The Wild Lands: Legend of the Wild Man (14 page)

The Hidden must have been in the kingcrow he
had battled too. The bird fought with bizarre skills and fearless
resolve until he had confused it. His prize, the trophy, was proof
of the Hidden's own weakness and gave him victory.

A symbol.

The elk symbolized the Hidden's loss. He
could still hear the terrified shrieks from the disgusting bird
when he attacked it with the skin and skull. He had scared the bird
with a symbol. He was a symbol.

Kao. The Hunter.

A scream rips his consciousness back to
reality. The hermit runs for cover. A kingcrow's shadow follows the
old man. The hermit dives under the crevasse of a toppled boulder,
but the kingcrow does not follow. Instead it lands on a patch of
mud and begins to tear at the wet earth with its talons.

Kao stares dumbly.

The scavenger's nostrils flare as its beak
scratches and tears at the earth. Kao breathes deeply and smells
berries, soft clay and green herbs, his sister! The scents come
from the bird's hole; the scavenger's sense of smell is sharper
than his own.

He is on his feet and sprinting towards the
kingcrow. It is smaller than the one he battled two days prior,
with his knife and armor he will kill it.

The kingcrow knows this. It squawks and digs
faster. The hunter runs faster, fast as the spirit of the swift elk
he wears.

But the kingcrow beats its huge wings and
slowly lifts into the air. The gusts slow the hunter’s pace just
enough for the bird to get airborne. A muddy body dangles from its
talons. Its wings push it higher and the hunter leaps!

He grabs the dangling arm, slick with mud,
and pulls the bird back towards the surface. They battle in
equilibrium. The bird cannot fly as long as he holds the arm but it
has a much better grip than he. His hands slip down the skinny arm,
too much mud. He can smell his sister; the aroma of smashed berries
makes him swoon as his grip slips and tufts of golden hair perk up
like lilies in the mud. He loosens his hold to grab her body, but
the kingcrow was waiting. It has played this game before, the
Hunter has not. It shakes its talons as he lunges and he slips. He
loses.

The hunter plummets to the earth.

The enormous black bird gloats. It caws and
beats it wings lazily as it turns south, out towards the plains.
The mud cushions his fall but still knocks the air from his
lungs.

He gasps and beats his chest as the hermit
pulls him up. Finally his breath returns, but the bird is already
too far for his practiced knife throws. So he turns south to rescue
his sister.

“It is a trick!” the hermit yells.

Kao growls and trudges faster.

“It means to throw us off. You know
this.”

Kao slows down. He
does
know this.
Kingcrows gain height far from their nests. Tribesmen have tried to
follow them before, to smash their eggs and end their lives, but
the birds are too wily.

“We must go on a vision quest.”

Kao does not like this, but he rumbles a
reply deeply. “Where?”

The hermit only points and Kao knows where
they will be going. Father Mountain. The king of the valley.

That irksome question bubbles forth,
“Why?”

“To see,” the hermit says, and ambles
off.

And trust your elders you must... for they hold
power... Trust them and obey them until you've learned all you can,
then snatch their power as easily as they snatched yours!

Skup had never been so humiliated in his
life. His
vultus
had been beaten by what would colloquially
be called a demon. He was going to do all he could to get his
revenge on the monster that half-blinded his favorite Evanimal.
Ntelo actually implied he had done it on purpose. On top of that,
after the meeting, Baucis had pulled him aside and chewed him out,
explaining details Skup had known since his first
synchronization.

“Do you have any idea how difficult it is to
determine parentage of an egg? Especially with something as
polygamous as a
vultus
! It's a miracle that we have so large
a specimen with a VRC, and now it's lost an eye because of you!”
Baucis railed on and on. The Master Ecologist was livid, he never
used words like 'miracle' unless he was in a rage.

