Orphan Tribe, Orphan Planet

by Jonathan Vick

  In the valley, the warriors were feeling out the herd, smelling each one of them to determine the oldest, the weakest, the sickest. Michau were dumb, but dangerous. They were huge, and they ran fast. Their horns were sharp as ice-shards, and when spooked, they ran chaotically, smashing everything in their path.

  Overhead, a vortex of scavenger vutchel birds circled, waiting for something to kill or be killed; waiting to sweep in and cleave meat and sinew from whatever bones remained.

  Gabal was trying to rejoin the hunt team, but he was upwind of the herd. Thurl could hear him creeping through the snow, moving slowly and pounding his hands into the ground with each step, mimicking the sounds of a roaming michau.

  Thurl wanted to be in the valley with them. He knew how to mimic the michau. Mimicry had been one of his favorite parts of his training. As Gabal crept upwind of the herd, Thurl stomped around in the alcove, mimicking the michau himself, as though he were down in the valley hunting.

  Sohjos cawed, giving a screech like laboring michau. Immediately, the herd gathered together in a tight group. Their instinct was to protect the laboring mother until she had given birth. There was no pregnant mother in this herd, but the michau knew the caw, and gathered together, leaving only the weakest behind.

  There were four michau outside the huddled group: two young calves, a sick, diseased smelling outcast, and, of course, the buck who stood sentinel, sniffing the air with his long, prehensile nostrils to detect danger nearby.

  The Racroft would never attack the buck. He was too vital to the survival of the herd. Instead, they focused on the calves. Thurl knew they wouldn’t kill either one. Instead, they would lead them away from the buck, into a small gorge or ravine until the calf called a distress caw. The buck would stay with the herd, but two or three of the michau would break away to rescue the calf. They would be the focus of the Racroft warriors.

  At Sohjos’s command, a few of the warriors moved around the calves, cutting them off from the herd. Carefully, the warriors tossed snow over their heads and cooed like horvill sows. The calves moved away from the sounds of the horvill, afraid of their sharp tusks and violent temperaments.

  Thurl had learned these same techniques, and was confident he could perform them. He couldn’t understand why his father had left him behind. It wasn’t as though the warriors were doing anything challenging. They were basically playing a child’s game – luring michau into a trap. Thurl had done that same thing to his friends hundreds of times. Of course, with his friends the trap usually ended in some sort of humiliating taunt or a friendly brawl.

  The calves were coaxed into a ditch behind the hillock, then prodded until they cawed. When they did, two of the female michau broke from the tight pack and followed the sound of the calves. As they approached the hillock, the warriors attacked.

  Thurl was disappointed in the hunt. He had expected wild flailing and a chase and pounding drums and excitement. Instead, the warriors he had always admired simply looped bonroot ropes around the michau necks, and very quickly and deftly slit their throats. There was almost no sound. The michau died almost immediately. The warriors marked themselves with blood and dragged the bodies away from the pack, jabbing their spears at the ravenous vutchel birds who were attracted by the smell of death.

  Thurl’s clicking and grunting slowed as he realized that his warriors were actually simple harvesters. There had been no fight, no battle, no glory. The hardest part of the hunt would be dragging the meat back home.

  “Why wouldn’t my father want me to participate?” Thurl asked aloud. “What was dangerous about that? My sisters face more danger from their bone needles when they sew!”

  He was angry and disillusioned and frustrated and sad. The next time he grunted and the echo came back, the hunt party was already returning, dragging the slaughtered meat in perfumed sacks behind them.

  The wind blew through the pass where Thurl stood in the alcove. It struck the edges of the crater and compressed in the tight breezeway. Getting into the valley was easy, with the wind at their backs. Getting back out was more difficult. The hunt party pressed into the wind, pulling their trophies behind them. Thurl could have run down to help them; he could have offered his fresh legs to theirs as they pressed through the deep, soft snow. Instead, he sat a rock and clicked slowly, grinning at their slow progress.

  It took them hours to get back to the alcove. The tide had already gone out and the smell of salt and brine was weak.

