Stardogs (39 page)

The three hunters had come to check their traps. They were unaware of what the gasping lookout was panting out to the village matriarchs three miles away. The ledge-access was usually watched for a few weeks after anyone had fled into the desert. Sometimes those exiled tried to come back. Nothing good came out of the desert.

The hunters heard Jarian blundering along the path. The animal must be either sick or wounded to make so much noise. They waited. Meat tonight!

The animal was like none they’d ever seen before. Pasty with lank yellow fur on its head, and the rest of its integument odd…. scales. It must be fine, fine scales on a loose skin. The creature seemed to be in moult, by the ragged bits. But it shambled upright. It walked like one of the people, even if its face was amazingly, monstrously ugly. They watched as it came closer and closer to the trap. And then… it stopped. Moaned piteously. Produced a water bottle and drank.

Silver-tip Wildscallion’s son was well known as the bravest of his folk. He could see the animal was perhaps going to get away. “I will taunt it,” he said, stepping onto the path, gripping his spear tightly.

Jarian stared, his eyes bulging. It… it couldn’t be! How had these crash survivors slipped that far from civilisation… from the human norm? Then he pulled himself together. Well, they’d be glad to have a handsome, wise ruler like himself. And with the smack of firm governance, he could make something even of fur-clad low-browed chinless wonders like this. Perhaps he would keep that Leaguesman who had wielded the whip so well on Brettan. Jarian took out the pipe-soldering torch and the lighter. “I am your new chief, sent to you by the gods from my home in the sky,” he announced pompously.

Silver-tip had been joined by his two fellow hunters. They didn’t want Silver-tip to be able to claim all the credit in the boasting. They were puzzled by the creature’s noises.

“Do you think it is trying to talk?” whispered Fireleaf to Silver-tip.

They were obviously, thought Jarian, overawed by him. They were probably the descendants of castaways from centuries back. Well, he’d start as he meant to go on. With them respectfully frightened. “I have very strong magic. Watch.”

He lit the blow-torch and the three wide-eyed hunters scrambled back. He advanced, laughing. The thin sticks holding up the cover of broad leaves so carefully covered by scattered leaf mould gave way. Jarian’s triumphal laughter ended abruptly on the sharpened stakes below.

It had never occurred to him that the hunters might not understand a word he said. But then, the
Homo neanderthalis
brought here by Denaari ships for their Bio-zoo nearly forty thousand years ago didn’t speak his language.

It had taken a long time for the other castaways to skirt the forest, walking along the edge of a hard sill that sub-irrigated the forest with ground water from the mountains. Then they followed the largely dry river bed to the lake-shore, beside which the patchwork fields were scattered. At first they couldn’t see anyone.

Then Juan spotted someone darting from one of the huts. Running for cover. But not running away from the castaways. Advancing on them. Otto barked, his fur standing on end.

“We’ve got to get out of here!” said Sam. He shuddered. “They’ll eat us.” A vision, a stark
real
vision of being alive but helpless while a cheerful group of Neanderthal women flayed the skin off his Tanzo, washed across him. He knew with absolute certainty that that was what would happen if they failed to run now. “Run!” He said in a fierce undervoice, “Run for those rocks.”

“But…”

“Run!” Shari had spotted flankers to their right.

At this point three triumphant hunters, deep in the boasts they planned for the punyatchet this evening, emerged from the forest, at a point about midway between the village and the castaways. On a pole between two of them hung Jarian’s limp and bloody body, suspended by the hands and feet. His head, hanging at an odd angle, was half severed.

The hunters dropped their catch and ran to join the rest of the people. Their chagrin was great. All that hard work which had gone into preparing boasts was wasted. None of the girls would be interested in them now.

A hail of stones and a few spears were flung at the castaways. The Viscount was struck on the temple by a stone. He staggered. Then he stopped. Took his pistol out, and stood like a marksman. Fired.

There was a scream, and another ragged shower of spears. “Come on, Martin. You can shoot from cover!”

Instead he waited. The next target presented itself and he fired again. There was no scream this time, but he was sure he’d hit. There were still spears and stones being flung, but there were no visible targets now. He legged it after the rest of them, blood streaming down his face. The cluster of rocks at the lake-side seemed too far.

They made it. It was not the ideal shelter, the rocks being rounded and low and offering next to no shade. But there was a flood-scoured rock-sheet plain in front of them, and the lake at their backs.

“They’re no strangers to fighting,” said Martin Brettan as Caro dressed his head.

“There seemed to be fields up-valley too. There are probably several villages. They may fight amoungst themselves.”

“They’re damned good at keeping out of sight,” said Mark, peering over a rock, looking for the source of the stone-tipped spear that had shattered against his shelter. Indeed, their attackers moved like ghosts. They were predators, after all. The most deadly predators, winnowed by a natural selection process harsher than any other.

Brettan felt his ribs gingerly. Nodded. “They’re skilled hunters. Come nightfall and we’ll all be dead meat.”

