Two in the Bush [Kila]

The boy was not just strange, but alien to the trader. He resembled a crawler dragged out from the guts of Fort and forced into a human mold. Pale and spindly as a mote of Thread before it struck flesh, Sh'len appeared to have been kept behind stone from birth. From his yipping and grimacing, Q'sis took away that there was nothing solid inside to make up for the watery shell. He supposed the Green had thought herself a patch to that runny personality. It might work. She was a good Green. Strong where Sh'len was weak. But the dragon alone did not fight Thread.

Unath, the Tan replied nearly a minute after Nivoth had addressed her. I'm Unath, she reiterated brightly. She had walked a meandering path to the lakeshore before answering, and waded outward a few uneven steps. The ripples cascading away from her ankles crossed the shrunken silhouette of the last moon to set. Its reflected light was already gone, Unath forced to navigate by whatever scraps of starlight were available in the hour, her immense eyes glowing above the lake's surface.

She lowered her head till Nivoth's tail dipped into the water, then jerked back as if she were the hatchling suddenly tagged with cold. The dappled dragonet twisted her head around to look back at the rocky shore, then out over the deep, dark waters. With some assistance from Q'sis, she decided to crane her head over her own shoulder, depositing Nivoth in the well between her last two neckridges. Her urge to poke at Nivoth with her nose failed to abate, but this time it at least had something of a stabilizing effect till the hatchling could secure her grip. Then Unath warbled into a broadly-defined gallop, charging along the shore, thick wings fanned at her sides.

"At least you know honesty," Q'sis said. "But even that will not serve you every time." At least Sh'len had not defied expectations. Though he could hear the Jr. Weyrling gurgling for breath, he kept moving. He stayed at the right side of the big road up to the Weyr, the forest expanding to his left. Q'sis did not so much as glance toward the little cricks and hisses rustling in the vegetation. He surveyed from left to right without prejudice, but he was not seeking anything yet. A troupe of firelizards coasted silently overhead, bellies flashing in the glow-light, their course curving toward the western beaches where there would be shellfish to pry.

Q'sis led Sh'len past the clustered workshops of Dalibor's outlying crafters, onto the empty road that had no business being full outside the arrival of tithe ships. Yet the path was still conspicuously maintained, no green allowed over the edges. "Pretend that all the dragons of Dalibor decided to leave. Everyone demanded a spot at Fort." He finally looked over his shoulder, only to see if Sh'len grasped the joke. "The Weyrfolk and Crafters were taken with the riders. Only your Nivoth is left inside the Weyr. Only you can provide for her. The feeding grounds are empty. Let's say you know, based on the fact that I brought you out so early, that the best time to leave for your hunt is before dawn. So here you are."

The Tanrider turned around, staring at his unlikely student. "Nivoth is starving. What do you do?"

Q'sis let Sh'len's questioning response sit out in the cold night unanswered. When the pale, quivering boy finally offered a more productive word-- the Tanrider still remained silent, normally dull olive eyes possessed of a keen glint from the glow in his hand. The judge's eyes were always clear.

"Hunting is a series of steps, just like anything else. If you're emotional about it, you won't do it right. The payoff comes in a single strike after long preparations. That is what we men do, because we are weaker than all the other predators of this world." And it was the giant who offered this wisdom. He clipped his glowbasket shut and the black scenery filled in around them, distant stars more vivid, firelizard shadows momentarily discernible against a slightly lighter tint of the sky. There were glows the fishermen set open on the docks all night to keep lost ships from plowing into them, but the details they illuminated were fuzzy from this distance.

The ocean had its own lights, bioluminescent flecks oiling the waves, but in this part of Pern they were not numerous enough to get the seas glowing. Among the footnotes of life, greater entities came into view. The flits of course, but also a pair of great globular lights that came in together from the depths, surfacing a ways of the beach and then proceeding to shore. It was no lost ship, but the creature arrowed toward the docks in particular, stopping in front of the lowest one. It threw its catch up onto the stubby wooden platform: a large fish, maybe a shipfish calf. It had the right shape, Q'sis thought, though usually shipfish made a racket when one of their number was injured, and he could not hear anything now.

