I just need to find Alex before that happens, he thought, carefully making his way along. So far, there were no sign of Arzats. Clearly, he was still in a lower section of the caves that they didn’t normally use.
The tunnel suddenly rose sharply. Steps had been carved into the stone floor. Finally Mot was moving higher. Good, he thought, sensing that most of the tunnels probably converged in the upper caverns. The closer he got to the center, the better chance he would have at detecting Alex’s presence.
He stopped and sniffed deeply, flicking his tongue and searching. The distinct aroma of many other Arzats filled his nostrils, but he could detect no sign of his human friend. There was a slight movement of air past him, originating where he had entered, heading deeper into the caves. This is not good, he thought, recognizing that he was essentially up-wind of every Arzat in the place. He continued to move deeper and eventually began to pass sleeping chambers along the way—all eerily quiet.
Mot eventually realized that, due to the threat of the humans, the Arzats probably would have all gathered in the main chamber of the caves. This would account for the deserted passageways. Another bit of luck he hadn’t expected.
He rounded a corner and smelled another Arzat that was extremely close by—a female. He stopped and dropped to the cave floor, quietly sniffing and flicking.
Suddenly, he caught another scent. It was the unmistakable aroma of Alex, daughter of Simon.
CHAPTER 43
TURN OF EVENTS
The Arzats had the umans surrounded and trapped against the cliff’s face. So far it seemed that the smooth-skins were completely unaware of their presence. The hunters silently crept forward as a unit with their killing sticks held high, ready for a slaughter. They were only waiting for Sa’te to give the order to attack.
Za’at was becoming impatient and decided to take matters into his own hands, but just as he began to lunge at one of the unsuspecting smooth-skins, the ground beneath him began to move and shake. He immediately dropped to a squat, as did the other Arzats, and instinctively placed his palm flat to the ground.
The earth had stopped, but deep in her bowels, she was about to move again. The vibrations were strong. Za’at could feel them intensifying and the other hunters could as well. They were all frozen, waiting for the inevitable.
“It’s going to be a big one isn’t it, Za’at?” one of the Arzat Hunters close to him silently asked, his own hand pressed to the ground.
Za’at could sense the pressure building. The earth’s might was vibrating through his fingertips. “Yes, Ma’o. Yes.”
The umans had stopped moving as well. In fact, it seemed that nothing on earth was even breathing. Then, Za’at felt the vibrations begin to rapidly increase. The ground around him began to shake again, heaving up then down. The movement this time was much more violent than the first. Rocks were starting to tumble from high up on the cliff’s face. The Arzats defending the main entrance dropped their killing sticks and fought for purchase.
This is some sort of sign from the Great Creator, they all thought, not knowing what kind of sign it could possibly be.
* * *
Ma’ar had sniffed Mot at the exact moment that he had sniffed her.
The Arzat male was close, but Ma’ar had never encountered his scent before. She immediately went to protect her egg, which was only an arm’s length away. She hissed and tried to grab the female at the same time, but the uman was just out of reach. As she picked up her egg, she began to experience the sickening feeling of the ground moving. Ma’ar was used to tremors. They happened frequently. But this felt bigger—much bigger.
Mot was also very familiar with earthquakes, having endured many in his youth and more recently in the ARC stairwell, but none of his experience made them any less frightening. Now, despite the shaking, all he could think of was getting to Alex. She was so close.
He gripped his killing stick tightly and stepped forward, fighting the floor of the cave, which lifted and twisted violently. As he rounded a corner, the remnants of a torch flickered further down the tunnel and fell to the ground. He spotted the opening to a sleeping chamber as rock from the cave’s ceiling started to crumble.
Mot could practically feel the tunnel about to give way.
* * *
Maria was squatting, in the process of trying to give birth, when she felt the ground shudder. Tom and Ara were close by struggling vainly to give her some assistance.
