Announcement
Continuing the serial release of The Plainsrunner under a Creative Commons license – Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike (CC-BY-SA).
Please let me know in the comments whether you’re enjoying this. It will help me to decide whether to do it again.
rjb
Chapter Eleven – The Savage
Sage found a suitable piece of wood on the second day. She started the first day in a hurry. She wanted to get the spear fixed and be on her way. By noon, though, and having traveled more than a kilometer in each direction from her campsite, she got over it. No longer in a hurry, she settled into a methodical search for just the right piece. She couldn’t compromise on this. Her spear would be the difference between life and death. It had already shown that and she was sure it would do so many more times before she reached the city. So when she found the piece she wanted by noon of the second day, she added it to the ones she already had, and she continued searching for the rest of the day.
She had seven pieces to choose from. She peeled the bark off of them and set them up by the fire to dry. Five of them either twisted, bowed or cracked almost right away. That left the one she favored and one other, so she left them both to dry for another day. The other one developed a very slight bow, while her favorite stayed almost perfectly straight. She started working on the good one right away, and left the second one to dry some more. By the time she had the good one ready for mounting, she had decided to keep the second one as a spare. If she broke her spear again she could repair it right away instead of having to waste two days on it. She nodded and set about removing the blade from the broken spear.
Standing back at a comfortable distance from the carcass, holding her new spear in her left hand, Sage looked at the remains of the big flier. After several days of noise and activity, during which time nothing bothered her at her campsite, things had calmed down out here. She decided it was time to come out and look.
The site covered a larger area than she’d imagined. It was now a trampled and torn area more than fifty meters across, littered with the scattered bones of the flier. It also smelled of putrefaction and feces. Wrinkling her nose, she walked around assessing the damage. All that remained were the indigestible bits. There was the skull, stripped of meat but still with the great beak attached. She saw some shreds of skin, the small scales still glimmering dully in the morning light. There was one of the feet, its deadly talons looking sadly ineffectual.
That gave her an idea. She searched the whole area, and when she headed back to camp she was carrying the skull and all four forelimbs.
She stayed in camp for a few more days, working. While she worked she talked to her glider. Her hands were busy so she wasn’t often touching it as she talked, but she imagined that she could hear it vibrating in response. She was able to look at it while her hands did their work automatically. She looked at the pointed wedge, just over a meter long, with its rounded bottom and flat top. Its metallic-looking surface was unmarked. It didn’t even seem to get dirty. On its flat top was the three-lobed design. By now she was getting used to it, but she still really wanted to know what the symbol meant. Actually, she really wanted to know about the whole thing. What the design stood for. Where the glider had come from, what it was, and why it was here.
“You’re not going to tell me, are you?” she said, while she slowly drilled a hole in one of the flier’s talons. She had removed the talons from their limbs, and the beak from the skull. After retrieving the tendons that remained attached to the talons, she threw the bones into the river. “Might as well let the swimmers have some,” she said.
After washing the slippery grease off her hands, and thoroughly cleaning the beak and talons, she got to work. “You won’t tell me,” she said to her companion, the glider, “so I’m going to have to find out for myself.” She laughed. “Right,” she said, “all I need to do is find someone to ask.” She lifted her head and looked around, then laughed again.
“Okay,” she said to it, “so I have to figure it out without any help.” She drilled silently for a while, then looked at it and said, “So, what do I know so far?”
She thought for a while longer, then said, “I know that you came down out of the sky. And you must have started from somewhere really high.” She finished drilling the hole in the talon she was working on, blew on it and looked closely at it before putting it aside and picking up the next one. “And I know that you got me banished from my village, and that’s why I’m out here killing day fliers on my way to the city.” She stopped talking and had to swallow a few times before she could continue. “And it all has something to do with the old legends.”
She thought about that. According to the legends, long ago, too long to seem real, death and destruction had fallen on the land, and on the people. Most of the people had been killed, and their grand civilization utterly destroyed. It had been so grand that it sounded magical. Huge, shining cities with towers reaching for the sky. Huge machines flying through the sky, higher than any flier ever flew. There were even stories of leaving this world and flying to other worlds that shone like stars in the night sky.
When that was all destroyed and most of those grand people were killed, it was taken as a sign to the others that they should give up their prideful ways. They were struck down for their hubris. For thinking they were greater than they were. So they must turn their backs on such vanity and try to live in quiet humility. It was said that, for a long time, they had even hidden themselves underground. They were too ashamed, or too afraid, to put themselves on display upon the land. They returned to simpler ways, not using any of the fancier tools and methods that got them in trouble in the first place. Most especially, they swore that they would never again use that most dangerous of vanities: radio.
“Whatever that is,” she said to her glider. “Do you know what radio is?” When it didn’t answer, she said, “I didn’t think so. No one does. All anyone knows is that we’re not supposed to use it.” She stopped drilling and flexed a cramp out of her hand. “So, how are we supposed to not use something if we don’t know what it is?”
