Vaughn Heppner: Giants

“It’s ancient,” Joash told Harn.

The lion-colored dog wagged his tail.

“Why didn’t Elidad want me to see this?”

Harn sniffed the skeleton.

In the distance, an auroch-horn blared. Joash could tell its type by the low flat note. A warrior’s horn would have pealed higher. He snapped his fingers at Harn and headed onto the plains. He wondered how the roundup went and which warriors had roped the most stallions.

Soon, Joash spotted two people near the cedar-topped hill. He shouted and waved until they jogged toward him.

It was Eber and Nestor, the latter a tall groom with a red band around his head. “You’re late,” Nestor said.

“Where did everyone go?” Joash asked.

“To the birch tree,” Nestor said. “We’re supposed to bring water. Oh, and make sure you keep Harn out of danger, especially from attacking sabertooths. Those are direct orders from Lord Uriah.”

“Why would he order that?” Joash asked.

“A Kenaz charioteer told us a new pride of sabertooths was spotted prowling around the cooking-wagons.”

“ More new sabertooths,” Joash said.

“What’s that mean?”

Joash told them about the sabertooths, the marsh and the black stallion.

“And you think this is another new pride?” Nestor asked.

“I’ll tell you if I’m going blind,” Joash said.

Nestor stroked his beak of a nose. “There’s nothing we can do about it now. You can tell Herrek later. Ready? Let’s go.”

Big Eber lifted two water-skins. Nestor slung one over his shoulder and gave the lightest to Joash. They followed chariot-wheel tracks, avoided thistle patches, and kept a sharp lookout for sabertooths. They came across a lone set of chariot tracks. The grass-crushed lines headed north instead of east with the others.

“Who headed north?” Nestor asked.

Eber shifted his water-pole. “Are we stopping?”

Nestor nodded, and they crouched in the shade of thorn bushes.

“I wish we would have come during winter,” Joash said, as he wiped his sweaty brow.

Nestor chuckled. “My brother came with Herrek ten years ago. The steppes howled with blizzards then.”

Joash studied movement along the eastern horizon, the direction they were traveling. A strange cry came from there.

“Are those hyenas?” Nestor asked. His eyesight was poor.

“They slink like them,” Joash said.

“I hate hyenas,” Eber said ponderously.

Joash didn’t know of anybody who loved them.

Old Three-Paws the sabertooth bitterly hated hyenas.

The hatred had started long ago. He’d been a cub then, barely able to eat solid food. His mother’s mouth had become swollen from giant porcupine quills. She’d wasted away, and had finally lain down, as the pride had padded away to hunt mammoths. Sensing her weakness, hyenas had come in their howling pack. As a cub, Old Three Paws had squeezed into an abandoned jackal hole and had snapped and clawed at the hyenas who had tried to worm in after him. The nightmare still haunted his sleep.

A pack of hyenas prowled in the reeds, watching him eat the stallion. Three-Paws roared, spittle flying from his bloody mouth.

Although past his prime, Three-Paws was still the pride leader and grotesquely powerful, over nine-hundred pounds in weight. Bad-tempered and mean, his long-ago wounding by a two-legs fueled his constant rages. For all his cruelty, however, Three-Paws kept the pride safe from foreign sabertooths. He also had a fanatical loathing of any beast that came near the sacred cubbing den.

A new sound filled the clearing: a blistering roar. The sabertooths looked up in alarm while the hyenas fled with their tails between their legs. In the reeds moved a creature that dwarfed the sabertooths. The creature roared again.

Old Three-Paws cowered, his ears laid flat against his head. The god-creature that had driven them here sounded angry.

One by one, the sabertooths slunk on their bellies toward the god-creature. Three-Paws hesitated. It enraged him that the god-creature wanted him to leave meat. He’d fought the god-creature a week ago and had lost. Now, he must obey, even as he’d obeyed the god-creature’s orders to leave the cubbing den and come here. Three-Paws finally slunk on his belly and licked the god-creature’s snout in submission. He endured the harsh snarls and the buffets to his head.

Attack the two-legs now, the god-creature ordered. Obey .

Three-Paws and his pride hurried away. Three-Paws dared look back, and saw hyenas dashing toward the horse carcass. Terrible anger filled him, but he obeyed the god-creature.

His crippled paw soon throbbed with pain. Combined with his belly-rumbles, he knew growing hostility toward the god-creature. Never, since he’d become the pride leader, had he been driven from his meat. It left him baffled and enraged.

The pride crossed the stream and headed onto the plains. The scent of two-legs, horses, and hounds lingered. Three-Paws’s belly rumbled, and the thought of hyenas feasting upon his kill made him angrily shake his head. Each time he set down his injured paw, he yearned to stop and rest. Just then, Three-Paws noticed a distant flash of light. He thought it might be a two-legs and his sun-reflected hide of bright skin. A low rumble sounded in his throat. The flash came from the same direction as the cubbing den.

In Three-Paws’s feline brain, an odd and imprecise contest took place. The terrifying god-creature had a strange right to demand obedience from the pride. Yet Three-Paws had little intention of obeying anything other than his belly’s constant demand for meat. His crippled paw throbbed anew. Old Three-Paws stopped and tried to make the others turn north. The pride followed Yellow Fang instead, sensing from the young male that the god-creature must be obeyed. In disgust, Three-Paws followed too.

In time, the pride came across a lone chariot track. Three-Paws sniffed it. A two-legs headed toward the cubbing den. He roared savagely and tried again to turn the pride north. Once again, the pride followed Yellow Fang.

Eyes blazing, Three-Paws attacked the smaller male. Yellow Fang tried to submit. Three-Paws bit and clawed him. Yellow Fang finally hissed in alarm, leaped up, and trotted east, driven from the pride.

With Three-Paws in the lead, the pride reluctantly turned north. Three-Paws wished to find the lone two-legs and slay him, and slay any who came near the cubbing den. Yet, what if the god-creature returned…? Old Three-Paws glanced nervously over his shoulder. He increased his pace in order to leave this strange and sinister territory.

Joash, Nestor and Eber topped a small crest and jogged down into a dry riverbed. They crunched across smooth stones and climbed the bank and into the noisy roundup camp by the lone birch tree. Chariots and cooking-wagons stood in parked clusters. Unhitched Asvarn stallions, aurochs, and half-domesticated long-horned cattle, grazed nearby. A horde of wagon masters, hunters, beaters, trumpeters, grooms, and runners milled about the camp as they chatted and did their chores.

The chain-mailed charioteers sat near a fire where tea boiled. They sat under a leather awning, shaded from the sun. Each warrior sat erect on a mat, cross-legged, with his spear laid on his right and with his sword beside it. Herrek had wrapped his belt around his sword’s scabbard. The silver buckle was shaped like a lion’s head, the fangs acting as securing clamps.

At the southern edge of camp steppe ponies shifted nervously. Ropes attached to their bridles secured them to stakes. Their eyes were wild. Blood welled from the rump of one brown stallion. Perhaps a sabertooth had raked him.