of a small, pinched face peering down at us, its muzzle drawn back in a silent snarl.
I thought it strange that they came so close. It almost seemed they were watching us. Sinewy and hairless, they were good for neither meat nor pelt, too vicious to be tamed, too small to be a threat. Nevertheless, their tiny teeth were sharp. The youths climbed noisily to sight our direction, not wanting to stumble onto a startled mongarr’h which, feeling cornered, might bite. On the sixth evening Heckt’er and Dam’an killed three sadu’hs with their slingshots and we ate well again.
At night each parent on watch kept his firearm close, more to teach his youngling vigilance than for any real need. Courrant'hs inhabited the mountains and Broghen roamed far to the south, while we had come north. But we were on the trail and the line between hunter and hunted can be as small as a single moment of unreadiness.
The increasing silence of the forest put us all on edge. When I saw the first sign of harrunt’hs—a disturbance of twigs, a single hair caught in the bark of a tree—I looked aside. This was our younglings’ hunt. But I was relieved. I glanced over at Heckt’er and saw that he noticed as well, though he turned away at once. Why didn’t he speak up?
Soon after, Dam’an and Sark’il called out, pointing with barely concealed excitement to the soft imprint of a harrunt’h hoof on the forest soil. It was several days old and faint; we were lucky there’d been no rain. Nearby, a few snapped branches and missing leaves indicated that a small herd had passed. The youths conferred together.
They were fortunate; the animals were heading northeast, into the wind. We could follow quickly without fear that our scent would reach them. Dam’an and Sark’il left their packs with their parents and ran silently ahead to scout. It should have been Heckt’er running ahead but I held my tongue, though it galled me. Heckt’er would have to learn to speak for himself.
We didn’t see our scouts that night or the next, but the night after that we met them on the trail in late afternoon. The beasts were less than two removes away, moving slowly. We would rest for the night and fall upon them at dawn.
In the night the wind changed. I was awake at once, but Heckt’er was already going from blanket to blanket, quietly shaking the others awake. It was too late to move out of the path of the wind; we were too close. The youths would have to strike at once, before the harrunt’hs caught our scent and stampeded. We ran silent and intent between the trees, our eyes adjusting already to what little light filtered down from the starry sky above.
We heard the snorting and stamping before we saw them. The older ones were circling through the trees, nipping awake young adults and yearlings, gathering them close, heading east. The herd was small, two or three dozen at most. The youths split into their triads, racing silently toward the milling beasts. Holding their knives between their teeth they moved in circles as the beasts were doing, choosing their prey. Our nearness stirred the herd to greater fear, black shapes in the black night between tall, black trees.
Dyit’er led Heckt’er and Dur’um in their triad. He motioned them toward a young harrunt’h looking belligerently about as though deciding which way to run. Heckt’er and Dyit’er circled behind the beast while Dur’um pulled himself into the tree he had indicated and moved along its lower branches.
Suddenly an eerie whistle pierced the night and every beast took up the shrill cry until the forest rang with their alarm. The harrunt’hs stampeded, following the summons of their lead buck. The ground trembled under their hooves, branches lashing and snapping in the path of their flight.
The young harrunt’h whirled straight toward Heckt’er and Dyit’er. They leaped into its path, shouting and waving their arms. Its eyes widened, ringed in white terror, nostrils flared, as it pounded toward them. They stood their ground, faces pale in the night as they waved and shouted, knives ready and claws extended. We parents held our breath while the forest thundered with the rush of the huge beasts. At last the harrunt’h swerved, heading under the tree where Dur’um waited.
Dur’um dropped from the branches onto its back, sinking his claws into its neck. It bucked, rising and pawing the air with its hooves while it whirled in a frenzied circle. The side of its neck smashed into Dur’um’s forehead. Caught off guard, nearly stunned, he let his knife fall.
Heckt’er and Dyit’er rushed forward with their knives but the flaying hooves kept them at a distance. Without warning, the buck threw itself sideways into the wide trunk of a ugappa and Dur’um leaped from its back barely in time to avoid being crushed. I watched him roll aside, then ahead I saw Heckt’er crouch to leap astride the buck when it raced by him. He was in a good position to do so, and it was bleeding, winded and running slowly enough that I knew he could mount it if his balance held. My youngling would bring it down alone on his first hunt!
It had almost reached him when Dur’um cried out. He lay on the ground between the trunks of two trees, holding his left leg. A large harrunt’h bore down on him, crazed with fear. Dur’um was too low to the ground to turn its path, it would trample him as it would a mound of dirt. Prakt’um was already racing toward his child, silent and desperate, but we were too far away. I looked back at Heckt’er in the moment that he made his choice.
Turning away from the buck, he raced to stand over Dur’um, waving his arms at the oncoming harrunt’h and yelling. It was too close to turn; the huge beast was almost upon them!
“Heckt’er!” His name caught in my throat, tore free, was lost in the screams of the beasts and their thundering hooves. I willed him to leap aside, to save himself.
He never flinched, not even in the last moment when the harrunt’h finally swerved, smashing against the tree beside him with such force it cracked, splitting in two as the harrunt’h swept around it.
