His feet were still sore as they slapped against the hard shell of the ayote. Quality of ride disregarded, there was no denying the horses back at the stable were much more majestic than an ayote. To Puk, it was like a giant rat poking out of a rounded shell. He was in constant fear of its whip-like tail lashing him from behind.
He tightened his grip around Kali’s waist, not wanting to be thrown off and lost forever in the unending dunes. She intermittently barked orders at Bella, but they didn’t do much good. Bella was an unruly animal.
Eventually, after the buzz of an early morning run wore off, Bella began to slow her pace to a mere jog rather than a full-on sprint. Puk found this much more palatable, and he was able to remove his arms from Kali’s waist and hold onto the saddle.
“See ’em?” Kali asked after around half an hour of their new speed. She squinted into the distance.
Puk did the same, including stretching his stalks forward to get a slightly closer look, but all he could see was the horizon wavering in the heat.
“No,” he answered. “Unless you mean the sun. Because yes, I see the sun.”
“Not the sun,” Kali laughed. Puk breathed a sigh of relief that her attitude toward him had improved since the night before. He worried all throughout dinner that he had soured their relationship. She went on, “I can see the cordols.”
He strained harder to spot the animals in the far distance, but still came up short. Her eyesight was staggering.
Kali described what she saw to him. “It’s a pack of six. They’re all fairly spread out. I read that they travel in packs, but tend to like their own space once they’ve settled down. They’re pretty solitary creatures.”
“Are there any mommies in the group?” Puk asked.
“Not sure,” she replied. “If there are any eggs, I can’t see them from here.”
They continued to ride at a steady pace, and after a few minutes Puk was finally able to make out vaguely cordol-shaped and -colored things against the backdrop of sand and sky. The animals were all a couple hundred feet apart from each other, forming a circle with nothing at its center.
Three of the cordols were sticking straight up out of the ground like red stone pillars. They were completely motionless, and Puk was baffled as to what they were doing. One other was slithering around on the ground, while another leapt dramatically into the air before coming back down to burrow into the sand. The last lay in the sand, curled around a collection of four eggs.
Puk didn’t have to say anything; Kali had spotted the eggs too, likely before he did. She pulled on Bella’s reins, and the ayote veered to the left toward their mark. At least she heeded that instruction.
He braced himself as the ayote’s speed increased, sensing a newfound purpose in their journey. Kali had to yank on the reins again to urge her to slow down, which she ignored. So much for obedience.
They circled around the pack of cordols, and Kali managed to bring Bella to a stop in front of their curled-up target, far enough away to hopefully not raise any suspicion.
“So what’s the plan?” Puk asked, sliding off the ayote’s banded shell. He landed with a thud as his feet sunk into the sand.
Kali unmounted much more gracefully and asked, “What do you mean? This was all your idea! You don’t have a plan already?”
He blurted out something to alleviate her annoyance. “No, I totally have an idea, but I wanted to see if you had anything in mind.”
“Well, I don’t,” she said. It was evident in her tone that she hadn’t bought the lie.
He didn’t blame her.
Bella stood nearby, shifting around impatiently. She wanted to run some more. Standing was boring. She still had energy to unleash.
They stood in silence for almost half a minute before Kali said, “Well?”
“Oh,” Puk sputtered. “Right. Okay. Well…” He tried to concoct a decent plan in his head. But first, he asked, “What are those three doing?”
She knew he meant the three stiffly pointing up into the air. “They’re asleep,” she said. “At night they burrow under the sand, but during the day they sleep like that to absorb warmth.”
“Weird,” said Puk. “Okay. Well, I think we don’t need to worry about those three then.” He looked around for any sign of the one that had jumped into the air, but it was gone.
Maybe it went out for a bite to eat, he thought.
Their target was flanked by two sleeping cordols, and the remaining one that was awake was on the opposite side of the animals’ huge circle. Far out of view, if its eyesight was as bad as Puk’s. He inquired about the subject, and Kali told him that their eyes were indeed not the best.
“So we only gotta worry about ours and two sleepyheads,” he determined. “I’m pretty sure we can grab the eggs without waking up those two. I ain’t that big of a loudmouth.”
“I think that’s still undecided,” Kali interjected.
“Fair. But anyway, here’s what we’ll do: I’ll circle around that way a bit, and then open up the smelly bait. That shit is pungent, believe me—it’ll have no problem catchin’ a whiff. It’ll slither over to the bait, and then you’ll run up and grab the eggs.”
“If the smell is that strong, don’t you think it’ll wake up the two that’re sleeping?”
Puk hadn’t considered that. Scheming was not his strong suit, which he would never admit to Kali after roping her into this grand idea of his.
“I think it’ll be alright,” he said, having no real basis for the statement. “If not, we’ll deal with that as it comes.”
“That’s not reassuring.”
“Well, life ain’t reassuring.”
Kali shrugged off his cynicism and said, “There are four eggs. How many do we need?”
