The low, grass-covered island lay close offshore and sheltered the beach here from the strength of the ocean waves. Further to the south it rose higher, above the salt spray of the sea, and there the trees began. With grass and shelter there was the promise of good hunting. Unless the murgu were here as well.
“Look, in the water!” Kerrick called out, pointing down at the sea. An immense school of hardalt was passing beneath them, tentacles trailing, their seemingly numberless, boneless bodies protected by their shells. Hastila seized up his spear by the butt end and poised it over the water. He was a big man, taller even than Amahast, yet very quick for all of that. He waited a moment—then plunged the spear down into the sea, deep down until his arm was in the water, then heaved upward.
His point had struck true, into the soft body behind the shell, and the hardalt was pulled from the water and dumped into the bottom of the boat where it lay, tentacles writhing feebly, black dye oozing from its punctured sac. They all laughed at that. He was truly named, Hastila, spear-in-hand. A spear that did not miss.
“Good eating,” Hastila said, putting his foot on the shell and pulling his spear free of the body.
Kerrick was excited. How easy it looked. A single quick thrust—and there was a great hardalt, enough food to feed them all for a day. He took his own spear by the butt, just as Hastila had done. It was only half the length of the hunter’s spear but the point was just as sharp. The hardalt were still there, thicker than ever, one of them roiling the surface just below the bow.
Kerrick thrust down, hard. Feeling the point sink into flesh. Seizing the haft with both hands and pulling up. The wooden shaft shook and tore at his bands but he held on grimly, tugging with all of his strength.
There was a great thrashing of foam in the water as the wet-shining head rose up beside the boat. His spear tore free of the thing’s flesh and Kerrick fell backwards as the jaws opened, rows of teeth before him, a screeching roar so close the stinking breath of the creature washed over him. Sharp claws scratched at the boat, tore pieces from the wood.
Then Hastila was there, his spear plunging between those terrible jaws, once, twice. The marag screamed louder and a gush of blood spattered the boy. Then the jaws closed and, for an instant, Kerrick looked into that round unblinking eye poised before his face.
A moment later it was gone, sinking beneath the surface in a flurry of bloody foam.
“Pull for the island,” Amahast ordered. “There will be more of these beasts, bigger ones, following after the hardalt. Is the boy hurt?”
Ogatyr splashed a handful of water on Kerrick’s face and rubbed it clean. “Just frightened,” he said looking at the drawn face.
“He is lucky,” Amahast said grimly. “Luck comes only once. He will never thrust a spear into darkness again.”
Never! Kerrick thought, almost shouting the word aloud, looking at the torn wood where the thing’s claws had raked deep. He had heard about the murgu, seen their claws on a necklace, even touched a smooth and multicolored pouch made from the skin of one of them. But the stories had never really frightened him; tall as the sky, teeth like spears, eyes like stones, claws like knives. But he was frightened now. He turned to face the shore, sure that there were tears in his eyes and not wanting the others to see them, biting his lips as they slowly approached the land. The boat was suddenly a thin shell above a sea of monsters and he desperately wanted to be on solid ground again. He almost cried aloud when the prow grated against the sand. While the others pulled the boat out of the water he washed away all traces of the marag’s blood.
Amahast made a low hissing sound between his teeth, a hunter’s signal, and they all froze, silent and motionless. He lay in the grass above them, peering over the rise. He motioned them flat with his hand, then signaled them forward to join him. Kerrick did as the others did, not rising above the grass, but carefully parting the blades with his fingers so he could look between them.
Deer. A herd of the small creatures was grazing just an arrow-shot away. Plump with the rich grass of the island, moving slowly, long ears twitching at the flies that buzzed about them. Kerrick sniffed through widened nostrils and could smell the sweetness of their hides.
“Go silently along the shore,” Amahast said. “The wind is blowing from them towards us, they will not smell us. We will get close.” He led the way, crouching as he ran, and the others followed, Kerrick bringing up the rear.
They notched their arrows while still bent low behind the bank, drew their bows, then stood and let fly together.
The flight of arrows struck true; two of the creatures were down and a third wounded. The small buck was able to stagger some distance with the arrow in its body. Amahast ran swiftly after it and closed on the creature. It turned at bay, its tiny span of horns lowered menacingly, and he laughed and jumped towards it, seized the horns in his hands and twisted. The creature snorted and swayed, then bleated as it fell. Amahast arched its neck back as Kerrick ran up.
“Use your spear, your first kill. In the throat—to one side, stab deep and twist.”
Kerrick did as he was bid and the buck bellowed in agony as the red blood burst out, drenching Kerrick’s hands and arms. Blood to be proud of. He pushed the spear deeper into the wound until the creature shuddered and died.
“A good kill,” Amahast said proudly. The way that he spoke made Kerrick hope that the marag in the boat would not be talked about again.
The hunters laughed with pleasure as they opened and gutted the carcasses. Amahast pointed south towards the higher part of the island. “Take them to the trees where we can hang them to drain.”
“Will we hunt again?” Hastila asked. Amahast shook his head.
