Chapter 4 The God of the Lost #4
The two-legs wagged his head up and down.
“Yes. For long time I chew on it but find no answer. Then one day I think to ask the little ones, the cockroach and mouse. They whisper to me of the paths of the fearing and humble. They tell to me that in their pride the two-legs cannot see such. I give them food, for thanking them. After that we are friend, and speak many night.”
“Really?” Blacktail asked. “I have never known them to be very talkative.”
The Hider looked amazed. “Them always talk. Them never stop. Some nights them talk so much I think to bite off my ears.”
Hearing this, Blacktail shot a suspicious eye at the Hider.
The man caught him looking. “Not really do it. Just think. After many-many of nights arguing all time about whether rotten corn or moldy bread is better taste, you maybe think, too.”
“Mrrr,” Blacktail said, settling back down. “Perhaps. If the bunnies on my hill had spent fewer nights bellowing out poems about how adorable Fluffy Miss So-and-So’s private parts were and more nights sleeping, they probably would have lived longer. I’ll say that much.”
The Hider wagged his head up and down. “Bunnies bad here, too. Especially in spring.”
“Yes, spring is the worst.”
“So, mices never speak to you?”
“Not really. Every now and then one begs for mercy.”
“Ah. I see. To you they food.” The Hider’s tone was faintly disapproving.
“They’re quite tasty,” Blacktail said. “They pop right in your mouth. The juices slide down your throat. You should try one sometime.”
“No,” the Hider said. He spoke respectfully, but his tone was cooler than it had been. “I no do. For a many of nights, mices are my only friends.”
“Ah,” Blacktail said. “I see.” He thought for a moment. “Um…I’ll leave the mice alone until I’m a bit farther south. Seeing as how they’re friends of yours.”
“Lord Hunter is very gracious.”
“Think nothing of it.”
“Still, even if they not speak to you, they speak of you muchly,” the Hider said.
“Me? Really?”
“Oh yes. First the mice, then later all the small things. They say you would come, from the north. ‘A hunter as has not been seen since the old age,’ they say, ‘And none may stand against him.’ They say you would come to me, hurting and in pain. I tell God. Him very excited. Him say I am to wait for you, yes. Feed you and give you aid. It still hurt?” the man asked, pointing to Blacktail’s leg.
“Not so much.”
“Is broken, I think.”
“It will heal,” Blacktail said, though he had his doubts. The fever was still high in him.
“My Lord Hunter is very strong,” the man said. “But I think maybe not. I think maybe this…”
“Fine. Fine,” Blacktail snapped. “But what would you have me do?”
“Maybe not you. Maybe I do. Among my prey are…wizards. Sort of. Wizards of the healing of beasts. Maybe I find one. I bring. It make your leg well.”
Blacktail was silent for a long time. “You would do this?”
“I do anything. You are my duty to God.”
“Very well,” Blacktail said. “I would be…Very well. Do it.”
“Good,” said the Hider, smiling his sad smile once again. “I go now, I think. My Lord Hunter need magic. Need it soon. But to work the—the—” He stammered for words, waving his forepaw at Car. “I must fall out of the true language. I must return to reason. I not can speak then.”
“I understand,” Blacktail said. His eyes were drooping. “When will you return?”
“Next night, maybe the one after. You have enough to eat, yes?”
Blacktail wagged in agreement.
“Good. Sleep. Eat. Heal. I come back soon.”
iv
All the next day Blacktail slept in the shadow of a boulder beside the stream.
Around midday he woke and filled his belly again on the prey that the Hider had left.
Other than that he barely moved. He felt better for having water and food, but the agony in his leg had returned.
He thought that his sickness had grown worse.
About midnight he woke to the roar of Car.
It was hard to be certain, especially in the dark, but he thought this one sounded the same as the one from before.
And sure enough, when it was close, he caught a whiff of the Hider underneath Car’s foul breath.
Sniffing deeper, he realized that there was another two-legs as well.
Blacktail considered rising to greet his host, but thought better of it.
If he is not yet in the hunt, he may not even remember me.
Perhaps it would be best to wait until I hear him speak.
He did not take pains to hide himself, but lay in silence next to the boulder.
He thought it would be enough. The eyes of men are weak at night.
Many things watch them but are not seen.
Car came to rest near where it had been before. Its bright, staring eyes closed. Its breathing fell still. Not long after, it burped up the Hider. Now his scent was mixed with fresh blood. He is wounded.
The Hider padded around aimlessly for a little while, scratching himself and looking up at the sky.
