Fire Country (7 page)

He races in from the side, leaps on the biggin’s back with reckless abandon, slashing with his slasher-blade again and again as the tug leader bucks and kicks like he’s under attack by a swarm of angry soldier bees. Circ’s hanging on with one arm, jerking and cracking around like the business end of my father’s snapper.
But he’s still stabbing, just a flurry of bronzed skin riding a monster tug whose brown coat is slick with red to match the sky.

~~~

It shouldn’t be possible for an animal that large to die, at least not from injury. But die it does, slowly at first, stopping its kicking, still snorting and huffing, but no longer fighting. It’s a strange sight: a tug the size of a Glassy fire chariot, walking and stamping his feet, with Circ on his back, like a pesky fly. I know there’s all kinds of other stuff happening all around him—like slashers finishing off their kills, a stampede of retreating tugs thundering into the distance, and apprentice healers rushing onto the field to attend to the dead and injured—but I can’t seem to pull my eyes from him.

Circ.

I don’t know why I worry ’bout him. He’s the most capable person I know, always coming out on top. In this case, literally.

Flush with the tug’s bloody body, he lowers his head to its ear, whispers something. The killing words:
In the name of the sun goddess, I claim your body for the use of my people, the Heaters. You have died with honor, and your passing will save the lives of many. I send you to a better place, Warrior.

Circ wraps
his arm around its neck, and is about to draw his blade across the biggin’s throat, when a blur swoops in from the side and smashes into him and the tug.

What the scorch?
I think.

Circ
loses his balance and topples off the injured tug, which suddenly has a bit of fight in him again, unloosing a bellow that sweeps across the field like a plague. I stand, straining to see who ruined Circ’s perfect kill. Hawk comes into view, stalking around the front of the tug, his spear raised to killing height. Beneath the tug, which is stomping and kicking again—not dead yet!—Circ’s rolling around, trying to avoid getting trampled. Hawk, the baggard! He’s going to get Circ killed!

Hawk thrusts his spear at the tug, but it ducks its head at the last second and
the sharp point glances off one of its horns.

Then it charges.

Hawk dives to the side, narrowly avoiding getting gored. Circ’s sprawled out form comes into view. He’s clutching his stomach, like he mighta caught a glancing blow from a hoof, but clearly he didn’t get fully stepped on or kicked, ’cause he wouldn’t be able to stand after something like that. Other’n that, he looks okay. Still, I hold my breath until he gets back on his feet.

The tug turns and starts pawing the ground, staring at Hawk and Circ. The two that tried to kill him. Circ yells something, but I’m too far away to hear what. All I know is that Hawk glances back and nods.
With three more years of experience—and a scorch of a lot more natural ability—Circ is the one calling the shots.

They run, the two of them, in opposite directions, circling the monstrous red-and-black-splotched tug
. It turns one way and then t’other, bucking around like someone’s on its back. They’re confusing it. Who to attack? Which way to go first? It starts for Circ and then seems to feel Hawk’s presence behind it, so it whirls around and makes a move toward him.

The moment the tug turns its back on him, Circ makes a move of his own,
a full out sprint toward the creature. He looks so small as he closes in on the girthy tug, ’specially ’cause of how far away I am. From here I can pinch him between my thumb and forefinger.

The tug stops again, as if realizing that the gig is up, that he’s been tricked. He twists his head to turn, but he’s too late. Circ leaps, lands gracefully on the tug’s back as if he’s tackling an
opponent in feetball, hugging the beast around the neck. There’s a gleam of light when the sun goddess’s eye is reflected off the broad side of his blade as he slides it across the tug’s neck.

A normal tug would drop on the spot after a killing stroke like that, but this ain’t no normal tug. It’s a behemoth, prepared to fight even as the life drains from him. With Circ still on his back, he charges Hawk, who’s standing there dumbly. Now this is the good part.

Hawk runs off like a scared little Midder. On the way, he drops his spear, a couple of knives, and every last bit of his pride in a heap on the desert floor. As it turns out, his hasty retreat probably saved his life, ’cause that final burst was all the tug had left. It slows to a stop, dips its head, and, finally, by the will of the sun goddess and Circ’s unmatched ability—collapses, all strength sucked from its legs like venom from a scorpion sting. I sigh.

Circ’s safe, and
he’s killed again.

I know the requirement to kill is necessary for o
ur survival, but I don’t hafta like it. The tugs haven’t done anything to deserve such a fate. Like us, they’re just trying to survive, migrating hundreds of miles each year to find diminishing fields of wildgrass to feed their young. ’Fore we kill them. We only take what we need, yeah, but to them we take everything.

I once asked Circ what it felt like to kill a creature as large and full of life as a tug. “Terrible,” he said. “Take the worst feeling in the world and then multiply it by one hundred, and that’s how awful it is.” A single tear slipped from his eye, the first time I’d seen him cry since he was a Totter.

