“Don’t worry,” Xala whispered. “You’re safe with me. In this hut, at least, the ones with the brains are in charge. Okay?”
“Sure,” Mills said, slipping away to his seat.
“He’s so scared of them,” Anaxis said to Xala.
“He lacks your courage,” said Xala.
“I don’t know that I’m courageous,” Anaxis said. “Maybe brazen, at best.”
“We all have our strengths and weaknesses,” Xala said, putting her book into a drawer in her desk.
“Can I borrow that book, when you’re done with it?” Anaxis asked.
“I’m afraid not, Anaxis,” Xala said. She lowered her voice and continued, “If you were found with it, we’d both be in a lot of trouble. But I’ll keep telling you all about what I learn from it, how’s that?”
“Sounds good, Xala.”
“Now go ahead and take your seat. We don’t want those bullies having any extra fuel for jealousy.”
“Understood,” Anaxis said. He took his seat next to Mills as the rest of the students filed in.
After class, Anaxis and Mills waited until the other students were long gone so that they could be undisturbed on their trek home.
“That was kind of a boring day,” Mills said as they walked.
“My mind wasn’t even there,” said Anaxis. “I was just thinking of polishing my lens all day.”
“It must have gotten pretty shiny in your imagination.”
“It really did.”
A whining noise came up on the wind, which quickly grew into a scream. Anaxis and Mills instinctually put their hands to their ears and looked up to see the Silver, a giant, shining contraption like a bird but with fixed wings and a tail of blazing fire, zip by overhead. It was gone nearly as fast as it had come.
“I forgot that was today,” Anaxis said after the Silver had passed.
“I remembered,” said Mills. “Still scares me every time.”
“You ever wish it would stop here?” asked Anaxis.
“Doesn’t it only stop to destroy things?”
“That’s how the rumors go.”
“Then, no.”
“Might shake things up.”
“Do things need shaking up?”
“Maybe. It never ceases to baffle me, how everyone just accepts that the Silver fly over our village every few weeks with this potential to annihilate us. How often does anyone really even talk about it?”
“Would that do any good?” asked Mills. “It’s from Gnirean, right? It destroyed Banoi like thirty years ago. Turned it into an ash heap. What more is there to say?”
“But that doesn’t answer anything,” said Anaxis. “Why does Gnirean care so much what we’re doing out here in the middle of nowhere? Why do they have to keep an eye on us?”
“The Silvers annihilate when they detect technology advancing too far. It’s a consistent factor in every recorded Silver annihilation over the past three thousand years. It’s one of the major theories as to why Banoi was destroyed,” said Mills. “Because they developed a shooting weapon. I mean, that’s why your parents really want you to stop messing around with inventions, isn’t it?”
“They’ve never said as much. And my parents are pretty honest with me. I don’t think they’d keep a reason like that hidden. Just, ignoring all the rumors and stories, going on what I’ve observed, all I can say is that the Silver is a highly advanced technology,” said Anaxis. “Unless one’s foolish enough to believe its supernatural.”
“There’s nothing else like it around, Anaxis. It’s inexplicable, and it has powers beyond our understanding,” said Mills. “That’s the definition of supernatural to me.”
“That’s not the actual definition of supernatural, Mills,” said Anaxis.
Mills shrugged. “I said, to me.”
“Well, I’m going to find out what that thing is one day,” said Anaxis. “It’s just a machine, I’m sure of it.”
“I’ll tell you one good thing my father always tells me, Anaxis,” said Mills. “You don’t want to look too close at a thing. It doesn’t do you any good.”
“Well, I look closely at things, Mills. That’s just how I’m built,” said Anaxis. “It wouldn’t do me any good to try and deny it. I can’t just live my entire life with those things flying around in the sky, without knowing why.”
“Alright, Anaxis. Do what you do. You want to get some more of that bread I baked this morning?”
“That would be great,” said Anaxis. “Then I’ve got some polishing to do.”
