Hunters Unlucky, Book 1 Storm Page 8

  “The ones who harassed you before you joined Mylo’s clique,” said Storm slowly, “they were attacking you for different reasons than they were attacking me. I made myself inconvenient, so they stopped. They would never have stopped with you. You did the right thing—joining a clique, asking Mylo to be your rogan.”

  “It wasn’t just foals,” said Tollee quietly. “Adult males, too—the ones who didn’t feel they could attract a willing mate.”

  Storm didn’t know what to say, so he chewed on a nut. Finally, he said, “I’m glad you didn’t walk off into Groth. You didn’t drink the water in the bowls, did you?”

  Tollee looked at him curiously. “No. I wanted to. It smelled so nice. But I thought it might be poison.”

  “It is…sort of.”

  “What is that supposed to mean?”

  Storm squirmed. “Pathar said that animals drink the water and crawl into the bowls and drown, but he also said that if you drink, you dream the future.” Storm didn’t feel the need to explain that Pathar had given a demonstration.

  Tollee stopped eating. She was very still for a moment. “After the curb trap, for a few days, I had strange dreams.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yes. The forest…Groth…it was in my dreams…even though no one had ever told me about it or what it was called.”

  Storm waited.

  Tollee shook her head. “There was a blue stone…a black creasia with glowing green eyes…a telshee…and you.”

  “Me?” Storm was surprised.

  “Yes.” Tollee did not meet his eyes. “In the dream, you were running away into Groth. Only I didn’t know what it was called until now.”

  Storm felt a chill. “I don’t believe in dreams.” He spoke without much conviction.

  Tollee smiled. “Me neither.”

  Storm laughed shakily. “How can you say that? You saw Groth before you saw it!”

  Tollee shook her ears. “Maybe it’s only what might happen.”

  Storm liked that better.

  They spent the rest of the evening making themselves comfortable in a dense thicket, where they would hear the crackle of anything trying to approach. They slept in turns, huddled together, listening for curbs, but nothing disturbed them. By the next day, they had rejoined the ferryshaft herd.

  Chapter 18. A Thousand Faces

  Storm saw no more curbs that summer, nor did he travel to Groth again. He did not tell Leep and Tracer about his experience, nor, he suspected, did Tollee tell Mylo and Callaris. However, he did speak more frequently to Tollee. As the summer wound down, they developed a genuine friendship.

  This provoked a certain amount of teasing from Tracer and Leep, especially as the fall season brought mating to the front of everyone’s minds. “Better watch out,” said Tracer. “You’ll be fighting Mylo for her.”

  Mylo did, indeed, fight off three male foals who challenged him over Tollee’s status, and the entire clique helped fight off two adults. Storm knew that, had she been alone, she would have dealt with constant harassment. Mylo’s status as clique leader entitled her not only to his protection, but to the protection of his entire clique. The others did stand to gain from Tollee’s presence as a hunting partner that winter, so they defended her readily enough. She was a good hunter, and no one wanted her to be spirited away by another clique.

  “I couldn’t be Tollee’s rogan,” Storm told Tracer. And she wouldn’t like me if I was. “I can’t fight like Mylo.”

  This was true. Mylo did not seem to regard the diminutive Storm as a rival and showed no sign of jealousy over his friendship with Tollee. They were both yearlings, after all. The other members of the clique were at least two years old, while Mylo was three.

  Meanwhile, So-fet selected a new mate, Dover, from the comfort of her female clique. Storm did not like him much, and the feeling was mutual. So-fet, however, seemed content, and that was all that mattered.

  Soon the trees began to shed their leaves. Storm’s fur thickened, and the winds blew colder off Chelby Lake. One cloudy day with a stiff breeze sighing over the plain, Storm found himself again on the long march to the cliffs.

  As he jogged along with his friends, he watched the new foals—all of them with at least one parent, and most with two. They were wide-eyed with wonder, looking at everything—the broad Igby River, the Southern Wood beyond, the distant cliffs. Some of them capered, pulling the tails of adults and then racing away.

  They don’t know what’s coming, thought Storm. For the first time since spring, he thought of the creasia. There’s nothing to do about that. Better to think on things I can do something about.

