She met the hulking buffalo in the hardy trees below Home-rock. He was standing forlornly beside the oldest and biggest acacia in Scraggly Bush, just as her messenger said. Tree and bull made a good pair. Both were giants showing their age, the weight of the years wilting branches and horns alike. The elderly Curvehorn brightened at her approach, lifting his droopy head. Even in the dusky twilight Bushwalker noticed the abject tiredness dulling his eyes.
'Hullo, big fella,’ she warmly said, patting Ugnap's enormous flank. His dark hide shuddered beneath her friendly caress.
'Bushwalk came. Me glad.'
'What's up then, Ugnap?'
'Me go sleep.'
Bushwalker frowned at the darkening landscape. ‘That's what usually happens when night comes,’ she declared in an imperious tone.
Ugnap snorted. ‘Me no dumb.'
The giant browser was right. Ugnap was slow-minded, not unlearned. Suitably abashed, the Upright maid mumbled, ‘Sorry. Go on.'
Struggling to explain himself within the framework of Curvehorn simplicity, Ugnap announced, ‘Me old and tired. Me go away. Take long sleep.'
'You plan to slumber someplace other than Scraggly Bush tonight. I get it.'
'Bushwalk no hear. Me go sleep. Me no wake.'
Her eyes widening with shocked understanding, Bushwalker bewailed, ‘You are about to die! Is that what you're telling me?'
'Ugnap soon sleep long,’ he affirmed.
Bushwalker leaned against the steadying roughness of the grey-barked tree trunk, her mind reeling. Did every male she was acquainted with have to expire? ‘This is the custom of your kind after they've grown old and been turfed out of the troop,’ she supposed, ‘to wander off into the wilds alone to perish.'
Ugnap grunted. He seemed neither sad nor upset by the fact, merely resigned.
Appalled best described Bushwalker's reaction. Uprights were a close-knit group that generally lived and died together. Going off on one's lonesome, especially to pass away, was frighteningly abnormal to the tribal hominins. ‘So it is time for goodbyes,’ she said regretfully.
The bull lowed. An emotional moment, words were no longer necessary or even adequate to express feelings.
Bushwalker became down in the dumps. She would miss the big lump of prime beef. Twice Ugnap saved her hairy hide and she had grown attached to her Curvehorn saviour in much the same way an owner cherishes a favourite pet. Though the burly bull was not housebroken, his loyalty counted for much with her.
'I guess you'd better be off,’ she instructed him, hating protracted goodbyes.
'Bushwalk go too.'
'What?'
'Ugnap afraid.'
She gave him a wan smile. ‘Want someone to hold your hoof, eh? Sure, big guy. Lead on.'
The march out on to the savannah was predictably slow, neither rambler particularly anxious to reach the end of this journey. Flashes of lightning sparked the overcast of early evening and Bushwalker lifted her inquiring face skywards, hooting unsurely. The wind had changed to an easterly and was the carrier of the muted reports of faraway thunder.
'Great sky-bull bellows,’ Ugnap observed with uncharacteristic depth, his impending mortality conjuring up a religious experience. ‘Piss soon come,’ he predicted.
Bushwalker disagreed. Early summer storms tended to be insubstantial light and sound shows without any guts to them. The water dropping eventually came later. ‘Just like males,’ she reminded herself. ‘All talk and no action.’ Bushwalker pulled herself up short. If not careful, she would turn into an embittered spinster.
They said nothing further for the next hour, meandering seemingly carefree through the deepening night until Ugnap complained of weariness and ground to a halt some three miles southeast of Home-rock. Bushwalker was about to ask after his health when the monstrous Curvehorn exhaled loudly and gracelessly flopped on his side. She silently knelt by his lolling head and tenderly stroked his broad snout, his breathing shallow but steady. The time for speaking was well past and by the silvering light of the incandescent starshine showing through a break in the cloud cover Bushwalker witnessed the natural fear wilding Ugnap's eyes mellow into contentment. And so he died, serenely and with profound dignity in the company of a caring friend.
She stayed by his side for the remainder of the night, heedless of the dangers posed by marauding lions, hyenas, hunting dogs, and formless shadows. Bushwalker harboured an obligation to the deceased bull that overrode her fear of the dark. He had, of his own volition, hung around Home-rock in voluntary service to her. Enacting a deathwatch over his cooling carcass for a few scant hours seemed the least she could do for the old battler. Deep in her bones it felt right and proper.