“Not if we are to return tomorrow. It will take the day and the night to butcher and smoke what we have here.”
“And to eat,” Ogatyr said, smacking his lips loudly. “Eat our fill. The more we put into our stomachs the less we will have to carry on our backs!”
Though it was cooler under the trees they were soon crawling with biting flies. They could only beat at them and plead with Amahast for the smoke to keep them at bay.
“Skin the carcasses,” he ordered, then kicked a fallen log with his toe: it fell to pieces. “Too damp. The wood here under the trees is too wet to burn. Ogatyr, bring the fire from the boat and feed it with dry grass until we return. I will take the boy and get some driftwood from the beach.”
He left his bow and arrows behind, but took up his spear and started off through the grove towards the ocean side of the island. Kerrick did the same and hurried after him.
The beach was wide, the fine sand almost as white as snow. Offshore the waves broke into a rumble of bubbling froth that surged far up the beach towards them. At the water’s edge were bits of wood and broken sponges, endless varicolored shells, violet snails, great green lengths of seaweed with tiny crabs clinging to them. The few small pieces of driftwood here were too tiny to bother with, so they walked on to the headland that pushed a rocky peninsula out into the sea. When they had climbed the easy slope they could look out between the trees to see that the headland curved out and around to make a sheltered bay. On the sand at the far side dark forms, they might be seals, basked in the sun.
At the same moment they became aware that someone was standing under a nearby tree, also looking out over the bay. Another hunter perhaps. Amahast had opened his mouth to call out when the figure stepped forward into the sunlight.
The words froze in his throat; every muscle in his body locked hard.
No hunter, no man, not this. Man-shaped but repellently different in every way.
The creature was hairless and naked, with a colored crest that ran across the top of its head and dawn its spine. It was bright in the sunlight, obscenely marked with a skin that was scaled and multicolored.
A marag. Smaller than the giants in the jungle, but a marag nevertheless. Like all of its kind it was motionless at rest, as though carved from stone. Then it turned its head to
one side, a series of small jerking motions, until they could see its round and expressionless eye, the massive out-thrust jaw. They stood, as motionless as murgu themselves, gripping their spears tightly, unseen, for the creature had not turned far enough to notice their silent forms among the trees.
Amahast waited until its gaze went back to the ocean before he moved. Gliding forward without a sound, raising his spear. He had reached the edge of the trees before the beast heard him or sensed his approach. It snapped its head about, stared directly into his face.
The hunter plunged the stone head of his spear into one lidless eye, through the eye and deep into the brain behind.
It shuddered once, a spasm that shook its entire body, then fell heavily. Dead before it hit the ground. Amahast had the spear pulled free even before that, had spun about and raked his gaze across the slope and the beach beyond. There were no more of the creatures nearby.
Kerrick joined his father, standing beside him in silence as they looked down upon the corpse.
It was a crude and disgusting parody of human form. Red blood was still seeping from the socket of the destroyed eye, while the other stared blankly up at them, its pupil a black, vertical slit. There was no nose; just flapped openings where a nose should have been. Its massive jaw had dropped open in the agony of sudden death to reveal white rows of sharp and pointed teeth.
“What is it?” Kerrick asked, almost choking on the words.
“I don’t know. A marag of some kind. A small one, I have never seen its like before.”
“It stood, it walked, like it was human, Tanu. A marag, father, but it has hands like ours.”
“Not like ours. Count. One, two, three fingers and a thumb. No, it has only two fingers—and two thumbs.”
Amahast’s lips were drawn back from his teeth as he stared down at the thing. Its legs were short and bowed, the feet flat, the toes claw-tipped. It had a stumpy tail. Now it lay curled in death, one arm beneath its body. Amahast dug at it with his toe, turned it over. More mystery, for clutched in its hand he could now see what appeared to be a length of knobbed black wood.
“Father—the beach!” Kerrick called out.
They sought shelter under the trees and watched from concealment as the creatures emerged from the sea just below the spot where they stood.
There were three of the murgu. Two of them very much like the one that had been killed. The third was bigger, fat and slow-moving. It lay half in and half out of the water, lolling on its back, eyes closed and limbs motionless. The other two pushed at it, rolling it further up on the sand. The large creature bubbled through its breathing flaps, then scratched its stomach with the claws on one foot, slowly and lazily. One of the smaller murgu thrashed its paws about in the air and made a sharp clacking sound.
Anger rose up in Amahast’s throat, choking him so that he gasped aloud. Hatred almost blinded him as, with no conscious volition, he hurled himself down the slope with his spear thrust out before him.
He was upon the creatures in a moment, stabbing at the nearest one. But it had moved aside as it turned and the stone point only tore through its side, glancing off its ribs. The beast’s mouth gaped and it hissed loudly as it tried to flee. Amahast’s next blow struck true.
Amahast pulled the spear free, and turned to see the other one splashing into the water, escaping.
It threw its arms wide and fell as the small spear hurtled through the air and caught it in the back.
“A good throw,” Amahast said, making sure the thing was dead before wrenching the spear free an a handing it back to Kerrick.
Only the large marag remained. Its eyes were closed and it seemed oblivious to what was happening around it.
