The Battle for Tomorrow (Ilon the Hunter)

by Frederick Bell

  “I wonder how you cannot.”

  “Perhaps I am the one who has changed,” she admitted reluctantly. “My fear is that I will be this way from now on.”

  Enough time had passed for Gangahar to feel more confident about his next words. “Your food stays down,” he observed.

  “Barely. If I have to eat this slowly then I will starve to death before I ever get my fill.”

  “Maybe the next animal we stalk will be tastier.”

  “It is not the animal. Rather, I crave . . . It is a craving for a taste that . . .” The image before her seemed to defy explanation. “I cannot describe it.”

  “Try,” he said simply as he sank back against his tail.

  “Something first must be done to the meat.”

  “What? What must be done?”

  “Something.” Horhon scratched behind her big ears, thinking, until it finally came to her. “Changed. Yes, that is it. It must be changed.” But it was not an easy thing to describe. Somehow she could picture it clearly in her mind and knew how it was done, yet the words were difficult. “Do you remember that day when the sky set fire to the field?”

  How could he forget about that? This past summer was an especially dry one. It had not rained at all; the grass was brown and crackled wherever the hunters jumped. One day while hunting they saw the dark storm clouds coming up, heard the rumbling of approaching thunder. They left for home immediately, yet before long the storm overtook them, and as they fled bolts of lightning thundered down. Aided by the fierce wind the flames whipped up higher and higher; the air was smoke-filled and hot. The fire spread so quickly they were trapped on all sides with no way out. Two hunters burned to death—it was terrible! The memory of that day still caused him to wince in pain.

  “We were lucky to have escaped it.”

  “We were—and that is why you must remember what fire can do.”

  “Fire,” Gangahar repeated uneasily. “So this fire will help you to eat? How?”

  How indeed, for in its explanation were descriptions that even Horhon herself could not entirely comprehend. “I understand only that it must be used to change the meat.”

  “And where will you get fire?”

  Now she found herself thinking about something she had never done before, and oddly, it seemed so simple, so straightforward, that the answer came to her immediately. “I can make fire.”

  Gangahar snorted. Few Egris had ever seen fire, and he had no great wish to see it ever again. “What you have described is impossible to make. Since no other hunter possesses the fire’s knowledge, how is it that only you, Horhon, can do this thing?”

  Obviously he didn’t believe her. Yet could she believe it herself—especially when she had never made fire? With all these thoughts in her head it was hard to tell which was real and which was imaginary, but she had to try. “To prove what I say is the truth I will show you. But first a fire must have something to eat. It must have food. That is what we must seek out and find.”

  “We are in the middle of a desert where nothing grows.”

  “Not true. Last night we passed such a place. Of course that would mean doubling back. Or instead we might try going forward and maybe we will find another spot. What do you think?”

  “I think we should go back—and keep going and don’t stop until we reach our forest again.”

  “Do that and we will certainly die.”

  “We will all die out here anyway if we go on. So why not risk going back?”

  “Leave if you must, it is your decision, but I go only as far back to last night.”

  Growling unhappily, Gangahar could see no advantage to abandoning her now, and so he decided to stay with her even despite what he feared the outcome would be.

  After traveling all night the three hunters dug out a place to sleep and rested until nightfall. With the hot sun gone and only the bright stars to guide them they came upon yesterday’s track and followed it to its source. They found a natural spring where the water percolated up from deep underground. Some small trees and bushes ringed its muddy banks; animal tracks ran off in every direction.

  “Find us something to eat,” Horhon told them both.

  Up on the hill, out of water’s reach the outermost ring of trees were mostly dead. Using her tail to crack off some of the dead wood she collected the broken pieces then threw them into a pile on the sand. Only a short time passed when Gangahar returned with food. It was still wriggling in his mouth and so he bit down hard then dropped the limp thing at Horhon’s feet.

  “Another tarser,” she frowned. “Is this all you could find?”

