Chapter 4 The God of the Lost #5
“You said it has magic to take away pain?” Blacktail asked. He tried to keep the desperation from his voice. Mostly he succeeded.
The Hider wagged his head up and down. “Oh yes.”
“Then do it,” Blacktail said. “Be quick, if you can.”
The Hider went to the hindquarter of Car and withdrew a small black bundle.
He walked up to the prey and tossed the bundle down near its head.
It seemed not to understand, so the Hider pointed at Blacktail’s leg.
The prey understood then, and cried a little more.
But when the Hider cut it, it babbled for a moment in the bad language.
Even Blacktail could tell it had yielded.
The prey withdrew the paraphernalia of magic from the bundle and cradled it to his chest. It crawled on its knees through the sand and desert rocks and knelt in front of Blacktail.
The scent of its terror rolled out in great waves, thick and rich.
The magic thing was long and pointy, like a metal thorn.
It glinted in the moonlight, then spat a little fluid up at the moon.
The prey reached out tentatively and touched Blacktail’s hind leg.
It paused then, panting, terrified. It could not meet Blacktail’s gaze, but it turned to the Hider with wet, fearful eyes.
The Hider stepped up, stopped the prey’s hand with a touch. “My Lord? This thing in the prey’s hand is a small magic. It will make your pain go away. But to do this, the prey must stick you.”
“A bite?”
“No. Only as you might be poked with a thorn or a cactus. There is no poison. It will not harm you. The magic is very strong—soon after, the pain will fade.” The Hider met Blacktail’s eyes.
“Please, Lord…when the thorn pokes, you try not to bite? This one can fix your leg. And”—the Hider gestured at Blacktail’s wound—“magic prey beasts are tough to come by.”
“Ah,” Blacktail said. “I see. Very well. I will not bite.”
When it came, the pain was absurdly small.
The worst of it was a sensation of swelling as the thing spat its magic.
He watched a bubble grow under his fur, then diminish.
Warmth washed out through his body, like a good meal after days of hunger.
For the first time since he could remember, he felt good.
“Better?” asked the Hider.
“Yes,” Blacktail said. He found it a struggle to focus his eyes. “Strong magic, indeed.”
“Be still now, and turn your head away,” the Hider said. Yup, Blacktail thought. He’s definitely talking better. “The magic does not work if you watch.” Blacktail smelled a lie in that, but he did not care. He laid his head down. Don’t fall asleep. It’s too soon to trust them.
The prey touched Blacktail’s hind leg with its forepaws, probing gently. Many of the spots it touched were swollen. Only moments before, even a light touch would have made him yelp. But whatever magic ran through his veins was strong.
Not long after the crunching sounds began. Blacktail rolled his eyes, lifted his head to see.
“No.” The Hider moved his hand to block Blacktail’s view. “Really. It is best you not look on it.”
Another wet crunch. Then another. “Well…if you say so.”
“Tell me, Lord,” the Hider said. “If I may ask? You are from the far hill?”
“Eh? How do you know about all that?”
“The mices tell to me,” the Hider said. “They see much.”
“So it would seem.”
“This journey you make…it is hard, yes?”
“Yes and no.” Something snapped in his leg—not painful, exactly, but…discomfiting. Blacktail grunted. “Not that hard, really, but for the damn mountains. The god who made this land must have treasured fatal drops above all other things.”
“Why you go south? Has the Forest God been told of there? The mices have not seen Him.”
“No one that I talk to seems to know anything. No one but the Old Kitty Mother, and she keeps her own counsel. She tells me He may be found if I journey to the south.” Blacktail sighed. “But I have walked quite a way already. All I’ve found is men.”
“You are the great hunter,” the man said. “She chose you. You must be the one to find. Tell me, what do you think? When you dream of that day, what do you see?”
“That’s an interesting question,” Blacktail considered this while the prey did horrible things to his leg.
“This is just me, mind you, but when I think of the Forest God, I imagine him in a wild place. He would be somewhere the hand of man has not touched. Perhaps a place where men still fear to go.” He looked at the Hider, not quite pleading.
“Is there even anywhere like that left in this world?”
The Hider thought for a while. “Perhaps. But is would be very far from here. So far south it would be not a forest but a jungle. There are many men, many roads and Cars on the path to this place. My Lord Hunter is brave.”
“The Old Kitty Mother said the same thing.” Something in his leg snapped. Blacktail winced. “I think I’m starting to believe it.”
The Hider took a quick peek, then smiled. “Don’t bite. The prey is finished soon, I think. Leg will heal.”
