“Just as it was foretold!” shouted a drawn-out voice that sounded like Cadool’s.
Afsan heard a buzz move through the crowd. “We have some time yet,” he shouted. “Although the world’s fate is sealed, we have many kilodays before its end will come.”
“Kilodays to pray!” said another voice.
“No!” Afsan again balanced on the shovelmouth’s back, holding both hands aloft. “No! Kilodays to prepare! We must get off this world.”
The sounds from the crowd were of puzzlement now.
“Get off the world?”
“What does he mean?”
Afsan wished he could see them, wished he could read their faces. Was he getting through to any of them?
“I mean,” he said, “that although the world is ending, our race does not have to. We can leave this place, fly to somewhere else.”
“Fly?” The word echoed throughout the square in intonations ranging from puzzled to sarcastic.
“Yes, fly! In vessels — ships — like those in which we now ply the waters of this world.”
“We don’t know how to do that,” called a voice.
“And I don’t know, either,” said Afsan. “But we must find a method — we must! It will mean changing the way in which we conduct our lives. We must give ourselves over to science, we must learn all that we can. Wingfingers fly; insects fly. If they can do it, we can do it. It’s only a question of discovering their methods and adapting them to our needs. Science holds our answer; knowledge — real knowledge, verifiable knowledge, not superstition, not religious nonsense — will be our salvation.”
The crowd, at last, was silent, save for the grunts of the beasts.
“We must learn to work together, to cooperate.” He smelled their pheromones, knew they were confused. “Nature — or God — has given us a great challenge. We have trouble working side by side; our territorial instincts drive us apart. But we must overcome these instincts, be creatures of reason and sanity instead of prisoners of our biology.”
Afsan turned his head in small increments from left to right, as if looking at each individual face. He could hear the hiss of conversation growing, a comment here, a question there, a remark from the back, an interjection up front.
“But, Afsan,” came a voice, louder than the others, “we need our territories…”
Afsan held the shovelmouth’s neck firmly so as not to lose his balance as he tipped forward in a concessional bow. “Of course we do,” he said. “But once we leave this world, there will be room for us all. Our Land is but a tiny part of the vast universe. We’re going to the stars!”
Suddenly another voice cut across all the others, a voice amplified and reverberating through a speaking horn.
“This is Det-Yenalb, Master of the Faith. Disperse at once. I have assembled those loyal to the Emperor and they are prepared to move upon the square unless you leave now. I say again: This is Det-Yenalb…”
The fool! Afsan felt pheromones from the crowd wash over him like a wave. His own claws extended. The shovelmouth gave a little yelp as their points dug into its neck. He could hear bodies jostling as Quintaglios, already packed too tightly, turned to face the priest. The situation was explosive.
“What are you afraid of, Yenalb?” shouted Afsan.
“Disperse!”
“What are you afraid of?” echoed the crowd of hunters.
Yenalb’s voice reverberated back. “I fear for your souls.”
“And I fear for the survival of our people,” Afsan shouted. “Call off your supporters, Yenalb. Do you really want to send priests, academics, and ceremonial guards against the finest hunters in all of Land? Retreat, before it’s too late!”
“I say again,” said Yenalb. “Disperse. No punishment will be levied if you leave now.”
Cadool’s voice rose up, almost deafening Afsan. “Upon whose authority do you act, priest?”
Echoing, reverberating: “The authority of His Luminance Dy-Dybo, Emperor of the eight provinces and the Fifty Packs.”
“And how,” demanded Cadool, “did fat Dybo come upon his authority?”
“He is…” Yenalb halted, the final syllable repeating as it faded away. But the crowd knew what he had intended to say.
He is the descendant of Larsk.
“Larsk is a false prophet,” yelled a female voice, “and Dybo’s authority is unearned.”
Shouts of agreement went up throughout the square.
“You will disperse!” said Yenalb.
“No,” said Afsan, his voice cutting through the uproar. “We will not. Order your people to withdraw.”
They waited for Yenalb’s response, but there was none.
“Once first blood is spilled, Yenalb, there will be no stopping an escalation.” Afsan’s voice was going, his throat raw. “You know that. Order the retreat.”
