Chosen Too

by Alan J. Garner

  Bushwalker's mouth dropped. ‘What do you know of that?'

  Ensodius grinned maliciously, revealing, ‘Goes by the name of Yowlar. Has a real grudge against you lot for some reason. I'm curious to know how he is faring.'

  'Famously. I'll pass on your regards next time he pops in for a snack.'

  'No need. I'll be seeing him again sometime soon. He can count on it.'

  Having had enough of this unwanted conversation, Bushwalker heaved herself to her feet and slogged her way upslope toward the savannah. Ugnap followed on his invisible leash as Ensodius called out mockingly to him, ‘Sure I can't interest you in staying for dinner, leg chop? I cannot stand eating alone.'

  Finding a measure of her strength and sanity returning, she ambled back to the murder site. The afternoon sun, beating down in waves of heat that transformed the distant vista into a shimmering haze, was already baking hard the pools and spatters of blood on the flattened grass and churned dust. Vultures predictably began gathering in lazy circles overhead. Soon their telltale presence would bring in the larger ground scavengers. It was time to be moving on. Shielding her eyes from the three robust corpses, Bighand's in particular, Bushwalker retrieved the blooded cutter and considered it obliquely for a moment: strange that a tiny, fractured rock possessed the capability to drastically alter events with the taking of a life. She corrected herself. It was the Upright in possession of the shaped flint who had the power to change circumstance, even destiny.

  Intruding on her cogitation, Ugnap gave an impatient snort. ‘Bushwalk do what?'

  'Reflect upon her brutality.’ She had taken the first guilty step down a path of no return. Those long hours spent shadow fighting in Rockshaper's former cavern, lunging and slashing in endless practice, paid off. She was now a bona fide killer. In more practical terms Bushwalker announced in buffalo lingo, ‘Bushwalk head home. Herd thirsty. Me show herd water.'

  Ugnap grunted his acknowledgment. ‘Me come.’ That was a given. ‘Make safe Bushwalk herd.'

  She bleakly thought there was no need. Her stabbing of Bighand demonstrated a future gracile propensity for self-defence. Naturally bereft of sharp horns, teeth, and claws, the minor Uprights had now in their hands the means of survival, perhaps supremacy. Bushwalker felt a resurgence of adrenaline course through her strained body. Within her shy and quiet persona burned the inclination to teach others the use of the strange pebble-tools, enabling the hominins to start living up to their potential.

  She started on the long hike to Home-rock. The first stage of her dangerously contrived two-part plan for tribal preservation was successfully done with. The second and hardest would come shortly after, but first she would make sure her troop drank and fed. She flipped the cutter negligently between her hands as she strolled in the protective shadow of Ugnap. Armed also with knowledge, Bushwalker was feeling brave enough to tackle her walking nightmare. Her ghoul had now a name. Yowlar the panther would soon enough feel the cutting edge of Upright stone technology.

  * * * *

  'We're too exposed here, sir!'

  Sighing, Yowlar elected not to ignore Jinku's protest. ‘If I want your opinion, monkey-boy, I'll scratch it out of you.’ The baboon ended his objection then and there, a decision that undoubtedly spared him a lot of unnecessary pain and bleeding.

  Cat and monkey sprawled on the westward slope of a mound topped by the sixteen-foot spire of a castle-like termite nest. The panther was irritable. His last hunt had not gone smoothly. Woken from sleep midway through the attack, Yowlar's victim had beaten him off with inhuman ferocity in spite of the cat inflicting fatal injuries. There followed a hasty retreat, although Yowlar did return later to drag his stiff prize up into his tree larder. Treeclimber's refusal to die easily shook the confidence of the sooty Sabretooth. That was not totally unexpected. His latest quarry was a male in his prime. Previous kills of an old man and young boy made him complacent, thinking all Uprights were easy marks. Yowlar swore to remedy his laxity.

  'Watch that Upright sow, Jinku,’ he instructed. ‘She's next on the menu.'

  The rebuked baboon squinted against the glare, peering at the betraying spectres of Bushwalk and Ugnap ambling across the baking veldt, their contrasting forms undulating in the heat haze. ‘Whatever you say, sir,’ he meekly said. He knew better than to question Yowlar twice.

