Solatium (Emanations, an urban fantasy series Book 2) (29 page)

The farther we got from Free, the bolder the birds became. They had no qualms about landing on the horses — or on us. The packhorses almost always had little flocks riding along on their loads, chattering, plucking at the ropes, lifting off, swooping around, and landing again like a bunch of tiny, hyperactive toddlers.

At one point, a pretty bright pink and yellow bird landed on my forearm and sat there, looking up at me curiously. My impulse was to let it be, but Mizzy leaned over and shooed it away with a flick of her whip.

“Surely they aren’t dangerous,” I said.

“No, not really. But they are pests. Many of the smaller ones will try to steal away a bit of flesh. They have venom that makes the wound bleed a lot. The blood attracts more. They swarm around you trying to get their share. It’s a nuisance.”

I stared at her. “Seriously? Those little birds would actually attack us?”

“Oh, yeah. We call them ‘skin-pickers.’ They’re always hungry. They like to steal hair too — for their nests, I guess. That’s why I wear a hat outside town.”

Wow. Venomous vampire barber birds.

Their gemlike beauty took on a sinister aura.

I pulled a crumpled sunhat out of my saddlebag and stuffed my hair up under it as best I could.

Sometime before noon, one of the horses in Ida’s pack string came up lame. It turned out to be a loose shoe, and Williams called a halt so Terry could pull it and put on a boot as a stopgap.

Without needing to be told, everyone turned their mounts outwards to watch the trees. As usual, Williams stuck close to me.

“Hey,” I said quietly, “did you hear what Mizzy said earlier about the little birds attacking people?”

He nodded.

“Is it true?”

Another nod.

His nods were more of a single quick lift of the chin. I suppose a full up-and-down movement of the head struck him as wasteful, or maybe just undesirably polite.

I sat in silence for a minute, scanning the woods.

“Can’t you keep them off us with a barrier?”

“Not without hurting them.”

“Hurting them?”

He looked down at me as though I were being especially dense.

“Most of them fly right into barriers. Stuns or kills them.”

I stared up at him, trying to marshal a response.

“That’s really … um. Really nice. You know — worrying about them. I didn’t know you were animal-rightsy. I mean, into animal rights. And all that.”

“Ryder.”

“Yeah?”

“We’re leaving.”

“Oh. Right.”

I reined Copper back into place.

I’d discovered a lot of weird-ass things in the last six months, but Williams as animal lover was definitely top five.

The land grew hillier as the day went on. At some points, the road had been cut into a hillside, creating a steep soil cliff to one side and a drop-off to the other. Those patches were muddy and rough with debris that had fallen from the uphill side. Visibility into the jungle was almost nil.

Kevin was clearly nervous of these stretches. He consulted his map and warned of each one as we approached.

Williams treated each hillside cut with caution, stopping for several minutes to scan the trees and listen, then putting up a barrier before leading us through — I could tell because little birds started bouncing off us.

At first I was tense with worry at each of these passages, but soon we’d navigated more than a dozen with no sign of trouble.

Around midday, the party of traders from the night before caught up to us. They all looked better rested than I felt — they’d still been asleep when we left the stockade.

They’d done some more hunting — the leader had a brace of goose-sized birds hanging by their feet across his horse’s withers. The birds’ necks were slit, and the horse’s legs were heavily splattered with blood.

Now I understood Ida’s angry reaction the night before. I could smell the blood as the man rode past. If I could smell it, predators could too.

The traders slowed down to ride with us.

Williams didn’t look happy, but he allowed it. That was surprising. They messed up our careful formation and enveloped all of us in their blood scent.

One of the traders was a young guy — seventeen or eighteen, I thought. He fell in beside me and introduced himself. His first name was “Serhan.” His last name started with a “K” sound. I couldn’t seem to get the pronunciation right. When I asked if I could call him “Mr. Serhan,” he blushed and nodded. Then he started chatting me up.

I could’ve kicked myself. I knew Seconds were comparatively formal and should’ve guessed he’d take my use of his first name as a come-on. I was uncomfortable and tried to extract myself from the conversation, but he was persistent, and I didn’t want to be rude.

He figured out quickly that my language skills were so-so and started speaking more slowly and using shorter, simpler sentences. I told myself it would be good practice and tried to hold up my end of the conversation.

The exchange turned out to be informative. Serhan told me our destination for the night was a small town named Butua. Apparently, we were traveling through a sparsely populated highland region. Towns tended to be scattered two or three days’ ride apart, with stockades between for travelers. Most were located near natural resources of one kind or another. Butua had been built beside a gold mine.

About two hundred miles north, the highlands gave way to a vast river plain that was flooded part of the year. The trading party was headed for the river.

After a while, the traders grew tired of Williams’s long pauses before the hillside cuts and rode on ahead. Serhan gave me a dazzling smile and said he’d look for me in town that evening.

I really hoped he wouldn’t.

“You made a friend,” Mizzy said, once the traders had passed out of earshot.

“I don’t need that kind of friend.”

“That kind of friend can be useful. They’re always willing to help.”

“Sure, but the help comes with strings attached.”

She laughed. “Well, at least you got to practice your Baasha. You’re going to need it.”

“Do most people here only speak Baasha?”

“No, but it’ll be your only common language with most of them. Languages in the strata tend to be dictated by where in the F-Em the people came from originally.”

“So people in Free speak English because they came from North Carolina?”

“Yeah. Several Native American languages are spoken, too.”

Mizzy started telling me about the tribes who’d lived around the strait before Europeans showed up in North America. Then she launched into a creation myth of the Tuscarora people she thought might preserve the cultural memory of an S-Em power using the strait.

