Because you liked the character introduction I did yesterday so much (seriously! I got like three or four times the views of my other posts!) today's blog post will be a chapter preview of Warlike.
CHAPTER ONE
I told myself I
didn't need the Elder's permission or even tolerance of my plan to do
what had to be done. If we were to survive against the raptors, we
needed weapons, and despite Kava's dire warnings, weapons were what
the artefacts of old civilizations had left behind in that ancient,
terrible haunt, the Deep.
And I wouldn't let
Venya's war party have died in vain.
The setting moon had
darkened the plant-life around me by the time I approached the Deep's
craggy outskirts. I hadn't told Iva where I was going, either. Iva
wouldn't understand, the same way she hadn't understood my rage after
I tried to convince Kava that after the loss of Venya's war party we
couldn't simply stand by, but had to protect ourselves. I wondered
whether they were missing me by now. They probably did. It wasn't
like me not to come home after a patrol. Kava probably knew where I
was and Iva would suspect the same thing if she noticed I hadn't come
home yet. It made me wonder briefly who might realize where I was
headed first. Iva, who'd been my companion since I turned into a
huntress, or Kava, the Elder, who could predict a rainstorm days
ahead.
In front of me the
brush opened slightly.
I was as close as I
ever dared to come before, close enough to see the strange metal
spikes, some of them scattered on the ground and the mesh of metal
wire covering the ground like a carpet. I'd once tried to follow this
carpet to the other side, but I'd not come far. The carpet ended, was
torn, and there was no more pattern to it.
In the past, before
the year 2138, it might have stood erect, like the fences we used to
keep animals out of the village.
But what did they
want to keep out? Or in? Had the plague of raptors already been a
problem all those centuries ago, when the fence was erected (though I
couldn't imagine the thin metal mesh would have held them) or had
there been worse threats?
Beyond the fence,
the land rose slightly. Trees were growing back slowly here, where
they hadn't for centuries, and they were strangely tall, imposing,
where they stood isolated. The rest of the area was clear, giving a
good view onto the gigantic structure in the middle: the Deep.
It rose from the
ground like a massive piece of grey rock. Veins and stranglethorns
grew on and over its walls in patches, and usually, the raptors
weren't far off. I slowed down my steps, went into a crouch. I was
wearing red, of course, but the raptors weren't entirely stupid. If
they saw movement, they'd assume something living, because there was
no wind. They didn't care what it was they attacked, as long as it
was meat. Humans, great cats, water bears, meat.
I ducked past the
single standing remains of the giant fence, grown against and within
a giant's fan, and slid into the underbrush. The going was difficult
here, the brush thick, because no one had been here for a while to
clear it. The atmosphere was quiet, no raptor showing its reptilian
face. The air smelled slightly rancid, with a lingering, ancient
taste of something sharp and metallic, like blood. The closer to the
Deep you came, the stronger the smell, but it never sharpened enough
to bite your nostrils after all this time. And it had been a while.
No one of my tribe remembered what the Deep was for, or when it'd
last seen people.
Around the Deep, the
night turned cold and the red furs on my shoulders ruffled in a chill
wind. The sudden change in temperature made my my fingers stiff and I
felt for the metal tube on my back for reassurance. I couldn't have
said why I brought it, since it didn't work. Maybe there was no
reason at all, and I just liked the feel of the metal. But perhaps I
was hoping it would protect me should something happen, that it would
suddenly spring to life.
But then, when it
happened, the tube stayed as lifeless as it'd been before.
In a short time, I
was close enough to the Deep to see the scars on the surface of its
walls. The material was unfamiliar to me, a girl of the
jungle-forest. It was like stone, but grainy, and, as I later
learned, not as hard. It had the colour of stone, too, but no stone
ever was as evenly dark grey as the mass of the Deep's wall.
I approached it
carefully, making no sound on the broken leafs and twigs around it.
