He ran up the slope of steep gravel bank snd paused at the top. Behind him the curve of the river hid pursuit from the ground, but the skycutter flew clear against the grey of lower clouds gathered at the foot of the mountains. If the skycutter moved it was too slow to tell in so brief a glance. He cocked his ear, and thought he heard the chorus of disturbed birds. A flock wheeled over the forest above the unseen riverbed.
The hunt had begun. His time was up.
Running along the gravel slope he balanced at the base where the main flow curved and cut into the bottom of the bank in a boiling surge of water. He plunged in up to his chest.
The cold came as a shock that cut through his wetsuit’s barrier and flooded the gap between his skin and the neoprene. But it awoke in him the energy to press on. He strode half floating, half stepping over the river and onto the low gravel of the fork’s inside bend. The flat expanse made it easy to run and he sprinted. Over the sandy gravel he raced, to skirt the Gharumal’s trail of wide depressions. Two hand spans across and two meters between prints, the track was unmistakable. Determined that his own trail would be harder to follow, he searched for firmer ground to run on.
His fast pace had sapped his initial energy. But he pushed himself one last time, cut through the curve of the stream, to cross the river again. A straight line was faster than an easier route that traced the edge of the flowing water. He caught his breath as he splashed through the stream, then aimed for a place he had seen from the skycutter. The way to it still hidden from sight, so he angled along the crest of a gravel bed for a better view. A sudden burst of birds in flight rose in his wake called attention to his position. Over another braid of the river, then past the bend where a sandbar extended from a higher slope of forested ground. He recognized this now. Ahead would be a pile of strewn boulders like a giant had dropped a bag of marbles.
Jupiter scrambled atop the first meter high boulder, bounded between the tops again, and angled towards the forested slopes.
The boulders had probably fallen down from the hills above.
‘No way so many huge rocks could have been pushed here by the river.’
Or perhaps they had? It didn’t matter. He remember the little fold in the forest. There would be an easier way into the forest here if the boulders had been washed down the gully by a stream.
‘Have to get away from the river. The hunter-beasts will scent me.’
And fast or he would lose the head start his bravado had won from the Air Lord.
The trees now overhung the boulders. In the shade Jupiter felt cooled and refreshed, though he knew the night here would be cold and the heat felt now would be a memory once day failed.
‘If I last that long.’
Then he saw it. A tumbling brook burst from under the trees and wound amongst the boulders before sinking into the gravel of the river bed. He slid off the boulder and careful to stay in the water splashed up the stream hoping the hunter-beast did not have scent ability to rival a tracker dog. But he assumed the worst. Under the shade he strode up the river bed, and tried not to disturb the water. His feet found no mud, instead gravel and stones unbalanced his feet. The rocks that broke the surface were mossy and green, and he climbed on them only when the stream grew too deep to wade through. Impossible to see the stream from the skycutter, however the little valley formed by the changing slope of the treetops had been clear when he had studied the landscape from above. Tall young trees filled the steep-sided gully. Trees with the conical shape he knew had seen somewhere before. The leaves were gold brown to green with a thick litter of fallen branches and leaves. The understory grew sparse in the shade of the trees, but all about the stream grew ferns, and prickly…
‘Bush-lawyer.’ This stunned him enough that he stopped and stared.
The thorny plant had wicked spikes on their straggly vines, but tellingly, the underside of the leaf had a spiked vein too. The thorns blood-red as if wishing to pretend they had not cut their victims.
Bush-lawyer. A name given to a plant in New Zealand that loved to line tracks, to snag clothing and rip flesh. He guessed it might have evolved to catch hold of passing creatures to propagate along trails. Could this be the same plant? Sure looked like it. The forest was much as he remembered those back home.
Almost as if…
A mewling cry echoed from the river far behind him. Jupiter pulled at the bush-lawyer vine so several lengths trailed over the narrow flow of the stream. He searched out more as he worked his way up the ever steeper slope.
