“Hedule is already dead,” Meisx said as he turned and began running toward the safety of the cave. “If the fegion don’t get him, the vutchels will, and all before I can get to the cave and back to help him. I’m getting the rest of the hunt team home. If you don’t come with me, then you’re dead too.”
Thurl grunted, tracking Meisx as he ran across the bristlewind fields, racing as quickly as he could to get back to the cave. When the wind and the falling snow made it impossible to distinguish the echo any more, Thurl wandered back to the hole the narvai-ub had dug.
He stood on the edge, sniffing the scents, hoping to smell traces of Sohjos, his father. He smelled rot and decay, clay and mud and wet roots and rising warmth. He smelled death. There were things down there, under the ground, that he couldn’t even imagine. Things no Racroft had encountered and lived to tell.
He took a deep breath, then another, deeper. He gulped air, huffing and panting and working his heart rate into a frenzy. Then, when he finished, he shoved the bundles of michau meat down into the hole, found the shallowest slope, and slid down after the narvai-ub.
CHAPTER Nine
Thurl had been in caves that went underground before. There was a trail in their own cavern that led to a small cave, hidden behind an outcrop of large stones. As kids, he and his friends dared one another to go as far down as they could. Thurl had never been the bravest, but he’d been down a long way. The rock turned into clay and mud, a sandy silt that was warm to touch, like living snow that didn’t melt.
He’d been underground before, but none of those caves had ever seemed so hollow and foreboding as the tunnel carved by the narvai-ub. Thurl clicked to get a sense of the scope and size. The echoes that came back were terrifying.
The hole was three times his height in diameter and sloped deeper downward into the soft clay and frozen sand that made up the landscape beneath the snow. Thurl tethered the smallest bundle of michau meat around his waist and dragged it behind him as he walked, clicking quietly, listening intently for any sounds of movement.
Once he was beyond the opening, the sounds of the wind diminished and ceased. As he pressed forward, turning with the curves of the tunnel, always sloping downward, the silence was nearly maddening. He could hear his own breath, and the shuffle of his feet, and the sounds of the bundled michau meat dragging behind him. He was accustomed to hearing wind and snow blowing against the mountains, animals in the distance, leaves and grasses, the other Racroft, so many sounds, ambient and relevant, atmospheric and intentional. The further down the burrow he walked, the further he felt from life; as if he were walking into the mouth of death; as if his life had already passed and he was taking a solitary journey into a terrifying afterlife.
He tried to remember everything he had ever heard about the narvai-ub. There wasn’t much beyond rumors and nightmarish stories. Not many Racroft had ever encountered a narvai-ub and lived.
There had been an Elder, Thurl remembered, who had boasted of surviving a narvai-ub attack when he was young. Thurl couldn’t remember the Elder’s name. He’d died in his sleep years ago on the far end of the village. But Thurl could still remember him sitting around the warming rocks at one of the festivals telling his story, describing the attack.
“Narvai-ub,” the Elder had said, “are the most terrifying creatures in existence. The big ones are three times the height of a Racroft and longer than six Racroft end to end. They have a sharp, gnashing beak in the center of rows of razor teeth; like a mouth within a mouth, surrounded by tusks. The teeth grab hold while the beak tears and rips flesh off the still living victim. It digs with eight great tusks that push ahead of its mouth, each tipped with a scaled paddle the size of your chest, covered in hollow boney spikes that help it carve through the snow and hard mud crust. The spikes are filled with an oozing liquid that dissolves the clay and helps soften the ground around them. It pushes forward on four legs, arranged in a row around its cylindrical torso. The tail stretches behind it, twitching and wisping and smelling the air for enemies following it back down its tunnel. Nobody knows where they live, or how many. We only see them when they attack. And most of the time, when they attack, Racroft die.”
Thurl had always believed the story to be embellished or made-up entirely to scare the kids at the festival. But as he walked down the tunnel, he could sense the scraped walls and almost feel the way the scaled arms had pushed aside the snow. He could feel the oozing wet claw marks under his feet where the boney spikes had dug. If everything the Elder had said about them was true, then Meisx was right: Thurl would never return from hunting the narvai-ub.
