And then there were the spikefrills, such as the one Yenalb was riding. These were a rare breed of hornface with long spikes of bone sticking out of the short bony frill around the neck. They had only one real horn, a huge one sticking up from the snout, although there were small pointed knobs above each eye.
But even as he tried to make a critical assessment, Cadool realized that his own control was slipping away, his blood coming to a boil.
"Advance!" Yenalb had shouted through his brass speaking cone. "Clear the square!" The palace loyal began moving slowly. The square was crowded; their mounts jostled each other. Beasts that size could crush the foot or tail of a Quintaglio without noticing a thing.
It’s madness, thought Cadool. Absolute madness. And then he growled, low and long…
Afsan felt the ground shaking slightly, knew that imperial mounts were starting to move toward him and the hunters. The air was thick with pheromones. He didn’t want this, had never wanted it. All he’d wanted was to tell the truth, to let them see — see what he no longer could see.
The blind leading the blind.
Afsan felt his claws unsheathe.
Cadool charged, pushing through the crowd of hunters. Other Lubalites were lunging forward, closing the gap between themselves and the imperial contingent. Being on foot, Cadool had greater maneuverability than those upon mounts. He and a hundred others surged ahead, three-toed feet kicking pebbles and dirt into the air, a cloud rising around them.
Cadool’s heart thumped in time with his footfalls. The hunt was on!
Forty paces. Thirty.
The air filled with wingfingers, rising in droves from statues at the periphery of the square. Their squawks, like claws scraping slate, counterpointed the dull thunder of feet pounding the paving stones.
Twenty paces. Ten. Cadool could smell them, smell their stimulation, smell their fear.
Five paces…
He leapt, kicking off the cobbles, flying into the air, cutting across the distance between himself and the closest of the opposing forces, one of the ceremonial imperial guards, straddling the back of a hornface.
The tri-horned brute bucked at seeing the screaming Quintaglio flying toward its flank. It tried to move to the left…
…and crashed against an adjacent hornface, this one of the rare variety with a boss of bone where the nasal horn would normally be…
Cadool hit the tri-horner’s huge side, rippling waves moving through its tawny flesh, radiating from the impact point.
The butcher’s claws dug in, pulling him up onto the beast’s back.
The imperial guard, a female slightly bigger than Cadool, fumbled to get out of her saddle…
…and Cadool’s jaws snapped down upon her throat.
He released the leather restraints holding her dead form to the beast’s back and let it slide to the stones below, splattering them with blood…
…and then leapt from the back of this hornface to the adjacent beast, his feet forward, toeclaws out, smashing into the chest of its horrified rider, a scholar Cadool knew slightly, knocking him to the ground.
He swung to look at the skirmish line. Every imperial loyalist was engaged by a Lubalite. Jaws snapped. Claws tore. Blood washed stones, dappled the hides of mounts, smeared muzzles of individuals on both sides. With a bone-crunching crack, Cadool saw Pahs-Drawo from Carno dispatch a loyalist atop a running beast, but then watched in horror as Drawo himself fell victim to a choreographed lunge by Yenalb’s spikefrill, the beast’s huge nose horn impaling Drawo, running through his gut like a fingerclaw through rotted wood.
Yenalb stood on his hind legs atop the spikefrill, dewlap puffed into a giant ruby ball…
Cadool was sickened. To be stimulated in that way by this … Chest heaving, vision blurring, Cadool had one last clear thought before he gave himself over to the madness: Yenalb was his.
Afsan knew there was nothing he could do, but he tried anyway. The cries of wingfingers, the thunderous calls of shovelmouths, the pounding of feet all drowned his words.
"Stop!" he shouted in the loudest volume his raw throat could manage. "Stop!"
But it would not — could not — stop.
Suddenly Afsan felt the shovelmouth he was standing on buck wildly in panic. Afsan shared the beast’s emotion as he found himself catapulted through the air. In his perpetual darkness, he had no idea where he was going to land. Air whipping about him, he quickly rolled into a ball, tucking his muzzle into his chest, wrapping his arms over his head, retracting his legs as much as possible, and folding his tail up and around.
Screams…
His own…
And then he hit…
Cadool slid down the rump of the boss-nosed beast, lashed out with his claws to stop a toppled loyalist who tried to intercept him, and made a dead run for the high priest.
Det-Yenalb had been shouting orders through his speaking cone, but each successive proclamation became less recognizable speech and more animalistic hiss and growl. His spikefrill had tipped its head low and was using a stubby forefoot to pull what was left of Pahs-Drawo off its nasal horn.
Suddenly Yenalb became aware of the charging Cadool. He yanked on the two largest of the giant spikes that protruded from his mount’s neck frill, as if to get the beast’s attention. It looked up, Drawo now discarded, just in time to try to intercept the butcher. The spikefrill’s beak snapped viciously at Cadool, but Cadool danced and weaved to stay out of its way.
The square was too crowded. The spikefrill couldn’t turn enough to get at him. Cadool leapt again, this time grabbing two of the spikes coming out of the crest of bone around the beast’s neck. He used these as handholds, pulling himself up onto the creature’s back. Yenalb tried to push him off, but the priest was no match for the butcher, none at all … Cadool opened his jaws wide, let out a primal roar, and…
This is for Pahs-Drawo!
Snapped his mouth shut on Yenalb’s dewlap, ripping it open, air hissing out
… And this is for Afsan!
Taking a second, deeper bite into the priest’s meaty throat, serrated teeth ripping through muscle and cartilage and tendons, a semi-ten of Cadool’s fangs popping free as his jaws banged closed against Yenalb’s cervical vertebrae…
And this is for the truth! —
But suddenly the animal beneath him was shaking — the whole square was shaking. Through the haze of instinct, Cadool thought some great monster — a thunderbeast giant, like the one Afsan had felled on his first hunt — had made it into the city, the guards having left their stations to be here.
But, no, the rumbling continued, the shaking growing more pronounced, the horizon jumping wildly…
Afsan was sure he had lost consciousness upon hitting the ground, but for an instant or for many daytenths, he couldn’t tell.
He heard the crowd rioting around him, screams of Quintaglios pushed into fighting rapture.
Afsan’s left side hurt badly. He knew he’d cracked some of the ribs that were attached to his backbone, as well as some of the free-floating ones that normally lay across the belly. He’d also knocked out a few teeth…
And then, suddenly the ground began to shake. I’m to die here, he thought, crushed under some giant beast, in the same square I thought I was going to die in all those days ago.
But the shaking wasn’t because of footfalls, wasn’t because of stampeding reptiles.
The ground shook…
…and shook…
Animals screamed.
Landquake.
Cadool listened to terrified roars of the animals, then stole a glance at the cobblestones below. Pebbles and dirt jumped.
Fear washed through him. In an instant, his fury was forgotten. He looked at the corpse of Yenalb, flopped on the back of the spikefrill, twin geysers of blood shooting from where the nearly severed head still joined the chest. Cadool pushed the body from the spikefrill’s back, letting it fall to the heaving ground. The head twisted around as it landed, facing backwards. The beast next to the spikefrill — an armorback whose old rider was cowering in fear — panicked as the land continued to quake. It moved backwards, trampling what was left of the high priest.