“All of ’em, if you can carry ’em all,” Puk said.
She adamantly shook her head. “I don’t wanna take them all. Let’s leave at least one.”
“Whatever, that’s fine,” Puk said. It didn’t make a huge difference to him, as long as they got one or two. The rest would just be nice bonuses. “You ready to do this?”
A frown graced Kali’s face, and Puk once again felt guilty about dragging her into this mess. He tried to tell himself that she had willingly agreed to it, there were no surprises about anything they were doing and it had all been laid out from the start, but it did little to alleviate the knot in his stomach.
With more poise than he expected, she said, “Let’s go.”
Puk snatched the packet of dried bor sludge from his knapsack and darted across the sands, putting a good amount of distance between their base of operations and the spot where he would be attempting to attract the cordol.
He came to a halt when he felt there was sufficient space between himself and three other creatures—Bella, the mother cordol, and the closest sleeping cordol—and knelt down to the ground.
The sand mildly warmed his leg through his pants, and when he touched it with his fingers, he was surprised by how hot it actually was. He scooped out a small divot in the sand, for reasons unbeknownst even to himself, and then opened up the bag of bait.
Predictably, the smell was horrendous.
Puk gagged as the scent wafted up from the bag into his innocent nostrils. He was going to vomit. He knew it. He could feel his dinner rising up his throat. He had to choke it down. Keep it down. It was so hot. The sand was hot, the vomit was hot.
Fuck, here it comes—
Before unburdening himself, he shot a glance at the mother cordol and saw that it had poked its head up. Investigating the new, tantalizing scent on the air.
With one eyestalk on the mother, he turned the other to observe their slumbering friend. It remained unmoved, thankfully. For now.
Puk succeeded in keeping his food down and bolted back in the direction of Bella.
For a second, he feared that the cordol might spy him running, assume he was the smell, and come chasing after him, but thankfully, it had keenly picked up on the scent and began to sl
ither toward its source.
With the mother cordol on the move and its sleeping neighbor still undisturbed, Puk saw Kali take off toward the eggs, her blazing red ponytail smacking rudely against her back.
- -
The cordol was quite literally taking the bait.
Now was her chance. Kali’s heart and lungs heaved in her chest as she dashed toward the pile of pale orange eggs, huddled together and nestled snugly into the sand.
She didn’t bother to look over her shoulder to find out what Puk was doing. She needed to concentrate, to act as quickly as possible.
Kali came to a sliding stop before the eggs and saw that their mother hadn’t yet reached the bait.
Plenty of time.
She gathered two of the eggs in her arms and held them close to her chest. Two should be enough to satisfy Puk’s acquaintance in Myrisih. It was a more than generous offer, she thought.
Kali turned on her heel and started toward Bella. Puk had not made it back yet with his unimpressive stride, but he wasn’t far off.
To her left, she saw the cordol had arrived at the bait and was busy devouring the miniscule amount of food. It would only be a handful of moments before it curved around and returned to its eggs. She urged her legs to move faster.
Puk was leaning one arm against Bella’s side and panting heavily when Kali made it to them.
“Two?” he wheezed.
“Two,” she said.
He shrugged.
She unclasped the empty sack that had come with Bella. The added space was incredibly useful, granting them an entirely empty bag to house the eggs without fear of them smashing against their other belongings. As she closed it tight, Puk uttered a swear.
“What?” Kali turned around and saw what had elicited his alarm.
Somehow, the cordol had already made a speedy return to its den and discovered two of its eggs missing. It reared up and began to sniff the air for its stolen offspring.
There was no time to waste.
Without warning, Kali reached over and grabbed Puk under the armpits then hoisted him up onto Bella’s back. The qarm yelped in surprise and righted himself.
They had to move faster. The cordol had spotted them.
Shit.
It slithered toward them with ferocious speed. Bella let out a soft whine.
Kali and the cordol moved in tandem.
She leapt up onto the saddle at the same moment the cordol propelled itself into the air. As Kali kicked at the ayote’s sides to take off, the cordol slammed into the ground and burrowed into the sand.
Shit, Kali thought again.
Maybe she hadn’t memorized the bestiary front to back like her sister, but she knew enough about cordols and ayotes to be fully aware that there was no chance they could outrun the beast.
But she had to try.
Better that than give up or resort to violence.
It was a good thing Bella was so young and hated being cooped up. Those factors combined with her fear of the approaching cordol injected her with an absurd amount of energy.
Kali had never seen an ayote run so fast. They were a blur.
Puk’s arms found their way around her waist again, and Kali had to lean forward to avoid being knocked back by the intense wind.
Their mount instinctively weaved side to side, charting a semi-unpredictable path, but it wasn’t enough to outsmart the cordol. It burst from the ground directly in front of Bella, who skidded to a halt, causing Kali and Puk to tumble forward over her head.
Kali crashed head-first into the sand, her legs accidentally whacking Bella on the face. The ayote yipped in shock, but seemed otherwise unharmed.
