By Tooth and Claw - eARC

by Mercedes Lackey

  Once Mreiss was finished with that he was set to gathering wood for the small cooking fires, sorting the kindling, and arranging the fire pits. After that, Arschus Mroa called upon him to help sharpen spear tips and their own blades. He always liked the time spent with Arschus; the senior warrior was always patient with him, no matter his mistakes. Arschus was quiet by nature, and didn’t say much, but when he talked, it was worth listening to. He’d taught Mreiss a lot over the years, just with a few well-chosen words.

  By the end of all of the chores, it was well into the night; the camp was made and all within it were ready to bed down. Mreiss shared the meager dinner with the rest of the clan around the main cook fire. There never was very much chatter during supper lately. Before the flood, there would always be laughter and stories; Mreiss liked the ones about battles and ancient heroes from distant lands the best. He always imagined himself as being one of those heroes someday, travelling away from the Clan of the Long Fang and leaving his mark upon the plains. But there were no stories to fuel his day dreams anymore. Everyone sat and ate quietly, the hushed conversations always short and private, as if the speakers were afraid that being too loud would bring some new calamity down upon them. There were no Dancers to lend their wisdom and to calm the fears of the clan. There was only Sartas Rewl, stony-faced and stoic no matter what came. Mreiss hoped it would be enough.

  It wasn’t until he had bedded down for the night that Mreiss had time to think again; even dinner was a chore, dealing with the unpalatable food and the long silences. He was stuck in a tent with nine kits, all of them younger than he was by a score of years. There was one good thing, though. There was no such thing as a restless, sleepless kit now. After a day’s worth of exertions, they all fell asleep soundly and easily. Mreiss was not so lucky. He didn’t mind the indignity of being set up with the kits; he had no family left in the clan, as his parents were both killed when he was still too young to remember them except vaguely, as dreamlike blurs and the feeling of comfort. He had been raised by the entire clan from that point on, but always felt different. Some of the kits in the tent were also orphans; parents taken in the flood or dead along the trail.

  What kept Mreiss awake long into the night were his memories of that horrible, disastrous day; the day when the flood waters came.

  He had wanted to go out with the hunters. The leaders of both hunting parties had rebuffed him. Sartas had at least been kind about it. “We hunt root-diggers, youngling,” he had said. “Only the strongest dare that.” And he had known Sartas was right; there was no way he could hold a charging spear against a root-digger. “There will always be next time. In a season, you’ll be stronger. We’ll see you ready by then.”

  Knowing that Sartas was right didn’t do very much to heal Mreiss’ wounded pride, however. Having been a loner for as long as he could remember, Mreiss had plenty of practice in going off alone in the woods outside of their village; the years of experience he had doing that were what made him a good scout. He could lose himself in the forest, leave his worries and frustrations behind and just listen to the world. He certainly hadn’t wanted to go off with the foragers. They were all kits and the elderly and the women. And though he would very much have liked to stay and watch the Dancers, they had chased him off, some with unkind comments about skinny adolescents with stronger desires than his body could meet.

  That had been why he had decided that he was going to watch them anyway, whether they liked it or not.

  Not just any tree would do, however. It had to be big, very tall, and heavy with leaves, the better to screen him. Best of all would be one so big he could lie down all along a branch, and blend in with the bark. From high vantages like the very tallest trees, he felt like he wasn’t a part of the world, but above and outside of it. He didn’t dare liken himself to Aedonnis; such would be blasphemy. Mreiss simply wanted to escape from the mundane life that surrounded him, the indignity of being treated like a kit when there was adult work he wanted to do, or warrior’s work he wanted to try, but like an adult when there were onerous chores to be done. It seemed the height of unfairness to be told “You are not strong enough” when he wanted to hunt or train against Liskash, but then be told “You are not a kit anymore” when there was water to be hauled or wood to be brought, or heavy objects to be moved. He was caught between two different sets of claws; both hurt, albeit differently.

