by Garry Ocean
“Sith!” Whisperer went pale. “He is there! I can feel him. Just as Ron and Valu, they are there as well!”
“Who? Where? How?” Nick didn’t understand anything.
The beast’s roar was mixed with the crowd’s noises. It seemed that the animal and people were trying to outdo each other in shouting. Whisperer was saying something to Nick, but he could only read his lips. It was impossible to hear anything. Then Whisperer simply pointed down. Nick, following his index finger, saw that right underneath them some people were running into the Arena. No, not even running. It looked like someone was pushing them out there while they resisted and tried to go back.
From the spot where Nick and Whisperer stood it was impossible to see exactly what was going on. They had to look over the heads of people going wild. Nick’s heart was gripped by a bad feeling. He already understood what the old man wanted to tell him, but he still refused to believe it. Nick charged down, to the first spectator rows, not paying attention to the disapproving looks and shouts he received from all sides. He went through the crowd as an icebreaker and Whisperer moved in his wake trying not to fall behind.
They reached the first rows and pushed out the spectators there to find themselves near the parapet. A small mound with thick, crudely sharpened wooden stakes aimed down and placed at a 45-degree angle blocked the view. Nick had to jump up on the parapet to see everything. And he did.
There were a lot of them. People were running back and forth, shouting something, and tried to go back behind the heavy lattice gates that closed behind them. Some were falling on their knees and prayed. Most were simply clinging to the clay wall of the Arena, as if looking for shelter from it. Some even tried to climb it, to no avail. The wall was at least ten meters tall and absolutely steep.
Nick’s eyes met the eyes of an exhausted man in shabby clothes. His look had fear and utter despair. Nick made himself tear his eyes off the man, started to search for familiar faces in the crowd. “Perhaps, Whisperer is mistaken?” he cherished a hope. “It is impossible to discern anything from the upper rows.” And then he saw them.
The hunters stood at the side, separately from the people running around in panic. “That’s why I didn’t see them right away,” Nick thought. They did not pin themselves to the wall but just stood there, huddling to each other. Nick yelled, trying to attract their attention, but his voice was drowned in the Arena’s uproar.
Then the Arena was drowned in the roar even louder than the previous ones. Nick glanced where it was coming from and saw a terrifying muzzle of the collarhorn slowly emerging from the rectangular hole.
The beast completely justified its name. Its huge curved horns attracted Nick’s attention. Two of them were growing right out of the huge brows under which red eyes were burning with rage. The third one, shorter but wider and stronger, was mounted above the beak-like mouth. At the back of its head, where its neck started, there was a huge bone collar edged with long and sharp growths as well.
The animal slowly raised itself above the edges of the hole, roaring wildly and swaying from side to side, as if trying to break through invisible restraints holding it in place. Now Nick realized that the collarhorn was being raised to the Arena on a huge platform. He thought that something about the beast was strangely familiar. When the raising platform leveled with the ground and the monster was visible to everyone in its full glory, Nick’s associative memory recognized it as a triceratops.
As far as Nick remembered, these herbivorous dinosaurs roamed the Earth about 70 million years ago. Several dozens of the species were cloned successfully and lived a fine life in the natural reserve on the Fiji Islands. However, at this point Nick was not sure that his beast is an enlarged copy of a triceratops. And he certainly would not bet on it being strictly herbivorous.
Meanwhile, the collarhorn was looking around the Arena with his wild eyes, stomping from one foot to another as if not understanding where he ended up. The spectator rows hummed like a disturbed beehive. Nick, absorbed in observing the monster, did not realize immediately who was pulling him by the leg. He turned around, saw Whisperer gesturing at him and pulled the old man to the parapet.
“They lied to us, Nick!” Whisperer had to yell right into Nick’s ear. “I don’t know what happened, but it seems like no one was going to let them go free.”
“But what is going on here, Whisperer?” Nick pulled the old man closer to himself. “Who are these people down at the Arena and why is this beast here?”
