Crown of Vengeance

by Stephen Zimmer

  Clasping his hands above his head and arching his back, he again stretched, endeavoring to rid himself of the lingering rigidity in his body that had formed as a result of sleeping for hours upon the hard, unforgiving ground. A few cracks and pops sounded as he worked his back and limbs.

  “Body stiffen up, old man?” Ryan asked, chuckling as he came up to stand at Lee’s right side. In his right hand, he held both his and Lee’s sharpened stakes. “Accommodations not good enough around here? Didn’t you request extra pillows?”

  Lee shot Ryan a bemused glance, a last few drops of water dribbling off of his face and hair. “Very, very funny, and good morning to yourself. But if you could talk to the cook, I’m starved. Or, maybe you can fix something up? Whip something together. You know I’ve taught you a few things.”

  “Supplies are low, and the wok is currently under repair,” Ryan retorted with a half-hearted grin.

  Lee could see right through the teenager’s façade of humor. The young man was feeling very grim about their meal prospects. The topic was the greatest worry weighing down upon Lee’s mind, ever since morning had arrived and confirmed that the previous day was no dream.

  “Then we need to take care of it,” Lee replied firmly.

  “What the hell can we do about it?” Ryan queried in a voice laden with frustration. He handed Lee’s stake over, adding in a lower, tense tone, “And here, we probably shouldn’t walk around without these real close at hand.”

  “What can we do about it? Take some risks. Let’s go see what we can find,” Lee responded, sounding more confident than he felt, feeling the stout, bark-covered haft of the crude weapon. He glanced down at the stake in his hand, and then over at the one in Ryan’s. “We have something to work with, at the least.”

  “What about the ladies?” Ryan asked.

  “I’ve already talked to Lynn. She was the first to get up today, evidently. Took over early from Erin’s last watch. I told Lynn to stay and watch the camp, and that we’d go and see about food. If we don’t succeed, we can switch teams whenever Erin gets up. They can give it a try,” Lee said, stepping to the brim of the creek’s bank.

  He looked across to where the water trundled along the brim of the far bank, gauging the distance.

  “I’d bet it’ll be awhile before that girl gets up,” Ryan remarked sarcastically.

  “I’d bet too. Which is why we should go now, while we are ready and rested,” Lee responded.

  With a leap, he hurtled the span of the creek. His feet squished into the soft footing on the opposite side, splattering a little mud and water all around.

  “Coming?” Lee inquired of Ryan, turning back towards the youth.

  Ryan tensed, took a step, and propelled himself across, his youthful spring and longer legs taking him a little farther than Lee. Lee winced as Ryan descended, fully resigned to being amply covered with splotches of mud. Fortunately, Ryan landed upon a more solid swathe of ground, and did not spatter Lee with the impact of his landing.

  “The question really is, are you ready?” Ryan asked Lee, sparks of excitement reflected in his eyes. “Hmmmm, old man?”

  Lee was glad to see the flair of youthful adventure within Ryan’s face, as his own mind was more oriented upon the very troublesome concerns regarding their unfamiliarity with the immediate environment and its denizens. He wished that he could embrace it all more like an adventure, and was not about to do anything to dampen Ryan’s current spiritedness.

  “Yes, yes, the old man is ready,” Lee replied with sharp sarcasm.

  Ryan took a step away from the bank. He pointed the sharp end of his stake towards the depths of the woods beyond, while looking back at Lee.

  “Then shall we?” he asked, with raised eyebrows and a grin.

  “Just remember, use gestures from here on out,” Lee said, holding his finger to his mouth as he stepped by Ryan. “We make enough noise moving. Let’s try and not add to it.”

  Ryan nodded as they set forth together. The two of them stepped softly, both careful in their efforts to remain as silent as possible.

  Lee did not want to wander very far from the camp, as the last thing that needed to happen was for them to become lost. He took great care to make several mental notes of their surroundings. He pinpointed their pathway as best as he could, cataloging distinctive landmarks in the forms of certain trees, as well as some uniquely shaped rocks. Committing them to memory, he knew that the natural signs would be their lifeline on the way back.