A few moments later Prakt’um reached them. He lifted Dur’um in his arms, and then I was beside Heckt’er. He looked up at me. When I stood speechless before him, he hung his head.
“I lost the prey,” he said.
I wanted to touch him, draw him against me. I wanted to fall to my knees and weep. I wanted to praise him for his courage and shake him and shake him for the risk he had taken.
“Two dead hunters will not feed our people,” I said.
*
Dawn was breaking as we returned to camp. Only one group of young hunters had brought down their prey. Another triad had wounded theirs. They’d started to follow its trail but their parents called them back.
“Let it try to keep up with the herd,” a parent was explaining when we arrived, “until it falls from blood loss. If you pursue it now, it’ll run for denser cover, and be that much harder to kill. In a few days we’ll catch up with it.”
We congratulated the successful triad, rolling up our sleeping mats while they skinned and butchered their kill to carry back to the city. We ate together the wild, juicy meat, cooking extra to take with us. The hot scent of harrunt’h blood and the savory odor of its flesh stayed with us long after we left the camp behind.
There were only twelve of us now, two triads of younglings with their parents. The triad that was tracking their wounded prey had followed the harrunt’h herd, but we continued traveling north. Better to find a new herd that wasn’t spooked.
The next day I heard the Symamt’h River, which began in the distant mountains and ran southward through the grasslands. At the edge of the forest it curved east between the tree line and the grasses, then twisted back southward, skirted the edge of the eastern wetlands, and continued flowing south all the way down to the sea. By late afternoon, we were walking close to a section of it that veered in toward us. I was near the head of our group when I heard Timb’il cry out, pointing.
“There can’t be liapt’hs here,” Cann’an snapped in disgust as he climbed the slight knoll to where Timb’il stood staring at the Symamt’h through a break in the trees. The river ran fast and cold, five times as wide as its tributary, the Symba, which flowed into our peninsula. In the middle of the vast river, I was shocked to see the long, sinuous shape of a liapt’h, twisting through the water. Cann’an was silent as the rest of us gathered around. The mud-green lizard opened wide its long jaws to snap at a passing bird and the sun glinted off double rows of wicked, knife-sharp teeth.
“We should go back,” Timb’il said. When no one answered, he continued, “There’s something wrong and we all know it: the forest so silent, the game so scarce and now a liapt’h leaving the wetlands to swim in the Symamt’h!”
“So we won’t go swimming,” I said quickly, before his fear affected the others. I had never returned empty-handed from a hunt. I caught Heckt’er looking at me and I grinned to reassure him. He would have his hunt. “I’ve hunted the wetlands before. Liapt’hs don’t frighten me.”
Cann’an looked at me darkly and rose to the bait. “No one is frightened!” he snapped. “We’ll continue.”
“It isn’t just the liapt’hs,” Timb’il protested, “it’s the whole forest. Listen!” he paused, looking around uneasily. “Not a single bird is singing.”
For a moment my own scales tingled, then I laughed. It came out somewhat forced but broke the tension.
“You have too much imagination, Timb’il,” I said. “We’re on a youth hunt, don’t forget. You can’t expect youngsters to be as quiet as experienced trackers. Our noisy passage frightens the birds to silence and then their timid silence frightens you.”
Timb’il flushed. The others looked away, turning to Prakt’um as leader of the expedition. He hesitated, looking at the liapt’h, then down at the hopeful youths.
“Timb’il is right, the birds are too quiet,” he said, “but it may be because of us, as Mant’er says. We’ll continue with caution.”
He wants to leave, I realized, and felt again that ominous tingle down the long ridge of my spine. Something was wrong in the forest and in the river. I knew it. But I told myself, we are above it. We are outside the circle of prey and predator. We are Ghen. Prakt’um had deferred to my argument, for I was the better hunter, but he sensed that Timb’il was right.
There were no sadu’hs to be seen at all, now. It was good that we’d brought harrunt’h meat with us. Nor was there any birdsong to cheer us. The only sound was the rustle of mangarr’hs in the trees above. We’d grown accustomed to it and ignored them as we marched. Heckt’er walked beside Bab’in as though guarding the smaller youth. Dur’um walked with them, still limping from his fall. Bab’in’s enthusiasm made him impulsive and Heckt’er saw that he stayed with the group.
Why would Heckt’er befriend such a scatterbrain? Despite his eagerness, Bab’in would never make a good hunter. His parent, Mart’in, was too good-natured to discipline him properly.
The sun was already setting when we stopped to make camp. Bab’in scampered up a tall ugappa for the evening look-out. We were stretching after our day’s trek, laying out our sleeping mats. Several of the youths were gathering twigs and branches for our fire. Mart’in waited near the tree his youngling had ascended.
He had just bent down to open his pack when we heard a savage growling and Bab’in’s scream, sudden and full of terror, and just as suddenly ended. We stood shock-still, unbreathing for one instant, listening to the snarl and whine of feeding mangarr’hs and the savage movement of branches high above us. With a cry, Mart’in sprang up the tree, climbing frantically, while the rest of us rushed over.