Skup wanted to scream that of course he did,
that no one knew the flock better than him. Baucis was so arrogant.
He thought that just because he helped pioneer the Evanimal
program, he understood it better than everyone else. Obviously he
didn't, or else he wouldn't need a bunch of children (Baucis's
words) to do all of the actual work.

Skup fumed as he walked towards the
Amplification Chamber. He was the first person to pilot a
vultus
with any real success. Of course he knew how
difficult they were to implant. It was his team that implanted the
the King! Skup was even training a protege, Elia, who had proved
that others could pilot the birds with the deadly grace Skup had
pioneered. With a little time, the whole flock could be piloted!
Baucis should be proud, but instead he was lashing out. He was too
arrogant to share the blame.

Skup wanted to show the Spire that he and his
sister were better than Baucis and Ntelo. He wanted Spire City to
thank him for keeping them all alive, instead of worshiping him as
one of Ntelo's false idols. Skup understood that he and Urea
controlled powerful individuals that owed their strength to
Baucis's careful breeding, that they were just the latest
improvement in decades of work. They could never have synched with
an Evanimal without Baucis, but Skup didn't see the need for the
Priestess's continual public support. How he dreamt of exposing
Ntelo for the lying hack she was. Skup hated Baucis but he could at
least give him credit as an ecologist. Ntelo was worthless, yet
Baucis threatened Skup if he so much as said a word against her in
public. The two acted like they could do just fine without him,
ridiculous.

Skup, in the body of his
vultus
, had
killed every member of the flock that didn't have the signature
body frame and brain size that the Master Ecologist had bred for.
vultus
society was more than careful eugenics. There was an
established pecking order that's constantly under review and
change. If a bird thought it was tough enough to take on the Alpha
male, then it challenged it. Skup had honed his skills in duels
against dozens of birds, and was Alpha
not
because his bird
was the largest but was largest
because
he was the Alpha.
Did Baucis think the entire flock followed Skup's bird of their own
accord? It took constant berating and attacking of the other
members. Baucis and Ntelo seemed to have forgotten what it was like
before Skup took over the flock.

When he was little the flock had run rampant.
They would eat live Evanimals, young and old, defecate everywhere,
tear up trees and destroy vegetables. Now that it was Skup's flock,
the birds ate only carefully selected elk or dead bodies. They
never damaged any crops and even composted their waste. Did he
receive thanks for this? Never.

Worst of all, Baucis was always too busy to
talk with Skup. He'd always prattle on about the importance of the
new
panthera
line, and what it meant for evolution but he
never listened to any of Skup's insights.

Skup had discovered that diet alone could
control the birds' growth. Skup saw to it that his
vultus
ate more than the rest of the flock, and he was larger because of
it. The adolescent bird his protege piloted received the same
treatment. Skup had tried to explain this to Baucis but the
egotistical old man wouldn't even hear him out. He had mumbled
something about caloric advantage and excused himself. Skup knew
there was more to it than that. Something was making the birds grow
bigger, much bigger. They were changing fundamentally, and faster
than the standard theory of artificial selection allowed. Their
obsidian-black feathers sparkled every shade of color in the sun,
same as the prongelk antlers, same as his own long hair. Yet all
Baucis would say of his hair was to cut it. He failed to see it for
it was, evidence. Of what, Skup wasn't sure.

The young pilot tried to push it all from his
mind and got ready to synchronize. He needed to provide food for
his flock. If he did not, the birds would venture beyond the
Garden. If they flew too far, there would be nothing he could do.
The VRCs only worked so long as they were inside of the Spire's
electromagnetic field. Too far out and they couldn't override the
animal's own consciousness.

Distance had affected his battle with the
Wild Man
. Distance allowed fear to drive the bird from the
battle. Baucis had cursed Skup for this and blamed him for losing
control. He failed to realize that if the bird had simply flown a
mile in the other direction, the signal from the Spire would have
been too weak to control it at all. Baucis should have thanked him
for habituating the birds to return to their mountain nest so near
the Spire. If, in its moment of freedom, it had chosen to explore,
then they'd still be waiting for it to come back. Skup could only
imagine what the flock would be without a pilot in the Alpha male
position.