Here and there, debris glittered on the ground around me, like
puddles of water that should have long evaporated. The air smelled
again of the sharply metallic smell. It reminded me momentarily of
the time our elders sacrificed a lamb to appeal to the rainstorms.
I snorted inside.
It was little
consolation that they hadn't repeated that trick ever since.
I was about to turn
towards the structure to examine more closely the material the Deep's
walls were made of when the earth trembled slightly beneath my feet.
Earthquake, my brain warned. Danger. But then, before instinct could
send me to shelter, movement in the corner of my eyes caught my
attention. In the same breath I realized how quiet it was, the
constant noise of the small jungle-forest animals drowned by
something... bigger.
Raptors.
They came out of the
treeline, almost half as tall as the trees themselves. Their hides, a
green and yellow, covered in thick scales the size of a human head.
And those were the smallest of them, the foragers. The bigger ones
could reach up to the tree crowns without much difficulty. The
raptors' skins were tough as metal, reptilian, but at the same time
pliable as leather, and the only thing that could penetrate it was
metal, the kind we didn't have, and the reason we couldn't fight
them. Thin, short arms, with claws the size of half a man and
knife-sharp teeth half again the size of one of my tribesmen
threatened if you ever were caught, and getting caught happened too
often, even though my tribeswomen didn't stray far from the village
and the raptors weren't smart enough to know we were all gathered
there.
My breath stalled. I
was closer now to the raptors than I'd been before in my life, and an
absurd thought suddenly emerged in my mind. Had Ion and Tarin been as
terrified when they scouted the Deep? When they somehow managed to
kill that raptor we found, later, when we already knew they were
lost?
I pushed the thought
away almost as soon as it surfaced. Terror was useless. Terror made
you careless, made you do things you wouldn't do in your right mind.
I needed to keep my wits. I needed to ignore the fear and get out of
here.
I made myself as
small as possible and slowly slunk back into the shadow of the Deep's
wall. There was nowhere to hide except in plain sight. I couldn't
fight the raptors, not with the knife on my belt, not with the metal
cylinder strapped to my back, but they might not see me if I didn't
move. The foragers' red-rimmed, slit-pupiled eyes easily spotted
movement, but scenery, especially red, essentially made them blind.
The red of my clothing would make me melt with the wall like another
rock. The only problem then was their sense of smell. My heart
pounded rapidly, quickening my blood, producing more sweat. Blood and
sweat. The ultimate cocktail to lure a raptor, and their scent was
the second superior sense to their hearing.
I had to move if I
wanted to survive.
But I couldn't move.
Foragers were fast,
their two hind legs strong and springy. I wouldn't outrun them.
I inched a step to
the right and immediately froze as my attention was drawn to the
other side of the clearing. To the north-west, where the moon was
dying, more of the foragers, outlined against the bright, dark-red
glow of the rising sun's corona]. Trapped. Air went through my
windpipe with effort. But the wind hadn't turned to bring my smell to
either of the raptor schools yet. I could run, make it to the
boundary of the Deep, if I was quick enough, and then lose myself in
the thicket. But I didn't fool myself. I couldn't outrun the raptors
if they caught sight or scent of me and the underbrush wasn't an
obstacle for the small foragers and their sharp claws. But the wind
wouldn't hold. The night wind always turned south during the day. It
could be seen in the shape of trees around the village and around the
Deep.
Then what other
option did I have? Shaking with the night's cold as well as fear,
which I tried to no avail to suppress, I turned back toward the
Deep]. It was obvious the Deep wasn't a natural outcrop just as our
huts weren't. There'd been rumours, and even more so when Ion and
Tarin disappeared, that the Deep was a dwelling place of old. I
didn't care about the rumours and I didn't believe the Deep was
anything menacing by itself, especially not the birthplace of
raptors. I cared not to be spotted, not to end up as the raptors'
dinner.
So, instead of
trying to outrun certain death, I turned toward the Deep and started
to inch my way around its wall by the feel of my clam palm against
the concrete.
Where there was a
man-made structure, there had to be an entrance. And that was my only
chance to survive.