Her vigil ended when a dull redness fired the cloudy heavens in the east. She considered the blushing firmament for a long moment before getting to her feet, legs aching from inactivity. ‘That's funny,’ Bushwalker mumbled, frowning at the gash of uncovered starfield twinkling directly overhead. The background sky remained a boundless black, prompting her to voice her concern. ‘It's too early for sunrise. How odd.’ Returning her puzzled gaze to the eastern expanse, the Upright maid had an uneasy feeling begin gnawing in her occupied belly. That disquieting suspicion was confirmed a few minutes later when a gust of the stiffening easterly brought her an acrid whiff of smoke.
Fire!
The natural horror of the animal kingdom instilled fear in every creature regardless of breed or bigness. Fire was a living, breathing entity consuming all caught in its burning path, leaving in its wake scorched, blackened earth and the charred, grotesquely twisted corpses of its horribly roasted victims. It was a merciless and indiscriminate destructive power, which laid waste to hapless plants and animals alike. Worse still, the monster was awake and on the move.
Two and a half miles due west of Wastesand in the predawn hours a lightning bolt grounded itself in the splintered remains of an acacia knocked over by terraforming elephants the day before. The downed tree provided suitable kindling for the sparks from the electrical strike and the resulting baby flames licking at the exposed wood soon ignited a major blaze in the surrounding grasses. In no time at all a fully-fledged bushfire was raging across the tinder dry savannah along a thirteen-mile front fanned by the blustering easterly.
Bushwalker ran. Forsaking her self-imposed task as Ugnap's minder, instinct ousted duty. Flight was the standard response to danger. But as the gathering wind at her back pushed her along and the pong of smoke blew stronger in her flaring nostrils, Bushwalker doubted she could outpace the speeding inferno, even though her gashed leg had fully healed, eliminating that pesky limp. A fire racing unchecked could overtake even the fleetest of four-footed runners. She was a slower biped, a pregnant one at that.
That did not prevent her from attempting to do so. She cowered when an adolescent male lion skittered past but thankfully did not stop to bother her, even after inspecting the sprinting, fattish Upright maid with a perfunctory glance. She could not be wholly certain, but Bushwalker thought the bounding Roarer might have been the culprit who had brought her down. She happened to be wrong. It was scar-faced Talon scarpering alone after his stupider brothers had been overcome by the smothering smoke and by now were fuelling the oncoming grassfire with their charring bodies.
A hiss filled with loathing stopped the gracile cold. Peering into the darkness ahead, she spotted a pair of luminous yellow dots low to the ground. They looked frighteningly familiar. They should. For as long as she lived Bushwalker would remember always the eyes of the killer who spirited Rockshaper out of the cave they had regularly shared. ‘Yowlar!’ she hooted accusingly. ‘We meet at last.'
The panther blinked in surprise. ‘You have me at a disadvantage, sister,’ he growled annoyingly. ‘You seem to know me. I can't say the same about you.'
'I am Bushwalker, the one who'll be ending your hunting safari.'
'With that little rock claw of yours?'
It was Bushwalker's turn to be astonished. ‘I tho
ught you didn't know me?'
'I don't, but I know of you. Your clawing of that big ape back at the waterhole was inspirational. Maybe you've got some cat in you, monkey-girl. Impressive as that display was, it marks you dangerous and a threat. I can't have that.’ Yowlar shut his eyes and vanished in the blackness.
Bushwalker panicked. ‘Where have you gone?’ she shrieked.
'Nowhere,’ a snarl came from behind.
She jumped and whirled about to face her troop's tormentor, pinpointing those telltale eyes of his. He was easily within leaping distance of her. ‘Why are you doing this, clawfoot?’ she demanded, nervously fingering the lethal pebble-tool in her hand.
'A boy's got to eat.'
'There's more than hunger to this killing spree of yours. A Watersnout told me so.'
The oath the panther growled warranted censoring. ‘I'm really starting to find reptiles more insufferable than dogs,’ he spat, condescending to expound to her afterwards, ‘Everyone needs a goal in life.'