He wanted to turn back and run; return to the cave and go home to the village. He might have to live alone, without honor. He might lose Oswyn, and his family and any hope of a joyful future. But, at least he would be alive.
If he’d been hunting the narvai-ub for food or stature or personal glory, he would have turned back and run, screaming loud enough for the hunt team to hear him. But, Thurl wasn’t seeking glory. He was hunting for revenge. He would rescue his father, or avenge his death or die on the way.
To distract himself from the terror ahead and from the ache in his legs and the stench of the air, he tried to think of home; his brothers and sisters; his mother; Oswyn. All he could recall were the worst of times. His brothers teased and taunted him. They threw him in the warming river. His sisters called him ‘Child’. Oswyn called him ‘Runt’. His mother gave him chores like he was one of the girls. The village ignored him, or bored him. He was the youngest son of Sohjos: the Leader of the Hunt, but he was treated like an unwanted pet; like a horvill sow in the plaka fields or a pocasta among the kanateed trees.
The more he thought of home, the more depressed he got.
He walked for hours; maybe days. It was impossible to tell. In the tunnels, without the changing winds or the smell of the brine, he had no idea how long he had been gone; no idea if it was day or night.
He trudged on, around gentle turns and winding curves as the narvai-ub shaft avoided bedrock and cut its path through the mud and clay. Always, he was travelling downward. Most of the time it was subtle slope, just enough that Thurl could feel his toes pointing slightly below his heels as he stepped. Occasionally, however, the tunnel would leap downward, as though the beast were punching a new hole down into the earth.
Thurl was muddy and exhausted and sweating. He was accustomed to the icy wind blowing against his flesh. Even inside the caverns of his village, the biting cold crept in on the fog. In the tunnel there was no wind. He was too deep for even the fog to find him. The comfortable cold that Thurl had always known was missing. Instead, there was a dripping, moist warmth – hotter than any warming rock.
The sweat poured down his body. He was having trouble breathing the thick, wet air. His muscles ached. Despite the wetness of the walls, and the sweat coating his flesh, he was dehydrated. His mouth felt like paste. He hadn’t thought to bring water; wouldn’t have had time to gather any.
Finally, he couldn’t walk any further. His head rolled forward. He stumbled and tripped. He fell to the ground and sank into the mud. He wanted to get up; continue moving; rescue his father; but his limbs wouldn’t respond. His arms were too weak. His mouth was too dry. His legs were numb.
Thurl lay still in the mud, unable to move, wondering if he would ever walk again. He wondered if the melting block of michau meat would attract other underground creatures; if some scavenger beast would find him in his sleep and devour him whole before he woke up. He wondered if it even mattered.
CHAPTER ten
He was navigating a steep decline, jagged and rocky where the bedrock thrust up into the narvai-ub tunnel, when the pressure in the chamber suddenly thrummed forward. There was a deep, deafening rumble as the air popped around Thurl. Something enormous was coming down the tunnel, filling it on all sides, pressing the air downward toward him.
Thurl clicked rapidly, searching for a place to hide. He was certain a narvai-ub was boring throu
gh the pre-cut chamber, returning with a kill, maybe with more Racroft in its teeth.
At the base of the bedrock, where the stone met the clay, he found an opening, an alcove that recessed deep enough for him to escape. It was smaller than he was – shorter and thinner – but he managed to lodge his body into the gap just as he heard the snarling, growling advance of the creature shooting down the abyss.
A moment later, it was leaping over the jagged edge of the bedrock. Thurl recognized the scents, the sounds of the growls, the quick movements of the low, wide creatures. It wasn’t a narvai-ub. There were four thick-furred fegions sliding down the mud, racing away into the tunnels.
Fegions were solitary hunters. The Racroft used their multi-bladed jaw bones to slice michau meat and skin pelts and cut their crops for harvesting. They used the thick, many layered pelts for bedding. They were fairly easy to hunt, because they were solitary creatures. They could be fierce in battle, but their senses were poor and although they could outrun most prey, their wide, thick bodies made it difficult for them to turn quickly. If a Racroft stalked a fegion from behind, it was fairly easy to launch a spear at the base of their skull, where the thick pelt of layered fur was thinnest.
