Hunters Unlucky, Book 1 Storm Read online

  The foals shifted their hooves. They cleared their throats and shook their heads. Finally, Leep spoke, “Something funny happened to me last spring when—”

  “I have a scary story.” Everyone looked at Tollee. It was the first time Storm had heard her speak since the day he arrived.

  “Oh, well—” began Leep.

  “You wanted a scary story, right?” Tollee was glaring at Tracer, who sunk down a little against Storm. “Once upon a time, there was a foal who lived with her mother and father by Chelby Lake, but then the winter came. During the first blizzard of the season, her father slipped on the ice while trying to get to a cave for shelter. He broke his leg, so he couldn’t forage properly, but his mate and his daughter kept trying to feed him.

  “Then one day, while they were foraging on the edge of the plains, a pack of curbs found them, and they attacked her father, because he was weak and injured. Her mother tried to defend him, and the curbs pulled them both down. They started eating before her mother was even dead. The foal crawled into a crevice in the rocks where the curbs couldn’t reach her. She was trapped there for two days because they kept returning to the bodies to feed.”

  “That’s enough!” snarled Ishy. Ally had buried his face in his brother’s fur. He was moaning softly.

  Tollee looked around at them with disdain. “I thought you all wanted a scary story—”

  “Not a true story,” barked Leep. He actually looked angry.

  “My stories are true,” said Tracer, but without much conviction.

  Storm heard himself say, “I’ll tell you a true story.” He was on his feet without quite knowing how he got there, standing between Tollee and Leep. Please don’t fight. We all know too many scary stories. “I’ll tell you a true story that’s only a little scary. It involves Kelsy and a dead rabbit. Does anyone want to hear it?”

  He was extremely relieved when they did.

  Chapter 14. Various Kinds of Traps

  The foals rose at dawn and spent the morning foraging, intending to start down the cliffs in the afternoon. Storm had more than a few questions from the night before, but he waited until he and Tracer and Leep had wandered a little away from the others. Finally, he said, “If Tollee’s parents died near the beginning of winter, what has she been doing between then and joining your clique?”

  “Same thing you’ve been doing, I expect,” said Leep without turning from the tree he was stripping.

  “But, I’ve never…” Storm thought about it. “I’ve never seen a female without a clique.”

  Tracer snorted. “She didn’t want a rogan, but they wore her down.”

  “A what?”

  “A promised mate,” said Leep. He looked around at Storm. “You really have been living on the outside, haven’t you?”

  Storm thought, I know all about intelligent species, and I’ve been to Groth! But he kept quiet. Pathar had obviously neglected some aspects of his education.

  “Females can always find a clique,” said Tracer, “but if they’re young, it comes at a price. The dominant male, or sometimes another high-ranking male, becomes her rogan—her promised mate. She becomes his ru. In exchange, he protects her from other males and shares food.”

  “If she’s an adult,” put in Leep, “she may be able to join an all-female clique. The others will help her fight off unwanted males, and they’ll choose their own mates. But, if she’s orphaned young, well…you know how hard it is to survive without a clique.”

  Storm frowned. “So Mylo is Tollee’s rogan?”

  “Yes,” said Tracer in a low voice. “We all witnessed the agreement, although she didn’t like it much. The younger a female is when she’s orphaned, the lower-ranking her rogan is likely to be. A foal less than a year old is a big risk. It’ll be three or four years before she reaches breeding age. A male could expend a lot of energy on her, only to have her die at some point during that time.”

  “Then why did Mylo take her?” asked Storm.

  Tracer guffawed. “In case you haven’t noticed, we’re pretty low in the herd hierarchy. Where else is Mylo likely to find a mate? He could wait and hope that one of the adult females chooses him, but he’s not exactly a beautiful specimen. Sometimes, the females will agree to mate with the winner of a fight, but those fights get nasty. This way is more certain if he can keep her alive. He could end up with three or four mates this way.”

  “What if Tollee doesn’t want to mate with him in three or four years?” asked Storm.

  Tracer looked uneasy. “Well…he’d be within his rights to kill her. He wouldn’t necessarily, but it does happen. The herd wouldn’t punish him, not if he was her rogan.”

