The noise grew and swelled, rising like the cloud of rolling dust sent up by the herd. Shrill, brassy trumpeting broke through the thudding rumble, giving voice to the beasts’ terror. They were being hunted in a way they had never been hunted before and they knew it.
“Faster,” Thakur yowled beside her. “The hunters have got the herd in a stampede.” He seemed to sail over the grass as if he were a swift, low-flying bird.
The bawling, the stamping, the thunderous commotion seemed to surround Ratha. For an instant she panicked, thinking that she and Thakur had somehow blundered into the midst of the rampaging animals.
And then Thakur yowled at her again, and she bounded to one side and saw that they were out of the herd’s path.
“Ahead … the cliff,” he panted. “Back there … the hunters.”
Ratha reared up on her hind legs for a quick look. The bow of hunters around the mass of face-tails was deepening, closing, forcing the animals toward the drop-off. True-of-voice’s people might not think and learn in the same way as the Named, but in some ways they were even more effective. Ratha had no doubt that they would kill every face-tail in the group. The thought chilled her spine as she dropped down again beside Thakur.
And it was my Thistle who showed them how.
The dusty haze turned the hunters into a grim line of shadows. She did not want to think that one of them might be her own daughter.
No, Thistle would not be a part of such wasteful killing … unless she has been so completely overwhelmed by True-of-voice that she has forgotten herself.
She heard the angry trumpeting of a face-tail turn into an anguished scream. With a rattle of rocks the first animal to reach the cliff plunged over. Another followed, unable to stop. And another and another in a cataract of shaggy fur and flesh, tumbling down with terrible cries and the sounds of heavy flesh meeting stone.
Though the first animals ran over blindly, the ones behind realized their danger and fought to stop. But others collided with them, pushing them over the cliff.
Only the face-tails at the rear of the herd had any chance to veer away or halt their maddened rush.
But the hunters would not allow any to escape. With cold ferocity, they lunged and slashed at the face-tails’ legs. Blood mixed with the roiling dust. Some animals tried to use their tusks, but they were too tightly crowded against the bodies of their fellows to do more than toss their heads and flail their trunks.
“Ratha, watch the edge!” Thakur cried. She bounded away with sweaty paw pads, realizing how close she had come to the brink. She crouched with him behind a pile of boulders to one side of the drop-off. Pressed close against him, she felt his sides rise and fall while the smell of carnage drifted up from below the cliff.
Now only three face-tails fought for their lives against the closing ring of hunters: an old bull, a female, and her calf. Relentlessly the hunters pressed them closer to the edge.
Ratha felt herself shiver. True-of-voice’s people were already frighteningly effective under his guidance. With the new knowledge gained from Thistle, they were now deadly. She felt a crazy impulse to run between the hunters and their doomed prey. The contest had become too unbalanced, too cruel….
The face-tail bull, his hide gashed by many claws and teeth, backed too close to the cliff edge. The rock and soil crumbled beneath his weight. With a brassy scream he, too, was gone, leaving only the female and her calf to face the hunters.
Her jaws opening in dismay, Ratha stared at True-of-voice, who was at the center of the hunters’ line.
Do you have to kill all of them?
But what had been set in motion could not be stopped, even by the one who had created it. The song possessed them all and it was filled with the need to attack and slaughter, even after there was enough meat to fill their bellies many times over.
Thistle had said it. The hunters repeated what they had already done, unable to stop or change. Perhaps that had served them well in the past, but if they continued to hunt like this, they would destroy the prey that sustained them.
But the song would not allow any questions, any doubts.
The face-tail calf screeched in terror as the hunters flanking True-of-voice engulfed it and dragged it away from the enraged mother. The female’s roar of anger turned to a roar of grief as the calf’s shrilling was abruptly cut off. The shaggy animal charged the hunters twice and was repelled easily, for they were prepared for her desperate attempt to rescue her calf.
What they were not prepared for was the face-tail’s attack on True-of-voice. As if the great beast sensed that he was the source of the will that drove the hunters, she turned on him.
Ratha, hidden, saw instantly that True-of-voice had been left dangerously unprotected by the others in their eagerness to bring down the face-tail calf. Now, with yowls of dismay, they sprang to his defense, but too late. The face-tail shook off their attacks. True-of-voice sought to escape, but the flailing, beating trunk found him and wound about his leg.
It flipped the gray leader on his back and dragged him to the edge of the abyss. Raking the face-tail’s forehead with his back claws and twisting around to drive his foreclaws into the rocks and dirt, True-of-voice mounted a frenzied battle.
From behind the hunters’ line, Ratha saw two figures charge through—the male called Quiet Hunter and her own Thistle. With a roar, she leaped from cover to her daughter’s side. She heard Thakur follow. Flattening her ears, she snaked her head around, ready to launch an attack on anyone who threatened Thistle. No one did. All gazes were locked on the cliff edge, the female face-tail, and True-of-voice.
Slowly, relentlessly, the leader of the hunters was being dragged backward, his claws leaving trails in the dirt. Quiet Hunter and others grabbed him by the scruff and the paws, but the vengeful face-tail was stronger. Her eyes reddened by rage, her black, shaggy pelt stained with blood, the beast wrenched True-of-voice from his rescuers. With a jerk she pulled him to the brink and flung him over.
The face-tail unleashed the rest of her wrath against the ones who had tried to save their leader. Ratha heard Thistle screech in dismay as a vicious downswing of the face-tail’s trunk clubbed Quiet Hunter in the ribs and sent him tumbling to one side.
And then, as if she had made her choice, the red-eyed, shaggy-pelted animal pivoted on the brink and let herself topple to join her slaughtered companions below. With a hail of rocks, she was gone, and the dust was already settling on the bloodied and torn ground where True-of-voice had fought for his life.
* * *
To Thistle, the song screamed in a blending of voices high and low. It was True-of-voice himself and all those that sang through him. The fierce hunting sound of the song turned into the sound of terror, a fang thrust through the mind. Then all was bleak and quiet.
She had been in the center of the song, rushing with Quiet Hunter to defend the beloved singer. Now she was snatched away, thrust back into the caverns inside herself. They were no longer jeweled and shimmering with the light of the song. As if a vaulted arch had fallen in, blocking the sun rays from above, all went dark. The shadows took possession. And shadows were where the Dreambiter prowled.
What had been a haven for her was now a threat. She fled outward, as if the rumble behind her were the sound of a cave-in. Yet the paths to the outside, once well-known, had become little-used and forgotten. Like the hunters, she, too, was trapped, and though she ran to the side of the beloved one who had fallen under the face-tail’s strike, she could not break through to him. She could only fling herself against the inward walls that would not yield to either panic or rage. And soon, close behind her, she heard the echoing growl of the Dreambiter.