Eye of the Moonrat (The Bowl of Souls: Book One)

by Cooley, Trevor H.

  Fist knew that he should get as far from this place as possible and never come back again, but his curiosity overcame him. He turned his head and spoke to his little friend that was perched on his shoulder.

  “What you think, Squirrel? Should I find where they going?” The creature didn’t respond, but pulled a nut out of its cheek pouch and began to nibble on it. “Me too,” Fist replied. He crept over to where the children had been playing and looked around the rocks. His jaw dropped.

  Beyond the cluster of rocks was a large stretch of ground covered in rows of tiny plants that looked like they had been placed there purposely. Beyond these rows of plants was a shelter. It was quite a bit larger than his and made entirely of logs except for a strange material on the roof.

  Smoke poured out of a stack on top of this roof. At first Fist thought that the shelter must be on fire. But there was no screaming, and the children ran towards the house in a carefree manner. Perhaps they made a fire inside the shelter on purpose.

  Fist caught a whiff of something that could only be food and his mouth watered with the texture of the smell. The humans were cooking in the house. When the children arrived at the door, a tall human that could only be their father scolded them for going beyond the property line but he didn’t beat them.

  Fist watched a little longer entranced by the way the humans had built their home, then shook his head and reluctantly headed back to his home territory. Along the way he described to Squirrel everything he had seen. The ogre had caught a glimpse into a completely different life than he had ever known. There were aspects of it that fascinated him.

  Another thought occurred to him and Fist frowned. The human’s territory was too close for comfort. What would they do if they found out about his presence? He would have to be careful.

  Over the next several weeks he found himself often at the border of the human’s territory, though he was careful never to put a foot inside it. Fist would watch the humans and their habits, trying to figure out how some of the things that they used worked. There were four-legged beasts that pulled something made of wood and metal. The tall male human would ride this thing and make deep furrows in the ground with it. Little plants grew out of the furrows.

  Other times another human with clothing similar to the girl child would come and pick growths off of these plants. Fist realized that the humans ate these plants with their meat. It was a fascinating concept to him, growing one’s own food. They even kept a small flock of birds that didn’t use their wings. Why, they hardly had to go hunting at all.

  Fist would often come home after such trips and lay awake thinking about ways to implement these interesting practices in his new tribe. He tried several things, but they didn’t seem to work very well. He couldn’t build a fire in his own home without filling it with smoke, and any birds he was able to capture simply flew away.

  The thing about these trips to the human land that he most enjoyed was watching the play of the children. As time went on, he found that he could understand more and more of what their tiny voices said even though they used terms that he did not understand. The male child’s name was Cedric and the girl child’s name was Lina. Their father was Tamboor. He knew this because the boy child would refer to himself as Cedric, son of Tamboor.

  The children’s games were fanciful, often the female would take the part of a warrior too and they would spar with sticks as if they were swords. This was also intriguing to him because the male child did not think the idea of a female warrior strange at all.

  Fist began to develop a fondness for these humans and even thought of them as extensions of his small tribe. There were several times that he saw the tracks of dangerous beasts on the border of the human territory. He hunted the beasts down so that the children would be safe.

  Sometimes their father would accompany them while they played and join along in the fun. Fist found such familiar interplay with their father fascinating. Tamboor hugged them and played along and laughed at their antics. But the father also kept a watchful eye on the surrounding area and Fist was very careful not to show himself. The man kept a rather long sword strapped across his back and Fist did not want to have to kill him in self-defense.

  Fist also learned something else while on these risky forays. This one human home was actually just on the outskirts of a large community of humans. This worried him because he knew that if they ever found out that he was there they would hunt him down. At least that was what the Thunder People would have done if a human was found living on their border. He kept his distance from any human roads or houses, but he couldn’t stay away from the family of Tamboor. He saw something in them that he wished he had for himself.

  One day as Fist was in his usual place waiting for the children to come, he sensed that something was amiss. It was strangely quiet and Squirrel had disappeared. Squirrel usually stuck right by him unless Fist was going into battle.

  The children’s voices chimed out from behind the rocks like they normally did, yet something raised the hair on his neck. Fist sniffed and scanned around with his eyes but didn’t see anything until he looked up into the branches of the trees above. There perched a large treecat. It was almost as big as he was. The beast was watching intently as the children came into view.

  The female, Lina, was playing with a small stuffed rag, while the boy whacked rocks and trees as he walked along with a fake wooden sword. Fist watched in horror as the great cat shifted its weight in the branch and hunched its shoulders in preparation to attack. The children were coming closer and the cat was just waiting for the proper moment.

  Fist knew that he should turn away and go back to his new home. If he intervened here, then the humans would discover his presence and find his new home. Fist grimaced. He would have to leave.

