“Ogre! Come out and face me!” Tamboor shouted.
He heard sounds from inside and the bear hide flap stirred. His instinct was to pull out his sword and charge, but he held his ground and waited. A huge hand grabbed the bear hide and pulled it away from the entrance.
Out stepped the biggest ogre Tamboor had ever seen. The beast came out with back hunched, but immediately straightened its back and rose to full height. Tamboor reached for his sword, but stopped before grasping the hilt. The ogre didn’t make any aggressive moves. It crossed its arms in front of its chest and waited, a frown on its wide mouth.
Tamboor didn’t know how to react to the ogre’s posture. Its stance exuded confidence, but there was worry in its eyes. He wouldn’t allow himself to let his curiosity overcome his responsibility, though. He was about to demand that the ogre leave his land or face death, when the most peculiar thing happened.
A gray rock squirrel appeared on the ogre’s shoulder, rummaged around in a small pouch hanging by the ogre’s neck and calmly began chewing on a nut. The ogre didn’t seem to register the little beast’s presence at all, but continued to look down at Tamboor with its brow furrowed, saying nothing.
Tamboor wanted to shout out at the beast and charge it for coming anywhere near his children, but something in its demeanor halted the force of his anger. What came out instead was, “What are you doing here?”
Its voice was deep and throaty, “I live here.”
Tamboor didn’t know how to respond to that. Suddenly he felt like he was the intruder here. That unnerving feeling re-ignited some of his anger.
“What were you doing on my land?” Tamboor asked.
Now the ogre looked embarrassed. It unfolded its arms and scratched behind its ear. The squirrel on its shoulder was startled by the movement and dropped the seed it was chewing. The little creature scolded the ogre and pulled another seed out of the leather pouch.
“I was watching,” the ogre said.
“Watching what?” Tamboor pressed, an edge in his voice.
“You,” the ogre stated. “The humans.”
Tamboor knew that there had to be more to it. Was this ogre a scout for a marauding tribe?
“Why?”
The ogre’s brow furrowed and it shook its head as it tried to decide how to best answer the question. Finally it sighed. “I don’t know.”
The ogre’s behavior was completely disarming. Tamboor growled in frustration. This was not how the meeting was supposed to go.
“What is your name, ogre?”
“Fist,” it replied.
“Okay, Fist. Why did you kill that big cat on the edge of my land?”
The ogre hesitated and then replied, “it was going to eat Cedric and Lina.”
“How do you know their names?” Tamboor had grabbed the hilt of his sword without realizing it.
Fist grasped the head of the rock mace at his belt in response.
“I listen,” the ogre said, watching Tamboor’s sword hand. “The male is Cedric, the female is Lina. You are Tamboor, and the woman-” He pointed towards the human’s land. “is mommy.”
Tamboor couldn’t accept what he had learned. This ogre had been watching his family for weeks and yet it had not disturbed them at all. It had even saved his children’s lives today. Part of Tamboor supposed that he should be grateful, but he could not reconcile the fact that this was an ogre that stood before him. With a grunt, he put his sword away.
“Alright, Fist. I will make a pact with you. I promise not to tell the other humans about your presence here. But you must not ever step a foot near my property again. If I ever learn that you have come anywhere near my land again, I will bring all of the hunters in the town and kill you.”
The ogre looked a bit confused at first as if puzzling out Tamboor’s meaning. “I stay away from your land, humans leave me alone?”
“Yes.”
“I agree to this.” The ogre looked relieved.
“Very well.” Tamboor said and left without another word. As he walked past the open flap, he caught a glimpse of what was inside the ogre’s house and stumbled. It was stacked with animal hides. Tamboor now understood why the town patrols had been so quiet lately.
The next week passed by uneventfully. Fist grew frustrated with his projects. He couldn’t seem to make anything work right. All of the ideas he had developed while watching the humans floundered. He didn’t go back to the human’s land. His sense of honor forbade it, but he often looked in that direction longingly, sure that if he could only spend a few more minutes studying the land, he would be able to figure out how to make his projects work.
He also missed the children, their laughter and playing. It was disconcerting how attached he had grown to the little humans, but there was nothing he could do about it. Their father had spoken.
One night it rained fiercely. His roof leaked more than normal and he shivered through the night, soaked. In the morning he awoke to the sound of footsteps outside of his dwelling. With a growl, he grabbed his mace and charged out.
Fist was startled by the sight of Tamboor pulling a loaded handcart.
“Good morning, Fist,” the man said.
“Why you here?”
“My wife has decided that I have been acting unneighborly.”
Tamboor pulled a large piece of oiled canvass off of the cart and shook the rain off of it. The cart was loaded with food and bags of seed. There was even a smoked ham and a small bag of sweetnuts for Squirrel.