  “It is fatter than the last one,” Gangahar said, irritated. He then watched as she crouched low and started working with her hands. Little of what she did made any sense to him, nor was he especially interested. However Antayak bent over and nudged the carefully arranged bits of wood with his snout.

  “Stop that,” Horhon scolded. “Can’t you see I’m busy?”

  “Doing what?” Gangahar asked bluntly. “All I see are sticks—and why do you rub them together that way?” He could have laughed because it was so ridiculous, to watch her supposedly making fire. “Lately, everything you do is a puzzle to me.”

  It worried her too. So much had happened since waking that first day in her burrow. She was no longer the same Horhon; she was changed. Now she saw things, images that were so haunting, so strange, she was sure that these were the thoughts of someone else. Whatever its source, one day soon she would be forced to reckon her own thoughts or she might lose herself forever.

  Had Gangahar not seen it with his own eyes he would have never believed it. At first there was a single speck of light beneath her hands, then a second point began to grow out of the darkness, glowing even more intensely as Horhon leaned forward and blew onto the mound. Then Gangahar noticed a gray wisp of smoke curl up through the center, watching as the first spark burned beneath the twigs. Then flame.

  “Fire!” he gasped, scarcely able to contain his astonishment. “You made fire!”

  Of course she had. It wasn’t much of a start but it was enough. The flames came up steadily as she piled on more wood, until the fire roared and was hot on her face.

  Gangahar honestly didn’t know what to make of her newfound ability, only knowing that he didn’t like it at all. The fire both frightened and excited him, though when he overcame his initial shock and could speak at last his fear was such that he said, “Is it dangerous? Should we be so close?”

  “You are afraid of it?”

  “Yes,” he admitted honestly, and then said, “It is a thing of destruction. I feel we should let it die before it grows and eats more than you give it now.”

  To her it all seemed so harmless, so ordinary and perfectly natural, as though she had always done it this way. To alleviate his fear she explained the procedure at great length, even demonstrated her skill with the sticks, yet when she finished she could see by his blank expression that the meaning of her words was completely lost on him.

  “You just don’t understand.”

  “Do you?”

  Stirring the fire with a stick Horhon sat peacefully, watching as the bright sparks swirled up and vanished among the stars. She stretched back on her tail and yawned. Now was the time to eat.

  “Antayak, go get me some more wood,” she ordered. She held up a branch then pointed toward the dead tree. “More wood. Understand?”

  He didn’t, so Gangahar volunteered to go instead. “I’ll do it.” He moved off into the shadows. When he soon returned with an armload of fresh wood, Horhon had already torn off a limb from the carcass and was holding it over of the fire. While the tarser’s flesh cooked, hot meat juices dripped down, sizzling onto the bed of red-hot coals. Its foul stench made him cough, and his eyes watered immensely. Up until this point her strange behavior had completely mystified him, but this was clearly the most outrageous thing he had ever seen her do yet.

  “What is it that you do to that black thing?�
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  “It must be thoroughly burned,” she replied frankly, and then added, “If I am to eat it.”

  His eyes bulged. “You are going to eat . . . that?”

  “I am.”

  In horror he watched as she now closed her teeth around it. Grimacing, he asked, “How does it taste?”

  “Better,” she mumbled, not knowing why but swallowing it anyway.

  Even Antayak was perplexed, sniffing the black lump of flesh and making a face that caused both hunters to burst out laughing.

  “Burnt flesh.” Gangahar shivered, watching with renewed disgust and revulsion as she snapped off another fore limb and gnawed contentedly on its cooked remains. “Looks terrible.” He poked at the steaming meat pile with his clawed finger and put the tiniest piece between his teeth. And spat it out immediately. “Tastes even worse. Now I will be the one who throws up.”

  Half-chewing, half-swallowing, Horhon looked over and said, “I crave it, that is all.”

