By Tooth and Claw Read online

  It didn’t take the group very long to reach where the kits had found their prize. The waters had come over this part of the woods, and receded. Because of a rather large ditch at the base of a small hill, some of the water had been retained. In that pool of water, half-submerged, was what the kits had discovered. The “monster” was—thankfully—dead. Very dead. And a good thing, too, since it was the biggest animal Sartas had ever seen in his entire life. It was easily fifty times as long as an adult warrior Mrem was tall, probably longer, since it had twisted up in its death-throes. One thing was certain: it could have swallowed an adult warrior whole without thinking twice about it. The creature had two rows of small fins that flanked its sides, with a long barbed crest on top. The thing’s head seemed blunted, with the mouth and jaws elongated for several strides before it ended in a sharp beak. Its maw was filled with rows of teeth, interlocked like a saw; Sartas didn’t want to imagine what a bite from them would feel like. Assuming it actually bit you before it gulped you down . . . He’d seen a fisher-flier toss a minnow in the air, catch it, and swallow it whole once, and he could easily imagine this thing acting the same with a Liskash or a Mrem. What could such a thing prey upon that would keep it fed?

  “What . . . is it?” One of the junior warriors warily prodded at the beast’s carcass, as if to make sure that it was still dead.

  Another warrior piped up. “A new horror created by the Liskash? Something we haven’t encountered before?”

  Sartas shook his head. “Something vomited forth from the sea. There are tales of giants and monstrosities in the deeper waters of the sea. That is why even the Liskash do not venture far out on the salt waters.” The Liskash made boats; the Mrem would use a boat if they could capture one, but he had never heard of a Mrem making anything more complicated than a raft. No matter how delicious water-creatures were, venturing out far from a shore . . . did not appeal.

  “Can we eat it?” It was the kit that had led the warriors to this spot. His belly rumbled, looking at all of the meat sitting there.

  “We don’t know what it is, or whether it might be poisonous to us or not. Besides, it is already half-rotted. We leave it behind.” Sartas knew that there were a lot of hungry eyes that were on his back at that moment, and none of them happy with the decision, but they still obeyed. Things had been very lean for his clan, even with everyone doing whatever they could to forage for food. If it had been before the flood, things might not have been so hard. As it was, everything and everyone had been pushed together along the waters; almost everything easy to reach had already been picked over. It would not be very long until the clan was reduced to nettle teas and bark soups, if they weren’t diligent.

  Sartas Rewl was silent for the rest of the walk back to camp, consumed by his thoughts. It occurred to him that finding the sea beast on land was a very appropriate sign for what his clan had become; a fish out of water. Hopefully, they’d fare better than the “monster” in this strange new world they had suddenly been thrust into. The question that troubled him the most was how exactly they would do so.

  * * *

  A distant rumble jarred Sartas back to the present day. Virtually every head came up, ears pricked and twitching nervously at the sound. When it died away, proving that it was the sound of thunder and not another flood, the tension eased. Mrem were quick to adapt; it was what had saved so many of his clan when the waters came crashing down around them.

  But if there was thunder, there would soon be rain, and this was as good a place as any to stop and hunker down. “We camp here!” he called, and saw relief in the adults at his decision. No one wanted to have to make a wet camp. Better to stop now, and get some level of protection and comfort before it was miserable work to try to do so.

  And now there was a mad scramble for fallen branches, and a frenzy of cutting down vines. Because, thanks to the still-rising water, there was no promise that the camp you made on dry land was going to still be dry when you woke up, so tents were always pitched on top of platforms, so the worst that happened in the morning was that you got wet feet. Ideally, the platforms were knee-high or higher, with shallow trenches dug around them. That was the work of every kit old enough and anyone else who could be spared.

  Sartas had too few warriors; with the waters on the rise and only Aedonniss knows what out in the woods, he wanted to keep guards on watch at all times. After a hard day’s march and setting up camp, in addition to hunting duties . . . it became difficult to find anyone that could still stand, much less be alert for threats. Often, he took it upon himself to walk the camp, inspecting preparations and checking the perimeter. He had to keep himself abreast of what was happening among his people. What starts as a small problem today can become a catastrophe tomorrow, if left unchecked. The clan was hardy, but even the best of them could only take so much hardship before the edges start to fray and unravel.

  But today they were cutting the march short. With luck that meant someone else could help him. Thunder rumbled in the distance again. He twitched an ear. It didn’t sound appreciably nearer. He hoped it was a slow-moving storm. Small favors from the gods were to be taken where they could be had, these days.

  Sartas was just starting his rounds when he spotted one of his scouts among some of the older kits; Mreiss Lrew, the youngest warrior left to the clan. He was scratching designs in the dirt with a stick, looking positively miserable.

  “Shouldn’t you be helping the others finish making camp?” Sartas Rewl stood with his arms crossed, looking down to where Mreiss was kneeling. The young warrior looked up with a start, quickly throwing the stick away and sweeping away the dirt when he saw who was talking to him.

  “Sir, the kits are all set up, sir,” he replied. “And everyone else . . .” His ears flattened. “Uh . . . kindly refused my help.”