“Then why do you…” I started to ask, but I never finished the question ’cause I already knew the answer, and he never answered although he knew exactly what I was gonna ask. Why do we do anything we do? Why do girls get Called at sixteen? Why do the Hunters hunt? Why do the Greynotes meet and discuss trade arrangements with the Icers? ’Cause it’s the Law, which is our sacred duty to uphold, a requirement for our survival. We don’t hafta like it, just to do it.

It doesn’t have to be like this.
Even after watching the vicious Hunting of the tugs, I can’t get Lara’s words out of my head. Who does she know? The Icers? It sounds wooloo, but who knows these days? We could potentially avoid the Call by sneaking into ice country. The Wilds? The thieving, sister-grabbing, feral freaks who ruined my life when they took Skye’s? I hope not, ’cause I consider Lara a friend and if she’s with them I’ll never be able to talk to her again.

A horn soun
ds and my head snaps around. It’s not the long blast to start the Hunt, but a short series of tones from somewhere atop the bluffs. A warning, from the watchmen. Not a frequent occurrence, but not unusual either. Sometimes the hunched, wiry Cotees’ll hear the initial horn, or smell the blood, and come to investigate. To a lone human, a large group of Cotees can be dangerous, but not to a fully equipped mess of Hunters.

I blink away the daydream and scan the desert, trying to find
the gang of furry thieves who drew the alarm. I gasp when I see them. Not a single Cotee flecks the horizon.

Killers.

N
ot Cotees, but Killers. It’s a big pack, too—I try to count them but keep getting confused ’cause they’re moving so fast, flitting in and out of various formations as they rush toward the Hunters. Their movements are practiced. Professional. Twenty is my best guess. A big pack.

Four-legged, w
ith fur as black as night, long, lanky bodies full of muscle and speed, and claws and teeth that can rip and tear through muscle, tendon and bone without discretion, Killers, as their name suggests, are the ultimate killing machines. They’re animals, like Cotees, but a whole scorch of a lot bigger and scarier—smarter too, always planning and plotting.

The spectators on the bluff, comprised of women, Younglings, and the few odd men who are too infirm to participate in the Hunt, are jabbering a mile a
moment, some screaming, some waving their hands, all on their feet. Scared. Like me.

Circ.

The Hunters can see the Killers now, too, even from their lower vantage point, that’s how close they are. My eyes flick to the black death squad and then back to the Hunters, who are reassembling themselves, trying to form their own pack, but it’s clear they don’t know what to do. Never in broad daylight. Never so many.

My mind racing, I estimate the distance. At their current
speed, the Killers are less’n five desert sprints away, as the crow flies, maybe less.

Circ’s
down there. Will he be killed if I do nothing? I don’t know, but I
can’t
do nothing, it ain’t physically possible for me to sit and watch as he’s torn apart by rabid beasts.

I have no time to think, and anyway, thinking’s not my skil
l. Nothing’s my skill really, ’cept my speed, and what good’s that ever done me?

My broken arm throbs, as if a reminder.

With no other choice, I give myself over to my legs, knowing full well what a stupid decision it is.

As I dart across the bluff, I see a few startled eyes following me, probably thinking I’m headed back to the village to get help. But I know there’s no help there. Anyone capable of helping is here, and I’m not seeing any of the other women or Younglings in a hurry to do a searin’ thing, so that leaves me. Scrawny. Runty. But fast.

I cut hard to the right, into a narrow passage that slices between the bluff and provides access to the killing fields below. It’s the same path Hawk took earlier.

Running
with only one arm is harder’n you’d think. Or at least harder’n I thought it’d be. I expected having one bum arm would be no big deal, ’cause when you run it’s your legs doing all the work anyway, right?

Wrong.

I’m all off balance, which makes me clumsier’n ever, unable to run in a straight line. First I bash into one wall of the passage, bruising my good arm, and then into the other wall. The second time is my bad arm, which, with the Medicine Man’s herbs wearing off, sends scythes of pain through the entire right side of my body.

Knock pain. Burn pain. Pain is nothing when my best friend since I was four is out there.

I’ve always liked the feeling I get when I run. Wind through my hair and on my arms, drying the beads of sweat that accumulate faster’n they can evaporate. My mind clear, the effort required to pump my legs and arms is enough to clear my head of all the garbage inside. When I’m running is the only time I can think clearly.

Well, this time
ain’t like that at all.

The wind buffets me, bashing me around like a brambleweed. My skin is hot. I’m sweating but it provides no relief from the heat inside me.
And my mind is the worst of all, cluttered beyond belief.

Circ. Killers. Circ. Killers. Hunt. Hunters. Circ. Prey.

The Hunters have become the Prey.

And I’m run
ning into the midst of it all. Clearly when the sun goddess was handing out brains I was last in line. It’s one of my favorite jokes, one Circ has heard me tell a hundred times. His response: perhaps the sun goddess had a surplus, and you got all the leftover brains.

