“Iassa,” Thurl said quietly. “Would you mind hobbling Meisx for us? I don’t want him to run and hide while his hunt team fights his battle for him.”
Iassa stepped through the tunnel. She loaded her bow with a spear dipped in fire and shot it directly at Meisx. It struck his knee and stuck. Meisx dropped, screaming in agony. The confusion of the quick and silent attack was the hesitation Hartenir needed.
He swung his legs beneath himself, sweeping one of his captors feet. The young, inexperienced Racroft hit the ground and exhaled a loud grunt. That sound was all sons of Sohjos needed.
Tsirc and Skaen popped up from their trenches under the snow. They thrust their shields at the hunt team, knocking two of them to the ground. Zam, Tsuaf and Wohsel scrambled over their hillock, launching arrows toward them, skirting around the hunt team, trying to surround them and push them closer to the narvai-ub hole. Thurl climbed up the slope of the tunnel and emerged from the hole, clicking and grunting to survey the battlefield.
Hartenir pressed his head against the body of the fallen hunt team member and shoved as hard has his thick legs could push. The warrior slid on the surface of the snow and Hartenir aimed for the pit. The warrior tipped over the edge and rolled down the bank into the wet mud at the bottom. As soon as he hit the bottom, Alfor and Agrinna grabbed him and dragged him deeper into the tunnel.
Meisx was kneeling, holding his knee and screaming orders.
“What are you waiting for?” Meisx barked. “Get down there! Don’t come back without their heads!”
He grabbed the warrior to his left and tossed him down into the pit, shouting curses, commands and insults.
As Iassa scaled the snow bank and emerged from the tunnel into the bitter wind of the battle field, Alfor and Agrinna tied up the fallen warrior with thin vines, and gagged him with large, soft plaka seeds.
The other warriors were clicking and grunting, holding their shields before them and thrusting their spears at every echo that came back.
Zam, Tsuaf and Wohsel launched a volley of arrows. They hit shields, of course, as expected, but the fire on the tips of their small spears ran down the tranik vine shields and spread quickly until the shields were too warm for the warriors to continue holding. They dropped them in agony, flailing their arms, trying to dry the fire they could only guess was some kind of painfully warm liquid.
Skaen threw his shield into the snow on the top of the hillock and jumped on. He slid down the steep incline, swinging a thick deilla stalk at every shape that pressed the air, knocking the warriors to the ground, where they were attacked by Tsirc and Thurl.
Iassa grabbed a shield from a disoriented warrior and slammed the edge of it into his ankles. He fell backward onto the shield and she shoved it down an embankment. The shield slid on the crust of the permafrost, carrying the warrior to the edge of the pit. When the sled stopped, he tried to stand, but he already too near the edge and he slipped down into the reeking maw.
Iassa ran to a pile of dried roots piled inside a tuft of bristlewind. She took two stones out of the small pack she wore on her hip, and struck them together. The bristlewind crackled and became engulfed in fire. In moments, a crackling whoosh echoed across the field, and a wall of fire rose in a giant circle around the battlefield, trapping the warriors within.
Panic set in among the new warriors. They only had a few weeks training for a mission that was not going as they’d been promised. Suddenly, they were confronted with an ambush and fast, unexpected weaponry, and some kind of itching, warm liquid sorcery. They warned one another to fight quietly; to stifle their screams; that the smell of the blood on the snow was alerting fegion and chantimer and narvai-ub that they were vulnerable.
Skaen slammed his shield into the back of a distracted warrior. He pushed the warrior toward the hole and let the him fall. Tsirc threw a cold and useless warming rock at one of Meisx’s chosen and hit him hard in the chest. The warrior dropped, stunned and confused. Tsirc grabbed him by the ankles and dragged him to the pit, tossing him inside.
Meisx kneeled on the edge, shouting orders, clicking and grunting and holding his knee where the arrow protruded. He bled and ached and screamed and demanded, but made no heroic moves to help with the battle.
One by one, the sons of Sohjos confused and defeated the new warriors, using battle tactics the Racroft had never dreamed; using weapons they’d never considered. The Racroft had only ever hunted game; only had to fight the occasional fegion or escape the beak of an odd chantimer. They were wholly unprepared, culturally, militarily, for the type of fight Thurl and his brothers were giving them.