“This is the Big Hunt,” Whisperer could hardly speak in Nick’s vise. “The last stage of the Ritual. These doomed ones are expected to hunt and kill the collarhorn.”
“Kill?” Nick looked at the collarhorn with doubt. He estimated the beast to be about three humans tall and, weighing at least thirty tons. “How often did that happen before?”
“Never. Not a single time,” Whisperer wheezed. “Please let go of me, I can’t breathe!”
Nick unclenched his fingers. He himself felt as if someone was clenching his throat with an iron vise. He could not wrap his head around it, but failed to find another explanation. And he had no reason to doubt Whisperer. So it looked like several dozens of unarmed people, his friends among them, were facing their death. And all for the sake of bloody entertainment of the crowd gone wild?
Nick noticed several guards to have thrown four bundles of spears into the Arena. They landed, raising small clouds of sand dust. But no one rushed for them. The doomed people seemed to have not noticed them. But no. Ron, Valu and then Sith ran up to the nearest one and quickly pulled two spears each out of the bundle. Several other people followed their example. However, most of them still continued to pound on the closed gates, yelling and crying.
The collarhorn roared again. Nick saw a dozen of guards armed with heavy crossbows approaching the beast on his side of the parapet. They aimed and shot heavy bolts at the beast at the same time. The collarhorn roared with pain, opening his huge mouth spangled with the stockade of sharp teeth. Then he leaned forward his horned muzzle the size of a four-seat flyer and looked around the Arena with his enraged eyes, as if searching for his offenders.
Everything happened fast after that. When the collarhorn noticed people on the other side of the Arena, he started to move toward them, first slowly and then faster and faster. The people started to run around in panic. Nick looked at the hunters. They were still standing at the same spot, not moving. The collarhorn was approaching fast, leaving a cloud of sand dust behind. When the beast was about a hundred steps away, people lost their nerves and scattered. Despite the size, the collarhorn was quite dexterous and fast.
Sharply changing his direction, Collarhorn turned to the largest group of the running people. Several monstrous steps, one swiping move of the horned muzzle, and Nick saw the people flying high into the air like ragdolls.
The spectators roared approvingly, muffling the near-death moans and cries of the killed and wounded. Meanwhile, the collarhorn ran by inertia at least twenty more steps and began to turn around. When the breeze carried away the dust clouds, Nick saw at least a dozen people lying around on the sand. Several people were simply squashed, which was confirmed by the dark-red spots around them on the sand. Nick looked away quickly. He saw a man trying to crawl. It was obvious that he had lost the sense of direction because instead of crawling away, he was moving right toward the beast’s colossal feet.
Nick’s eyes searched for the hunters. Ron, Value and Sith were slowly backing away, trying to increase the distance between them and the collarhorn. When it finally turned around, they froze. “The beast must be reacting to movements,” Nick realized, “The hunters, of course, would know that.”
However, their plan did not work this time. Instead of scattering around the entire arena, the people hurdled closer to each other, forming larger groups. Very soon, several people rushed to the hunters, looking for protection. The collarhorn did not wait for too long. With a long roar, the giant charged straight at them. Nick
saw Valu and Sith running in different directions while Ron, having shaken off a man crazed by fear, made several steps toward the running beast. Thus the hunters arranged in a triangle. When the distance to the collarhorn reduced to about thirty steps, they threw their spears at him practically at the same time.
Nick leaned forward trying to see the details through the clouds of dust. The beast let out an angry roar and the live mountain made of armor and muscle ironed the spot where the hunters had been standing just a second before.
Nick remembered little of what happened next, he was acting like in a haze. He unclenched Whisperer’s white knuckles from his hand and jumped off the parapet to the mound below. He hung on one of the spikes pointing down. Then he swayed himself and jumped off a ten-meter height. “I just need to avoid pulling my tendons,” he thought quickly. His feet felt the strong pain of hitting the ground and Nick grouped his body, rolling several times to ease the inertia of the fall.