Prakt’um was already climbing after him. I ordered the youths to stay together at a distance and had Timb’il guard them. Already the sway and slap of branches in the treetops overhead was spreading out. I directed the other adults up into a wide circle of trees, wishing I could see through the thick covering of leaves, wishing that Bab’in would call out again. A shot rang out above me as I climbed and I saw a mangarr’h fall to the ground.
“Knives!” I screamed. We were all in the treetops now, hidden from each other, following the growls of feeding beasts. I could hardly believe we were fighting mangarr’hs! Even when I myself saw several tearing into Bab’in’s severed hand, even as I swung my knife and watched them drop it and fall upon their wounded kin instead, even while I slashed at them again and again, I couldn’t believe it was real.
We killed at least two dozen. If they had been less desperate in their feeding, most would have escaped. They were dark in the dark treetops and we were in the grip of a nightmare, slowed by disbelief. When we climbed down, the sight of Bab’in’s small body torn apart, half-eaten, was unbearable. We wrapped him in his sleeping mat and built the fire high, cremating him at once.
No words were spoken. We were all in shock, shivering despite the mild evening and the blazing fire. When it burned down, we gathered his bones and ashes and presented them to Mart’in, bowing low with our claws retracted and our backs to the darkness beyond.
We did not bow long, baring our backs. Mangarr’h hunt in pairs, never in packs. Mangarr’h do not attack Ghen. Mangarr’h don’t fight unless they are trapped. Their strange compulsion might be explained by the scarcity of birds and sadu’hs, but even so we were shaken as much by the manner of Bab’in’s death as by its occurrence.
Death, from creatures no bigger than my arm! Creatures we considered pests, dangerous only to fish and birds and sadu’hs! The rhythm of the hunt was shattered, altered beyond recognition. The rules had shifted and all our acumen seemed suddenly uncertain.
*
“I’m taking him back,” Mart’in said as we lay unsleeping in the darkness. He hadn’t spoken all evening and his voice was scarcely recognizable.
“Of course,” Prakt’um said after a moment. “Dur’um and I will accompany you.” Dur’um’s blanket twitched in protest.
“We should all go,” Timb’il’s voice was high, nervous. I waited for Prakt’um to reply.
“We can’t,” I said finally.
“You’re crazy!” Timb’il cried. “I don’t care if we go back without a harrunt’h. You’re going to get us all—” he broke off. Timb’il was a pathetic creature. I had to breathe deeply to keep the disgust from my voice when I answered him.
“We don’t have enough provisions to get us all back home. We have to hunt.”
“We could eat berries and cappa fruit.”
I was speechless. Ghen travel hungry through the forest? Scrounging to keep from starving in our own forest? Why didn’t Prakt’um speak up? I reminded myself that Timb’il was in shock, that we all were. I could hear the sound of muffled weeping from one of the youths.
“What happened to Bab’in is terrible.” I paused at the inadequacy of the word, and took a breath. “But it won’t happen again. We’re not going home to say we’re afraid of mangarr’hs!”
“Who’s afraid of mangarr’hs?” Cann’an demanded.
“You are, if you go back before your youngling’s a hunter.”
“You’re saying I’m a coward?”
“He’s saying we all are,” Timb’il cried. “I tell you, I’m not staying to satisfy his ego!”
“Timb’il, you take Sark’il and go with Mart’in,” Prakt’um said, trying to calm us.
“No, Prakt’um,” Piet’er’s voice was firm. “You want to go because of Dur’um. And you’re right.”
“I’m okay. I want to stay,” Dur’um mumbled.
“You’ve been limping ever since you fell from the harrunt’h’s back. You can’t hunt like that, it puts the rest of your triad in danger.”
“Then we should all go,” Timb’il repeated stubbornly.
“Only Prakt’um and Dur’um should go,” I said. “The rest of us are needed for the hunt.”
“Who made you the leader of this hunt?” Cann’an demanded.
“I do,” said Prakt’um. “Mant’er’s the leader when I go. We’ve argued enough. I’ve decided.”
*
Two days after they left, Dam’an found signs of a herd of harrunt’hs. Cann’an was mollified and Timb’il had no one left to grumble to. I suspected that once again Heckt’er had seen the trail first, for he stepped aside and let Dam’an go ahead just before Dam’an called out. But this time I was glad that Heckt’er had remained silent. Or I would have been, except that he was too quiet. We were all subdued, but Heckt’er most of all.
“I should have known what the mangarr’hs would do,” he said when I questioned him.
“How could you have known? Mangarr’hs don’t behave that way!” I replied.
“I should have been able to make myself think like a mangarr’h. Even like one of these.”
I opened my mouth to tell him that that was impossible, and then I remembered finding him deep in the river on the Bria farm. It occurred to me that I’d never heard Heckt’er overstate his abilities.
“It wasn’t your fault,” I said at last, looking at my youngling as though for the first time.
*
We spent seven days tracking the harrunt’hs, although their trail as we followed it was only a few days old. They were moving fast, almost as fast as we pursued.
What’s making them hurry? I wondered uneasily, but for all my skill, I could detect nothing that would alarm a harrunt’h. Except for us, but we were downwind of them and too far behind. They were heading out of the forest toward the grasslands, long before stillseason was due. Already we were almost at the edge of the woods. I pushed us to greater speed, wanting to finish the hunt quickly and get home.
