by Mark Angel
“What about my father?” Tamik asked silently by touching his leg, and pointing toward the injured man’s hutch.
“Your father is in fine hands,” Almar signed with a dismissive wave. “Now get to work.”
Tamik picked up his father’s butcher set, and said out loud, “Then I should begin harvesting our kill. The rexes seem to be finished eating.”
“You can join us at the carcasses after you’re finished collecting the dung,” Almar said. Condescendingly, he added, “Don’t worry; I’ll make sure you get your share of prime flesh.”
After all he and his father had gone through to score a kill, Tamik felt he should have a more important job than gathering dung, but Almar was as beholden to the pride’s hierarchical protocols as the rexes. Furthermore, the Secondary Rexrider rationalized, reinforcing the camp’s defensive perimeter under current conditions was not frivolous work and a fitting assignment for a Senior Guardian. He also realized he had yet to feel that sickening sensation in his gut that usually accompanied his activities with the rexes. The vibrations were definitely there, but something was masking the usual sensation of nausea. Was it his enthusiasm? Instead, he felt his stomach growl, indicating just how hungry he had grown now that the rush of battle had worn off, and without much spirit, he placed the cleaver, skinner and other sharpened blades on the ground in front of the hutch. The tools where immediately joined by a shiny object the Primary Rexrider flung down. Almar had approached without Tamik noticing.
“I found it stuck, festering in the back of the Prime Bull Rayak killed,” Almar explained, no longer needing to shout or sign. “I figured you could use it.” The Primary Rexrider then turned and walked away toward the mound of flesh that awaited harvest near the river bank.
Tamik crouched down and peered at the object. It was a short sword, dirty, bloody, and a bit rusted, but sound. He scrubbed the blade clean with a clump of dry sloggerdung and then buffed it with the sleeve of his garment. It polished easily.
Must not have been long away from its owner.
A set of dactylite wings, the mark of a smuggler, were engraved upon the hilt.
Could this belong to the lost smuggler that crazy old Seer told me about?
He did not feel particularly compelled to consider the beggar’s words. Instead, he removed his broken weapon—he would return the pieces to the smiths—and put the smuggler’s blade in its sheath. Then he efficiently went about the business of dung collecting, and positioned piles of dry, herbivore dung patties strategically around camp. When finished, before heading to the harvest, he checked in on his father.
The camp was well-organized with eleven hutches constructed in a large circle around the clearing. The creek ran just behind the hutch Melok was in and the cookfire was already built in the middle, but as yet it remained unlit. Tamik pulled the flap back on his father’s hutch and saw Pako still crouching over the injured rexrider. Tamik had to fight the urge to run from the place. Seeing his father so weak and infirm shook him deeply. It forced him to see Melok as a man instead of an icon, and that left him as the rexrider—the one responsible for getting Gar-rex back to Stonehaven. When Melok caught his eye, Tamik felt compelled to speak.
“How are you, Father?”
“I could be better.”
“You could be worse, too,” Pako interjected.
Melok breathed painfully. “I think I’ll survive . . . this time . . . thanks to this old beast handler,” he said, indicating Pako with a slight jut of his chin. “But look well after Gar. He doesn’t understand all this. He needs quality attention.”
“I will. But you’ll be back on your feet in no time.”
Melok studied his son’s face, then began to speak slowly, considering his words. “Remember what I said the first turn of the hunt. We are people of the wilderness. Though we reside within the gates of the protectorates, we spend much of our lives outside those walls.” Melok paused and chortled, as if to laugh at himself, but he didn’t have the strength. “We face death regularly, and understand its part in the cycle of life. We hunt to provide your boots, your saddle, your tunic, and more. You consume flesh from the kill. Even a rex carcass has value to provide ceremonial artifacts—I used the tooth of a dead rex and its skull bone when you were born in the ceremony accepting you as my son.”
As Melok spoke, Tamik sat on the groundskins opposite Pako. His father sipped some water the young man offered from his hip flask.
