Chapter 86 - On the Prowl
Splitting from Taquoho’s group with a final wave, we pulled out onto the open plain. We cruised across piebald grassland and bare, rocky turf while the sun beat down overhead. Armstrong was right about one thing: It was hot without the canopy cover of the forest. Of course, we were also riding unstable internal combustion motors burning explosively enhanced kerosene.
Not having to bear multiple riders, the cliffords were easily able to keep pace with the convoy, even ranging out ahead in some cases. They’d adapted well to the dense clutter of the jungle, but this was their natural habitat and they dove through the grass stands as if they were olympic swimmers, barking their heads off and circling back for more. Wranglers rode alongside on bikes to give them some semblance of order.
We set a northeasterly course toward the rising sun, leaving a trail of dust behind us that climbed into the sky. I stood in the stirrups and leaned over the handlebars, enjoying as the terrain rushed by. This was almost as good as flying. Almost.
Speaking of flying, I spotted the flash of reflective lizard skin in the air, and Chuck pulled alongside.
“It’s a glider,” he said. “They’ve spotted something,”
“Let’s check it out,” I said. “Lead the way!"
Chuck took his bike back ahead, raising his shock spear overhead and spinning it, before pointing in the direction the glider was facing. The convoy whooped and cheered as they turned north-northeast, cutting across a small stream and bounding up the other side through a stand of scraggly trees. We rode for a couple hours, keeping the circling glider in flight as it rode thermals and pointed the way to our destination.
The eclipse came and went. As it receded, far in the distance, I could see the flash of sunlight on water. And near it, a small herd of white creatures. Pay dirt. I didn’t know what they were, but I’m sure they were delicious.
Chuck caught sight of them, too. And then the cliffords caught the scent. At the wrangler’s whistle, they broke out to the right, bounding into the grass and vanishing from sight. One of the other bikes pulled up alongside.
“Pass word to Promo, take Big Hoss Rig and the fueler and set up near the water.”
The bike dropped back to pass the word. Behind me on the trike, the goblins readied various weapons and tools, including lengths of rope with nets, slingers, tesla prods, and more than a couple premature sets of eating utensils that they had to have filched from the paladins.
Armstrong opened up the magazine on his rifle and stuffed a handful of rockettes in, but I held a hand out to him. “Hold off if you can. We want herd animals if we can get them. Herds can be driven and bred. Carcasses have to be hauled and butchered.”
“Aye, boss! Just in case, then, yeah?”
Sounded prudent. Herbivores drew carnivores, and we didn’t yet know what kinds of beasts stalked the plains. “Just in case,” I agreed.
Rufus’ bestiary had described large cats, bipedal lizards, diurnal birds at least as big as a night haunt, and some manner of burrowing predator. But most of it was folklore, rumors, or just plain fabrication. The fact was, the interior of Lanclova was inhospitable to the ‘newcomers’ as the Ifrit dubbed them. Which was fortunate for goblins, even though the powers that be had already sent agents like the javelines.
I scanned the grassland for any sign of predators, but the trike was a little too low to penetrate the tall grass stands. Still, I didn’t see any immediate threats. Behind me, one of the buggies was extending a line attached to a kite with a goblin strapped to it to get eyes in the air. That should give us vision for miles in every direction.
Unfortunately, the herd spotted the paper wings on the glider, and decided they’d had enough to drink. The creatures, maybe 30-40 strong, wheeled and started bounding in the opposite direction. All around me, engines roared as wranglers opened their throttles all the way up. Not one to be left in the dust, I did the same.
About that time, the cliffords broke out of the brush much further up, startling the herd and forcing them to shift directions. No longer running directly away, they cut an angle that would let us close the distance. The goblins on the trike chittered and whooped as we closed the distance, smacking the side of the vehicle with the butts of spears and the sides of cleavers as if to spur the iron steeds on.
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As we got closer, I was able to make out more details of our prey. They were some type of large bipedal creature with broad, twisted horns—not all that dissimilar from the shape and sweep of my trike’s handlebars. They were half again as tall as a goblin, and they had four eyes set wide, able to track us as we pursued with long arms that they used for turning by slapping the ground. They also had thick haunches, and they moved in a bounding leap that carried them probably close to five or six meters per bounce as their long, floppy tails waved in the wind like streamers.
Strange creatures. Put me in the the mind of a kangaroo crossed with an antelope. But those haunches were thick, and one of these things could probably feed 10, maybe 15 goblins for a day. My brain was vibrating too much to do the mental math, but if we got even a few of these creatures, it would be a huge boon for the village.