“No youth hunt has ever come this far,” Piet’er said to me quietly, watching his youngling collect twigs for our evening fire. “And yet we’ve seen only one small herd of harrunt’hs.”
“They’ve gone to the grasslands,” I said, deliberately keeping my voice casual, “as the sadu’hs went early to their burrows. Stillseason will be early this year.”
“No.” Cann’an had come over in time to hear my reply. “Something is driving the game from our forests.”
“I see no evidence of that.”
“Something dangerous is hunting our forests,” Timb’il broke in.
“That’s absurd,” I said coldly. “What signs have you found of this ‘something’? What scent have you smelled? What sounds have you heard?” When they were silent I said, “Do you think if there were anything here, I wouldn’t know of it?”
“Perhaps we haven’t crossed its trail.”
“An early stillseason doesn’t leave a trail, except in the behavior of birds and beasts.”
“Stillseason is no time for youth hunts,” Piet’er said, seeking a compromise.
“You’re right.” I touched my breath in agreement. “We’ll hunt the herd we’re following, then return home at once.”
“What if our younglings miss?” Timb’il asked.
“We should hunt also,” Piet’er said. “We can carry two carcasses easily, and that way be sure of one to feed our trip home.”
To calm them I agreed. “But let the youths make their move first,” I suggested. The others nodded. We were, after all, all parents. We wanted to see our offspring become hunters.
The ugappas thinned to clusters of cappas and finally to grasses. The wide Symamt’h twisted back across our path and on its distant shore the grasslands stretched away to the horizon where we could just make out the peaks of the mountains, gray blue against sky blue.
The grasses were tall, reaching as high as our chests. They were green and gold in the sun, but something in their sinuous movement, in their sly rustle, struck me as threatening, malevolent. I shook off the feeling, angry with Timb’il for filling me with his phantoms. It was only the wind that moved these grasses, only the wind that shook a sound like moaning out of them.
The wind blew away from us, carrying our scent toward the distant mountains. Again I shivered, as though there were something out there that should not know of us. Dyit’er pointed westward across the curving Symamt’h and there was the herd we’d been tracking, feeding peacefully upon the grasses perhaps three days away. The sight calmed us all, and I was disgusted with my earlier misgivings. Too much imagination, distracting me from the hunt. A mere youth had sighted our game ahead of me.
The youngsters cut down a number of nearby cappas, lashing them together with the long grasses that grew beside the river. By evening they’d made three good-sized rafts and a number of limbs, widened at one end with their branches webbed by grass, to paddle us across. The youths went to fish while we made camp. It took them a long time to catch enough to feed us, but our meal that night was fresh and flavorful.
During my watch I heard the Symamt’h roiling with the sound of fish feeding on small night-fliers. The noise echoed in the dark over the water. I saw Heckt’er staring at the river.
“Stillseason’s coming,” I said. “The fish are beginning to hide from the sun. Already they only rise to feed at night.”
Despite my explanation he looked uneasy. Most of the fish we had eaten had come from his line. Once again, I remembered his episode on the farm. Had he sensed something I’d missed?
The Symamt’h was quiet in the morning, with only the cool breeze rippling its surface. We lashed our packs to the rafts and set off. I had knotted all our ropes together and tied one end to the trunk of a cappa near the shore, playing it out as we crossed. The current was strong and the rope would speed our return.
We traveled three to a raft. Dyit’er came with Heckt’er and me while his parent, Piet’er, rode with Cann’an and Dam’an. Timb’il and Sark’il were on the final raft with two extra packs and the last of our provisions.
When we reached the middle of the river we paused to rest. I felt a bump against the bottom of my raft. A boulder or the upper branches of a fallen tree, I thought, though the river should have been too deep at this point for either to reach the surface. The bumping increased and, startled, I remembered the liapt’h. Could it possibly have come this far? I reached for my pack. Heckt’er was already scanning the water.
“There!” he cried.
A huge liapt’h broke the surface thrusting itself up onto the third raft. Its wide, elongated jaws reached for the packs of provisions, snapping eagerly while its short, clawed front legs scrambled for purchase. Green scales glistened as it pulled itself higher onto the raft.
Then another appeared beside it, and another!
Before we could reach our firearms the weight of their bodies had capsized the raft. Timb’il and Sark’il plunged screaming into the water, which was now alive with frenzied liapt’hs. I loaded my firearm while Heckt’er and Dyit’er beat at the shapes in the water around our own raft with their paddles. One monster tried to mount our raft but Heckt’er thrust his knife into its protruding eye and it lashed backward, almost pulling him with it, for he refused to surrender his weapon.
I shot one of the liapt’hs attacking Timb’il and Sark’il, but already several long jaws had clamped round their limbs and I could do nothing more as they were pulled under. Then I had all I could handle keeping the liapt’hs from toppling our own raft, as did those on the raft beside us.
Heckt’er and Dyit’er stabbed at one trying to reach us and I shot it. They pulled it aboard and crouched behind its lifeless form. The Symamt’h ran yellow with liapt’h blood before the others were satisfied to leave us and feast upon their own dead. We paddled in haste to the shore.
