by Travis Peck
The injured young man tested the weight and was pleasantly surprised by the result. It was no longer hellish agony each time he set the foot down, merely an excruciatingly painful, stabbing sensation. A vast improvement. “Thanks,” Martel said as he tested the weight on the makeshift brace. “So, any ideas on what we do next?”
“Hmm…” Mon Lyzink stroked his beard, satisfying both intellectual vanity and long-ingrained habit. “We have no food. No weapons to speak of. It’s night and raining heavily. And we are surrounded by—from my calculations—no fewer than three flocks of rav—”
“Three? Are you sure?” It was uncommon for two flocks to occupy an area of this size, but for three to do so. Unheard of.
“Oh yes, my boy, quite sure. I’d be shocked if there are only three…” Mon Lyzink trailed off, murmuring to himself of any possible reason why this was so. Martel thought he caught the word migratory but could not be certain.
“Well. We should probably get away from this one, at least,” he suggested to his mentor as he gestured to the dead ravinor lying at their feet. “If there are three flocks around, then they are going to converge on this place presently.”
“Quite right,” his mentor agreed.
Ravinors seemed to have a second-sense for detecting death, and they were not above eating one of their own. Oddly, though, they would not kill one of their own for a meal.
The previous summer, Mon Lyzink and Martel had led a flock deep into a canyon. Their goal was to observe them from a safe vantage point from along the edge. This is where they first witnessed ravinors eating their dead. The flock was starving for days, desperately scouring the canyon for any signs of life to sate their hunger. There was nothing there. They became so weak that all they could do was huddle together and occasionally whimper or moan. It had been rather disturbing. If Martel had never seen the aftermath of a ravinor flock attacking a village, he may have been tempted to throw down some food for them. But he had seen such a terrible scene, and so he watched and waited for them to die.
When the first one expired, there was no hesitation; all the ravinors scrambled to get at least a mouthful. After the survivors had finished their meal, Martel assumed that they would all go into a frenzy and kill and eat one another. But they did not. They huddled together once again. Sure enough, as soon as the next one died, they all jumped at the chance to get meat. Once more, they huddled together after their cannibalistic meal was concluded. This process continued until the flock was no more, and the last one finally perished alone. An unpleasant experiment to be sure, but Martel believed it showed there was at least some trace of feeling, however small, that resided in the depths of a ravinor’s soul.
With that experiment brought back to his mind, the two set off to the northwest. They agreed that it was the most likely direction where they might find a village or town—even a farmhouse—to get food and shelter. They tried to keep up a good pace, but with Martel limping each time his throbbing ankle hit the ground, and the old scholar—now moving slowly without his walking staff—the men hobbled along as best they could. They kept glancing back in the direction where they had left the dead ravinor. Each man dreaded the excited noises that would tell them that a flock had found their fallen brethren.
The terrain carried them up in a steady climb, and the drop-off to their left gave them a view of the valley that they had been skirting. Fortunately, the full moon granted them enough light to see a good distance away. The mountains made the boundary of the opposing end of the valley clearly visible above a sea of black that shrouded the forested valley floor. The rain was a mere sprinkle compared to what it had been, so at least they didn’t get any more saturated, but the ground was still muddy and slick. The two kept on walking, silent, each man focused on any noise that might signal trouble.
In a stroke of luck, they had made it nearly a league before they could just make out the whooping and barking of feeding ravinors in the distance behind them.
That should keep them busy for a while, Martel thought, relieved that they might be able to make it to a place of relative safety soon—without a flock in hot pursuit. Being chased by only a single ravinor was quite enough for one day.
Relief was short lived. Martel and his mentor heard more ravinor calls coming from the direction they were heading. And they were getting closer by the moment.
“Damn it!” Mon Lyzink swore under his breath as he motioned Martel to follow him into some heavy brush. The slope they were on was open to the west, and they did not care to be seen by the approaching flock. They crouched down as low as they could and waited.
The sky was growing brighter, and for Martel and his teacher, the light could not come soon enough. Both men hugged the ground, desperate to stay out of sight. The barks and ravinor laughs were louder now.
Martel could see them ahead. The hillside they were on sloped downward and to the west which gave them plain sight of the flock coming their way. It was a large one. Martel counted at least forty figures scurrying up the hill, but it was hard to tell exactly how many there were with the brush and trees between them. Forty ravinors were more than enough to be their end, though.
Martel’s breath caught in his throat when the flock suddenly halted. In unison, the ravinors lifted their heads in the air as if catching a scent. Martel could not move a muscle even though his brain was screaming at him to bolt. His muscles tensed—
He nearly screamed when Mon Lyzink clamped a surprisingly strong arm over him, all the while motioning for him to be still. Then Martel heard their luck evaporate. The flock feasting on their dead brother was hooting now. The ravinor flock that was nearby sprang into action and began sprinting heedlessly past the two skulking scholars.
“We’re going to have to follow them,” Mon Lyzink whispered to Martel once the flock had passed them by. His mentor must have read the incredulous look on his face. “We need to observe this flock when it encounters the other one. I’ve only seen it once in all my years observing ravinors. It had been all too brief and I was too far away to see much.”
