Extraordinary Zoology

by Tayler, Howard

  Kinik stood and swept again with her polearm, roaring with exertion. Her bellow almost drowned out the meaty crunch her war cleaver made when she buried it in the bone of the drake’s left foreleg.

  The drake toppled, and Pendrake rode it over, continuing to savage the beast with the embedded blade.

  Horgash came stumbling out of the mud, swords at the ready, but by the time he reached the drake’s head the beast was still, its amber outline gone from Edrea’s sight.

  “Is everybody okay?” Lynus called into the mist.

  “I feel ten years younger,” Horgash said with a broad smile.

  “I feel two feet shorter,” said Kinik with a grin.

  “I feel like a moment of silence,” Pendrake said, staring down at the remains of Codex. He shook his head sadly. “Morrow, but he was a fine animal.” He pointed up the rise. “But unless we all feel like walking, we ought to give quick chase.”

  Aeshnyrr and Oathammer hadn’t run far—just up and out of the fog—and Horgash’s bison, Greta, hadn’t gone anywhere. Their bolting had resulted in a few scrapes, but nothing serious.

  Unfortunately, the trail Edrea had been following was destroyed. As the mist began to fade—much of it had been the fog drake’s work—no further tracks were visible.

  “The Tharn have gotten away from us,” Edrea announced, examining yet another horse-trampled bramble. “That clear, clumsy trail is gone now.”

  “No,” said Horgash. “It ended here.”

  Pendrake nodded. “He’s right.”

  “I’d have been right if I said something. As soon as we crossed that ridge into the mist, I thought to myself, ‘This would be a great spot for an ambush,’ but somebody,” he pounded his fist against his breastplate for emphasis, “somebody has spent too many years trading instead of leading the marching warriors.”

  “I knew it!” said Lynus. He waved a tiny book up at Horgash. “You weren’t just a warrior. You led them! And not just as a warband leader or kithkar. You’ve got Bragg’s blood in you.”

  Edrea chided herself for not figuring it out sooner. Horgash was a fell caller, one of the warrior singers of the trollkin whose ballads could turn the tides of battle, and whose shouts could rend flesh.

  At least, he used to be, until something ruined his voice.

  Horgash scowled at Lynus with a furrowed brow. Edrea thought for just a moment he might strike the young man. Then the trollkin’s expression softened.

  “What gave me away?” he asked.

  “When you jumped at that fog drake,” Lynus said, “you shouted something, and I thought it sounded like poetry. I’ve never met anybody who yelled poems at the enemy.”

  “Lots of soldiers are poets,” Pendrake said.

  Horgash rolled his eyes and turned back to Lynus. “Go on. How’d you figure it out?”

  “Well, one of the books I packed was Cole’s Guide to the Verse of Immoren’s Trollkin. The very first section is devoted to the famous battle calls of Bragg, and speculation regarding their impact.”

  “No impact anymore. Not unless you count ragged breathing and a sore throat.”

  “Well, the bit you shouted was iron sinew, proven blade from ‘Ballad of the Hero.’” Lynus held the book open and pointed at the page for emphasis. “Commonly shouted as battle is joined, Cole says.” He closed the book and looked up at Horgash with something approaching awe. “The way you tore into that drake, I thought maybe you were using trollkin magic.”

  “No magic, boy. Years of practice, and ten seconds of desperation. I’ve got Bragg’s blood, yes, but his gift is gone.” Horgash lowered his head and shook it. “I haven’t been able to call for years, but sometimes, in the heat of a fight I still try.”

  Trollkin could regenerate lost limbs, provided they survived the initial wound. What injury could have stripped a fell caller of his song?

  Edrea had to know. “What happened to your voice, Horgash?”

  The creases in the great blue brow deepened, and Horgash’s eyes narrowed. He was looking not at Edrea, but at Pendrake.

  The professor nodded. “It’s part of their legacy, too, old friend.”

  “Very well then.” Horgash cleared his throat. “Fourteen years ago, late in the winter of 592, I played cards with Saxon Orrik, and I won.”

  “Oh dear, that Saxon Orrik?” Edrea turned to Pendrake. “The one you got court-martialed?”

