by Archer Swift
***
We made the distance in about fifteen minutes. I felt I was pushing the pace, and was annoyed—admitting to myself that my refusal to buckle to Dixan’s request was due to the anger festering in me from this morning’s drama. We were twenty strides from the hole when we realised we had caught something … something had fallen in. The covering foliage was sunken, although there was no evidence of any tracks leading into the pit.
“A fleet-footed Hog?” joked Dixan; he could hardly contain his excitement. “With fairy feet?”
“Easy now,” I said as we approached carefully. “Shh.”
“What? Why?” His eyes widened with a blink of uncertainty.
I put my finger to my mouth to quieten him and strained hard to hear if there were any sounds emanating from the hole. A Hog usually made an ear-torturing racket. Not only did it have a short, curled tail like a pig; it squealed like one, too. Since there was no noise from the hole, I could only imagine it was dead, skewered on the spikes at the bottom.
“A very dead fleet-footed Hog,” mouthed Dixan as we both inched forward towards the trap.
Then we heard it, a shuffle from the hole. I stopped abruptly, catching Dixan, who wanted to rush in to see what we had snared. “Slowly,” I whispered, “we don’t know what’s down there.”
Dixan glanced at me sideways with anxious, questioning eyes. “Bro, do you think we’ve caught a Sabre or two?” he teased, a nervy smile crawling on his face. It quickly disappeared, giving way to a tense, taut frown. “What else could fall and make a gap in the foliage like that?” A smaller creature would not have disturbed the covering foliage as much; a bigger creature would be visible in the relatively shallow stride-and-a-half-deep hole.
“Well, until we’re sure … we don’t take any risks,” I said, and then forced a smile. “See, I’ve learnt from that hole I tumbled into.”
Dixan relaxed perceptibly and grinned from ear to ear. “And I’m never going to let you forget it, bro.”
“Clearly, you—” My sentence was cut off at the root. We both heard the rustle from the hole again; this time, a sound that seemed to be the result of a definite and deliberate action. Dixan stiffened. I mastered my own fear, and tried to enthuse him with a look of confidence. I motioned towards the trap and inched slowly forwards. With an arrow charged on my bow, I came within five strides of the pit. Dixan dragged himself a stride behind me.
I could now just espy the crown of the creature’s black, hairy head. From what I could see, it was definitely not a Hog.
“What, what is it?” I could hear a deluge of fear in Dixan’s trembling voice, but curiosity egged him on. I too was spiked with interest, but I knew a beast of some sort was suffering in that hole, and I had to put it out of its misery, whatever it was.
I hate when creatures suffer needless—
In one step, that sentiment changed. Completely. Taking one pace closer, I saw what it was. Dixan saw it a second later and froze in terror, paralysed with dread.
It certainly wasn’t a Hog. It wasn’t a creature we hunted at all.
It was a creature that hunted us.
It was one of them.