Soon, the army of thirty Racroft had dwindled to twenty one, then eighteen. By the time Agrof and Oadil – Thurl’s sisters – arrived to help fight, there were only ten warriors left.
Agrof wrapped her fingers through the long follicles on a warrior’s chest. He thrust his spear at her, but she could feel it cutting the air before it reached her flesh. She stepped aside, and used his momentum against him, grabbing his arm and twisting her leg to entangle between his, then pulling until his weight carried him forward into the snow. Agrof put her wide foot in the small of his back and kicked hard. He tumbled down the embankment into the pit and was met by Agrinna and a mouthful of plaka seeds.
Thurl wrapped a warrior’s legs together with thin, stringy roots and dragged him to the pit. He dumped the terrified young Racroft over the edge, where the screams slid down the snow drift and into the mud.
One by one, the new warriors were gathered in the narvai-ub pit, screeching and wailing in terror as they fell. The pandemonium was thick with echoes and scents, creating a disorienting battle field.
Finally, when there were no warriors left, Thurl stood above Meisx. His whiskers bristled so fiercely there was an aura of hum surrounding him. He panted, out of breath from the battle, but ready to finish the fight.
Meisx, the self-appointed new Leader of the Hunt, fell silent and dropped his head.
The entire hunt team was in the mud below, tied and gagged; incapacitated, but alive. Only Meisx remained, and he knew he’d been beaten.
“Kill me quickly,” he growled between soft grunts. “Or leave me out here to die.”
“I’m not going to kill you, Meisx” Thurl said.
“Of course you’re not,” Meisx whined. “Because you’re weak. This is why you’re unfit to be Leader of the Hunt, Thurl. You don’t even know when you’ve won the battle.”
“None of you are going to die today,” Thurl continued, ignoring Meisx’s taunts. “If my siblings and I let you and your hunt team die, who would we be murdering? Our neighbors; the sons of friends; the mates of sisters. We don’t want to be enemies, Meisx. We don’t need to be.”
Meisx rolled his head back and laughed; long and loud and manic.
Slowly, he stood up, still wincing at the pain in his injured leg, and towered over Thurl; taller and stronger. Thurl waited for him to grunt, or click, or speak. Instead, Meisx launched himself, pushing with his uninjured leg and hitting Thurl with his full weight in the chest. Thurl didn’t budge. He didn’t slide in the snow, he didn’t waver in the wind, he didn’t roll with the impact. He stood, strong and immovable, just on the edge of the narvai-ub pit.
Meisx staggered with the blow of the impact. He stumbled backward and fell into the snow, sliding toward the pit. He grasped at the ground, kicking his feet to find purchase before he joined his fellow warriors below. Somehow, he rose to his feet. Thurl remained silent and unyielding.
Then, Meisx turned and ran, limping slightly on his injured knee, but tearing across the bristlewind field. He plunged into the wall of fire, stumbling over the thick vines that fueled the flames, and screaming in surprise as the pain of the clinging liquid.
Thurl stayed at the edge of the pit. His brothers stood in the field, clicking and grunting, tracking the path Meisx took.
“Where does he think he’s going?” Zam asked.
“He thinks he’s going to the village to wa
rn the Elders,” said Thurl. “The battle isn’t over. It’s only begun.”
The scent of the sea was getting stronger as the tide rolled back in, signaling morning for the Racroft. The wind got stronger, and the ring of fire cooled. Soon, it would disappear, leaving only ash on the wind and an unknown scent in the air.
Iassa stood beside Thurl and put her hand in his.
“Now the real battle begins,” she said.
CHAPTER forty-three
In all, there were thirty six warriors Meisx had recruited to hunt down Iassa and Thurl. They had been defeated by the fourteen children of Sohjos. They were poorly trained, and fueled with lies and the angry vitriol of Meisx’s rabble rousing speeches. But, for the most part, they weren’t bad Racroft. They were simply young, and had been misled.
