‘Tonight, If you come to take one of us, take me. I am the eldest. I bear no more children. I am useless.’ She hunched down then, discarding her spear, and sank into the grasses, where she rolled on to her back, exposing her throat.
They were mad, Gruntle decided. Driven insane by the terrors of the jungle, where they were strangers, lost, seeking some distant coastline. And as they jour shy;neyed, every night delivered horror.
But this was a dream. From some ancient time. And even if he sought to guide them to the shore they sought, he would awaken long before that journey was completed. Awaken, and so abandon them to their fates. And what if he grew hungry in this next moment? What if his instinct exploded within him, launch shy;ing him at this hapless female, closing his jaws on her throat?
Was this where the notion of human sacrifice came from? When nature eyed them avid with hunger? When they had naught but sharpened sticks and a smoul shy;dering fire to protect them?
He would not kill them this night.
He would find something else to kill. Gruntle set off, into the jungle. A thou shy;sand scents filled him, a thousand muted noises whispered in the deep shadows. He carried his massive weight effortlessly, silent as he padded forward. Beneath the canopy the world was dusk and so it would ever remain, yet he saw every shy;thing, the flit of a green-winged mantis, the scuttle of woodlice in the humus, the gliding escape of a millipede. He slipped across the path of deer, saw where they had fed on dark-leaved shoots. He passed a rotted log that had been torn apart and pushed aside, the ground beneath ravaged by the questing snouts of boar.
Some time later, with night descending, he found the spoor he had been seek shy;ing. Acrid, pungent, both familiar and strange. It was sporadic, proof that the crea shy;ture that left it was cautious, taking to the trees in its moments of rest.
A female.
He slowed his pace as he tracked the beast. All light was gone now, every colour shifted into hues of grey. If she discovered him she would flee. But then, the only beast that wouldn’t was the elephant, and he had no interest in hunting that wise leviathan with its foul sense of humour.
Edging forward, one soft step at a time, he came upon the place where she had made a kill. A wapiti, its panic a bitter breath in the air. The humus scuffed by its tiny hoofs, a smear of blood on curled black leaves. Halting, settling down, Gruntle lifted his gaze.
And found her. She had drawn her prey up on to a thick branch from which lianas depended in a cascade of night blossoms. The wapiti — or what remained of it — was draped across the bole, and she was lying along the branch’s length, lam shy;bent eyes fixed upon Gruntle.
This leopard was well suited to hunting at night — her coat was black on black, the spots barely discernible.
She regarded him without fear, and this gave Gruntle pause.
A voice then murmured in his skull, sweet and dark. ‘Go on your way, Lord. There is not enough to share. . even if I so desired, which of course I do not.’
‘I have come for you,’ Gruntle replied.
Her eyes widened and he saw muscles coiling along her shoulders. ‘Do all beasts know riders, then?’
For a moment Gruntle did not comprehend her question, and then under shy;standing arrived with sudden heat, sudden interest. ‘Has your soul travelled far, my lady?’
‘Through time. Through unknown distances. This is where my dreams take me every night. Ever hunting, ever tasting blood, ever shying from the path of the likes of you, Lord.’
‘I am summoned by prayer,’ Gruntle said, knowing even as he said it that it was the truth, that the half-human creatures he had left behind did indeed call upon him, as if to invite the killer answered some innate refusal of random chance. He was summoned to kill, he realized, to give proof to the notion of fate.
‘Curious idea, Lord.’
‘Spare them, Lady.’
‘Who?’
‘You know of whom I speak. In this time, there is but one creature that can voice prayers.’
He sensed wry amusement. ‘You are wrong in that. Although the others have no interest in imagining beasts as gods and goddesses.’
‘Others?’
‘Many nights away from this place, there are mountains, and in them can be found fastnesses where dwell the K’Chain Che’Malle. There is a vast river that runs to a warm ocean, and on its banks can be found the pit-cities of the Forkrul Assail. There are solitary towers where lone Jaghut live, waiting to die. There are the villages of the Tartheno Toblakai and their tundra-dwelling cousins, the Neph Trell.’
‘You know this world far better than I do, Lady.’
‘Do you still intend to kill me?’
‘Will you cease hunting the half-humans?’
‘As you like, but you must know, there are times when this beast has no rider. There are times too, I suspect, when the beast you now ride also hunts alone.’
‘I understand.’
She rose from her languid perch, and made her way down the trunk of the tree head first, landing lightly on the soft forest floor. ‘Why are they so important to you?’
‘I do not know. Perhaps I pity them.’
‘For our kind, Lord, there is no room for pity.’
‘I disagree. It is what we can give when we ride the souls of these beasts. Hood knows, it’s all we can give.’
‘Hood?’
‘The God of Death.’
‘You come from a strange world, I think.’
Now this was startling. Gruntle was silent for a long moment, and then he asked, ‘Where are you from, Lady?’
‘A city called New Morn.’
‘I know of a ruin named Morn.’
‘My city is no ruin.’
‘Perhaps you exist in a time before the coming of Hood.’
‘Perhaps.’ She stretched, the glow of her eyes thinning to slits. ‘I am leaving soon, Lord. If you are here when I do, the beast that remains will not take kindly to your presence.’
‘Oh? And would she be so foolish as to attack me?’
‘And die? No. But I would not curse her with terror.’
‘Ah, is that pity, then?’
‘No, it is love.’
Yes, he could see how one could come to love such magnificent animals, and find the riding of their souls a most precious gift. ‘I will go now, Lady. Do you think we will meet again?’
‘It does seem we share the night, Lord.’
She slipped away, and even Gruntle’s extraordinary vision failed him from tracking her beyond a few strides. He swung about and padded off in the opposite direction. Yes, he could feel his own grip here weakening, and soon he would re shy;turn to his own world. That pallid, stale existence, where he lived as if half blind, half deaf, deadened and clumsy.
He allowed himself a deep cough of anger, silencing the unseen denizens on all sides.
Until some brave monkey, high overhead, flung a stick at him. The thump as it struck the ground near his left hind leg made him start and shy away.
From the darkness overhead he heard chittering laughter.
The storm of chaos cavorted into his vision, consuming half the sky with a swirling madness of lead, grainy black and blazing tendrils of argent. He could see the gust front tearing the ground up in a frenzied wall of dust, rocks and dirt, growing ever closer.