Killbird

hills to the east, to the place where I, in my youthful arrogance, thought that I had gained the world merely by slaying a dragon. And in the end I had to come down, for the updrafts deserted me, and I considered crashing into rocks or trees, but again that was taking God's prerogative. I landed in a little clearing, far from the valley of my people. I respected my wings, folding them. I lay in the grass and willed myself to die. The mind might wish death, but the body never does. It rebelled, after God only knows how long, and I found myself seeking food from the fruit trees, drink from the clear stream. I had nothing, only my wings. It was chill. I covered myself with grasses for warmth, and by morning I had decided that God wanted me to live. What I would do with my life was now in God's hands. I packed my wings. If a man is to live he must have tools. I carried the wings to the place of the dragon and took what I could with my bare hands. I found a very unsatisfactory piece of dragon skin which I honed for days until it was ready to mount, using dragon veins, to a crude handle. I made a longbow and strung it with dragon veins, fashioned arrows from wood, tipped them with crude pieces of dragon skin. Then I could hunt for meat, and life became an endless series of days, meaningless days. I used the dragon for my house, sleeping in the cavity which I had cleared out. Many times I wondered about Yuree. The summer days began to grow short, and I set about making myself warm skins for winter. I was alone. I built a hide lean-to to cover the cavity in the dragon and gradually began to build up a winter's supply of sun-dried meat and nuts from the trees. And then, with the first chill of the coming winter putting a coating of frost on the bleeding skin of the slain dragon, I contemplated spending the long winter nights alone in a dead dragon, and there was something akin to panic in me. I still wished only to die. I could not die. God apparently wanted me to live and to suffer. To seek death was a sin. But perhaps there was a way. I stood one day with the chill of the winter kissing my back and gazed out toward the flats. It was taboo to go there, but it was a sort of… well, I guess you could say common-sense taboo, with no punishment other than danger and death involved. I mean, it was not a sin for me to go there but it was foolish. No man ever went into the flats and came back alive. But wasn't that what I wanted? And to find death there would not be a sin, merely foolishness. Moreover, if God wanted me to live and suffer he could keep me alive in the flats to suffer there, couldn't he? I could not face winter alone in that dragon's hide. I sought out the highest ridge overlooking the distant undulation of rolling hills which led to the lows and assembled my wings. I took only my hardax and my longbow. Their additional weight would slow my flight, but would not make it impossible. I waited for a warm day with a wind from the hills behind me. The distant valley shimmered with heat. I ran, leaped, and flew. I used the updrafts. I used all my skill. I was tempting the gods of man, and I didn't care. And they didn't care about me, for no killbird came to blast me into forgetfulness. At the center of the valley I felt, on my exposed belly, the warning, the tingling. And down there were the piles of stone and other things which, legend says, were the homes of the giants. Shivering, I almost wished there were giants, giants who could squash me with a fist and put an end to it. I flew away from the source of the warning tingle, however, and cleared a ridge, found an updraft on the other side, rode it to clear another ridge. I suppose it was an epic flight, the longest man has ever made. It extended for half a day, over ridge after ridge as the land dropped away under me until, in the late afternoon, the winds and the updrafts failed me and I sank slowly downward, into a flatness which, after living my life among the mountains, seemed sinister and eerie. I took a good look as I went down. The land was mostly barren, with rocks exposed, the dirt a dirty red. Far away there was a line of trees which seemed to mark a stream, but they were stunted and unhealthy, unlike the trees of my mountains. I landed running, stumbled over a rock, went tail over wings and smashed the delicate bracings. It didn't matter. I would have no use for wings in this flat desert. I was not hurt. God was looking out for me, keeping me alive to suffer. I salvaged some dragon's veins from the wings and set off toward the distant trees. There was a little rabbity type of animal there in the flats, existing on God knows what, and I killed one with an arrow, skinned him, smelled him, found him to be unsavory but edible. I carried the carcass to the tree line and found a stream of reddish water which tasted tepid. I used my hardax and a piece of flint for a fire and settled in. I awoke with a feeling of eyes upon me. I leaped to my feet, clutching my hardax. I saw them then. There were three of them. Two men and a woman, the woman lank of body, thinner than I, and with a filthy mane of hair on her skull. The men were equally sorry, with hair on face and head. They were dressed in tattered and filthy skins, and their eyes were sunken into their faces. «Who are you?» I asked. «Who are you?» one of the men asked. His words were distorted but understandable. «I am Eban the Hunter,» I said. «What do you hunt?» the woman asked, licking her lips. «I have hunted bears and lions,» I said, with a swift pride which soon faded as I remembered. «This is no bear,» one of the men said, pointing to the remains