Stars Beneath My Feet

by D L Frizzell

  Based on what little I knew about the T’Neth, they were skilled with all kinds of handheld weapons, and could throw them equally as well as they could wield them. That meant he hadn’t been trying to kill me. “Were you trying to get my attention with that?” I asked, pointing at the head.

  The T’Neth nodded.

  I knelt to take a look. Not a close look, just a look. Mud encircled the head, mixing with gobs of blood and gore. Strips of sinew were stuck between the clefang’s teeth, while ground bits of flesh and bone sluiced from its exposed esophagus. Apparently, it had died while eating.

  I looked questioningly at the T’Neth. “Why are you showing it to me?”

  He insistently jabbed a meaty finger at the head.

  Averse to touching such a monster, but sensing this was relevant somehow, I pulled on one of the tusks. It hardly budged. The damn thing had to weigh thirty or forty kilos. The head shifted until I finally had it angled enough to see its face. I frowned. I looked at the T’Neth, and back to the skull.

  “This looks familiar,” I said.

  The T’Neth’s eyes went wide as he stared at me. He nodded.

  This severed head not only reminded me of the clefang in my dream, it was the clefang in my dream. I stared at it for a long minute, poring over every detail in the hope that I might be wrong, but there are some things you just can’t forget. Thinking of one other detail in my dream, I ran my finger through the gory fur and smelled it. It wasn’t just blood smeared over the clefang’s head; there was fluid from a shadow palm mixed with it. There was no mistake. This was the animal in my dream.

  I stood up. “I don’t understand,” I said.

  The T’Neth looked at me quizzically, and then shrugged. He had showed me the head for a reason, though. He knew I would recognize it, or at least suspected it. “Why did you bring this to me?” I asked.

  He stared at me without saying a word.

  “Fine,” I said. “Don’t tell me, then.” The silent treatment was getting us nowhere fast. Okay, so he saved my life by warning me about the booby trap. That by itself was out of character for a people that generally kept to themselves unless they were killing you. Then he showed me that a clefang I dreamed about was actually real. Now that I had established that none of this made sense, I had to find a way to draw the answers out of him. “You killed this thing?” I asked.

  He nodded once.

  That isn’t much progress, I thought, but maybe it’s a start. “Who are you?” I asked.

  “I am the chief inspector,” he graveled.

  He had now spoken two whole sentences, a lengthy conversation for any T’Neth, but not particularly helpful in the current situation. On second thought, maybe it did give me something to work with. Everybody assumed the T’Neth were savages. This one just indicated that he was a lawman of some kind. I suppose even savages live by some kind of code. Maybe he recognized me as a type of colleague and intervened on my behalf. Without a better explanation, I decided to go with that.

  “Thank you,” I said. “I’m Marshal Vonn. Alex, if you like.” I thought briefly about extending my hand to shake his but didn’t want to suffer from broken fingers if he squeezed too hard. I could imagine him doing that without meaning to.

  He didn’t say a word, but knelt down and rolled the clefang head to face me. He peeled back a loose flap of the clefang’s forehead, revealing the letters ‘XIV’ hand-carved into the skull.

  The letters formed what looked to me like a Roman numeral. “Fourteen?” I asked. “What does that mean?”

  He scowled at me, and for a moment I thought he might punch me. As that could be deadly, I’m very glad he didn’t. “We go to Dogleg,” he commanded. Without another gravelly word, he re-bagged the clefang head, hung it on a nearby tree branch, and waited.

  I looked at him, baffled. “You want me to go with you?” I said.

  He nodded once.

  T’Neth have never, to my knowledge, worked with anybody outside their own tribe. This guy would need to be a little more forthcoming if he wanted me to join him. But who was I to refuse? I owed him my life. That, plus T’Neth weren’t reputed to deal with rejection very well. “Well,” I said, “we’d better hit the road then.”

  He stared at me for a moment, and then looked as if he remembered something. “No.”

  “You don’t want me to go with you?” I asked, pretty sure I looked as confused as I sounded.

  “Stay,” he said, motioning at me with one hand. “Leave,” he said, pointing at the bag. “Hit nothing.” He turned to leave.