'Mine is to kill you,’ Bushwalker avowed.
Yowlar went invisible again, criticising her tenacity from the concealing blackness. ‘You've really sunk your claws into that scratching post.'
She glanced furtively about and saw only the taunting dark. A puff of smoky wind reminded her of a more pressing hazard than a rogue big cat and she made the suggestion, ‘I think we'd better postpone this bout of ours.'
'Are you scared of facing me?’ the panther challenged in a confident growl.
'I'd be stupid not to be,’ Bushwalker confessed, ‘but I'm more frightened by the fire at my back.'
Silence greeted her divulgence. It was broken only when she heard a faint snuffling as the camouflaged Sabretooth tested the dark morning air and coughed in response to the increasing smoke. The hidden cat's eyes reappeared off to her left, and they were wide with fright. ‘I always meant to ask Jinku how Firewind Veldt got its name,’ he murmured in self-recrimination.
Yowlar felt like screeching insanely. After trekking all the way back from Whitetop, healing as much as he could along the way, he spent the past week studying the movements of the principal hominin with whom he intended to restart his campaign of genocide. Bushwalker was the key to Upright unity. What was with take-charge females in this place? Was there something in the water? Her removal from the scene would leave the Home-rockers wide open as his personal buffet and be the pinnacle of his thus far short, yet illustrious, career as a man-ape killer. This was the first chance of bringing the gracile sow down cleanly to present itself in all that time. Yowlar was damned if he was going to let a pissant brushfire deny him this golden opportunity. Besides, he was ravenous. Not eating for a couple of days really makes a predator ambitious.
Bushwalker, noting the panther's glowing orbs narrow, heard him snarl defiantly. ‘We're not going to reschedule, bitch. I'll breakfast on you here and now.'
'We don't have time for this today,’ she maintained and moved to one side. The contracted eyes matched her motion, blocking her way. Bushwalker attempted stepping around the determined cat and again found her way barred by those spiteful eyes. She repeated her warning. ‘There's a fire coming, dummy! We don't want to be caught here when it arrives.'
Glancing up at the ruddy glow reflected off the underside of the clouded sky, Yowlar hissed merrily. ‘I wouldn't worry your fuzzy little head about it, monkey-girl. You won't be alive to see it and I'll be long gone.’ He pounced before his sibilance ended.
Bushwalker reflexively raised the stabber to defend herself when those unfeeling eyes came springing for her. Sadly, all her practice with the blades of flaked stone came to naught. The leaping panther deftly batted the weapon out her hand with one expert swipe of a forepaw, drawing his uncovered claws across her exposed belly with the other before twisting away.
'Not my baby!’ she hollered and dropped to her knees, clutching her bloody stomach, paining ripping through her awareness. The stricken Upright missed seeing the intense yellow dots circle behind her as Yowlar came in to deliver his death-bite to the base of her neck.
The ground shook. Or more literally the earth heaved and convulsed. Yowlar was interrupted from killing Bushwalker by an impossibly loud rumble emanating from the rear. ‘Oh crap,’ he exhaled, snapping his head around as that ear-grating sound reverberated through the smoky darkness. ‘STAMPEEEDE!’ he roared warningly.
Moments later, the combatants were engulfed by a wave of galloping bodies as literally hundreds of thousands of the savannah's migrant grazers, returning at the end of the dry season, fled the advancing blaze alongside the resident herbivores. Grunting wildebeest jostled with braying zebras, clicking eland and bellowing buffaloes joining the choir. Panicky antelope leapt fleetly over one another in their haste to escape the searing peril. The din of their combined, mindless passage was positively thunderous and assailed the senses, threatening to burst eardrums. Clouds of dust thrown airwards by innumerable hooves churning up the dry earth mingled with the overlaying smoke, thickening the murky air until it was scarcely breathable.
Blinded, deafened and choking, Bushwalker had a momentary glimpse of a streak of ebony blacker than the night being ground underfoot by the stampeding ruminants before she herself was bowled over in their maddened rush.
Chapter Sixteen
She retched. Bushwalker was groggy, but alive. By some miracle, more likely blind luck, she escaped being trampled to death in the mass getaway of Firewind Veldt's panicked herders. The sprinting antelopes, leaping gazelles, lumbering buffalos, and galloping zebras had amazingly skirted the fallen gracile instead of running her over. Judging by the wideness of the belt of flattened grass she laid spread out on, she figured Yowlar was not as lucky.