  He had no idea of what he and Ryan might come across on the excursion in the forest, being that he was no experienced outdoorsman. Theirs was to be a foray of sheer opportunism, delving into the unknown.

  On the gathering side of things, their miniature quest remained a dismal failure, as they failed to locate any nuts or berries of a recognizably safe nature in the general vicinity of the camp. Anything they found turned out to have a very questionable appearance, and Lee was not about to chance a possible threat to their health. If any of them were to get sick, the prospects of treating the illness were very remote at best.

  They had an altogether different experience in regards to hunting. About an hour and a half into their sojourn, Lee heard a couple of high-pitched screeches coming from deeper within the trees and brush, somewhere directly ahead of them. He signaled immediately to Ryan, to duck down and take cover behind some nearby trees.

  Situated close together, Lee and Ryan waited in crouched positions, poised in a state of keen alertness.

  Several minutes later, a group of four apparently flightless birds, each at least three feet tall and heavier of body, came into sight. Spread apart at staggered depths, they stalked slowly forward as their eyes swept through the area.

  The heavy-bodied birds had large, and sharp-ended, curved beaks at the ends of their sizeable heads, which provided conspicuous evidence that the creatures were predators to be respected. Their stout bodies rested upon pairs of long, powerful legs, equipped with sets of horrific-looking talons. They had a very limber, muted step, and their purposeful movements gave off the appearance that they were ready to explode into rapid motion at any moment. The creatures also possessed two very undersized wings, readily confirming their flightless nature.

  It was quite clear to Lee that their darker plumage was very advantageous to moving stealthily amid a world of shadows, brush, and earthy colors. They blended extremely well with the background, and it was plainly fortuitous that the area that Lee and Ryan had been trekking through contained only sparse, patchy areas of undergrowth.

  To Lee, the creatures looked like they had emerged right out of a far distant past. He was simply glad that they were the size that they were, and not like some of the monstrosities of a very similar type that had walked the prehistoric ages of his own world.

  While Lee realized the dangerous nature of the predatory birds, he also recognized a prime opportunity at hand. Though the large birds were themselves hunters, they were now about to become the hunted.

  Lee gestured for Ryan to remain idle, while he kept his eyes riveted upon the approaching quartet of birds. The birds continued to methodically step through the area, fanning out broader as they looked about for smaller game.

  Holding his position behind the tree, Lee waited patiently while he slowly brought his stake up in both hands to a level plane. When his arms came to rest, the sharp end was pointed towards the nearest of the birds. He kept a strong, firm grip upon the stake, the muscles of his arms, back, and shoulders tensing in readiness.

  About a minute later, one of the other birds stepped over very close to where Lee was hiding. Lee carefully shifted the point of the stake to align with the advancing creature. It had just started to pass by the trunk of the tree, and in another stride or two would be in a position where it would not fail to discover Lee.

  Lee was not about to let that transpire. Having kept rigidly still, he remained poised, a serpent coiled to strike. The very instant that the bird poked its head by the tree th
at Lee was behind, it found itself abruptly impaled with a powerful thrust of the makeshift spear. His robust strike was well-executed, bringing his body’s weight and momentum fully behind it, and driven all the more forcefully by Lee’s growing hunger.

  The blow landed squarely in the bird’s body, the sheer force knocking it backward and slamming it down into the ground. Spiked and grievously wounded, it made a loud squawk of dismay, which instantly roused the others of its group.

  Lee yelled loudly at the birds, hoping to startle and scatter them. Instead of taking to flight, the others three birds recovered quickly, spreading out as they started towards Lee. Lee’s heart sank precipitously, seeing their aggressive intention.

  Secondly, and even more worrisome, Ryan was nowhere to be found.

  “I need some help here, Ryan!” Lee shouted in panic.

  His voice echoed off into the woods, without any reply other than the sounds of the predators encroaching upon him.