In the pit of the narvai-ub tunnel, the young warriors were exhausted and defeated and confused. The scent of the mud and the heat of the breezeless chamber and the smells of the beasts below the crust scared them more than anything Thurl could say. So, Thurl simply told them they were going home.
“Meisx has been defeated,” he said. “My family will move back into our home in the central dais. As the youngest son of Sohjos, I will assume responsibility of the Leader of the Hunt.”
“You’re just going to take over as Leader?” Scoffed a young warrior. “Who will follow you?”
“Any Racroft who disagrees is free to go,” Thurl offered. “I’ll cut your bonds now and you can return home. But, I’m not letting anyone who won’t follow me exit this pit the way you entered. If you think you’re better than me; can do a better job; would be a better Leader, you can exit through the narvai-ub tunnel, the way I did, and if you can find your way back out again, alive, the way I did, you can go home and tell everyone you are a better match for Leader of the Hunt, and maybe I’ll even agree with you.”
The warriors sat, silently. None of them moved toward the depths of the tunnel.
“Nobody wants my experience?” Thurl asked, taunting. “In that case, I recommend you all stand. We have a long journey ahead of us.”
“Where are we going?” Asked one of the youth.
“To the Valley of Corpses,” Thurl answered. “You left our village to go on a hunt. So, let’s go hunting.”
They spent the rest of the morning marching.
“Most of you have never been to the Valley of Corpses,” Thurl told them as they stood at the entrance to the valley, spread out before the mouth of the cave where all the hunt teams camped and stored their supplies. “This is not how the Valley of Corpses was the last time a hunt team was here. It was soft and flat and easy to navigate. There were michau roaming the plains. There were signie roosk and chunacat and lutzwock everywhere. The prey was plentiful and comfortable and slow. The terrain was simple; rolling plains and grazing fields. Experience what it has since become.”
The Racroft warriors clicked and grunted and the echoes that came back chilled them. There was no wildlife; just a few scavengers picking clean the bones that remained from the murderous avalanche. A swarm of vutchels flew in wide circles over the valley, searching for the scent of blood that would lead them to a carcass. There were huge, powdery drifts and looming banks of snow; giant boulders resting against unstable rocks; chasms and sinkholes and mazes of stone, and tangles of uprooted ancient trees. The winds blew down into the valley and scattered in a thousand directions, cutting through the new peaks, twisting into deep ravines, spinning and whirling into debris filled vortexes, then spitting stones and bones and ice shards in every imaginable direction. A mountain peak, off in the distance, creaked and groaned as the winds pounded against it. Another avalanche was coming soon. The snow smell broken and restless and soft.
“How do you hunt on ground like that?” Asked one of the young warriors.
“You don’t,” another answered.
As the eldest of Sohjos children, Muxil had been on many hunts, and he was terrified by what the Valley of Corpses had become.
“This is going to change everything for the Racroft, Thurl,” he said. “Without our hunting grounds, we could starve. The entire village is at risk.”
Thurl let them all stand at the mouth of the Valley. He didn’t say anything. He let the conversation happen freely.
“Does Meisx know about this?” One of them asked.
“Even if he does,” said another, “What can he do about it?”
“Meisx is a great warrior,” answered one of the young recruits, but his voice wavered when he said it.
“He couldn’t even defeat the fourteen sons of Sohjos,” whispered a warrior.
“And four of them were women,” someone added.
They hunt team was beginning to get angry.
“Did he even fight?” One accused.
“I saw him kneeling in the snow, shouting orders,” said another.
“He had a spear in his knee. He was injured.”
“He didn’t sound injured when he ran, after we were all defeated.”
“Did anyone see Meisx actually fighting?”
“Meisx is a great warrior!” Growled a seething young recruit. “He’s greater than Sohjos!”
“How do you know?” Asked another.
“He told us,” said the angry Racroft.
“Exactly,” answered the first. “He told us. But none of us have ever actually seen him prove it.”
“Nobody has seen Thurl prove his story, either,” the scoffing recruit shouted.
Suddenly, as they spoke, a strong wind blew at their backs and screamed through the gorge into the valley. It tore at the jagged stones and whipped itself into a vortex. The newly formed vortex ripped across the landscape, shifting boulders and pressing soft snow into hard packs and throwing sharp shards of ice at whistling speed until they embedded themselves into solid rock. The vortex finally tore itself apart and escaped down the valley as a gentle breeze.
