Chapter 7 The Fire of God #3
“Not these two in particular, not that I remember anyway. Just every now and again, some of them will pass through. I used to go up and ask them for food sometimes, but one of them threw something hot on me. Now I don’t do that anymore.”
“Those days are over, right enough. Begging is for slaves,” Blacktail said, his gaze boring into Chester. “Can you understand that?”
Chester was not sure that he did understand. Food was food, was it not? Who cared how you got it? But he felt uneasy in the shadow of those burning eyes and would not challenge him. He set aside doubt and wagged his tail silently.
Blacktail studied him for a time. “Very well, then,” he said finally. “Follow me.”
Chester had lived in the desert for a long time before Blacktail came, but he had learned almost nothing of the land around him.
It never occurred to him to try. He was not precisely loud when he moved—his paws weren’t capable of anything like the noise men made—but he was not above kicking an occasional stone or setting off a small avalanche.
Blacktail, however, moved in nearly total silence.
Chester did not notice this at first, but after they had trotted a little ways he came to realize that the only sounds to mark their passing came from him.
If he stood still and listened very, very closely, he could hear the sound of Blacktail’s heart beating in his chest, but that was all.
I deserve to starve, Chester realized. The shame rocked him, stopped him in his tracks. I can pick out the sound of a can opener from half a longrun away, but the only prey that fears me is the bobtail trash bag.
Blacktail did not even pause in his stride, though he no doubt knew the nature of Chester’s thought. Wolves who hunt in a pack are of a single mind.
Chester stood for a moment, watching as Blacktail moved away from him, traveling through the canyon like a black wind.
I might have waited among these rocks until the sun went black and she would not have returned for me, he thought with sudden and perfect fury.
I might have been a ghost and haunted the desert forever, dead and betrayed with nothing but the screams of my stomach for company.
I was nothing to her. We are nothing to them.
Then his hunger, which had been calmed somewhat by the small meal but not appeased, awoke.
But there is meat aplenty on those two, Chester realized, the idea rising like the sun of a new day.
Meat aplenty, hot and fresh. A thin strand of drool ran from the side of his mouth. A dog might eat for days.
Chester trotted to catch up with Blacktail’s receding shadow. This time he took pains to be silent as he moved.
“Decided to join the hunt, have you?” Blacktail asked.
For a long time he looked only at the red dust under his paws. But when he looked up, he met Blacktail’s gaze. “Yes. I believe I have.”
“Good,” Blacktail said. “Have you done this before?”
Chester thought at first to say “of course,” to say “many times.” That was true, was it not?
He’d spent quite a bit of time running after prairie dogs.
Even before that, he had whiled away many an afternoon in the backyard, terrorizing squirrels and annoying the occasional cat. He had, of course, caught none of them.
Then he thought of the few morsels he had eaten, here among the rocks. He remembered how the raw flesh felt slipping down his throat, the warm contentment that came after. No, he thought. This hunter doesn’t want to hear about my games.
“Lord, I know nothing.”
“All right, then,” Blacktail said. “The first craft is silence. Watch me. Do as I do.” He scented the air for a moment, then bounded up the hill. Chester followed close behind, taking care to place his feet as Blacktail did.
He was still weak, and the pace was difficult. But he thought Blacktail might have moved much quicker if he had hunted alone. By the time they overtook the two-legs, they were nearly at the top of the mesa. Chester was panting hard.
“Hold back a moment,” Blacktail said. “Catch your breath. I’ll take the first one.”
Chester swallowed hard. After a moment he wagged his assent.
“As we get closer, take care that you do not look directly at them. Another thing—and this is important: Don’t linger on the thought of killing, even in your deepest heart.
You must hide your thoughts, even from yourself.
A creature can feel when it is being stalked.
I try to walk as if I’m on a stroll, just out to mark the bounds of my lands. But do whatever works for you.”
Chester looked at him doubtfully.
“Do you understand?”
“Honestly…I’m not sure. But I’ll try.” This, apparently, was enough. Blacktail turned back to the hunt. Chester followed.
The man and woman sat together on top of the high mesa, facing the setting sun.
The breeze made a gentle roar as it moved through the stone buttes.