  The panther noted the doubt in the monkey's voice. Earlier observing from his acacia hideaway Bushwalker furtively leaving the Upright cave complex and recognising her scent from that brief contact on the night he slew Rockshaper, Yowlar's curiosity had been sufficiently aroused for him to forsake his daytime napping and discreetly follow. Any thought of making a diurnal ground kill was dashed by her teaming up with that insufferably clingy buffalo bull who, for some unfathomable reason, craved Upright company. A distraction from routine, however irking, was welcome and so he shadowed them all the way to Bushwalker's deadly encounter with the burlier Uprights. Her unanticipated prowess at killing not only disturbed his simian partner in crime.

  'She needs to be eliminated and swiftly,’ fretted Yowlar. ‘If her clawing technique becomes widespread in her pride, I'll have my paws full combating meals that scratch back. Find out what cave she frequents. We eat tonight.'

  Jinku groaned inwardly. He was becoming sick of Upright morsels and wished for a little variety in their diet. Making sure Yowlar had his eyes firmly fixed on the horizon, the baboon slyly tested his gammy leg in the shade of the termite stack. The claw marks the rotten cat so heartlessly scratched on his thigh were scabbed over and healing nicely. Soon he would be fit enough to escape from his servitude to the demanding ebony clawfoot.

  Spying something else out on the grassy plain, Yowlar stiffened and half rose. He growled softly as his tail flexed in annoyance.

  'Anything wrong, sir?’ Jinku asked, concerned that danger might be looming.

  'Plenty,’ the troubled cat muttered back. He had glimpsed a spotted Sabretooth far out on the savannah and was sharply reminded of his aloneness. The wind changed, blowing in the wrong direction for him to pick up a scent, and at this range he could not make out who the individual was by sight. Could it be his estranged brother or another member of his dislocated pride? Might it even be cub-heavy Miorr prowling about? Loathing his bout of sentimentality, Yowlar took his ire out on Jinku by clawing the baboon's other calf.

  'Ouch!’ Jinku hollered, grasping what had been his good leg. ‘Why did you do that?'

  'Because you're here.'

  The Squaremuzzle stopped his moaning. He simply could not argue with that.

  Looking heavenward at a faraway cloudbank smudging the lower western skyline, the first such clouds to break up the monotonous blue ceiling since his arrival, Yowlar snarled, ‘Let's get going. I want to reach the caves before it gets dark.’ Clouds aggravated him as much as caverns. Jinku made to climb atop the crotchety panther, only to be warned off with a hiss. ‘I'm in no mood to carry your flea-ridden hide anymore today. You walk.'

  Grumbling quietly, Jinku limped after his brutalising master. The maimed baboon had the distinct and unsettling notion that his usefulness to Yowlar might be wearing thin. When that ended so inevitably would his life.

  The journey back to Scraggly Bush was tediously slow. Yowlar frequently had to wait for the labouring monkey to catch up, Jinku's double lameness hampering progress. The haughty cat never once second-guessed crippling the baboon anew. His arrogance assured him that his decisions and the consequences of the actions dictated by those choices were never, could ever be, wrong. That is not to say they were not occasionally unwise. Night fell when the travellers were less than halfway to their goal and with the descending darkness came a snag.

  Yowlar was engrossed in cajoling Jinku to hobble faster when a series of god-awful roars split the night. The startled panther went rigid. That beastly caterwauling harked back to his first terrifying night spent alone on the foreign African veldt. ‘Roarers,’ he declared in a certain whisper.

  'The
y're getting closer,’ Jinku nervously observed. Picking up the worry in Yowlar's stance, he suggested rather vehemently, ‘Time for us to get out of here, sir!'

  Too late. Silhouettes could be seen skulking nearby in the murk. The evening moon lifting into the starred firmament was too weak to illuminate much, rendering the passers-by as ghostly phantoms.

  Jinku squirmed, planning to make an absurd run for it. Yowlar hissed at him, ‘Keep quiet. If we lay low they may go around us.’ Having not yet laid eyes upon the great cats responsible for instilling general fear in the animal populace, the panther had no desire to remedy that outstanding gap in local knowledge. Introductions like that were best left unmade.

  Heavy footfalls filled Yowlar's pricked ears. He hunkered down, ashamed of his cowardice. What seemed a lifetime ago he had walked with their confidence, unafraid of any creature. Now he cowered in terror like a motherless cub. His ploy seemed to be working. The padding clawfeet—Yowlar counted two, maybe three sets of meaty paws pacing the dark—were noisily passing by as he predicted. He and Jinku were going to remain unmolested. That is they would have been if the baboon, muzzle down in grass and dust, had not sneezed.