Amahast’s spear plunged deep into its side and it emitted an almost human groan. The creature was larded with fat and he had to stab again and again before it was still. When he was done Amahast leaned on his spear, panting heavily, looking with disgust at the slaughtered creatures, hatred still possessing him.
“Things like these, they must be destroyed. The murgu are not like us, see their skin, scales. None of them has fur, they fear the cold, they are poison to eat. When we find them we must destroy them.” He snarled out the words and Kerrick could only nod agreement, feeling the same deep and unthinking repulsion.
“Go, get the others,” Amahast said. “Quickly. See, there, on the other side of the bay, there are more of these. We must kill them all.”
A movement caught his eye and he drew back his spear thinking the creature not yet dead. It was moving its tail.
No! The tail itself was not moving, but something was writhing obscenely beneath the skin at its base. There was a slit there, an opening of some kind. A pouch in the base of the beast’s thick tail. With the point of his spear Amahast tore it open, then struggled against the desire to retch at the sight of the pallid creatures that tumbled out onto the sand.
Wrinkled, blind, tiny imitations of the adults. Their young, they must be. Roaring with anger he trampled them underfoot.
“Destroyed, all of them, destroyed.” He mumbled the words over and over and Kerrick fled away among the trees.
Enge hantèhei, agatè embokèka lirubushei kakshèsei, hèawahei; hevai`ihei, kaksheintè, enpelei asahen enge.
To leave father’s love and enter the embrace of the sea is the first pain of life—the first joy is the comrades who join you there.
CHAPTER TWO
The enteesenat cut through the waves with rhythmic motions of their great, paddle-like flippers. Our of them raised its head from the ocean, water streaming higher and higher on its long neck, turning and looking backward. Only when it caught sight of the great form low in the water behind them did it drop beneath the surface once again.
There was a school of squid ahead—the other enteesenat was clicking with loud excitement. Now the massive lengths of their tails thrashed and they tore through the water, gigantic and unstoppable, their mouths gaping wide. Into the midst of the school.
Spurting out jets of water the squid fled in all directions. Most would escape behind the clouds of black dye they expelled, but many of them were snapped up by the plate-ridged jaws, caught and swallowed whole. This continued until the sea was empty again, the survivors scattered and distant. Sated, the great creatures turned about and paddled slowly back the way they had come.
Ahead of them an even larger form moved through the ocean, water surging across its back and bubbling about the great dorsal fin of the uruketo. As they neared it the enteesenat dived and turned to match its steady motion through the sea, swimming beside it close to the length of its armored beak. It must have seen them, one eye moved slowly, following their course, the blackness of the pupil framed by its bony ring. Recognition slowly penetrated creature’s dim brain and the beak began to open, then gaped wide.
One after another they swam to the wide open mouth and pushed their heads into the cave-like opening. Once in position they regurgitated the recently caught squid. Only when their stomachs were empty did they pull back and spin about with a sideways movement of their flippers. Behind them the jaws closed as slowly they had opened and the massive bulk of the uruketo moved steadily on its way.
Although most of the creature’s massive body was below the surface, the uruketo’s dorsal fin projected above its back, rising up above the waves. The flattened top was dried and leathery, spotted with white excrement where sea birds had perched, scarred as well where they had torn the tough hide with their sharp bills. One of these birds was dropping down towards the top of the fin now, hanging from its great white wings, webbed feet extended. It squawked suddenly, flapping as it moved off, startled by the long gash that had appeared in the top of the fin. This gap widened, then extended the length of the entire fin, a great opening in the living flesh that widened further still and emitted a puff of stale air.
The opening gaped, wider and wider, until there was more than enough room for the Yilanè to emerge. It was the second officer, in charge of this watc
h. She breathed deeply of the fresh sea air as she clambered onto the wide ledge of bone located inside and near the top of the fin, her head and shoulders projecting, looking about in a careful circle. Satisfied that all was well she clambered back below, past the crewmember on steering duty who was peering forward through the transparent disc before her. The officer looked over her shoulder at the glowing needle of the compass, saw it move from the coursemark. The crewmember reached out next to die compass and seized the nodule of the nerve ending between the thumbs of her left hand, squeezing it hard. A shudder passed through the vessel as the half-sentient creature responded. The officer nodded and continued her climb down into the long cavern of the interior, her pupils expanding swiftly in the half-lit darkness.
Fluorescent patches were the only illumination here in the living-walled chamber that extended almost the full length of the uruketo’s spine. To the rear, in almost complete darkness, lay the prisoners with their ankles shackled together. Cases of supplies and pods of water separated them from the crew and passengers in the front. The officer made her way forward to the commander to give her report. Erafnaiś looked up from the glowing chart that she held and signed agreement. Satisfied, she roiled the chart and returned it to its niche, then moved off to climb the fin herself. She shuffled when she walked, a childhood injury to her back which was still scarred and wrinkled from the same wound. Only her great ability had enabled her to rise to this high rank with such a disfiguring handicap. When she emerged on top of the fin she also breathed deep of the fresh air as she looked about her.
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