  As much as he dreaded the hardships of winter, Storm felt he had a firm grasp on what to expect this year—the dangers he might face and how to avoid those that were avoidable. In this, he was entirely mistaken.

  The first hint came with the weather, which seemed increasingly oppressive. By noon, thick clouds had gathered, with the sun only a faintly brighter spot above the haze, drenching the plain in eerie half-light. The wind—which usually came off the lake during the day—was blowing from the west. It gusted and tore at the grass, whipping the Igby into choppy waves.

  The herd seemed depressed. The new foals stopped playing and hung close about their parents. Storm was surprised when his own mother sought him out. “Storm, come and walk with me.” She’d not been so direct since last winter.

  He came to her, though he felt awkward with her new mate walking nearby. “Mother, why is the sky so dark?”

  “A storm.” She seemed distracted.

  “I don’t remember the winter storms looking like this.”

  So-fet didn’t answer.

  Storm was pleased to see Pathar up ahead. He was about to go to him and ask about the weather, when So-fet put her head out and stopped him. “Not now, Storm.”

  Storm saw that Pathar was talking to two other elders as they walked. They kept looking up at the clouds. As he watched, Charder—the big, dark red ferryshaft who led the herd—approached them and joined in the conversation. They all looked quite serious.

  At last, the four of them split up and hurried off in different directions. Moments later, the word came trickling down through the ranks of ferryshaft: they needed to reach the shelter of the cliffs as soon as possible. They needed to run.

  * * * *

  “What are we doing, Mother?”

  “Just eat, Storm.”

  “But I’m not hungry.”

  “I said, eat!” Her tone brooked no argument.

  Feeling like an infant, Storm bent his head and obeyed. A moment later, So-fet turned her back, and he looked up rebelliously. It was evening, nearly dark. The exhausted herd should have been nestled among the warm rocks and in the caves below the cliffs, resting after their long journey and sheltering from the coming storm. Instead, they were scattered over the plain, eating as if they had not tasted grass in a season. A few stragglers were still trailing in along the edge of the river, and these, too, fell upon the grass as soon as they’d caught their breaths.

  We should be taking shelter, thought Storm. The wind had become fierce, peppered with stinging rain. Storm stared at the roiling clouds now filling the western sky. Not a star showed, and the moon peeked down only occasionally.

  Yet all the oddities of nature paled in comparison to the latest mystery. When Storm went to the river to drink, he had seen several creasia across the Igby and on his own side as well. Normally the ferryshaft ran when they saw a creasia, at least until the killing began. But tonight neither species paid any attention to the other. The cats paced or lay on the bank, eyes closed, breathing quickly.

  Storm struggled to recall exactly what had happened this time last year. He remembered that the herd had been nervous, had appeared to wait for something. Mother said it was a conference, and Pathar said it had something to do with the cats. But it was nothing like this.

  He wondered where his friends were and what they thought. He’d lost track of the
m after the herd began to run. He kept hoping to see someone he recognized, even Pathar, but in the deepening twilight, with everyone milling, heads down to feed, it was difficult.

  “Storm!” So-fet’s voice made him jump. With a sheepish expression, he lowered his head to the grass again.

  At last, Storm did recognize someone. Charder came trotting out from among the boulder mazes, Pathar at his heels. A dozen other elders and high-ranking adults came forward to talk. Storm tried to observe from a distance, but shifting animals kept blocking his view. Then Charder said something that Storm did not hear, but the order passed through the ranks, echoed and repeated by hundreds of voices. They were to move...somewhere.

  He looked to So-fet and found her whispering with Dover. “What is happening?” he demanded. “Where are we going?”

  So-fet turned to her foal. “Listen closely, Storm. Soon there will be a lot of confusion, and everyone will run forward at once. Stay near me if you can, and don’t fall no matter what. Do you understand?”

  “Yes. But what—?”

  “A monstrous storm is coming. We call it the Volontaro. We would not be safe in the caves where we usually stay during the blizzards. There is only one cave in this part of Lidian that is safe and big enough for all of us. We are going there soon.”

  “Are the creasia coming too?”