The catch twitched. The wood of the dock beneath it darkened. The hunter crawled out of the sea beside it. Big as an ox, maybe; the distance distorted matters of size. But the features were as hard to unveil as shellfish meat from the shell. The beast was so knobby as to resemble a cluster of branches and rotting swigs that had assembled into a pantomime of an animal. It appeared colorless beneath the dock glows, just a lighter shade of the dark. It rolled the catch toward the center of the dock, then climbed over the body and turned around so it could dine with a full view of the shore. It ate without fanfare, not even a roar of triumph.

Q'sis watched for a time before turning his regard back to the far less interesting predator at his side. "We will go deep into the forest now," he informed Sh'len blandly, lacking his prior incense. "The wherries they breed for feeding dragons have escapes from time to time-- not from the Weyr so much as the mainland. They swim over here. They always seem to get smaller outside the pens, but it would be enough for you and your dragon." The Senior Weyrling turned away from the beach and stalked straight off the path, into the wet newborn leaf smell of the woods. "Come on."

He reopened his 'basket, trees cutting shark shadows upon each other as the glow filled the space between. However close to morning the heavens might have seemed outside, it was still pitch everywhere beyond the glow's reach in the forest. "Stay with me, Green. The night's watchmen are going home now. You don't have to worry about them. But those wherries will kick your guts out-- well, they would kick your guts out. On me they would kick something of vastly greater importance," he explained, noting their height difference. "Do you understand why we are approaching from this direction?" Q'sis asked, sniffing at the wind in his face.

...can't remember, Unath replied to the tiny hatchling on her back, taking the inquiry rather literally. I think so. She flapped her wings once, casting her enormous body into a faster leap that splashed down gently in the buffered shallows. Oh... she murmured, having reached the bridge separating the lake from the waterfall pool. Unath waddled around in a circle, looking over her shoulder when she was finished to remind herself that Nivoth was still there. She craned her jaws over and licked the tiny dragonet's head and back, nostrils puffing over wings and skin. Q'sis says you should keep your wings closed and hold on to me, Unath advised, descending the shoreline till her feet left the bottom.

Nivoth was kept high and dry on the island of Unath's shoulders, and Unath settled into a sedate, tail-propelled paddle out into the lake. I would listen to him. He's the nicest guy, the Tan oozed dreamily.

"The wind favors us when we approach from this direction," Q'sis replied with dutiful patience, his earlier frustration absented. "Listen to Nivoth for a time, Sh'len. She smells, hears and sees well in this time when your own senses fail. Wherries have the same abilities. If you die, they swarm upon you within minutes. If they were to smell us, they would flee long before we had glimpses of them. Remember: you are the hunter. They fear only your dragon more than you."

The Sr. Weyrling did not remain talkative, even to teach. Outside the distant eastern sky began to redden, but in the island forest it remained black outside the radius of their glow. Q'sis did close the basket a few more times, looking for the bioluminescent shine of eyes that would show up in the light's absence, but upon seeing nothing continued ever-deeper. A rotten effervescence slipped onto their route, and Q'sis motioned his charge back a hundred paces, shoving him into a ditch under a log there. He crouched down beside the log, too large to fit into the little haven beneath himself, and waited with the glow closed.

The odor drifted to the north, and disappeared. The fungal blue-green of the basket reemerged, the shadow of Q'sis hand sliding away from it. "I will never know why people believe acting wherrybrained is a bad thing," he joked, turning around to retrieve the Greenrider. "When we get back up to where we were, I will be shutting the light off for good. Stay close--" As if Sh'len had not already been nearly hugging to him in terror! "--and listen. You will be telling me where we go from there." The canopy above them flushed a dim orange-brown, the product of the rising sunlight trickling into green leaves. "And keep your axe handy." Q'sis' flat instructive tone began to dissipate, making room for excitement.