The creatures wheeled again, toward a grassy area where they must have hoped they could lose us. One by one, they started hopping through the wall of grass, vanishing as though they had turned into smoke. And it was true that these vehicles wouldn’t do as good in thick grass as they would on bare earth. But we weren’t helpless and we weren’t afraid to get dirty.
The bikes split up and headed in either direction, and I fell back behind a four-wheeled buggy with a wide, ceramic cutter on the front.
“Armstrong, get ‘em in line,” I said, securing a scrap of canvas over my nose and mouth.
Armstrong stood up in his station and cupped his hands. “You lot queue up! Single rank, onna double!” he shouted.
The vehicles pulled in, and then the front buggy hit the grass stand.
His cutter flayed the grass, sending clippings through the air as he carved a path ahead of himself. He necessarily slowed, and I eased off the throttle so as not to hit him from behind. The walls of grass rose on either side of it, taller even than the goblins atop the buggy who hadn’t bothered to mask up, currently spitting out and coughing up grass clippings.
One of the goblins on my trike got snagged by a scraggly branch from a tree in the grass field, and I heard his cry of EEEEeee as we kept moving, but I couldn’t afford to stop. Hopefully he would find us before nightfall.
The front truck burst out the other side of the grass stand, back onto hard turf, and opened his throttle back up. I pushed mine to the max, as well, and spotted the motorcycles on one flank, moving ahead to make sure the herd couldn’t deviate again, while the cliffords sprinted up another.
The herd itself started to tire. Their break-neck pace slowly dropped, and individual animals started to lag behind. With the motorcycles and cliffords penning them in, the main convoy gained ground. The lead buggy drew close enough that the goblins on board started throwing nets and lassos—which immediately got tangled in the buggy’s axle and caused it to spin out.
“Look out!” I shouted.
I jerked my steering to the right, aided by Girmaks, and narrowly dodged the grass-cleaving blade from making my leg remnants even shorter. Several of my passengers were not holding on especially tightly and flew off the sides of the buggy. The monocycle had been following me too close to react when I swerved, and they ramped off the front of the cleaving buggy, steel suspension acting like a springboard to launch the unfortunate, screaming pilot in his one-wheeled abomination at least fifty meters into the air. The accident caused a chain reaction behind me, as more vehicles were forced to slow or swerve to avoid wrecking against the buggy. Dust from all the wheels skidding across the ground rose up in a choking cloud that confused all four directions for a minute before the wind blew it clear.
We got it sorted, but the bulk of the herd used the distraction to build distance again. All that lagged behind were the old, the injured, and a few juveniles who couldn’t keep up with their older generations. I got us back on track and the trike began to catch up to the stragglers who fell behind the herd. Three vehicles, including the monocycle, the cleaver buggy, and one tipped over trike did not rejoin the pursuit. We’d make do.
“No ropes!” I shouted over my shoulder. I didn’t need a repeat of the buggy’s blunder. I reached down to a holster by my knees and pulled out one of the tesla prods with a snapping, buzzing wasp pinched between its tines. As we drew even with one of the exhausted creatures, I thrust out my rod and was rewarded with the snap of electricity. The creature locked up mid-hop and toppled over. the goblins on the trike cheered, and I grinned myself.
I’d never been a hunter on Earth. My old man had told me only bakers and thieves woke up early enough for that sort of thing, and he didn’t have the belly for an apron or the face for a mask. Just one of those weird things dads say, I guess. But the point is that it didn’t run in my family. Now that I was riding the plain on a trike, zapping animals into submission with my tribe. And it felt good, to both the human and goblin sides of my brains. There was something primally satisfying to it.
We pulled further ahead, and two of my gunners with reed dart guns shot another pair of wasps at another horn hopper. It bleated as the insects struck it, and it tumbled ass over teakettle with the angry bugs buzzing for freedom in its flank.
All around, vehicles veered off and chased down onesie-twosie hoppers as they broke and ran different directions. But the main herd was still making good its escape with renewed vigor.
“Armstrong, what’s our fuel look like?
Armstrong opened up the brass tank. “Gettin’ low, boss. Just below that line you scratched.”
The bulk of the herd was still ahead. But we were also getting further away from our support vehicles, and I didn’t want to spend the evening trudging back to the lake we’d passed with bladders to fill and carry back just because I got greedy.
“Alright, load up the ones we stunned. Let’s rendezvous with Promo and celebrate our first hunt with a proper fry-up.”
That got the loudest cheer of the day.