I ain’t no genius.

With the wooloo thoughts I got going through my head that’s so full it’s empty, I should be cracking up, rolling on the ground with laughter, but I’m not. I’m just running, running, running. And emerging from the space between the bluffs.

Wow.

From up above, the grazing field looked so small, almost surreal, with little men with tiny weapons fighting fist-sized beasts. As a spectator, no matter how much you care about those on the field of battle, you’re still detached from it. Separated.

As I race out onto the field, it all suddenly becomes very real to me. The bluffs loom over me like a dark tower, casting a shadow across the desert, cutting the dead b
odies of both men and tugs in half, as if they’ve been eaten away by vultures and Cotees. The field itself is huge, not just a game board like it appears from above. Hard-packed sand and durt go on forever, marred only by tiny tufts of wildgrass, which is the only reason the tugs were here at all. The tugs are behemoths, even in death. They lie crumpled in the durt, dozens of them—surely it woulda been enough to feed the village for the winter.

But that was before the Killers. Now we’ll be lucky to get off the field alive.

I skid to a stop and my heart skips a beat when I see them. Black flashes of heat in the distance. Definitely headed our way. There’s not much time left. Find Circ.

Fran
tically, my eyes dart every which way, bouncing around so quickly that there’s zero chance of me finding him. I take a deep breath, try to calm my frayed nerves, focus on each thing I see and hear. Men yelling. The Hunters, bandying together, at least eighty strong. I search for anyone I know and spot my father at the same time as he spots me. He’s the only Greynote who fights these days. The others are too old and decrepit, many in early stages of the Fire.

His eyes are alight with something. Fear? No. Concern? No. Anger? The snarl on his lips gives away his emotion. “Go!” he yells across the field, his finger pointing back up to the bluffs.

His one word sums up our relationship. Whether his command is to keep me safe or not, I know he’d speak it even if we weren’t in mortal danger. Hot tears well up, but I blink them back just as quickly. No time for tears, or fears, or the pain throbbing in my arm. Find Circ.

I ignore my father, continue to scan the desolate field, trying to remember something important, some clue as to where I’ll find Circ. Everything looks so different from this vantage point. Up above, I knew exactly how things were laid out, where Circ was in relation to the hurd,
to t’other Hunters. Down here it’s all one big bloody mess. A man groans nearby, pierced by sharp horns in two spots, round circles of blood.

The black smudges are no longer smudges. They’re Kill
ers, so full of detail I wanna scream. I can see their eyes, reflective yellow. They should be staring in a million directions, preparing for the hunt, but I feel as if all their eyes are on me. Their mouths are agape and snapping, two-inch-long fangs the showcase piece in their collection of razor sharp teeth. They’re so close now I can see the muscles rippling in their legs as they run. Death on four feet.

Circ must be amongst t’
other Hunters. He’s nowhere else…

What was I thinking? Why am I here? I have about as much chance of protecting Circ as becoming part of the male-only Greynote club when I turn
thirty. If he sees me I’ll only distract him from defending himself.

I turn to run back to the bluffs as my father
ordered, when I spot the man who groaned earlier. The two spots of blood have widened and his head’s lolled to the side, tongue hanging out. He’s dead. But there’s something about him that means something. Something important. Two spots of blood. Two horn injuries.

The fifth Hunter killed by the biggin! I’m close to where it all went down
. Then I see him, the monster-tug himself, a big ol’ pile of flesh and fur and bone now. And behind his dead carcass, voices, no more’n whispers, but clear as day now that I know where to listen.

As scared as I am of the Killers, there’s no way they’ll attack us or the Hunters, right? I mean, why would they? They’ve got fresh, dead tug meat all over the place, just begging to fill their hungry stomachs, so surely they’ll go straight for that.

There are cries to my right from the group of Hunters. The Killers, who looked so much like they were staring at me, heading for me, have veered off toward the larger group, who are shooting volley after volley of pointers at them. What the scorch? They’re going straight for them, as if they don’t even see the tug feast in front of them. Something’s seriously wrong.

Fifty feet away. Feathered
pointers stick from their black fur, but it don’t stop them.

Thirty feet. More pointers pierce their flesh. One goes down, yelping, as a sharpshooter puts one through its brain.

Ten feet. With a dozen snarls from the Killers and five times that many yells from the Hunters, the battle begins. ’Fore I can return my gaze to the biggin, I see one Hunter get mauled and another stab his slasher-blade through a Killer’s throat.

I realize that I’ve crouched down, instinc
tively maybe, but more likely ’cause my legs are shaking at the knees. This is no place for a girl with one arm.

I head
for the biggin.