  A trio of half-maned, sub-adult male lions converged on the sound and Jinku fainted dead away. He would have wound up a Roarer plaything were it not for Yowlar bolting for freedom. Sidetracked by the fleeing panther, the three brothers reoriented their bloodlust and gave chase to this exotic cat blacker than midnight. A heart-pounding pursuit was infinitely more fun than batting around an unconscious Squaremuzzle.

  Sheer panic lent Yowlar speed. Until recently fear was unknown to the prideful cat, but now it urged him on like a cracking whip. The goad was not enough. The lead Roarer caught and bowled over the racing Sabretooth with a swipe of a dinner plate sized forepaw. Yowlar tumbled over and sprang back to his feet as the lions encircled him. Overtaken and outnumbered by his foes, he turned and bared his fangs in defiance at the threesome. It was going to be a short, one-sided fight. Each of his adversaries was twice the length and over three times his weight. The doomed Black Panther pledged to go down biting and clawing.

  The waxing moon revealed all, and one of the lions unexpectedly sat on his haunches to stare blatantly at Yowlar. ‘I don't recognise your pelt, stranger,’ he said in a puzzled meow. ‘What sort of clawfoot are you?'

  'A ferocious one,’ Yowlar growled back.

  'I want a fight, not small talk,’ one of the other lions demanded. ‘We're wasting time, Talon. Let's maul this pipsqueak and be on our way. That Curvehorn is getting farther away.'

  'Pull your muzzle in, Broken Fang,’ rebuked the first lion. ‘That's how you lost your tooth as a cub in the first place, by stupidly rushing that Striper from behind and getting your mouth kicked in by a flying hoof. Learn a little of new game. It makes killing that much less of a hassle and more an enjoyment.'

  In spite of his predicament, Yowlar silently commended the Roarer named Talon. Cat behaviour was the same worldwide. Prey meant play.

  Lions were not unknown to the remodelled Sabretooth. In his former days a subspecies ranged across the Americas, occasionally impinging Sunning Rock Pride territory. Living and hunting in pairs, they differed from their African cousins in more than behaviour. Patterned like the closely related European cave lions with faintly striped pelts, the males too did not sport a mane. Yowlar was grateful that the Roarers assailing him tonight were only two-thirds the size of their Yank relatives.

  'We're supposed to be trailing that Curvehorn,’ insisted the third lion.

  Talon grimaced at his teammate. Being the brainiest of the three, he was customarily in charge. ‘The Curvehorn can wait, Stomper.'

  'But it insulted me.'

  'Then I'll congratulate the beast before we bring it down once we do catch up to it. Meantime, I'd like to find out more about our intrusive stranger.’ Talon shifted his suspicious amber eyes back on to Yowlar. ‘You're not from around here, blackie.'

  'That's a long story,’ the panther evasively said.

  'Where's your pride?'

  'Gone.’ That at least was the truth.

  Talon wracked his brains. ‘The colouring doesn't match, but you're similar in size and shape to that spotty clawfoot we savaged out on the veldt a couple of days ago.'

  Yowlar suddenly showed interest. Their victim could only have been one of his old pride members. ‘Male or female?’ he tentatively asked.

  Talon was surprisingly forthcoming. ‘Definitely female, by the way she yowled so pitifully as I crushed her skull in my jaws. Did you know her, blackie? Was she your mate? Guess what ... you're a widower now.'

  His rush at Talon was explosively fast, Yowlar raking his extending claws across the sneering Roarer's muzzle before dodging to one side. The beefier lions were muscular, but he was nimbler. Bloodied and violated, Talon reacted and made for the insolent panther, only to collide with Stomper when his littermate stumbled in his way. Broken Fang was more successful with his retaliation. He sidestepped his tangled brothers and charged the fleeter Sabretooth, throwing his full bulk at Yowlar. The smaller great cat fell heavily onto his side. Before he could regain his feet, Broken Fang was atop Yowlar, frantically looking for the throat bite that would suffocate his catch. Yowlar managed to squirm over onto his belly, preventing the lion from clamping down on his exposed throat. Broken Fang instead took out his frustration on the panther's neck and shoulders. The pale moonlight picked out the redness of blood staining Yowlar's glossy blue-black coat as rending teeth and claws did their worst.

