Killbird

giants with its toothless small dragons. Mar begged to be allowed to stop, to build a mud-and-grass hut where we could warm ourselves with a fire vented by a hole in the center of the roof and by lying together in our couch. However, the cold was minor compared to the deadly and snow-deep winters of the mountains, so I pushed on, finding shelter as we might; for example, in the lee of a huge fallen tree with a makeshift lean-to of branches over us. I had it in my mind to find the legendary field of endless waters, and I felt that it must be near, for there was a smell to the air. I was frustrated in my desire to continue eastward by increasing spirit warning, and we spent long and aimless days wandering to the south, trying to find a gap in the solid wall of warning which lay to the east. The reptiles and frogs were sleeping, hidden from the cold. I found that fat birds of the water were clean and, although tasting somewhat fishy, were nourishing and quite easily taken by arrow, since they had no fear of man. Most of the woodlands were of an evergreen tree, tall and straight, with needles similar to the evergreens of our mountains. The climbers ate of the burred seeds, as did we, but found them to be rather tasteless. The warning tingle in my belly was, at times, very strong and caused retreat, so that for the early winter months our course angled east and back and ever southward. The days began to vary, some of them pleasantly warm, some chill as the wind shifted into the north, but gradually it warmed and then there were new green shoots growing and the animals were partaking in the new-year ritual of mating and food was more plentiful. The new year was well established when I decided that it was not my lot to see the field of endless waters. Everywhere to the east was a solid wall of warning. The spirits, it seemed, had reason to guard the endless waters from the eyes of man, or at least of man with the sense to heed the warnings. I make mention of one incident, which decided me to alter my plans. Finding a gap in the wall of warning spirits, we ventured eastward into woodlands and found climbers plentiful and, testing with a stunted deer, the same warning in the very bones of the beast. It was when we were camped for the night beside a pleasant lake. The fire had been allowed to burn down, and I heard, as I fell into sleep, the stealthy movements of an animal. I alerted myself and reached for my longbow and saw, reflecting the dying gleam of the fire, a pair of eyes at a height from the ground which caused me concern. Quickly I replenished the fire, and the eyes disappeared, but I had little sleep that night. In the morning I saw tracks, much like the tracks of a lion, only different. There were claw marks on each pad, whereas a lion walks with his claws withdrawn. I continued eastward with some caution. I saw hints of movement in the trees around us. There was more than one animal there, and I knew the feeling of being stalked, as I'd known it when the lion of the mountains sought me for his meal. As usual, the warnings came and we had to retreat, through the same stretch of woodlands, and that night there were two, three, four sets of eyes around our campfire. I wanted to get to the bottom of it. I picked my chance, aimed a hand below the gleaming set of eyes with my straightest arrow and heard an eerie yowl as the arrow went home. There was a threshing sound and then silence, and then a series of mournful hoots, sounding almost human. It was too much for me. I built the fire to its greatest with armloads of dry branches gathered before darkness, and the light showed a heap on the ground and eyes in the darkness behind it. I set a branch blazing and walked nervously to take a look at my kill. I cried out in fear when I saw it. The thing lay on its back. Its pink eyes were open, and blood ran down my arrow shaft where it had lodged in the throat below a face out of a nightmare, a face which was near human but distorted into wide-eyed horror, with fangs which extended over huge, thick lips and a mouth large enough to cover the lower face. The body was all haired and the arms were long and there were three fingers on each hand and the feet were huge and haired and vaguely human but clubbed into a shortness which made them look like lion's paws. The thing was almost as tall as I. Its vaguely human features and shape told me that it might walk upright, and the height of the glowing eyes, when they had first caught the firelight, confirmed it. Shaken, I went to my fire and tended it all night, and in the early hours of the morning there was a scuffling and hooting moans which caused the hair of my neck to rise. At the sound of growling, I threw a brand to see, in the brief flare of light, a sight which chilled my blood. A half dozen of the things were tearing and ripping at the body of their dead fellow, fangs chewing, with blood dripping down their hair-covered faces. Sickened, I yelled and charged them with a burning brand, and one of them stood his ground, indeed, made threatening moves toward me, his huge mouth open to show the fearsome teeth, his growl low and feral. I sent an arrow into his midsection and he fell, but crawled away to moan and scream until I heard a flurry of movement and knew that he, too, was furnishing a meal for his kind. The eating sounds, accompanied by sounds of struggle and occasional hoots, as if of pain, continued until light, and I decided that it was wise for us to leave those woods. We seemed to be in the clear when, without warning, one of the manlike