  “The same,” said Pendrake. “This happened after Vinter IV pardoned him and put him to work for the Inquisition.”

  “What happened to him after the coup?” Lynus asked.

  “I was telling a story,” Horgash said, rasping the best roar he could. Then, more softly, “Interruptions like this never happened when I could call.”

  Edrea sat silently and looked at the others.

  Horgash gave a shrug. “I might have been humming a bit during the game, just to put the others on edge. Bragg’s gift was good for a lot of things. Still, the cards Orrik drew were his own.

  “The big loser of the night was Orrik himself. He was noble enough about it, I thought, when he bought a pitcher and poured us drinks, but he slipped some Wurm-wrought poison or another into mine. I don’t know what he used.” Horgash’s features darkened to a blue-black as he scowled. “He toasted me, my victory, and my winnings right to my face. I threw back the glass, and that bastard said, ‘And to your last song.’”

  Horgash ran his hand over his throat. “The drink burned, and kept burning. I spat, and choked, and it burned. I drank water, poured ale down my throat by the gallon, and it still burned. Orrik stood there watching the whole time. Until I tried to speak, and couldn’t. My voice was gone. Then he turned and left.”

  “It shamed me when I heard of it,” Pendrake said. “I learned much of my woodcraft under Orrik. But of kindness and decency? There’s not a thing that cruel, infernal shade of a man could teach.”

  “Don’t flog yourself on his behalf. You’re not the one who pardoned him and turned him loose on the world again.” Horgash gestured at Lynus. “You just make sure the rising generation turns out more like you, and less like him.”

  Lynus blanched. Edrea put her hand on his shoulder. Certainly he knew that accidentally knocking a comrade’s sword down was not the same as poisoning someone over cards. Even the accidental shooting paled against that treachery.

  Pendrake broke the silence. “Now that everyone knows the evils of gambling and drink, we have work to do.” He pointed at Lynus. “Senior assistant, I think you should demonstrate for the others the procedure for retrieving smoke glands from a fog drake. I shall contemplate our further course, given that we’ve lost the trail.”

  Edrea watched with a smile as Lynus worked. He was wrist-deep in the neck of the fog drake, lecturing like he would for a lab full of Pendrake’s students, more confident than Edrea had seen him in days.

  “Here, then, just behind this tab of cartilage, is a tube about as big around as my thumb. I’m following it deeper,” and he was now in to his elbow, “until I find a sac. It’s a little bigger than a sheep’s stomach, and right now it is . . .” he closed his eyes in concentration, “empty.”

  Lynus waved at the mist, which was much thinner than when they’d entered this vale. “An empty fog sac means all this was generated by the drake.”

  Kinik grimaced. “We have been breathing it!”

  “Indeed,” said Lynus. “I never really thought of it that way.”

  “Why did Dhunia not give it poison gas?” Kinik asked. “Easier hunting, more killing.”

  “Dhunia must like us better,” said Lynus. “Otherwise we’d have all been eaten by fog drakes long ago.”

  “Or maybe,” Edrea said, “some fog drakes did make poison gas, but it was poisonous to them, too, and they all died.”

  “Most poisonous creatures are immune to their own . . .” Lynus began, sounding fully professorial. Then, more meekly, “Oh, you were joking.”

  Edrea smiled. “Sorry to usurp your moment, Lynus.” />
  “That wasn’t my moment,” he said, smiling back. “This is.” He drew a scalpel from the kit at his hip and with three long, deep strokes and a pull, laid the lower jaw and the top of the drake’s throat wide open. Two more strokes cleared a mass of muscle, gill tissue, and tubing.

  Kinik’s eyes went wide.

  “Sharp, isn’t it?” Lynus said, waving his scalpel. “Now, it’s a good idea to reach in and check the sac first, because if it’s full, and you cut it, there’s fog everywhere. I’m not quite sure how the juice works, but it’s a mess you don’t make twice.”

  “Friend Lynus,” said Kinik, pointing at the gaping wound. “If you can cut such a hole with that tiny knife, why do you carry a too-big sword?”

  The ogrun made a good point. Edrea looked at Lynus, curious how he’d respond.

  “The little knife is for samples that aren’t trying to eat me. Living, angry, samples? I prefer to kill them from as far off as possible. If the rifle doesn’t do the job, the great sword gives me the next longest reach.”

