“How fortunate that she was able to find another shallow-brained sadist like herself to do her dirty work,” Taluine glowered. “I wish her a short life and hope her fat corpse rots before I set eyes on her again.”
Lophine Lorim’s laughter shook her corpulent bulk. “Her wish for you, too. Now, please.” She eagerly waved the wedge of her hand. “Do come out.”
Sambalor volunteered to be first, stepping past Lophine Lorim with a killing glare in her beady, black eyes. Physically attacking her might get her killed, yet the opportunity to close her wedges around this idiot commander’s scrawny neck seemed so much more appealing than being ripped apart and eaten.
“Why Blilo Yim, my dear, you look positively frightened to death. Don’t you want to come outside and play with your little animal friends?”
He had backed himself into the furthest corner where he was determined to stay. “No.”
“Leave him alone.” Taluine stepped between them.
“This is your cause, isn’t it? Protecting the indigenous wildlife from Epiphilinian aggression.”
“There is no moral justification for exploitation,” he argued.
“Well then, come out of there and let these wild beasts decide if this morality of yours will improve or degrade your tastiness.”
Stepping into the sunlight, Taluine raised a blocking arm to protect his eyes from the blinding glare. To be this far out of his city felt like he really was on another world. Strange, because back on his own world, the massive environmental destruction was more hostile to him than this wild world ever could be. And still, he was going to die. Behind him, he could hear his companion squealing as Lophine Lorim hauled him from the passenger compartment and tossed him face first onto the sand.
“You should thank me for bringing you out here to see this. Is it not beautiful? Look at these dunes. In pristine condition, untouched by us Epiphilinians.”
“Like all things Epiphilinian, I expect it will be destroyed in no time to put something of lesser value on it. Profit before life. Destruction before preservation.”
Her head-shake was slow and deliberate. “Such a shame to waste two young and pretty males on these bestial animals when you could be entertaining my troops instead of filling your feeble minds with the same sort of environmental nonsense that you were preaching back in city Anaxerxes.”
Taluine remained obstinate. “I’d rather die in the jaws of some beast than have to lie on my back for even one of your dregs.”
“Very well.” She waved her arm to signal that it was time for them to depart. “My preference would be to watch and see what happens to you, but I have to return to my city. You do know where your city is, don’t you?” Looking around to see if any of her dregs were listening, she acted as if she was giving up an important secret that might help them. “Tell no one that I gave you this. It’s that way,” she pointed. There was a dark line visible on the horizon. “Through that forest. And straight on to city Anaxerxes.”
“Straight to our deaths,” Sambalor said grimly.
“That’s not a very positive attitude,” Lophine Lorim chided her. ”Why, a big, strong female like yourself shouldn’t have anything to be afraid of. And with these two males to assist you it will be an easy walk from here.” But the real sting was in her final words. “Have a safe trip home.”
The dust cloud swirled up around them as the aircraft started to ascend. Blilo Yim watched as it departed and shrank to a faint dot that already seemed to be an infinite distance away from them. He was trying to be realistic about their chances of survival. “We are going to die, aren’t we?”
Now Sambalor was sounding like the optimist. “In the military I took survival training, and believe me, there are much worse situations to be in. If we can reach the forest then those giant trees will protect us so long as we can keep ourselves clear of the stalking animals.”
However, Taluine was more pessimistic. “The engineers constructed impenetrable walls around our cities for good reason. This is not Epiphiline where we eliminated all of the predators. There are no cute and cuddly animals here, just the ones that want to eat us.”
Sambalor nodded because this was the reality they were living in. “Then I hope we make it.”
“As you said already, we won’t.”
“I’m scared, Taluine,” Blilo Yim shivered.
He put his arm protectively around his friend. “I am too. Pray to Ashimmah for protection, but I fear she has never met a segathar before.”
“So what now, stand and wait to be eaten?”
“We walk. Even if it is to our deaths we are doing something instead of nothing.”
“Do you suppose Midlothian will discover that it was Poxiciti who told us that she was profiting from the skin traders?”
“Perhaps he is the one who she is killing at this very moment,” Sambalor said.
“Then I hope not, because he is our only hope for this world now.”
“No,” Taluine disagreed. “Even he is not enough.” He stared in the direction of the forest where they were heading. “To save it, there has to be something else.”
“Or someone else.”
“Then let us hope he is coming soon.”
Chapter Eight
Just how long Gangahar had been asleep he was not entirely sure. His eyelids were drooping back down and he thought he might close his eyes and sleep some more, until the next shrill shriek penetrated his burrow. This disturbance roused him and he hurried through the tunnel to find Katakana waiting outside of Horhon’s burrow.
“She dreams again,” Katakana told him.
Another anguished shriek caused him to look past her. “I worry.”
“You should not.”
“But these nightmares of hers seem to worsen by the day.”
“When a pregnant female’s time is near she can dream the dreams of the unborn,” she explained. “And since Horhon has said that her baby is coming soon this is what must be happening to her.”
“It is much too soon,” he told her. “Less than half the time that it normally takes. This one is not even a full season yet.”