Yenalb’s voice echoed back, but it had a different tone. He must have turned around to address those who were loyal to the palace. “Advance!” shouted the priest. “Clear the square!”
For once, Afsan was glad he could not see.
*35*
Pal-Cadool looked up at Afsan, balanced atop the tube-crested shoveler. The One, still small and always scrawny, had eyelids closed over rent orbs. His voice, unaccustomed to addressing multitudes, had become strained.
Cadool then looked out across the square. The Lubalites filled most of the eastern side. Some were atop hornfaces, half hidden behind the great bony neck frills. Others were riding running beasts, both the green and the beige variety. Still others were on shovelmouths — hardly a fighting creature, but still a good mount. And a few hunters stood on the wide knobby carapaces of armorbacks, ornery plant-eaters mostly encased in bone.
But Cadool saw that the bulk of the five hundred hunters were on foot. They had been rapt with attention, drinking in the words of Sal-Afsan, The One.
But now those loyal to the Emperor, led by Del-Yenalb high on the back of a spikefrill, were moving into the square through the Arch of the First Emperor.
The hunters turned, those on foot swinging quickly around, those riding atop great reptiles prodding their beasts to rotate through a half circle. With grunts and hisses the animals obeyed.
Cadool guessed there were seventy paces between the two forces. On this side, 500 hunters. On Yenalb’s, perhaps 120 priests, scholars, and palace staff members, each atop an imperial mount.
The palace loyal were a sorry lot: many of them had lived soft lives, relying on butchers such as Cadool himself to do their hunting and killing. No, they were no match for the Lubalites, either in number or skill. But their mounts were fresh, not exhausted from the long march to Capital City. Cadool took a moment to size up the animals they rode. Armorbacks had daggers of bone coming off the sides of their thick carapaces and had solid clubs at the ends of their muscular tails. A hunter would never use such a club in battle, but scholars and priests might indeed sink so low. One swing from an armorback’s tail could stave in a Quintaglio skull.
And then there were the hornfaces, with three pointed shafts of bone protruding from the fronts of their skulls: a long one from above each eye and another, shorter horn rising from the tip of the muzzle. In his time, Cadool had seen many hunters, either too daring or too careless, gored by such beasts. Even Dem-Pironto, who, excepting Afsan, was the finest hunter Cadool had ever known, had been felled that way. Further, the great neck shields, rising like walls of bone from the back of the animals’ skulls, would help protect the scholars and priests.
And then there were the spikefrills, such as the one Yenalb was riding. These were a rare breed of hornface with long spikes of bone sticking out of the short bony frill around the neck. They had only one real horn, a huge one sticking up from the snout, although there were small pointed knobs above each eye.
But even as he tried to make a critical assessment, Cadool realized that his own control was slipping away, his blood coming to a boil.
“Advance!” Yenalb had shouted through his brass speaking cone. “Clear the square!” The palace loyal began moving slowly. The square was crowded; their mounts jostled each other. Beasts that size could crush the foot or tail of a Quintaglio without noticing a thing.
It’s madness
, thought Cadool.
Absolute madness
. And then he growled, low and long…
Afsan felt the ground shaking slightly, knew that imperial mounts were starting to move toward him and the hunters. The air was thick with pheromones. He didn’t want this, had never wanted it. All he’d wanted was to tell the truth, to let them see — see what he no longer could see.
The blind leading the blind.
Afsan felt his claws unsheathe.
Cadool charged, pushing through the crowd of hunters. Other Lubalites were lunging forward, closing the gap between themselves and the imperial contingent. Being on foot, Cadool had greater maneuverability than those upon mounts. He and a hundred others surged ahead, three-toed feet kicking pebbles and dirt into the air, a cloud rising around them.
Cadool’s heart thumped in time with his footfalls. The hunt was on!
Forty paces. Thirty.
The air filled with wingfingers, rising in droves from statues at the periphery of the square. Their squawks, like claws scraping slate, counterpointed the dull thunder of feet pounding the paving stones.
Twenty paces. Ten. Cadool could smell them, smell their stimulation, smell their fear.
Five paces…
He leapt, kicking off the cobbles, flying into the air, cutting across the distance between himself and the closest of the opposing forces, one of the ceremonial imperial guards, straddling the back of a hornface.
