The crisp autumn air was shortly pierced by the smell of rotting flesh. Lynus shifted uncomfortably in his saddle. Oathammer chuffed in distress, clearly no happier than he about the wafting scent of death.
“Morrow only knows, I would have preferred to approach from upwind,” he said, half to himself.
Pendrake raised his left hand and stopped his horse. “Morrow has preserved us with a downwind approach. Do you smell that?”
“I can’t
not
smell it, Professor.”
“He means the other smell,” Edrea said.
Lynus concentrated, sniffed deeply, and caught the scent of something that was neither autumn nor rotting meat. It was musky, and perhaps sweaty, not as foul as the putrescence on the wind but somehow more rancid.
“Dismount.” Pendrake slid out of his saddle and strung his lucky bow. “Rifles at the ready, you two.”
Lynus clambered down, stiff from the ride. Edrea, he noticed, slid from her horse with practiced ease, as if she’d been doing it for twenty years.
“Gorax,” said Horgash. “Good nose, there, Viktor.”
Oh,
that
smell
, thought Lynus. Not many beasts’ scents could be caught over the stench of festering death. He should have recognized it.
They tied their mounts to trees along the track. Lynus heard Edrea whisper reassurances to Aeshnyrr. They set off on foot, staying low and moving as quietly as they could up the road toward Bednar. It was a skill that had saved Lynus’ life on more than one occasion.
The soft, steady crunching behind him negated any benefit of their stealth. Kinik had no woodcraft at all. Horgash and Pendrake were nearly inaudible, and Edrea was so silent that Lynus had to keep looking to his left to make sure she was still there. But Kinik, who weighed more than some horses, made a disturbing amount of noise.
“Shhh,” he said, scowling. He pointed at the ground. “Step around the crunchy bits.”
Kinik’s face fell. “Crunchy bits are everywhere.”
Lynus noticed for the first time just how large her feet were. He also considered for the first time, on this trip at least, how many expeditions he’d been on that returned short by one or more students.
“Just . . . try to step on less of them.”
The trail emerged from the scrub forest at the top of the rise and looked down on what was left of the village of Bednar. The ruins lay in a low, lush clearing, the turf churned to mud and pushed into low berms. The houses in the hollow were now nothing more than splinters and thatch, spread flat. The deep greens of the fields above the hollow to the north were just turning yellow and red, heralding autumn’s harvest. No churning there, nor in the village orchard to the south.
Not fifty paces beyond the flattened houses rose the misty tree line of the Widower’s Wood.
Lynus scanned the village. This place stank of gorax, but the beasts were nowhere to be seen. Perhaps they were hiding in the shadowed mists of the wood. Pendrake pulled a small spyglass from his satchel and gazed through it, no doubt able to see much more detail than Lynus or the others.
“I think,” Pendrake said after a few moments, “that perhaps a pack of gorax came through here and ate the dead. We’re smelling scraps, and gorax saliva.”
The copious, pheromone-laced salivations of gorax were famous for their powerful aroma. The long-snouted, knuckle-dragging bipeds stank of sweat and filth, certainly, but even if you got close enough to smell the pits under a gorax’s long arms, it would be the odors coming off the spittle caked on it that would put you off your lunch.
“Some of the homes have been flattened in place,” Edrea said. “Gorax love the damp shade of a cave. If any cellars remain intact, the gorax may have taken up residence.”
“No cellars in Bednar,” said Horgash. “The water table’s too high. A cellar would fill right up.”
“Let’s head down and sweep the area, then,” Pendrake said. “Edrea, Horgash, come with me. Lynus and Kinik, fetch our mounts.”
Fetch the horses?
Lynus fumed for just a moment, then arrived at a solution.
“Professor, what if there
are
gorax here? Won’t the animals be in more danger with us?”
Pendrake grunted and nodded. “That’s true. So we all go down together.” Lynus might be sent to fetch the horses and that bison later, of course, but maybe Kinik and Horgash would go instead.