  “Chased you off, did they?” He snorted. “Their loss. Come help Reshia. Tell her I sent you.” Mreiss nodded once before dropping his eyes to the ground and running in the direction of Sartas and Reshia’s tent. He’s troubled. It’s best to keep him busy, keep him working. I’ll have to keep a close eye on Mreiss Lrew in the days to come.

  * * *

  The next few hours passed quickly for Mreiss Lrew. As commanded, he assisted Reshia in setting up the tent she shared with Sartas Rewl. Theirs was one of the few that only housed the two of them . . . but it was tiny, and had been made from pieces that had been scavenged out of the flood. Sartas Rewl made certain that no one in the clan was wanting for anything before he took supplies or provisions for himself and Reshia; he made sure that everyone was fed and had a place to sleep before he looked to himself. He had been a good talonmaster; he was a very good clan leader. At least in Mreiss’s opinion. He never talked down to Mreiss, not like some of the others did. When he didn’t want Mreiss to do something, he always explained why.

  Once Mreiss was finished with that he was set to gathering wood for the small cooking fires, sorting the kindling, and arranging the firepits. After that, Arschus Mroa called upon him to help sharpen spear tips and their own blades. He always liked the time spent with Arschus; the senior warrior was always patient with him, no matter his mistakes. Arschus was quiet by nature, and didn’t say much, but when he talked, it was worth listening to. He’d taught Mreiss a lot over the years, just with a few well-chosen words.

  By the end of all of the chores, it was well into the night; the camp was made and all within it were ready to bed down. Mreiss shared the meager dinner with the rest of the clan around the main cookfire. There never was very much chatter during supper lately. Before the flood, there would always be laughter and stories; Mreiss liked the ones about battles and ancient heroes from distant lands the best. He always imagined himself as being one of those heroes someday, traveling away from the Clan of the Long Fang and leaving his mark upon the plains. But there were no stories to fuel his daydreams anymore. Everyone sat and ate quietly, the hushed conversations always short and private, as if the speakers were afraid that bein
g too loud would bring some new calamity down upon them. There were no Dancers to lend their wisdom and to calm the fears of the clan. There was only Sartas Rewl, stony-faced and stoic no matter what came. Mreiss hoped it would be enough.

  It wasn’t until he had bedded down for the night that Mreiss had time to think again; even dinner was a chore, dealing with the unpalatable food and the long silences. He was stuck in a tent with nine kits, all of them younger than he was by a score of years. There was one good thing, though. There was no such thing as a restless, sleepless kit now. After a day’s worth of exertions, they all fell asleep soundly and easily. Mreiss was not so lucky. He didn’t mind the indignity of being set up with the kits; he had no family left in the clan, as his parents were both killed when he was still too young to remember them except vaguely, as dreamlike blurs and the feeling of comfort. He had been raised by the entire clan from that point on, but always felt different. Some of the kits in the tent were also orphans; parents taken in the flood or dead along the trail.

  What kept Mreiss awake long into the night were his memories of that horrible, disastrous day; the day when the flood waters came.

  He had wanted to go out with the hunters. The leaders of both hunting parties had rebuffed him. Sartas had at least been kind about it. “We hunt root-diggers, youngling,” he had said. “Only the strongest dare that.” And he had known Sartas was right; there was no way he could hold a charging spear against a root-digger. “There will always be next time. In a season, you’ll be stronger. We’ll see you ready by then.”

  Knowing that Sartas was right didn’t do very much to heal Mreiss’s wounded pride, however. Having been a loner for as long as he could remember, Mreiss had plenty of practice in going off alone in the woods outside of their village; the years of experience he had doing that were what made him a good scout. He could lose himself in the forest, leave his worries and frustrations behind and just listen to the world. He certainly hadn’t wanted to go off with the foragers. They were all kits and the elderly and the women. And though he would very much have liked to stay and watch the Dancers, they had chased him off, some with unkind comments about skinny adolescents with stronger desires than his body could meet.

  That had been why he had decided that he was going to watch them anyway, whether they liked it or not.

  Not just any tree would do, however. It had to be big, very tall, and heavy with leaves, the better to screen him. Best of all would be one so big he could lie down all along a branch, and blend in with the bark. From high vantages like the very tallest trees, he felt like he wasn’t a part of the world, but above and outside of it. He didn’t dare liken himself to Aedonniss; such would be blasphemy. Mreiss simply wanted to escape from the mundane life that surrounded him, the indignity of being treated like a kit when there was adult work he wanted to do, or warrior’s work he wanted to try, but like an adult when there were onerous chores to be done. It seemed the height of unfairness to be told “You are not strong enough” when he wanted to hunt or train against Liskash, but then be told “You are not a kit anymore” when there was water to be hauled or wood to be brought, or heavy objects to be moved. He was caught between two different sets of claws; both hurt, albeit differently.