Maria wasn’t worried in the least about how to deliver her own baby. She had served as a midwife on numerous occasions and was quite familiar with the process, but the sudden and jarring motion of the earth had thrown her from her squatting position to her back.
There had been a brief pause, but now the ground would not stop shaking and her body would not stop contracting. She grit her teeth hard on a piece of green wood and continued to will the child from her loins. There was nothing else she could do.
Tom and Ara clung to the ground, watching helplessly.
* * *
Abraham was just about to let another arrow loose when he felt the ground go for the second time. The force of the first tremor had been enough to throw him from his feet onto his knees. He had immediately stood back up, imagining that was the end of it, but the ground had soon begun to heave again even more severely.
He staggered about as if he were drunk, trying in vain to spot Moses and the other warriors in the low light. Then, he sensed something absolutely sickening. The cliff overhead was about to give way as the ground continued to relentlessly move and shift. There was nothing to be done about it and no place to seek cover.
Abraham fell back to his knees and prepared to die.
* * *
In the main chamber of the caves, Ta’ar and the others also fought for balance. Most of the Arzats were gathered there, including all of the females and the other Arzat males who were not hunters but served in other roles in the clan’s hierarchy.
Now their home was coming apart. Large chunks of the chamber’s rafters started to collapse in giant shards of heavy rock. One section let loose and fell directly into the Great Fire sending red embers flying, burning several of the Arzats nearby. Then something blocked the uppermost vent in the chamber rafters and smoke began to overwhelm the room.
* * *
Outside, Za’at and the other Arzat Hunters braced themselves as the second tremor began to violently move the ground around them. The cliff’s face begin to crumble and fall. The hunters and the umans were all directly in its path.
Za’at dropped his killing stick and leapt for the closest and biggest tree he could find. He managed to scale the first few sticks of its height before the boulders and rocks sliding from the cliff reached the tree’s base and began to relentlessly slam into its trunk. He dug his long nails into the bark and held on with every bit of his strength, his injured arm burning with pain. He could see huge pieces of the mountain moving beneath him like a raging torrent.
* * *
Mot stumbled around the corner and found the two females clinging to the ground. The Arzat’s golden eyes met his with anger and confusion, as if Mot himself were responsible for the ground shaking. Mot ignored her and turned toward Alex. Thankfully, even in the chaos, he could sense she was unharmed.
“Alex?”
“Mot!”
“Come, Alex, daughter of Simon, we must go quickly.”
Mot felt as if the tunnels might collapse at any moment. He crossed the room, keeping a wary eye on the Arzat. She is protecting an egg, he realized, as he passed her.
The ground was still lurching and Alex was sick from the movement, but she gratefully reached out to the familiar Arzat, amazed that he had found her.
Mot picked her up and pulled her around to his back. “Hold tightly Alex.” As he turned for the passage, he was surprised to find the female Arzat suddenly blocking his way. This astonished him. No female Arzat would risk the well being of her offspring. He raised his killing stick and prepared to st
ab the female if necessary.
“I am Ma’ar, daughter of the Great Hunter Ta’o. I only wish to join you,” the female Arzat said to him, nervously eyeing the pointed end of Mot’s killing stick.
Mot could see that the female was holding her egg close to her body, protecting it, struggling to keep her balance. Certainly, the female Arzat was not a threat with an egg. Mot could feel the cave collapsing around them. There was no time to argue.
“I am Mot, son of Url. Try to follow if you can.”
Mot began to run on the shaking ground with Alex holding tightly, but the torchlight soon faded into a total black that defeated even his uncanny eyesight. He began to feel his way, hoping that the passage he had used to access the caves had not been blocked.
Suddenly, there was a split in the passage, and fresh air was wafting up from both directions. Mot stopped, perplexed. He did not remember such a split on the way in and the dust was confusing his senses. The ground beneath him, mercifully, had stopped moving.
“Do you know the way out, Ma’ar, daughter of Ta’o?”