Edrea smiled at Lynus, and he wondered why. Then Kinik spoke, right in his ear.
“Thank you, friend Lynus,” she said. “We will go together. Watching Pendrake and Wesselbaum and Lloryrr search and work is better than fetching horses.”
Lynus frowned and said nothing.
They walked down the track into the village, and the smell grew stronger. Nervous, Lynus unslung his Radcliffe rifle, broke the breech, and chambered a round, then shut the breech with a satisfying snap. Pendrake looked back at him and raised an eyebrow, then unslung his lucky bow.
“Does the boy know something we don’t?” Horgash said.
“If he’s got a book in front of him, almost certainly,” said Pendrake with a grin. “And discretion has always been the better part of his valor. But the smell is a lot stronger down here.”
Horgash drew his own firearm, a large short-barreled Vislovski carbine that looked like it had Khadoran artillery pieces in its direct lineage. Edrea unslung her Radcliffe as well and nodded at Lynus. Her Iosan magic was always at her disposal, but it never hurt to be able to put a bullet in something first.
Pendrake walked in front, with Horgash close behind him. Edrea, Lynus, and Kinik fanned out some fifteen paces behind. They stepped carefully, and fairly quietly—Kinik learned quickly—between and among the destroyed homes. Some were in splinters, others appeared to have been crushed in place. Debris, especially thatch, was strewn everywhere. There were no bodies in sight.
“Friend Lynus,” Kinik said, “I read that the gorax has a heavy skull, tough ribs. Where do you aim that,” she gestured at his rifle, “to kill it?”
Lynus opened his mouth to answer, then stopped. That exact question had been one of the very first things Lynus asked Professor Pendrake almost five years ago. And thanks to his research with Pendrake, the answer he could give was far more specific than the one he had received then.
“Between the pectoral crease and the first rib below it,” he said, pointing to his own torso, “preferably from the left side, but definitely not from in front. An adult gorax has a wide, thick sternum.” Lynus tapped his chest.
Kinik nodded soberly.
“Properly aimed, and with enough powder behind it, that shot bursts the heart. The gorax will run maybe three more steps before dropping dead.”
“
Shhh!
” said Pendrake, signaling a halt. Then he pointed. “Where did that come from?”
A gorax pup, first season, no larger than a boot, was rolling around in the mud and thatch, barely ten paces from Pendrake. Its snout was still short and cute, its tusks no more than nubs, and a fluffy tuft of mane poked out behind its ears. Straw clung to most of the rest of it, sticking out like feathers on a baby bird.
Edrea spoke very softly. “It came from right there, Professor. You missed it because it was tiny, asleep, and covered in straw.” She bent her knees and twisted, without moving her feet or making a sound, and scanned all the way around them.
“Anything?” asked Pendrake.
“No,” she said. “Let me try—” and the pup mewled in distress, cutting her off.
Everyone was silent. Lynus held his breath.
Several bundles of thatch, still tied to unbroken rafters, rose from behind the pup, and a large female gorax crawled out on all fours, apparently from a burrow dug beneath the fallen roof. Her broad snout, somewhere between feline and porcine, glistened with stinky saliva, and the long, tangled fur of her mane was matted with mud and blood. She blinked against the daylight, reached for the pup with one hairy arm, and snorted, catching new scents.
She looked at Pendrake and growled, a low belly-growl that seemed to say “I hate you” and “I want to eat you” at the same time.
Pendrake backed away slowly. “Do as I do,” he whispered, his left hand low, his lucky bow also low in his right hand. Horgash began backing up as well, his carbine held the same way. As nonthreateningly as possible.
Lynus also stepped backward, and his boot squish-crunched in the mud and thatch—the loudest possible step he could have taken. He looked down to check his next step and saw a boot-sized muddy clump of fur right next to his foot.
Morrow preserve me. Another pup.
It opened a pair of wet black eyes, stared up at Lynus, and let out a low growl.