“Perhaps she was pregnant for longer and just didn’t tell you.”
“She had no burrow mate,” Gangahar insisted. If she had then it would have been him, or so he hoped. “Horhon told me herself. She swore that however it happened it was not one of our hunters.”
Katakana’s smile suggested otherwise. “Something happened.”
“I know what it was.” Unknown to her there was some additional information that only he had knowledge of. “Something attacked her.”
Her big, blue eyes widened. “What attacked her?”
Even despite what he told her, she was unconvinced that this had anything at all to do with Horhon’s pregnancy. “Gangahar, in this world of ours, goud produce goud, efedaifents produce efedaifants, and Egris produce only Egris. How could such a thing have produced her child? It had to have been a hunter.”
“This thing was no Egris hunter. I saw its tracks.”
“Then what?”
Before he was able to answer, Horhon cried out in her sleep again. This time Katakana couldn’t prevent him from getting past her; he peered down into Horhon’s burrow. She was still asleep-awake, her rigid body writhing in agony.
“It is unwise to wake one who dreams,” Katakana cautioned him.
Perhaps he should have heeded her warning because when he touched Horhon on the neck she grasped him tightly about the arms and shook him until his hoarse shouts penetrated her waking nightmare. On her face was a look of terror.
“Such a terrible dream,” she gasped. “So many awful things that I wonder if I am awake now. Am I?”
“Better for me that you are.” Unclasping her frozen fingers from his arms he said, “Was it the same dream again?”
She nodded. “It felt so real, maybe it was.” Then she quickly added, “My head, these thoughts. I can’t make them go away.” She looked at him tearfully. “Make them
go away, Gangahar.”
He couldn’t. Eager as he was to please her there was little he could do.
“Is she all right in there?” another voice said from behind him.
“Katakana, is that you?”
Her snout poked through the opening. “I warned him not to wake you, but he is stubborn and wouldn’t listen to me. I heard you shouting. Are you well?”
“I think so. It was a bad dream.”
“This was my first thought, that you were dreaming awake again. Then I return to my burrow to sleep.”
“Sleep well,” Horhon told her.
“Tell me what it was you saw,” Gangahar asked inquisitively.
“I do not think I should tell you. It will frighten. Perhaps what I feel you will not even understand.”
“Then I will listen as I only can,” he said, then made motions of respectful silence.
It had not gone unnoticed, his fawning, his attentiveness. She believed that he genuinely cared for her, and they were close friends now so she would tell him whatever he wanted to know.
“I was . . . someone else. Something else. In another body.” Holding out her hands in front of her she wiggled her clawed fingers. “My hands, so different they were from these. The others of my kind, their faces unlike any animal I have ever seen.”
“Can you describe them?”
“Two-legged animals, walking upright like us, but running on their feet, not jumping. No tails, no claws or sharp teeth. Instead they use sharpened sticks for weapons. They have fur on their bodies but they wrap themselves in animal skins to stay warm.”
“These are very strange creatures,” he agreed, “and I can see why they frighten you.”
“They are not what frightens me. The reason we are running, is to escape.”
“From what?”
“Other creatures.” She stared at him, her face full of gloom. “The ones who are attacking us.”
As she described the attack she was possessed by a hatred of such intensity that she blindly smashed her fist into the sandy wall. But even while she was trying to comprehend it she found herself becoming more and more upset. She could scarcely breathe, she was that angry.
Panting, Horhon cried out, “I know this anger is difficult to control. I also know I cannot speak about these other creatures I see without feeling hatred towards them. I must, but I know not why I feel this so strongly.”
It seemed there was no end in sight to her despair. Although Gangahar remained calm in the face of her pent-up anger, he realized he would never find the answer if he let her continue like this. So instead he decided to go with his gut feelings and speak what he believed.
“Perhaps this is not your dream.” His eyes shifted downward. “Perhaps it is his.”
Her hoarse bellow of surprise was such that Gangahar drew himself backwards, expecting her sharpest rebuke yet.
“No. Stay. I do not mean to shout,” she apologized. “None of what I feel is intended for you. Rather it is because I think you must be right. These are his thoughts, his anger, that fills my mind.”
“Do you think they are real?” he asked.
Her eyes were closed in deep concentration before she opened them and spoke again. “It feels real. I see their faces, I know their names. They are all dead. And their killers seem to be a lot like the Iranha. ”
Perhaps her interpretation was a bad one, and these bellicose creatures she described were in fact the same ones who were attacking them. “If they are living here somewhere then these others you speak of are the Iranha, too.”
“No,” she disagreed. “I sense they are very far away, somewhere that is not Egris. Do you remember in the past when I told you about the hunters who will die?”
“Unhappily—yes. You said that the Iranha will destroy many trods, that the fight will be long and hard.”
“I did. But now I must tell you that this has happened somewhere else. And the ones they killed are gone forever, gone forever . . .”
“What are you saying?” Gangahar sank back and was filled with despair. “This is what you see for us as well?”