  “Yes, but don’t be afraid. We have a treaty agreement during the Volontaro.”

  “Then…this happens often?”

  “There is a chance of a Volontaro every year.”

  At that moment, the ferryshaft herd surged towards the cliff. Storm understood his mother’s warning immediately. The animals ran fast and close together. A small ferryshaft might easily have been trampled.

  The situation did not improve as they entered the rocks. The herd’s anxiety seemed to escalate into a near-stampede. Storm had to concentrate to stay on his feet, and he wondered again how the rest of his clique was faring.

  When they reached the foot of the cliffs, the herd went straight up a trail. Storm had never used this path himself, although he had seen it. Tracer had told him that the path led to a stone bridge that spanned the Garu Vell, and the clique avoided anything to do with the Vell.

  The path was broader than he had imagined, with room for at least six ferryshaft to walk abreast. Up the cliffs they galloped, rising higher and higher, and all the while moving steadily south towards the Igby. They passed over the river, where it spilled out of the cliff below. The banks seemed deserted, the surrounding plain very dark. The wind was making an appalling shriek among the rocks.

  Soon, Storm noticed that the animals ahead were muttering and snapping at each other, crowding more closely together. Storm turned all his attention to the twin tasks of staying on his feet and keeping near So-fet. Even Dover was no longer with them.

  Presently, Storm noticed that the animals ahead were thinning and forming a line. Finally he could breathe. Then the animal in front of Storm stepped forward, and Storm found himself on the verge of an abyss. He reared and tried to back up, but the ferryshaft behind pushed impatiently. For one awful moment, Storm thought they would send him over the edge.

  Then he saw it—a narrow thread of rock, only about half a length across, spanning the entire Vell. A line of ferryshaft were laboring over it, nose to tail on the slender bridge, heads down, eyes fixed on their feet.

  Storm felt another shove behind him and heard a muffled curse. “Move!”

  He gulped, heart racing, and skidded down the last few lengths onto the bridge. The wind hit him full force, and Storm struggled to keep his balance. One brief glance into the yawning emptiness told him that he should not look down. “Just keep your eyes on the path, Storm,” came his mother’s voice a couple of animals behind him. “Just look at your hooves.”

  For what seemed an eternity, Storm struggled over the bridge. His heart pounded in his throat, and his legs wobbled as though they were made of mud.

  At last, Storm felt the force of the wind decrease, saw other animals around him, and realized that he had stepped off the bridge. The cave beyond was dim. He sensed, however, that it was vast, with a high ceiling and a great many animals jostling around him. Then a ferryshaft to his rear kicked him, and he realized that he was obstructing traffic. Disoriented, Storm stumbled forward.

  In the confusion, he realized that what he had feared had happened—he could not see So-fet. Storm raised a tentative voice, calling her name through the crowd, but he was one of many doing the same thing. Still, she’d been only a few animals behind him, and he was almost certain that she’d made it off the bridge. Trying to reassure himself, Storm pushed his way deeper in the cave, away from the chaos around the entry point.

  He found the back of the cavern moderately calm, with many ferryshaft lying down to sleep. He noted the distracting smell of creasia, though he could not see them. No one seemed concerned, so he tried to ignore the unnerving smell. The floor of the cave was soft with sand, probably blown in through the large mouth, which was almost as wide as the cavern itself.

  Storm worked his way to a wall and lay down, damp, cold, and exhausted. Now he understood why his mother had commanded him to eat. Who knows how long it will be before we see grass again.

  For the moment, however, Storm felt safe. Not far away, a clique of older foals was quietly telling stories. Storm couldn’t understand the words, but he felt comforted by their cheerful tone. Lulled by the patter of rain and the soft breathing of resting animals, Storm began to doze.

  Somewhere nearby, a mother ferryshaft sang softly to her foal:

  Chase me if you must

  Catch me if you can

  But never, never think that you can kill me

  I have a thousand faces.

  It was an old lullaby that Storm had heard times beyond counting. The tune was so familiar that he hardly thought about the words. They ran round and round in his head as he drifted off to sleep.

  “A thousand faces…a thousand faces…we have a thousand faces.”