Skup climbed the last flight of stairs and
arrived on the Amplification level. Originally designed as a
noninvasive form of collective virtual reality, a sort of
immersible LAN, the Amplification chambers had the necessary power
and wireless configuration to function as perfect synchronization
rooms. The birds were powerful, and grew ever wilier, but they were
still immersed in the Spire's Field and subject to Skup's commands,
thanks to the Amplification room.

He liked to synchronize before sunrise, so he
could truly feel what it was to live like his
vultus
, but
the meeting hadn't started until after dawn. Today he'd have to
sync up and hope nothing had gone too wrong. His
vultus
could defend itself easily enough, but didn't usually stop any of
the others from killing elk or
howluchin
s if they so
desired. Baucis would surely blame him for that, even though he had
scheduled the meeting.

The flock needed meat, and lots of it, to
stay healthy. There never seemed to be enough carrion to go round.
This was creating tension in the flock, for hungry birds are angry
birds. Skup's presence had kept the flock from descending into
Garden and gorging themselves on the
biselk
and
howluchin
s, but they had begun to turn on each other. They
understood that their rivals were made of meat, and that killing an
adversary provided a free meal, while wounding him only gave a free
meal to others. Skup was sure that without his constant presence
the flock would have long cannibalized itself. He did not like
having to delay his synchronization, especially with the storm last
night. Surely the flock had not slept well.

The self proclaimed Scavenger didn't mind
doing all this, far from it. He was fascinated by the birds,
obsessed. He always had been. He had idolized Baucis as a kid. It
was genius to use vultures to eliminate disease and the unsightly
corpses that had begun to accumulate in the gardens. The
vultus
program inspired him to become an Evanimal Pilot. He
had told this to Baucis but the Councilor seemed to think
admiration was expected, not earned.

Skup doubted the Councilor had watched just
one of the dozens of duels he had had to win just to maintain his
place as Alpha. They were a bit of a sensation, garnering thousands
of views. People loved anything to do with Nature, and the
spectacular aerial battles did not disappoint. Skup did his best to
guide the fights to the ancient stone Colosseum. From there, all of
the Spire could see, even those without VRCs. Councilor Rufus had
congratulated Skup for his work many times. He praised him for
entertaining so many people while doing an important job. Skup had
accepted the praise humbly, and never called on the Councilor for
any favors. Why couldn't Baucis show him the same respect?

Instead the Master Ecologist only praised
Urea, his gifted sister. It was obvious she was immensely talented.
She had done things with her obsidian-black
panthera
that
Skup had thought impossible. His own acrobatic aerial duels paled
in comparison. He didn't resent her the attention, she deserved it.
Skup thought his sister was the greatest Evanimal Pilot to ever
live.

Skup considered himself more of an ecologist,
something he wished Baucis would notice. He maintained order in the
flock through intelligence and tactics, not the same animal
instincts Urea seemed to possess. He was a great pilot, but he was
really interested in managing the Garden as a whole. That was one
of the reasons he took a protege so young. He knew the sooner
someone could do his job, the sooner he could move on to something
even more important, like working on his own evolutionary
theories.

He wondered how his sister viewed her work
with the
panthera
. What if the
panthera
bred with a
feral member of the population? Skup doubted this would happen,
Urea was as committed as he to the program, but accidents did
happen. If she lost control for a few minutes, say from that
enigmatic neurochemical, fear, there were untold things that could
go wrong, especially if the
panthera
she controlled was more
intelligent than she or Baucis had assumed. Most Evanimal Pilots
agreed Skup losing control would be far more disastrous. The flock
was adapting constantly. They had picked up all sorts of tricks
from watching Skup's own piloted
vultus
. There wasn't the
same risk with other
panthera
s, for there was only one.
Though nothing had ever made Skup feel at risk, nothing save the
The Wild Man.