  Mreiss didn’t know how long he had been in the tree he had found when it started; he had indeed found one with massive branches that allowed him to lay down fully, and had fallen asleep between his brooding and reverie. He was awakened by a noise, low at first. Mreiss initially thought it was someone growling at him to quit being such a layabout. It took him a few moments for the grogginess to clear from his head and realize he was still up in the tree. When the tree began to shake and the noise grew louder, he looked down at the base of it. What kind of animal could shake a tree like this and make that sound? Only then did he notice that it wasn’t just his tree that was shaking; the entire forest was moving as the rumble grew louder. Steadying himself on the branch, Mreiss stood up and hugged the tree trunk with one arm while he used his free hand to shield his eyes as he scanned the horizon.

  “An Arx stampede? An army?” He wondered allowed as he took in everything below. A short distance away he could see the village; the Dancers were in the prominent clearing where they always practiced. Some were under the low shade trees on the far end, resting. They stood out against the ground; years of the action of hands-on-ground had removed the grass in the center to leave a roughly circular patch of compacted sand. Even from this distance, he could plainly see that the Dancers were alarmed as well; some of the ones that had been lounging under in the shade had stood up, looking around.

  The noise was getting louder. It didn’t sound like a stampede—it took him a moment, but he remembered being with a hunting-party in the spring just after a big rain, when they encountered what had been a trickle of a waterfall and had seen it had become a torrent. The thunder of the waters had sounded just like this…only this was much, much louder. Where’s it coming from…there! Oh, gods, there! In the east, he could see large trees shaking with the impact as something struck them, and smaller trees snapping and falling over as if they were just blades of grass being knocked over by a rolling kit. It seemed Mreiss that whatever was causing it took up most of the horizon, and that it was getting larger as it came closer.

  He let go of the trunk and cupped his hands around his mouth, shouting at the Dancers in their clearing. “Run! Run! Climb a tree, a big one! RUN!” He pitched his voice high to make it carry over the noise, jumping up and down on his branch, waving. “RUN!”

  He saw the—thing—his mind didn’t even take it in as water at the time, just in time to drop back down to the branch and cling on for dear life. It looked like an avalanche, or a mudslide, a churning, grinding force of rocks and tree-parts and something that was dirt-colored but moving faster than any mudslide he had ever seen before.

  One moment, he was staring in wide-eyed horror at the Dancers. Some of them had started to run, but none of them knew where the danger was coming from, or what it was; the trees blocked their view. The next moment, the edge of the flood reached the clearing, and just as quickly it all disappeared under the tumbling water. Mreiss didn’t even have a chance to cry out in grief before the oncoming mass slammed into his tree. Several times the tree canted dangerously back before swinging forward a little bit; Mreiss had to cling for dear life, his claws straining at their roots to keep him attached to the tree. He shut his eyes, willing that it was all just another dream, as the sounds of splintering wood and churning water filled his ears.

  But it hadn’t been a dream.…

  Eventually, so numb with shock, horror, and grief that he had felt as if he had turned to stone, he began clambering from tree to tree, heading in the direction that the foraging party had taken. The hunters under Sartas had found him a little before he reached them, but we
ll after he had heard their faint singing in the distance, and had known that at least he was not utterly alone.

  He had been the one to tell Sartas that he was the sole survivor of the camp. He had been the one to tell the talonmaster that all the Dancers were dead, and that he was certain that none had gotten to safety. He had looked past Sartas to see the faces of those who had heard that their mates, their daughters, their sisters were forever gone, and if he could have managed it, he would have sunk into the ground to hide. He had known what they were all thinking, after the first shock of grief. So why are YOU still alive? No one ever said it, of course. It wasn’t as if he hadn’t been asking himself that same question with every breath he had taken since the waters came.

  Just as he was asking it now, lying in the darkness, unable to sleep.

  Then, finally, the storm came. Thunder rumbled overhead, rain pounded the tent, and under cover of the storm, now that no one could hear him, he could curl on his side, and cry.

  * * *

  Thunder rolled and the night sky whitened with flashes of lightning up above the trees. It was a good thing the clan had stopped early; it had been possible to make shelters for all of the campfires before the rain came. For once, no one was going to have to go to bed wet.

