Peter awoke to the snorting of the mounts. The beasts rested heads on the ground all around him as he lay amongst sweet smelling hay.He felt like an incubated egg as the musky scent of the creatures hung heavy on the air. Heat radiated from their huge bodies and he still felt dulled by exhaustion from the escape from captivity. The fight and flight when chased by blackbirders seemed long ago now. The events that had thrust him amongst the warrior clan and surrounded by a hunting pack of huge beasts remained a whirl.
Eoth happened years ago. And I never got used to that.
He sat up on the compressed hay and dusted himself off. High above him loomed a rock overhang lit by a bright day’s sun that set everything aglow with its warmth. But that came from the beasts because he could feel the chill of the winter air as it twisted its way between the flanks of the beasts.
The nearest beast opened her eyes. Peter reached out his hand and touched her flank. The sweep of his palm against the fur-feathers brought a tingling sensation as the soft fibers bounced free and caught the light. A multitude of colors shimmered before the refraction settled on blue green and black. Her affection for him pulsed within in him.
‘So. I get it,’ Peter said. ‘I do get it… You like me. But why?’
He did not expect a response, but the huge creature rose then. Always though, her head remained stationary even as her body bulked higher. Her eyes fixed on his until her posture matched that of a submissive bow. Peter scrambled to his feet and she rotated her head on her neck until it turned almost upside down.
Peter saw the emotion implicit in her action and grinned. ‘Okay. No need to question why. It just is.’
The beast raised her head and Peter stepped back. The strength in raising her car sized head so high, so fast, and so nimbly struck him with awe. She opened her mouth and rumbled her purr-like warble, then lowered her head to the ground. Peter stepped onto her muzzle and walked onto her head to the saddle webbing.
‘Oh. Sorry. I should have taken that off last night. Or this morning.’
The other beasts did not have the saddle piece on. Their riders had taken the time to care for their charges.
‘I didn’t know.’
He sat on the saddle but no reins rest ready for his use. She had been tied to a tether wrapped around a huge vertical stone set into the ground. His mount tilted her shoulder, he swung his leg over and slid down her outstretched foreleg as if on a playground slide and landed light on his feet. He slipped the tether from the stone and walked up her muzzle again even as she lifted her head. He slipped into the webbing and before he knew it they had begun to move from under the rock overhang into the bright of the day.
It must be tunlanvarqa.
Peter rocked back and forth on the bunching, stretching muscles of his mount and shaded his eyes from the glare of the sun. He had bundled his felt clothing around himself and yet the cold air snuck in.
How else could I manage to ride like this?
Tulanvarqa had enabled him to talk to manisaurs, and speak the Thaluk language of the humans of Eoth, learning it in weeks. He still remembered the poems and songs years later.
Other languages still mess with me. I’ve tried that and failed.
Tulanvarqa, connexion. He and Maggie had eaten the manta egg things and been given knowledge. He had long scoffed when the comparison of eating an apple from a tree in paradise had occurred to him years later. He remembered his year living with his uncle Jeff, and the lost opportunity to eat the fallen apples from the trees at the bottom of the garden.
Now the magic of tulanvarqa amazed him all over again. He and Maggie had been able to talk with Breeze, in his limited fashion. And somehow the mantas had communed with them, and especially Moby. Maggie had told him of how a queen manta had pulled her through the skies of Eoth on a mission to find Gan and the rest of the rebels. How she had brought them to attack the blackbirders even as he had rescued captured ones from the hold of that terrible skyship.
‘This is real. It’s happening like it did before. I have to accept it.’
His mount rose on two legs and gave a hoot which he took as agreement.
‘So girl. What’s your name?’
Then he realized where he stood. Back in the plaza where he had been denounced a witch and shaman. People stared at him now and he saw a group of mounts and riders had gathered around the central dais.
‘You knew this?’ Peter said to his mount. ‘And woke me? Whose in control of who?’ Somehow he realized again that it did not matter.