Any sound of pursuit fell away, hidden in the noise of the stream’s tumbling flow amongst the rocks. Jupiter pulled himself up between mossy stones like green cushions, and under overhanging ferns. The sound of tumbling water increased as he climbed over a rock bigger than an overstuffed sofa. He found the source of the noise. A shallow pool churned below a curling arc of white water that overtopped a towering cliff.
Jupiter skirted the pool and made for the cliff as he searched for a way up. The base of the cliff lay in a broken heap of cracked and fallen rock similar to the grey-white stones of the braided river, but sharp and angled as if newly hewn from the native rock of the mountain. Little vegetation grew there and the fall of rocks seemed recent and regular. Along this rocky trail at the base of the cliff he found himself rising higher and higher. The stone pile formed a stairway now rather than a ladder. As he rose up the face vegetation grew more vigorous and less knocked about by the rocks that fell from the cliff. At the clifftop he saw movement behind him through the trees. It might have been the tumbling of the stream, but he feared they drew close now.
Along the clifftop he found himself on a terrace cut by the stream that made the ground sodden and marshy. The terrace ended under a waterfall that fell from a sheer cliff with no way up. The cliff stopped his progress forward. Instead he took a way over the boggy terrace that led off to the left. But there the roots of old twisted trees, their multiple trunks low to the ground, seemed almost purpose-designed to slow his progress. He pressed on but knew he had taken the wrong path.
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No way I can move fast enough to get away.
The beasts cried loud now, raptors on the hunt, almost as if they already fought over his fallen carcass.
Away to the left of the damp ground he came to a ridge of firmer ground with exposed rock and could pick up speed. But the hunters drew closer. Ever closer.
He stepped then into air. But stopped himself by falling backwards and grabbing a branch of the entangling trees. A huge drop yawned before him and his head spun as he pulled himself back from the precipice.
The narrow ridge he had followed fell away to the side in a drop to the valley far below. The way forward across the edge of the terrace abutted the same high cliff that had stopped him before. A ledge led to the left past the end of the cliff above the drop. The narrow ledge angled up higher - the only way forward. The rest of the slope fell shear and steep with no handholds.
No way down there.
Without hesitation he clambered towards the ledge on hands and knees. The ridge widened a little and he scrambled to his feet, face pressed to the cliff. Away behind him, almost like a presence, the cliff dropped shear and even undercut his footing a little so the height of the fall loomed even greater.
In the distance he could see clear to the sea. Dizzied, he took a deep steadying breath to force himself to consider his options.
Ahead of him the ridge continued along the cliff face. Below lay a shear drop to a huge gravel fan that after a long fall spilled into the river far below. Vertigo gripped him, so he kept moving forward in the one direction that did not mean death. At least not them. In places the ledge, for that is what it had become, widened enough for him to shuffle along faster, but for much of the way he had to cling, face to the cliff, and pick his steps along uncertain footholds.
A cry screeched out behind. The hunt had spied him. They were three hundred meters behind, but they had not hesitated to climb the ridge. He remembered then the acrobatic agility of the manisaurs. They were an arboreal species, and he wondered then that taking to the forest had perhaps been a bad idea. Maybe they had swung through the trees and gained on him while he had to pick his way through rocks up the stream.
The hunter-beasts seemed at ease on the heights as well. Jupiter pressed on. He knew now what tracked him behind, and how the path lay ahead. Time had run out. His ledge ended a long crack at the foot of a huge cliff face a hundred meters ahead. Beyond it led ever on until it disappeared from sight amongst a knot of vegetation.
Below lay nothing but the steep shingle fan. It spilled into the river where the base of the fan had been cut by the fast flowing main stream before it gathered itself to meet the estuary.
Behind him the laughter of the manisaurs joined the raptor cries of their animals. The beasts could see and smell him now, and were hungry for the kill. Jupiter tried not to think of that fate but his hands shook now. The ledge ended just a couple of steps further on. He studied the cliff for any route up, but the manisaurs could climb anything he could with much greater ability.