4
The villagers in Talx dressed in their ceremonial clothes and gathered for a communal feast the night before the cannar were due to arrive.
“To the Hunt!” one of the elders cried after the group prayer. He lifted his mug of grog high and howled.
The other elders howled along and raised their own mugs, which they then handed to any young ones in their families who were about to participate in their first Hunt. The passing of the grog was an important rite of passage for the young villagers, both their first taste of intoxicant and their entrance into the world of adulthood.
Anaxis gulped his father’s brew down, wiped his chin, and burped.
“That’s my boy,” his father said, slapping Anaxis on the back, eliciting another burp. “Are you ready?”
“Ready as I ever will be,” Anaxis said, running his fingers over the lens stored in the pouch around his waist.
“You’re going to do great, Anax,” Caraxis assured him. “Just stay with me. I’ll make sure we’re in prime position.”
“It’s not that complicated, really, is it?” Anaxis asked. “You just corral them and then it’s slaughter. Right?”
“That’s the biggest understatement I’ve ever heard,” said Illox. “You’ll see when we get out there. They’re smart animals. Even though they’re in the valley, you have to anticipate their movements or you’ll get trampled. And people do, every year.”
The grog took hold of Anaxis’s body, and he started to sway where he sat. “And we do this drunk?”
“It’ll wear off in the heat,” his mother said. “When the excitement takes hold, you’ll be as clear as sunshine.”
“I hope so,” Anaxis said. “Because right now I just feel sick.”
“Well then, have another one,” Caraxis laughed. “Go ahead, drink up!”
After the feast, the villagers headed out in the burgeoning twilight to the overlook above the narrow valley through which the cannar were due to pass. The beasts were huge, hairy things, with horns that wrapped around their heads and met beneath their snouts. They lumbered when calm, but picked up lightning speed when scared or angry. Thousands of them travelled together from the south, and the sight of the herd moving was one of the most impressive natural phenomenons on the planet.
“See them coming?” Illox asked her family from where they sat, up along the valley ridge. “Aren’t they magnificent?”
“So beautiful,” said her father. “We are so incredibly lucky to have such a gift from nature.”
“Is the herd the same size every year?” asked Anaxis.
“Roughly,” answered his mother. “Though there was one year, long ago, when the hunters got greedy, and ruined the Hunt for many years following. They killed so many of the beasts, so many more than they could ever use. The untouched corpses rotted in the sun. It was horrible.”
“A tragedy, in every meaning of the word,” said Anaxis’s father. “We are careful now to kill no more than what we need. Three animals per family member, that’s it.”
“And I will get all fifteen this year!” Caraxis proclaimed. “You all can sit back and watch.”
“Good luck, brother,” said Illox. “But I’m going to beat you to it!”
Anaxis was relieved at his siblings’ fervor, as he didn’t want to personally kill unless he had to. He wasn’t against it, by any means; he knew it was necessary. But he feared the look in the animal’s eye as it was struck by the spear, and th
e noises it would make dying, and what it would feel like to know he had inflicted that pain. He would make a kill someday, as he knew life fed off life, but he didn’t know if he was quite ready to do so yet. He was more than ready, however, to use his new lens, to try and make it easier for his fellow villagers to make their kills, and gain some of their respect. He anxiously awaited the chance as his family talked of Hunts past and watched the herd come nearer beneath the burning orange fade-out of the setting sun.
“Send down the scouts!” announced one of the village elders when the cannar had reached the threshold.
Ten men and women started to descend down the valley walls. They got into position behind scrub trees and rocks at the tightest squeeze point in the deepest part of the valley. As this was happening, Anaxis snuck away from his family, who were too focused to notice, and slipped down a crumbling slope to the valley floor himself. He took the lens out from his pouch and gave it one last polish with the back of his forearm just before the cannar herd passed by the first scout.
