Page 17

As dawn filled the cave with the dying sun’s light, the only two humans in the tract woke. The cave entrance was still blocked by the dark bulk of the monster. Esterra sipped water and washed the mud and filth from her face. Leodin was prying a stone loose from the wall. Dark circles were clear beneath both of their eyes. Neither had slept well.

“The enskaal might be dead,”

Leodin said. “But best to be sure.”

With a grunt, he threw the stone at the great mound in the cave entrance. One of the heads snapped up and shattered the rock in its jaws. Esterra hurled a curse at it. She noted the dried blue-black edges of the burns on the creature’s body. The bleeding had stopped.

“Damn it, Leodin,”

she muttered. “It isn’t a single monster.”

“It’s a community, multiple beasts intertwined. Genius. A marvel of licht and nature. I must tell the professor.”

“Stop admiring the damned thing and start thinking of a way to kill it.”

The old man rummaged in his bag, propping his crutch against the cave wall. Esterra watched him for a moment, then took the pitchfork-crutch.

“What are you doing with that?”

he asked, a slight edge to his tone.

“I need its length. My knife is useless until I’m in close.”

“This is what happens when two cripples need to work together,”

Leodin said with a crooked smile.

“Don’t use that word. I don’t like it. Besides, you have any better plans?”

Esterra growled, glancing down at her right arm. “I’d rather not be forced to rely on this, if we can help it.”

The old man looked her over, then rummaged through his bags again.

While he didn’t display any panic, the jerky movements betrayed unease.

He pulled out a small flask, placed it on the ground, and dug deeper into the hoarded goods he carried.

A strip of cloth followed, a few tarnished brass nails, and a thick shell from some tree-nut.

Esterra watched without a word. She knew she had nothing in her pack but rope and rags, and a blunt knife or two. Nothing that could help by any stretch of the imagination.

Leodin threw the bent nails into one half of the nut, and poured in some dark grey powder from the flask.

He tied the two halves together, binding it tightly with the cloth.

He looked up at Esterra, squinting.

“Is that what I think it is?”

she asked.

“It’s going to be a gamble,” he said.

“It always is,”

she replied. “But I thought all the fire-powder had been burned or lost.”

“There are caches in the ruins, if you look deep enough. Not that I do the searching. I bought mine from the Traders’ Circle, and it cost me far too much. Also, this is the last of my powder. We only have one chance.”

“Same odds as usual,”

Esterra said.

“For you maybe,”

Leodin answered.

“When I throw the bomb, pass me the spear.

Then tuck your left shoulder under my right arm, put yours around my torso.

Stay crouched and charge with me.

Hopefully the shards of the bomb will clear three of the heads, and our spear can take the last two.”

“Stars above, that is a gamble.”

“Use your licht if you have to.

I’ll back off if you do, but I’ll be there when you need to pull it back.”

Esterra read sincerity in his eyes and nodded.

The snakes were fully awake and glaring at them, heads swaying from side to side, tongues flicking out.

With the spear ready in her left hand, she crouched under the Pitchfork’s right arm.

He touched the burning wick to the cloth on the bomb, letting it catch.

He hurled it at the base of the monster, grabbing the spear.

As the explosion blasted through the air, Esterra balanced him on his one leg, and they charged.

One of the bent nails flew past, barely missing Esterra’s face.

The shrieking snakes writhed wildly.

One of them, eyes burned out by the explosion, flashed its fangs toward them.

Esterra ducked, and Leodin rammed the spear right down its throat, slashing right through the stinking flesh and out through its neck.

He ripped the spear back.

Another head struck, venomous teeth slick in the red sunlight.

Leodin pushed Esterra aside and spun in place.

The spear’s blade slashed halfway through the top of the snake’s head. And stuck. Hissing and spraying blue blood, the dying hydra slipped off the cliff, dragging Leodin after it.

“Damn it! Old man!”

Esterra shouted.

She looked down just as the giant creature slammed into the water.

As the bloody mud splashed all over the gully floor, Esterra scanned it for the figure of the old man.

The dying snakes were thrashing wildly, spraying blue blood everywhere.

As they quieted down, Esterra spotted Leodin dragging himself toward the far side of the gully, where they had come from the night before.

He still had the spear in his hand.

Esterra laughed, and slid her way down the rocky slope.

She slipped past the dead hydra, spitting as she did so.

Leodin shot her a grin through his bandages.

Leodin rose on his crutch once again, and the pair stood side by side, looking down at their conquest.

“So tell me, Stake,”

he said, “Is this luck? Destiny? Or mere survival?”

“You’re damn lucky you survived,”

she replied.

“Each tract serves my great purpose. Even this one.”

“Perhaps you simply infuse meaning into the meaningless, in an attempt to justify the risks you take.”

“A cynical outlook, to be sure,”

Leodin said.