  Lee yanked the crude pike out of the bird lying before him, raised his leg, and stomped down as hard as he could upon the creature’s neck area, feeling his heel crack bone. The bird underneath him thrashed once more, before falling entirely still.

  The other three continued to close in upon him. Lee raised his spear up, and readied in desperation to fight them.

  Ryan entered the fray at that moment, yelling at the top of his lungs as he rushed out and skewered one of the incoming birds, taking it completely by surprise. The blow did not land as flush as Lee’s had, but it knocked the bird off its talons and to the ground.

  In burst of adrenalized vigor, Ryan hurled himself forth and threw his weight fully upon the end of the stake. His efforts drove the wood through further, and effectively pinned the writhing bird to the ground.

  The two remaining birds were momentarily distracted and confused by the sudden attack of the shouting newcomer, enabling Lee a prime opportunity to strike cleanly and formidably. He focused and delivered another solid strike with his crude spear.

  Yet another thrashing bird hit the ground, expiring a moment later after Lee had moved in and landed a couple of vicious kicks to its head, the last one crushing its skull.

  The lone remaining bird, seeing the violent fates of its comrades, and no longer finding any strength in numbers, whirled about with a resounding cry, and bounded briskly off into the depths of the forest. Its body melted into the shadows and brush, vanishing in just a few strides.

  “A lot harder than I thought,” Lee remarked between heavy breaths, looking towards the depths of the forest that had engulfed the surviving bird’s fleeing form. “Didn’t think they would attack us. I hate surprises.”

  “Yeah, it was alot harder,” Ryan agreed, then adding with a grin, “But at least we got something.”

  “And you took long enough,” Lee retorted accusingly, with a grin that was only half in jest. His heart was still racing from the uncertain moment when the three birds had stalked him.

  “Timing is everything,” Ryan responded without hesitation. “Worked too, didn’t it?”

  “Okay, I’ll give you that,” Lee conceded, though not entirely assuaged. “But you still took your sweet time.”

  The three slain birds were now fully motionless, hard-won prizes for Lee and Ryan’s efforts. Lee pulled his spear out of the dead creature that it was currently lodged in. He took a few moments to walk around and make certain that the other two fallen birds were indeed dead before trying to handle them. Lee knew that just one slash delivered from one of the powerful talons, or a lone, hard strike from the creatures’ sharp beaks, could quite possibly cripple or kill him.

  Each of the creatures weighed somewhere between sixty to seventy pounds. “We’ll have to settle for two on one trip, it looks like,” Ryan said, straining to heave one of the carcasses up and over his right shoulder.

  Lee shrugged. “We’ve got more than enough here, and we don’t have any place to store the excess.”

  “I hate wasting it, since we killed it,” Ryan stated, looking over at the third bird. “Maybe we should come back for it.”

  “I think the meat will be made good use of, long before we can get back,” Lee said, looking up into the surrounding trees. His eyes remained fixed on the branches above them. “They aren’t going to be upset if we leave the bird. And I don’t think they’ll wait very long when we are out of sight. In fact, you and I are probably now heroes to them.”

  “What?” Ryan queried, before following Lee’s glance on up into the boughs of the trees. He flinched in surprise at the sight.

  A number of small, rodent-like creatures were cautiously emerging into sight on many of the upper branches.

  They were chittering in high-pitched, squeaky voices, and their long snouts vigorously sniffed at the air in apparent excitement, likely emboldened by the sight of the three dead birds. Were it not for their prehensile tails, anchoring their dark-furred bodies to the tree limbs, Lee would not have doubted that their raised level of fervor would have caused more than a few of them to tumble out of the trees in the expanding commotion.

  Lee understood immediately what the lay of the land was.

  In more usual settings within this new world, it was creatures such as those above that were eaten by the carnivorous birds now lying below. Caught foraging on the forest floor, before they could reach the refuge of the trees, the creatures that Lee now saw all around him would be very easy prey for the large, predatory birds.