We dragged our rafts high into the grasslands, for the only way home lay once again over the river. I sank one of the paddles into the dirt and attached the end of the rope to it, so that it stretched across the water. We would want to cross back with all the speed we could manage. Then I leaned on the stick and closed my eyes. Breath of Wind, what was happening? Three dead on a youth hunt?
I heard the sound of sobbing and turned, sinking on wobbly knees to the grass. Piet’er and Cann’an tried to comfort their weeping younglings, while shivering with horror themselves. Heckt’er sat apart, pale but dry-eyed, staring at the river. Surely he didn’t blame himself as he had when Bab’in died?
The thought made me wonder whether I had failed them. Timb’il had wanted to take Sark’il home, and I had stopped them. They would never go home now. Did Heckt’er blame me?
I couldn’t indulge such thoughts. I was the leader, I had to keep them going. There would be time later for guilt and grief.
We had only four packs between us and two firearms; Piet’er’s and Dyit’er’s packs had been on the third raft, along with the last of our provisions. The herd of harrunt’hs was still two day’s trek away. In the meantime, our only food was the dead liapt’h that Heckt’er had pulled onto our raft. I took out my knife and began to butcher it. Cann’an and Dam’an came to help me while Piet’er and Dyit’er silently built a fire of driftwood, encircled by rocks they had cautiously retrieved from the river shore. At night we burned the fire higher. I doubt anyone slept.
In the morning we found the harrunt’hs’ trail and followed it through the grasses. They had cut a wide swath in their grazing, and we walked down it, keeping close together. In the bright sun, on the track of our game, I began to relax. We would soon reach our quarry. The wind blew our scent north to the mountains while the harrunt’hs drifted west and we followed them undetected.
Since we were now only a day behind the harrunt’hs, we slept without a fire. The night was dark and cool. The movement of the grasses increased with the rising night wind, as though with the passage of ghosts. Nobody spoke, but we were all thinking of our dead comrades.
I felt that I’d missed something: something I should have noticed, and it disturbed me. But tomorrow we would reach our game. We’d have fresh meat and our youngsters would be hunters. Then we could go home.
The wind howled, the grasses swayed, and the dark night became darker. I dreamed we were being stalked by the harrunt’hs! In my dream I gaped in confusion as a one-eyed harrunt’h closed its herbivore mouth over Heckt’er’s arm, tearing into his flesh. I reached toward him but he faded, disappeared into the darkness. I could still hear his screams and I ran forward, gripped by the terror of nothing-as-it-should-be. He screamed again and the wall of nightmare that held me broke into reality. I awakened to hear Dam’an shrieking his parent’s name.
The grasses waved furiously as Cann’an was pulled by some unseen force racing away from us. For a moment I hesitated, nightmare and night attack intertwined. Then I charged after him with Piet’er close behind. We couldn’t shoot for fear of hitting Cann’an, and every step we took we fell behind while he and his assailant sped further and further ahead until, exhausted, defeated, we fell panting in the wake of his bloodied passage.
We returned to the youths. As we huddled together among the bruised grasses, I shivered in the cold night wind. It was then that I realized what I had over-looked.
The wind had been cool as it shook the forest treetops, cool as it chopped the broad Symamt’h into glittering wavelets. The wind was cool now as it raced in stealth between the concealing grasses. There was no hint of the heat of stillseason in the cool wind that shivered up our spines. I had convinced myself that an early stillseason was sending into premature hibernation birds and sadu’hs, fish and harrunt’hs. But Timb’il must have been right; something else hunted our forests.
“What was it?” Heckt’er asked me.
“We’ll kill an extra harrunt’h,” I said.
“It will be drawn to the scent of fresh blood.” Piet’er understood at once.
Then Dam’an spoke: “and we will be waiting.”
I saw that he knew his parent was dead, that all we could do was lay a trap for the thing that had taken him and kill it.
“You bring honor to your parent,” I told him.
*
We dropped our packs when we were close enough to hear the snorts and whistles of the herd, the tramping of their hooves and the swish of grasses when they lay and rose again. Piet’er wanted to rest until morning but I didn’t trust the treacherous night to wait on us.
The herd wasn’t large, a hundred beasts at most. We separated into two groups, Dyit’er and Dam’an with Piet’er, Heckt’er with me. Piet’er suggested we bring our firearms but I disagreed. Ghen do not hunt harrunt’hs with firearms. Besides, how could we shoot while our younglings were leaping onto the backs of harrunt’hs to kill them with knife and claws?
Heckt’er and I moved west, counting our steps as we circled the herd. Piet’er took Dyit’er and Dam’an to the east around the resting beasts. We hadn’t finished walking when the lead buck’s startled whistle rent the night and, lurching to their feet, the harrunt’hs stampeded.
I thought it must have been Dyit’er or Dam’an who alarmed them prematurely and I snorted under my breath. I had no time to think or I would have known my error, for the herd was thundering toward the east. I only had time to point to a young buck racing by us, to aim my knife at its throat as Heckt’er leaped onto it, sinking his claws into its neck. I raced after them, but I was unnecessary. By the time I arrived, Heckt’er was standing beside his first large kill. My youngling was a hunter.