His right shoulder and the back of his head started to nag with an ache. Ignoring the pain, he got up on his feet. Not a single second to waste. The collarhorn, roaring and opening his toothy mouth wide was already turning around, getting ready for his next deadly attack. Nick searched for his friends with his eyes, preparing himself for the worst. The Arena was a bloodbath. Misshapen bodies of people were lying around everywhere Nick looked. Some were still moving, some even tried to crawl, but it looked more like an agony.
He noticed Sith first. The boy stood on all four and spat the sand that got into his mouth.
“Sith!” Nick shouted on top of his lungs, trying to outcry the noise of the tribunes. The boy started to turn his head around, not understanding who was calling him. Then Nick stood to his full height and waved his arms above his head. “I’m here, Sith! Come over here!”
Someone squeezed his shoulder painfully, “Don’t yell!”
It was Ron. The hunter’s face was grey from the dust stuck on it and looked like a solid mask. Only the agitated eyes were sparkling from under his eyebrows. “Do not attract the beast’s attention,” he said. Ron didn’t seem to be surprised by Nick’s unexpected appearance. In contrast to Sith, who finally ran up to them.
“Where did you come from, Nick?” the boy gave him a big smile and added, turning to Ron, “I told you they were here…”
Instead of an answer, Ron nodded at the collarhorn, as if ordering them to postpone all conversations for later. The beast was roaring loudly. Looking at him carefully, Nick noticed that he had a spear sticking out of his brow like a toothpick. Obviously, one of the hunters’ throws hit the beast’s eye. The spear did not cause a lot of damage but was still obviously causing pain to the animal. The collarhorn was swaying his huge horned head from side to side violently, not stopping his wild roar for a minute.
Finally, Nick noticed a new group of people, not far from which Valu was sitting right on the sand. Nick recognized him by his long hair falling onto his shoulders. He was very proud of his hair and took good care of it. He usually wore it in a ponytail tied by a leather lace. But right now it looked like dirty uncombed and untidy dreadlocks. This undoubtedly was Valu: he was the only one with a spear in his hand.
“Get up, get up!” Nick shouted at him in his head. “Crawl to the wall!” But Valu continued to sit. The last collision with the giant must have taken its toll on him. When the collarhorn charged toward Valu and a score of other people near him, Nick, realizing that he wouldn’t be able to make it there, ran to him. Ron grabbed Nick with his both hands and managed to stop him.
“Stop!” he hissed, hardly managing to hold Nick back. “Valu knows what he is doing!”
Meanwhile, the collarhorn was approaching the people, accelerating its speed with every step. “They need to run to the wall,” Nick thought quickly. “The beast’s long horns will get stuck in it and he won’t be able to gobble everyone up.”
The doomed must have had the same idea at the same time. They rushed to the Arena’s eastern wall with the cries that were completely muffled by the crowds going wild. They were not more that a hundred steps away from the wall, so they had a chance of outrunning the beast.
The collarhorn reacted to people’s movement immediately. The beast tried to charge after them right away, however, the inertia of his huge body was a lot greater.
The collarhorn started to skid to the side and just like a heavy loading crane he stomped a wave of sand at Valu who was still sitting in the same spot. When the beast resumed running, the people almost reached the wall.
“Where is his weak spot?” Nick shouted at Ron.
“I don’t know!” Ron yelled in response. “We never hunt them!”
“On his back, closer to the neck, where the bone collar starts!” Sith said unexpectedly. “Whisperer has just shown me.”
“Great, now all I have to do is to figure out how to climb on top of him,” Nick did not clarify with the boy what he had meant by ‘just shown me.’ He decided he had just misheard the boy because of the unbearable noise.
Meanwhile the collarhorn was getting closer to the people trying to mend with the clay surface of the wall. Nick also froze, wanting to know what would happen next. But Ron yelled right into his ear, “It’s time, run!” He grabbed Nick by his hand and ran in the wake of the running collarhorn.
Nick followed him, quickly calculating the possible scenarios in his head. To climb the giant, Nick needed him to slow down or even stop completely.