  Chapter 19. A Line in Stone

  In his dream, he saw her running—that foal who had not yet seen the end of her first winter…and never would. The creasia pursued her, muscles bunching and stretching beneath sleek, dark fur. As Storm watched, the foal spun on the ice to confront her pursuer. Storm saw her face—Tollee’s face.

  “No!” he shouted. “Run! Don’t fight! You can’t win! Run!”

  But she jumped at the cat, snarling, and there was a slash of claws and a scream and entrails steaming on the ice. The cat turned to Storm and roared. The noise was horrible, so loud that it didn’t even sound like an animal. Storm ran, but he knew he couldn’t escape. The roaring grew louder.

  Then someone kicked him.

  Storm opened his eyes and looked up at a glaring adult ferryshaft. “Stop kicking,” she hissed.

  Storm realized that he’d been running in his sleep. “S-sorry,” he stammered. “It’s the smell…the cats.”

  She huffed and lay back down. Storm had to raise his voice to be heard, and he realized that the roaring in his dream was real. The wind was screaming among the rocks outside, but apart from that came a howling, rumbling noise that grew louder by the moment.

  The Volontaro.

  It came out of the west and raced screaming up the Vell from the sea. Then it was outside, obscuring the mouth of the cave in a blinding sheet of rain. Storm heard boulders crashing down the cliffs. That’s why the other caves are unsafe, he thought.

  After a while, Storm’s fear diminished, although the wind and rain continued to batter the cliff. He no longer felt at all sleepy, and he was seized by a desire for a closer look at this greatest-of-all storms. So he rose, picking his way carefully between resting ferryshaft, and approached the mouth of the cave. He passed the last of the ferryshaft long before reaching the edge.

  Storm crept cautiously over the wet rock. Wind-driven rain tore at his fur, but he pressed on until he could peer down into the tempest. It
took him a moment to understand what he heard, what he could glimpse through the rain. The Garu Vell was underwater! The surf, which normally lapped on the beach, was pounding in the rock mazes. Boulders, he guessed, must be shifting like pebbles underfoot. Even from this height, Storm could hear a distant grinding and see the flash of whitewater.

  He jumped as something grabbed him from behind. Storm tried to turn, but was swept off his feet as the intruder gripped him behind the head and dragged him back into the cave. Storm pulled free and spun around to find his mother glaring at him. He was relieved to see her, although he gathered from her expression that she disapproved of forays to the lip of the cliff. The noise of the storm made conversation impossible, so he merely turned and followed her back into the cave.

  * * * *

  Storm woke to weak morning sunlight. He felt warm and comfortable, lying against his mother among other sleeping ferryshaft. His stomach growled, but he ignored it. The wind was still blowing outside, but with less violence, and the rain had stopped.

  Storm wondered what the rest of the cave looked like. His impressions from last night had been muddled by the dark and by crowds of pushing, half-panicked animals. Curious, Storm rose and looked around. He appeared to be toward the western end of a vast, wide-mouthed cavern. Rock formations partially obscured his view. Resting ferryshaft covered the floor for as far as he could see, which was, admittedly, not very far. Storm thought he heard water near the pile of rocks towards the center of the cave.

  Stepping carefully to avoid waking anyone, Storm made his way east. When he reached a rock formation, he clamored up and finally got a decent view of the cave. The creasia were at the eastern end. He could see the brindled brown and black and gold of their coats covering the cave floor in that direction. Very near the center of the cave mouth, he could see the bridge. Towards the ferryshaft side of the bridge, a shallow stream crossed the cave floor. He must have splashed through it last night, but probably hadn’t noticed, as wet as he’d already been.

  He did not see any ferryshaft beyond the stream now. However, he also saw no sign of violence, nor did he smell any blood. As he watched, a ferryshaft approached the stream and drank before moving away. It must be safe.

  Still moving cautiously, Storm climbed to the ground and picked his way through the ferryshaft herd until he reached the stream. The cave floor was uneven, and he couldn’t actually see any of the resting creasia from the spot where he chose to drink. He found that he was quite thirsty after the previous day’s exertions. The stream was little more than a shallow sheet of water running over stone, and Storm had to lap at it for some moments to get an adequate drink.