  “You say things and do things that make no sense. You are pregnant and it makes no sense. I have thought of this over and over and none of it makes any sense.”

  “Is it so important that you know the reason why?”

  “Why? Why?” Gangahar was indignant. “You are too quick to attack the meaning of my words. I am concerned.” He was. It was no coincidence. He knew, just as Horhon did too, that all these strange events were somehow connected.

  In the fire’s flickering light, Horhon’s face had a forbidding expression. “Do not be concerned for me, Gangahar. Be afraid. Be very afraid for our people,” she warned, the tone of her voice rising dramatically. “I have seen the Iranha in my dreams and know what they will do to us. Thousands will die. Tens of thousands!”

  He was paralyzed with fear, her words of doom closing in around him like a predator’s jaws. He stared at her with widened eyes, whispered, “That is knowledge you should not have.”

  “Or asked for,” she replied quietly.

  “Tell me, will the Iranha attack us tonight? What about tomorrow? Where are they now?”

  “I don’t know,” she admitted. “Understand that I cannot control what I see, but I feel we are safe so long as we keep moving. I know that if we stay out here in the open we are targets for killing. The Iranha are always hunting.”

  “How can we go on when there is defeat in the very future that we look toward for hope?” Gangahar said dismally. “You see death for all of us.”

  “It is wrong to think like that. Yaryar believed the Iranha were no threat to us—and died. Those who believe as he did will die too. We must think instead what we can do to stop this from happening. Now it is to be our task to bring this news to all hunters, to spread the message to everyone we see.”

  “It is a big world,” he said skeptically.

  “And there is little time. Our future is coming.”

  With daylight approaching they had to hurry. Horhon led the way, Antayak and Gangahar following swiftly at her side. As the day progressed the warmth of the sun grew, and when it rose high and was hot on their backs they stopped beside a dune and dug into its bank to sleep until the evening. When they awoke the night was clear; the stars were easy to follow, yet the forest was no closer. They went on, knowing that what lay ahead was exactly what they left behind—just more desert.

  Days passed by and still there was no forest in sight; the arid plain was empty and endless. The hunting was sparse, the water even more scarce. Once when they found a dried-up watercourse they followed its length for the entire night and found no outlet. And no water. This was no longer a journey but an expedition into the unknown, one that the hunters now worried would never end.

  It was the start of another long night and the first thing Gangahar needed to do was search for water. Two solid days without anything to drink made this expedition particularly important since it was either find water tonight or go back, these were their only choices. He and Antayak set off together just as the sun was setting, but by the time Horhon climbed out of her burrow and brushed off the sand they were long gone.

  Strange. This morning she had felt like eating raw flesh again but now her stomach was unsettled and she retched up the remains. While it frustrated her to be this sick she was determined to not let it keep her from getting off this accursed desert. With the other hunters already searching for water she decided to scout on ahead by herself.

  At sunrise the next morning Horhon was returning to the same spot where they had spent the day before. Gangahar and Antayak still had not returned. She was not alarmed, only worried that there was no water to be found. The sun was streaking up and in every direction they were not to be seen. They might be back soon. Nevertheless now she was tired of waiting for them and so she dug back into the hill and went to sleep.

  Sometime during the day Horhon opened her eyes. She heard the sound of footsteps and guessed the others were now returning. But when she poked her snout through the sand and peered outside she saw the face of a stranger looking in at her.

  “Greetings hunter, I am Krugjon. And you,” he grinned toothily. “What is your name?”

  “I . . . I am Horhon, a hunter for trod Yaryar. Or, was,” she lamented, now remembering. Once she pushed through the sand and emerged from her hiding place she was surprised to see two youngsters standing nearby. The youngest, his oversized ears twitching nervously, was probably on his first expedition in the desert.

  No one moved. For a tense moment all four were rigidly silent. Horhon looked at them, they at her. Then Krugjon scarcely nodded, a gesture that brought the other two jumping forward without delay. He placed his hand on the shoulder of the nearest.