“Stop with the philosophy. We need to get out of here.”

The stream trickled past them as they walked onward in silence.

The vines and ferns and trees all united in a wild desire to block their every movement, it seemed.

Mosquitoes returned in droves to circle their sweaty faces, and Esterra’s temper turned foul.

She vented on the plants about her, hacking away with determination, her knife doing a remarkably good job considering its size.

But the foliage was endless, and before long she was drenched in a fresh layer of sweat and grime.

“Look,”

Leodin said.

The snakes were flitting past again, though in fewer numbers than when she the day before.

They seemed to come in waves, all travelling in the same direction.

They never took notice of the two humans, but slithered through the underbrush to the alza -way of the tract.

Esterra caught Leodin’s eye. He nodded, and they set off, following the scaled creatures.

“Curiosity never fails,”

Leodin said.

“Not curiosity,”

she replied, “We must always seek new knowledge, in order to better survive.”

“That’s a perceptive perspective,”

he said, smiling at his clever turn of phrase. Esterra spat to the side and glared at him. “Perhaps this is all to our shared purpose.”

“Shared now, is it?”

“If you would take it up. You can do so much with the opportunities you have.”

“Quit prattling and help me cut through these vines, old man.”

They hacked away, snakes slipping past all the while.

Sweat poured down their faces, Leodin’s bandages turning a dark grey.

Esterra’s arm quivered between the blows, the muscles strained and exhausted, but she chopped away, preferring the work to Leodin’s endless nonsense.

She kicked against the thick wall of vines.

It gave way and they both tumbled down into a vast bowl of roots, moss, and ferns.

The clearing was a thousand paces across, at least.

In the centre of the bowl, a great tree stood, its branches twisting and lurching out at odd angles.

Esterra gasped, eyes widening as she saw the tongues flicking out between the scaly jaws at the end of each branch.

Knotted together in a thick tangle, the bark of the tree was simply the scales of many gigantic enskaal, the same beast they had fought earlier.

Towering up to the height of fifteen men, the snakes snatched bloated insects out of the air, swallowing them whole.

At the feet of this giant enskaal lay a thousand round objects.

At first she thought them to be skulls, but one cracked open even as she watched.

Four snakes slipped out, as long as her hand.

Their eyes were still blind from birth, but within moments they had joined together into a miniature version of their mother, forming a baby enskaal.

All around the basin, snakes swirled and slithered, hissing praise and subservience at the gigantic enskaal above.

Still none of the creatures had spotted the two intruders, or if they had, they were deemed to be harmless.

Hell, they probably think we’re an easy meal , Esterra thought, to be enjoyed at their leisure .

They were still close to the forest’s edge, though.

A quick scramble and they could run for a hollow.

“We need to leave,”

she whispered.

“You want to see my purpose, the meaning of my life,”

Leodin said. “See the eggs? Thousands of these creatures are waiting to be born. They have no natural predator. There are not enough insects in this tract to feed them all.”

“What’s your damned point? Let’s go!”

“These creatures will spread. In their hunger they will brave the hollows. Cold-blooded, they will survive any climate, and make their way through each. Spreading like a cancer, till each liveable tract is their home.”

“You are mad if you think we can kill this thing.”

“You are mad if you think I won’t try.”

“Damn you, old man!”

she said, “Damn you and your lofty purpose.

Your suicide-mission might seem noble to you, but don’t think you can guilt me into it.

I am my own woman.

I serve no man, nor does any society serve me.

We are all alone in this sick corpse of a world, like maggots, squirming around to find whatever food we can eat.

There is no common good, no purpose, no stars-cursed meaning.

Sacrifice is as dead as whatever gods may have once watched over us.

Only the licht remains, and the sick mutants which haunt these tracts.

And us humans, scratching in the dirt and surviving.

Because that’s what we do, Leodin. And that’s all we can do. There are no heroes, no good guys. There is only the bare reality of survival. And that is what I plan to do. Survive.”

“And when this tract becomes too small to hold them,”

he replied.

“When these enskaal spread, and slaughter those you hold dear, such as your botanist friend, and her husband, and the bearded man from the old College, what then? Will you look back to this moment and simply say ‘I survived’? Or do you want to think you did what was right, not just for you, but for all of humanity?”

Esterra glared at him, the fear in her heart giving way to the emotion in his words. Naba. Tarr. Those I hold dear . But did she hold them so dear? Were they worth running headlong into almost certain death, like a star-damned fool?

“I hate you old man,”

she said, wiping the sweat from her forehead. “How do we do it?”

“You cut through to the core,”

he said. “Once you are inside, they cannot bite us. Your only danger then is being crushed when the entire thing collapses.”

“I can use the licht, if we need it. Stars above, I wish I had some other means to do so. We could use more of your powder right now.”

“Stick to reality. We have only the weapons at hand, and your power if need requires it.”

