by Paul G Mann
It took two days to prepare the drink and another day to bring down a deer and lace the carcass with his knockout preparation. Once done he climbed a tree and let the smell of blood bring his quarry to him. It wasn’t long; by his estimate two hours had passed before he heard the crashing approach of the Rippers. Two of them came bounding out of the undergrowth, a male and a female, both young and inexperienced by the look of them, but dangerous never the less and not to be underestimated if you valued your life.
Fred watched with amused fascination as the pair began to rip the deer to pieces with their wicked claws before diving in and fighting over the iron rich liver. They made short work of the dead animal; teeth and claw ripping the flesh off bone before their voracious appetites almost inhaled the flesh. He began to wonder if the blue mint was going to work on the hated animals, had he made the mix strong enough. Had he laced the meat with enough of the mixture to render the animals unconscious? Two questions he needn’t have worried about, sated they stopped feeding, stood to leave and promptly began weaving as their legs refused to function under the influence of the drugged meat.
He hated these animals; they were nasty vicious killers that cared little who or what they killed and ate. Normally pack animals, once they had selected a quarry there was no escape for the unfortunate who would often be eaten while still alive. He had been lucky it was just two juveniles he had drugged; if a pack had come it was apparent the drug wouldn’t have worked to the same effect and his plan would have failed. He breathed a sigh of relief as he watched from his overhead perch. Both animals knew something was wrong and began snarling and wildly lashing out with their front paws and razor sharp claws.
He only needed one for what he wanted; he drew back on the bow and sent an arrow into the eye socket of the nearest Ripper. It dropped like a stone. Now it was a waiting game, if he went anywhere near the other animal while it was still semi conscious he would have little chance of subduing it without risking serious injury and in this world serious injury meant death. Thirty minutes later satisfied the Ripper was unconscious he lowered himself to the ground, double checked the animal posed no immediate threat to him and bound it, front and hind legs and at the muzzle. The dead animal he skinned and de-clawed leaving the carcass to rot where it lay; hoisting the drugged animal onto his massive shoulders, he carried it down the hill to the waiting cart.
The villages had done a good job of constructing the cage; it was solid with a flat roof covered in thatch. A front door that slid up on a pulley allowed easy access while the sides had been made from thick wooden planking joined together with bone glue and rough dowels that once dried and set was as strong as the wood itself. Even an enraged Ripper would need a week to rip it apart and as Fred was hell bent on keeping his Ripper docile with the help of the blue mint juice he was satisfied that once in the cage the Ripper would be going nowhere until he released it. His oversized pet eventually caged, drugged and settled in his new home, he sat back to await the judges.
The boat had been playing on his mind. Twice a week it would be seen about a half a mile offshore heading north and then on its return south. It perplexed him; it was obviously on a predetermined course and running to a predetermined time table, why and who by was the questions he needed answering and the only way he would get the answers was by asking the person in the boat; either that or tracking it as it made its way north, not an option he had wanted to take with the threat of the judges hanging over the village.
He assumed either rightly or wrongly that anyone with the wherewithal to build a boat must have some knowledge of the sea. He wracked his brains until fairly certain he remembered right he asked for a flag to be made, half yellow and half blue with the yellow on the pole side. If he was right, that combination of colours was the maritime flag K denoting that the flag bearer wished to talk. Once made, he spread it on a rock over hanging the waters of the Inland Sea, and waited to see if the erstwhile sailor, out on the body of water would see the flag and recognise it as a communication signal. If not he would have to rethink matters.
With the Ripper caged he tendered to it each morning feeding it venison laced with a watered down blue mint cocktail that kept the animal docile enough to pose no danger as long as you didn’t go too near and aggravate it. With that small chore done he would set out westward to scan the countryside for signs of approaching life. He knew anything coming their way would be human; the Ripper would keep game animals away and the smell of one of their own would keep Rippers away.
