The hesitation cost him. A massive weight rammed into him, driving a harsh cry from his chest and slamming him against a thick bow tree. Heat, and hair, and foul, fetid breath battered Tokela as he shoved, kicked, tried to wrestle his knife hand upward. The trapped creature, bait to lure the prey—only now Tokela was the prey. The only thing keeping those huge, slavering jaws from closing on his windpipe was a desperate grip, torqued hard as outLand eirn about the creature’s throat.
Pain blazed in his thigh then in his bicep, claws ripping and teeth tearing—or trying to. Somehow Tokela kept his stranglehold on the creature and freed his knife hand. With a harsh grunt, he shoved the knife upward and wrenched sideways. The creature gave a strangely normal ki-yi and convulsed—a last, violent tear of teeth and claws—then fell at Tokela’s feet. Impulse, to kick it away, but he might as well kick at stone. Instead, gaze fixing on the remaining creatures, he began a slow, sideways creep.
They were supine; no doubt expecting their companion to handily dispatch the puny two-legged. As their prey proved instead resourceful, the creatures rose, snarling.
The one in front stood high as Tokela’s chin.
Tokela snarled a hoarse answer that steamed into the air. He kept his back to the bow tree, and his knife ready. Its copper surface, too, steamed, stained with the creature’s… it must be blood. Even if it whiffed of nothing he’d ever experienced, and even if in Sun’s faint dapples it looked more like to the indigo that, if these things had their way, he might not survive to Mark upon his own cheeks.
The largest creature stilled, and Tokela sucked in a quick breath, crouched-ready. Instead the creature sprang at its fellow, the “bait”. Little chance for bewilderment, though; the remaining creature leapt for Tokela. He lashed out, let the momentum spin him past the brunt of the charge. Giving an eerie cry, it’s lunge fell short, its jaws snapping a frantic but bloodless rent in the fringed cloth of Tokela’s hip wrap.
It fell back, a penetrative—unsettling—calculation in their eyes. Still, it limped; Tokela’d done damage, at least. Yet the creature seemed confused, eyeing first him, then the grey-brindled leader, who still had the smaller one pinned to the ground. Punishment, for spoiling what should have been an easy kill?
With a last growl, the grey-brindled leader released the youngling and turned. Again that unsettling calculation, as the leader eyed Tokela up and down, lips curling back over its canines. Tokela returned the favour. To show throat, here and now, surely meant death.
“Ai, this prey has teeth.” Tokela grated out, letting his senses cast about. Were there others? Would he know? For only in closer quarters did the creatures reek of fetid sweat and breath; they’d disguised their scent. The concept was no more outLandish than the way their eyes glittered in shards of white. Akin to the t’rešalt. Who knew what unnatural abilities these things possessed?
N’da, he couldn’t think that way. Shaped or no, they were predators. It remained: if he moved, they would strike, and if he didn’t move, they would still strike.
If he stayed here, he would die.
Keeping his eyes upon the leader, Tokela slid from his boots, one then the other. Gripping the ground with long, bare toes, he snaked his free hand behind the small of his back, palm surveying the tough bark.
The chastised youngster’s ears flattened; the two pacing went still. The leader’s head lowered.
Tokela spun, digging feet, fingers, and knife into the bow tree. Almost in the same breath, the creatures leapt to the attack.
Tokela wasn’t there. As the creatures piled against the trunk, he scrabbled higher into the bow tree. The huge leader leapt after. Stinking breath heated Tokela’s backside, fangs stabbing sharp as the creature grabbed his calf. Only the thick hide leggings gave protection from a bone-deep bite; unfortunately they allowed the creature better hold. Shaking its massive head, it flung Tokela against the bow tree as if he were an ill-tied door flap. Sparks popped behind his eyes; he stayed up only by virtue of the panicked grip on his deep-dug copper blade.
Growling, the leader set itself to finding some purchase against the trunk, braced, pulled. Tokela’s arm tendons stretched nigh to ripping, but he managed to hang on, gave a vicious, desperate kick with his free leg. It was enough. The creature’s long claws suited more dog than any cat, and it fell with a tearing of leather and flesh. A muffled scream bursting from his throat, Tokela hauled himself upward, even as the creature hit the ground with a crack! that would have broken any normal creature’s spine.
The others clawed and scrabbled, trying to follow. The bow tree shuddered and rocked beneath the onslaught. Tokela’s slender build for once proved boon instead of bane. He kept climbing, husking faint orisons to the tree from which his People made some of the finest bows in thisLand. The creatures kept venting their fury against his haven.
Persistent. But he’d climbed enough to be safe. With a shaky groan, Tokela leaned hard against the trunk. Only then did the hot blood of fight and flight drain away, leaving him shivering like the branches. His fingers wouldn’t let loose of his knife. His arm and leg flashed pain of bite and strain of ligament with every little movement. The scratches the creatures’ claws had left on his thighs, shoulders, and abdomen expanded from mere sting, to sullen and angry.
If the creatures’ spittle was poisonous…
Then none of it mattered. What did matter, now, was his leg. The blood smell would draw every predator around—it was driving Tokela nigh mad, a thick, nauseated scorch in the back of his throat. Not to mention there’d be little need for poison if he bled out and fainted.
The tree stopped swaying. Tokela peered down with bleary eyes. The creatures had abandoned their punishment of the