  The warriors collapsed in the snow, panting and heaving, dropping their ropes and letting the warm michau meat sink into the snowbanks.

  As soon a Sohjos crested the hill and stood before the alcove, Thurl leaped off his rock. He stopped in front of his father and pounded the ground with his fists. He threw snow over his head and kicked and snarled and mewled and cawed. When he was done, he stood at his father’s face – nose to nose – huffing and grunting.

  “This is hunting?” Thurl growled. “If this is hunting then children could do it. I’ve been imitating these creatures since I learned to walk. I could masquerade as any creature in the entire valley. And you know this! You know this, and still you let me sit behind on a rock instead of joining the hunt.”

  “You’re not ready,” Sohjos said quietly, calmly, powerfully.

  “I AM READY!!” Thurl shouted. “What danger was there? What threat? You didn’t hunt at all! You harvested! You may as well call yourselves plaka farmers or horvill sow ranchers! You collected the michau the way the women collect cold warming stones! Today, I am ashamed to be a Racroft. If this is hunting, I’ll join the women in distribution, or pottery, or collecting warming rocks.”

  “Perhaps you should,” said Sohjos. “But I fear you’re not ready for those tasks, either.”

  Thurl wanted to slap his father; to punch him; to punish him.

  Instead, he simply blew disrespectfully in Sohjos’s face, then turned and walked back into the shelter of the alcove.

  Sohjos stood still for a moment. Slowly, he lowered his head. Then, he turned back toward the exhausted hunt party and order them to their feet. The meat needed to be taken into the alcove. They would eat a little and sleep. When the tide began to advance, they would begin the journey back home.

  CHAPTER six

  “We got lucky today,” Sohjos whispered.

  He had slid beside Thurl as the warriors slept. They crouched together with their backs against the warm stone at the back of the alcove.

  “We don’t find a herd of michau often,” he was trying to tell Thurl. “Most often, we have to battle more dangerous prey. We got lucky today. The michau were plentiful, and the fegion weren’t hunting us as we hunted them today.”

  Thurl didn’t answer. He turned away from his father and huffed.

  “You were reckless with the chantimer,” Sohjos continued. “I don’t want to see you make a mistake and get killed. I decided to leave you behind for your own safety.”

  Thurl grunted. “My own safety? Or your reputation?”

  “I’m an old Racroft, Thurl,” said Sohjos. “If I tripped down a cliff and died like a fool today, my reputation would be intact. But if I went home without you, son, your Mother would see to it that my life meant nothing. My life would mean nothing if I lost you.”

  “You can’t protect me forever. I’m ready for the hunt.”

  “Today, it was too dangerous.”

  “Every hunt is dangerous,” Thurl growled. “If I was afraid for my own safety, I wouldn’t have come hunting!”

  “I felt like I didn’t give you the choice,” said Sohjos. “I am a hunter. My father was a hunter. I never asked you if you wanted to be a hunter. I just assumed, and pushed you into training before you were ready; before you showed signs of being a hunter.”

  “I am a hunter,” Thurl scowled.

  “You don’t have to be,” said Sohjos. “Your brothers aren’t hunters.”

  “I am not my brothers,” snapped Thurl.

  Sohjos didn’t answer. He press
ed his back against the rock, sniffing the bloody blocks of frozen michau meat, perfumed with the reek of chewed kanateed seeds to prevent other hungry creatures from tracking the scent and coming after the Racroft’s trophy.

  “So far,” Sohjos finally whispered close to Thurl’s ear, “you are only known as the Runt who tried to help a chick hatch and was almost killed by a chantimer. Your reputation is only as good as your last action. But, a true warrior is not defined by success, son. A true warrior is defined by how many times he gets up after he fails.”

  Sohjos walked away. He weaved around the bodies of the sleeping warriors until he was at the mouth of the alcove. There, he crouched on a rock and waited for the tides to change.

  Thurl wanted to follow; to shake his father; to confront him; to fight. Instead, he sat in the snow, feeling the sting of his father’s words, letting tears fall from his eyes.