Two weeks after capturing the Ripper he saw the first signs of life approaching East Harbour from the direction of Stonehaven. He was high on the mountain to the west of the village when he saw the tell tale signs from the smoke of camp fires drifting lazily over the trees. It was a windless day, not even the hint of a soft breeze to whisk the smoke away. The amount of smoke let him know that more than one fire had been lit; more than one fire meant a sizable number of men. He estimated five fires with between four and five men to a fire, approximately twenty to twenty-five judges he would have to face. He smiled; the smoke was still about two days journey away, plenty of time to fully wake his new pet. He returned to the village and covered the front of the cage with the leaves of a native ‘palm’ tree and roughly sowed them together to form a makeshift sheet.
Preparations done he sat back to wait only leaving the Ripper cage to check on the progress of the approaching judges. Two days later a villager came running from the trees shouting the judges were coming and everyone should hide. Normally Fred would have knocked the idiot out, but this time he served Freds purpose, it saved him telling everyone to hide from his Ripper. Bow and four quivers of arrows in hand, he rattled the cage sides enraging the animal inside; once it was in a frenzy he climbed on top of the cage and began stamping about, careful not to put his foot through the thatch. His efforts had the desired effect; the Ripper who hadn’t eaten in two days was well and truly agitated and began growling; a long low angry growl full of menace that made Fred smile as he relaxed and sat cross legged on top of the cage waiting.
It wasn’t a long wait; thirty minutes after the villager had run about warning of the judges they came along the rough track from under the tree line. His estimation on numbers wasn’t too far out, he counted twenty-eight, all armed to the teeth with crossbows and wicked looking spiked clubs. Their leader didn’t waste any time; the twenty-eight split in a well practiced move fanning out either side of the rough track about a hundred yards from where Fred sat with bow already knocked and ready to fire. Fred stood, bow in hand, arrow ready and shouted in a voice that dripped ice and commanded respect.
‘Turn and leave and I promise not to hurt you. Stay and I promise most of you will die’
‘Fred, if that’s who you are,’ their leader shouted back. ‘You are one man and I don’t care how good you are with that bow my men will cut you down within seconds. Give it up, return to Stonehaven with me and all will be well, I’ve been told to offer you a judge’s position as a sign of goodwill.’
‘You have to the count of ten,’ Fred replied.
He watched as a score plus of crossbows came to shoulders and aimed at him. He dropped like a stone to minimise the target area and as he did so he cut the thin thread holding the sheet over the cage front. The hungry Ripper saw men in front of it and went mad trying to get out of the cage and at them. Fred’s huge knife cut the rope holding the cage front and the Ripper crashed through it and charged the waiting bowmen.
Only two managed to fire a bolt at the enraged starving Ripper; both missed and the Ripper chased and sliced to ribbons in a blur of motion anything that moved. Panic, terror and confusion erupted among the judges; within a minute of the Ripper being freed half of them were either dead or seriously wounded. Fred added to the terror firing arrow after arrow at those judges who were running from the snarling animal. Two minutes after the Ripper was loose, between them, the Ripper and Fred, they had accounted for over twenty of the judges. Five remained on their
feet trying to fight off the Ripper but the animal was a whirling lightening fast ball of razor claws and teeth. Fred waited until only two judges remained on their feet before sending an arrow into the neck of the enraged blood covered beast.
He jumped down from the cage and made his way to the survivors of the Ripper attack. Body parts lay everywhere, it was a sickening sight even for him but he didn’t regret his actions. These so called judges would have killed him and the people of East Harbour without question, they would have taken what they wanted without emotion and that included women if the tales he had been hearing were true. As far as he was concerned what they had received here today they deserved.
He reached the two survivors, one was bleeding from an ugly looking gash on his leg that showed the bone of his thigh, the other was unhurt but out of breath from his exertions.
‘You bastard,’ the unhurt judge spat at him.