Rubbing her throbbing head, the fortunate Upright now faced a new threat: suffocation. Knocked senseless by the leading elements of the stampede, during her time of unconsciousness a lacklustre dawn had broken over the savannah while the blazing grassfire roared closer. Sprawled on her back, Bushwalker could plainly see in the early morning overcast the layered white smoke from the inferno billowing eastwards, joining the smudgy cloud cover. Her eyes stinging from windblown ash and cinders, her lacerated belly heaving in pain, she hacked from lungs filled with dust and smoke. If she did not move, and fast, she risked running out of oxygen long before the flames singed her body hair.
Coming to her feet, Bushwalker lurched blindly through the drifting smoke, her vision obscured by the choking whiteness. Not knowing which way to go, she stumbled along and tripped over an object lying in her path. Crouched on her hands and knees, Bushwalker looked back expectantly through watering eyes and sighed her disappointment. What caused her to tumble was not the panther's trampled corpse but the crushed carcass of a bull wildebeest calf unable to match the frantic pace of his elders—so much for safety in numbers. That meant Yowlar remained at large.
A strange clarity enveloped Bushwalker. Wounded and weaponless, at the arguable mercy of a clawfoot out for her blood, not to mention trapped in the middle of a firestorm, she stayed remarkably calm. Her original plan of luring the panther into the rambling cave system of Home-rock, there knifing him to death in her preselected setting within the cramped lower passageway leading to the tool cutting grotto, had by circumstance fallen apart. All was not lost however.
Evolving mental capacity triggered the standout hominin resourcefulness, prompting Uprights to take cues from their environment to better comprehend the natural world, consequentially improving their lives. Associating a presence with an event was dawning genius. In its simplest expression, circling vultures signified the chance to scavenge fresh meat. Hence, scanning the glary skies for the wheeling carrion birds offered the reward of food. Hardly a step up from what jackals did, such thinking led to more advanced cognitive processes coming into play, notably that banging two suitable rocks together eventually tooled a better shaped and potentially useful stone. Rockshaper sparked such reasoning power in Bushwalker, enabling her to make the correlation
between the scratched trunk and a hitherto undiscovered clawfoot species. Furthering that intellectual development, his inspired working of flint taught her about controlling reactions.
Accordingly quick to recognise opportunities and capitalise on the unexpected, Bushwalker acted on a devious idea popping into her head. Closing her eyes she swivelled her head to and fro, trying to source the heart of the grassfire by feeling from which direction the intense heat it was generating radiated the strongest. Locating roughly where the seat of the blaze lay, Bushwalker covered her mouth with a hairy arm and resolutely staggered northeast where the smoke bloomed thickest.
She had not plodded far before pain cramped her belly and she doubled over, gasping from the crippling intensity. The panther's swipe caused more than surface damage. An ensuing wave of agony brought Bushwalker to her knees and she whimpered as a nervous adolescent would. Worry over the wellbeing of her undelivered infant was suddenly blasted to the back of her screaming mind by the fiery barrage advancing on her.
Bushwalker trembled before the fifteen-foot high wall of ravaging orange flame she had sought out. The smoke here was thankfully less dense, the conflagration crackling with a life all its own breathed into it by Father Lightning and Mother Wind as its sooty effluence swirled downwind above her head before settling lower. The petrified Upright maid nearly passed out from the waves of searing heat exuded by the inferno and smelt the tips of her black strands smouldering.
Steeling herself to risk the impossibility she was committed to attempting, Bushwalker cast about with frenetic eyes, providentially finding what she had come for: a thorn tree aflame with tongues of amber and yellow forming a wood consuming bouquet. In a heroic display of overcoming her natural aversion to fire, she ducked under the sizzling canopy, the roar of devouring heat providing a disturbing counterpoint to the crackle of roasting bark. Braving falling twigs and branches ablaze with blossoms of glowing embers, she desperately quartered the scorched ground hot underfoot. Finding an adequately long charred limb tipped by fire, she faltered. Fire meant death to any creature coming into contact with it.
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