I realized then that the herd had stampeded toward Piet’er and the youths, not away from them. They must have been caught in its path. But we could only step back and wait as the beasts surged past us. Then I began to wonder what had stampeded them.
I grabbed up my knife and yelled to Heckt’er to arm himself and so we were ready when the courrant'h swept down on us. It was in feeding frenzy, already bloodied with its slaughter yet seeking more. Predator, not hunter, killing beyond its need. I readied myself in its path, arms raised. Its eyes burned into mine as it crouched on its powerful legs and screamed defiance, exposing rows of reddened fangs.
It must have sensed my strength, for it swerved toward Heckt’er. He stood his ground while the beast leaped yowling toward him. It massed twice as much as he and only its face was vulnerable. The deep double thickness of matted hair that covered the rest of its body protected it not only from the mountain cold but also from the reach of knife and claw. Heckt’er’s only chance was to sink his weapon into its open maw or one of its eyes, if he could do so before it tore him apart.
I’ve heard of grown Ghen, experienced hunters, turning and running before the charge of a courrant'h, but Heckt’er stood firm. He thrust his knife into the creature’s right eye, his aim straight and deep, while the claws of his left hand raked across its sensitive nose. With a scream it twisted its face aside and its terrible fangs clamped onto his offending arm as it bore him down. I reached them then and slashed my knife across the monster’s face, cursing myself for refusing to bring my firearm. It released Heckt’er’s arm with a roar and turned to me.
I was full of a furious terror for my child and without hesitation I plunged my knife, fist and all, into the courrant'h’s gaping jaws, and twisted. Retching and coughing, it reeled backward, dragging me over the bloodied ground, but I found my footing and thrust deeper until it groaned and fell, pulling me to my knees beside it.
*
We found Dam’an first, trampled into the ground, almost unrecognizable, then Dyit’er, lying between the stiff legs of a yearling calf. He trembled and moaned but would not open his eyes. I carried him away where he wouldn’t see the body of his parent. Piet’er must have thrown Dyit’er behind the dead calf and stood before them as long as he was able, frantically waving the charging harrunt’hs away from the path of his youngling.
Piet’er had been my friend, had trusted me. Cann’an, for all his belligerence, had followed me, and so had Timb’il. And their younglings. I should have led them home eating berries, as Timb’il wanted.
*
Heckt’er’s left arm was mangled but he was otherwise unhurt. I cleaned it and wrapped it tightly to stop the bleeding, then he helped me build a funeral pyre for Dam’an and Piet’er. I felt Dyit’er’s eyes on me, almost as punishing as Heckt’er’s refusal to look at me.
I dared not wonder what they might be thinking. I dared not think at all. Get them home, I told myself, and nothing else. Get them home, get them home... over and over, the words building a wall within my mind between the enormity of what I had done and the inadequacy of what I could now do.
For myself as well as them, I behaved with as much normalcy as I could manage. It is an insult to Wind to scorn the hunt we are given; therefore, I skinned the courrant'h while Heckt’er attended to the harrunt’h he had brought down. Together, we skinned two others the courant’h had killed. So much meat. I’d been too proud to lead my hunt home without meat. Now I had plenty of meat, and only two younglings to bring home.
We used the skins as sleds and packed the carcasses onto them, along with a fourth, half-eaten harrunt’h, which we dragged behind us. They slid over the taunting grasses with little resistance.
When we reached the Symamt’h we loaded everything onto one raft. I tied the half-eaten carcass around the edges of the other raft so that half the meat dangled into the water, and sent the baited raft down river. Using the rope I pulled us across as quickly as I could while the liapt’hs swarmed to our decoy.
*
As soon as we were in the woods I let Heckt’er and Dyit’er rest. We had a long trek ahead. I knew my forest and had no need to climb for direction, but now even the mangarr’hs had gone. A pall lay over the forest. We walked through the death-like stillness as though we were marked.
Every morning some of the meat was missing, no matter how we watched in the night. We found no footprints but our own, even when I brushed aside the leaves and twigs on the forest floor to leave damp soil exposed around us.
“It’s only mangarr’hs sneaking down the trees to snatch pieces of meat and scurry up again,” I reassured Heckt’er and Dyit’er. But it bothered me more than I let on. I showed them both how to use Cann’an’s firearm.
Dyit’er believed the thing that hungered between the hushed trees was only a sly mongarr’h. Dyit’er trusted my judgment, as had every parent and youth who died on this hunt, may I some day be forgiven. During the night, on his watch, Dyit’er left the circle of our campfire to relieve himself behind a tree.
Even a great hunter can be broken by being awakened too often with death at his campfire. Even great pride can be shaken by too many losses, too many miscalculations. I grabbed my firearm and ran toward the sudden silence where Dyit’er’s scream had broken off, pausing only to order Heckt’er to stay by the fire.
I found no trace of Dyit’er, not then, not in the morning. I saw signs of a struggle: snapped branches, blood spattered on leaves and soil. But I found only Dyit’er’s footprints stamped into the bloody ground, round and round, as though he had attacked himself, then charged away into the woods. I followed the bloody prints till they were hidden by the fallen leaves, calling his name among the silent trees.
