Walls of Wind and the Occasional Diamond Thief Boxed Set Page 6

  Hunt

  (Mant’er)

  “You went out in stillseason? In your first year of hunting?” Chair Ghen’s tone was daunting, but I suppressed my discomfort and returned his gaze evenly.

  “Everyone knows you’re a fine hunter, Mant’er, despite your youth,” he said, with an air of tried patience. Again I was silent. My triad had brought home four large harrunt’hs, during stillseason. They were being butchered and smoked by less capable hunters as we spoke.

  “...but you owe it to your parent to sire a child before you take unnecessary risks.”

  “Because my parent died on a stillseason hunt doesn’t mean I am at risk,” I replied. He had aimed low with that barb and drawn my anger. I saw the sharp scales that rose over the ridge of his spine tremble slightly as he struggled with his own temper. When he looked up again he was calm.

  “You will go to Festival Hall tomorrow and choose a Bria. You will not hunt in stillseason again until you have a youngling. I say this on behalf of all Ghen.”

  I bowed my head. When Chair Ghen invoked that phrase, his word was law. I had intended to go at any rate, but it irked me to be ordered about like a child. Even as I acquiesced, I murmured, “I hunted for all Ghen.”

  “You hunted for yourself!” he said, and turning sharply, left me.

  ***

  I noticed Ocallis and his sibling at once when they entered Festival Hall. Rukt’an led them in as pleased as though they were his younglings, not merely those of the Bria with whom he’d joined. They sat in the seats he led them to, catching their breath.

  I turned back to my conversation with Igt’ur, for Bria must wait when Ghen discuss the hunt. Igt’ur is small and only a mediocre hunter, but Igt’ur notices things. Not only the track and spoor of the prey; Igt’ur notices tendencies, changes. The “hunting wind” he calls it, and “the wind is changing” is what he had to tell me. I realized as he talked that I’d noticed the same things myself: the harrunt’h herds drifting northwards, the flocks of plump terriad’hs that nested along the rivers diminishing, even the small sadu’hs, such prolific breeders, were becoming scarce. Not enough to be worrisome but something to keep an eye on, we agreed.

  Igt’ur’s gaze shifted slightly. When I turned, Ocallis was standing behind me. I saw him bite into his first taste of wild corn coated with liapt’h egg and I saw the taste of it please him. He was a hunter also, in his own way.

  The thought amused me. I admired the tawny curls of his pelt, the long, slender legs and willowy body, the plump, soft belly and firm, enticing breasts. A heat rose in me as I watched the languorous movement of his body, the slow sway of his hips, the knowing laughter in his eye. He was the most beautiful Bria in the room and instinctively sensual.

  I chose Ocallis not only because he was beautiful, but because he knew it, and knowing made him strong. I wanted my youngling to feel that strength while he was in Ocallis’s womb.

  ***

  When my child was born I named him Heckt’er after the fabled Ghen who saved us from extinction by the Broghen. Why should my offspring not be as great as Heckt’er? He was strong and he had me to teach him.

  Even as an infant Heckt’er was fearless. I had to pry his claws from the flesh of the Broghen infant at their birth, not the other way around. At one, he cried for meat and I gave it to him. He was already as big as a two-year-old. I would have had him weaned early but Ocallis said he needed milk as well as meat. Ocallis held him too often, but it pleased Ocallis to do so and didn’t seem to weaken Heckt’er.

  During the stillseason before he turned two, Heckt’er climbed the ugappa in front of Ocallis’s house and leapt upon an unsuspecting bird. He missed his footing and fell to the ground. From treetop to ground he never lost his nerve, neither cried out nor loosened his hold on his prey. He was a worthy youngling for me!

  When he was two I took him with me to the Ghen compound. He didn’t cry to leave Ocallis and yet I know he felt affection for him. He asked me to tell Ocallis not to worry, that it was time for him to learn the forest. His words surprised me; of course Ocallis knew it was time. Ocallis had his Bria offspring to train and I had mine. What more was there to say? Nevertheless, I passed on his strange comment and Ocallis blinked in pleasure. As I turned to go, Ocallis signed, “Try to love him, Mant’er.”