The new warriors were silent for a long time.
Finally, one of the young warriors said what they were all thinking: “Meisx isn’t fit to be Leader of the Hunt. But, I don’t know of any Racroft who is.”
A spear, crudely made and tipped with a misshapen shattered stone, launched from behind a giant boulder off to the right of the warriors. It struck Thurl in the shoulder where he stood among them. Thurl reeled with the impact and cried out in pain and surprise.
The warriors clicked and grunted in the direction of the boulder, hunting for the attacker.
Meisx stepped out from behind, running across the snow toward them. He was shouting something none of them could hear; some whooping, wailing war cry, and swinging another crude spear over his head.
The poorly made stone tip of the spear had lacerated Thurl’s arm and shoulder, but hadn’t stuck or broken through. He was bleeding badly, but got to his feet and braced himself for Meisx’s attack. He strolled forward, in front of the warriors, to face Meisx alone and unafraid. He grabbed his spear and lowered his stance, letting the blood spurt down his arm and plaster the follicles to his hide. Iassa pushed through the crowd of warriors and drew her bow. Thurl stuck out his hand and pushed it away. His fight with Meisx was his alone to win or lose.
Meisx suddenly stopped. They could hear his clicks bouncing through the valley, but whatever echoes they revealed to Meisx were lost on the young warriors and Thurl. Meisx lowered his spear and tucked it under his arm, pushed his head forward and grunted the same low, menacing growl they used when hunting michau.
“What is he doing?” Thurl asked aloud.
Then he could hear it. The air shattered with piercing, mind-splitting sonar shrieks; not one, but dozens, all screaming at once with vacillating waves that blotted the senses and drove the young warriors to their knees. They grasped their ears, closing the flaps to block the horrific sound. They cowered and clicked, hunting for echoes to tell them what was coming, but the screeching whoop and wail of the waves caulked the winds and clogged their minds.
Thurl stood tall, suffering throug
h the ear-splitting sounds, grunting low to get low level echoes. In the distance, Meisx was spinning with fear, clicking in every direction.
Then, howling into the violent winds, snarling and drooling and galloping with intense speed, a pack of ravaged fegions descended a high snow bank where they’d been hiding among the ice reeds.
When their scent caught the air, Meisx turned and ran. He returned to his boulder, shouting for help, panicked and frenzied and frantic for shelter. He scaled the boulder, trying to get away, hoping the fegions couldn’t jump or climb, hoping they would go away.
The fegions surrounded Meisx – ten, twenty, thirty beasts – panting and huffing and growling with ravenous desperation; screaming their crashing sonar waves in a cacophany of looming death.
Meisx was trapped on all sides, unable to flee. He screamed for help, and shouted with anger and rage and terror. His sounds where obliterated by the winds and the waves of fegion shrieks.
Fegion were solitary hunters, traveling alone and attacking upwind of their prey. They only attacked Racroft when they were desperate and starving. Meisx had killed fegion before. He knew their weaknesses; knew their traits. But, this group was hunting in a pack, each facing a different direction. Their weaknesses – poor senses, frontal attacks, wide bodies with slow turn radiuses – were suddenly eliminated in a group. In the weeks since the avalanche, they’d been forced to adapt; to hunt in packs to survive at all.
Meisx stood on his boulder in the center of their circle, spitting feeble curses as they lunged toward him. A low flying vutchel added to the distraction. When a snarling fegion snapped at the scavenger, Meisx slammed his crude spear into the base of its neck. The spear broke, not able to penetrate the thick fur or the fegion hide.
Annoyed, the fegion turned toward Meisx, now unarmed, outnumbered and completely alone. Together, as a pack, the fegions lowered their heads. They opened their mouths filled with rows of sharp, gnashing, bladed jaws. Among the coats of thick fur, they exposed the hollow antlers above their ears. They gasped, then tensed, then produced a thick sound, then unclogged their hollow antlers and blasted Meisx with a thick, steaming mucus.
Orphan Tribe, Orphan Planet Page 21