Ma’ar was not sure. She hadn’t been this far down in the tunnels since she was young, and she was not sure which of the vents the Arzat Hunters would have used. “I think to the right,” she finally said, trying to block her uncertainty from the strange male.
“Why did you stop, Mot?” Alex asked.
“There are two tunnels Alex, and I am not certain which to take. The female is uncertain as well, but says she thinks it is to the right. I can’t smell anything in this dust.”
“Well, they say a woman’s intuition is the next best thing to a known fact.”
“Sometimes, I still do not understand you at all, Alex.”
“That makes two of us, my friend,” she said, squeezing him tighter. The ground had completely stopped moving. Mot had found her. They were alive. There was still a chance.
Mot immediately moved down the tunnel that the female Arzat had recommended, hoping it was the tunnel he had used to enter the caves. It was pitch black. Alex was still clinging to his back, trying to hold on. He sniffed and flicked, but the only thing he could smell was dusty air.
“I knew you would find me, Mot. Thank you. Thank you.”
“Hold tight, Alex, daughter of Simon. We are not safe yet.”
A short while later, Mot was pleased to discover that the female Arzat’s guess had been correct. When they emerged from the tunnel, he expected to find the Arzat guard beginning to recover from their earlier encounter, but the youth was still lying exactly as Mot had left him.
He set Alex down and squatted, checking the young male for some sign of life, but the Arzat’s mind was silent and his body was growing cold. I struck him too hard, Mot thought. He was just a youth.
Mot looked at the Arzat for some time, then rose and faced Alex and the Arzat Ma’ar.
“Come Alex,” Mot said, beckoning Alex to his back.
“Who is that, Mot?”
“His name was Ne’o, son of Kaz. Please Alex, do not ask my anything more.”
CHAPTER 44
AFTERMATH
Moses’s mind finally began working again as the sun started to rise in the east. He was lying on his back, with his left leg painfully pinned between two large boulders. His head was throbbing mercilessly.
The tracker probed for damage and blood, but he could find only a large sore lump on the back of his skull. The blow he had taken had obviously knocked him out, because he remembered nothing of the night after the earthquake had begun. He could not believe he was still alive.
He slowly sat up and ran his hand down the length of his trapped leg as far as he could. Miraculously, it didn’t appear to be crushed or broken. He worked his foot around in his leather moccasin trying to pull himself free until he was exhausted. His foot would not budge. Finally, he let his body fall back to his elbows and looked around.
From where he sat, he could see nothing but large rocks and the tops of a few trees that had somehow escaped the carnage of the quake. He had somehow ended up in the middle of a sea of boulders—and had not died!
Moses turned toward the cliff. It was still there, but the face of it had changed, as if it had lost a significant portion of its size. The exposed rock was sharper than it had been before and the mountain itself seemed smaller. He scanned his eyes along the cliff’s entire surface, trying to see if he could still spot the lizard’s entrance or any movement, but he could not.
I wonder how many of them survived, he thought, once again trying to wrestle his leg loose. He pushed and pulled, but his leg would not budge. Something was lodged tightly against his ankle, preventing it from extraction. He bent forward and tried to move the large rocks that were the source of the problem, but they were too big and too heavy for him to manage. After a while, he gave up again and rested, listening for any other signs of life.
This would be something, he thought, to die here after surviving the landslide. He looked back down at his leg and realized that he was going to need help to get free. Someone besides me must also have survived, he thought. Manto was watching the horses, surely he . . .
He was about to cry out, when a long early morning shadow crossed his face. Moses immediately looked to the source. A large lizard was jumping from boulder to boulder. He froze, hoping he would not be seen.
The lizard paused and sniffed the air, its long tongue darting in and out of its mouth. Moses watched, holding his breath as the lizard looked around slowly, scanning the area. Its reptilian eyes finally came to rest on him.
Za’at stared at the uman.