  In what was probably a most glorious moment among their furry little race, their great nemesis’s body would now be serving as a feast for their own kind.

  Lee surmised that with the killing of three out of the four birds, he and Ryan had effectively decimated the rodent-like creatures’ main threat within the area. If the small tree-dwelling creatures had been able to speak a succinct language, Lee would not have been surprised if they acclaimed the two humans as saviors.

  Ryan grinned as he stared at the odd little creatures. “Yeah, we probably are heroes to the little guys. And you know what? I don’t mind that. Nature’s not really a very friendly thing, you know?”

  “In reality it can be pretty brutal, and the tables aren’t often turned, so they should celebrate it while they can,” Lee remarked. He slung a bird carcass over his own right shoulder, with a grunt accompanying the exertion. “But we gotta survive. And so do they. So that’s that. Now what do you say to getting some breakfast going?”

  “And making up for a few other meals … but you clean it,” Ryan replied as they started on their way back. “And I’m not watching. I prefer to get meat already cut and readied.”

  “I thought you young people were afraid of nothing,” Lee chided, laughing. “Well, you can be happy that we landed birds. I’ve prepared chicken and duck more times than you can count. This will be on a bit of a bigger scale, but I’m sure the approach is not too different. But you are not off the hook. While I’m on this, you work on a fire.”

  “Don’t know how,” Ryan said.

  “I’d bet one of the women might still have a lighter in her pocket,” Lee said with a wink. “Didn’t you notice Erin’s coughing?”

  “Good point,” Ryan replied.

  In time, they reached the campsite and set about their tasks. As Lee had suggested, Erin was a habitual smoker and did indeed have a lighter in one of her pockets.

  In another moment of fortune, it was discovered that Lynn had one as well. She half-reluctantly confessed that her uses for it went further beyond tobacco. She also had a small pocket-knife in her possession, which Lee enthusiastically borrowed to help with his immediate tasks.

  Ryan helped Lee get the carcasses carried over to the creek. Ryan soon disappeared as Lee started attending to the job of preparing the newly acquired food. The process was not as hygienic as Lee would have liked, as well as being much more awkward, but with some effort he finally accomplished his task.

  When he finally came back, lugging several cut sections of meat in his hands, Ryan an
d Lynn had a small part of the ground cleared, and demarcated with a ring of stones. A fire was burning steadily inside a hollowed out area located within the stone circle.

  Fashioning some rough spits, Lee soon had the meat cooking. The flames licked at the fresh meat, as the juices hissed and crackled in the heat.

  In minutes, the scents wafting off of their cooking breakfast inundated the air. Lee’s mouth watered in anticipation, buoyed by his gaping hunger, but he noticed that Erin was looking very sullen and hanging far back from the fire. Erin quickly saw that Lee was staring at her, and apparently recognized his puzzlement with her demeanor.

  “I’m not eating that,” she remarked edgily, her nose turned upward. In a tone that sounded like a judgement being delivered on all the others, she stated curtly, “I’m a vegetarian.”

  Lee chuckled openly, unable to hold back his amusement given their stark circumstances and options.

  Ryan evidently could not hold back his incredulity either. “Oh, your kind really amaze me. See these? They are called canine teeth … C-A-N-I-N-E! They are used for eating meat,” Ryan said in a patronizing tone, as he pointed at the sharp teeth in his own mouth.

  “And what about it?” she snapped back hotly at him.

  “Herbivores are not equipped with them. Omnivores and carnivores are,” Ryan replied in the same condescending tone. “Oh, and did you know that your jaw moves back and forth, and also moves up and down? That’s what a natural omnivore’s jaws do.”

  “So what?” Erin replied irritably, her face now a hard scowl.

  “Oh, and guess what else? Large brains in humans came about because of meat consumption,” Ryan continued, clearly deriving some amusement from her vexation by that point. “I won’t get into what that implies for the future of vegetarians, other than your brains will probably shrink over the generations, but you had better consider yourself real lucky that we can eat meat. Otherwise you would have had to continue starving.”