Q'sis pressed his lips together, pursuing the boy as quietly as his massive frame would allow. It was not hard to remain silent, actually. Sh'len proceeded with either great care or great fear, and either way it kept them both from making so much noise that they would warn the wherries of their arrival. He thought it was progress enough that the Greenweyrling was now willing to take a command stuffed into his hand as his own. He did not need to know it as a Greenrider. But as a man, surely. The former notion haunted Q'sis as he walked through the shadows: Sh'len had been designated to his purpose the moment Nivoth'd Impressed. It was infinitely less clear, in the wake of Unath's poor capacity for fighting, what purpose she could give to him.

Though he had planned out this hunt for himself as much as his mentoree, the Tanweyrling had gone so listless by the time they encountered the first of their quarry that he did not see it till they had almost walked into the wherry's backside. By chance the animal was not facing them, and was occupied foraging some insects from the leaf litter when they breached the line of underbrush between them and it. Q'sis froze, then retracted himself a pace, grabbing for Sh'len's shoulder in lieu of commanding him to stop.

He assessed the surrounding trees: the lumpy bodies of other wherries still rousing to eat clogged the branches like mobile warts, legs and necks and tails tucked in around their ribcages. In the deeper underbrush, long-legged silhouettes stalked after tunnelsnakes. The closest wherry, the one that now raised its beak from the ground and flicked open its translucent inner lids, was only half Sh'len's height. Her reddish-brown fuzz of feathers made her hard to distinguish from the surrounding trees, save when she moved. However, now that she had unwrapped her inner lids, her faceted eyes whirled brightly like a dragon's, mostly blue but with yellow stains along the upper edges.

The worst Sh'len could do now, Q'sis thought, was kill her in such a way that her cries sent the rest of the flock elsewhere. But they would not mind too much of a scuffle. The difficulty was that her chest and neck were facing away from them, her upturned tail blocking the view. He moved his hand to the other Weyrling's hand-axe, applying just enough pressure to make Sh'len aware of it. It was the most appropriate weapon for this range. The wherry was not lowering her head to resume foraging yet. As with dragons, it was difficult to ascertain exactly where she was looking, and if she would spot a hunter's arm rising to flick death her way.

Unath's thick neck curved backwards at Nivoth's growl, her blunt muzzle descending towards the green hatchling's resting place on her back in an upside-down arch. She did not quite possess the contortionist capacity to reach her nose all the way to Nivoth from this angle, so her head ended up suspended close to the dragonet instead. Unath's lower jaw shifted as Nivoth's excitement built, but she only produced indelicate little grunts to echo the hatchling's snarls. When Nivoth jumped up, the Tan's green eyes drew wide, awed circles of observation, and a croon burbled up the entire length of her throat, radiating out her slightly parted jaws. Though there was no one crushingly loud note to her reply, the entire sound expanded through the Bowl, drifting all the way to the Rim.

Q'sis heard its echo as he moved after his fledgling hunter, under no restrictions with Sh'len having already panicked the flock. Though the Greenweyrling was small and overly slim for a boy, the giant still had to lean to one side to get a look past him at the meager spoils of his victory.

"Alright," he said, despite Sh'len's various errors. The Tanrider's abbreviated right forefinger descended to prod his mentoree's bony shoulder. Sh'len had the build of a wherry himself. "Now go get another." The single finger became a fist, closing on Sh'len just tight enough for a grip before Q'sis shoved him aside. He pulled the axe out and tossed it into the dirt for Sh'len to retrieve. "Sloppy of you to alert the others, Green." He twisted open his glowbasket so that a single green shaft fell upon the wherry's body, a light so small it did not penetrate the underbrush beyond. Q'sis drew his own axe and chopped off the wherry's head, then held it by its legs, amber-green ichor puddling out onto the ground.

Once the flow ebbed he stuffed the carcass in his game bag- his, not Sh'len's -and then looked toward the Junior Weyrling with an arch of his brow. His arms were balanced against his knees as he squatted over his salvage, all his bulk concentrated in an expectant hunch. The whites of his teeth bared themselves in a grin; Sh'len had the excitement of any boy that had finally hunted on his own. Nivoth had been reacting to him, no doubt. That was the best explanation for the intensity Unath had picked up on. "But it feels good to be useful. To be a man."