What was it that he said? When the hunt is not high in him, the true language is like a dream? Something like that. I was right to lay low. If I showed myself now, he would piss himself and run away screaming, I think.
Then there came a muffled moan from the ass of Car, followed by a great pounding. The Hider blinked a few times, as if coming back to himself. He walked slowly to Car’s hind end. It opened for him.
The Hider reached in and wrapped his forepaw in the hair of another man, bigger than him.
This one had long hair like many female two-legs, but a broad back and legs thick with muscle.
The Hider lifted him, ignoring the prey’s squeals, and dropped it to the desert floor.
Blacktail thought it might run then, but no.
After a moment he realized that its fore- and hind paws were bound up in some kind of vine. It was helpless.
The Hider rummaged around in Car and retrieved a long metal tooth.
It flashed wicked in the moonlight. The prey seemed unable to look away from it.
The Hider knelt in front of his prey, holding the tooth.
The prey tried to squirm away, but the Hider was stronger than he appeared.
Even with his wound he tossed the prey about as if it were a pup.
The Hider struck the prey about the head and shoulders, subjugating it. When it offered no further struggle, he dipped his head and bit the prey’s shoulder. The prey screamed and bucked wildly, but the Hider only laughed.
At first Blacktail wondered: What is the point?
The Hider’s teeth weren’t strong enough to tear flesh.
It crossed his mind to intervene, to stop…
whatever this was. But something about the Hider reminded him of the night Renren had died, the way he himself had savaged the bodies long past the point of hunting.
Too, he remembered how he’d felt when he stopped.
Empty. Ashamed.
Lost.
Then, for no reason he could name, he thought of that ancient scent poem by his home—how did it go?
As with the sunset, so, the coming of men.
Hate has its own language, Blacktail thought. And some poems insist upon themselves.
The Hider lay panting beside his prey for a moment, then rose. He shed his outer skins and his body steamed in the cool night air. “Lord Hunter?” he called out tentatively. “Come out, Lord Hunter. I have a fine gift for you.”
“I am here,” Blacktail said, emerging from the brush.
At the sight of him, the Hider smiled. “Well met!” he said brightly. “To see you is good. I feared you a night-vision. A dream.”
“No, I’m real enough,” Blacktail said, limping up to the Hider. As he drew close, he saw that the blood smell came from a wound in his shoulder. Many of the Hider’s scents were strange to him, but he knew the smell of wounds. This one was deep. “What is this?”
“Is only a little thing,” the Hider said, flicking away a trickle of blood. “When I took this prey, the magic one, I was seen. Two pack lords came for me. I killed them, but one threw a gunshot.”
“Hmm,” Blacktail said. “Bend down a bit, will you?” The Hider squatted down, and they sniffed each other for a moment.
Despite what he had said about being deaf-in-his-nose, the Hider seemed to take pleasure in Blacktail’s scent.
He brought his face close to the thick fur of Blacktail’s neck and drew in a deep breath.
“There is something in your wound,” Blacktail said when it was done. “A metal stone, I think.”
“Yes,” said the Hider. “I feared it was that.”
“You have risked much in my aid,” Blacktail said.
“Once already I tell you,” said the Hider. “This my honor.”
Down below, the prey watched them, at first in wide-eyed silence, then, after a few breaths, with loud, piercing screams.
“Is that the wizard you spoke of?”
“Yes.”
“You know, for a two-legs, you’re not bad at this. I think you’re speaking better as well.”
“Really?”
Blacktail swished his tail.
“Thank you,” the Hider said, quivering like a happy pup. “Do you hurt again? It can make the pain go away.”
The prey was staring at them with wide, horrified eyes, insane eyes. It said something to the Hider in the language of men.
“What is it saying?”
“It…Lord, I have lost the words. I cannot speak both the true language and the tongue of reason at the same time. But to guess…it knows we speak. Before, it was afraid—of my hurting, of death, perhaps of the sight of Lord Hunter as well—but to know we speak together is worse. To know hurts it in the mind. I think it begs to die.”
Blacktail padded up to the prey, his fangs bared. He tasted the blood flowing from the bite wound in the prey’s shoulder. “It will get its wish, I think.”
At the feel of Blacktail’s soft tongue, the prey screamed and screamed. Finding no relief in that, it twisted on the ground, tried to bury its face in the dirt. Over and over, it spat nonsense words into the dirt.
“Make it stop that,” Blacktail said. “The sounds of that language sicken me.”
“Yes, Lord.” The Hider kicked the prey hard in the head, bringing fresh blood. It cried out in pain, then fell mostly silent.