“If I die, it will be nothing to mourn. But to not properly take care of Gar would be disastrous. He is a valuable asset to the pride for certain, and don’t forget that he will look after you just as devotedly. Now go get what you can from that longneck we killed.”
Tamik pressed his nose against his father’s in a warm parting and hurried out of the hutch, breathing easily once again.
At the site of the kill, he fought his way through the growing swarm of flies and other pestilence that were attracted to the carcasses, their buzz continuous in the warmth of the pre-dusk air. Scavenging birds and flutter-lizards would soon descend, which would, in turn, draw raptors and larger opportunists. There was even the chance that a gargantuan thunderrex—more than three times the size of its cousin, the prairie rex—might come calling. Such an appearance could place everyone at risk and scuttle the opportunity to salvage the last of the meat. The bloody work had to be completed quickly. They would have to finish by dark or even the best flesh would be nothing more than waste by the morrow.
Tyna beckoned Tamik to help her. She had hewn a large, ragged hunk of prime flesh from the tenderloin of the longneck. In a litter made from two spears and rawhide tarp, Tamik helped her carry it out of the ribcage. They cut it up into more manageable pieces and wrapped it in the broad leaves of a stretch-fruit tree. He held the leaves together while she tied it with tendons she had already stripped. As the tendons dried they would gradually tighten.
“Let’s get some rump-flesh to store for the rexes,” Tamik suggested.
“We should concentrate on prime cuts right now. There’ll be plenty of time later for gathering flesh to store for the rexes.” She pointed inside the longneck’s ribcage. “There’s some that looks good,” she said, and then climbed into the spot and began to whittle the flesh off the bone.
Meanwhile, Tamik hacked open a leg bone with a bone axe and filled two gut-bags with warm marrow, sprinkling it liberally with ground red pepper and salt. Fresh marrow was a prized commodity back home for its nutritional and healing properties. In fact, some would be cooked up at camp to feed Melok as soon as the fire was ready.
When Tamik finished his task, he looked up to see Tyna crawling gingerly into the chest cavity again to dig out tender cuts of fat, muscle and organ meat that was lodged behind the ribs, under the shoulder blades, or in other hard-to-reach places. She wore her oilskin cloak and had tied the hood over her hair to keep it from becoming too soiled with offal, but the foul weather garment only provided limited protection from the blood and bodily fluids of the beasts. She climbed through the tangle of bones and sinuses, slashing away at the jungle of anatomical obstructions with a wide variety of sharp utensils, each serving its own distinctive purpose.
Tamik offered his cheers of encouragement. The heart, liver, and kidneys were especially prized, as they sold well at market, or served as a mealtime treat to fill the camp skillets and stew pots commingling with wild herbs, ground-fungi, and tubers.
The untainted prime cuts designated as table food were packaged differently from the meat stored for the rexes. The rexriders sprinkled the market quality meat with salt and powdered spices that would help preserve its freshness before it was packaged in broad leaves brought for that purpose. And some of these bundles would be saved for their families and assistants.
Lower grade meat rations were brought back by the tarpful for the rexes to feed on between hunts. These were battered in clean dust, and covered with a thin layer of featherweed to help prevent parasitic infestation. These spoils were then wrapped in
fresh pieces of longneck skin and the bundles tied together with hemp rope. As soon as they had as much coarse flesh as they could load in the meat carts and onto their mounts, the harvest would be over.
Almar had taken charge of salvaging hide, another important commodity. He roused Rayak-rex, difficult to motivate after such a big feed, and employed him to roll over one massive carcass—now stripped to the bone on the top side—to expose the less damaged ground-side skin valued by traders and tanners.
Because the hunt had been early enough in the turn, most of these tasks were completed by dusk.
“Almar,” Ka’tag called to his compatriot, now buried in the rib cage of the longneck. “You have this operation under control. I’m going up to get the cookfire ready.”
Almar grunted and flicked his cleaver in acknowledgment.
“Hey, Tag!” Tamik called after the self-designated chef as he passed by, “I could eat a whole slab of ribs.” A small rib had enough meat to feed a family.
