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Arkk didn’t know how long he crouched behind his friend’s ruined hut, breathing in the scent of blood shallowly through his nostrils. The muscles in his thighs and tail were numb from staying still, long enough that the chunk and hiss of the weapons platform’s razorcannon stopped, replaced by a wet squelching he couldn’t identify.
Arkk knew he had to move. He was safe here, for the moment—Kral’s hut was backed up against the curved edge of the paddock’s bowl, near the forked branches of the massive tree the bowl was anchored in. A curtain of leafy vines hung down from a higher branch and hid Arkk from view except from someone standing behind the row of huts. The Urd were still in the center of the paddock’s grassy sward, doing whatever was making the squelching noise. But soon they would fan out, looking for survivors.
A rough snort sounded from the other side of the wall he crouched against. Terror shot down his limbs, wiping away their fatigue in an instant as his body prepared to flee.
But Arkk was frozen in his crouch. Time slowed to a crawl as the Urd snuffled around the hut at his back. The scenting stopped and a gruff voice said, “There’s another one here.”
Arkk closed his eyes and prepared for death.
Something heavy scraped over the hut’s packed-earth floor. With sick comprehension, Arkk realized the Urd was hauling a body from the hut.
Kral. It must be. Kral, who had glimpsed the Urd weapons platform descending on their paddock and understood what it meant. Kral, who had pushed Arkk out the open roof of his hut while Arkk was still numb with incomprehension, told him to hide wherever he could. Arkk had heard the Urd flechettes thump into the back wall of Kral’s hut only moments after he’d gotten out of sight. There was no chance Kral had survived.
But even as that thought sent an ache through his chest, liquid and deep under the terror, Arkk found himself shifting, turning to peek out from behind the wall. He needed to know.
The open lawn of the paddock’s central hub had been stained yellow with blood. Trickles still oozed from two piles of Arashal bodies. Eight Urd milled around the piles. Four had their spined backs to Arkk and seemed to be tending the pile. The other four clutched flechette rifles in their clawed hands, their yellow eyes scanning the ring of huts around the paddock’s edges.
Arkk flinched back; his tail twitched in agitation and he stilled it, steeling himself for another look.
There was something wrong with the bodies. The skins of the ones in the larger pile were discolored everywhere but the heads—their arms and backs and bellies yellowish-red where their scales should have been green and blue. The second pile was the right color, but the bodies appeared out of shape, deflated almost.
There was movement on his left. An Urd’s blunt head and long, ridged spine emerged from the hut, less than a tail-length from Arkk. It dragged a limp Arashal by the tail. Its red eyes were half-open and dull, and the broad chest was a mess of flechette wounds... but under the bloodstains, Arkk could pick out the turquoise markings—Kral’s markings—flecking the belly scales.
Arkk clamped his beak shut to keep from crying out. He watched, numbed beyond fear, as the Urd deposited the body of his friend before the larger pile that was all that was left of their paddock.
One of the Urd not on guard duty turned from the pile and barked, “This the last of them?”
The first Urd bowed low. A male. “Yes, Fehrl-leader.”
Fehrl ruffled her back-spines in satisfaction. “We eat well tonight, Meersh.” She grasped Kral’s head in one hand and levered the Arashal onto his belly. Still holding his head, she unsheathed the claws on her other hand and made incisions along his shoulders below the base of his neck and down his back.
Comprehension hit Arkk like the burst from a razorcannon. The deflated-looking smaller pile wasn’t a pile of bodies. It was a pile of skins.
Fehrl tore away the skin from Kral’s back as though she were peeling a feshna fruit. As it came loose in one piece with a familiar squelch, a strangled gasp tore itself loose from Arkk. Fehrl’s gaze snapped in the direction of the sound, followed by Meersh’s. Two sets of golden eyes went wide, then Fehrl’s narrowed. With a hiss, she dropped Kral’s body into the grass and started toward Arkk.