‘Rock. Who called you to counsel?’ said Thorn.
‘I can’t really say,’ said Peter.
‘You are here now,’ Thorn said. ‘Join us.’
A murmur of disagreement rumbled through the assembled riders. Their mounts though all bowed their heads low as Peter’s nosed in amongst them to take a place in the circle.
Sarah sat on her mount, it’s green flanks shimmered in the sun as it raised its head to regard him with the same animosity as its rider. Sarah’s red hair had been pulled back from her face with a severe tightness across her head. But the rich thick curls billowed from beneath her hair band. Her cheek bones and rounded forehead sprinkled with freckles brought back to him the young girl he had known sailing Tango.
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Her frown deepened in response to his smile of recognition, and her mount snorted and thumped the ground with a foreleg.
‘We have little choice,’ Thorn continued. He had been speaking for sometime but Peter had been distracted. ‘We must cull more of our grazing animals for food, and then move to fresher land where we may find forage under the snow. The winter thaw will not come for some weeks, and the blush of new growth not for weeks after.’
‘We can not go on like this,’ said another rider, a tall slim man with a mane of long gray hair. ‘We must eat more than flesh and dried grass and bark.’
‘I don’t know about you, Beech,’ said Vale. ‘But I leave the grass and bark to the grazing animals.’ That raised a chuckle.
‘You know what I mean,’ said Beech, his gray shook once as he dismissed the joke.
‘It will get us through what remains of winter,’ said Thorn.
‘But we can not return to our lands,’ said Beech. ‘The alien creatures squat there. Destroy our sacred places. And more come every month.’
‘The attack had some success,’ said Thorn.
‘But that great flying thing, said a young rider with a shock of black hair, and a beard to match. ‘It came in the night when we ran from the forest. That is something new and dire.’
‘It is indeed.’ Thorn sighed. ‘I believe we must deal with the Water people.’
‘No,’ said Sarah.
‘You would put yourself before others?’ said Beech.
‘Their terms are too much,’ said Sarah. ‘You must see that.’
‘We will talk on this later, daughter,’ said Thorn.
Peter stared between the two. He knew for sure that Sarah could not be Thorn’s daughter. But then he did not know how she had come to be amongst these people.
‘Sarah is Thorn’s daughter.’ Peter said under his breath. As he shook his head in confusion the movement drew Sarah’s gaze to him. He saw in her eyes a look that went through him and beyond. To a distant past before she had come to this planet. A sense of loss and regret. A yearning that could not be fulfilled.
Did I just sense her thoughts?
Sarah noticed then where she had looked and her gaze shifted back to her scowling frown. Peter nodded grimly in reply. He knew what loss felt like. The impossibility of getting back what once he had held close.
Sarah’s frown softened as she turned away.
‘We will ride to them in the morning,’ Thorn said.
‘Enough of this talk,’ said Beech. ‘We must bring in the grazing animals and the day draws late.’
Beech and Vale drew off a group of riders and without thought Peter’s mount joined them. Beech shook his head.
‘You shall not come.’
Peter smiled. ‘I wish to help those who helped me and mine so much.’ The Thaluk came naturally to him but also a word or two of these snow people whispered to him. ‘I repay my debts.’
Beech stared at him.
‘Oh let him come,’ said Vale. ‘His mount knows the work.’
At that his mount reared on hind legs and ran with the pack as they headed away from the camp under the rock into the white lands of the plain next to a great braided river.
They rode at a speed beside the river. The snow lay less thick near the water though ice rimmed the edge of the stream. A a large rounded rock Vale swung his mount away from the river to follow an iced up tributary to the great river.
Under the snow mounds rippled the surface as if the blanketing snow covered low trees and bushes. Still Vale led them on. Now and then they would pass a series of sticks that extended out of the plain of snow and it seemed they followed a depression that cut across the plain. The trampled snow of a path. It wound higher until they entered a sparse expanse of trees that had been reduced to sticks, where the ground had been churned by animals.