  “Okay,” I replied, not wanting to admit I had no idea what he meant. “I’ll wait here, then?”

  He threw me a look of worn patience. “Red light,” he growled, pointing toward Little Hand where it had just risen in the east. “There.” He pointed straight upward.

  “Right,” I replied. “Little noon. You’ll be back by little noon.”

  He grunted an affirmative and ran off into the forest.

  “I’ll wait here,” I sighed to myself again. It was going to be a long walk to Dogleg.

  Chapter Four

  Mister Fourteen, which is what I decided to call him in the absence of his real name, left me alone at the camp. I was tempted to run away, escape through the forest and make it to Bogfield as fast as I could. The temptation was fleeting, however. I suspected he would track me down one way or the other, and then our relationship would be less amicable. Not wanting him to feel the least bit slighted, I reluctantly decided to go with him to Dogleg. Who knows? I rationalized. A T’Neth warrior might come in handy if we run into more clefangs.

  Thinking I’d need more supplies for the journey, I headed back to the place where the tree squirrels had bothered me earlier. When they again voiced their protests at my arrival, it occurred to me how quiet the forest had been for some time. Now that I was coming back out of the forest, the normal sounds of life had returned. Well, that was one more mystery I’d probably never figure out. I decided I’d have a better chance of getting answers from the squirrels than I did from the T’Neth. And I was about to cook those squirrels over a campfire.

  I made camp at the metal sphere and got a fire going. With a lanyard full of dead rodents, I made a spit and started cleaning my catch. I heard scratching noises overhead, and looked to see that those two scavenger birds had returned. I concluded that they must have gotten attached to me when I helped them escape from the shadow palms. As birds go, these were supposed to be fairly intelligent. I finished skinning the first tree squirrel and, since I didn’t have anything better to do with its intestines, piled them up on a rock. The birds waited for me to move aside, and then pecked at the scraps hungrily when I’d gotten far enough away.

  “You’re welcome,” I said.

  Twenty minutes later minutes later, my supply of squirrels prepared, I sat on a fallen log and ate one. After relaxing a bit, I stripped down to my briefs. I’d had enough of the shadow palm smell accompanying me wherever I went, so I washed my clothes under the waterfall inside the metal sphere. I then found a more productive use for the cable that almost killed me earlier; I strung it up as a clothesline. I hung my wet clothes on it and kicked back to consider my next moves. I made some notes on the back of my map; what not to do in a magquake, an approximate location for my aerobike, and a reminder to bring salt on future trips. Those squirrels could use a little seasoning.

  My clothes dried before too long, so I put them back on and realized I had nothing left to do but wait for the T’Neth to return. This was a problem. I’m the kind of person who likes to come and go on my own schedule, and have never been one to respect authority unless it’s been earned. The T’Neth was certainly intimidating, but that wasn’t the same thing. My instinctive reaction was to ditch him the first chance I got. Still, I had to admit I was curious about the man. The T’Neth people, or tribe, or whatever they called themselves, were descendants of the Mercury colonists that came to Arion with the Founders over five centuries ago. They’
d disappeared almost immediately when they took possession of the planet’s northern hemisphere, and only just reappeared thirty years ago. People loved to talk about them, but I’d relegated most of what I’d heard to wild speculation or just fear-mongering. The only consistent rumor I heard was that they ran out of women and migrated south to the temperate zone around the equator to find some. Not that I gave that laughable story any more credence than the rest, but I had to admit I’d never seen a T’Neth woman. Only the men ever showed themselves.

  I’d gotten a fleeting glance at a pair of T’Neth men six years ago in Edgewood. They’d killed a dozen soldiers who were guarding the Mokri groves there, and then lit a forest fire among the volatile sap-producing trees. If we hadn’t acted so quickly – using the town’s abundant supply of mud as a fire suppressant - the world’s largest fuel depot would have been destroyed. As it was, we were able to save most of it. The funny thing was that, when the T’Neth saw they were cornered, they ran into the flames to avoid capture. They were either completely crazy, or had some secret they were willing to die for. Now, my curiosity piqued, I decided to stick with Mister Fourteen long enough to learn more about them.

