"It's got Beli! It's got my little girl!"
The sounds of screaming and turmoil awoke the whole village. Tarvos threw aside his sleeping furs and ran out of his hut to see what was going on. In the darkness of the night, oil lamps hanging from poles illuminated a massive rex that had a young girl in its jaws. As he watched, the creature lifted up its head and allowed the still-living girl to slide down its throat while her father watched in horror. Then the creature turned to leave, running back the way it had come on its two massive feet.
"Don't let it get away!" Tarvos cried. If the beast made a successful escape with its meal it would be back for another, a few days or a few weeks later. They had to teach it that hunting humans was a very bad idea. He ducked back into his hut, therefore, grabbed his spear and ran out to find the other warriors doing the same thing. They glanced at each other, and then by unspoken agreement they scrambled up the dyke that surrounded the village and through the hole the creature had made in the perimeter fence. They slid down the steep bank of the moat that lay on the other side, up the other side and into the pre-dawn gloom in the direction the rex had gone.
Even in the darkness it was easy to follow its trail. A path through the wheat that surrounded the village had been beaten down by its massive three-clawed feet, as had the pleth reeds beyond, and when they reached the wild grass that covered most of the equatorial plains they saw that firebugs had been scared into flight, dancing and weaving in the air like the embers of a dying fire. The rex was fast and soon left them behind, the sound of its heavy breathing disappearing in the distance, but rexes had little stamina. The hunters knew that it would soon be forced to stop. Humans, on the other hand, could run at an easy pace for hours. The hunters didn't despair as the sounds of their quarry faded to silence, therefore. Instead they ran on with a quiet determination, their bodies soon glistening with sweat despite the chill that hung in the air.
The older warriors had hunted rexes before and knew their habits. Tarvos had spent many long evenings around a camp fire listening to their tales, and he knew as well as the rest of them that the rex would soon turn to meet its pursuers. Tarvos had only gotten a brief glimpse of it while it swallowed the girl, but that had been enough for him to see the scars of spear wounds on its leathery body. The creature had fought humans before and knew they could hurt it if it allowed them to get close. It had excellent hearing and would know it was being chased. It would choose a defensible position, therefore. A place where it had tall rocks at its back, where the humans wouldn't be able to surround it. They would have to get past its massive, clawed hands if they wanted to spear it, and if it killed enough of them the others would give up and go home. That was how it hunted, they knew. Snatch, run and defend, and it would do it again if they let it get away.
Alvaldi, the oldest and most experienced warrior, took the lead, taking them towards Gooth's Head rocks. They weren't the closest of the huge piles of rocks that dotted the grasslands, but they were more or less in the direction the rex was going. The rex was going a little to the north of the direct path, to avoid the grove of tanglebushes that would slow its passage, but the smaller humans would be able to weave their way between them and get to the rocks sooner. Some of the younger warriors were probably wondering if they could reach the rocks before the rex, but Tarvos knew that that was too much to hope for. If they were quick, though, they could get there before the rex had had too much time to rest. While it was still exhausted from its run.
The tanglebushes were a dark line on the horizon ahead of them, silhouetted against the rosy sky where the sun was getting ready to rise. They saw a gap in the bushes and Avaldi led them towards it. A moment later they were trotting between the outstretched, thorny tendrils that scratched at their bare arms and legs. The thick, leathery soles of their feet crushed dead twigs and thorns under them as they ran. Tarvos felt a prick as a particularly large thorn penetrated the ball of his big toe. He ignored it. Later that day he would ask Dione, his sister, to help him remove it, but for now he only allowed himself to think of the hunt and what was ahead, waiting for them.
The tallest parts of the tangleberries reached high over their heads, blocking their view of the horizon, but the entire eastern half of the sky was ablaze with orange and red now, making it easy to tell the direction they were going. Tarvos jumped over the skeleton of what looked like a fleethorn that had wandered in and become trapped by the thorny, tangly vines. Unable to escape, it had starved to death and decomposed, feeding the plant as its tissues rotted into the ground. Tarvos had heard of bushes that had piles of bones taller than a man and twice as wide at the centre of them. Some of them were human, if the travellers' tales were to be believed. Tarvos put away the thought that their entire hunting party might meet the same fate if they weren't careful and carried on running, following close on the heels of the man in front.
Then they reached the end of the bushes and saw the grasslands stretching ahead of them and, on the horizon, a mound of boulders that, from this angle, resembled the head of the animal after which it was named. The rex had already reached them, they saw. The creature, twice the height of a man, turned to roar at them, brandishing its long arms with their black claws, each the length of a spearhead and as sharp as broken obsidian. Then it backed away, though, until its back was to the rocks. The spiny crest that ran down its back and short, stumpy tail was raised, Tarvos saw, and engorged with blood as its body tried to shed the heat it had generated while running. Good. That meant it was tired.
Stolen story; please report.
