"Amma?"

"Baba!"

"Amma!"

"Ammaaaaa!"

The plaintive screams of a scared boy echoed through the silent apartment building, though no one was there to answer.

The ravens watched curiously through the open window, from their perch on the building across. In the thin light of dawn, the city was still and unnaturally silent. In the distance you could hear the whining of a car alarm somewhere.

Eventually, there was just the sound of a child sobbing.

...

Sabar jerked awake. For a second he didn't know where he was, before he came back to himself.

It'd been a slow climb up the cliff, a small eternity, clawing his way up the gnarly rock face. He was near his limit by the time he dragged himself up and over the edge, his fingers raw and bleeding. After laying there, panting, eyes closed, he'd picked himself up and stumbled into the church.

Three days had passed since then, and he was still here, camped out in the little bell tower.

The first reason for this was the well in the church courtyard.

It was the first thing he'd seen, when he cautiously crept past the slumped walls. Lowering down the old rusted bucket by the frayed rope tied to it brought him several buckets of mud and eventually water. The water seemed clean by the fourth bucket - cool, clear and just faintly bitter.

The second reason Sabar stayed was the arrival of the red riders.

...

Sabar was not a very adept hunter. But after the first night he slept, curled up, still naked, still cold, huddled against a wall in the church, he woke hungry. It was time to look for food.At first he ventured cautiously out from the church. After hours of creeping through moors surrounding him, and seeing nothing but scrub and the strange deer-like things, he relaxed a little. He contemplated stripping wood for a spear from the lone scraggly trees that broke up the landscape, before settling on a less ambitious scheme.

He'd noticed the beasts were still very curious, if cautious, about him. They no longer startled when they saw him. As long as they could watch him from a distance, they'd try. So he lured them near from his perch atop the belltower, with some friendly banter..

"Hello my dears", They perked up at the sound of his voice.

"Dears, get it? because you're deer?", They slowly approached, closer, seemingly fascinated by his humor.

"I'm quite hilarious when I get going", he prattled on, and the deer couldn't seem to get enough. One hopped over the rotted fence by the bottom of belltower to get closer.

It looked straight up, staring, seemingly enthralled.

Then he dropped a rock on its head.

When the other deer, instead of bolting, hesitantly crept closer and began to gnaw at their dead brethren’s remains, it occurred to Sabar that they might not be herbivorous. And that they might have been cautiously stalking him the whole time.

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Still, a few more stones dislodged and flung down scared them away, and he’d successfully hunted his first prey.

Sabar was no butcher, and carving the meat was grisly work. He broken rocks against the stony cliffs edge fashion a rough stone knife. Some driftwood from the beach made a small fire in the bell tower. A few more pieces of driftwood made a little three legged makeshift smoker. He had what he hoped were choice cuts curing above his little campfire.

He’d tried his hand at skinning the thing, biting back his bile. Washing and gently scraping the skin became progressively easier as he grew used to smell of blood again. Then he laid the furs over his smoker to try and cure. He vaguely felt like getting the moisture out should keep things from spoiling.

...

The second day he spent fashioning something like clothing. The pelt he'd made a rough job of cleaning seemed to have lost most of its carrion stench. Strips of skin, that he'd boiled and drawn out before drying, made a makeshift leather string.

Roughly punched holes with his stone-shard hole-punch, a long few hours of painful fiddly work and Sabar had a very rough set of coverings.It wasn't much more than a long loincloth tied haphazard round his waits and furs to drape over his shoulders.. but for a moment Sabar felt a little more human.

Sabar made a few more forays from the church. He always returned to belltower to rest. He'd originally planned to make camp in the courtyard, but the strange carnivorous blue grey deer that had seemed almost charming, now unnerved him.

They didn’t attack him, whenever they would spot him, they would just watch him, with their strange alien lit up eyes, gently creeping closer and closer, until he backed away and ran back up to his little camp in the bell tower. When he'd examined the one he'd killed - he'd found sharp canine teeth, like a wolf's, instead of the flat incisors of a deer.

Sabar had to remind himself he knew very little about this place.

...

On the third day, he first spotted the riders. Completely by luck, his fire was out when he did.

There were four of them.

They were tall wiry figures, the riders. Their skin a dull red mottled with black. Their hair was braided down their backs, and they were bare down to their waists, with deerskin pants below. They rode on horned beasts that looked a cross between bisons and cart horses. They were more than half larger than any horse he'd seen, with shaggy brown coats and small curved horns.

Sabar crouched behind the belltower wall and waited, cursing, not knowing what to expect. The riders must have seen his smoky campfire. It must have almost been a beacon, a smoky fire shining from the top of the belltower. Sabar muttered a steady stream of curses under his breath as a kind of prayer.

He was almost tempted to greet them.. it had been days since he'd had anyone to talk to other than the eerie greydeer.. but..

"Move quietly in that place.. everything and everyone there will try and kill you"

They rode past the tower and stopped. As Sabar crouched below the low wall, he could hear the heavy pounding of their hoofbeats. He didn't peer over the wall to see them, so he stayed where he was, waiting.

They exchanged words in a strange tongue that was foreign to his ears. But somehow he could understand what they were saying

"Janu noari, noari rey"

They knew he was up here, there were traces of him all over the church. For a reason he couldn't make out - they seemed reluctant to enter the church.

"Asfa ro! hanei, hanei.. isa fahun hun"

The leader, with a thick low voice, was urging his men to go in anddrag him out. But the other two seemed less than excited at the prospect of crossing the threshold if the church. There was some quibbling.

"..."

"Arasi ho na! Nadir!"

They were shouting at him now, to come out. They sounded impatient. It was strange, he didn't understand or recognize a word they said, but somehow he knew what they were saying. Sabar stayed where he was, since he couldn't think of anything better to do.

Then there was a sudden tinkle of shattering glass and a rush of heat. Sabar realized they must have thrown something, something that gave a burst of hot flame when it hit the side of the belltower.

"Nadir! Arasi ho na! Arasi!"

Ah, so, they were offering to set the place on fire with him if he didn't descend. Shit. He didn't know what they'd planned to do with him, but this did not seem like a nice way to go.

Sabar slowly stood up, raising both his hands high in a universal sign of surrender, letting them see him over the belltower wall.

"Allright! Allright - I'm coming down"

"Haye, Arasi"

They were still sitting atop their bison, as he carefully stepped out church, trying to project as much harmlessness as he could.

Which is when he heard a new voice speak up from behind him

"He's with me"