~~~

A hand appears over the monster-tug. Then a face. Circ!

His expression is grim, determined. Then he sees me and it morphs from eyebrow-raised shock to wide-eyed fear to a decision in the form of a nod: We’re getting
out of here.

Another face appears. Hawk. The baggard! If we weren’t in this searin’ life or death situation, I’d have half a mind to march up to him and knock him clear into tomorrow.

Hawk pushes off of the dead tug and hurdles it, landing in a crouch in front of me. Circ moves around the butt end of the biggin, sort of limping, holding onto his gut like he’s eaten some undercooked ’zard and is about to spew. The injury from that tug hurt him worse’n I thought. That’s why he didn’t join the rallying Hunters to face the Killers. Hawk mighta stayed with him to help get him to safety, but more likely he stayed ’cause he’s a burnin’ coward.

Ignoring Hawk, I
head for Circ. Our eyes meet. “We’ve got to g—” he starts to say, but then we both see it on the edge of our vision. A dark shape, a moving shadow that’s not a shadow.

One of the Killers has broken away from the pack and
is locked on Circ, probably seeing him as the weakest link, smelling out his injury as if it has a nasty odor, like drying blaze. I’m injured too, of course, with my broken wrist, but I don’t have enough meat on my bones to make even a snack for this monster.

I run. Every instinct is telling me to run away, to head in the opposite direction, but they’re survival instincts, not
life instincts. In life there’s only one choice: run to Circ. I keep my eyes ahead, on Circ, try to forget about the Killer, pretend we’re just Midders again, playing feetball…and Circ’s got the ball.

I’m two steps away and the shadow is all over
me. Tackle the guy with the ball.

One step. Blackness everywhere.

I turn my uninjured side toward the front just before I collide with Circ. Even still, it’s like running into a hunk of rock at full speed. Circ doesn’t have any soft bits on him at all.

At the same time, a burst of air rushes
past me. Claws scrape between my shoulder blades. I cry out.

Circ’s a fighter. ’F
ore today, I already knew it, but I’ve never really seen him in a situation where death’s not only possible, but likely. He’s on his feet in an instant, pulling my tangled arms and legs behind him, urging me to “Run, Sie, run!” He pushes me and heads in the other direction at full speed, right for the Killer, as if he doesn’t have a set of crushed ribs and who knows what other injuries. I thought I was saving him, but now he’s saving me.

’C
ause of my momentum, I take at least five steps ’fore I’m able to stop. There’s heat all around me, pushing in: on my back, practically tearing through me; on my arm, which, having broken free of the sling, is dangling from my side again; but the worst heat is what I’m now forced to watch: the heat of death and war. Someone hasta die. The Killer or all of us. Running is no longer an option.

Circ’
s chasing the Killer, and the Killer is chasing Hawk, who’s decided to ditch us for the relative safety of the high ground. Circ’s fast as scorch, but the Killer’s faster and has a headstart. When Hawk looks back his eyes are so wide and white it’s almost comical, like a Totter’s in a ghost maze when we celebrate the Day of the Dead.

The Killer leaps. At the last second Hawk dives to the side and rolls, rolls, rolls, end over end. The Killer misses again and I think this ti
me it really grizzes him off, ’cause he lets out a growl that sends shivers buzzing up my spine. Unlike Circ, Hawk is slow to his feet, probably a bit dizzy from all the rolling. The Killer stops so fast I’d think it was impossible if I didn’t just see it happen. The predator cuts to the right, pounces on Hawk, his teeth bared and dripping clear and red ooze, a mixture of its own drool and the blood of its last victim, one of t’other Hunters. My feet are stone, too heavy to move. After the Killer rips out Hawk’s throat, I’ll be next.