‘Ho there Storm.’ Vale called out even as his mount rumbled then gave a deep call that rose in pitch that sounded a lot like a owl, but equally unlike anything Peter had heard. The rest of the pack of mounts echoed the call but softer and less insistent.
Away in the distance Peter saw a herd of animals. The pack wheeled to close the distance but at a slower pace. As they got nearer peter recognized the fat beasts that walked on two legs. Herbivores that dug in the snow with their feet as they waved their short arms for balance. Not moasaurs but if he had not seen those beasts on Eoth these creatures would match the name just as well. Like ostriches but with thick gray fur-feather dusted with snow. The arms had something like a hand on them but with a long finger that seemed useless until he saw one grooming with it.
A mount ran up on two legs then dropped to all fours as it approached Vale and Beech. It stretched its neck low as the small woman on the saddle webbing ducked her head in greeting.
‘Well met Vale. And you Forest, Beech, Stream, Ember, and a new one.’
Peter looked around the pack. He had not known their names but each now seemed to fit them.
‘I am Rock,’ Peter said. ‘New from Earth.’
‘Well this is a turn around,’ said the small woman. ‘And yet you ride on U’Fern. What has become of her then? Where is Fern?’
‘I’m sorry Bloom,’ said Vale. ‘Fern fell in the raid on the Alien’s camp. This is Peter Rock. This mount has a new name.’
The woman sent him a look that confirmed that she had been well named, but then she smiled. ‘Well met Peter Rock. It is rare that a mount takes a new name. If U’Rock chooses to serve you as she did Fern then you are worthy.’
Storm nodded to Vale and something passed between them that Peter did not understand.
‘The day wears on,’ said Beech. ‘Get to work.’
The pack split up and ran left and right of the herd.
Storm signaled for Peter to draw near.
‘You are from Earth, and yet you ride. You are not of our people and yet you speak. How is this?’
‘I don’t know. But I wish to find out. What must I do to help you now?’
‘Follow me,’ said Storm. She led Peter and his mount U’Rock away to the right. ‘There are some stragglers to draw back to the herd. I sent young Cloud ahead while I awaited you to join us. But she has not returned. Come with me. Show me how you and U’Rock can hunt.’
The old woman settled lower amongst the saddle webbing as her mount bounded forward on two legs. Peter’s mount set off in pursuit snorting from the snow sent into the air in the wake of Storm’s mount who could only be seen from the trailing tail that whipped the air to balance its wild flight.
This old woman is definitely well named.
They crested a low snow covered bank where a faint trail wound between wind blown bushes. On the other side Storm had pulled up to a halt.
As Peter joined her he gasped.
The snow ran red with blood. Rippled with slashes of a color alien to the winter whiteness. Drops of crimson had frozen, then rolled across to snow to create berry-red beads as if the fruit of spring had come early. And amongst the red lay the broken bodies of the fat grazing beasts.
And one mount.
Peter and Storm’s beasts ran to the mount which had fallen prone on the ground as if asking to be forgiven.
Then he and Storm were next to the beast looking for its rider. They found her. Broken and twisted as she hugged her mount as if for protection.
Then he and Storm were next to the beast looking for its rider. They found her. Broken and twisted as she hugged her mount as if for protection.
Peter felt the heat from the great mount’s body as Storm turned away to face him.
‘This has just happened,’ she said. ‘Whoever did this… they’re close by.’
Peter had never seen a dead person before. He sat down and sucked the cold air but he could not slow his panic.
‘Who would do this?’ said Storm. 'How can anything cut and punch and turn all flesh to this?’
Peter's mount nosed him and he turned to her as she stretched her head out low to the ground. ‘Blackbirders,' he said then swung up onto his mount. ‘The others. We have to warn the others.’
He and Storm ran their beasts hard and fast but Peter knew it could never be quick enough if the Blackbirders had a skyship to carry them.