“What has happened to them is in the past, and what will happen to us is in the future, so this does not mean that we cannot change it. We can.”
Of course he was thinking purely out of his own fears. He may have to hear more, so he calmed himself down and tried to think. “If these things are not the Iranha, then what are they?”
“I hear a voice inside my head that speaks their name, over and over.” Her entire body began to tremble. “I hate it. Hate them.”
“Them?”
“Uta. This is what I hear. This is what I hate.”
Gangahar’s face creased in puzzlement. Was that even a word? He attempted to make the same sound too. It was barely pronounceable. Nevertheless he tried several more times and when he finally came close to saying it correctly Horhon nodded.
“That is it. Uta.”
A sharp spasm caused her to grimace.
“Your child?”
“Yes. Even now he moves with hatred as I speak his enemy’s name.”
He understood, maybe a little too well. “Just how different will this child of yours be from us?”
“So different that it terrifies me to think how he will survive in this world of ours.”
“Then it worries me too,” Gangahar said. “He is coming soon?”
“Very soon.” She was clear about her wish for him. “I hope he is ready.”
Chapter Nine
“No, no, no! That is not how you stalk game,” Ilistruk said to her brother, highly irritated, watching as the herd of nentenens bolted away into the field. Antayak was no better a stalker. In fact the two of them together were doubly worse, and even while she was angry she felt an uncontrollable urge to laugh at them. “Now watch me. Here, like this,” she demonstrated, bending low into the grass and creeping forward on her stomach.
Yahu chirped enthusiastically, trying to do just as she did, though he was still clumsy and stepped on Ilistruk’s tail. Her resounding roar of rage echoed across the field.
“Stupid! Stupid! You will never be a hunter!”
His face wrinkled. “Already I know a lot.”
“You know nothing. I don’t know which one of you is worse.”
Antayak wasn’t even paying attention. Instead he was staring out into the grass, concentrating on something. Even despite his inattentiveness Ilistruk no longer cared. It was hopeless, just hopeless, they would never learn. What she really wanted was to be with the adult hunters, stalking the big game. A big meaty goud, or efaifedent, that would be tasty too.
“Where are you going now?” Ilistruk called after her brother. “Come back here!” Her eye caught the end of his long tail sliding into the tall grass. Whatever animal he was after, his only hope of catching it would be that it was deaf and incredibly stupid to not hear him coming. Even Antayak went in after it, running as if he was the one being chased. “Unbelievable,” she grumbled. So long as these two neophytes accompanied her she would never catch anything alive.
Suddenly her big ears twitched and she turned in the same direction where only moments earlier her two overzealous students had disappeared. Something squealed loudly.
Her thick tail snapping, Ilistruk instantly sprang into the air, hitting the ground twice before coming back down in the grass. It was just as she expected. Both Yahu and Antayak were bent over something on the ground. They both straightened up when they saw her stamping forward. Now the two of them were grinning proudly, though it was Yahu’s blood-stained teeth that showed who had struck death.
“What is that you have killed?”
“Tarser,” he clicked happily. “I catch tarser.”
“That is no tarser.” Indeed, it was a very ugly thing. Ilistruk could see the gaping wound where he had torn it open, the bright yellow blood still seeping out. She leaned over its dead mass and sniffed. How strange. It had another layer of skin beneath. Slimy, mottled gray and black skin, sm
elling of something long dead. What was this thing?
At first she believed the dead animal was a tharank, large dirt eating creatures that lived mostly underground, but this grim looking mass had arms and legs so it could not be. And what was this laying beside it? She retracted her claws and touched the shiny object. It made a hollow sound as her finger thunked against it. Here was a mystery needing to be solved, though she was certain that her brainless companions were readying to consume the evidence.
“You are not to eat this. Is that understood?”
Although Yahu was shaking his head yes she knew it would be devoured the instant she left his sight. Undoubtedly it would be a pile of well gnawed bones upon her return. She considered this, and arrived at what she thought was the best solution.
“You must go tell father what has happened. You must bring him back here. Can you do that?”
“I tell him I kill tarser,” he grinned again. “Yahu is good hunter.”
“Yes,” she agreed, careful to show her appreciation lest he think about staying. “Here, give him this.”
He grasped the shiny object in his hand then leapt away. Antayak was close behind him. To be rid of them both was what she had most wanted. And yet now for the first time today, she hoped they would be coming back.
Chapter Ten
This night had been a restless one for Gangahar. He thought about hunting; he was hungry and sensed the taste of meat as he licked his wet teeth clean. Yet he could not leave Horhon alone so he propped himself up against his tail and waited for morning to come.
By night’s end the hunters were beginning to return from the forest. Gangahar’s solid, unmoving frame was the first thing they saw as the group came bounding in.
“How was the eating?” he asked them.
“You were not out hunting?” Katakana knew exactly where he had spent his night.
“I do not know what to do,” he said with concern. “She refuses to eat, nor will she leave her burrow. Katakana, you have children. Is it always this way?”
The Battle for Tomorrow (Ilon the Hunter) Page 8