“I won’t bite.”
The Hider rambled on. Blacktail thought it was mostly a distraction, but he didn’t mind. “What does my Lord Hunter think the Forest God will do? If you find Him? Wake Him?”
Blacktail surprised himself with the truth.
“Probably nothing,” he said. “He has slept long. I think it may take more than the woes of one wolf to rouse him. But if he does…” Blacktail trailed off, considering.
After a breath or two his lip curled up—not quite a snarl, but close.
“Or perhaps he will gobble me up to punish my impudence.” He paused, then winced at another crackle from his nether regions.
“Or perhaps he will grant me an audience.”
“What then?”
“If the Forest God listens to me, he will rise up. He will awaken from his long sleep and go out into the world. Then. Well. Then men will learn what it is to be the hunted. All men.”
“Do you think?”
“No. Not really. But it can’t hurt to hope.”
“Is the Forest God so powerful?” the Hider asked, awed. “To kill all of men?”
“Possibly? I grew up on a rock up north of here. We’ve got chipmunks, bear, caribou, mouse…like that. But we don’t get many Gods up there. The Old Kitty Mother—you’ve heard of her, right? From the mice, or whoever?”
“Yes.”
“She seems to think it’s possible. And she strikes me as a clever one.” Another crunch. Blacktail winced. “So…maybe. And it’s not like I’ve got much else going on.”
The Hider smiled. It was sweet and genuine, like a puppy. It lit up his face. “That…that is a glorious thing.” His expression was wide-eyed adoration—worship, even. It was the first time another creature looked at him that way. Blacktail always remembered it.
“Aren’t you…don’t you feel any…”—Blacktail reached for words in the painless fog of his mind—“any kinship to them? The other two-legs? Any bond?”
“No!” The Hider turned his head and spat into the underbrush, like he was clearing a bad taste from his mouth.
“Why should I? They are not my pack anymore, if they ever were. They put me in a cage. They wanted to keep me there forever. Not just long time. Forever. My life? In a cage?” His mouth frothed with foam. “Hell for them! Hell for them all.”
Blacktail observed this small fury with some interest.
A few breaths later the Hider was calm again. “I ask my god once,” he said reflectively, “if He hates them so much, why He not devour them?”
“Oh? What did he say?”
The Hider laughed. “He say is too hard. Kill the two-legs, yes. That is easy enough. But above them is the God of Reason, who give protection and sheltering. To kill such is above even Him.”
“Hmm,” Blacktail said. “You know, you’re not the only beast I’ve heard say something like that. I will think on it.”
The Hider nodded, pleased. For the rest of the night they said little, each lost in their own thoughts.
v
The Hider left shortly after the prey had completed working the magic. He took the prey with him. Blacktail was grateful for the peace—he fell asleep as soon as he could no longer see the red eyes of Car. He slept all the next day.
Blacktail woke around sunset. He was surprised to see that the Hider had left another body for him.
It was a great fat thing. Blacktail fed on it for three more days while his leg healed.
He had always healed quickly. With the magic helping, he was now back to something like his normal strength.
I will rest for one more day, Blacktail thought.
No more. Tomorrow night I set out again.
The Hider came that night. He roared up in Car just after sundown, and pulled the wizard of healing out of Car’s hindquarters.
The Hider seemed strange—more so than usual, even.
Blacktail thought his wound had become infected.
His smell was something like a mad opossum he met once, just before the blood fever killed it.
When they drew close, Blacktail saw that the prey had been hurt even more than before—now all its flesh was covered in little cuts and burns. Parts of it were missing that Blacktail was sure had been there last time. It can’t take much more of that and live.
But this time the Hider did not seem to need to hurt it more. He fell into the true language immediately, saying, “Lord Hunter? Lord Hunter, come out.” The prey at his feet heard the sounds of the true language and moaned.
Blacktail showed himself.
“You are walking better now,” the Hider said. “It is healing, yes?”
“I think so,” Blacktail said. “It is good that you came. I thought to leave on the next sunset.”
“You must leave, yes,” the Hider said. “Find the Forest God. Tell him what you have seen. But first I will show you.”
“Show me? What would you show me?”
“I would show you one thing, one place. It is a special to me, and there is no one else. It is a hard thing, to be always outside the pack—” He cut himself off. Blacktail thought he smelled shame.
“Yes,” Blacktail agreed, his tone gentler than was common for him. “It is hard, indeed.”
“You will come, then? It is not far.”
“Of course.”