He looked at mama gorax. She pulled herself the rest of the way out of the burrow and snorted again. She stood, drawing herself up to nine feet of mud, stink, and fur, and swung her low-slung head side to side, snorting.
Edrea took a deep breath to Lynus’ left. Had she seen the pup?
“Professor,” he said, his voice cracking between whisper and whimper, “there’s a second pup between my feet.”
Horgash flashed Lynus an incredulous, furious glance.
“On three, run hard to your right,” said Pendrake.
Mama gorax took a step forward, still snorting, still searching.
“One.”
She drew a deep breath and stared at Lynus.
“Two.”
Her yellow gaze tracked down between his feet, and her eyes widened.
“Three.”
Lynus froze. He was supposed to jump, supposed to run, but mama gorax . . .
“THREE, LYNUS!” shouted Pendrake.
Lynus jumped to his left, and mama gorax roared. Then he remembered he was supposed to go to his right, but it was too late for that now. Mama gorax was coming, and Lynus could only hope she was having as much trouble running in this mud as he was. The Radcliffe that had seemed so comforting a few minutes ago was suddenly terribly heavy.
A sizzling whistle ended in a meaty thump not far behind him, and the gorax roared, her breath hot and rank. Lynus screamed and threw his rifle. Was it shiny enough to distract an angry—
Two rifles boomed and the gorax screamed in pain, spittle and stink splattering the back of Lynus’ head. Morrow, it was close enough to bite, he could expect teeth or claws any moment.
A huge hand came at him from his right. Before he could dodge, he realized it was in a sleeve.
Kinik!
She grabbed his right arm and yanked him hard to the right. He flung his hands out to break his fall, but he still hit the broken turf so hard his teeth rattled.
The gorax roared again. He heard a heavy, splashing thump and a horrible crunch.
Silence.
Lynus rolled over and sat up.
Pendrake’s bola was wrapped around the gorax’s feet, and an arrow sprouted from its shoulder. A vicious gash spanned the creature’s back. Kinik stood over the fallen gorax, polearm in her left hand, right hand on her hip. She looked back at him.
“More than three steps,” she said. “I am lucky to have a polearm and big blades.” Her blade certainly was big, and blood-spattered. That must have been the finishing stroke.
Lynus blew out a breath and turned toward the others, who were running his way.
“Brilliantly bungled,” said Pendrake, shaking his head. “Mama turned to follow you, but the angle was wrong.”
“You still managed to put an arrow into it and your bola around it, old friend,” Horgash said. “Though I think we all know it was my bullet to the heart that felled—“
Another roar, muffled, rose from the burrow. Everybody turned to look.
A wall from one of the flattened homes burst upward as another gorax, this one a full-maned male, emerged with a frenzied roar. It bounded up and into the clearing, then turned and glared at Lynus and the others.
From the dark hollow under the fallen home came two more gorax.
“Reload!” Pendrake shouted, loosing an arrow and nocking another. Horgash and Edrea broke their rifle breeches and slid cartridges into place.
Lynus scrambled for his own rifle amid the sounds of breeches slamming closed and arrows taking flight.
“You know where to put bullets!” shouted Kinik. “I am a student! Where do I put blades?”
A pair of weapons thundered, closely followed by cacophonous roaring from charging gorax.
Lynus grabbed his rifle and looked up at the ogrun towering above him, her enormous war cleaver at the ready. She’d shattered the spine on a gorax that was down with two arrows and two bullets in it, but—
“
WHERE?
”
Now Kinik meant to go blade-to-claw.
“Sorry . . . um . . . under the jaw and up, like pithing chickens. And, uh . . . between the ribs“—he was interrupted by a volley of gunfire and roars of pain—”but your blade is too wide. Umm . . .” That huge cleaver blade wasn’t likely to pith or pierce anything unless Kinik could drive it with enough force to crush several very sturdy bones on the way in. Which maybe she could, but he hadn’t seen her work yet.