  Storm didn’t like the sound of that. “Why don’t the orphaned females form cliques like the males?”

  Leep sighed. “They try, sometimes, but all it takes is two or three big males attacking them and taking their food until they agree to make the attackers their rogans or find other males to protect them. The harassing males are often adults or four-year-olds. The orphan females are young. They give up.”

  “I heard of one female clique of orphaned foals who made it all the way to adulthood without rogans,” said Tracer. “Maybe it’s just a story, or maybe it really happened. It’s a good story, though. I’ll tell it some evening.”

  Storm thought of his mother joining the female clique that winter.

  Leep grinned and nudged him. “Nobody fights over us males. We may never breed, but at least we’re free to die wherever we like.”

  “’We may never breed,’” scoffed Tracer. “If Leep isn’t very careful, one of those female cliques will make him their ru.”

  Leep looked almost embarrassed. He opened his mouth to say something, and then stopped. “What’s that?” His voice sounded so taut that Storm looked around in alarm.

  “What’s what?”

  Leep bent down and nosed at something on the ground. Storm thought at first that it was snow or ice, but then saw that it was white fur. There was more—wispy hanks scattered along the ground.

  Leep started backing away as though from a snake.

  “Leep, it isn’t—” began Tracer. “It can’t be; we’re on the cliffs.”

  “How do you know?” hissed Leep. “Do we really know anything about them?”

  Storm wasn’t sure what they were talking about. He saw another clump of fur drifting down and retraced its path upwards. He squinted. “Is that a sheep?”

  Leep and Tracer stopped arguing. They followed Storm’s gaze upwards.

  “Oh,” said Leep. He sounded relieved.

  “See,” said Tracer, “just a curb trap.”

  “So, we’ll be killed by curbs and not telshees,” said Leep. “That’s a relief.”

  “It’s a sheep!” said Storm stubbornly. “Are you blind? That’s a sheep hanging from a—a—”

  “A curb trap,” finished Leep. “Come on, let’s get the others.”

  Within moments, the entire clique was standing beneath the body of a young sheep, hanging several lengths from the ground by what appeared to be a tangle of vines around its neck. “Do you think the curb pack is nearby?” muttered Ishy.

  “Doesn’t matter,” said Callaris. “There’s enough of us to drive them off.”

  “A big pack might not find us intimidating.”

  “Chief?” asked Callaris.

  Mylo was examining the sheep from all angles. The meat would make their trip up the cliffs more than worth the effort. “We take it,” he said at last.

  “What’s a curb trap?” whispered Storm to Tracer.

  Tracer tried to explain. “Curbs make traps for sheep and young deer. Adult ferryshaft are usually too big, but foals get caught sometimes. You choke if someone isn’t around to chew you lose. Sometimes, the curbs use poison on the vines. It’s dangerous to rob the traps, even if the pack isn’t nearby.”

  “But how does it work?” persisted Storm.

  Tracer just shook his head.

  Mylo and Callaris had
jumped up and each grabbed a leg of the dead sheep. Their combined weight brought the animal low enough for them to touch the ground with their back hooves, but the vines holding the sheep did not break. Ishy and Leep each grabbed a leg as well, and they worried the animal this way and that, trying to break the trap.

  Storm was suddenly aware of Tollee sitting beside him. “Cowards,” she muttered. Then, more loudly, “I’ll get it.”

  “No—!” said Tracer, but she’d already run forward.

  Tollee leapt into the air and, with a tremendous chomp, severed the viney trap. The four males who had hold of the sheep stumbled back in all directions.

  Mylo rose, sputtering, and turned on Tollee, but she faced him levelly, ears flat, tail bristling. “I won’t eat my portion until you’re sure I’m not poisoned. That way, the meat won’t be wasted if I die. Happy?”

  Mylo deflated a little. He inclined his head.

  Storm had gone over to sniff at the vines that had been used in the construction of the trap. He thought he recognized them and their faintly sweet aroma. He’d seen vines like that before among woody bowls of clear, sweet-smelling fluid, standing with Pathar on the edge of Groth. Storm did not think Tollee would be poisoned, but he wondered what she would dream that night. Behind him, the foals began to divide the meat. He heard Tracer say, “Don’t leave Storm out; he’s the one who spotted it” and smiled.