He had been patrolling all night, surveying the damage. A few of the Arzat Hunters had survived the earthquake, but not without serious injury. Either they had been pinned beneath great rocks or were lying so mortally wounded that they had begged Za’at to kill them. He had reluctantly complied, realizing that he would wish the same for himself. The one Arzat he would have been happy to help onward—Sa’te—had been crushed by the falling debris and was already dead when Za’at found him.
A few of the umans had also survived, but much like the Arzats, they were pinned down by debris or otherwise mortally wounded. Like the Arzats, all of them eventually died in the night from their injuries or with the merciful, if unsolicited, help of Za’at’s killing stick.
The carnage was so brutal and so complete that Za’at began to feel almost as bad for the smooth-skins as he did for the Arzats. No, he thought as he made his way around cleaning up the mess the Great Creator had made, this was simply not right. It was true that Za’at was happy to see the umans die, but not like this. He would have much preferred to gut them himself in a fair fight.
Then, in the still of the night, a sickening thought had washed over him. What of the Arzats left in the caves? He opened his mind and searched for some sign of life, but nothing came.
Za’at scaled the cliff’s new face and eventually entered the main chamber. It had taken him several torches of time to clear enough rock and debris before he could finally force his way through the partially blocked tunnels, almost choking on the smoke and the scent of the dead. When he finally reached the main chamber, the embers from the Great Fire still smoldered. What he found there left him in a state of shock. It seemed that not a single Arzat who had been in the caves had survived.
As he picked his way through the room, he eventually sniffed out his mate Va’a, who was curled up and lifeless. Her body was not far from the Elder Ta’ar’s, who was also quite dead, the old Arzat’s hands still clinging to his prized killing stick, a frozen look of agony on his silent face. His vacant eyes were staring at the chamber’s ceiling. Za’at glanced up and noticed that the main vent looked as if it were completely blocked.
He began to wander in the dark, checking the other connecting tunnels blindly for signs of life, but it appeared that most of the Arzats had moved to the chamber. If not, it seemed as if they must have suffocated or been crushed just the same.
But where then, he asked himself,
is the uman Alex? He searched and searched, but the tunnel leading down to the back passage where they had taken her had collapsed and was completely impassable. If she had been left down there, she would be as dead as the rest, he thought.
Eventually, he had given up and had gone back outside, hoping that perhaps another Arzat Hunter had survived that he had missed in the night. Za’at jumped from boulder to boulder in the area of the slide, looking around in a sort of dull state of shock. His entire clan was gone and his mate was dead. Why, he thought, has the Great Creator done this to me? Is this all because I attacked the umans?
Then, suddenly, he had been faced with another of them.
* * *
As Mot approached the area where he had left Ara and the two humans Tom and Maria, he cautioned Tom and Ara telepathically that he was with another Arzat. Tom, however, seemed not to have received Mot’s message or simply didn’t care. His eyes immediately fixed on Alex, who slid off of Mot’s back and ran to him.
“Alex, are you all right?”
“I thought I was never going to see you again,” Alex said, squeezing him.
Tom kissed her and held her out at arm’s length. “You look like shit,” he said, winking at her and smiling. Suddenly, he became aware of the strange Arzat female who had followed Alex and Mot into the clearing.
“Who is this?” Ara asked, staring coldly at the female Arzat who waited on the perimeter. Despite herself, she rudely sniffed and flicked in the female’s direction.
Mot looked at Ara balefully and without reply and watched as his mate’s hand tightened around her own killing stick.
“I am Ma’ar, daughter of the Great Hunter Ta’o,” the female said. “My mate is the Great Hunter Sa’te. I only wish to find him. I mean you no harm.” Ma’ar, even without flicking, had already determined that the female Arzat must be Mot’s mate and that she was also about to deliver an egg. This made her extremely dangerous.
IN NATURA: a science fiction novel (ARZAT SERIES Book 2) Page 27