Puk had absorbed most of the momentum and was flung right into the cordol, knocking the huge, thick worm onto its back.
He scrambled to stand up, but the cordol was faster.
It whipped its lower half into his torso and sent him flying again, screaming “Fuck!” as he careened through the air.
If the stakes weren’t so high, Kali would have laughed at the ludicrous sight. But as it were, she pushed herself up off the ground and swiftly backed up to her knapsack which hung from the saddle beside the bag carrying the eggs.
“Shit,” she muttered aloud this time, distraught that it had come to this.
She extracted her antique dagger from the bag and gripped its hilt.
Just in time, too, as the cordol slid past Bella and rammed into Kali. She braced herself and held on to either side of the beast’s head, stabbing the blade into what amounted for its neck.
It gnashed its rounded teeth and roared with fury, rolling away from her and Bella. As it rolled onto its left side, it pushed the dagger in deeper.
Unfortunately, the beast was undeterred by the weapon sticking out of its body. Once righted on its stomach, it reared up again and charged toward Bella, who held the bag that contained its babies. The scent was probably all over her.
Puk was still many feet away, struggling to rise and rejoin the fray.
Kali needed to do something.
But the cordol was fast. Faster than she could have imagined. It smashed its head into Bella’s side, sending the ayote crashing down.
The egg bag slammed against Bella’s side as she landed, but mercifully it was the bags on her other side that had been crushed by her weight. Hopefully Puk wasn’t carrying anything too valuable.
A line of blood trailed from where the cordol had rolled over to where it now slithered around Bella’s frantically kicking body. It might be more concerned about retrieving its eggs than the dagger in its head, but apparently, the weapon was causing some damage.
That was good.
Kali tried to leap forward but slipped on the shifting ground, once again slamming her face into hot sand.
She looked up, spitting sand out of her mouth and blowing it from her nose, to see Puk running past her toward the fight.
“Hey!” he called in a feeble attempt to wrangle the cordol’s attention. “Look at me! Look at me, I’m a big fat idiot!”
His self-inflicted insults naturally did not register with the cordol aside from earning a passing glance. It quickly turned back to the bag where the smell of its eggs was strongest. Blood streamed from the wound in its head.
Puk stopped running.
Curiously, he reached down and began to undo his boot.
Kali got to her feet and rushed past him as he continued to mess with his shoe. With more preparedness, she jumped forward and grabbed hold of the egg bag.
The cordol roared at her as she tried in vain to pull it free from the saddle. The stablemaster had done too good of a job securing it.
Suddenly Puk’s boot zoomed through the air and lodged itself in the cordol’s throat while it was preoccupied with another intimidating roar.
The beast began to choke and sputter, which was Bella’s cue to get the hell out of there. She scrambled to her feet and took off straight ahead, dragging Kali along behind her as she held on to the egg bag. Bella’s wiry tail whipped her face twice before Kali decided to let go.
She rolled a few times before coming to an awkward stop. Up ahead, Bella continued to run for several feet, but soon came to a halt and looked back at her companions.
Good girl.
Kali spun herself around in the sand and witnessed what was possibly the stupidest death ever orchestrated.
Puk too stood motionless, stunned by his own handiwork.
The cordol was still choking on the boot he’d thrown. It thrashed about wildly, kicking up its own tiny sandstorm as it tried to dislodge the sturdy footwear.
Finally, the animal’s body slowed, and it lay down in the sand before coming to a complete stop. Kali watched its body bob up and down in a handful of halting, beleaguered breaths before it ceased.
Puk was astonished.
He was standing on one foot to protect the naked one from the heat, and he hopped to face Kali.
“I killed it!” he yelled, relief and amusement in his voice. �
�Killed it with a shoe! Dumbass!”
She didn’t know if he meant himself or the cordol.
Kali exhaled deeply then threw her head back and let herself be lost in the soft sands.
- -
Against all odds, they had pulled off the egg heist.
Puk was still incredulous, even as they inspected the eggs for any signs of damage from the fight. There was a sliver of a crack in one of them, but it seemed cosmetic rather than anything serious. They counted themselves incredibly lucky.
He and Kali both drank from their extra jars of water that Gael had graciously—and unknowingly—bought them. It was crisp and delicious and washed down the lingering taste of vomit.
They stood by Bella, who was making sure to keep her distance from the cordol, dead or not.
With the eggs in fine shape, they were just about ready to depart. There was just one more thing.
“I need to get my dagger,” said Kali. It was still lodged in the side of the corpse.
She was about to plod off toward the body when an idea occurred to Puk. Likely a monumentally stupid one, but an idea that he wanted to pursue nonetheless.
“I’ll get it!” he offered with enthusiasm. “I gotta get my damn boot outta there anyway.” It was not viable for him to hop on one foot all day every day.
Spit and Song (Ustlian Tales Book 2) Page 19