"Unless those are tears of joy, knock it off," Q'sis said, reaching out and grasping Sh'len's small face in his hand, fingers lined to that slender white jaw and thumb mashing the moisture off Sh'len's cheek. He gave the other side the same treatment, like he could physically withhold the boy's misery. "You're a proper little dragon now, like Nivoth wants. And you are upsetting her." Back at the Weyr, Unath tipped her head back and rested her velvety muzzle over Nivoth's back, sweet, warm air blowing out from her jaws. She extended her forked tongue tips to groom the Green's neckridges, only she could hit Nivoth's entire length in half a lick, and sat back in surprise afterwards.

Q'sis unbound a crossbow from his back, laying it on a dry patch between them. "Even you should know that you kill or are killed yourself. You can at least try to have what fun surviving permits you to. Unless you are prepared to tell your dragon you find her way of life disgusting, pick up the 'bow and go get another. It doesn't matter where you hit it- any location will knock the bird out of the tree. So don't aim for the throat or anything easily missed like that; just knock the wherry down, then finish it with your axe."

The ex-trader rose onto his feet, closing the glowbasket. It was light enough to make out shapes in the forest now, the shadows of solidity they would have to wind around like tunnelsnakes to pass to their redistributed quarry. "Come. Count the steps you take to reach the wherries from this point, and hold that number in your head while you kill. Grasp the 'bow close in a firm stance when you use it. You point, pull the metal bit at the bottom, then load the next bolt and winch it up if you need to. I will position it for you when we get there if you wish."

Q'sis did not wait for Sh'len to act on his own. He advanced in their prey's most likely direction, taking the glow with him, hooking his hand-axe back to his belt. The crossbow he had left behind was slowly illuminated by the shifting sunrise, which crept through the leaves and slid along its silver gears.

Q'sis had sunk to the ground on the edge of the next clearing, muscle hunkered over muscle in an attempt to reduce his silhouette to something less recognizable to the wherries. He did not even look back for Sh'len; the boy might have gotten away after all, had he tried. But Sh'len proved his loyalty, and Q'sis smiled as he heard the clicking of the crossbow and whisper of footsteps beside him.

"No," he said when the boy tried to drop onto one knee. "You'll need your legs. Stand up, keep your knees bent. You put your foot there." He pointed to the section between the wooden curve retaining the crossbow string and the shaft.

Unath's chest swelled and released a breathless squeal at Nivoth's opinion of her. The word "love" was something Q'sis called her instead of "Unath" sometimes, but its meaning had always been laid out implicitly, through a requisite array of shared feelings and mental embraces. A Tan, she did not grasp implied concepts too quickly. The word had a concrete sound when Q'sis said it. Between dragons, it became the truth just by being uttered.

I love too! she squeaked back at Nivoth, stamping her feet and unfurling her wings. Love and kis-ses. Her head rolled from side to side, eyes whirling green. Want to fly? I can fly. Kis-ses says no. So I cannot fly. Love! With that, Unath seemed to have exhausted her vocabulary, and her brain as a whole. She slipped down onto the bank, pressing her soft tummy to the dirt, and curled up onto her side slowly, so Nivoth had time to crawl to a new surface. She stuck one of her large hindfeet forward and began grooming her talons.

Q'sis loaded the bolt, showing the front and back ends to Sh'len and then slipping it into the appropriate inlay on the crossbow. "Now, with your foot there, stand up straight." He had borrowed one of the small devices, more suitable for boys than dragonriders. He had heard Sh'len was no giant. If the Junior Weyrling struggled to pull the string back to its hitch, Q'sis would let him carry on for a time before using a couple fingers to give the bow the last tightening it needed. "You hear the click," he demanded more than asked. "Then it is prepared to fire, but you never take the point off the ground till you are ready Green."

