Prologue rough draft
Prologue
The pig was
hell to haul back after the hunt. He’d never expected to find one, not after
seeing all the signs of wild dogs. Other than being insane and dangerous, the
presence of a pack bothered Mer. It meant more than a lack of meat for dinner.
The camp
wasn’t the best place. They’d picked a shelter in the middle of a storm and now
had to stay because the baby was too sick to move. This boar would go a long
way toward stabilizing the food situation and getting them out of this forsaken
area.
It had been
his idea to leave the tree line and come onto the plains in search of civilized
people they could trade with. The storm that soaked them all to the bone was
just one more message of bad luck from the Un, coming at them when they were
the least prepared for it. A week ago, before the mudslide they had everything
they needed to deal with whatever the elements threw at them. But out here in
the wilds a week felt like a year of living. The loss of that gear felt like a
lifetime ago.
The pig was
twice his size, but he couldn’t pass up the fresh meat. Cutting it up for
transport, some of it got wasted. And having gone without food for days, he
hated that necessity on principle. But this was a lick of good they all needed.
He could smell it roasting in his head, making his mouth water and stomach
rumble.
Coming back
after dark, later than expected, Mer kept his eyes open for Bezeck. The nights
out here were full of weird noises, making them all touchy. Guarding his mate
and child, Bezeck would shoot first and ask questions later.
His mare
clip-clopped over the terrain, picking up speed when she recognized the area.
The smart old thing wanted to be done with the day as much as he did. Fighting
him that first mile, after getting the meat on her back had worn down her will
for anything but finishing this day’s beast of burden business. And the mare
knew her job well enough to understand there was food waiting for her.
This place
had been a decent-sized town or city once, reminding him of the setup of some
of the housing areas in the 12 Sectors. Roads with the remains of man-built
things lined up evenly next to them. Brick pillars, concrete walls, and
twisted, rusted metal growing out of the ground with the grass and brush.
People had lived here, their lives now buried under a thin layer of dirt. This
was their memorial, left behind in tall, broken pieces of wreckage.
Mer and his
friends had found a few structures with standing walls. One had a pit leading
to a concrete basement. After weeks of traveling and staying in tents, they had
decided to stay. No one else was around. The structure they chose had two good
exits, and they’d added a roof by tearing down the wall of another left-over
building and repurposing the materials.
The mare
stopped moving and snorted.
Had she
heard something?
The wind
whistled between the barriers of old walls and creaking wood. Nothing but wind.
“Come on,
you.” He nudged the mare’s sides with his boots. She went backward instead of
forwards.
He didn’t
know if it was her nature or if someone else out here in the Un lands had
raised and trained her, but she hadn’t bucked too much or resisted too hard
when he and Bezeck captured her months back. She fit right in with the other
two animals they already had. The horse acted as steady as an old lady who’d
seen everything in life and rarely put forth an effort to react. The storm,
full of lightning, booming thunder, and icy rain, had not spooked her a bit.
The only
thing she ever balked at was
The way the
wind was blowing, the smell of cut-up boar on her backside shouldn’t have
bothered her anymore. She’d already carried it for a couple of hours anyway.
Mer
dismounted, tied her to a curve of black hook in a pillar, and went forward on
foot. The animal’s senses were better than his, but he was breed. He’d broken
his nose several times in the fighting pits of Sector 2. Although he’d healed
crooked, messing up his profile, his nose was still in the general vicinity of
the middle of his face. It worked fine.
Blood. He
finally smelled it, too.
He found the
first body within a direct sight line of camp. He bet the next two lumps he saw
were more bodies.
Bezeck had gotten good with his sling. Arrows
took too long to make, but rocks were everywhere. A rock to the brain slowed
another breed alpha down as fast as anything.
The night.
The wind. Bodies and silence.
Mer never
had anything to lose. Until now.
Had he gone
out to find food and come back to nothing?