The tri-horned brute bucked at seeing the screaming Quintaglio flying toward its flank. It tried to move to the left…
…and crashed against an adjacent hornface, this one of the rare variety with a boss of bone where the nasal horn would normally be…
Cadool hit the tri-horner’s huge side, rippling waves moving through its tawny flesh, radiating from the impact point.
The butcher’s claws dug in, pulling him up onto the beast’s back.
The imperial guard, a female slightly bigger than Cadool, fumbled to get out of her saddle…
…and Cadool’s jaws snapped down upon her throat.
He released the leather restraints holding her dead form to the beast’s back and let it slide to the stones below, splattering them with blood…
…and then leapt from the back of this hornface to the adjacent beast, his feet forward, toeclaws out, smashing into the chest of its horrified rider, a scholar Cadool knew slightly, knocking him to the ground.
He swung to look at the skirmish line. Every imperial loyalist was engaged by a Lubalite. Jaws snapped. Claws tore. Blood washed stones, dappled the hides of mounts, smeared muzzles of individuals on both sides. With a bone-crunching crack, Cadool saw Pahs-Drawo from Carno dispatch a loyalist atop a running beast, but then watched in horror as Drawo himself fell victim to a choreographed lunge by Yenalb’s spikefrill, the beast’s huge nose horn impaling Drawo, running through his gut like a fingerclaw through rotted wood.
Yenalb stood on his hind legs atop the spikefrill, dewlap puffed into a giant ruby ball…
Cadool was sickened. To be stimulated in that way by this … Chest heaving, vision blurring, Cadool had one last clear thought before he gave himself over to the madness: Yenalb was his.
Afsan knew there was nothing he could do, but he tried anyway. The cries of wingfingers, the thunderous calls of shovelmouths, the pounding of feet all drowned his words.
“Stop!” he shouted in the loudest volume his raw throat could manage. “Stop!”
But it would not —
could
not — stop.
Suddenly Afsan felt the shovelmouth he was standing on buck wildly in panic. Afsan shared the beast’s emotion as he found himself catapulted through the air. In his perpetual darkness, he had no idea where he was going to land. Air whipping about him, he quickly rolled into a ball, tucking his muzzle into his chest, wrapping his arms over his head, retracting his legs as much as possible, and folding his tail up and around.
Screams…
His own…
And then he hit…
Cadool slid down the rump of the boss-nosed beast, lashed out with his claws to stop a toppled loyalist who tried to intercept him, and made a dead run for the high priest.
Det-Yenalb had been shouting orders through his speaking cone, but each successive proclamation became less recognizable speech and more animalistic hiss and growl. His spikefrill had tipped its head low and was using a stubby forefoot to pull what was left of Pahs-Drawo off its nasal horn.
Suddenly Yenalb became aware of the charging Cadool. He yanked on the two largest of the giant spikes that protruded from his mount’s neck frill, as if to get the beast’s attention. It looked up, Drawo now discarded, just in time to try to intercept the butcher. The spikefrill’s beak snapped viciously at Cadool, but Cadool danced and weaved to stay out of its way.
The square was too crowded. The spikefrill couldn’t turn enough to get at him. Cadool leapt again, this time grabbing two of the spikes coming out of the crest of bone around the beast’s neck. He used these as handholds, pulling himself up onto the creature’s back. Yenalb tried to push him off, but the priest was no match for the butcher, none at all … Cadool opened his jaws wide, let out a primal roar, and…
This is for Pahs-Drawo!
Snapped his mouth shut on Yenalb’s dewlap, ripping it open, air hissing out
…
And this is for Afsan!
Taking a second, deeper bite into the priest’s meaty throat, serrated teeth ripping through muscle and cartilage and tendons, a semi-ten of Cadool’s fangs popping free as his jaws banged closed against Yenalb’s cervical vertebrae…
And this is for the truth! —
But suddenly the animal beneath him was shaking — the whole square was shaking. Through the haze of instinct, Cadool thought some great monster — a thunderbeast giant, like the one Afsan had felled on his first hunt — had made it into the city, the guards having left their stations to be here.