  “This is Ilistruk, my oldest. She is a good hunter but she wastes too much time pursuing her male companions.” The color of her hide changed slightly though Ilistruk managed to growl out a greeting without further embarrassment from her father. “And this small one is Yahu. He still has many things to learn.”

  No older than Antayak, Horhon thought. The memory of him suddenly stirred within her and she wondered where he and Gangahar might be now. “And your burrow mate?” she asked distractedly. “Where is she?”

  “Their mother . . .” Krugjon’s voice broke off and there was a long silence before he finished. “Dead. She went hunting and never returned. So we did not stay.” He pointed up the slope. “We were crossing this dune, saw your tracks.”

  Although it was fortuitous, their meeting this far out in the desert, Horhon was sure she had met him before, somewhere. “Your face, Krugjon, so familiar. We must have met.”

  He shook his head no. “I don’t think so. But tell me, where do you come from?”

  “The Olahn territory.”

  “Then I must say no for certain. That is a far distance from here. Once I hunted north beyond the desert, but that was a very long time ago. Perhaps you confuse me with someone else.”

  “Perhaps.”

  Ilistruk then growled at her father and he listened momentarily before turning his gaze back to Horhon. “She wishes to know if there are other hunters who look like you.”

  Lifting up her arms Horhon slowly rolled them over and sighed unhappily. Except for a few dark blotches now her skin was completely white. How strange it was to not even know if this was even the end of it. “No,” she responded. “I am the only hunter who looks like this.”

  “Do you travel the desert alone, Horhon? Are you lost?”

  “Not alone. We are three, the last, the only survivors.” Then she grimly added, “The others were killed.”

  This was indeed disquieting news that caused Krugjon’s mouth to gape wide open. “The rest of your trod dead, wiped out. Everyone?” When told that they were, he moaned, “What happened?”

  “The Iranha,” she growled, hatred and loathing in every breath and movement of her body.

  “What are the Iranha?” he asked naively.

  She gaped, her blue eyes bulging in their sockets. “Don’t you know?”

  “No, t
ell me.”

  “The Iranha. Killer Iranha. The ones from the sky, the ones who butchered our hunters.”

  What Krugjon then heard was so frightening that he was forced to send his children away out of earshot. Of all his deepest fears none now compared with the Iranha. Everything about them was disturbing and unnatural, evil. These were creatures that hunted the hunters—and not for food—but something even more grisly.

  “Our skins! They steal our skins!” He was aghast. “Why do they do that?”

  Horhon simply shrugged. “They are not of this world.”

  “Then they must be hunted down, these Iranha. Wiped out.”

  “Not likely.” She was appalled by how little he knew, though moderated her comment so that he would not be offended by the strength of her rebuke. “Obviously we both want the same thing, to see every Iranha dead. However you must know that no one has lived to tell us how this might be accomplished.”

  “If they behave like any animal then they can be killed like any animal.”

  “No, they can’t be killed that way.”

  “What other way can there be?” He expected her to elaborate further, yet he saw the firmness of her expression and knew that he would have to speak again. “They are that dangerous?”

  She frowned angrily. “Infinitely worse. The Iranha are not hunters like us. They possess knowledge we do not have, kill with weapons we do not understand. We do not even know how to kill them, or if they can be killed.”

  It was a gloomy assessment. Krugjon looked away from her, wanting to hear no more, yet even as he was turning about she came around to face him.

  “My trod died, perhaps yours is now dead. Even your mate. The Iranha might have captured her too.”

  “Please—not like that!” His shock and bewilderment was such that it took extraordinary effort just for him to continue. “To see my beautiful Mako skinned—no! No, that is a death too horrible to imagine.”

  Evidently Horhon was not finished yet. As she told him more it was as if the entire future ended on her last word. He was astonished and dismayed, shaken. It seemed that the future she painted was very certain indeed.