  He stood up and turned, but almost tripped when he took a step. Looking down, Storm saw a tendril of vine wound around his foot. He shook it loose as though stung and then stood staring at it. He tried to convince himself that he’d snagged it with his own clumsiness, but he knew that wasn’t true. The fur on his neck prickled, and Storm looked up to see Tollee some distance away, watching him.

  Chapter 15. Ally

  Later that day, as they were trudging down the cliffs, Storm said, “Leep, did you really think that white fur came from a telshee?”

  Leep looked embarrassed and didn’t answer.

  Tracer said, “We saw one.”

  Storm was impressed. “Really?”

  “Last year about this time. We were…” He trailed off and glanced at Leep.

  Leep twitched his tail and tried to look indifferent. “You can tell him.”

  “We were foraging in the Southern Wood.”

  Storm was astonished. “In creasia territory?”

  “They’re not everywhere,” said Leep. “I’ve never seen them except when they’re attacking the herd.”

  “We were orphaned in the same raid,” Tracer tried to explain. “So we stuck together. We hadn’t found a clique then, so we were desperate, and there’s good foraging across the river if you’re brave…”

  “But you don’t go over there anymore,” said Storm.

  Leep shook his head. “We passed the Garu Vell one evening. It’s less than a day’s journey from the river. And we heard…singing.”

  “It’s not really singing,” said Tracer. “It’s a sort of rising and falling hum. It sounded very close.” He shuddered.

  “You can’t tell what direction it’s coming from,” said Leep. “I think that’s why they do it—to panic their prey.”

  “Well, we panicked anyway,” said Tracer. “We ran among the rocks, but instead of getting away from it, we ran right into it. Only, it wasn’t singing for us.”

  “It had caught a creasia,” said Leep in a low voice. “It hadn’t seen us, and we were too scared to move. The cat was fighting, but the telshee had it mostly wrapped up in its coils. Then it started to squeeze.”

  Tracer made a face. “I almost felt sorry for the cat. I vomited, and that was noisy. The telshee looked around and saw us.”

  “It had blue eyes,” said Leep. “Very big blue eyes—not green like in your stories.”

  Tracer shuddered. “Who cares what color eyes it had? We didn’t stop running until we crossed the river. We found Mylo and Callaris not long after that. We never went back into the forest.”

  Storm considered this. “Why didn’t you tell that story to the others up on the cliff? It’s a lot scarier.”

  Leep scowled. “Why don’t we tell stories about creasia raids? Why don’t we tell stories about losing our parents? Storm, if you don’t understand that, then you don’t understand anything.” He trotted on ahead and Storm felt small and foolish.

  “Don’t let him bother you,” said Tracer. “The beginning of last winter was a bad time. He doesn’t like thinking about it.”

  Storm looked out over the island. “No, he’s right. I don’t understand anything.”

  * * * *

  Storm half-hoped to see a telshee that winter, but he didn’t. He did journey up the cliffs half a dozen times with his clique and even descended twice to the beach, where they spotted a few seals and devoured strange, crunchy animals from the tide pools. It was an odd period for Storm—a period of cold and hunger, but also of friendship and belonging. He had a place in the world, and he was content. His mother seemed proud of him, though he visited her rarely so that she did not feel compelled to give him food. He did not visit Pathar at all for the rest of the winter, as he did not wish to be suspected of betraying his friends for their brief act of cannibalism.

  Towards the end of winter, they did find and eat one more dead foal. Storm could not see the harm. They’d caught no game for three days and were very hungry. The foal had obviously died of starvation. Storm chewed on a piece of the ropy meat, but it was sour on his tongue. He swallowed it almost whole and let the others finish. He needed less food than most of them—one advantage of being small.

  Everyone said that this was the hardest time of year—right after everything had been eaten and right before the grass started to grow. The ferryshaft herd had traversed the length of the cliffs twice, and now they were going over the ground a third time, heading away from the river. The snow was already beginning to melt, and the ice had become unsafe to play on. Everyone said the grass would come soon.