The Urd was fast across open ground, but Arkk’s terror gave him the edge. He leaped up the waterfall of vines hanging from the tree branch a fraction of a second before Fehrl swiped at the spot where he’d been. Arkk gained the upper branch and shimmied around the tree trunk, putting its circumference between him and the Urd’s weapons platform. He descended as fast as he could, jamming his fingers and long toes into the creased bark for purchase. He had to get into the understory where the weapons platform didn’t have enough clearance. If the Urd fired at him while he was exposed on the tree trunk, it would be over quickly. As though that thought had been its cue, Arkk heard the chug of the platform powering up. The crowns of smaller trees and bushes began to poke up around him. Arkk chose one whose slender branches looked like they would just support his weight and jumped.
He knew the forest like the scales on his tail, but desperation had made him miscalculate the force generated from a jump at this height. He wrapped both arms around the tree branch as he slammed into it, felt it bend first to, then beyond, the point of resilience. Arkk let go as the branch cracked, and made a hard landing into the bushes at the tree’s base, bending his legs double to absorb the impact. The broken branch sagged down around him a moment later, banging into his shoulder even as it draped him in a shroud of obscuring leaves. The small, winged bodies of insects and reptilian flitters fled the broken section, chittering angrily as they went. Arkk stood still, trying not to disturb the undergrowth more than he already had. As the animals quieted, he heard the faint, low whine of the Urd’s weapons platform flying at half-speed above the understory.
He would not move, and the Urd would go away. They wouldn’t like maneuvering their platform between the trunks of the canopy. It would make them nervous. He would have been safe if he hadn’t alerted them, if the sight of Kral being... skinned... by the female hadn’t been more than he could bear. He’d gotten a second chance to be still.
The platform slowed, stopped to a hover. Arkk risked tilting his head for a better angle between the broken tree branches. He saw the Urd Meersh and Fehrl descend on ropes from the platform and touch down near a tree less than three body-lengths from his hiding spot. Both had flechette rifles now.
“There are no travel corridors here, Fehrl-leader,” Meersh said. “This one wonders if perhaps we should take the vortna. It knows the jungle—”
“Shrivel the vortna. By the time you fetch it, our prey will have escaped.” Fehrl cocked her rifle. “Besides, I don’t need a vortna to find it.” She raised an arm and pointed through the screen of broken branches, right at Arkk. His breath was trapped in his chest. She grinned and brought the rifle to bear. “There you are.”
He jerked his head to the side as she fired. Flechettes chewed the trunk to his left, peppering him with splinters. The sharp smell of sap bit the air. Arkk ran. Fehrl whooped and followed, ignoring Meersh’s plaintive call from behind her.
Arkk zigzagged between tree trunks and stumbled over stumps, heedless of the splinters that had caught in his skin. A spot between his shoulder blades itched in expectation of the flechette blast that would shred him. Instead, a sapling to his right exploded. Fehrl was toying with him, enjoying the hunt.
A tuberous bush went next, showering the ground around it with sap. A sudden, desperate idea formed. Arkk looked around for the tree, its trunk thicker than most in the understory and corded with purple-black vines. Normally, Arkk wouldn’t go anywhere near this tree. Now he pounded straight toward it, mouth dry and skin crawling. If he misjudged this leap...
The muscles in his legs and tail bunched and he leaped, sailing up, past the tumorous growth wrapped around the tree’s trunk just before its branches began and into its midstory. He scrambled higher, putting as much distance as he could between himself and the tree’s parasite. He crouched on a high branch visible from the ground just around the tree and waited.
Fehrl’s blunt head emerged from between two tree trunks directly in front of him. She was panting, her red tongue lolling from her muzzle. “Where are you...”
Arkk watched her read the trail of smashed undergrowth, how it stopped at the point where he’d leaped into the tree. Her gaze traced the arc of his leap and fixed on his approximate location in the tree. Her scaly lips quirked into a smile. “You’ve led a good chase, Arashal. But it’s over.”