The hunters fanned out into a long arc as they closed in, to block its escape if it tried to make a run for it. "Ready your slings," Alvaldi commanded. The hunters lay their spears on the ground and took the long strips of leather from around their necks; the weapons they always wore even while sleeping, bathing or lying with a woman. They stooped to dig stones out of the hard soil with their strong, calloused fingers and fitted them to their slings. Then they whirled the weapons around their heads while they waited for the command to attack.
"Now!' Alvaldi shouted. Twelve fist-sized lumps of rock flew through the air, all of them striking the rex with perfect accuracy. The creature bellowed with pain, bleeding where the rocks had struck, but it remained where it was. Tarvos cursed under his breath. This one was smart. It would be hard to lure out.
"Again," Alvaldi commanded. The twelve hunters dug more stones out from the hard, stubborn ground. Angrboda, the man beside Tarvos, grimaced as his nail tore. His own fault. Warriors kept them trimmed as short as possible. Blood stained his rock as he fitted it to his sling, and then all twelve warriors were whirling their weapons around their heads again.
"Now!" Alvaldi shouted. Again twelve lumps of rock pummeled the rex, and this time it lunged forward, howling its pain and hatred at the humans. Farbauti and Gridr, the two men closest to the rocks, took the opportunity to snatch up their spears and run forward, stabbing at the creature's hind quarters. The rex turned to swing its great clawed arms at them and Tarvos snatched up his own spear, as did Angrboda and Fornjot, the man on his other side. The three of them then ran forward while the beast had its back to them and thrust at its huge legs, the iron points penetrating the creature's tough hide and sinking deep.
Tarvos and Fornjot withdrew their spears and ducked back as the rex spun again to face them, but Angrboda's spear was jammed in a bone and was pulled from his hand as the beast jerked back. Stumbling forward, he fell to his knees in the thin, stunted grass and a swing from the creature's massive, clawed hands ripped his body open with a spray of blood.
The delivery of the death blow momentarily distracted the creature, though, and Farbauti and Gridr took the opportunity to move in again to stab with their spears. The creature tried to retreat to the safety of the rocks, but it was too late. It was surrounded, and the hunters stabbed again and again while the rex screamed and slashed with its claws. Whenever it lunged forward, the hunters ahead of it would retreat while those behind would close in to deliver another attack, and when it turned to drive them away those who had pulled back would close in again. The hide covering its hind quarters was thicker and tougher, it was true, but the hunters nevertheless managed to inflict one wound after another until the beast was weak with loss of blood. Eventually it was too weak to stand and it sank to its belly, its eyes wide with misery as it stared at its tormentors.
"Siamaq," said Alvaldi, standing his bloodstained spear upright on its end beside him. "It was your daughter the beast killed. You should have the honour."
"Its life for my Beli," the man agreed, stepping forward. The others stepped back to make room for him. The rex watched him approach, and one of its clawed hands moved a little as it tried to defend itself, but it no longer had the strength. Siamaq stood beside the creature's massive jaws and stabbed down into its neck. The steel point penetrated an artery and blood jetted up to splatter the man's body. The rex gave a final convulsion and died.
The other hunters drew back respectfully as Siamaq fell to his knees and wept in grief. Later, they would open the beast's stomach to recover the girl's corpse. Then Angrboda and the girl would be solemnly carried back to the village to be given an honourable funeral, burned on a pyre of matted grass while the whole tribe gathered around to console the two grieving families.
In the meantime, though, the other warriors gathered a short distance away in silent contemplation of the two lives that had been lost. The sun was fully above the horizon now, and the landscape was revealed in all its splendour; an ocean of grass waving slowly and majestically in the light breeze. On the horizon, other piles of rocks and clumps of tangleberries could be seen, silhouetted by the bright sky, and behind them was a herd of thunderbeasts, hazy with distance, their long necks and tails swaying with every slow, ponderous step they took.
Alvaldi came to stand beside Tarvos. "Remember when we shared camp with the William Tell hunters?" he said. "They told us that a rex had attacked their village a week before. They hunted it down and killed it."
Tarvos nodded, shivering. Now that they were standing still, the cold air was chilling their bodies. He wished for a cloth to wipe the sweat from his arms and bare chest. "We see a rex once a year maybe," he said. "Then two in less than a month."
He looked up into the sky. Most of the stars were gone, banished by the light of the rising sun, but one remained. Normally it was just one star among others, but over the past few weeks it had been growing steadily brighter and now it was always there, even in full daylight. With the sun on the horizon, the star was directly overhead, and those with the clearest eyesight claimed to be able to see it as a half circle with the curved half facing the sun. It was Caelus, the Bringer of Change, and its appearance always heralded a time of upheaval. A time in which everything they knew, all the familiar realities of life, would be swept away to be replaced by a world that only the grandparents were old enough to remember.
Tarvos and Avaldi stared up at it together, both of them thinking the same solemn thought. A thought that remained unspoken until Tarvos drew a deep breath and let it out in a great sigh of apprehension.
"Summer is coming," he said.
