Kaz jogged along behind his father, watching the broad back and the high, confident sweep of his tail. They were hunting fuergar today, but Kaz wasn’t frightened. He was with Ghazt, and nothing in the world could defeat his father.
Ahead, Ghazt froze, and Kaz did the same, letting his hands touch the ground as he prepared to move. Only little puppies, much younger than Kaz, still walked on all fours, but Ghazt had assured him that that didn’t matter. Whatever kept him alive was what he should do, and Kaz could still move most quickly when he started from all four limbs.
Something darted through the shadows ahead of them, the flicker of their torch illuminating a long golden tail. Kaz’s ears perked, and he took a deep, silent sniff, pulling in the scent of the rodent. Even without the color of its tail, he would have known it was a gold. Beneath the rank odor of its musk hung the sweet, clean smell of the bright yellow metal.
“Gold,” he whispered, and Ghazt nodded. Kaz’s heart filled with pride. Not every kobold could identify metals by scent. Ghazt said the ability came from his own father, and had been passed down to Kaz. Even Kaz’s sister, Katri, couldn’t do it.
“And only just mature,” his father murmured, reaching back to gently push Kaz forward. “Golds are smart, but soft. You can take it.”
Kaz felt his lip tremble with a whimper, though he managed to hold it back. He had only killed very young fuergar, ‘hoppers’, they were called, because they tended to jump everywhere, rather than running. Even if this gold fuergar was young, it was no hopper, and Kaz was afraid.
He reached for the little knife at his belt, but Ghazt laid his big hand over Kaz’s. “Here,” his father said, passing over his own knife, which was half Kaz’s height. He had never let Kaz touch it before, not even in practice, saying that it was too sharp and heavy for a puppy. It wasn’t though. It was awkward, but Kaz lifted it, holding it out in front of him. He could barely see it, thanks to the iron-heavy black paint his father used to cover the blade, but he almost thought it glowed a soft blue beneath that dark coating.
Ghazt caught his breath, then sighed, an oddly regretful sound, before he spoke. “That knife will be yours someday, Kaz. You might as well try it once.”
Once? Kaz tightened his grip on the hilt. It was so large that he had to use both hands, but he could do it. He would show his father that the knife was safe in Kaz’s hands, so Ghazt would let him use it again.
Creeping forward, Kaz moved silently toward the spot where the fuergar had vanished in shadow. This tunnel was a dead end, and Kaz and Ghazt had left a hunk of spoiled niu meat at the end more than an hour ago. Since then, they had stalked the dark, their torch almost completely covered, waiting for their prey. There weren’t many wild beasts left in the Deep, but fuergar managed to find their way down from the mid-levels fairly regularly, and once they built a nest, their population exploded quickly.
Ghazt remained behind, along with the torch, leaving Kaz in complete darkness, guided by his sharp senses. His ears twitched as he caught the scritch-scratch of little claws on stone, the brush of a long tail against the wall, and his nose told him he was approaching both the rotten meat and the fuergar. The sound of teeth tearing through flesh replaced the scratch of claws, and Kaz judged that he was both close enough, and the creature was distracted enough, to make it safe to attack.
He lunged forward, long blade held out before him, and felt the tip impact flesh. It slid in with a squelching sound, but the sound and resultant smell made him realize he had struck the meat, not the fuergar. Loud squeaks echoed down the tunnel as the creature turned on him, and long teeth sank into his arm. He howled, a pitifully small sound, and heard Ghazt start down the tunnel behind him.
Kaz refused to give up, though, refused to be rescued, and dropped the too-large knife, instinctively depending on his own teeth and claws. With the fuergar’s fangs in his arm, he knew where its head was, and more importantly, exactly where he needed to strike to claw at its eyes. He slashed out with his uninjured arm, and the fuergar released a shrill cry, pulling back. Unfortunately, it didn’t let go of Kaz first, and it felt like it pulled a chunk of his arm along with it.
Kaz howled again, much louder, but jumped after the creature, wrapping his arms around it and hanging on for dear life. Later, his father would tell him he was very fortunate that he didn’t place himself in a perfect position to have his throat or guts ripped out, but in that moment, he felt only triumph.
Going for the eyes again, Kaz bit down as hard as he could, feeling his teeth sink through the skin and fur of the beast. This was why gold fuergar were considered easy prey: the metal reinforcing their flesh and bones was relatively soft, and though they weren’t as easy to kill as fuergar who hadn’t received a steady diet of metal as pups, they weren’t nearly as difficult as the others. Fortunately, gold was far more common than copper or iron in the Deep, so most of the fuergar born here were golden.
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He felt something give beneath his teeth, and a vile fluid filled his mouth. He hung on, though, his back paws digging at the beast’s ribs. His claws caught against bone just as his teeth hit something hard, and he shook his head fiercely, whipping the fuergar back and forth. It squealed again, and then Ghazt was there, reaching out to snap its neck with an easy, practiced movement.
Kaz fell back, panting, and started to swipe his paw across his mouth to get rid of the foul taste, but yipped when he was reminded of his wound. Ghazt was there in an instant, wiping away the blood concealing the injury, and growled softly when he saw it. In the light of the torch, Kaz, too, was shocked at how much blood there was, and how much more was already pouring out. He felt his knees go weak, and slumped to the ground.