“I am here to thank you for saving the lives of our children. I am also to thank you for keeping the beasts off of our land. Will you accept these gifts as thanks?”
Fist did not know what “unneighborly” was. He didn’t even know what most of the things in the cart were. But the sight of the meat made his mouth water and he knew that the humans were showing him goodwill. It was something he had never experienced before.
Tamboor sensed that the ogre was at a loss for words. He took a look around. The ogre was soaked and a trail of water ran out from under his doorway. The ogre’s home was in bad shape.
“Well, Fist, it looks like you had a rough night. Would you mind if I helped you with your roof?”
Fist smiled in response. A new friendship had begun.
Chapter Thirty Four
The leader of the raptoid pack was gorging on their fresh kill. The other members of the pack watched him eat, keening softly with hunger. They would not be allowed to feed until he was finished.
While they were preoccupied, Deathclaw approached the leader of the raptoid pack carefully, staying downwind of the others. This was a tricky thing to do because the dunes dispersed the wind between them in ways that were hard to predict. Deathclaw had lived in the dunes for so long that this was almost second nature to him, but with the changes in his body, nothing was quite the same.
For weeks he had wandered along the outskirts of the desert, slowly but steadily gaining control over his new body. At the beginning he had been an awkward mess, stumbling around and unable to see. Now he could run with ease and his eyes moved in concert. The world had a new depth to it and he could see greater distances.
These new senses made him a far better hunter. He learned to go to the top of a high dune and look over the desert for movement. The sensors in his tongue and nostrils were able to pick up more delicate scents than before. Once upon his prey, he had another new advantage. His arms had new mobility. He could reach further, and with the bulging muscles on his back and chest, they had great power.
Though he did not comprehend the enormity of it, his mind had changed as well. His thought processes were expanding and he was beginning to see things in a new light. He was starting to question things, something he had never done before. This is what had led him here, downwind from the deathclaw of a new raptoid pack.
Once Deathclaw had enough control over his body to hunt and survive, he had one last overriding instinct. He needed to build a pack to replace the one he lost. He searched
until he found scent markers that told him he was near a small pack. He followed the pack for two days undetected and watched their movements.
There were six of them. Two females and four males. Their deathclaw was the largest male. As he watched the raptoids take down several kills, Deathclaw knew that he was stronger than any of them
Usually a lone raptoid had to enter a new pack as a submissive. It would need to start at the bottom, surviving off of the scraps the others left behind until it could work its way up through the pack. One day if the deathclaw of the pack was wounded or ill, he might be able to kill it and take its place as the new deathclaw.
This method was now unacceptable to Deathclaw. With the changes to his brain, his sense of self had altered too. In his mind, he was a distinct individual now. He had led his own pack for so long that deathclaw wasn’t just his title anymore, it was who he was. He could not be content with groveling his way through the ranks of a pack for years, known apart from the others only by his scent.
There was only one acceptable way for him to join a new pack now. He had to kill the deathclaw and claim the pack as his own. He had done this before on previous occasions when he had led the largest pack in the desert. When a new pack entered his territory, he would surround the pack, kill their leader and absorb the surviving members into his own pack.
The only reason that this tactic had worked for him was because his own pack so outnumbered them, they didn’t dare protect their deathclaw. This time he would need to do something different. If he attacked head on, they would all fight back. He had to use stealth and kill the leader before the rest of the pack could react.
Now was the time. The leader of the pack had sated himself on the kill and moved a short distance away to lay down. The rest of the pack tore onto the kill now that he was finished. Deathclaw saw his opportunity. He darted forward.
He pounced on the raptoid from behind, seizing its neck with his powerful jaws. It was sated from its meal and reacted a fraction more slowly than usual. This gave Deathlaw the time to grab its front arms with his own before it could slash at his eyes. He raked its back with his rear claws, tearing through muscle and into its kidneys.
The raptoid screeched and tried to get to its feet but his weight kept it down. It sent its tail barb at him, but he used his own tail to bat it aside. It screeched again. The other raptoids had looked up from their meal and came to their leader’s aid.
Deathclaw was out of time. He grunted and clenched his jaws with all his might. He twisted his head, his muscles bulging beneath his scales. The raptiod’s neck snapped with an audible crack.
He leapt off of the dead creature and faced the rest of the raptoids. Deathclaw screeched in triumph, claiming ownership of the pack. The five remaining members circled him warily.
He hissed an order at them. They paused for a moment, then continued to circle. Deathclaw did not understand. The leadership of the pack was his now. If one of them wanted to challenge his position, it had to bellow a challenge. He hissed another order, more forcefully this time, demanding that they back down. The pack cocked their head at him and several of them hissed back in defiance.
One of the males stepped out of the circle. It chirped an order. The rest of the pack obeyed, spreading out into an attack formation.