“If you can carry it,” the seasoned rexrider hollered back, his arms filled with dry firewood he had found near the river, “I’ll toss it on the coals for you.”
Tamik felt unusually contented, immersed in the ways of a rexrider.
***
Though the riders were exhausted, spirits around the cookfire were high. And while Ka’tag cut roast flesh from the spit, Pako raised his hands in thanksgiving to Mystery for their “arduous, but favorable hunt.” Tamik appreciated the ironic slant he put to the remark.
After bringing a bowl of meaty marrow broth to his father, Tamik sought out Tyna and found her leaning against the back of her saddle behind her hutch, her wooden bowl full of seared flesh. She waved at him to join her.
The pungent metallic smell of blood and sweat stuck to them both and combined to engulf them. Washing up in the creek nearby had only removed the more visible signs of their recent labors. A hot herb-bath and a steamroom would be necessary to truly purge the residuals of the harvest.
“This is great, isn’t it?” she asked glowingly. They gazed at the heaps of death silhouetted in the distance. She glanced back at Melok’s hutch. “Regrettable about your father, though.”
“It was definitely a favorable hunt, as far as the kills went,” Tamik said, “but I wonder if the skywatchers knew my father was going to get hurt and neglected to warn us directly?”
“I don’t think they’re that talented,” Tyna laughed. It was hard not to catch her contagious cheeriness.
“Incredible how much meat those beasts can gobble down,” Tamik said, as lounging members of the pride licked the gore off each other’s skin in the soft light of the setting sun.
“Their saliva begins to digest the flesh even before they swallow it,” Tyna commented. “The first bites pass through their stomach and get digested and expelled before they even finish eating.”
“I guess that’s how they can go so long between hunts and still have the strength to catch prey,” Tamik said. “They devour as much as they possibly can, and then eat some more.”
Tyna, her mouth full, nodded.
“Old Tag’s quite a cook, eh?”
“Umm,” she said while chewing. “Where’s your bowl?”
Tamik touched the corner of her mouth, wiping off a drop of meat juice. He licked his finger. “I just took food to my father. I’ll have to go back for some when he’s finished with the bowl.”
“I have more than enough.” Tyna placed a slice of heart meat in Tamik’s mouth.
After all had gorged themselves on the spoils of the hunt, a marked sense of contentment persisted among the company of hunters and their beasts. Tamik remembered the feeling from previous hunts in the distant past; how it felt; how he actually liked it. He experienced a sense of regret for having avoided the expeditions for so long. Acting like a rexrider, it seemed, exhilarated him almost as much as acting like a guardian.
When traveling in the wilderness
Even the simplest tasks are fraught with risk.
One rarely has the chance to do over
That which has once been done.
--Sortan
12. Crox
Western Wilderness after dawn, 11/01/1643--
Thanks to full bellies and ample time, Tamik was not the only one to sleep late the following turn. The sound he heard upon waking—the lulling trill of a tenor bone flute, hallow and solemn—did not register with him immediately. He did not know of any rider in the Stonehaven Pride who played the flute, yet he recognized the sound, meaning . . .
Sonjay, the spouse of his sister’s healer, Dasha, must have joined the camp . . . on his female thunderrex, Surpus.
Tamik could also hear the surviving female fledgling up and about, playing in the carcasses, growling and screeching while pretending to kill them anew. She showed absolutely no fear of the thunderrex now feeding on the mass nearest camp. Such giant beasts were usually threats to fledglings, but not Surpus. She was the only domestic thunderrex in the Western Kith—one of the few in the entire civilization, in fact. And, unlike the prairie rexes, who were dwarfed against the backdrop of the giant longnecks, the thunderrex was nearly the same size as the juvenile carcass she was feeding upon.
Surpus showed up often after the rexes hunted, sometimes riderless, taking advantage of their hard work uninvited. Many a rexrider, including his father, had told Tamik of her uncanny knack for locating their kills in what often seemed less than a few fingers after the hunt ended. The mild-mannered brute—Sonjay had trained his mount well—did not have to hunt much at her size. At the top of the pecking order, she could just wander up to any kill and eat her fill, and her rider was always welcome to a share in the spoils of the hunt if there was enough to go around. Other than some camping gear, Sonjay carried only his short sword and a flute.