Fehrl walked forward to bring him into sight. Her eyes locked onto his and she raised the rifle. Triggered by her proximity, the venomvine seedpod wrapped around the tree swelled and burst.
A black cloud of sticky acidic sap rained down, hiding Fehrl from Arkk’s sight. Arkk didn’t wait to see what happened next. He climbed away from the doomed Urd. But he couldn’t block out the agonized howls that split the air behind him, nor the smell of sizzling flesh that filled the glade.
#
The jungle surrounded Meersh in a blue gloom. It was quiet now, except for the crunch of the vortna’s padded feet and Meersh’s own talons treading the dry leaves and sticks that littered the ground. He’d left Fehrl’s body—what was left of it—on the weapons platform, temporarily bagged in one of the sacks they’d brought to transport the Arashal meat from the harvest.
The other females would beat him for disgracing Fehrl like that, if they found out, but Meersh didn’t see much choice. If he let the Arashal who’d killed her escape, the punishment would be far worse. He’d reported her death to the rest of the harvest party, and that he was going on with the vortna to catch the escapee.
The tracking beast exerted a constant pull on the leash in Meersh’s hands. His shoulders started to ache after only a few minutes from maintaining his hold. But though the vortna was trained to return to its handler at a command, Meersh didn’t dare let it run on ahead—not with the image of Fehrl’s half-melted corpse fresh in his mind. The acrid stench of the caustic venomvine sap still lingered in his nostrils, no matter how he scratched at them. Best to follow the vortna as it tracked the Arashal’s scent trail, plowing through the undergrowth with the utter confidence of an animal that knew the jungle’s dangers. It could detect and avoid the venomvines and spinetrees and firetail nests before Meersh blundered into them.
With no one to hear but the animals in the trees, Meersh cursed Fehrl under his breath. She’d had friends among the raiding party; they would see to it that Meersh ended up taking the blame for her walking under a venomvine. All he could hope for was a lessening of punishment by catching the Arashal responsible, hopefully before it reached any other paddocks. The raid could get away with taking one paddock under the Terrans’ noses; two would be an unnecessary risk of exposure.
And he had plans for the paddocks closer to Kressheel. It was one of the main reasons, other than risk of discovery, that he’d pushed to raid one farther away from the trade port.
Since the treaty had outlawed the harvesting of Arashal, most Urd hadn’t found much use for them. Except for the occasional clandestine harvest, contact with the Arashal paddocks that had chosen to settle in the planet’s jungles was minimal. The Urd didn’t know what the Arashal might be up to in those trees, and more to the point, they didn’t care.
Except for Meersh. As a logistics operator at Kressheel Port, he was in charge of receiving shipments of Terran technology and shipping Urd goods in exchange. He’d found it curious the Terrans would want to trade with them at all, when the Expansion’s technology was so clearly superior to the Urd’s own. The Expansion boasted an interstellar empire that made the Urd’s own seem comically small, and yet there were things it could obtain only from them, things some Urd traders were growing fat off of. It had set Meersh to wondering—what could the Arashal trade that the Expansion might find of value?
He intended to be the one who found out. With a little diplomacy and imagination, Meersh could position himself at the center of some lucrative agreements with the Expansion. Then, who knew? He might buy a landed estate in the mountains, with grassy valleys where he could run free and never have to worry about the blows of a female superior again.
But not if the other Arashal paddocks learned what he’d been party to.
An ugly thought occurred to him. Meersh pulled back on the vortna’s leash, and the beast plunked its hindquarters down on the red earth. It looked back at him with dim curiosity as Meersh removed the holofoil terrain map from his vest. With a claw, he traced the direction the Arashal had fled. There had been some diversions and double-backs on its route, but if the Arashal kept following this trajectory, it would intersect with Kressheel Port. There was a Terran outpost there. That must be his prey’s goal.
Meersh growled, then whipped the vortna’s flanks with the leash until it roused and began pounding through the jungle on the trail again. This time, Meersh had to restrain himself from outpacing it altogether.