My attention wandered.

I found myself thinking about how Cordus had tried to change me. I stuffed that thought back in its box and mentally nailed the lid shut. Too bad my brain didn’t come equipped with an iron maiden.

“Why so grim?” Mizzy said.

I jerked, and Copper jigged beneath me.

“Oh, nothing. You know. Thinking of home. Sorry.”

“Are you going to be over here for a long time?”

“Longer than I’d like to be.” Time to steer the conversation away from me. “How about you? Have you lived here long?”

She laughed. “As you said, longer than I’d like.”

“What brought you here?”

“I got in some trouble. Mr. Gates helped me.”

Mizzy wasn’t old enough to have been hunted. She must’ve gotten into some other sort of fix. I let the silence stretch a few extra seconds to see if she’d elaborate, but she didn’t.

“Do you like living in Free?”

“It’s okay. Not enough of an arts scene.”

“Has it changed much since you’ve been here?”

“Not a great deal, no. It’s been a frontier town for a long time. The tide shifts back and forth. Sometimes it seems like we’re pushing the dinosaurs out, but then they make a comeback.” She frowned. “Recently they seem more organized and aggressive. That’s not a good sign.”

As though on cue, a horse screamed up ahead. An instant of dreadful silence pressed down on the forest. Then the sound of gunfire and human and animal panic washed over us. Honest to god, it was right out of a horror movie. If you bottled pure terror, that’s what it’d sound like.

Copper’s head shot up with a snort. Without even thinking about it, I kicked him, and he leapt forward.

A second later I was on the ground, trying to catch my breath.

Williams glared down at me.

“Don’t be a fool,” he spat.

He had Copper by one rein. The little horse was dancing around Bertha in a tizzy, mouth working as the bit sawed against his gums.

Terry jumped down and pulled me to my feet.

“How many?” Williams said.

Kevin shook his head. “Not sure … more than a dozen. Maybe twenty.”

Mizzy gasped.

Terry caught hold of Copper and helped me into the saddle, then ran back to his horse. Ida tossed her pack string to Kevin and drew her shotgun.

Williams looked grim. “Stay in formation.”

He pulled his shotgun from its scabbard. Then he trotted forward. The rest of us followed closely.

I could feel my face burning. Why had I gone rushing off like that? So stupid.

After a few hundred feet, the road curved right and rose to one of those hillside cuts. Williams slowed to a walk and led us forward around the bend.

A scene of carnage unfolded.

Dead horses were scattered across the road.

Dinosaurs were eating them.

They were much larger than the ones I’d met in the Octoworld isolate. Most were my height at the shoulder. A few were bigger. They were heavily built, with massive heads and tiny, fingerless stumps for arms. They were covered with fuzzy little feathers, like giant, partially plucked chickens.

Turkey problem’s getting worse
, Mr. Gates had said.

Our horses jigged around nervously. I could feel Copper quivering beneath me. I prayed he wouldn’t bolt.

Williams said, “Stay close,” and rode forward. Bertha arched her neck and shifted her weight back onto her hindquarters, picking up a slow trot.

The closest dinosaur raised its head. Gobs of glistening flesh hung from its teeth. It eyed us, then opened its mouth and roared out a strange, high screech. The inside of its mouth was coated with gore and horse hair.

Six others raised their heads to study us. Then they charged.

Terry dropped the first two with quick three-round bursts from his M4. Ida took the one behind it. Her rifle was deafening.

Most of the remaining dinos left their prey and silently melted into the forest, but one of them advanced on us.

This time the guns had no effect — the animal was using a barrier.

Williams’s hand twitched, and some invisible thing hit the animal from the left, sweeping it up and slamming it into the bank on the other side of the road. It was left embedded in the earth, crushed and oozing.

Our barrier-worker was stronger than theirs.

We continued around the bend. For a few seconds I thought the men of the trading party had escaped, but then they came into sight. They were huddled at the side of the road, right up against the embankment. Several dinos were trying to get at them. Most of the animals were just pacing around, waiting for an opportunity, but one of them was mouthing something I couldn’t see, tugging and twisting at it.

Another worker. It was trying to break whatever barrier the men had put up.

More dead horses were scattered about. These were tacked for riding. The men must’ve left their packhorses behind and tried to make a break for it, only to get caught by the second group.

The dinos turned on us excitedly as we came into view. Terry killed one of them. The rest scattered, vanishing into the trees.

We rode right up to the traders. One of them was down. Ida dismounted and went to him. The others hurriedly gathered up our packhorses and started covering their eyes with whatever cloth they could lay their hands on — spare saddle blankets, their own shirts, whatever.

Williams stayed mounted. In fact, he reined Bertha around so that she faced out toward the road. I saw the others were doing the same.

“You think they’re coming back?”

He nodded.

I thought about arming myself, but trying to handle Copper and a gun at the same time seemed foolish.

For some minutes nothing happened. The forest around us was unnaturally quiet. The only sound was the injured trader’s gurgling breaths.

Then Kevin shouted “Incoming!” and dinos burst from the trees on the far side of the road. Noise and movement were everywhere.

I didn’t know where to look.

Then one of them singled me out, and my world narrowed to just that animal.

Instead of bolting, Copper pinned back his ears and lunged forward, striking and snapping at it. The thing feinted left and dove in at me, mouth gaping. Copper wheeled around to meet it — but too slowly.

But of course, Williams had a barrier around me. The dino slammed into it nose-first and went down. It thrashed around, trying to lever itself up with one stumpy arm.

I dropped my reins, fumbled the .44 out of my holster, and fired all six rounds.