  He was going to return home without a kill; with no trophy. His brother’s would never let him hear the end of it. Oswyn would tease him, and whether or not she meant it, he would feel less worthy of her.

  Thurl didn’t sleep. He was too angry and disappointed. He wasn’t sure how he could go home. He wasn’t certain he planned to ever return home again.

  CHAPTER seven

  They were running, single file, through the snow. Thurl was in the middle of the group, protected; like a child.

  He was exhausted from the running. He should have slept. Many of the warriors were pulling sleds of meat behind them. Thurl only carried his pack and some provisions for the other hunters. Soon, they would reach the point where Thurl had encountered the chantimer. He was panting and huffing and stumbling through the snow, but he hoped they wouldn’t stop. He didn’t want to be reminded. More importantly, he didn’t want anyone else to remember. He wanted to disappear and never return. He just didn’t know how.

  When they reached the crook of the tranik vine where hunting parties normally rested, the warriors slowed, slumping packs off their shoulders and ready for rest.

  Sohjos whooped loudly. They would not be stopping. Everyone knew why. If Thurl was not Sohjos’s son, they would have stopped and slept. Instead, they ran until their muscles pulled and their heads ached and their mouths were dry and frozen and raw.

  They would reach the foothills of the mountains before they could stop. Recessed into an outcropping of high, sharp rocks was a cave the hunt party used in emergencies. They were only a few hours away, less than halfway across the bristlewind fields, when a blizzard crested the mountains and raced down the smooth slopes toward them.

  Ciashi detected it first. He lifted his head as he clicked and grunted and the echo that came back stopped them all. They stood, ankle deep in the bristlewind, grunting to get the scope and scale of the cloud. At first, several of the warriors argued that it was simply an avalanche that wouldn’t reach them. A desquamating blast of bitter wind and shards of ice convinced them of the polar vortex. It came billowing down the mountainside, pressing the winds against the hunt team and shooting shards of ice over their heads.

  At Sohjos command, the hunt party gathered together in a tight bond, and placed their shields together as a wall against the racing wind. They huddled and crouched behind the thin shield wall, draping their chunacat pelts over themselves.

  Thurl placed his shield with the others and cowered beneath his pelt. The thunderous sound of the approaching storm shook the ground. Thurl was flesh to flesh with Gabal. He could feel Gabal’s heart beat like a chaotic drum. Gabal gasped in the wind, gulping the air into his lungs, preparing for the suffocation that would come with the unbreathable frozen air within the storm. Thurl followed Gabal’s lead until the two of them were breathing in sync.

  Just before he closed his mouth and folded his nostrils shut for the blast, Meisx shouted: “This is your fault, Sohjos! Your pride in your immature son has murdered us all!”

  Then the air froze.

  Snow and ice seemed to hang in the air, trapping a crystalized atmosphere that seemed too thick to move, yet pressed on them like a crushing glacier.

  Thurl couldn’t breathe; couldn’t click; couldn’t force his muscles to move against the storm. He grunted in his throat - a pathetic, strangled sound - and got no echoing return. His whiskers and follicles were numb. His nostrils were closed. He was without communication. No information was reaching his senses. He felt helpless and terrified and alone and to blame.

  He hadn’t asked his father to skip the normal resting place. His father had made that choice himself. Still, Thurl wondered if he had not made such an ass of himself after the hunt, his father might have been able to let Thurl face his failure like a man; learn from the mistakes of a boy on his first hunt; live to become a celebrated hunter. His father told him, had always told him, that success does not come from a single moment of triumph; success comes from hundreds, often thousands of little failures. Thurl had been too immature, or too headstrong, to understand.

  The Racroft were straining against the storm; bursting for air that would not flash frost their lungs and suffocate them. Thurl could feel his eyes, those useless orbs on the front of his face. They ached. He could feel his own pulse in them. And then, just when he thought he would explode for breath, a wind splashed over them and scattered the glaciated air over the bristlewind fields . The ice that clung to the air fell and dappled the snow around them.

