Alarm of War, Book II: The Other Side of Fear (9 page)

Chapter 8

In the Atlas Mountains, Refuge

              By midday the forest had thinned slightly and the sun beat down on them.  Even though the ambient temperature was cool, Emily still felt the heat.  When the wind blew, she could see the leaves of the
shatah mallah
trees roll in their enormous waves.  From their height, she could see across the broad valley to another range of the Atlas Mountains, their jagged peaks covered with snow and ice, and she thought again of what a beautiful and hard land this was.

              “Are these grogin really that fierce?” she asked Rafael when they had stopped to rest the horses.

              “Oh, yes, fierce and pretty smart, and big, too.  A male grogon might go one hundred and thirty pounds, but the females can weigh in at two hundred.  But what makes them really dangerous is that they hunt in such large groups.”

              Emily frowned.  “What do they hunt?  Elephants?”

              Rafael laughed.   “No elephants on Refuge, sorry.  Grogin will eat just about anything, but what they really like are sambar.”  He frowned in concentration.  “Sambar are sort of like Old Earth moose, but larger.  They go maybe fourteen hundred pounds, ten feet long and stand seven feet at the shoulders.  Males have two horns, almost like bulls, while the females have one sharp horn growing right from their forehead.  They’re big and they have nasty dispositions.  A herd of sambar will stand and fight grogin if it’s a small pack.  If they see a sole grogon, they’ll actually try to chase it down and kill it, but usually they just run away.  They’re beautiful to watch, incredibly fast and they can jump like you wouldn’t believe.”

              “But grogin are the top of the predatory chain?”

              Rafael shrugged.  “We have large, bear-like creatures that we call, surprisingly, ‘bears.’”  Emily rolled her eyes and he grinned.  “But the top predator is the sivot.  Looks like a large tiger, all white fur and weighs five to six hundred pounds.  All teeth and claws, but they are pretty solitary.  A large enough grogin pack might take on a sivot, but never two at the same time.  A sivot can outrun a grogin pack, but they’ve been known to lure the grogin into tight places, then turn and kill them one at a time.  Very lethal beast, our sivot, but we won’t see one.  Heck, I’ve only seen them three or four times and at that through binoculars.”

              “I know you sometimes hunt grogin for food. Do you hunt sivot?” Emily asked, intrigued.

              Rafael laughed out loud, making his horse’s ears twitch.  “Hunt sivot?  All honor to the one who tries.  Oh, sometimes we get some idiot from the city who wants to bag a sivot, but most of the time they go up and don’t come back.  These mountains do not treat fools kindly, Em.  And even if the guy actually found a sivot, I’d put my money on the sivot every time.”

              Further on, Emily said, “Raf, I think it’s time you told me about Ait Driss.”  Rafael looked at her, then nodded and reined in his horse.  “Be dark in an hour, this is a good spot to make camp for the night.”

              They tethered the horses, brushed them down and fed them, then erected the small tent they would use that night.  Rafael unpacked the portable electric fence and carefully set out the six pylons in a horseshoe pattern that brought either end up to the base of a large rock.  He adjusted the conductor cones, then activated the energy pack and the air filled with a low humming sound.  Emily watched avidly, but nothing else happened.

              “That’s it?”  She was vaguely disappointed.  Rafael smiled.  “I can tell you didn’t grow up on a farm.”  He picked up a twig and tossed it into the barrier.  As it went through it sparked loudly, making the horses twitch. 

              “There’s almost enough voltage here to kill a horse.  It’s got enough kick to absolutely ruin the day of your average grogon.”  He turned off the power.  “We’ll save the energy charge for when we go to bed.  Grogin hunt night or day, so we don’t want to run it down if we don’t need it.”  He smiled reassuringly, but Emily noticed that even as he lit the camp stove and set the water to boil, his rifle was always within reach.

              Supper was a fried pastry ball filled with vegetables and slices of beef that had been marinated in a spicy sauce, washed down with more of the butter-and-salt tea. 