beasts leaped a tree to send Mar sprawling to the ground, and four others charged us from the undergrowth. I used one of the dragonskin skinning knives to kill the beast which was trying to reach Mar's jugular with his fanged teeth and rose quickly to swing my hardax at the first of the oncoming attackers. He fell, his head almost severed, and I struck the arm of a second such a blow that he was no longer interested in combat. But I went down under the remaining two, using my knife to disembowel one, feeling the sharp teeth of the other on my shoulder, buried under the weight of the dying one and the other, who was fighting to bite my neck. I was in a bad way for a moment, and then the attacker was jerked, went limp and began, still atop me, to kick out his life. I scrambled out from under the reeking mass of horror and saw Mar, breathing hard, crouched over us, one of her knives bloody. «Well done,» I said. «Are you hurt?» «Only a scratch,» I said, squeezing the wounds on my shoulder to force them to purify themselves with free bleeding. Later I would cover them with a leaf poultice. I took time to examine the fallen ones and was struck by the nearness to human form. It was as if some cruel god had taken a man and done his best to deform him, make him a horrible imitation of man. But there were hoots from the forest, and I led Mar away as quickly as I could until, gaining fairly open ground, we left the dark and terrible things behind us. I was left without a purpose. What little purpose I had had was involved with seeing the fabled field of endless water, and, prevented from seeking that goal by the continuous belt of warning which cut me off from traveling east, I made a semipermanent camp and watched the days grow longer. This pleased Mar. She blossomed. She found clay and formed cups, plates, bowls, fired them in the campfire. She became very domestic. But as the weather warmed and it was impossible to move without breaking out in sweat, and, worse, the flying biters came in clouds, I tired of those hot, humid lowlands and, to Mar's sadness, made movement to the west. I longed for the coolness of my native mountains. However, it was impossible for me to return to my own home. I had been the bringer of death to half of my family. And to come, bringing with me one of the sick women of the low ridges, would be the ultimate insult and would, most probably, invite trial before the elders of the family, with the ultimate punishment being what I was already suffering, banishment. However, the mountains were long and large and there was the talk I had listened to in my youth, of the hills extending far to the southward to diminish into pleasant rolling lands. We followed the sun westward, through a broiling summer which left us weak and exhausted at the end of the day. But the farther we went westward the more plentiful became the game, the clearer became the streams. Since our march eastward had been less purposeful, we made better time on the westward march, for I did not deviate, except to avoid the areas of God's chaos. One moon after the longest days of summer we saw on a clear day a band of blue to the west which looked like low storm clouds, but as the days passed, it grew, until, my heart leaping with joy, I knew that there were the mountains. Now we encountered men, the same sick, weak, starving men of Mar's country, not to be trusted. My wanderings and the passing time had added weight to my body, and, with my face hair full, my skull hair hanging to my shoulders, I was, no doubt, a fearsome sight, and my efforts to avoid the inbreeders of the low slopes were not contested by them. Nevertheless, I kept one eye open as I slept and two or three times had to growl warning, once to fire an arrow, to drive off prowlers. At last we reached the low hills leading upward to the mountains, which, as I had expected, did not look as high as the mountains of my home. On a night of nights, I came to our camp with a huge and healthy deer and we spent three days in that camp feasting and preparing meat to dry in the sun. I taught Mar how to chew the hide to make it soft and pliant. Now she would be properly dressed for winter in our own—in my own—type of country, for I had had enough of wandering and would, I had decided, make my home in some secluded place in the mountains. Laden with drying meat, my stock of dragon's veins, the beautiful and deadly skinning knives from the cave of the giants, my hardax, our sleepskins and the new deerskin, we climbed the low hills, and in my eagerness to find the coolness of the heights we walked into the range of an old dragon, a dragon of the hills. It came without warning. I topped a ridge, Mar at my side, her legs strong, long, keeping pace with me, and I saw the bloodstained, ancient body of the dragon even as his head jerked and there came the creaking, warning scream of his anger and then a burst of sound and things like bees buzzing as his teeth flew around us. I yelled and fell back, dragging Mar with me behind the dome of the ridge. She lay limply. I pulled her farther down the slope, thinking she was merely frightened and tired. She was unmoving, and there was a great flow of blood into her black hair, and I felt my heart hurt. The dragon had spat teeth into her head. Oh, gods of man, I prayed. I rolled her onto her back. Her eyes were closed. She was, I felt, dead. The lion had been spat in the head by my dragon, and he was ever so much stronger than my poor Mar. So I mourned for a moment and then, in my agony, saw her chest moving. She was breathing. I