  Love him? Hadn’t I taken him along the wall and into the woods more often than any other Ghen parent, only returning when he was so tired he stumbled, though he tried to hide it from me? Didn’t I praise him, perhaps overly, when he sniffed the wind and answered my questions well? Bria foolishness, I thought, and signed, “I will make him a great hunter,” so that Ocallis would be reassured.

  ***

  Heckt’er understood the forests of Wind instinctively, as I did. I taught him the ways of the timid sadu’h, no taller than my knee, with their large eyes and soft, furred pelts, and showed him how to track them to their burrows. I pointed out the feathered terriad’hs flying back from their migration in the mountains to mate with the anhad’hs, waiting for them in the eastern wetlands. I described the majestic harrunt’hs, a third again as tall as I, fleet on their powerful legs and sharp-hoofed, formidable for all that they were herbivores.

  I told him of the three large predators on Wind: the cold-blooded liapt’h with their long, fang-studded jaws, that swim in the rivers of the wetlands; the fierce courrant’h, silent, four-footed mountain killers that mass as much as an adult Ghen; and most dangerous of all, the Broghen that rage along the seashore on the mainland, far to the south of our peninsula.

  I taught Heckt’er to read the messages brought by the wind and how to avoid letting it tell of him. I taught him to move in silence, to leave no trail and to follow any trail, including mine. When he found me, I praised him, and when he failed, I waited. Many times we stayed in the woods all night while he hunted for traces of my passage. He never cried or called out. He never rested. He never quit. When I no longer had to leave a sign, when he could find me no matter how I tried to escape his notice, then I was satisfied.

  When Heckt’er was four I sent him to a farm for stillseason. The Bria had retreated into their houses, unable even to tend their tame callans and farmborra. Heckt’er accepted the extra duty as he accepted all my training, even though farm work is despised. The farms are, after all, an affront to Ghen hunters, a lack of confidence in our abilities. However, Bria are timid, superstitious creatures, who fancy droughts and famines and what-have-you in every change of weather. We indulge them.

  The city itself had spread to the edge of the Symba River, which abutted the farms. In fact, some of the farmland to the west had been converted into additional housing areas, and every few years more houses had to be built. As the houses encroached on the farms, so the farms encroached on the wood-lands, and we cut back the trees to increase the callans’ pasturage. Someday we would occupy the entire peninsula.

  I left Heckt’er on his own to care for the callans and farmborra on one of the large farms south of the city. I knew the callans would wander in their pastures, and a few would hide from him at sunset, some among the cappas, some in the river, evading the heat of stillseason. They would try to kick him every morning until he learned to milk them as though he were a calf himself.

  The farmborra would hide their eggs from him and the cocks would wake him in the night until he came to understand their cries: the joke of false alarm or brief dreamstartle from the rare pitch of genuine terror when a mongarr’h had ventured from the southern woods in search of easy prey. I knew all this because in my youth I, too, had spent a stillseason on the farms.

  “Become a callan,” I told Heckt’er when I left him. “You will only find your prey when you can think as they think. You’ll only draw close enough for the kill when you have learned to convince them that you are one of them.” If Heckt’er could come to understand these pitiful, tame beasts, which give the Bria their milk and cheese and butter and the fibres they spin into wool, or twist into rope, or weave into the
ir delicate, dyed fabrics, then he could understand their majestic mating species, the wild harrunt’h.

  The morning that the wind returned, I went for Heckt’er. I didn’t find him in the farmhouse or the barn or the roost-hut. He wasn’t in the farmyard or the near pastures. At last I went to the far pastures where the callans grazed. I grinned to think that he had felt the wind on his face as he drove them from the barn and it had drawn him with them into the farthest meadows.

  I searched the ugappas that lined the callan trail and saw here and there a bent branch or twisted leaf that remembered his foot as he climbed to feel the light, cooling breeze. I searched the groupings of callans but he wasn’t among them, though I saw a disruption of pebbles where he had run with the young harrunt’hs. Soon they would be driven up onto the mainland to join a wild herd in the forest, leaving only a few to keep the callans productive.

