Hunters and Prey, Pride and Shame

“Tracks. Fresh. Male . . . Big.” Dylan’s fingers flickered in the overhang’s shadow, whispering his find to his brother, crouched low just behind him. Both boys hugged the rock’s wall, immobile in the dusty gloom except for their bloodshot eyes and Dylan’s finger sign.

“How big?” Mael’s light touch asked.

“Big. BigBIG.” Dylan’s fingers answered.

“We wait? Find anoth – ”

“You wait. I hunt!” Dylan flashed, sliding as softly as the surrounding shadows into the searing heat and brightness of the steep-sided defile.

Mael, at eight summers the older by two years, shook his head and followed his vígnish-brained brother across the sand and boulder-strewn draw.

The sun was still a hand’s span shy of highlight yet the air shimmered while the rocks baked until their mere touch left the flesh reddened. It was no wonder the male nâzrill the two boys stalked carried a vicious temper to match its armor-like scales and poisoned tail spikes. Life in the Wastes, home to only the hardiest, most resilient, the truly most determined survivors of an existence tested with extinction each and every day, was harsh beyond measure. True. Yet home it was to the nine clans of the Aestrâgor, the People of the Promise, Dael’s people.
Dylan and Mael’s moccasined feet slipped across the soft sand without so much as a grain’s whispered movement. Children of these sorcery-blasted wastes, they wore silence for the same reason the nâzrill wore its scales – survival. Both boys carried short spears held loosely in their right hands while the long knives swinging from their belts were more akin to swords against their young bodies. It would be half a score more summers until Dylan would stand for his testing into manhood and the right to wear his clan’s tattoo – a warrior’s mark. Yet to his eager mind’s eye, the nâzrill they hunted might as well have been a Krîll legionary – a hoary, hard-bitten centurion! – and they two fearless fiana hard on his tracks, his blood soon to wash their spears with crimson glory.

The tracks led ever along the sandy floor. Around boulders, over wind-scoured bare stone, their course distaining what small shade there was for the lung-searing heat that gripped the land and made the sand shift of its own accord.

The still air itched Dylan’s nose, its flinty taste sharp against the back of his throat. There! He squinted, fighting his eye’s dryness. The nâzrill’s claws had left shallow furrows up the face of a large outcropping of weathered limestone, its flattened summit half again the boy’s height. He felt Mael halt next to him. Both followed the tell-tale tracks leading up and over the bare rock face. Dylan squatted and stretched his hand out to gauge the width of four fresh marks. It was that that save his life.

The gritty wind of its passage stung the back of Dylan’s neck even as the boney spiked ball of the nâzrill’s tail cracked against his spear’s shaft, missing both head and hand by a bare hair’s breadth. Torn from his grasp the spear spun across the defile’s width to clatter against the far wall before falling to the ground. It lay steaming with the nâzrill’s venom splattered across its upper length. Had the spikes so much as scratched across his flesh, Dylan would now be fighting excruciating pain as well as a spreading deadness of muscle and strength.

Faster than thought, Dylan dropped and rolled to his left, coming to his feet in a low crouch, his knife bared and held high. From the boulder’s top the scaled beast glared down at the two boys and hissed its rage. Its barbed tail whipped from side to side sending clouds of sand flying from its perch. Mael held his spear ready, carefully stepping to his right, away from his brother. The nâzrill growled and spit, first at one and then the other, its anger burning hot in the basilisk fury of its glare.

“Can you reach your spear?” Mael called out in a voice tight with fear and excitement.

“Useless,” Dylan answered. “Splashed with venom. I smell its stink.”

“Tease it then. I’ll use mine to gut it.”

“Why do I have to tease it?” Dylan hissed between clenched teeth.

“You’re the one lost his spear, heh.” Mael kept his eyes locked onto the armored monster’s legs, watching for it to ready itself to spring.

“Don’t miss!” Dylan took a skip forward and waved his arms.

With a spittle-misted scream the nâzrill launched through the air, its deadly tail sweeping the air beneath while razor foreclaws sought to embrace the maddening boy’s head. In its rage the spear’s leaf-shaped blade was a barely-felt sting along its soft underbelly.

“Whew,” Dylan gagged, squatting next to his brother. “The bigger they are, the more they stink.
“Ugh! Be careful will you,” he grunted and slid away from the fresh gout of viscid gore seeping from the nâzrill’s severed tail.

“I’m keeping myself clean,” Mael retorted. “Move, if you want to stay dry. This bloody thing’s as tough on the inside as it is on the outside.”

He kept sawing his knife until with a final wet snap the reptile’s spiked tail’s end rolled free in a gush of green and sanguine fluids.

“There,” he sighed, rolling the muricated bit of horn and bone to the side with his knife’s point. “You can dig the venom sac out. Tammy’ll thank us for it.”

“Aye.” Dylan grinned. “After she blisters our ears for sneakin’ off on our chores.”

Mael shot his brother a sour look. “This was your idea, brother.”

“True enough, brother.” The grin only widened. “Too bad it’s you are the eldest though. ‘Twill be your ears a bleedin’ now, won’t it?”

“Aye, you’ve a point there, you have.” Mael’s frown deepened into a resigned scowl. “Here, move back and I’ll get the goo out. Mayhap it’ll soften Ma’s anger a bit if I give it to her.

While his elder brother held his breath against the gagging stench of the nâzrill’s poison, Dylan squatted on his heels a dozen paces distant cleaning his knife in the sand, a satisfied grin stretching his lips thin. The air still seared the lungs, but the heat felt clean, free of stink.

* * * * *