  The children continued to blindly walk into the danger laughing. Fist could not stand it any more. He had to do something.

  He hefted his spear and wondered if he could take the cat out of the branches before it attacked. But he wasn’t a very accurate shot. If he missed, then he would lose his spear in the fight. A spear was a necessity in a fight with something as quick as a treecat. Soon the children were almost directly under the tree where the huge cat was waiting to strike and he couldn’t wait any longer. He ran out of the trees and onto the path where the children usually played.

  “Run childs!” he shouted and waved his huge arms.

  The children saw the ogre come out of the trees and screamed. As they ran back towards their house, the cat saw its dinner fleeing and jumped down after them. Fist was already running before the cat hit the ground. He tackled it before it could chase after the children.

  The great beast roared. It was very strong and agile. It tried to scramble out from under him. Fist reached around and grabbed it under its front legs. He had to hold it back because the cat was far faster than any of them and could still catch the children with ease if it got away.

  Fist was in grave danger himself. Tackling the cat wasn't the best way to attack it. The treecat's claws were long and sharp and its front teeth could rip out huge chunks of flesh leaving wounds that even an ogre as big as Fist couldn’t recover from.

  The cat quickly stopped trying to chase after its prey and turned on its attacker. It growled and thrashed. Fist held on tight and struggled to stay behind it and out of the way of its claws. The cat twisted its back end and clawed at him while its head whipped back, snapping at his face.

  Fist was sliced by its rear claws several times as it tried to break free. In desperation, he wrapped his legs around the cat's lower body. He released the cat’s arms and grabbed it by the neck. He pulled its head back and squeezed. The cat screamed and thrashed frantically. Ignoring the wounds from its frantically ripping claws, he twisted and twisted until, with a loud crack, the cat went limp.

  Tamboor came home early from his patrolling that day. There had been a strange lack of monsters around the mountain border town of Jack’s Rest lately and there had not been any
reports to check up on. As he came on to his property, he sighed. When he was out doing his duty as part of the town patrol, it reminded him of his warrior days back in the Academy Sword Wielder’s Guild. He had been called Tamboor the Fearless back then.

  Sometimes he missed the thrill of battle, the slaying of evil beasts, and the knowledge that by the strength of his arm, he was saving lives. That had been his life for over twenty years. Then he met his wife.

  Tamboor had met his wife, Efflina, while working for the academy guild. They had three children together while living in the city of Reneul. His oldest son followed his footsteps and graduated from the academy.

  On that day, as his son took his place in one of the guilds, he had stayed up all night comforting his wife. She wept in his arms knowing that the two men in her life would be going into danger every day. Tamboor was crushed. Through all the years they were married, she had never let him see how she felt.

  The next day he had announced his retirement from the guild. They begged him to stay even as a teacher, but he could not bear to live so close to the daily fight and not take part in it. So they had packed up their things and left Reneul. Tamboor had asked around and heard of a place that caught his fancy.

  Jack’s Rest was a rugged border town where danger was near, but the soil was good. They had lived in this place for over a year now. Though sometimes he had regrets about leaving his old life behind, as soon as he saw his homestead, he forgot about any misgivings.

  Tamboor loved his new home. He bought the land with his own hard earned gold. He built this house and worked the fields with his own hands. It was hard work and he had hated it most of the time that he was building this place, but Cedric and Lina grew carefree and happy and his wife was in love with the small town.

  As he walked up the stairs to his home he was completely at peace. He could spend the rest of his life here. Who needs battle anyway?

  Those were his thoughts as he opened the door of his home. Five minutes later, he ran back out in a fury with his sword in hand. Evidently his retirement wasn’t completely over.

  Chapter Thirty Three

  Fist trudged back to his new home with a heavy heart. Luckily the furs he wore took the brunt of the great cat’s attacks and his wounds were only superficial. Squirrel reappeared right after he had killed the cat and now it sat on his shoulder, scolding him. He ignored his little friend, not really having a good explanation for what he had done.

  He had never done anything like that before. Sure he had saved the lives of his fellow tribe members on countless occasions, but why had he risked his life and home over these humans? Fist looked down at the little rag doll that he had taken before he left the scene. It looked frail and tiny in his large hands. He couldn’t really answer that question. All he knew was that he didn’t regret it.

  When Fist arrived at his new home in the grove of trees, he didn’t want to leave. In the short time that he had lived there, this place had become more precious to him than the territory of the Thunder People had ever been.

  When he entered his dwelling, he found that Squirrel wasn’t eager to leave either. The little creature crawled into its little hole between the boulders and wouldn’t come out. Fist tried to coax it out with acorns for a while before giving up. He started gathering his belongings together.

  Large tears welled up in his eyes.