Shari was still stunned by the sight of young Jarian’s body. She’d despised him, but… “I’m out of ideas. What do you all think we should do next?”

Tanzo shrugged. “All I can suggest is talking to them. We can shout from here, without getting speared.”

“All right,” said Shari tiredly. “Try it Tanzo. Tell the monkey-men we mean them no harm. Tell them we’re also castaways, just as they are. They must surely at least have stories about it.”

Tanzo tried. Unfortunately oral history, while longer-lasting than written history, had not survived 40 000 years. And these weren’t castaways, they were captives. Their oral tradition was about the destruction of Eden, and having to flee from its snake, into the wilderness. Anyway, they thought animals crazy enough to run into a herd of snoozing petrovores were probably just baying in their insanity. Neanderthal speech, which was long on sibilants, gutturals and clicks sounded nothing like that. They continued to fling rocks. Sooner or later that would wake the petrovores. The only one who was dissatisfied with this stratagem was Fireleaf. He decided to count coup in a quicker manner. Perhaps he could use some of the boasts he had planned after all.

“Could we swim across? Get away to the other side, perhaps?” asked Juan tentitavely.

At this point the lake was not very wide. Perhaps 300 yards of blue separated them from the other bank. “It’s an idea,” said Shari. “If we slipped into the water in the dusk, and swam across…”

“I can’t swim,” Lila said regretfully. Water, in that quantity, had never been a feature of her life as a debt-slave or farm-girl from the semi-desert of New Texas.

“Me neither.” Sam looked out between the rocks at the azure water.

Tanzo signed to Una. The girl shook her head. “She can’t swim, and I couldn’t swim that far,” Tanzo added.

“Besides, if they spot us, we’ll be sitting ducks in the water.”

Shari made a wry face. “I suppose the good swimmers could take the non-swimmers across.”

Sam had continued staring at the water. “Look. What’s that?”

Whatever it was, they were not going to be swimming. All they could see of it was a head with cold reptilian soup-plate sized eyes staring back at them. The head was the size of a dinner-table and the long snout held far too many teeth. Sharp teeth.

For a moment they stared at it. Then, without a ripple, the head disappeared back into the water. They could dimly make out a huge dark shape sliding away into the depths.

There was a collective exhalation. “Next idea, anyone?”

Fireleaf had chosen to sneak closer along the waterline as soon as he saw the Mega-ichthyodile. It was sure to distract the attention of the strange animals. What a coup! How he would brag. He wouldn’t be surprised if one of the matriarchs themselves took him. He stepped around the petrovore’s bulk, as Shari said ‘anyone’, his spear ready.

The Dagger of the Goddess had seen the demon in the water. He was wondering at its meaning, when it was abruptly made clear to him. It was a vision. A warning of the evil that stalked within the man he had to kill and become. Amadeo Cerros was no innocent servant. He was a spy and a murderer. A foulness who killed for money and pleasure. The Dagger had been thorough in his research of the man.

When Fireleaf stepped around the rock the Dagger of the Goddess did not see a young Neanderthal with too much testosterone for his own good. He saw a man to whom the Dewa would refuse rebirth. Amadeo Cerros. A man he must kill and become. Fireleaf’s chance of boasting his way to in between a matriarch’s thighs died, before he could push the spear forward.

Deo began the cleansing, ignoring the dead. Only Shari heard him say, “Tenfold be your damnation in the pit, Amadeo Cerros.”

Amadeo Cerros. Shari swallowed. She knew that the next person he had gone to kill had been herself. Her neck felt vulnerable and exposed.

Tanzo stared at the body. Wished desperately she’d paid more interest to anthropology. But it had always seemed so tame compared to the alien Denaari. There was something about the heavy, short-bodied hairy man that she ought to understand.

The close proximity to the killing had horrified Una. She clung to Juan and sobbed. The boy was fairly horrified himself. What was that man in grey? Some kind of robotic-killing machine? He moved his back up against one of the round boulders. It throbbed. A Juan-Denaari memory plucked insistently at him. Rounded rocks. Rounded rocks that throbbed… They weren’t rocks! “We’ve got get away from here. These rocks… they’re petrovores! They’re alive! They’re going to wake up and start feeding. We’ve got to run!”

“What!?” This was one crisis too many for Shari on top of what Deo had just said.

The young stationer grabbed her hand and pressed it against the rock. She felt it throb. “It is alive! They’ll liquify the ground here and start to feed any minute now!”

Sam obviously felt something too. “Yeah. This place is turning bad. We gotta chance it, Princess-Capo. Soon.”

One of the Petrovores groaned, and then began to hum and vibrate visibly. Shari looked for a way out. Their foes were mainly hidden in the dead reeds of the flood margin. These were thickest back towards the waterfall. There was only one route that would not force them to run through this. That was up valley, towards the towering golden structure. “The pyramid. It is our only chance.”

The broken corner of the Bio-Zoo was at least a mile off. But the ground was flat and open, with little cover for Neanderthal ambushes. Several more of the rounded rocks moved, and groaned. The humming became almost overpowering. The ground began to shiver.