‘You’re probably right,’ Fred replied with an air of indifference, ‘but I’ve done nothing that you didn’t have planned for me and probably everyone else around these parts. You were warned the last time you people came here that I would kill any judge who wanted to hurt me or the people of East Harbour. Don’t come anywhere near this village again, if you do I make this promise. What you have seen today will be nothing to what will happen in Stonehaven, I will round up every Ripper I can find and let them loose on that pile of manure you call a town. After today you know I can do it, so the choice is yours. Go home; tell the people in Stonehaven what happened here and pray you and your cohorts never see me again.’
Five
He watched as the two made their slow weary way back to the tree line. Once sure they were on their way he turned and surveyed the carnage on the roadside. Bodies lay everywhere, some mutilated beyond recognition as a human being, others with limbs ripped off and ugly gashes from Ripper claws across torso’s, heads and faces. It wasn’t a pretty sight that needed cleaning and cleaning quickly before Newth’s answer to the fly’s of Earth invaded and the area was plagued with their fat little offspring that for all the world looked like maggots. Burial was out of the question; too many bodies to contend with to put them all in hole six feet deep. With the help of half a dozen villagers he dragged the bodies and the carcass of the dead Ripper into a giant funeral pyre away from the trees, covered them in brushwood and set them alight. He hoped the smoke and the smell would follow the judge and his injured companion back to Stonehaven or at least until everything was burned and the ashes scattered across the fields surrounding East Harbour.
He had thought long and hard about the actions he had taken against the judges reasoning they were bullies who once put in their place would keep clear of him and anywhere he lived. Threatened with retribution against their home he hoped it would become clear to them that to pursue him would lead them down a path leading to severe punishment at best and annihilation at worse. Whatever they decided it was his hope that he and East Harbour had seen the last of the judges for some quite considerable time to come.
All that remained for him to now was to get rid of the boat patrolling up and down the Inland Sea near to the harbour. The village elder was right. If the Hunki returned and saw the small vessel it would be destroyed where it was, out on the lake, without compunction. The history of Newth showed that any signs of civilization would be eradicated and the inhabitants of any nearby town or village exterminated without question. Why he didn’t know or even cared, it was a fact of life that everyone on Newth had to live with.
The maritime flag asking to talk had been on the rock for over a month and despite the boat passing the village at least twice a week in that time the flag had either been ignored or not understood. Only one course of action was open to him, if the sailor wouldn’t come to him he had to go to the sailor. The only water going craft was a small shallow canoe an enterprising fisherman had built some time ago that was kept hidden under a construction of woven twigs covered with a dusting of soil and leaves and topped off with moss. It was a flimsy thing not meant for anything other than fishing near the bank and not suited for deep water; the slightest bit of bad weather would have it over and sunk in seconds. It would be risky; one slight mistake out on the open water could be the last mistake he made. Not one to scare easily he assessed the risk and decided against his better judgement it was risk he had to take.
He watched the boat make its way north knowing the sailor was a creature of habit and would be back along the same route at the same time the next day. The following day was warm and sunny; a boon as he stripped to his waist and climbed into the rickety canoe as the sail of the small boat breached the horizon. Swift powerful strokes on the one bladed paddle pulled him quickly out from the shore and near the course of the small boat. Satisfied the sailor would see him he stopped paddling and waited for the boat to reach him.
The wait seemed like an eternity; with no headway the canoe was at the mercy of the waves. Small they may have been on a calm summer day but the un-seaworthiness of the craft made his wait a balancing act that defied his sea legs even with his constant re-positioning. After a wait that seemed to take hours, the sails ahead of him slowly inched towards him as he tried to keep the canoe dead ahead of the oncoming boat. Two to three hundred yards from him and the boat dropped her sails, the sailor obviously seeing him and slowing her headway. He began to paddle towards the boat, more out of desperation to remain afloat than a desire to confront whoever was on board her; as he neared the small spinnaker was dropped and the sailor on board threw out a sea anchor to prevent too much drift.