  From the moment that he ran out of his home with sword drawn, Tamboor had been filled with a fury that he could barely restrain. His sense of well-being about his new home had been shattered. For the first time in his life, danger was touching his family directly and that was unacceptable. His children were off limits. Whatever had dared come near them was dead.

  When his Cedric and Lina had first started to play out at the edges of his land, he had been afraid about them going this far from their home in this part of the borderlands. But then he had come with the children and scouted the land out to find that it was pretty quiet. Now that he thought about it, the forest had been too quiet in fact.

  Actually his whole life had been too quiet. He had gotten complacent. He had known it too.

  Tamboor had been itching for a fight for weeks. Now he had it. Tamboor also knew that he could not afford to let his emotions rule. He couldn’t rush into a fight without knowing what he was fighting. He needed to shake the anger from his mind and track the beast from an impersonal point of view. He could not miss anything.

  He had many questions about the incident. If a giant truly had gone after his children, and he had no cause to doubt them, then why had it yelled at them to run? Tamboor had some experience with giants and knew that they could be pretty cruel to their prey.

  Perhaps it wanted to have some fun with the human children. It might have wanted to scare them before it ate them. But if it was taunting them, then why didn’t it chase them all the way to their home? He had built a sturdy house, but none that would withstand the attack of a giant. The thought of a giant destroying his house angered him again. He had to make sure and kill the thing before it could come back.

  When he came upon the enormous treecat with the broken neck, he stood with jaw agape. His anger turned into background noise and his training kicked in.

  With his vast tracking and battle knowledge, he could tell certain things. The creature that had scared the children definitely was a giant or something akin to one, because it would have taken enormous strength to break the cat’s thick neck. The presence of the cat explained the roaring sounds that his wife had heard, but what were the odds that a giant and a great cat would have a battle right on the edge of his land?

  Another peculiar thing was that the giant had not taken the cat with it when it left. This didn’t make sense unless it was too wounded to carry the beast. A giant always took its kills back to its lair to eat if not just for the fur. Tamboor searched, and though there was some blood on its claws, there was not enough to suggest that the giant was incapacitated.

  A set of heavy footprints left the scene and entered the forest. From the depth and size of the footprints, this wasn’t that big of a giant, maybe 600 to 700 pounds at the most. Tamboor nodded grimly. This was a foe that he could handle easily.

  Tamboor searched the surrounding forest next and found many more tracks, enough for thirty giants or more. His emotions were kicking in again and outrage lined his thoughts. How had he lived in this place for a year and not known that a group of giants had lived so close to his land?

  Tamboor considered going to the town and gathering a hunting party, but then he noticed that the tracks were all identical. No, it wasn’t a large group of giants at all, perhaps only one. He examined the age of the tracks and shivered. This particular beast had haunted the edge of his land for weeks! His children played out here every day. The thought of a leering giant watching his children at play and planning its dinner caused his insides to squirm.

  Tamboor tracked the trail of the giant and began to get a better picture of what he faced. But for every answer he found, several more questions were raised. He found several piles of rocks that he knew to be territorial markings. Only ogres used formations like that, but this beast wasn't acting like an ogre.

  Ogres were stupider than giants and were possessed of more of a savage brutality than an evil cruelty. An ogre wouldn’t have observed his children for weeks. It would have immediately killed them and brought them home for supper.

  He continued his tracking and found that his fury was becoming tempered by curiosity about the creature. He knew he was getting closer to the beast’s lair when he noticed several areas where deadwood had been chopped or pulled down and carried away. The ogre would need that for its fires.

  Tamboor entered a tranquil grove of trees where birds were chirping and crickets sounding. This was strange because the presence of an ogre almost always scares off the local wildlife. The surrounding area was almost untouched except for the ogre’s tracks. Tamboor had never been into an ogre territory where the land was not scarred by the
ignorant beasts. When he finally came upon the ogre’s home, he was stunned.

  The beast had actually tried to build a house. There were several boulders grouped together with a makeshift roof on top and a bearhide flap for a door! Tamboor even saw what looked like an attempt at a chimney, though he didn’t see how it could be functional. In front of the ogre’s dwelling several furrows were dug into the ground with dead plants lined up in them. This didn’t make sense. Ogres didn’t have gardens.

  It took a moment for Tamboor to finally realize what was going on. The pieces fell into place. The beast had been watching his land and trying to learn!

  Tamboor stood in front of the dwelling and decided to call out to the ogre. Normally, he wouldn’t have challenged the beast. His original plan had been to wait for it to leave its home and kill it quickly before it even knew he was there. But this one had him curious. He couldn’t kill the thing without getting some questions answered. He was starting to have some suspicions about this beast and if they were true, he would know as soon as it stepped out of the door.