  Kinik nodded.

  Lynus reached into the hole his incisions had made. “Also, the sword is intimidating. Lots of things look at that blade and decide to find an easier meal elsewhere.”

  Horgash grunted. “If you want to intimidate things with that blade, you need to learn how to use it. The way your point bobbles, anything brighter than a cow is going to smack the blade aside on its way to ripping your throat out.”

  Lynus withdrew the fog glands from the fog drake—each about the size of an apple. “You’re talking about using my sword on people,” he said. “We’re scholars of extraordinary zoology. People aren’t really what we hunt.”

  “Lynus, he has a point,” Pendrake said, patting the scabbard where his Orgoth blade now rested. “You must be proficient with any weapon you wield. These Tharn are dangerous, and quite a bit brighter than cows, as evidenced by the trap they so skillfully laid for us.”

  “But are we still hunting them?” asked Lynus. “Edrea lost the trail.”

  Edrea winced at that. She hadn’t lost the trail because of the horses. She’d lost the trail because their quarry wanted her to lose the trail. They’d foreseen pursuit taking a shortcut and planted obvious prints to lead trackers of lesser woodcraft astray. Trackers like her.

  “Indeed,” Pendrake said, “but there are many ways to find things in these woods. I believe it’s time to go speak to my friend Groth.”

  They moved single file through the woods. Edrea rode Aeshnyrr, quietly thankful to be on horseback rather than straining at signs in the brush. She worried for Pendrake, who was now afoot in front, but the professor had insisted, and was setting a good pace. His share of the supplies rode with Edrea, since she was the lightest among them, and Aeshnyrr was strong.

  Horgash rode Greta just behind Pendrake, the contrast in their sizes dramatic. Kinik took up the rear, having apparently decided that this was the position in line where all the students belonged. And frankly, after seeing her pound the dent from her breastplate with a single stroke from the butt of the war cleaver, Edrea was more than happy to have the young ogrun at her back.

  “Groth is a name I have heard, I think?” asked Kinik.

  “He’s a friend of Pendrake’s,” Edrea said. “He recounted their meeting in the Monsternomicon, which is likely where you heard the name.” Kinik carried a copy of that book everywhere, a practice that Edrea found admirable, and just a little adorable.

  “Page sixty-eight,” Lynus said. “Groth is a farrow shaman. Pendrake saved him from a dracodile, made a friend, and got that very suit of draco-hide armor in the bargain.”

  “And that,” said Edrea, “is why Lynus doesn’t carry a copy of the Monsternomicon with him. He’s memorized it.”

  “I can’t un-memorize it. Not after those months of deciphering Pendrake’s handwriting. And I notice you don’t have a copy either.”

  “When you’re along, I don’t need one,” Edrea said with a completely straight face, deadpanning like few humans could.

  Kinik laughed, a joyous sound punctuated with resonant snorts. Lynus shook his head with a scowl, but the ogrun’s mirth overcame him, and he smiled.

  “Lynus?” Edrea asked, “why did you pack a book of trollkin verse into the field?”

  “It barely takes up any space,” he said.

  “It takes up more space than an extra dozen scalpels at your belt, or a specimen jar.”

  “I guess it does,” he said after a moment.

  “So why bring it along?”

  “When I pack, I always select three books that I’m sure I won’t need. On a long trip, I usually end up needing at least one of them.”

  “That’s . . . odd.” Edrea was going to say absurd, but thought better of it.

  “I guess so. I learned it from the professor.”

  “I’ve never seen him carrying extra reading material.”

  “But have you watched him as he packs? He grabs his bedroll with changes of clothing, his bow, and that old sword. Then there’s his field kit, the specimen kit, and a fresh notebook. All that’s the same, totally predictable if you know what kind of weather he’s expecting.

  “But then there’s his satchel. I never know what he’s going to put in it. I think he just scrapes his desk into it on his way out the door.”

  “Sometimes he needs those things, Lynus.”

  “Exactly! But when we’re packing, he never gives any indication as to why he might need them.”

  “Intuition?”