Martel groaned. “I don’t think I can walk back where we started again.”
“Ah yes, your ankle.” Mon Lyzink must have forgotten in his excitement.
“You go,” Martel said. “I’ll find a place to hole up here. Just find me a nice branch or stick to walk with.”
“There’s a good lad!” Mon Lyzink’s attitude swung back to enthusiasm in a flash at the prospect of observing the two flocks interacting with one another. He quickly left Martel where he sat leaning against a tree trunk and went to find his apprentice a likely walking stick.
Mon Lyzink was back in moments, hefting a mostly straight branch that was roughly double the diameter of Martel’s thumb.
“Perfect,” his mentor said. “And it should do nicely to whack a ravinor with if you need to.” His mentor slapped him on the back as he handed over the new walking stick. “Rest up, and I will be back soon. I don’t think there will be much to see with the sunrise so close, but you never know.”
And with that, his mentor stalked off toward where there were now two flocks of ravinors. Martel hobbled deeper into the forest to find a suitably hidden location as he was forced to lean more and more on his new crutch. It helped him to keep the weight off his injury, but he didn’t think his ankle would be much better when Mon Lyzink returned in a few candles. If he returned at all.
The two men had recently observed an alarming trend that suggested that ravinors were becoming less afraid of sunlight than they had been only a few years past. What had once been considered the most predictable characteristic of ravinor behavior was now becoming murky. At this point, it would be a mistake to count on the presence of the sun to protect against ravinors as it had for so long. His mentor had notes to that effect, but they had not been distributed yet. Once they got back to the scholar’s tower, they would have to send messenger birds to notify the empire of this change. If it hadn’t been for the sudden report of ravinor activity in this
area, they would have already sent the word out.
As it stood now, Martel wondered if they had not made a terrible mistake in not spreading the news before they had left. Two men being in the same area as three ravinor flocks was an arrangement with questionable survival odds. Though, somewhat remarkably, Martel was not yet overly concerned about his safety. He had certainly been terrified when being chased, of course, but now he had faith in his mentor to get them back to safety. Even though Mon Lyzink’s mind was apt to wander, no one was more qualified in all the Styric Empire than his mentor was to keep them alive with so many ravinors about.
He groaned as he crawled underneath a large silverwood’s dense, low-hanging branches. Finally able to rest, he leaned back against the tree and propped his ankle up on a rock to keep it elevated. His stomach growled; it had been a full day since he had eaten anything, and he was hungry. He hoped his mentor would not be too long before returning.
But all he could do was wait.
***
Mon Lyzink followed the flock’s trail back toward where he had brained the ravinor who had been chasing his pupil. And also to where two flocks would shortly converge. Flocks generally steered clear of one another, though they would occasionally raid together if presented with an ample target. But once their unfortunate victims were consumed, they would separate and go their own way.
He finally saw the ravinors in a cluster in the distance. Daylight was a candle away, but he no longer knew if that would have an affect on them any more. A large boulder rested on top of a small outcropping that overlooked the clearing where the creatures were congregating. A perfect view, he thought as he belly-crawled the final few spans to the boulder.
Peering around the side of the large rock, he estimated there to be eighty ravinors, or thereabouts. In this grouping he could not identify which flock was which, but they all seemed comfortable around the others. The dead ravinor was nothing but a pile of picked-over bones now. Mon Lyzink wondered why they were still in the area. He had assumed that the ravinor flock had smelled the fallen ravinor and wanted to get in on the easy meal. They had missed out on the feast but seemed unconcerned. Is it just coincidence that there’s a dead ravinor that brought these flocks together, or is it something else entirely?
The scholar hunkered down in a slightly more comfortable position beside the boulder and watched. For a candle, nothing happened. The ravinors milled about in clusters or simply sat on their haunches and gazed out at their surroundings. The sun was climbing up over the horizon, and the clearing was now partially lit. The ravinors did not react to the light at all.
That settles it. Sunlight is no longer a deterrent. But why?
A quarter candle after dawn broke, all the ravinors’ heads perked up and fixated to the east. A moment passed before Mon Lyzink could hear what the ravinors had already detected. Distinctive barks and calls were sounding enthusiastically from the east. Another flock. The two flocks in the clearing answered the calls with vocalizations of their own. The eastern flock answered the calls, each time audibly closer.
They’re telling the other flock where they are. Remarkable. He had believed that ravinors could convey simple information to the others, but to do so between flocks in a coordinated way? Amazing. He knew he was seeing something that nobody in the empire had yet witnessed. The scholar could not suppress his excitement, nor could he suppress the burgeoning sense of dread that accompanied it. The ravinors were changing. It was undeniable, what with the sunlight not affecting them, the ability for effective communication between flocks and amongst themselves, and having three flocks grouping together. Something had changed for the creatures, and perhaps the change had been slow to be revealed, but there was no denying it.
He did not have long to wait before he saw the third ravinor flock pour into the clearing. The three groups met with more excited hoots and calls. The scholar’s gaze attempted to take in every detail so that he could write it down exactly as it had happened. One of the newcomer ravinors appeared more vocal than the rest and was gesticulating to the other flocks. Mon Lyzink swore that he was seeing a leader giving commands to his subordinates. And the ravinors obeyed.