  I beat my way slowly through a dense copse of cappas, but Heckt’er was not resting in their leafy thickets. Along the bank of the Symba I thought I saw his imprint in the mud amidst the tracks of callans, who love to swim in the cool waters at midday.

  Ghen don’t swim. There is no buoyancy in our heavy bones and muscular bodies and the weight of our scales bears us down. I shuddered to see the callans gamboling in the current, remembering the worst part of my stillseason on the farm when I was Heckt’er’s age: the evenings I had to wade into the swirling waters to drive the reluctant callans to their barn.

  Three times I searched the meadows, the cappa copse, the ugappas; three times I returned to the farmhouse, barn, roosting-hut, before I stood again on the banks of the Symba. The sun was already sliding into the west. Bria, recovered with the returning breeze, were coming to round up their callans. I examined the gold-tinged waters anxiously.

  And there I saw the tip of a slender, hollow reed moving as no reed moves, against the current. I could hardly credit what it must mean. Nevertheless, I plunged into the river and reached down. My hands closed over scales cold and slimy with the silt of the riverbed, sodden with long submergence. For just a moment, before I drew Heckt’er up to break the surface, I thought I had mistaken and held a fish.

  ***

  Heckt’er returned with me to the Ghen compound. There was nothing more I could teach him without taking him out on the trail, so I set him up to learn firearm production. Normally, he wouldn’t have been studying this until he’d had his first hunt, but youths who showed interest were always welcome; the smithy needed apprentices. Not that Heckt’er would become one of those who made the firearms used by better hunters.

  I had a new stock—one I’d carved during stillseason from the strong thigh bone of a harrunt’h I’d brought down that year. Heckt’er could observe the boring and rifling of the barrel, made from smelted bog ore; the insertion of the hammer and trigger; the placement of the crystal so the strike of the hammer would unfailingly draw a spark. A Ghen should see the construction of his weapon, and this would be Heckt’er’s after he had had his first hunt.

  “A youth firearm,” I said to the smith, “and the youth to watch its making.” I was warmed by the flush of surprise and pleasure on Heckt’er’s face. He reached for the stock I’d placed on the smith’s table and examined it.

  I’d kept it hidden because its size would have given away the surprise. A youth firearm was smaller, lighter than an adult’s. It had a shorter barrel and therefore a shorter range, but it was just as deadly. I’d outgrown my youth firearm quickly, as Heckt’er would, but I still had it. With that in mind, I’d taken great care in the carvings: liapt’h and courrant’h both on one side, and on the other, a Broghen.

  “You’ll be master over every beast on Wind,” I promised him when he looked back up at me.

  “Explosives?” the smith asked.

  “Yes,” I said without hesitation. Many Ghen wouldn’t let their younglings observe the nitration of the fluffy seedballs produced by threadplants—so named because the Bria spun its fibers to make our woven bedmats. Occasionally, when a smith had failed to remove all traces of the nitric and sulfuric acids, the resulting nitrofiberballs could undergo spontaneous decomposition. This never happened to a master, and the smith accepted my compliment with a nod. Of course, I wasn’t simply being polite; a Ghen who didn’t know how to handle explosives didn’t deserve a firearm. Heckt’er wouldn’t be one such.

  By mid-year the smith sent Heckt’er back to me, saying he’d learned all he could without apprenticing.

  Heckt’er couldn’t practice shooting until he was a hunter, but I showed him how to hold his firearm braced between his chest and shoulder. I let him catch the trigger with his claw and bend his finger over it till he could pull it back, sliding his entire hand along the side of the stock. I loaded it and, pointing to a distant falling leaf, shot cleanly through it. A fine weapon.

  ***

  “He’s only four,” Prakt’um said when I asked if we could go with them on the last youth hunt of the year. Prackt’um was twenty, the leader of the party. He was taking his second youngling, Dur’um, on his first hunt. The others were all fourteen, a year older than I, taking their firstborns out.

  “He’s ready,” I said.

  “He knows more than I do,” Dur’um broke in. We hadn’t noticed him approaching us on the training field and Prakt’um frowned slightly.

  “That’s beside the point, Dur’um.”

  “He’s as tall as Dyit’er. They’re friends already, and Dyit’er’s coming with us.”