  “I’m not saying that he’s wrong. I’m just not saying that he’s right, either.” Miarrius Srell finished picking his teeth with a bone splinter before tossing it into the fire. He was seated across from Arschus Mroa and Ssenna Errol; the three of them always ended up on their own after the clan ate, to discuss the day and plan for tomorrow. It usually devolved the same way it had tonight; with Ssenna and Miarrius opposed to each other, with Arschus sitting silently and weighing everything.

  “Be plain, and say what you want to really say. What would you rather Sartas have us do?” Ssenna, as icy cold as stone most of the time, only seemed to become heated when she talked to Miarrius. The two of them never could agree, and it always vexed Ssenna; Miarrius seemed not to have cared less about how he frustrated her, to the point where others wondered if he did it for his own enjoyment.

  “All right, I’ll tell you what I’d have our talonmaster do. Stay. Rebuild. We have lived in this valley for over a generation. The mountains and the forests protected us. We can find another home here, where there’s still forest that hasn’t been drowned in water.” Miarrius shifted his weight a little farther back on the stump he was using for a seat. “Joining the Clan of the Claw means the end of the Clan of the Long Fang. I may be old, but I still have pride in my name.”

  “And just how do you propose to get the water to stop rising, hmm?” Ssenna asked. “You’ve seen it for yourself. When we backtrack, the water is right at our heels and our side. It would be foolish to stay here; before we could even begin building a permanent camp, the water would be up to our ankles. I don’t know where it’s coming from, but I do know this; it isn’t stopping.”

  “The water can’t keep coming forever. I’ve seen floods before. This one was costly, and bigger than the others. But that’s how things are; the next worst thing is always the end of the world, until the thing after it comes along.” Miarrius glowered. “It’s just a flood.”

  “The water, you moron, is salt. Have you ever been to the Great Salt?” Ssenna smirked. She had. She knew very well that Miarrius hadn’t. “The Long Valley always was lower than the Great Salt. What if the land that held it back broke? The water will pour in forever until the valley is full.”

  “And what if Aedonnis thought that it would be a fine time to take a long piss on us? You can guess and wonder what did it until your fur is as grey as mine.” Miarrius pointed one finger at her face. “It still doesn’t change the fact that our clan dies if we join with the Clan of the Claw.”

  “And you can flaunt your ignorance as well as your stupidity, but that won’t change the fact that we’ll drown if we try to stay here. Unless you plan on growing fins and gills.”

  Arschus Mroa had been stirring the fire with a long stick, gazing into the flames while he listened to his two friends argue. Finally, he straightened up and took a breath to speak. The others stopped talking to listen; whenever Arschus chose to talk, which was rarely, it was usually for a good reason. “You know—”

  “Are they at each others’ throats yet? It’s been a rather dull day, and I could use some entertainment.” Rrerren Rras chose that moment to make his entrance. He shook himself mostly free of the rain on his hide just out of range of the fire, which was only polite, then ducked under the leaf-canopy to get as close as possible to dry off. He was carrying a large folded leaf in one hand. “Found something on my way over.” He unfolded the parcel, revealing a chunk of meat. “Mind, if you’re fighting, please continue. If I can’t have a brawl with the Liskash, I’d like to watch one between you.”

  Ssenna leaned forward, licking her lips. “You bloody fool, How in the world did you get that?” Everyone’s eyes were on the unexpected treat; with so little meat for so many in their clan, every morsel was added to a stew or dried out and rationed out. Freshly cooked meat was as rare as mercy, these days.

  “With my good looks and charm. How else?” Rrerren picked up a dry stick from the pile of firewood, brushing it off before he used it to skewer the meat. “Oh, don’t give me that look. The major share went to the common pot.” Rrerren was lithe for a warrior, but not in a lanky way. He didn’t need bulk; whenever he moved it was with a casual grace that belied his bravado. In the Clan of the Long Fang, there were no males so handsome as he was, and he knew it. Wherever he went and whatever he did, he always seemed to be wearing the same perpetual smirk, as if there was some joke that only he was privy to. It infuriated some—and made all of the available females of the clan swoon—but that expression never seemed to leave his face. “So, what are we arguing about tonight? The color of the sky?” He cocked an eyebrow at Ssenna. “You know that the only way to get him to admit that it is blue is to declare it is the color of sand.”