The scout ran screaming from her hiding place, shaking her spear and arms, which started the front of the herd to braying and beginning to moving faster. The second scout came from the other side, which made the beasts break from their lumbering walk into a trot. A third scout came from behind the front of the herd, which started the cannar moving faster still.
As they came nearer to where Anaxis hid, his heart started to beat wildly. He hadn’t imagined what being in front of the charging herd would feel like, the shaking of the ground beneath his feet, the terrified visages of the beasts as they ran. Trembling, he lifted his lens to the sky to try and find the last rays of the sun for reflection.
Three more scouts were goading the animals into a frenzy now. The cannar thundered through the valley toward the waiting hunters, shaking boulders and loose scree down from the walls as they moved like a terrible wave across the ground.
The first group of bowmen took aim. Anaxis was positioned between them and the cannar. He caught the light he was looking for with his lens and directed it into the eyes of a beast at the front of the herd.
The animal reared up. Those behind it did not stop their charge; they smashed into and trampled over each other. This confusion grew the herd’s charge into a stampede. Anaxis knew immediately that something was wrong.
The cannar that managed to break free of the trampling were moving with their fastest run now.
Anaxis tried to angle his lens at the animals as they came closer, to gain some sort of control over them, but he lost his courage when he saw the look of sheer panic in one of their eyes. He dropped the lens, which shattered on a rock, and started to run.
The bowmen trying to make sense of the marauding cannar noticed Anaxis coming around a sharp corner and shouted at the boy to get out of the way. But there was nowhere else for him to run save in front of the cannar, as the walls around him were too steep to flee. Some keen shooting on the part of some of the hunters brought a few of the animals down, but could do nothing to stop the rest.
The scouts and bowmen started to retreat. As they pulled out of their positions, Anaxis sped past them, running as fast as he could before the coming wall of animals. When the front of the herd was almost at his back, he tried in desperation to run up the side of the valley, but it was pointless. He tumbled back down into the crest of the stampede, where it was only through luck that he wasn’t flayed to death. Instead, he bounced off the ground and somehow managed to get hold of one of the cannars’ thick fur, which he clung onto as tightly as he could as the animal continued running at full tilt.
With his hands gripping fast the cannar’s matted fur, Anaxis was dragged along the floor of the valley, rocks and stones lacerating his back and tearing his clothes to shreds. The noise of thousands of pounding hooves was so loud that he couldn’t think.
The valley opened up again after the choke point, to scorched plain on one side and a sheer drop-off on the other. The animal Anaxis had hold of turned too late and too sharply. It skittered along the edge of the drop-off, and then fell.
Anaxis let go of its fur now as he tumbled through the air. The cannar falling around him squealed and brayed. Anaxis could see nothing but the animals for a short while. When he caught sight of the sky again, it was just for a moment, before he splashed down into water.
He saw the cannar plummeting down through the water around him in a confusion of bubbles. One of them struck a rock. Its blood was turning the water red when Anaxis himself hit bottom, head-first, and fell unconscious.
5
When Anaxis opened his eyes, there were stars overhead. He heard the rushing of water, and felt its pull on his leg. As he went to sit up, a sharp, jolting pain went through his back. He gasped and splashed back down into the water.
He struggled to sit up again, and this time managed to push through the pain and make it all the way. He winced as he looked around. He was in wide, shallow rapids. The moons and stars above were sparkling reflections in the gurgling water that ran around the bodies of the several dead cannar splayed about the river rocks.
Anaxis groaned as he stood up. He reached at the pain on his side and realized he was still bleeding from a long, deep laceration. The pain when he touched it was so great that it overrode the feeling of stinging cold, until Anaxis was able to step out of the rapids and was hit by a strong breeze.
When the gust died down and the sand settled, Anaxis studied his surroundings, shivering. He didn’t know where he was. He thought. There, in the rapids, where the dead cannar. On the banks, twisty trees grew up through gnarled bushes. In an instant, as he looked to the dark horizon, Anaxis remembered how he had gotten there. The Hunt gone awry. The stampede he had caused. Falling over the cliffside.