              “The people who settled this planet came in two different colony ships,” Rafael began.  “One from Israel and the other from Morocco.  Like most of the colony ships at the time, they were leaving Earth to get away from the plagues.  They didn’t intend to come together, but the Israeli ship had engine problems and couldn’t fix it.  They drifted in space for months before the Moroccan ship heard their distress beacon and stopped to assist.  While the Israelis were glad of the help, it was a tense visit.  Israel and Morocco, while not actual enemies, belonged to two rival religions and there was a lot of animosity.”  Rafael tossed more sticks on the fire.  “The Moroccans had the spare parts the ship needed and the repair was completed, but then some of the Moroccan colonists fell ill.  The first to die were the Moroccan doctors.”

              “It was the plague,” Emily said. “The Cairo Plague.”  She had read the story as a girl.

              “The plague,” Rafael confirmed.  “At first the Israeli ship Captain wanted to leave to protect his passengers, but the leader of the colonists persuaded him to stay and Israeli doctors went aboard to treat the plague victims.  When things finally settled down, the two ships decided to stay together in case of more problems and they finally made it to this world, which they named ‘Refuge’ because that is what they hoped it would be.

              “The first years were hard.  The colonists started farms in the lowlands near the river, built several small towns and began to branch out, exploring the planet.  One group of five hundred – mixed Moroccan and Israeli – moved into the mountains, which they named the Atlas Mountains after a mountain range on Earth.  Uncle Danny says the mountains were in Israel, but Uncle Yael says Morocco.  Knowing Uncle Yael, he’s probably right.  Anyway, the colonists climbed this mountain and found the valley where Ouididi is now.  The soil was good enough for corn and grains to grow and they had embryonic livestock with them, which they grew in artificial wombs.  In a year or so they had a small village going, sort of an alpine garden. 

“They also discovered the grogin, or maybe the grogin discovered them.  At first the grogin packs were small.  The villagers lost some livestock, but it was more a nuisance than anything else. Anyway, sometime in their first summer, a large group of villagers went on an adventure.  Some sixty adults and seventy or eighty children climbed to the peak of the mountain, where they discovered a large windswept promontory.  They set up camp, intending to spend the night and hike back down the following day.  That’s when a doom of grogin found them.”

“A ‘doom’ of grogin?” Emily asked.  “What’s a ‘doom’?”

Rafael smiled.  “Gruesome, yes?  But it’s just a name, like an ‘obstinacy’ of buffalo, a ‘flock’ of birds, a ‘colony’ of bats or an ‘unkindness’ of ravens.  But the name fits.  We call any large group of grogin a ‘doom,’ because that is what it is.”

“But surely the villagers were armed,” Emily said.

“Yes, but not well enough,” he replied.  “The doom was more than one hundred grogin.  They may have been following the trail of a sambar herd, but they stumbled onto the villagers while they were eating supper.  No one had posted guards; they just didn’t think there was any danger.”

Thinking of the Dominion surprise attack on Victoria, Emily grunted.  “Lot of that going around.”

“The grogin swept in and attacked before the villagers understood what was happening,” Rafael continued.  “A lot died in the first couple of minutes before the rest managed to get their guns and form a perimeter.  The grogin attacked all through the night.  Their howls brought more and more grogin, nobody knows how many. There were heaps of dead grogin everywhere, but they just kept attacking.  Towards dawn the villagers began to run out of ammunition.  They finally took as many of the children as they could and jammed them into a small cave.  They left the kids with food and water and sealed the entrance as best they could with boulders.  Then the surviving adults set themselves in front of the cave and fought until the ammunition was gone.”  He paused, scratching in the dirt with a stick.

“Gods of Our Mothers,” Emily said.  “All of them?  No survivors?”

“All of the adults died,” he said gravely.  “Sixty three adults out of a village of a little more than five hundred.  And close to thirty children.  But when the villagers climbed up to find them, forty three children were still alive in the cave.  The village hung on somehow, and a few years later they built the temple to memorialize the massacre and the sacrifice of the adults who saved the children.  Over the centuries that we’ve been here, the Temple of Ait Driss has become sacred and today the name Ait Driss stands for any great act of perseverance in the face of overwhelming odds.”

And it started a social experiment with marriage and family that has lasted as long as the Temple, Emily thought, but kept it to herself.