  “I’ll ask the others,” Prakt’um said to me.

  I learned later that Cann’an, a large, sharp-eyed Ghen who liked to boss those smaller than he, had opposed our coming. Timb’il had also expressed doubts, mostly in deference to Cann’an, because their younglings were in the same hunting triad. I snorted when I heard that. I had no use for Cann’an and less for Timb’il; he always followed the prevailing wind.

  My request was granted, however, because Dyit’er’s parent, Piet’er, pointed out that another youth was needed to complete Dyit’er’s hunting triad. Since Dyit’er and Heckt’er had often trained together, Heckt’er was an obvious choice. I was glad to team with Piet’er. He was a good one to have at your back, strong and unhesitating. From what I’d seen, Dyit’er was like his parent.

  We passed through the gate onto the mainland and headed north into the forest, twelve hunters with their twelve younglings. Far to the south lay the seashore, where we left infant Broghen. East lay the wetlands, where terriad’hs nested. Succulent fare, but we were after bigger game.

  The forest was dappled with shadows, its silence broken occasionally by the calls of birds. The wind carried near and distant scents to us: the dank smell of moss and decomposing leaves on the forest floor, the sweet smell of ugappa sap, faint because it was no longer running but dried on the bark, the tangy scent of ripening cappa fruit.

  At regular intervals one of the youths would climb a tall ugappa and sighting by the lean of the sun, confirm our direction. When it was Heckt’er’s turn he altered our course slightly. Young Dam’an had climbed before him and frowned, about to protest, but the adults concurred. We knew this route well although we left no path to mark our frequent traverse.

  When the sun lowered the youths made camp, rolling out our sleeping mats, collecting dry twigs and branches that would burn well, with little smoke. Dyit’er emptied two canteens from our store of water into the pot on the fire and made a warming brew for us to drink with our dried rations.

  During one of our stops Heckt’er had taken aside Bab’in, the smallest youth, to pick ruberries, which they now shared around. Bab’in grinned with pleasure when we thanked him, glancing sideways at his approving parent, Mart’in. We appointed them the first watch. I was happy, sleeping in my forest, and proud to be taking Heckt’er on his first hunt.

  It was several days before we came upon the tracks of sadu’hs and even then they were scarce, hiding in their burrows day and night. The birds had also quieted. Occasionally, branches
rustled overhead as mongarr’hs leapt from tree to tree away from us. Their dark skin made them almost invisible in the treetops, but once or twice I caught the malevolent stare of a small, pinched face peering down at us, its muzzle drawn back in a silent snarl.

  I thought it strange that they came so close. It almost seemed they were watching us. Sinewy and hairless, they were good for neither meat nor pelt, too vicious to be tamed, too small to be a threat. Nevertheless, their tiny teeth were sharp. The youths climbed noisily to sight our direction, not wanting to stumble onto a startled mongarr’h which, feeling cornered, might bite. On the sixth evening Heckt’er and Dam’an killed three sadu’hs with their sling-shots and we ate well again.

  At night each parent on watch kept his firearm close, more to teach his youngling vigilance than for any real need. Courrant’hs inhabited the mountains and Broghen roamed far to the south, while we had come north. But we were on the trail and the line between hunter and hunted can be as small as a single moment of unreadiness.

  The increasing silence of the forest put us all on edge. When I saw the first sign of harrunt’hs—a disturbance of twigs, a single hair caught in the bark of a tree—I looked aside. This was our younglings’ hunt. But I was relieved. I glanced over at Heckt’er and saw that he noticed as well, though he turned away at once. Why didn’t he speak up?

  Soon after, Dam’an and Sark’il called out, pointing with barely concealed excitement to the soft imprint of a harrunt’h hoof on the forest soil. It was several days old and faint; we were lucky there’d been no rain. Nearby, a few snapped branches and missing leaves indicated that a small herd had passed. The youths conferred together.

  They were fortunate; the animals were heading northeast, into the wind. We could follow quickly without fear that our scent would reach them. Dam’an and Sark’il left their packs with their parents and ran silently ahead to scout. It should have been Heckt’er running ahead but I held my tongue, though it galled me. Heckt’er would have to learn to speak for himself.