Thurl wondered what surface dwelling fegions were doing underground. He wondered if they’d been attracted to the smell of the michau meat he’d been dragging.
The first one leaped over the ledge. It splattered into the mud below, and shoved itself forward on its powerful legs, just as another dropped over the rocks. The second one slipped and skidded and scraped, then launched itself forward, following the first. A third yelped and stumbled over the rocks, tumbling head over tail. Thurl could smell it was injured. There was the scent of blood and exposed marrow. It bounced off the jagged edge and rolled to the ground, trying to get up; trying to turn and face the menace behind; trying to live through imminent death. But fegion were slow to turn. Their low, wide bodies and thick legs were built for running through soft snow, skimming along the surface faster than any prey. The legs were too short for running on mud, for turning quickly or changing direction.
The air thrummed through the shaft, pounding Thurl’s head, vibrating the follicles on his chest and legs with painful, rhythmic pulses.
Another fegion jumped over the ledge. It was old and sick. Thurl could smell its age, the decay in its teeth and rot on its fur. It tripped and tumbled and landed hard, facing the wrong direction, sliding backward down the shaft.
It dug its claws into the ground and halted the momentum. Then, it smelled Thurl, trapped and helpless, and the raw block of michau meat wedged in the bedrock alcove. It lowered its head and a shock of sound filled the chamber; an oscillating, vacillating sonar scream. The high-pitched waves pierced Thurl’s head, ringing through his ears and vibrating his teeth.
Thurl raised his shield, making a door to cover the nook, trying to mask the tell-tale scent; to block the air-splitting sound; trying to protect himself from the hungry, desperate fegion, and whatever horror was following it.
Thurl had brought the michau meat to use as bait for the narvai-ub, to distract it while he rescued his father. He didn’t expect to meet fegions. He didn’t know what to expect. He didn’t have a plan; not a real plan; just the delusion of a child battling a beast; just the dreams of an untested warrior spinning fantasies of glory for himself.
Ignoring the danger still thundering down the shaft, the old, sickly fegion advanced on Thurl. Soon, both of the fegion were growling – the sick one, and the injured one, still trying to turn. They snarled and opened their hideous mouths to reveal the nine rows of bladed jaws within. There was a strange whistling sound, like breath passing through a hollow reed, and then a thick clogged sound that came from the horns on the fegion head.
The air pressure was pulsing faster and warmer. Thurl could feel it pushing on his chest and his head, threatening to crush his skull. The fegion crouched low, trying to get below it.
Then, their scent died out like a shifting wind, shoved down the tunnel by some other rank odor; the reek and stench of the narvai-ub. Before the fegion could attack, the narvai-ub was rolling down the drop, filling the shaft with its blubberous weight, clogging the hole and creating a pressure that pounded inside Thurl, pressed against his eyes, his ears, his throat until he felt choked and suffocated. It shot down the bedrock, leaving a pocket of air where it didn’t fit the chamber. It opened its mouth and with the yelp and squeal of doomed prey, the fegion disappeared, swallowed in a single bite, or impaled on the teeth or the tusks and swept down the tunnel to be eaten alive.
As the narvai-ub passed, the air unplugged behind it and came rushing down the burrow, pulling swirls of muck and the scent of the briny snow from the surface. The sonic thunder that followed gave Thurl horrifying echoes, revealing the shape and size of the narvai-ub. It was a long, thick, segmented serpent covered in blades and clawed tentacles that propelled it through the tunnels and chewed through the mud. The tail was the last thing to slither over the bedrock; a weak, barbed anus trailing along behind the grotesque monster, covered in whiskers and follicles with a circle of five or six slit nostrils hungrily sniffing the air for whatever scents may be following.
Thurl waited until it was gone; until the sounds and the smells of the nightmare had swirled far enough down the shaft he felt certain the beast wouldn’t find some passage to return and find him and swallow him whole.
