David Farland - Lords of the Seventh Swarm

Silver things wandered along the ground on tedious legs. Cooharah suspected these were not living beings, yet he wondered. Could they be the stubby-legged oomas his mother had taught him of? Certainly their bodies were silver-like-reflected-water, not tan-like-the-hair-of-desertdiggers. Cooharah did not approach the silver creatures, fearing they might be dangerous.

And how should we treat oomas, if we find them? Cooharah wondered. Should we flock with them, or flee from them? Some Qualeewoohs would flock with oomas, gaining profit thereby, while other Qualeewoohs found death at the aliens’ hands.

The oomas’ reaction to Qualeewoohs seemed to arise from the proximity of other oomas. If many comas flocked together, they would not kill a Qualeewooh. But lone oomas were dangerous.

Cooharah found it odd that the actions of an individual depended on whether others of its kind hovered near. Cooharah found this so incredible, he dared not believe it. Better to avoid the oomas altogether, to flee from them.

“If we see oomas, flee,” Cooharah whistled.

“Agreed to the second level of fervency,” Aaw whistled back.

They flew to a stream flowing through the green fields, then dived headlong into the shallows, washing themselves.

The water stunned them, for it was icy so high in the mountains. For a long moment, both Qualeewoohs waded, dipping their mouths into the water, then raising their heads high so the sweet, clear water flowed down their gullets.

The foot of the mountain before them was bathed in sunlight, and Cooharah spotted the natural purple of wild plants from the tangle. Though the humans raised their own strange herbs, an oasis of sorts still survived here.

Above the tangle, a flock of skogs rose, wheeling over the twisted vines like black bullets, dodging between the uppermost branches of trees. It was a strange sight, for skogs seldom flew so high above the tangle. These skogs had not been hunted in a very long time.

“The chase begins!” Cooharah whistled, leaping into the air. He chose a path low to the ground, in the shadows, barely skirting the odd alien vines. Aaw flew at his tail.

They swept into the tangle, winging up through shadows, veering through the branches. Down here, they kept hidden from the skogs above them.

Both Qualeewoohs prepared for the hunt while on the wing.

The silver teeth inlaid into Cooharah’s spirit mask had been filed to perfect sharpness earlier in the morning, and he’d not had a chance to make a kill since then. With a flick, Cooharah used the small hands at the apex of his wings to retrieve a long, thin blade from his weapon belt, then dropped it and caught it in his talons. The blade-the chosen weapon of his flock-was designed for midair decapitations.

In a moment, Cooharah spotted dark skogs pinwheeling above. His belly grumbled; the sight of prey made Cooharah see red. He was so famished, almost the sight of food drove him into acrahas -the frenzy.

But Cooharah reigned his passions. To let himself fall into the hunting frenzy would be dangerous. One did not mindlessly attack a flock of skogs, with their sharp tusks. So Cooharah fought the hunger madness, yet doubled his speed, till his body became a blurred shadow beneath the creepers and branches of the tangle. The best angle to attack a skog was from behind and beneath, rising unseen to slice at a soft belly or to slash a throat. Cooharah had practiced his techniques since he was a chick.

But behind him, Cooharah heard a rattling, a throaty chuckle that spoke of desperate need. Aaw’s hunger had become too terrible to face. She’d fallen into the acrahas . Though Cooharah flew fast, Aaw burst past him, winging up through the trees, the need in her rising from her throat in the closest sound to a growl a Qualeewooh could approximate. Cooharah thought fast. With Aaw mindless from hunger, she’d need his protection in case the skogs circled back to attack.

With the sound of Aaw’s need rising from the tangle, the skogs broke ranks, flying distractedly in every direction, wings flapping loudly. Aaw burst up from the foliage and caught one young hen skog in her mouth, ripped off its left haunch in mid-flight and gulped the bloody meat, tossing the body up and away. Half a second later, Cooharah caught the carcass as it dropped, tore off flesh with his own teeth. He shot up above Aaw in that moment, preparing to toss the bloody remains back to her, when something huge swooped past him.

Cooharah realized that just as he and Aaw had risen from the tangle to attack the skogs, some larger predator had dropped from above for the same purpose. Cooharah dropped the body of the skog in surprise and twisted, wheeling sideways, then flapped his wings hard to slow, and gazed down. He wheeled in a semicircle, watching. He had never seen a creature like this one: the beast was part mammal, part bird. It had vast, speckled wings that rose from the shoulder, and in this respect it reminded Cooharah of a whipparoong-but in no other respect. Instead of antlers on its head, it had long wavy hair, but that seemed to be the only part of its body that had hair. Its face, long arms, and legs were all hairless. It hid its body beneath some cloth much softer than the leather harness that adorned Cooharah’s own torso.

The winged beast flapped hard and soared just above the tangle, looking up at Cooharah and Aaw in frustration. It screamed some loud war cry and shook its fist in the air, angered that they had wrested away its prey.

For her part, Aaw still chuckled, her blood hunger, securely under the sway of acrahas . All the skogs had fled, dispersed in several directions, too shocked from the triple assault to form a counterattack. Cooharah watched several of them dive into the tangle, where in moments he knew they would be so far beneath the sunlight he would never catch them again before nightfall.

With nothing left in sight to eat, Aaw shrieked with need, and dived at the strange creature.

The beast rose to the challenge and flew straight up at her, beating its wings furiously. It held something in one long hand, a weapon that discharged with the sound of thunder.

Something flew from the creature’s hand, hitting Aaw’s wing, so that several pinion feathers blew off. Aaw cried out in rage, dived, twisting just to keep aloft.

With fear pumping his heart, Cooharah whistled for Aaw to be patient, so together they could face this beast from the realms of the oomas worlds. With a blinding dive, Aaw hurtled at the strange beast. Their foe pointed its weapon at her, discharged, but at the last second she twisted away. Their foe moved too slowly, and his missiles sailed harmlessly past Aaw’s tail feathers.

Cooharah knew of flocks who used missiles to hunt prey, but he’d never heard of any alien creature that did so, except for oomas.

Aaw managed to spin on her back as she passed, raking the beast’s soft underbelly with her talons. The surgically inserted nails of metal in her talons flayed the beast from chest to groin, so that on second it was roaring and a waving its weapon menacingly, and the next it faltered, trying to hold its own guts in with one long arm.

Distracted by the sight of its own blood, the creature glanced down. Cooharah struck.

Cooharah dived from above and behind, aiming between the beast’s wings, slashing forward with all his might. When his blade struck the beast’s neck, Cooharah was unprepared for the thickness of its bones. He’d never met a foe so strong. The blade nearly ripped from his talons, and Cooharah flapped his wings frantically for half a second, trying to draw it out.

Fortunately, just when Cooharah feared the blade would tumble into the tangle and become lost, the beast’s head severed from its body and tumbled.