Ghazt whined, and woozily, Kaz wondered what could possibly have made his brave, powerful father sound so distraught. He hadn’t even sounded like that when Mother broke her leg, had only chided her for not watching where she was going and then falling in a hole like a puppy. Mother only laughed, and said that this was obviously the only way she could get her mate to take proper care of her, and the two had growled at each other playfully before Ghazt fed her stew as if her arm was broken, and not her leg.
Something clamped down hard on Kaz’s arm, and he whimpered again, a very young puppy’s cry of, “Li, li, li!” The sound was strangely familiar, not just because he heard it from the little puppies in the tribe every day, but because it reminded him of… something. Something he was supposed to remember, but couldn’t.
Then the cold ground fell away as Ghazt lifted him, cradling Kaz’s small, trembling body against his own broad, warm chest, as if Kaz was a blind newborn again. Kaz whined, long and pained, the sound echoing inside his suddenly aching head.
The torchlight fell away behind them, but then the bright, clear light of a female’s orb appeared, chasing the darkness away. Kaz tried to look around. Had Mother found them? Katri could only barely make a light, and it always clung to her hand. A few of the other females in the tribe could make lights that didn’t have to stay on them or a nearby surface, but only Mother’s was this beautiful.
“Hold on, pup,” Ghazt growled, and Kaz felt the ground passing beneath his father’s paws. Ghazt could run more quickly than anyone else in the tribe, and he was stronger and more agile as well. Mother had definitely chosen well when she took him as her mate, though she often claimed that Ghazt chose her instead, which was obviously impossible.
Time passed in a blur of stone tunnels and pain. Blackness took him, now and then, but each time, he woke again to Ghazt’s urgent voice and a rush of comforting warmth flooding him from where his side was pressed against Ghazt’s chest.
They burst out of yet another tunnel, into light like none Kaz had ever seen before. Yellow and blue combined into a white that seared his eyes after the long period he had spent in the near-darkness. Cradled as he was in his father’s arms, he was forced to stare up at the ceiling, where countless lights gleamed back at him. Yellow and blue, flaring out into a pattern of swirling shapes, they spun into blotches that hung behind his eyelids even when he tried to blink them away.
Something surrounded them; tall, green and brown columns that looked a bit like the stalks that held spore capsules on some mosses. These were far too large, however, some extending high above Ghazt’s head, thick as an adult kobold’s arm, with huge, fluffy, elongated brown and beige balls on top. Sometimes they blocked the too-bright lights, and Kaz would start to drift into painless darkness again, before a bark from Ghazt and the merciless lights brought him back.
Until the lights faded to nothing more than filtered beams, drifting through green, high, high overhead. Many smooth stalks yielded to a single one, thickly coated in some brown, ridged substance that looked like it would yield easily beneath a kobold’s sharp teeth and claws. This one was too large for even Ghazt to bite, though, extending so far to either side of them that it seemed to go on forever, though Kaz could see that it faded into the shadowed space beneath the lofty green canopy.
“Voice!” Ghazt called, his howl rising through the silence of the cavern. The echo was strangely muffled, soft and distant, and he called again and again, tone increasingly desperate.
Kaz was just falling into that cool gloom for the last time when a voice answered.
“Woodblade,” it said, creaking as if it was very old. Even Kaz’s grandmother hadn’t sounded that old before she died, and his father often claimed she was older than the mountain itself.
Ghazt gasped in relief. “Voice,” he said, and Kaz whimpered as he felt himself shifted away from Ghazt’s chest. He suddenly felt very cold, and the terrible pain in his arm returned tenfold.
“My pup. He’s dying. He fought a fuergar, and it tore through his arm. Please, save him!” Kaz was lifted high over Ghazt’s head, surrounded by shadow and dwarfed by the terrible thing that towered over them.
The answer was slow, sounding as if it was dragged out of a throat that barely remembered how to make such a sound. “If… I do… he belongs to me.”
Ghazt let out a low, pained whine. “I know the howls,” he said. “But you send them back to us, and only one in ten is called, and then only when they become adults. I would rather have nine-tenths of my son than nothing.”
A sigh, long and low, and overhead, the green moved, as if blown by a single enormous breath. “Then give him… to me.”
With a deep, hollow crack, the rough brown surface in front of them split, revealing a paler brown interior, glistening with moisture. Without hesitation, Ghazt thrust Kaz into it, laying him down on a damp surface that felt like a particularly dense mushroom. Then Ghazt’s hands let go, and the gaping hole closed around Kaz. For a moment, there was terrible pain that subsumed his entire body, dwarfing the pain of his original injury. Then it was gone, and a figure loomed over him.
“Hmm,” the figure said, picking Kaz up and rolling him between his fingers as if he were as small as a pebble. “Not bad, though it only has three colors.” Purple eyes squinted, and a finger poked at Kaz’s side. “Ah, no. A smidgen of earth, here. I suppose it’s enough to start with.”
Long fingers that seemed to bend in more places than they should dropped Kaz into a little stone bowl. He rolled around, spinning until he settled into place at the bottom. Somehow, he wasn’t frightened when he realized that he couldn’t feel his arms and legs. He didn’t feel much of anything, really, until a lid was snapped in place over the top of the bowl and heat began to rise around him.
“Let’s see what we can make out of you,” a muffled voice said, and Kaz began to burn.