Deathclaw backed away slowly. They weren’t seeing him as a contender for leadership. His commands had confused them at first, but now they had decided what to do with him. They were treating him as an attacking predator.
Deathclaw finally understood. To them, he was no longer a raptoid.
Their new leader leapt forward, leading with the talons on its powerful rear legs. Deathclaw darted to the side and sent his tail out as it passed by. His tail barb caught the raptoid’s head mid flight and pierced through its eye into its brain. Its short career as leader ended as it convulsed in the sand.
The remaining four backed away. One of the females assumed leadership. It chirped an order and they entered into a different formation.
Deathclaw knew that order. The new leader understood that he was too great a threat for them to come at him one at a time. They would all rush him at once. He didn’t have much choice. Deathclaw fled.
His new muscular legs caused him to run differently than he had in the past. He ran hunched over, occasionally using his arms to pull him more quickly through the sand. The raptoids paced him, but he didn’t stop to fight. He slashed with tail or claw if one of them got to close. When he left the boundary of their territory, they slowed and stopped, screeching taunts at him.
Deathclaw continued to run, his mind awhirl with new feelings. They were right. He was not a raptoid any longer. What was he? Sadness tore through him along with self pity. What was he to do? He screeched in misery.
There was a startled yelp a few dunes away. Something had heard him. He came to a halt and listened. He heard frantic scampering and labored breathing.
He followed the sounds until he saw the tracks of a strange beast in the sand. The wind kept most of its scent from him, but he caught a faint trace from the tracks. He hissed. It was a human. The one creature in all the world that Deathclaw feared.
Deathclaw followed the tracks over two dunes. When he reached the crest of the last one, flattened his body to the sand and peered over.
The lone human trudged through the desert with no weapons but a sword. The man was bent by the heat and nearly dying of thirst. He recognized this human. It had been there the day that his body was changed. Deathclaw held his breath, afraid to give away his presence.
With his expanded mind had come another new experience. Deathclaw had dreams. Every night as he slept mostly buried in the sand, he relived the moment when the wizard had destroyed his pack and changed him forever. Sometimes in the dreams, his sister screeched pleadingly to him as she was dragged away. The wizard would approach him with its hideous wiggling fingers. His head would hurt and hurt until he awoke, disoriented and shaking.
Deathclaw quivered with a mix of fear and anticipation. This human was weak. Perhaps he could kill it. But what if it froze him like the time before? What would it do to him then?
He kept his distance, but continued to follow the man as it stumbled through the sand. Yes, it was very weak. He could attack at any time. It would die before it could freeze him. But something made him stay back. As a raptoid, Deathclaw would have simply killed the man and ate him. Now, a part of his brain that he had rarely used before was leading him. It was curiosity.
He followed the human to the edge of the desert. A green bush or two stuck up out of the sand, and he could smell a host of foreign smells. There was an abundance of water and vegetation this way. He could smell strange animals and insects.
The human seemed excited by this development. It laughed and shouted things into the air, though there were no other humans in the area. Deathclaw was startled by this outburst and followed from a further distance.
The dunes and cracked earth ended and were replaced by trees and grass and flowers. Deathclaw watched as the human disappeared into thick grasslands.
He stared at the grass in puzzlement for he had never seen anything like it before. He heard the human continue on its path through the grass and struggled with himself. His instincts said to leave the human and stay in the desert, but something prompted him to follow.
It wasn’t just curiosity that nudged him forward. Deathclaw had learned that he was no longer a raptoid. He was something else. The desert was all he knew, but it no longer belonged to him. He entered the tall grass and left his desert home behind.
Deathclaw decided to find out just what he was.
Chapter Thirty Five
For an eternity Justan’s mind soared through an empty and lonely darkness. Distantly he saw a misty source of light. He willed himself toward it. As he approached the light, he entered into a cloudy tunnel. The inside of the tunnel was bright and Justan was able to see his arms and legs. He had form. This surprised him for he had always imagined his sp
irit to be without substance. He flexed his left hand and felt a distant twinge. That was funny. Spirits weren’t supposed to have pain.
The light within the cloud came from tiny swirling beacons that were dispersed equally within the mist. Justan stared at the lights, enjoying their hypnotic spinning. Out of curiosity, he reached out his hand and touched one.
With a jolt, he was looking out of someone else’s eyes. The air was cold and dry. He was in a rocky wasteland and hunting for food. Justan had no control over the body he inhabited, but he could see, smell, and feel everything. He was conscious that the being he was in had immense weight and strength. This being was a warrior. A warrior, but also a hunter. As the being knelt beside a tiny stream for a drink of water and looked at its reflection, Justan was startled. His spirit fled. He left the bright cloud and sped back into the darkness. He had no desire to inhabit a monster.
Eye of the Moonrat (The Bowl of Souls: Book One) Page 36