The ravinors spread outward in the clearing in a circle, leaving the middle space open. The strange commanding ravinor walked into the middle of the clearing, leading a female ravinor by the arm. He immediately noticed the leader’s boots. They were in good shape, much better than they would be if the obviously mature ravinor had worn the same pair since it had been turned. The clothing was also better kept than any normal ravinor would wear, and it was clean too. Thoughts of the leader’s attire fled off into the ether when he noticed something about the female ravinor.
The female ravinor was pregnant. Was this woman pregnant before she had turned? Mon Lyzink had, for many years, tried to observe a ravinor successfully give birth. He had witnessed only a handful of births, but each one had ended in a stillbirth. And each time, it was clear that the female in question had been newly turned, with short nails and less filthy than her brethren.
This female seemed to be a mature ravinor. Her hard nails were each as long as the finger it grew from. She was naked but for a torn nightgown that only partially covered her from the waist down to just above her knees. The female’s breasts were swollen with milk. Fascinating. He would possibly get some answers to many of his questions he had about ravinor reproduction. If indeed this one did not result in a stillbirth like the others.
Logic would dictate that the creatures had to be reproducing somehow; not every ravinor could be a turned human—could they? More questions.
The female ravinor gave a cry as she fell to her knees. Her water had broken and now formed a small puddle next to her feet. She lay down and started to groan, not unlike how human mothers had done during the few human births that the scholar had seen.
For two candles, the female grunted and shrieked as the three flocks looked on silently. It was unnerving having so many ravinors nearby without making their customary vocalizations. Suddenly, the shrieking stopped, and a wail broke the silence of the clearing. It survived! Mon Lyzink was caught up in the moment and actually felt happy for the ravinor babe and its mother. As the newborn cried, the leader ravinor and a small group of others descended upon them.
Even from his excellent vantage point, he couldn’t clearly see the babe as the other ravinors crowded around it. He could make out the umbilical cord, though, still attached to the new mother, being consumed by several of the closest ravinors. He felt sick as he saw the ravinors fighting their way so that each one could get a mouthful of the tiny meal.
But then the group of ravinors broke apart from their cluster, and the leader held up the wailing infant. They were cleaning it. He had assumed the ravinors had been eating it, but apparently the babe was being enthusiastically licked clean. The leader ravinor held up the newborn, and the three flocks barked in a celebratory fashion. When the calls died out, the leader gently handed the babe back to its mother, where it promptly began to feed at her breast.
Mon Lyzink was shocked. He had just seen a successful ravinor birth. The scholar couldn’t believe how gentle the mother was tending to her newborn, and how clearly excited the flocks were at their new arrival. With the surprise of observing a ravinor who could successfully command others to do its bidding, and now this birth before him, Mon Lyzink could not remember such a day of revelations.
His heart was racing, and he noticed his palms were clammy with sweat. His rubbed at his cramped hands; he hadn’t noticed how tightly he had been clenching them throughout the birth. As he was about to slip away, he heard the sound of a galloping horse. Mon Lyzink swore. There was no way he could give warning without revealing his position. He hoped that the rider noticed the flocks soon and had time to turn back. If the rider could wheel his mount around, it might be possible to outrun the flocks if his horse wasn’t too tired already.
The ravinors were all facing the direction the horse was galloping from. Mon Lyzink
expected the flocks to take off toward the rider, but with a sharp grunt from the leader, they all remained silent and still.
The scholar cringed as he thought of the hapless rider bursting into the clearing occupied by three flocks—over one hundred ravinors waiting for his or her arrival. The horse broke into the clearing, the rider sitting tall on its back. The ravinor leader barked another order, and he and all the others, went down to their knees. Mon Lyzink had to look the fool with his mouth hanging open so wide at the strange sight before him. The figure vaulted off the horse and landed in front of the leader, who remained on his knees with his head touching the ground.
He swore he was looking at a human, but no—the eyes were black. This newcomer wore clothing—not ragged and rotting clothing—but a nice cloak that any traveler would have worn, along with breeches and a tunic that showed normal wear from the road. In short, he—for it clearly resembled a human male—was dressed better than Mon Lyzink was, and certainly less filthy. This man was perhaps a touch more pale than was considered healthy. His canines were enlarged and he had the hard, overgrown nails typical of mature ravinors, but only about three-quarters as long as was common. He was fit. Despite the figure’s clothing hiding what was beneath, the scholar could tell that this—creature—was well muscled.
The human-like ravinor handed over the reins of his horse to the leader, who had apparently been given permission to get back to his feet. Mon Lyzink was having trouble breathing. This day was turning out to be the most important of his academic career. And it was not over yet. He saw the newcomer stride over to the new mother where he firmly took the babe from her. He studied the newborn for a few moments, and then Mon Lyzink saw him smile. He had never seen a ravinor display any facial expression other than hunger or bloodthirsty rage. Usually they had the blank face of a dull cow but for their eerie black eyes.