“So how do we survive long enough to reach the damned thing?”

She looked about at the snakes, circling the great tree in some mad dance. “Are they venomous? Are there more enskaal out there? We’re going to die, damn it all.”

“There are worse ways to go,”

Leodin replied.

“Not very many.”

“I will distract them. I have my pitchfork, and I see the hollow up there, see there, between those two great trees. I can make it.”

Esterra eyed the narrow gash in the tawil where he pointed. It was quite far, and uphill. She looked at him. He grinned his lopsided smile.

“You actually are insane. Stars above.”

“Till we meet again, Esterra Stake.”

With a nimble step, the old man rushed off into the jungle, crashing through the ferns, jumping from root to twisted root.

The snake-dance stopped, and with a terrible speed all the enskaal turned and rushed toward the sound.

The pursuit was on.

Esterra spared a moment to pity the man, and then sprinted into the clearing, spear firmly grasped in her palm.

The roots of the tree spread across the clearing.

A dozen or so of the smaller enskaal, as tall as her knee, remained in the clearing, but she managed to dodge past most of them.

A few snapped their heads at her.

She slammed her knife into the centre of one, dodged past the last one, and slipped between the writhing trunk of the giant snake tree.

Everything moved inside.

The walls and floor undulated with eerie scraping sounds that sketched horrible images in her mind.

Wood on wood, creaking and grinding against itself, a forest come alive.

The bare light that filtered through from outside painted only more horror, with bark-scaled trunks sliding and twisting in every direction.

There was strength under those scales, muscles that would crush her in an instant if the creature discovered her presence.

She gripped her knife more tightly and moved forward.

Where do I stab? she wondered.

Her blade would never breach the scales, and the slightest mistake meant her death.

Why must I always feel compelled to use the licht? It seemed that the magic called out to her in every dire situation, like a psychopathic saviour extending a bloody hand.

A hand covered in her own blood.

I am my own woman , she whispered in her mind, refusing to entertain the temptation.

I’ll kill it my own way.

The huge bulk of the walls moved in a sudden spasm, slamming into her side and throwing her to the bark-covered ground.

She lay still, gasping for breath, knife held ready, sweat seeping from every pore.

Nothing happened.

She looked up, and then saw exactly what she needed.

Hanging high above her head, suspended by multiple arteries and veins, hung a massive, mutated pulsating lump of flesh.

Four or five giant snake hearts had merged together without any regard for logic or nature.

Just as the exterior of the creature had united, so had the internal organs.

She could see other parts fused together beneath it.

The hydra was truly becoming a single entity.

With careful movements, she climbed her way up the giant curved boles inside the beast.

They moved beneath her, but her boots had good soles, and she used the base of her palm for support, fingers clutched around the grip of her blade.

Now and then the entire mass of the creature would move convulsively, which she assumed was one of the heads snatching a morsel out of the air.

She stopped in those moments, heart pounding, the hydra’s foul heart beating in mockery above her.

Finally she was perched below the beating mass.

Lodging her right arm in a cranny of scales and muscle, she slammed her curved knife deep into the beating flesh, then wrenched it sideways, leaving a bloody arc in its path.

The muscles clenched spasmodically, drawing the blade and her hand only deeper in, almost tearing it from her grasp.

She pulled back with all her weight and strength, fell, slammed into the writhing trunks within the beast.

The entire creature tense, pushing her off her perch and to the scaled floor many paces below.

She landed with a gasp of pain, her ribs shrieking in agony.

Stars, I think I broke something , she thought, immediately biting back the agony, forcing it back.

The floor buckled and she was thrown toward the sunlight. She dragged herself the last few paces as the entire world about her convulsed and shook. The insides of the hydra squirmed and thrashed, blood from the punctured heart splashing out over everything, drenching her in deepest maroon. Just as the entire body clenched into itself in a final attempt to crush the assassin, she rolled outside.

Her side ached, the muscles pulsing in feverish warning.

I have to move , she thought, rising unsteadily to her feet.

The smaller enskaal were in a wild panic, rushing into the woods, attacking one another in a frenzy.

Snakes hissed at her, but seemed more afraid than anything.

She looked up at the giant dying creature.

The long necks thrashed more slowly, heads snapping blindly at the air, tongues flicking out in vicious hisses.

Below her feet lay the alien eggs, the greenish-white sheen of their leathery skin making the bile rise in her throat.

She picked up a nearby stick and began her grim task.

A short while later she left the clearing, covered in all the filth of death.

But her white teeth, clenched in a horrible smile of pain and victory, shone through, and the snakes did not attack her as she walked, but went back into the jungle, seeking new homes after the death of their mother.

She was more animal than human in that moment, and even the predatory enskaal knew when they faced a greater hunter.

Far above, in the darkness beyond the dying roar of the crimson sun, two stars twinkled for a moment, then vanished.