The thunderrex was outfitted with neck spikes and chest armor like the prairie rexes, but she had no choke collar or battle lances, and her saddle protection consisted of curved rib bones that formed over the back of the animal, held together by metal rods—more like the saddle of a domehead than a rex—made for protecting the rider in a prone riding position. A sheet of oilskin fit over the apparatus, which doubled as a low-slung sleeping hutch when grounded. Tamik wondered what it would be like to wander the wilderness on the back of such a creature, beholden to no one, no territory, no pride and nothing but nature, cocooned in the protective saddle guard, free from worry about wilds, raptors, or anything, really. That must be why Sonjay seems so at peace with the wilderness, Tamik thought as he snuggled in his bedding and listened to the flute.
It was high meridian before the rexriders broke camp. Tamik waved to Sonjay, who reclined against the claw of his sated, somnolent, curled up beast that loomed like a great round hill behind him—though if you watched closely you would see that it breathed.
Pako tended to Melok, checking his wound dressings. The leg was stable, but the rexrider had lost a lot of blood. Pako fed him another dose of spicy marrow broth, and then attended to the logistics of getting his friend home. He began by taking a couple of spears and folding a large sheet of fresh skin between them to fashion a makeshift litter that could cradle Melok among the meat for the journey home.
As he had set up the dung fires, Tamik was expected to extinguish them. He poured an entire sack of water over each burning pile, then hustled to stow his provisions and finish assembling his meat-wagon, transforming the protective hood of the rex’s saddle into a cart-like set up. This was accomplished by disconnecting the hood, wheel and pinion assemblies from the saddle. As the hood rotated back onto the cartwheels, which previously had been used to form the side enclosures of the saddle hood, the butts of the lances, which were connected to the pinions at their balance point, formed the yoke poles. The bony hood now served as a hopper to hold the supply of extra meat. The narrow, pointed ends of the long lances, which now functioned as yoke poles, would be affixed to the saddle’s girth assembly.
Because Gar-rex had shattered a lance, T
amik borrowed one from Nef-rex. Pako’s mount would have had difficulty pulling a litter home because of his injury, so Pako and Tamik worked together to assemble one good cart, which would leave Nef-rex in full battle rigging, less one lance, for the trek.
After he completed his chores, Tamik stripped down to his underclothes. He grabbed Gar-rex’s girth strap and reins, slung a scrub brush over his shoulder, and went to clean the gore off his father’s mount.
“Gar! Here boy!” Tamik whistled. The rex lumbered up slowly and collapsed front and center in a cloud of dust as if the effort had been too much to bear. His belly bulged under his double rib cage, distorted well beyond what Tamik thought must be comfortable. The rexrider coughed several times to clear his mouth and nose of the dry earth stirred by the beast, then applied the girth strap, draped the reins and climbed on.
“Let’s go, Gar.” Tamik kicked him in the flanks. “Time for a wash.” The rex reluctantly complied. At the river’s edge, the pair joined the others who were already washing their mounts in the deeper waters of the Red River. As long as the rexriders held onto their rexes, they had little to fear from the river crox, as no water feeder would likely risk attacking a fully grown prairie rex.
Tamik gripped Gar-rex’s reins tightly and wedged his feet into loops on the girth strap. “Down, boy!” he commanded and tapped Gar-rex lightly on the head with the scrub brush. The beast submerged himself repeatedly in the rust-colored water. The cool liquid refreshed Tamik as he diligently washed Gar-rex, paying special attention to scouring potential irritants away from his haunches where the saddle would rest. Satisfied that Gar-rex would be comfortable under mount, Tamik turned toward shore.
But as his vantage changed, he noticed Sama-rex swimming riderless. She seemed to be looking for something, and with a sick feeling in his gut, Tamik realized for whom she was searching, and that she was searching in the wrong direction. After a brief scan of the river, he saw Tyna treading water and floating downstream as she waved and called for help.