  One ill-fated day, Mylo’s clique made the dangerous trek to the top of the Red Cliffs to search for food. Even this area had been well picked over, and the foals spread out among the trees, consuming everything within reach. Storm was stripping bark from a low branch when he heard someone shouting from the direction of the Sea Cliffs. He moved toward the sound and soon emerged from the trees.

  Grass! Little Ally had found some of the first tender blades in a tiny patch of dirt between the woods and the rocks. Storm was impressed that he’d called the others to share his prize, rather than eating it quietly by himself. None of them had eaten fresh grass since summer, and they came running. The patch was not large, but there was enough for all to have half a dozen mouthfuls of the sweet, tender stems.

  However, the youngsters had not eaten a quarter of the patch before Ishy glanced up and went rigid. He snorted, and all the foals followed his gaze to the edge of the trees, where another group of young ferryshaft had appeared. Storm recognized Kelsy at once.

  He had not seen his old opponent since he’d joined Mylo’s clique. Seeing him now made Storm feel a little queasy. He couldn’t help eyeing all available escape routes.

  If Kelsy recognized Storm, he gave no sign. The other clique’s wishes were obvious, and Storm knew what Kelsy would say before he even opened his mouth. “I believe that you’re eating our grass.”

  “Grass belongs to anyone who finds it.” Mylo spoke without conviction, and Storm could tell from his stance that he did not intend to fight.

  “Yes, and we just found it. We outrank you and outnumber you, and we can outfight you. Don’t make this ugly, orphan.”

  For an instant, Mylo hesitated, and Storm could see that he would very much like to fight Kelsy. But Mylo is no fool.

  He tossed his ragged ears and turned away. “Come, friends. There will be other grass.”

  Most of the clique followed Mylo as he started into the wood, but Ally lingered. “We warned you, foal!” snarled one of Kelsy’s party. “Leave. We don’t want t
o eat grass soiled by orphans.”

  “Then don’t.” The words were soft but audible, and Mylo’s clique turned in surprise.

  “What does Ally think he’s doing?” whispered Leep.

  Kelsy cocked his head. “You’re brave for someone on three legs. Get out of here before I break one of them.”

  Behind him, a foal snickered, “Don’t make him piss himself, Kelsy; he’s still standing in the food!”

  Ally didn’t move. The crippled foal was foraging very poorly at this point in the year, and he looked like skin stretched over a collection of sticks. Nevertheless, he trembled with every appearance of rage. “Mylo is right: grass belongs to whoever finds it. We found it first. Go find your own!” He took a step forward, and his scraggly coat bristled. Meanwhile, his companions had started to walk back toward the cliff. Storm could tell that Mylo was embarrassed and a little angry. If Ally’s actions resulted in a fight with injuries, Ally would pay for it later.

  Kelsy looked a little flustered. There was no glory to be gained in hurting a crippled runt, and if Ally put so much as a scratch on Kelsy, it would be humiliating. “You stupid foal,” he said quietly, “my clique will eat this grass one way or another. Getting yourself killed will not help anyone. If you walk away now, I’ll forget what you just said.”

  Ally didn’t say anything, but he moved back a pace, and Kelsy took that for acceptance. “A wise decision.” He turned away, giving the orphans an opportunity to remove themselves from what had become a dangerous situation.

  Kelsy, however, had misread the signs. No sooner had he turned his back than the sullen Ally flew at him. He sank his teeth into Kelsy’s back leg in an attempt to hamstring the larger foal.

  Kelsy’s reflexes were instantaneous. He whirled to snap at his attacker, lashing his body violently in an effort to dislodge him. Kelsy’s teeth raked Ally’s spine, but the whipping motion did the most harm. The tiny foal was so light that he lost his hold and went sailing through the air. He landed on the very lip of the crag. Storm watched in horror as Ally, disoriented, tried to stand, failed, and, with a scream of terror, vanished over the edge.

  For an instant, they were all too stunned to move. After a ghastly pause, Kelsy turned to Mylo’s clique. He looked shaken. “I…did not mean for that to happen.”