I was responsible for Dyit’er’s disappearance. He was a youth in my care and I had failed him. I struggled again to push my thoughts aside, and yet they ate at me. Neither my pride nor my strength nor my skill nor my weapons had kept my companions alive. We were prey in our own forest. We were meat pretending to be carrying meat back to our people.
Heckt’er and I still had ten days’ journey home through a forest I no longer knew. For the first time, I was afraid. I wanted to send my child to burrow, like the sadu’hs. I wanted to hide him, quiet and still in the treetops, like the birds. We were too far from our home, too far from safety.
We abandoned most of the meat, carrying only what we needed, and I pushed us to greater speed. Heckt’er was hurting badly, almost despairing. Dyit’er had been a close friend, had trained with him and accepted him despite the age difference, when most of the others hadn’t. I told him that I would collect a party of armed hunters as soon as I got him home, and we would find Dyit’er; but he knew Dyit’er was already dead. I was too sick at heart to convince him otherwise. Sick with my failure, sick with fear for him.
We traveled for three days undisturbed. I began to hope that whatever prowled the spectral woods had been satisfied with poor Dyit’er and the harrunt’h meat we left behind.
Seven days from home. I barely slept. I was hallucinating with exhaustion when I finally lay on my mat. Heckt’er wakened me almost at once it seemed, but the night was half over and I felt a little better. I suspected he would have given me longer except that his own eyes were closing beyond his power to prevent. I rose and sat by the fire, making him sleep so close I could touch him.
I have never dozed on a watch before. I have never been so depleted, and I was lulled by four days without incident. Once, twice, my eyelids drooped and twice I startled into panicked wakefulness to find the night quiet around me. Against my will I dozed.
Sudden movement and Heckt’er’s surprised cry awoke me in time to see the skins with the last of our harrunt’h meat disappearing behind a bushy cappa. Heckt’er leaped up to give chase and I lunged for him, grabbed his legs and pulled him down. I dragged him back to the fire and held him, though he did not struggle, held him tight against me with one arm while the other held my firearm, aimed into the darkness.
We were not disturbed again that night. At the first light of dawn we stamped out our fire and packed our mats, canteens and firearms. I spent a few minutes examining the trail of the skin, looking for clues to the fiend that shadowed us, but the skin had swept the ground clear except, here and there, for what appeared to be our own footprints.
We had not come from this direction. We hadn’t stood in this spot, yet there were the partial imprints of our feet! I wondered in horror if something preternatural stalked us, leaving our own footprints behind. I was being mocked, my hunting skill exposed in all its sham!
It is my Pride, I thought, grown beyond control, taking on a malignant life of its own. My fears blew wild, toward madness. It only attacks when I sleep! It’s after Heckt’er, because he’s become the focus of my Pride. I was cold and trembling and I stopped looking for clues, more afraid of what I might learn than of being pursued. I returned to Heckt’er and we left.
Six days from home; five if Heckt’er could keep the pace I set. Even I could not make it in less. Five days with no provisions, only the water in our water skins and what we could find on the trail. Five days and four nights from safety.
It came again the next night. I sensed its baleful presence at the edge of our campfire, waiting for sleep to disarm me.
“There’s something there,” I said, willing now to strip my youngling of his confidence in me, if fear might save him.
“I’ve felt it,” he said. “I’ve tried to become it, but it’s not... I can’t think like it.”
A shiver of madness blew through me as his words confirmed my fears, but I also felt a thrill of pride. Under the shadow of death, Heckt’er still thought like a hunter. In the presence of demons, my youngling could not be made prey. And then I was more afraid than ever, because he fed my Pride even as I fought to subdue it.
“You can’t think like the thing that pursues us,” I said, bitterly. Heckt’er was not proud. Heckt’er had let the other youths go before him, had let them find the signs of harrunt’h, that they might learn what he already knew. Heckt’er used his skill to help his people.
I dared not sleep that night. The thing that prowled at the edge of our fire’s light did not sleep either, but my watch held it at bay. In the daytime we traveled, pushing ourselves almost beyond endurance. Four days from home. Three nights away from safety.
We stumbled on until the gathering dark obscured our way and then I panicked, afraid my unwillingness to stop had made us wait too long to find enough firewood for a full night’s fire. I slashed at living limbs with my knife, unwilling to let Heckt’er move out of my sight to gather dead branches on the ground. I needed a bright fire, but even a smoky one would do. Another hunting party might see it. We were almost near enough to meet with one and I was ready to accept any help that came to us.
It wasn’t Ghen we saw that night, drawn to our fire. At first I thought the two eyes were embers, glowing through the smoke. Then they moved closer and I saw its body, pale in the darkness. The exact shape was obscured by wisps of smoke but it massed no more than I. That threw me off; that and my sleep-deprived deliriums, for I was half expecting to see myself, or some nightmare figure, the specter of my Pride. I suppose that, too, was pride, to think that only I could defeat myself.
Beside me, Heckt’er whispered softly, “Broghen.”