It was just before noon the next day when everything went wrong.  Rafael was in the lead, Emily a little behind riding Rosie.  Emily didn’t hear anything, but Rosie suddenly put her ears back and skittered nervously to the side.  Up ahead, Rafael reined in and stood up in the stirrups, shielding his eyes to get a better view.  Emily loosened the sonic rifle in its scabbard, straining to see through the trees.

“See anything?” she called softly.

“Not yet,” Rafael said, which didn’t reassure her at all.  Rafael took out his flechette rifle and held it across the saddle.  That didn’t reassure her much, either.  She withdrew the sonic rifle from the scabbard, thumbed on the energy pack and checked the cone setting.  She patted Rosie’s neck and moved up alongside of Rafael.

“You’re not going to ruin my vacation, are you?” she asked.

“Hope not.”  He stared intently into the forest.  “We’ll find out soon.”

Emily stared as well, but still couldn’t see anything.  “Well then, I’ve changed my mind,” she said.  “You can take me to Tinjdad instead of to the Temple.  A good hotel with a bar and a pool would be just fine about now.”

Rafael snorted in amusement, but didn’t stop scanning the forest.

The first sambar leapt out of the trees a hundred yards in front of them, its single horn flashing whitely in the sunlight.  It reared back when it spotted them, flanks heaving as it gasped for air, then lowered its head and charged forward.  Moments later two more sambar – males this time – bolted through the underbrush, running hard, followed by a fourth a few seconds later.  Their hoofs beat a solid drumbeat as they came closer.  Rosie’s eyes flared in alarm and she snorted and pulled at the reins, hoofs pawing at the ground.

“Move right!” Rafael shouted, spurring his mount off the path. Emily hurriedly followed.  The sambar veered slightly away from them and flashed past.  Emily could see the terror in the bulging eyes of one of the younger males as it thundered by, then they were gone, leaving behind a deceptively tranquil silence.

“What was-” Emily started to ask, but then she heard it – a low rumble of grunting and an eerie, undulating wailing that swirled through the air and grew steadily louder. 
Bugger me!
She thought savagely.

“Not good,” Rafael said grimly.  “Not good at all.”  He wheeled his horse around.  “About two hundred yards down the trail, we passed a large rock outcropping.  We’ll use that as our anchor.  Move!”

They dashed recklessly back down the trail, heedless of roots that might trip the horses and the countless branches that whipped their faces, skidding to a stop when they reached the outcrop.  About forty feet wide, it rose about fifteen feet to a narrow shelf, then another thirty feet to the top.  Rafael leapt off his mount and ran to the pack horse, slashing at the straps with his knife rather than take the time to untie them.  The pylons for the power fence tumbled to the ground and he snatched them up, throwing one to Emily.  “Set it up as close to the face of the rock as you can get it!” he ordered, quickly extending one of the other pylons to its ten foot height.  Emily did as she was told, telescoping out the plastic rods to their full length and locking them, then extending the wide base so the pylon would stand erect.  There were three wide, dish-shaped cones fastened to the side of the pylon and she positioned them to point at the next set of pylons Rafael was erecting.

The grunting and wailing noise grew in volume and pitch as it moved closer.  “Secure the horses!” Rafael told her as he extended the third pylon.  Emily snatched the reins for Rosie and the gelding and pulled them as close to the rock as she could, then tied them to the trunk of a small tree.  Rosie’s eyes were rolling in her head and she was snorting and rearing, but there was nothing to do for it now.  Emily wheeled on the pack horse, reaching for the reins, but the animal suddenly shied away from her grasp and bolted down the path the sambar had taken.

Rafael looked horrified.  “It’s still got the plasma rifle and the spare energy packs for the fence!”  Emily started to chase after it, but then the first grogon came barreling through the undergrowth and stopped about one hundred feet in front of them.

It was an ugly beast, more like an Old Earth hyena than a wolf, with high muscular shoulders, long, powerful legs, a wide chest that tapered to narrow haunches and black fur streaked with lines of scarlet along its flanks.  But the most arresting thing was its face.  A bulging, knobby forehead fell to a long, pointed snout that was presently showing a lot of teeth as the grogon snarled at them.  Its eyes were black, all black with no change in color from the eyeball to the pupil.  The first grogon was soon joined by four more and they stood shoulder to shoulder, eyeing the two humans warily, but inching forward nonetheless.