  Miarrius crossed his arms in front of his chest. “The fate of the clan, and our talonmaster’s vision of what that ought to be.”

  “Oh, so nothing too troubling, then.” Rrerren’s smirk was back. He waited for the old warrior to take his bait while he made a show of carefully skewering and roasting the meat over the cook fire.

  It was Ssenna’s turn to speak. “No, it isn’t troubling. Sartas Rewl has always put the Clan of the Long Fang first, in all things. He’s never lead us astray, never taken us down an evil path in the years that he’s been talonmaster.” She unsheathed a claw and poked at the meat on the skewer, checking to see how it was cooking.

  Miarrius nearly exploded. “How can you say that? How can you say he puts the Clan first, if he takes us to join another and there is no Clan? Have we endured all of this to be swallowed up and vanish?”

  “You don’t know that will happen,” Rrerren countered. “Unless you’ve turned Dancer on us. Turn around, let me look under your tail and see if you still have your old equipment. After all, they say miracles can happen.” His little smirk turned to a grin as Miarrius flicked a small piece of wood at him. “You’d make a lovely lady. A bit beefy and ancient for my taste, but lovely.”

  “And you call me a moron,” Miarrius growled to Ssenna.

  “I think…” Arschus said, slowly, and they all turned towards him. “I think, for I have been there, that the New Water comes from the sea, and I do not know how to swim.” He reached for the meat, gently taking the stick from Rrerren’s hand. He picked off a small piece, popped it into his mouth, and chewed thoughtfully. “And I also think, that if everyone dies here, the clan dies too, and you can bury my heart with it.” Arschus gazed into the fire once more, then nodded solemnly before standing up and walking to his tent.

  The three warriors sat around the fire in silence, gazing after Arschus. Rrerren was the first one to speak. “You know…he has a good point.” He sat for a few moments longer, deep in thought. Suddenly, his eyes widened, and he sat up str
aight. “And he just stole my dinner!”

  * * *

  It was still raining when the camp roused, which made for a miserable start to the day. But Sartas reminded himself that the fires had been kept burning, so at least their scant breakfast was going to be warm, and they’d been mostly dry while they slept.

  It was just around sun-high—not that you could see the sun, given the rainclouds and the trees—when Ssenna came looking for him. The clan was still packing up to resume the trek. She didn’t have the sense of urgency about her that would have indicated her scouts had found something dangerous—but her hackles were a little raised, and her scent told him she was profoundly disturbed about something.

  “We’ve found a Mrem camp,” she said, shortly. “I don’t know exactly how to explain it, but I know that you need to see it.”

  “Are there other survivors?” Usually Ssenna wasn’t this guarded about a scouting report; something was wrong, and she didn’t want to say it in front of the others.

  “You’ll just have to come and see, talonmaster. And I suggest we bring a lot of help, along with a couple of the Arx.” Sartas called out, gathering some of his warriors. He instructed four of them to stay with the camp and guard the perimeter, while the rest were tasked with rounding up the able-bodied to follow him. Ssenna walked with him when the gathered Mrem were ready to leave.

  “I was checking on the progress of the New Water before we moved out,” Ssenna explained. “Miarrius and I were having a…discussion…about the water rising last night, and I wanted to verify something.”

  “You mean you were fighting about how fast it was rising, and wanted to use the patrol as an excuse to prove him wrong. Again.” Sartas had no illusions about that, nor why they were fighting. Miarrius wasn’t precisely rebellious, but he was very conservative, and very protective of the clan, and consequently of the clan’s heritage. He was afraid that for all intents and purposes, once they joined with Clan of the Claw, Long Fang would vanish.