Blacktail maneuvered through the sandstone, brushing past lily and agave.
Soon they were directly downwind. Chester understood that the ears of men were mostly unused.
He thought it likely they could howl their throats raw and still go unheard in this wind.
Even so, Blacktail took care in his steps, treading carefully on the loose scrabble, careful not to disturb anything that might make a noise.
Blacktail closed in slowly. Chester hung back, watching him.
He took great care to think of other things, of the warm den where he had been a puppy, of the strange squeaky thing that had been chewtoy, but something must have slipped through, something must have, because when Blacktail was still many paces away, the female turned and saw him.
His intent was clear, of course. Even a two-legs couldn’t fail to recognize the look of Blacktail, with his careful, frozen stare and the long gentle curve of his fangs.
She screamed. The sound of it tore at Chester’s heart, for he was the protector of the den, was he not?
When the sounds came in the night, it was his job to drive them away.
Blacktail looked back over his shoulder at this.
“The choice is yours,” he said. “Take up against me if you like. I will not strike you down—you can drive me away with only a bark. Who knows? Perhaps they will embrace you for it. If their gratitude is strong enough, you might live again in House of man, and have your ‘sammich’ and ‘chewtoy.’ ”
The two-legs said something at this. The scent of its terror was plain, but its tone was soft and gentle.
Chester giggled.
“What did it say?” Blacktail asked. “Their language is strange to me.”
“It…it said you were a ‘good boy,’ ” Chester said. “It said you were a ‘nice doggie.’ ”
Blacktail bared his front teeth. This time both of the two-legs screamed.
In that moment he seemed to Chester a king of the old age, when the forests belonged to the wolves and a strong pack need fear nothing.
“Lead me, lord,” he whispered softly, laying his ears low in submission. “I am a penitent to your pack.”
Blacktail wagged his tail at Chester, just once. Then he fixed his gaze on the prey and padded forward.
The two-legs screamed again, a high desperate sound that danced among the stones and the last rays of the sun. Behind it, the moon rose red in the desert twilight.
The male stepped in front of the female.
It shed its top skin and wrapped that around its forepaw, moving fast enough to startle Chester.
Its eyes cast back and forth, looking for a place to run, but of course there was nowhere.
Even the swiftest two-legs that ever lived would be no match for Blacktail, and anyway they were deep in the Starving Rocks.
Where could it go? Then he took something from his waist, a small metal stick that glinted in the setting sun.
“Be careful,” Chester said, “that thing is like a fang.”
The male said something that Chester couldn’t understand.
The woman did not at first react. She seemed not to hear.
She stared at Blacktail, eyes wide, unblinking.
After a moment the man repeated himself, shouting this time.
Still nothing. The third time he screamed.
Hearing that seemed, finally, to break through her terror.
She turned to run away from all of them, trying to put distance between herself and Blacktail.
Blacktail started after her. The man stepped into Blacktail’s path, guarding her retreat.
Blacktail dodged him easily. Three paces later he leapt, jaws wide.
His bite caught her low on the leg. She screamed again and fell.
She stood back up quickly enough…but her leg no longer seemed to work well.
“When you can reach, you should try for the meat-vine in the back of the prey’s leg,” Blacktail said, impossibly calm. “It cripples them, you see.”
The male rushed up to attack Blacktail from behind, hoping to catch him unaware.
Chester almost called out a warning, but then thought better of it.
At the last second, Blacktail spun and intersected the arc of the man’s strike.
Chester heard its bones crunch in Blacktail’s mouth, and the metal tooth fell to the ground.
The two-legs screamed again, not in terror this time but in pain.
Its forepaw dangled limp at a strange angle.
The male scuttled back a few paces, then got to its feet.
“What are you doing?” Chester asked. “It’s getting away!”
“I am doing nothing. This one is your kill.”
“But…”
Blacktail took a step closer, looming now over him. Chester took a fearful step back, but when Blacktail spoke, his tone was kind. “If a pack is to eat well, everyone must hunt. This time the burden is on you. They are not fast, Chester, you know that. Run it down. Kill it. Then we shall feast.”
Chester said nothing, but he licked his lips.