  I checked my pocket watch, and then confirmed that Little Hand had circled around Arion to the same position as when he left. Mister Fourteen had been gone for over twenty-four hours, much longer than the six hours he’d told me. Apparently, punctuality wasn’t a T’Neth strong suit. I glanced at the bagged clefang head still hanging from a tree, wondering if the guy had gone on some murderous killing spree and just lost track of time. This delay meant I might not get to Bogfield in time to catch Oliver Jarnum, but I would eventually track him down, one way or another, and get his shackle back to Ovalsheer to collect my pay.

  I pulled the wanted poster out of my vest and reviewed it for the hundredth time. There had been a number of prisoner escapes from Ovalsheer Prison over the last few years, each of which was accomplished without alerting the guards. I wasn’t tasked with finding the reason for these escapes; I was just supposed to find them and kill them. Bringing back their shackles would be the means the warden used to discourage further adventures. That didn’t mean I couldn’t find out how they escaped. In fact, I’d made it my mission to find out how the prison had sprung such a persistent leak. I’d find Jarnum, get him to talk, and then kill him. Once I retrieved his shackle – which I would accomplish by removing his arm at the wrist or elbow – I’d deliver it to the warden and then take some time off.

  Maybe I could even get back together with Kate…if I could figure out what I did to make her dump me.

  I snapped out of my reverie when the scavenger birds launched from their perch in the tree overhead. As they flew off, I thought there might be a predator in the area. A few minutes of careful listening with my hand on my pistol satisfied me that I was alone. I stoked the fire and pulled my boots on, thinking I’d spent enough time relaxing. I thought briefly about leaving a note for Mister Fourteen, but suddenly wondered if he even knew how to read. Did the roughly-carved letters on the clefang skull mean he didn’t have much of an education? What did a tribe of desert nomads need an alphabet for, anyway? Well, I thought, if the T’Neth wanted to find me, he could damn well follow my tracks toward Dogleg.

  That’s when I remembered something that I’d seen in the gully. A clue, or maybe an answer.

  The imprints were still there in the gully, having been missed by the clefang head, the large rock thrown by the T’Neth inspector, and the retracting cable. I circled around the metal sphere, keeping away from the water this time, and got a closer look at the mud. The prints had to be less than twenty-four hours old, judging by the way the boot treads had kept their shape. The boot print was perfectly preserved, almost as if it had been made in plaster. There in the instep was the same logo I’d seen during a hundred manhunts. It was the logo for Ovalsheer Prison. Next to that was a set of hash marks that would look like part of the boot’s treads to most people. To those who understood the markings, they displayed a four-digit number: 5187. That was Oliver Jarnum’s prisoner ID number.

  I stared at the tracks, not believing my eyes. I’d hunted a lot of people over the last six years, and I was one of the best when it came to finding them. But the chances of stumbling across Jarnum out in the wilds like this, especially in such a dangerous area, were practically zero. My evidence had put him on the border trail, taking the long way around Rekeire because the plains were too dangerous. The only reason I’d taken the shortcut was because I had an aerobike. Jarnum didn’t have one of those. He’d been stealing horses all along his route toward the western frontier, and a horse wouldn’t have gotten him across the Rekeire Plain.

  Then why were his tracks here in the mud, with a booby trap designed to cut any pursuer in half?

  The answer was obvious. Jarnum would have expected the Council to send somebody after him. Escapees from Ovalsheer were automatically sentenced to death. He didn’t know who I was, as I was just starting college when he’d been thrown in prison. He did, however, have the expectation of a pursuer. The Plainsman Territory, where I’m from, has never had more than one marshal. Since his path led through the Plainsman Territory, he laid a trap for anybody that found his trail. I wondered how many traps he’d set that would kill innocent people who were just in the wrong place at the wrong time.

  Jarnum was clever, that much was certain based on his knowledge of traps and Founders’ Tech. He was also confident enough in his abilities to risk a trek across the Rekeire Plain, which upped my estimation of the danger he posed. That’s the nice thing about a protracted manhunt; you learn a lot about the person you’re chasing.