  From out of the corner of his wincing eye the pinned panther could see Talon and Stomper disentangling themselves from one another, their frightful growls and roars cursing the other for his incompetence. Yowlar had to act quickly. Once those two got loose he would not stand a chance.

  Marshalling all of his strength he bucked Broken Fang off his back and tried making a run for it. His manoeuvre did not entirely work. The thrown Roarer quickly scrambled back to grab the panther's rump, his digging claws lacerating fur and flesh while his widening jaws sought to cripple his foe with a paralysing bite to the spine. Desperate to escape, Yowlar kicked out and again wrenched himself free, spinning around to viciously scratch Broken Fang's face. Blinded by a sudden gush of blood, the bitten lion missed the chewed up panther slinking away. Luck was this time on Yowlar's side. Curtains of wind-driven cloud obscured the moon, pitching the veldt into the blackest of nights. Yowlar blended in perfectly to the near solid darkness.

  'Broken Fang, where are you?’ That was Talon's enquiring shout.

  'I can't see,’ whined the temporarily sightless Roarer.

  'Join the pride,’ Talon answered back. ‘It's blacker than a Curvehorn's hide out here. I can't see even my whiskers. Stomper, you near?'

  'Right behind you, Talon, and I'm as blind as bat too.'

  'And just as bright. Where's our playmate gone?'

  'Ask Broken Fang.'

  'My eyes!’ Broken Fang roared plaintively.

  Talon cussed rather loudly and at length before getting his act together. ‘Okay brothers. Split up and we'll sniff out our chew toy. Stomper, you go south. I'll take the west. Broken Fang, you stay put.'

  'I don't even know where to find south,’ complained Stomper.

  'Follow your nose,’ Talon ordered. A bullying snarl sent Stomper on his way.

  Crouched in the concealing dark within earshot of the grumbling lions hid Yowlar, hurting and bleeding freely over the squashed grasses. His give-away yellow eyes, brimming with pain and fright, stayed closed as he cringed listening to the footsteps of Talon and Stomper receding into the distance. That left Broken Fang, whimpering and at a loss at what to do. The wind stirred fitfully from the west and Yowlar was fast running out of time. The clouds masking the moonlight would soon be blown off and he would be exposed like a flopping fish out of water.

  Yowlar sneakily crawled away out east, having expended one of his nine lives.

  Chapter Twelve

&nb
sp; Life depreciated further. Bushwalker had not thought that possible, yet as she traipsed from out of the dusky evening up the path to the Home-rock caves and into the meeting chamber where an assembly of the tribe had become a nightly occurrence, she realised just how fragmented the gracile troop really was. Dusty and tired, she simply stood at the entrance and opened her ears to the clamour of opinions being voiced.

  The males were continuing their squabble over who should lead, the ongoing argument exemplified by Caverunner's abdication. Bushwalker learnt from snippets of conversation seesawing between the gossiping females that during her daylong absence the chieftain and his mate just up and left without a final word of goodbye. Those who watched them leave reckoned they were in some sort of trance for they walked stiltedly with eyes glazed and unseeing, carrying Troublefoot's smelly remains between them. Inconsolable grief turned them mad and sent them southward in the direction of Wastesand on a crazy suicide pact. The family that died together, stayed together. If they were not Roarer fodder by now, the desert would shrivel them to sun-dried husks.

  There was more. A further two Home-rockers had died. In a bitter twist of irony, the youngest and eldest of the graciles perished in the same dreadful hour; an unnamed infant delivered stillborn by the midwives and old Plainswalker, casualties both of malnourishment and dehydration. Their bodies were dumped side by side at the foot of the honeycombed tower for the efficient scavengers to recycle.

  And still the ludicrous wrangle over who should be in charge echoed through the cave complex.

  'STOP THIS FOOLISH BICKERING!’ Bushwalker finally screamed at the top of her lungs.

  The chatter died away into an awkward hush broken by a lone mutter from Quickstep. ‘Here she goes again.'

  Bushwalker stepped forward into prominence once more and pointed out, ‘All this talk is wasted if nothing ever comes of it.'

  'That's male prerogative, girlie,’ rejoined Quickstep, not appreciating the stupidity of his statement. ‘You really shouldn't be here. Treeclimber banned you from attending these meetings.'