Slayer

Brighteye and Whitecrown found the stranger again just as the snow from the prior night was almost cleared from the grass. She moved gracefully despite her immense size, her height towering over everything else in the wind-beaten landscape of thorn bushes and rocks. She was silent and sturdy, and when she crouched down to rest for a moment she almost disappeared from sight, her grey plumage matching the large boulders dotting the landscape. She nibbled the vegetation as she went, picking a green shoot here, a flower bud there, but passing over most of the plant life, too hard and sharp. She was selective about what she could eat.

The hornheads weren’t. He saw them approaching in a wide line, a herd of a hundred or more, as the stranger rested beside a boulder picking tidbits from the ground. The hornheads ate everything as they went, a force of destruction. Bare earth was unveiled as the herd marched along, torn and muddied, all its life stripped away. They ate the grass and the bushes, the spikes on their wide beaks protecting them from injury. She couldn’t see them from her position, but she could apparently feel the movement of their hooves upon the earth. She rose to her feet in advance of the closing army and made her retreat ahead. To move to the left or right of the hoard would be better, but in her foraging for more nutritious plants she had entered a mostly dry river bed, a ditch in the earth. Here water pooled longer, and more nutritious grasses and herbs grew away from the drier thorn-filled upland. But here, too, her movement was restricted. The sides here were too steep to climb. She was a lot faster than the herd though, so she would easily outpace them walking the long way, and exit the other end of the rut where the transition was smoother. Brighteye, with Whitecrown close behind, fluttered from one thicket to the next to stay close behind the stranger.

Suddenly a whir of wings erupted beside them, startling whitecrown who let out a croak. Another lone bluetail had been hiding in this bush. Was it watching the herd-bird too? Did it have the same idea? The other bluetail turned its head as it flew away, and briefly made eye contact with Brighteye, but then kept going in the same direction as the stranger, passing high over her head and disappearing into the distance. It didn’t stay to fight. Perhaps it was just a juvenile passing between territories before settling its own clan. It was frightening to be away from one’s clan for the first time, and Brighteye at least had his brother. He couldn’t imagine how much worse it would be for one like him to be cast out by himself.

But it was then that Brighteye heard something that made him stop. Calls in the distance, but growing slowly louder. The bird wasn’t alone. They spoke in a dialect he hadn’t heard before. The accent was comprehensible, but thick enough that he could only understand their voices with difficulty at this distance. What he heard gave him a chill. A repeated chant, growing louder with every verse.

“Here, leader-fang. Follow-me-far. Time-now-to-eat! Don’t-wait-long.”

It was a hunting party. The brothers froze silent in their hiding place as the clan appeared, dozens of wings cracking against the cold air. It was a large one, more than twenty adults. They landed one by one, on boulders and branches and on the edges of the all ravine around the stranger, who’s whole mannerism shifted in an instant. She froze too. All around her they sang their eerie harmony, raising their voices louder and louder. Whitecrown cowered, scarcely breathing. Brighteye’s clan didn’t do this... at least, they hadn't in a long time. It unnerved him. Yet memories returned to him from his youth, the old clan leader calling the hook-toothed creature now mostly gone from the world. He recalled the excitement, how he wished to lead his own hunts in the same vein one day. It felt different to see the ritual from this new perspective.

“Here, leader-fang. Follow-me-far. Time-now-to-eat! Don’t-wait-long.”

To the stranger it was incomprehensible chatter, and yet she knew fully what it meant.

They were calling in reinforcement.

She glanced briefly behind. The hornheads were still making their slow approach, currently paying her no attention but collectively blocking the entire valley behind her from wall to wall, a fortress of gnashing jaws and knife-like tusks. She could not reverse course and cross them.

“Here, leader-fang. Follow-me-far. Time-now-to-eat! Don’t-wait-long.”

It was an ambush.

“DON’T WAIT LONG!”

And she was trapped.

Blaze's concern wasn't toward the birds, the harbingers, that gathered screaming around her. She knew their display was only an omen, foretelling the arrival of much worse things. Turning back ahead, to where the grade evened out and the valley came to its end, her gaze met that of the one her people called the slayer.

And in its cold eyes, in that moment, she saw death itself.