  “I have no idea. I tried that trick a couple of times, shoving the contents of my study desk into a sack before we set out. I never needed any of it and usually lost most of it.” Lynus reached into the satchel at his side. “But every time we went out, I found myself wishing for some book or another that I didn’t have along with me, and it was always something I never suspected I’d need. So I started packing more and more books, until the professor joked about pillaging and told me I was carrying too much.”

  “I believe you still carry too much, but go on.”

  “Well, I pared back to the essential references, and then, on a whim, I decided that essentials-plus-three was a good compromise.” He held up the book of trollkin verse. “So these days I grab three books I haven’t read. If there’s time, I make a point of reading them so I don’t have to bring them along next time.”

  “Two more trips out and you won’t need to bring any books at all,” Edrea said.

  “Then I will take over the carrying of books,” said Kinik. “I love to carry books.” She held up her beaten, dog-eared copy of Viktor Pendrake’s Monsternomicon, open to the farrow entry. “I can carry more than you, friend Lynus. I can carry all of the books.”

  “That,” said Lynus wistfully, “would be traveling in style.”

  Edrea liked Horgash’s choice of a campsite. They were perched on a bluff with one sheer fifteen-foot face looking west over a creek. The trees here were farther apart, but they were among the biggest she’d seen yet, giants whose canopy arched densely overhead, starving the forest floor for light.

  Horgash and Pendrake walked the perimeter, gathering additional deadfall for a fire, earnestly discussing approaches and retreats in the event of trouble. Pendrake speared a sturdy stick into the sandy face of the bluff and hung a lantern there, ensuring they’d be able to see the mounts come nightfall.

  While Lynus and Kinik made camp and laid out dinner, Edrea walked Greta, Oathammer, and Aeshnyrr down to the creek where they could drink and munch on the lush growth. Aeshnyrr had picked up a deep scratch in her run through the underbrush, which Edrea treated and wrapped.

  Poor Codex, she thought. Such a noble creature. And such an ignoble end.

  Edrea gave Aeshnyrr a loving pat and climbed back up onto the bluff.

  “Again, it is dinner. And again, I do not smell bacon,” said Horgash, eyeing the spread of canned beans, corned beef, and hardtack.

  “You’d eat bacon at every meal, and then we’d h
ave none to coax us out of bed come breakfast,” Lynus said.

  “Someone should have thought of that when provisioning this trip,” Horgash said. “A square five meals of bacon would, I am quite certain, help the healing along.” He made a show of rubbing the leg where he’d been wounded by Lynus’ misfire.

  “Is that still hurting?” Edrea asked. She treated Lynus to a conspiratorial wink. “I just treated Aeshnyrr with some ointment from the stables. It smells lovely.”

  Lynus grinned at Edrea and blushed. She liked his smile when he blushed.

  Horgash laughed. “No ointment! I already smell enough like a horse, and I’m not even riding one! I certainly don’t need to wear their perfume.” Everyone laughed at that. Horgash’s voice might be ruined, but he still had the skills of an entertainer.

  Lynus passed tins around and the conversation stopped as mouths filled with food. Horgash aptly demonstrated the legendary trollkin appetite, eating more than five times as much as Edrea, and then casting about in search of something else to consume. Even Kinik, a head taller and at least eighty pounds heavier, looked impressed. Or perhaps distressed.

  “I’m happy to take the third watch,” Pendrake offered. “I rise well enough in the morning, but at my age an interrupted night’s sleep just won’t do.”

  “This bullet hole,” said Horgash, rubbing the mended spot on his leggings, “should be all healed up tomorrow, assuming I get a full night’s sleep on this belly full of it-still-isn’t-bacon.” He cocked his heavy brow and looked across the waning firelight at Lynus. “I volunteer Lynus for the second watch.”

  Lynus sighed and shrugged. “Sure.” This would be his third night in a row on second watch.

  “I can watch first?” asked Kinik.

  Pendrake scratched his chin, appearing to consider her offer. Edrea knew him well enough to guess at his unspoken line of thought. Kinik was new, but she had proven herself well during the last three days.

  “The first watch is yours, Pupil Helegroth.” Pendrake continued formally, in Molgur-Og. “I entrust my life and the lives of my friends to you and to the long arm of your blade this night.”