  The hunt team gasped for breath, panting and hyperventilating. Thurl exhaled the stale breath in his lungs and sucked in fresh, clean air. It was colder than anything he had breathed before. He could feel the air crystals coating his throat; melting inside his mouth; chilling his lungs.

  “We must get to shelter,” Sohjos was saying from the front of the pack. “That was only the fore burst! The real storm is still coming!”

  The Racroft quickly captured their breath and grabbed their packs.

  “Leave the meat,” shouted Sohjos. “If we survive, we’ll come back for it!”

  They were running again before Thurl could judge his direction. He grunted but nothing came back. He clicked twice, and could tell they were heading toward the foothills. Beyond that was a solid wall of nothingness: no sound, no echo, no information. The storm was racing down the hill, and if they didn’t get into the caves before it reached them, they would lose communication, almost certainly lose their way, and possibly even lose one another. He followed the warriors and hoped they knew where they were going.

  The temperature was falling quickly. Thurl could feel the thick skin on his feet and ankles tighten and crack. His whiskers were numb. He put his head down and pushed against the wind. His throat was dry. He tried to click, but his saliva was frozen. He tried to grunt but his voice was strained. His follicles were too numb to feel the other warriors around him. The soft snow muffled the sounds of their feet.

  Thurl began to panic. He knew the others had to be near, but he couldn’t hear their footfalls or feel their warmth or smell their musk. His nostrils were closed against the cold. He was running through a void, unaware of his direction.

  Then, he tripped.

  Meisx had stumbled over a snow drift. Thurl crashed into him, and they both fell. Despite their straining muscles and heaving, aching lungs screaming for them to stay down and rest, they knew they had to get up. Despite the terror of the storm and the horror of isolation, they were happy simply to have found one another.

  Thurl helped Meisx get to his feet. Meisx was shouting something close to Thurl’s ear, but the wind took the sound before Thurl could understand.

  Then Meisx began running, dragging Thurl behind him. Thurl put his hand on Meisx’s shoulder, his shield raised over his head, and they ran into the void.

  There was thunder. The ground shook and cracked beneath them. Based on their last known location, they should have already reached the caves in the foothills. Instead, they were clambering over unknown mounds, knee-deep in bristlewind.

  A blast of cold air enveloped them. Involuntarily, Meisx dropped to the
ground, chilled and exhausted. Thurl grabbed a handful of Meisx’s follicles and tried to pull him to his feet, but Meisx wouldn’t budge. He’d drawn his arms into his chest; his knees up to his chin, and was lying in the snow, rocking and crying and cursing Sohjos for murdering him.

  Thurl dug his shield into the snow behind Meisx to block some of the wind. Then he grabbed Meisx’s shield and, using it like a shovel, began to dig a trench in the permafrost.

  He gulped frozen air as he dug, hoping some of it would reach is aching lungs, hoping it would be enough to keep him alive.

  He dragged enough snow aside to roll Meisx’s body into the small ravine. Meisx lay in the hole, petrified with fear.

  “I hear a vortex,” Meisx shouted. Then he began screaming, clawing at the air.

  Thurl placed the shield over his body, so that Meisx was sunk down below the surface of the ground, capped by the heavy shield. The wind blew over him, but didn’t penetrate his body.

  Meisx grabbed the shield from below and pulled it tight over himself. Thurl hoped what was left of Meisx’s body heat would warm the makeshift cavern enough to keep the warrior alive. Then, Thurl grabbed his own shield and began scraping out a divot for himself.

  The permafrost crust broke easily, and the snow beneath was soft, but wet and heavy. Thurl was already exhausted from running. His arms ached and twitched as he dug. Already, the snow was beginning to freeze into solid ice. Each time the blade of his shield struck the snow it was more difficult to pull away.

  His own grave was shallow; too shallow to cover him from the blistering wind and ice-storm that approached. But he was out of time. Hard crystals pelted him as the scream of the wind tore at his back. Thurl lay down in the ditch he had made, and stuck his shield over his body. More than half of his girth still rose above the ground.

  He could hear Meisx breathing heavily in his own furrow; screaming. Meisx was terrified, but he was safe; at least, safer than Thurl.