  Mreiss didn’t know how long he had been in the tree he had found when it started; he had indeed found one with massive branches that allowed him to lie down fully, and had fallen asleep between his brooding and reverie. He was awakened by a noise, low at first. Mreiss initially thought it was someone growling at him to quit being such a layabout. It took him a few moments for the grogginess to clear from his head and realize he was still up in the tree. When the tree began to shake and the noise grew louder, he looked down at the base of it. What kind of animal could shake a tree like this and make that sound? Only then did he notice that it wasn’t just his tree that was shaking; the entire forest was moving as the rumble grew louder. Steadying himself on the branch, Mreiss stood up and hugged the tree trunk with one arm while he used his free hand to shield his eyes as he scanned the horizon.

  “An arx stampede? An army?” He wondered allowed as he took in everything below. A short distance away he could see the village; the Dancers were in the prominent clearing where they always practiced. Some were under the low shade trees on the far end, resting. They stood out against the ground; years of the action of hands-on-ground had removed the grass in the center to leave a roughly circular patch of compacted sand. Even from this distance, he could plainly see that the Dancers were alarmed as well; some of the ones that had been lounging under in the shade had stood up, looking around.

  The noise was getting louder. It didn’t sound like a stampede—it took him a moment, but he remembered being with a hunting-party in the spring just after a big rain, when they encountered what had been a trickle of a waterfall and had seen it had become a torrent. The thunder of the waters had sounded just like this . . . only this was much, much louder. Where’s it coming from . . . there! Oh, gods, there! In the east, he could see large trees shaking with the impact as something struck them, and smaller trees snapping and falling over as if they were just blades of grass being knocked over by a rolling kit. It seemed to Mreiss that whatever was causing it took up most of the horizon, and that it was getting larger as it came closer.

  He let go of the trunk and cupped his hands around his mouth, shouting at the Dancers in their clearing. “Run! Run! Climb a tree, a big one! RUN!” He pitched his voice high to make it carry over the noise, jumping up and down on his branch, waving. “RUN!”

  He saw the—thing—his mind didn’t even take it in as water at the time, just in time to drop back down to the branch and cling on for dear life. It looked like an avalanche, or a mudslide, a churning, grinding force of rocks and tree-parts and something that was dirt-colored but moving faster than any mudslide he had ever seen before.

  One moment, he was staring in wide-eyed horror at the Dancers. Some of them had started to run, but none of them knew where the danger was coming from, or what it was; the trees blocked their view. The next moment, the edge of the flood reached the clearing, and just as quickly it all disappeared under the tumbling water. Mreiss didn’t even have a chance to cry out in grief before the oncoming mass slammed into his tree. Several times the tree canted dangerously back before swinging forward a little bit; Mreiss had to cling for dear life, his claws straining at their roots to keep him attached to the tree. He shut his eyes, willing that it was all just another dream, as the sounds of splintering wood and churning water filled his ears.

  But it hadn’t been a dream. . . .

  Eventually, so numb with shock, horror, and grief that he had felt as if he had turned to stone, he began clambering from tree to tree, heading in the direction that the foraging party had taken. The hunters under Sartas had found him a little before he reached them, but well after he had heard their faint singing in the distance, and had known that at least he was not utterly alone.

  He had been the one to tell Sartas that he was the sole survivor of the camp. He had been the one to tell the talonmaster that all the Dancers were dead, and that he was certain that none had gotten to safety. He had looked past Sartas to see the faces of those who had heard that their mates, their daughters, their sisters were forever gone, and if he could have managed it, he would have sunk into the ground to hide. He had known what they were all thinking, after the first shock of grief. So why are you still alive? No one ever said it, of course. It wasn’t as if he hadn’t been asking himself that same question with every breath he had taken since the waters came.

  Just as he was asking it now, lying in the darkness, unable to sleep.

  Then, finally, the storm came. Thunder rumbled overhead, rain pounded the tent, and under cover of the storm, now that no one could hear him, he could curl on his side, and cry.

  * * *

  Thunder rolled and the night sky whitened with flashes of lightning up above the trees. It was a good thing the clan had stopped early; it had been
possible to make shelters for all of the campfires before the rain came. For once, no one was going to have to go to bed wet.

  “I’m not saying that he’s wrong. I’m just not saying that he’s right, either.” Miarrius Srell finished picking his teeth with a bone splinter before tossing it into the fire. He was seated across from Arschus Mroa and Ssenna Errol; the three of them always ended up on their own after the clan ate, to discuss the day and plan for tomorrow. It usually devolved the same way it had tonight; with Ssenna and Miarrius opposed to each other, with Arschus sitting silently and weighing everything.

  “Be plain, and say what you want to really say. What would you rather Sartas have us do?” Ssenna, as icy cold as stone most of the time, only seemed to become heated when she talked to Miarrius. The two of them never could agree, and it always vexed Ssenna; Miarrius seemed not to have cared less about how he frustrated her, to the point where others wondered if he did it for his own enjoyment.

  “All right, I’ll tell you what I’d have our talonmaster do. Stay. Rebuild. We have lived in this valley for over a generation. The mountains and the forests protected us. We can find another home here, where there’s still forest that hasn’t been drowned in water.” Miarrius shifted his weight a little farther back on the stump he was using for a seat. “Joining the Clan of the Claw means the end of the Clan of the Long Fang. I may be old, but I still have pride in my name.”