Reaching the boat he didn’t wait for an invitation to board deciding the dangers onboard could not be as bad as the threat of drowning from a capsized canoe. Grabbing a painter that hung over the side he hauled himself aboard the boat as it came alongside him letting out a pent up breath as he landed on the deck. His breath was soon sucked in again as he turned to see the lone sailor with a small crossbow fully loaded and pointed at his chest.
‘State your business and leave,’ the sailor said in a monotone voice that sounded a couple of octaves too low for it to be natural.
Fred tore his eyes from the crossbow and looked at the sailor; slight of build with little if any muscle, short hair, a dirty face and grubby hands and clothes that hadn’t seen soap since they had been made. With a start he realised the crossbow was being pointed at him by a woman. ‘First,’ he said with a jovial smile he didn’t quite feel. He liked to be in control of situations and this time the woman opposite him held all the control cards. ‘I mean you no harm; I just need to talk to you. Look to the shore you’ll see the communication flag I’ve been trying to get your attention with; you’ve ignored it so I was left with no alternative than to come out and try to speak with you.’
‘I said state your business,’ the monotone replied.
‘Please,’ Fred said with a resigned air, ‘put the bow down and speak to me and you can use your normal voice, I can see you’re a woman’.
‘And I can see you’re a man,’ she replied in a husky voice, ‘who despite his assurances that he means me no harm is probably lying through his teeth.’
‘Then we find ourselves at a bit of an impasse,’ he smiled at her, ‘you don’t trust me and I can’t say I can blame you on this God forsaken world, and I have to talk to you because you are putting yourself and everyone in East Harbour in danger.’
‘I don’t see how,’ she said indignantly, ‘I don’t go anywhere near the place.’
‘Maybe not,’ he replied in the softest voice his huge frame could muster, ‘but if the Hunki come and see this boat of yours they’ll destroy it out of hand and anywhere within a hundred miles of here. They’ve done it before so what I say is no idle threat, it’s a dire warning.’
‘The Hunki aren’t due for a few years yet,’ she said, ‘so they are no concern. Besides I only need this boat for a few more months; then it can be sunk, and now you know that you can go.’ The hands on the crossbow tightened their grip and rais
ed it a fraction to point once more at the middle of Fred’s chest.
‘I don’t know your business my friend,’ Fred said icily, ‘but the Hunki are due sooner than you think, be warned, I give you till winter sets in to do what you will in this craft, after that I’ll sink it myself if I see it plying up and down off East Harbour. Oh and one more thing,’ he said in an almost inaudible whisper as he stood and began to climb over the gunwale and down to his rickety canoe. ‘The next time you point that thing at me you better use it, if you don’t I’ll shove that bolt down your throat.’
‘Friend,’ she replied sarcastically, ‘thank you for the warning, next time we meet I’ll forgo any pleasantries and bury this bolt in your heart. Now go,’ she commanded.
‘Remember,’ Fred smiled as he stopped at the top of the gunwale. ‘Until winter sets in; for your sake I wouldn’t forget it.’
‘Humour me,’ she laughed, ‘how can you in that thing you risked life and limb on coming out here, even consider trying to damage this boat never mind sink it?’
‘Sail past this point on the first day of winter and find out.’ He replied quietly staring her in the eye before he dropped into the canoe without any more repartee. Long slow powerful strokes of the canoes paddle soon took him away from the boat and back to shore.
Her attitude had infuriated him; not the crossbow, he fully understood the need for protection on this planet and appreciated the way she had handled the weapon and the way in which she had threatened him with it. What he objected to was her flippant dismissal of the danger she posed from the Hunki on to the people of East Harbour and possibly Lizzyville to the north and Riggers Cove to the south. There was nothing he could do about it now but come the first day of winter; if she still sailed up and down this coast it would be her last time. She had had her warning; the next time they met he would not be so nice.