There were four of the beasts on his trail. He had some satisfaction that at least one had been hurt enough to be taken from the hunt. Each beast had two manisaur handlers. And the Air Lord. He strode confident in the lead now. A long blade in his hand. The slope did not slow him. The long toed feet of the manisaurs gripped the rocks as if born to this environment. Perhaps they had.
Jupiter felt a fool. He had played their game. And lost. It had come to a literal end. From the angle of the rock layers Jupiter saw the ledge formed the interface between strata. If he could keep ahead of them the way would lead him onto the mountain tops again. With his back to the cliff he held on with both hands and watched the approach of fate. They had come to within twenty meters when they paused.
‘A good chase young human.’ The Air Lord boomed a crackling raucous cry that hinted at his true language. ‘You have entertained. Not well, but enough. Shall you die by the blade? Or be taken by the Thraqanonkra?’
Jupiter watched the handlers restrain the beasts, these Thraqanonkra. They had choker chains on their necks and this close he could see the points of the collars dig into the bare black skin. Their handlers had sticks studded with points, like a thistle. One of them now hit the beast under its chin to tame its straining eagerness to get at Jupiter.
‘Come now.’ The Air Lord flashed his blade. The long slim blade had an intricate face worked with a twisting pattern of grooves. ‘Walk onto my blade and the gods will sing of your valor.’
‘Yeah. I doubt that somehow.’ Jupiter muttered.
‘Or. If you come now, and tell me all you have withheld… you may live.’
Forward, he could escape into the mountains. And the drop from the cliff path not as scary as meeting the beasts. In its hugeness the fall became abstract, less real. The shingle fan ran the full height from the ridge all the way to the river. Had he climbed so many hundreds of meters already? His legs shook with tiredness while his heart continued its frantic beat. He brought his hand to his chest where his niho taniwha pendant lay. A secondary pulse from the jade carving warmed him. The pulse began to match the thump of his heart.
‘What will it be human?’ The Air Lord shouted above the yips and screeches of the beasts. ‘Accept defeat, aid me and live. Or die by the blade?’
Jupiter admitted this deepest of fears — death scared him — but in that moment he could accept it.
‘Human. Why delay the inevitable when your position is untenable?’
Jupiter felt alone as he never had been before. He thought now of his crew of friends who had worked with him on something bigger than any of one them. Together they had learned how to fly The Jupiter, each played their part. The crew had fought, and pulled together, and relied on one another. They had done good. He wanted to get back to them. The crew of The Jupiter had a lot more to do.
The pulse of the pendant tugged at him stronger then. He turned his head and saw.
On the shore of the estuary far in the distance, a clutch of figures. A pair of moasaurs hauled a small craft floating as the wind tugged at the tow rope.
His heart lurched, or his pounamu niho pulled at him. But he recognized now — The Jupiter and his crew. His whanau — his family were safe.
They had escaped his fate, even as he had found his end. To scurry away along the cliff face would only delay the inevitable. The wind chilled him now as if to remind him he had not prepared for the cold. Hope for him had died — he had moved a long way from everything and everyone he knew and cared for. Alone. But at least they lived.
The view for his death was not even a very pretty. Just a dull sea under a blue sky. And a grey fan of shingle that fell a long way down to the river. Even as he watched the gravel and sand shifted and flowed a little, as if alive somehow.
He remembered then a similar view in Otautahi of a gravel pit turned into a wildlife reserve. And he had…
‘You know.’ Jupiter turned to the Air Lord and called out. ‘Humans may not be so good at climbing trees, or scaling cliffs.’ He laughed then. ‘But we’re pretty good at running…’
He took a deep breath. A calmness pulsed through him from his pendant — mana from his Granbam.
‘And taking big leaps.’
Jupiter launched himself off the ledge into the air, away from the tumble of stone and the curve of the rocky ridge.
He whooped with defiance as he flew.