  Then something else occurred to me. It couldn’t have been a coincidence that there was a T’Neth lawman in the neighborhood, someone who might very well be on a manhunt himself. Was Mister Fourteen hunting Jarnum, too?

  My thoughts lingered on the T’Neth. He probably thought that Jarnum was headed to Dogleg. But why did he want me to go with him? Maybe he figured that I owed him my life – hard to argue that point – and he was used to working with a partner. I groaned. It could be suicidal to ignore his request. But why did he need me if he was capable of dealing with Jarnum himself?

  The answer came in a flash of insight. Maybe Jarnum wasn’t worried about a marshal. He might have suspected a marshal would be on his trail, but a T’Neth would be impossible to miss. If a giant brute with glowing, speckled eyes passed through a town, people would notice him and gossip for weeks. Did you see that T’Neth the other day? Somebody might have asked a friend on the street. Gee, it sure is strange to see one of their kind passing through, someone else might have said. People loved to tell every detail in situations like that. He headed that way. All Jarnum would have to do is circle around the town and then eavesdrop from the shadows.

  That might explain why Mister Fourteen wanted me alive. If he was chasing Jarnum, and believed that Dogleg was his next destination, then he needed somebody who looked a little more average to perform some reconnaissance. A T’Neth certainly couldn’t go into Dogleg without scaring the citizens out of their collective wits. I had the advantage of not standing out in a crowd. I had a badge, sure, but I kept it hidden in my pocket for that same reason; I didn’t want to be noticed.

  And then I felt that sudden, sick feeling I get when my life is about to get a lot more complicated. If the T’Neth wanted Jarnum, then he might not be willing to share the kill. I’d heard that the T’Neth had a thing for chopping off the arms of their enemies and keeping them as trophies. He might not be agreeable to letting me retrieve the shackle, which was the proof I needed that the job was done.

  Chapter Five

  I woke up after a restless sleep, only to see the T’Neth staring down at me, his giant blue sword pressed into the ground beside him. I yelled in surprise and jumped to my feet. I fumbled with my pistol while trying not to slip on the mossy rocks by the stream.

  The T’Neth’s hands went up in surrender as he took
a step back. He did not appear frightened, even when I finally got a bead on him.

  “Don’t do that!” I shouted when I realized he’d just been standing there, waiting for me to wake up. Now, I’m not the most sociable of people, but I do know that you don’t sneak up on people while they’re sleeping; especially not somebody with a gun. When I heard the click of a revolver behind me, I groaned. “Dammit.”

  “Well said, kid,” a familiar baritone voice said.

  I turned my head around slowly, anger rising in my chest, to see the man who’d gotten the drop on me. He was a little taller than me, broad in the shoulders, but thinner than he’d been the last time I saw him. His thick beard was now speckled with grey, and he had crow’s feet around his eyes. In his right hand he held a standard revolver, not the Council-issued hand cannon he used to carry. He wore a bulky jacket, but the sleeves weren’t long enough to conceal the titanium shackle on his right forearm, the one he’d been fitted with six years ago when I delivered him to Ovalsheer Prison.

  “Mother fu...”

  “I’ve missed you too, Alex,” Hugh Redland interrupted with an evil grin. “You have no idea how long I’ve been tryin’ to find you.”

  I stared at Redland, hardly believing my eyes.

  He smiled and wagged his pistol at me. “Drop the T-gun, kid,” he said.

  I half-considered going for the shot, but he already had the hammer back and his finger on the trigger. I wouldn’t get turned halfway around before he put a couple rounds in me. I flinched when a giant hand wrapped around my pistol and forced it from my hand. I looked back, having forgotten the T’Neth was there. “You’re with him?” I asked.

  The T’Neth nodded.

  Redland let out a raucous laugh. “Oh! You should see your face!” He gestured at the gun in the T’Neth’s hand. “Easy now,” he tut-tutted when I angled my left hip away from him. “The blade, too,” he said. “You still carry that pansy-ass falcata?”