Too small, I thought, too pale. But I recognized the crazed look in its eyes, the hideous deformity, the mix of fur and scales, the gaping jaw and vicious rows of teeth. It should have been taller but it was still fearsome, broader and more powerful than I, even at the same height. I felt, for an instant, limp with relief that I was not insane, then Heckt’er said, more firmly, “Broghen.”
His voice broke the fire’s spell and the monster lunged for him. I threw myself between them and felt its claws rake down my side sending lines of fire across my ribs and tearing my left leg open to the bone.
I fired sideways and knew the shot was poor but the Broghen howled and reared back. Heckt’er fired over me but he was inexperienced and only grazed the brute. It turned and fled into the woods. I reloaded and fired into the path of its retreat but it was too far away. I could hear in the distance the sound of slapping branches as it escaped. Worse, I had used the last of my ammunition. All we had left was a single shot in Cann’an’s firearm, and our knives.
Heckt’er bound my leg and cut me a strong stick to lean upon and we traveled hard. At least I knew now why we had found only Ghen-like footprints. If it had been full-sized I might have guessed, for even half-obliterated as the prints had been, I would have seen they were too large to be ours.
Every step drove pain through the length of my leg, and every breath spread fire across my ribs. By afternoon I was feverish and the dressing on my leg was soaked with new blood, yet we hurried on. We had no respite but home.
At dusk we stopped. Heckt’er built a fire and watched while I slept until dark. When he wakened me, I sat against the wide trunk of a large ugappa with the firearm in one hand and my knife in the other. He fed the fire higher and placed several large pieces of wood where I could reach them easily, then I ordered him up into the ugappa to sleep wedged in its branches. Broghen cannot climb, but neither could I with my wounded leg. At first Heckt’er refused to leave me, but I insisted. He would be safe there even if I failed him.
Perhaps I dozed. Perhaps I was delirious with fever. But deep in the night I was abruptly awake and I was not alone.
I couldn’t see it. It was beyond the light of the fire, waiting in the night, circling me, trying to gauge the extent of my weakness. I tensed, sweating in the cool wind, straining for the hushed sound of a footfall, the faint expel of breath, the barest movement of leaves.
To the left—behind me, but the ugappa shielded my back—to the right—pause—behind me again—pause. My hands gripped tightly the handles of my knife and firearm, my heart pounded and my leg throbbed in unison, but I was aware only of the threatening, soft sounds just beyond the perimeter of my sight. I dared not shoot blind.
To the right of me again. Pause.
There was a rustle in the tree overhead, very slight. I could tell by the weight that it was only a mongarr’h, maybe two. I didn’t worry. Heckt’er would be a match for two mongarr’hs. It was the Broghen I must keep him safe from.
Why didn’t it move? Had it circled around behind me again? I turned back to the left and in that moment it rushed from the shadows on my right.
As though in slow motion I swung my firearm, its muzzle drawing a large semi-circle in time, too much time, between the beast’s spring and my aim. A single moment of unreadiness and I was its prey.
It was almost upon me when a small form dropped from the branches overhead. The blade of his knife reflected a gleam from the fire and I heard a snarl of surprise as the knife sank home. The Broghen pulled short its spring and reached for the fierce young hunter clinging to its back.
“No!” I screamed.
But already it had torn loose Heckt’er’s hold and even with Heckt’er’s knife buried to the hilt in its neck it pulled him around and sank its vicious fangs into his throat, bearing him down under it as it fell. I lurched over, afraid to shoot in case I hit Heckt’er. The Broghen was already dying as I clawed it aside frantically, but I fired my last shot into it, then dropped to my knees beside Heckt’er.
“Don’t be a great hunter,” I cried as I gathered his still form into my arms, “Be only my living child!”
*
I couldn’t burn Heckt’er’s body. I carried him, as I had when he was a babe and I first took him into the woods. For a day and a night I walked, carrying my youngling home.
When my leg gave I rested on my knees, bent over his body, till I could rise again. I dropped the first canteen when it was empty, and then the second. When I fell at last and knew I could rise no more, I made a fire. I burned the green wood of the cappa I fell beside. Heckt’er’s body was cold as I lay beside him, as cold as the forest shadows, as cold as the wind that would never wake him again. They found me that way, delirious, almost dead, beside the body of my child.
*
I will no longer hunt but I teach every youth who comes to me to be a fine hunter, better than I.
I teach them that there are four large predators on Wind: the cold-blooded liapt’h that swims in the wetlands, the fierce courrant'h’h that prowls in the mountains, the raging Broghen that hungers to the south, and the hunter who feeds his pride instead of his people.
Hello,
I hope you have enjoyed reading Part I of Walls of Wind.
You can read more of the Bria and Ghen on their planet Wind in ebook or print form. To read the complete trilogy, look for Walls of Wind, by J. A. McLachlan, on your favorite online book store.
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For Amazon Kindle go to: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00IPOP5GC
For Kobo go to: https://www.kobo.com/ebook/walls-of-wind
I would be especially grateful if you left a review of Walls of Wind on your favorite site. Your review helps other readers find my book.
To see more exciting books, or to send me a message, visit my website and blog at
http://www.janeannmclachlan.com
Happy reading!
J. A. McLachlan