Quickly, he was beginning to realize that chasing the narvai-ub, trying to rescue his father, was foolish and dangerous. He began to understand, truly understand, that he may never return to the Racroft village; may never return to his brothers and sisters, his mother, Oswyn. For the first time, the terror of his endeavor struck him to his core.
His neck hurt from the pressure and the tautness of his stressed, tense, panicked muscles.
He wondered if there were more narvai-ub in the tunnel; if they cut paths into the crust that they used as common passageways. Based on the stories the Elders told, Thurl had always assumed they dug their way through the underground, creating a new tunnel each time. He wondered if any more narvai-ub would use the same tunnel; if he might meet a hungry beast returning toward the surface, lured by the scent of the cut michau meat, and his own Racroft sweat.
He pressed himself deeper into the recessed alcove, trying to comprehend how badly he’d misjudged his own heroics; how fatal his mistakes had been; how he was slowly walking toward his own death.
He cowered under the bedrock, clicking meekly, waiting for courage to raise him to his feet and push him down the tunnel, or terror to come screaming down the shaft and devour him.
Soon, he was sleeping; a restless, anxious, disturbed slumber.
In his sleep, he dreamed of Sohjos; the lessons, the lashings, the constant disapproval. All his life, he’d been an echo in the echo of his father; the Leader of the Hunt; the Leader of the Racroft. Thurl was the smallest of Sohjos’s children; the youngest; the weakest; the most immature. In public, Thurl was expected to be like his brothers; be manly and strong. When he failed, which was often, Sohjos yelled and cursed. Thurl was punished harshly. He was judged by standards he didn’t understand; wasn’t prepared to meet. They called him Runt and Child and worse, and his father let them; sometimes called him the same. But, in the safety of their hut, in the quiet village nights, his father told him stories, and sat him on his lap. He cuddled him, and kissed his head, and held him tight in his arms. His father was discipline, and anger, and manipulation, and love. All Thurl had ever been was disappointment. Even on the hunt, the first day of his adulthood, he’d been foolish and reckless and had to be saved from himself. Sohjos was right to leave him behind; to let him cower in the cave while they hunted without him.
Maybe, he dreamed, that was why he was hunting. Meisx was probably right. Sohjos was probably dead. No Racroft survived narvai-ub attacks. Still, Thurl couldn’t let his father die believing his son was such a bitter disappointment. He needed to prove to his father, to himself, to al
l Racroft, that Thurl could fight and survive; that he was an adult; that he was worthy to be called the son of Sohjos: Leader of the Hunt.
In his dream, Thurl stepped out of the echo of his father’s voice, and shrieked into the void to see if his own voice echoed back.
When it did, it was a haunting, chilling scream.
CHAPTER eleven
Thurl woke up.
He thought he had heard something. It sounded like a growl, at first; something low and predatory.
He lay completely still, listening for distance and direction.
The mud caked his body, matting his whiskers, making it impossible for him to feel currents or changes in the air. He was covered in sweat. His nostrils were filled with mucus. He could smell the perfumed michau meat and the earthiness of the mud, but little else. His sinuses were too blocked for complex aromas. So, he listened.
Nothing.
He wondered if he’d dreamed it.
He sat up. He cried. He felt sorry for himself.
Then, he ate michau meat, not because he was hungry, but because he hoped the blood and melting ice and dissolving fat would help replace the liquids he lacked.
He untethered the block of michau meat from his waist. He sniffed and clicked and grunted to make sure the passage was clear, then he stepped out of his hiding place. He shaved several handfuls of the meat off the block with his spearhead. He put them inside his chunacat cloak and tossed it over his shoulder. Then, he shoved the block inside the alcove, pushing it as far back as it would go, trying to hide the scent from whatever predator might be attracted to it; to him.
The roar came again. It was further down the tunnel, too far to be a threat; faint and weak and distant. Thurl wondered if it was the call of the narvai-ub. It was a guttural, violent, angry tone.
Orphan Tribe, Orphan Planet Page 6