of the rabbity animal which had been my meal. «If you are hungry, eat,» I said. The man leaped toward the carcass and began to tear it with his hands, the other two pushing and yelling, trying to grab a bit for themselves. It sickened me. I stepped forward and pushed one of the men. He was frail, and he fell to his back. The other scrambled away on his hands and knees. Only the woman remained, the food clutched in her hands. «There is enough for all,» I said. I took the animal and cut it into pieces with my hardax, handing each a share. «Eat,» I said. «You are great and mighty,» the woman said. «I will be your ———» She said a word which is sometimes used, with shame, by young boys trying to shock. I turned red. «You like I be your———?» she asked. «No,» I said harshly, «nor do I want to hear such language.» «I will cook for you and tend your fire, then,» she said. «As you will,» I said. «I will sleep.» «Yes,» she said. «Sleep. I will stay awake and keep the fire for you.» The two men huddled together and seemed to go to sleep. I curled up and closed my eyes, opening them now and then to look at the woman. Her clothing was mere tatters, showing her long flanks and the curve of her breasts. I slept. Later in my life I saw men, if the inbreeders deserve the name, seek death by their own hands. But a real man, however sure he is that life is not worth living, clings to life with all his strength, even as his mind wishes ease in eternal sleep. I had a feeling, perhaps not fully realized, that if death was all I sought it would come to me as a pleasant surprise in my sleep that night. So that urge, that sacred will to live, kept my hand on the handle of my crude hardax. A good hunter, it is said, sleeps with one eye open. I'm sure that both my eyes were closed, but there was something in me which was vigilant, for I woke and rolled with one movement and the dragonskin head of my own arrow plunked into the ground where I had lain. It was, on my part, instinctive, I suppose, for if I had been fully aware I would not have done as I did, leaping with one fluid movement to vault the dying fire and shed the blood of the man who had seized my longbow and used it to try to kill me. His skull split with an ease which made it difficult for me, as he fell, to remove my hardax from it. And then I was whirling to meet a new threat as the dead man's companion screamed in rage and, using both hands, tried to break my skull with a huge rock. As it was the rock struck me a glancing blow on the shoulder, numbing it, but it was my eating hand, not my hunting hand, and I swung the hardax, driven by anger at the betrayal—I had, after all, shared my food with them—and by the instinct of survival. The ax flashed in the dying light of the fire and took the second inbreeder on the side of the throat, sliding across bone to sever the large artery there. His life pumped away as he dug futilely in the barren red dirt with his broken and dirty nails. I turned to the woman, who was crouching on the ground, my ax held high. «Please, please,» she cried. «I wanted to warn you, but they would have killed me.» «Is this the way your people reward hospitality?» I asked. «We have eaten nothing for three suns,» she whimpered. «Do not kill me. I will be your———» That word caused me to curl my lips in disgust. And then I was struck by the sure knowledge that I had taken life. To be sure, I examined the men. The first, his skull cracked, was surely dead, and the second was gasping out his last breath. I saw the gleaming bone of the skull and was struck by its fragility. The skulls of my people are thick and strong and protect the mind. The inbreeder's skull was thin, so thin. No wonder my ax buried itself in it. Dead. Men dead at my hand. I fell to my knees and thrust my face into the dry red dirt. I wailed. I prayed the prayers of the dead. The woman sat, chewing on one dirty fingernail, watching me. «Are you driven mad, then?» she asked, as I raised my face, now streaked with my tears and the red earth. «Will you kill me?» «I have had enough of killing,» I said. «Do you not mourn your dead?» «I do not mourn them.» she said. I found grass and dead sticks for the fire, no longer interested in sleep. I dug holes with my ax and buried the two men. The earth was hard and the work long, and when it was finished the sun was a redness to the east. «They took me away from my village,» the woman said. «Come there with me and I will cook for you.» I wanted no part of them. But she looked weak and helpless in the morning light. I told her to remain. I walked about and shot a rabbity animal and cooked it over the open fire. She devoured half of it greedily and carried the remainder in the folds of her filthy skirt. I had made my decision. «I will take you to your family,» I said. She led the way downstream, and there was a little pitiful growth of woodlands into which she ran, leaving me behind. I followed, and soon I could hear the sounds of young voices, and around a bend in the trail I saw a collection of sorry structures built of grasses, mud, sticks and odd-looking things which I did not recognize. The woman was standing in a clearing on the edge of this collection of shacks, waving to me to hurry. But as I neared I felt the voice of the spirits on my belly. I paused, turned, finding that the warning came from the village. I shook my head and called out to her. She came. «Do you not feel it?» I asked. «I always feel hunger,» she said. She held out the greasy remains of her breakfast. «Come to my home and I will cook for you and be your———» «Fool,» I said. «There is warning here.» «Warning?» «Death.» «Some die,»