“They came out of thin air!” Gallen said, shuddering. “Just out of the air. I’ve never seen anything move so fast!”
“Let’s get back to the ship,” Athena said. “This isn’t over. Some got away. They’ll be back with reinforcements.”
“There were no scouts …” Gallen said. “None came looking for us. My mantle would have seen them.”
Orick’s hair stood on end. He hadn’t seen the sfuz till they dropped from above. He looked up. The air above them stood open for at least sixty meters.
“Well, Gallen, you reacted admirably,” Felph said, grunting in satisfaction.
Gallen still crouched, trying to look all directions at once. “You said they trained other animals. Could they have used one against us?
“How do you mean?” Tallea asked.
“The sfuz must have had help setting the ambush,” Gallen said. He looked all about. “Insects?” he asked, shaking his head. “Something larger-like a crow-flew overhead an hour ago, but I thought it was just hunting insects.”
“Maybe,” Athena agreed. “They train such creatures to hunt, the way our ancestors trained dogs.”
“Let’s get out of here,” Gallen said.
Athena grabbed the darkfriends, stuffed them into the net on her hip.
Orick stared at the corpse of a sfuz. Its face, he saw now was more purplish than gray; its teeth were unnaturally long and sharp. He’d thought it had large eyes before, but now he saw that each large dark eye was actually two eyeballs, separated by a thin membrane. One eye aimed up, while the other aimed down. It made sense that such a creature would always seek to attack from above or below.
Its fur, which started just behind the ears, was shorter and thicker than a bear’s, bristling. He saw now that each sfuz had four legs and two arms. The creature’s legs had four or five claws, or hooks on them, all in a row along the length of the leg, so the sfuz could crawl upside down or sideways among the trees simply by hugging the limbs. The foreclaws were more like hands, each with a thumb and two fingers, all or which had saberlike claws.
Orick moved his shoulder experimentally. He’d been clawed on the back, and he could smell blood. Yet he felt little pain. Months before, in order to save Orick’s life Gallen had fed the bear some nanodocs, tiny machines that went about repairing injuries to Orick’s body. They worked so quickly that even now, Orick could feel some heat in his back where the machines had hurriedly mended his torn shoulder.
“Are you alright Tallea?” Orick asked. He smelled blood on her.
“A scratch,” the she-bear said. Orick looked into the wound on the back of her neck, saw dark blood pooling. He licked the wound, then licked her muzzle affectionately.
Gallen and Felph had readied their packs. They hurried ahead. Orick did not want to be left behind.
The journey back up was arduous. Orick hadn’t realized how rapidly they’d descended-walking down limbs, climbing from one drop to the next. It had seemed a fairly level journey as they came down, but where possible, when the path had taken a downward turn, Athena had led them lower.
They ran for an hour, then Gallen suddenly raised his pulp gun and fired into the air.
Something large and black dropped. Gallen went to the thing. It was a bird, a hairy red bird, with a ratlike face filled with rows of sharp teeth. Gallen’s weapon had ripped away most of its innards.
Gallen bent to study the creature. “It’s the same one that flew over us earlier. My mantle says it has the same infrared register. It came flying ahead of us, and was just turning back.”
“It’s called a blood rat,” Athena said. She turned the creature on its side. Just behind its head, she found a thinning in its hair. “This one has been wearing a collar.”
Lord Felph grunted.
“They didn’t just train this one,” Gallen said. “They had to have communicated to it, somehow.”
Athena shook her head. “I can’t see how. It’s just a dumb animal.” Indeed, it looked like a rat with wings. Its head was no larger than a cat’s; Orick thought it odd that such a creature could communicate with the sfuz. The sfuz were as large as humans, though not as massive.
The group began hiking, almost running up the trail. Orick watched Tallea. The she-bear had been more sorely wounded than she wanted to tell, and she lagged behind, dragging her right front paw. Orick kept urging her to hurry, to keep up.
They were still a good hour’s march from the ship when Orick detected a distant whistling. In the deep foliage of the tangle, with a thousand branches crowding around, it was impossible to tell where the sound came from. That it was the whistle of a sfuz, Orick had no doubt. Once having heard that high, keening, almost hysterical pitch, he would never forget it. The sound reminded him of laughter, of whistling laughter, yet more frantic, more intense.
Gallen stopped. “They’re behind us,” he said with certainty. He leapt away.
Orick and the others followed with renewed, strength, though Orick was sweating from exertion.
A moment later, Gallen stopped. Ahead, perhaps not a hundred meters, they heard whistling. Yet at this moment, they were running along the track of a worm vine that wound a precarious way among the immense boles of dew trees, each many meters in diameter. Orick could not see around that path, but the sfuz announced itself.
The ululating noise stopped. Almost simultaneously, another whistling seemed to come far above and behind them.
“That’s the same sfuz,” Gallen whispered in awe. “My mantle says it has the exact same voiceprint.”
“It’s teasing us,” Felph guessed. “It must know where we are, so it’s running along limbs above us, whistling. Because it went into a different chamber, it sounds as if it is moving around us.”
“No,” Athena whispered, “that is a hunter’s whistle. That sfuz is hunting us. I think … I’ve heard that sound when a pair of sfuz attack, and I manage to kill one’s mate. That sfuz is furious.”
The fur at the base of Orick’s neck rose again.
“Quietly then.” Gallen whispered. They ran. They climbed a wide tree, up through some thick spongy fungus, till they found the trail they’d come down, then they hurried through a narrow defile where ancient withered roots, like long gray fingers, hung from above.
As they passed this, Orick heard heavy whistling behind him. He brought up the rear of the group, so he pivoted instantly, lashed with one claw.
The sfuz was charging, but as quickly as it had appeared, it turned aside, scurried around the trunk of a tree. Orick’s claw raked empty air. He stood befuddled, unable to find his quarry.
“They’ve found us!” Tallea shouted. “Run.”
Gallen burst ahead at full speed.
They ran for twenty minutes, Orick expecting an attack at any second. The sfuz went for reinforcements, Orick realized. Or it hoped to organize an ambush ahead.
Lord Felph kept lagging behind, stumbling from exertion. Orick heard whistling again, far below it seemed, so far he thought he might be imagining it. Yet it was not one voice that resounded through the tangle now, it was a thousand voices, united.
Felph fell to the ground, panting for breath, forcing everyone to stop. Gallen reached to pull him to his feet. “Hurry!”
Felph shook his head. “It’s no use. We’re too far from the ship. We’ll never make it!”
“You can’t know that!” Gallen said. “You have to try.” Felph laughed. “No, no I don’t. You have to try!”
Orick understood. Felph was giving up. He didn’t need to make a grand dash for escape. He would be reborn. Felph was right. He merely slowed the others down. Leaving him was their only hope for escape.
“I can do you a small service,” Felph grunted. “Give me the darkfriends. Gallen, give me a weapon. When the sfuz attack, I’ll hold them off a few moments, buy you some time.”
“You certain?” Gallen asked.
Felph chuckled. “Really, boy, one way or another, this body will get eaten today. I might as well.”
“Fine,” Gallen said, unceremoniously. He tossed a pulp gun on the ground beside Felph. Athena unsnapped the webbing that held the darkfriends. The grubs tumbled out.