She put down her work and fed the fire, then walked around her encampment, checking the integrity of the barrier and looking for intruders. Coming back to the fire, she picked up a piece of fish left over from dinner. She chewed slowly and swallowed. “So we were once a grand people, with great deeds and accomplishments. Maybe we could even have made something as mysterious and …” She put her hand on the glider, stroking its smooth, unblemished surface. She thought about the wonder of making this strange metal, so light and yet so strong. “Maybe even something as mysterious and perfect as you.”
She felt a thrill of fear at the audacity. Perfection? Was it not such pride that brought them down before? Did she risk retribution for even thinking that way? She shook her head and laughed at herself, but it wasn’t a comfortable laugh. She wasn’t going to allow herself to be ruled by superstition, but she wasn’t entirely free of it either. She’d been brought up with the stories, and had their messages planted deep inside her. It wasn’t easy to completely discount them, even when she was at her most rational.
She patted the glider. “So,” she said, “at one time we may have been able to make something like you. And we supposedly could have flown you up high and dropped you.” She felt it vibrate, and asked, “Is that a yes?” She laughed out loud. “So, does that mean that some of us, somewhere, are doing it again?” She had a chill. “Maybe even in the city we’re heading for?” Then she had a colder chill. “Or were you made by the same … thing … that destroyed us before? It’s supposed to have come from the sky, too.” She had to fight down a powerful surge of fear. The urge was strong to get rid of this thing before anything bad happened. She was able to subdue her fear. “Nothing bad has happened yet,” she said. “Well, other than banishment, of course. But that’s just me. Nothing bad has happened to the people, has it?”
She immediately knew what was wrong with that. “Of course, they did banish me and get rid of you, so maybe they just saved themselves.” She had another surge of fear, which she suppressed. “Anyway, whichever place you came from – us or our nemesis – the elders had a reason to fear you. Either we were getting beyond ourselves again and risking punishment, or the actual punishment was back.” The glider’s vibrations did nothing to reassure her. She had one more terrible thought. What if this was all part of a plan? What if she was supposed to take this artifact to the city for some reason? What if she was the ignorant carrier of an instrument of destruction?
Sage spent another day there, finishing her work with the flier’s beak and talons. By that time the flier’s carcass was almost gone, with nothing remaining to interest anything larger than the smallest of animals. This meant that the day runners and night stalkers were coming around and showing more interest in her again. So, with her work done, she packed up and left.
Walking again in the sunshine, she rattled her spear and did one of her regular scans of the sky and the grass. The spear rattled because it had eight of the smaller talons attached to it. She liked the sound of it. She liked the way it looked. Mostly she liked what it stood for. The flier had tried to kill her, but she killed it instead. The flier had broken her spear, but now she had a new one and it was decorated with the flier’s talons. She adorned it with the symbols of the flier’s power, and she carried it as a warning to any other flier that might think she’d make an easy meal.
She looked down where the beak and the eight larger talons were hanging around her neck. She’d made the cord they were hanging on, and the one on the spear, from the tendons that were attached to the talons when she brought them to her camp. She liked the way the necklace looked, too. Those sharp, deadly things now hanging safely there for all to see. Maybe it was a little primitive. Maybe it made her look like a savage, but she didn’t mind. Out here, alone against all the things trying to kill her, she didn’t mind looking like a savage. In fact, looking like a savage might just be a good start. If she was going to survive this, maybe she was going to have to become a savage.
The necklace rattled softly as she walked. She shook the spear again, and smiled.
She wasn’t bothered by a day flier again for many days of walking. She scanned the sky regularly, but never saw one. She wondered if she was still in the territory of the one she killed, and if its mate was reluctant to bother her. Whatever it was, she knew it wouldn’t last much longer. Either another flier would come in to fill the vacuum, or she would walk into the territory of another pair, and they would have no reason to avoid her. She didn’t relax her vigilance.
It wasn’t so peaceful on the ground. She felt as if she had to kill a day runner every couple of days. It got so she knew just what kind of cover they’d come from. She could predict, almost to the second, when the attack would come. Her reaction became almost automatic. She’d point the spear and the animal would run into it, no matter if it was young and inexperienced like the first one, or older and more wily. It became repetitious, but she didn’t relax.
After killing it, she would cut off a part of its haunch to cook at that night’s fire. It was the least vile part of a runner to eat, but it was still vile. She always ate that bit, though, to avoid the sin of waste.
The day fliers were another matter. Each time she entered a new one’s territory, it would have a go at her. She did the same thing every time. When it attacked, she dropped down and put up her spear. Now, though, she put it straight up instead of angled back. This would slash its skin, but it wouldn’t kill it. It was enough to frighten it off and send it after easier prey, which was good enough for her. She already had a good set of talons, and she didn’t want to break another spear. Each time, she would jump back to her feet with a yell, and rattle her spear at the flier as it labored to gain altitude.
This all became almost routine. She’d walk, she’d sleep, and she’d walk again. Maybe she’d kill a runner or scare off a flier, then sleep, then walk again the next day. Her bandages were off long ago, cleaned and stowed in her medicine bag. She was beginning to think that she must be getting close to the city by now, and was wondering what it was going to look like, when she met the band of traders heading north.