Ancestor Peak, the landmark which was obvious from anywhere within a fair distance of Talx, was not in sight. It occurred to Anaxis that he must have been very far from home.
“Where am I?” he asked aloud.
As the words were lost to the desert expanse, Anaxis heard the pained braying of one of the nearby cannar.
“It’s still alive,” he said.
Anaxis walked over to where the animal lay along the banks of the river and saw that the poor beast had broken all of its legs, which were bent in different, unnatural angles. The cannar’s dark, wide eyes stared at Anaxis, begging for him to help. There was nothing Anaxis could do, though, and so he turned and started away to escape the desperation in the animal’s eyes.
The cannar cried loudly as Anaxis left it. Anaxis stopped and looked back. He couldn’t let the animal suffer. He couldn’t heal it either. It was surely beyond healing, even from the village doctor. No, Anaxis had to put the cannar out of its misery, somehow. The thought made his stomach turn.
He walked back over to the animal, which was fighting to lift its head from the water. It would fail, inevitably, with every effort, and start to drown until it could manage to lift its head again.
Anaxis looked around for how he might kill it. The spear which had been on his back was long gone, lost when he was dragged across the valley floor in the stampede. There was a pile of rocks, though, the only implement that might work. Anaxis hadn’t even had the nerve to spear one of the animals from afar, and now he had to bash one, from up-close. He tried not to think about it as he found the largest rock he could manage to pick up.
He seized the rock and lifted it over his head, which tore open the cut on his side as his muscles flexed. With new blood flowing, Anaxis carried the rock over to the dying cannar. He looked up to see the rock haloed by moonlight, then brought it down, as hard as he could. He missed the animal’s head, though, and struck his own toe instead. He dropped the rock and screamed, his voice like a wailing wind bouncing around the landscape and silencing the chirping of the cerxils.
“Shit!” he roared. “Shit, shit, shit, shit!” He staggered back onto the banks of the river and fell down.
He pulled his boot off, which was painful enough, to find that
he had busted his toenail free from his toe. Blood was flowing out of the mangle, though not as much as he had imagined there to be before he took his boot off. He dipped his bloodied toe into the stream, cursing a new storm at the bite of icy water flowing into the wound, then pulled his boot back on, painfully, to keep sand from getting into the wound.
The poor cannar was still howling. Anaxis, now urged on by anger, splashed back through the water to the rock he had dropped. He lifted it up again, and channeled his pain and rage straight down onto the head of the wounded beast. He didn’t wait to check to see if he had been successful; he lifted the rock quickly up and brought it down again. There was a loud, cracking noise, and the animal stopped its twitching.
Anaxis didn’t lift the rock from the crushed head of the cannar. He lowered his face and whimpered as some tears flowed, then wiped them away with the back of his hand and staggered out of the river. He knew he had done what was right in killing the beast, but also knew he had wasted its life and many others with his foolish actions.
Looking up at the sky again, Anaxis found the Guide Star, at the end of Wran’s Arrow, and started limping in its direction. The Guide Star had led his people home since before written records. He knew it would do the same for him, if he could manage to make the journey with his broken toe and the intensifying pain at his side.
For some time, Anaxis knew not how much, he walked along in reflective silence. In all his forty-five years, he had never been in such damaged physical shape. It hurt, terribly, but at the same time, it was almost exciting. Anaxis was as far away from home as he had ever been, completely out of his element, but there were no bullies to contend with, no expectations from his family. They would be waiting when he got back, surely, and he would have to answer for the stampede he had caused, which would probably mean more harassment than he’d ever had to endure. But for the moment, he was free, in his pain and solitude. He started to hum as he moved stutteringly over the rocks that turned to pebbles then back to desert sand.
Legend of Alm -The Valor Saga Pt 1 - Falling Star Page 3