“Ron is right,” he thought, “This may be my opportunity. While the collarhorn tries to dig the people out of the wall with his muzzle, I will have several seconds to climb him up.”
Nick accelerated his pace. “Don’t rush, be calm,” he repeated to himself, trying to estimate which side of the beast will be easier to climb on, “He will stop now, and then…”
However, the collarhorn behaved unpredictably again. He did not try, as Nick thought, to capture people frozen in fear with his toothy mouth. He simply turned around and stroke a deadly blow with his tail.
Seeing a part of the wall with people shaking and collapsing, Nick realized that no one could have survived that. “Crushed them like bugs with a swatter,” Nick thought, not even wondering why exactly this was the comparison that came to his mind first.
Nick felt rage filling up his body and charged forward. The air became dense. Nick made several long strides, accelerating, and shot himself up. A double somersault later Nick landed with his entire body at the sloping back of the beast.
The collarhorn’s back was covered with wide round plates resembling giant scales. They were sticky and slippery. Nick would have slid down had he not found at the last moment an iron bolt spiking out of one of the scales. Trying to keep his balance, Nick got up. His bare feet were sliding on the thick dark slime that stank like hell.
Nick looked around. Standing on the collarhorn’s back, he was practically at the same level with the lower rows of the spectators. He could see the faces of the spectators looking at him with shock and awe. They must have never seen anything like this before. Nick looked down. The collarhorn started to turn around with his entire heavy body, while Ron and Sith tried to stay in the monster’s blind spot as long as possible, keeping closer to his right side.
“A spear,” Nick thought. “I need a large, long spear. This giant must have at least one spot not protected by the armor. Some nerve knot. Or the spinal cord. Shouldn’t this beast have a spinal cord? I am sure it has it. It cannot be otherwise. What did Sith say? At the beginning of his collar zone on the neck? Something like that.”
Ron whistled sharply to attract Nick’s attention. Then he swung his arm shortly and threw his spear at Nick. “Good job, Ron!” Nick thought easily capturing the hunter’s spear. “Now the key is not to slide down right under the collarhorn’s feet.”
Right at that moment, as if overhearing his thoughts, the collarhorn roared powerfully and his entire back shook with violent muscle contractions. Nick’s right foot slid between the scaly plates and he
felt the fire of a sharp pain. He got his foot out instinctively. The beast started to accelerate and the scales on his back began to move back and forth on each other like giant scissors. “One more second and I would have ended up footless,” Nick thought aloofly. “This is why the monster needs the slime, to reduce friction of his scales. Nature’s original lube solution.”
However, he had no time to ponder. The collarhorn seemed to have decided to turn around and finish off Valu. Keeping his balance with great difficulty and carefully watching where he was stepping, Nick managed to approach the bone collar of the monster. From here, the collar resembled a huge umbrella, about two times taller than Nick, but Nick was interested in a different thing now. Closer to the spot where the collar started, there were no scales and the dark, slimy skin was exposed. Underneath the skin, some nodules were bulging out. It was not clear what their function was or why they looked that way. It became easier to move, and Nick straightened out a little. More out of curiosity than intent, Nick poked the nearest nodule with the spear. The nodule burst up with a muffled flap, and out flew right into Nick’s face some disgusting creature, unwinding in the air as if it were a tourniquet. Taken aback, Nick leaned to the side, which saved him. The creature’s jaws closed dangerously close from his face, and the creature recoiled just as quickly.
“Damned barracuda!” Nick said, stepping back a couple of steps. This comparison was the first one that came to him. He looked cautiously at the other nodules, scattered around the very foundation of the bone collar. Fighting them was not in his plans right now. Every delayed second could cost someone’s life.
Nick took several deep breaths, re-grabbed the crude shaft of the spear and jumped forward. Out of the corner of his eye he noticed that the nodules started to burst one after another and like black roped boomerangs flew to the spot where he was standing a second before. Grouping his body, he drove the spear with his entire weight into the collarhorn’s unprotected flesh. The spear met no resistance and went into the jelly-like mass entirely.