The merciless pace of the exercise was not about to slow, either. He grinned. "So lift it." But Sh'len's aiming would not go unguided. Q'sis predicted he might simply try to heft the weapon off the ground, sending the business end wagging everywhere, even to the side, at him. So he kept a hand at the Greenweyrling's elbow, another at the crossbow shaft, not steering but pushing back against any erroneous movements. Only when it was more or less level did he start the fine adjustments. "Feel the wood bit that matches your shoulder? You brace it at the same spot every time." He led Sh'len's hand to the 'bow's midsection. "Trigger." He glanced sidelong down the bow while he was leaned over his mentoree. "Aim," he ordered, giving the boy's weapon one bump toward the target but leaving the rest to him, smirking all the while. "Once you hit, give the crossbow to me and retrieve the bird with your axe. Don't worry about the second." Q'sis peeled another bolt from the crossbow's quiver and rested it on the ground between them.

All his talking had not given the wherries cause for concern. They were too far. One of the them had just plucked a blue tunnelsnake from its burrow and tipped its head back to gulp down the spoils. The other was nosing a berry-bush and chirping to its companion.

They did not realize the Pernese were not limited to what they could throw.

Unath paused in shoring up the cleanliness of her largest claw to blink at the celebration Nivoth was enacting by her stomach. She hiccuped when the hatchling poked her soft belly-hide.

Wherries? The tan lifted her head, glancing around the shore, then slowly expanding her search down the lake, past the stables to the feeding pens. But it was early yet, and the Weyr's birds were only just starting to stumble out of their nighttime huddle. She lowered her head back toward the tiny green. I don't know, she said, addressing more the concept of wherries than the actual question.

Sh'len had been left alone with his bleeding badge of honor. Q'sis had taken the crossbow, but returned with it in a couple minutes, with a couple more wherries slung over his shoulder for his efforts. They were headless as Sh'len's, but one still wiggled its wings as Q'sis dropped his game bag from his shoulder and stuffed it in. He picked up the greenweyrling's catch and put it in his own bag too, for a total of four. He put the bag back over his shoulder, fixed both axes to his belt, but held out the crossbow and its remaining quiver to Sh'len to carry back. As Nivoth spoke to his tan, Q'sis straightened and looked to the Weyr, its stone walls distant but visible through the gaps in the canopy.

"Pining already?" he mused. "I had hoped she would let us cook out here." His heavy, strong hand made for Sh'len's shoulder. "Most women cannot call you back off a good hunt, no matter how sweet their tears. But a dragon it's best to listen to." The tanrider smiled. "Come. I will show you how to clean them back at Dalibor. It will be messier than usual. I'd prefer to let them hang for a few candlemarks." Q'sis moved off, walking for the Weyr, never slowing despite the weight of the four kills and supplies at his back. He would have given one to Sh'len so the boy could feel his own game bag full, but somehow he thought the greenweyrling might lose it.

He slowed every so often to collect a choice dry stick, ending up with a column of them braced against his side by the time he strode through the Weyr's entryway. The sun had jumped to visibility on the Eastern Rim, and its white eye warmed his side all the way to the dragons. Unath did not react to his approach, but tilted her head at the carcasses he rolled out of the sack.

Q'sis seemed to ignore the tan in kind, and he began setting up a small wooden construct that could serve as their cookfire. The wherries he had laid out were all coated in eachothers' green blood. "See if Nivoth wants the big one there. I'll set the smallest to roast, and you and I can eat when you're done cleaning. Tasting something you gained yourself is special, compared to being fed as we are here, like so many bulls to a trough. Knowing your family--" and he nodded to Nivoth in case Sh'len missed the reference. "--can live on what you give to them is its own reward. You should be proud."

"Good," Q'sis said. Defeathering dead wherries wasn't hard. "But keep an eye on Nivoth. Let nothing about your girl shame you." His chest lifted on a slightly harder breath, but Sh'len had a functional green, not a tan. It wasn't his concern. "For she is with you for life." He had only plucked his bird a few times in demonstration, then laid it aside with the other untouched specimen. When Sh'len had finished with the smallest wherry, Q'sis motioned for him to hold it out over the fire, and turn it so that the stringier, unpluckable feather-bits could be singed off.

He took the wherry for gutting with his belt-knife, then laid it out to roast. The organs he chucked one at a time to Unath, using a cloth he'd stowed in his game bag. His dragon caught each piece and swallowed it, then laid her head down, licking her lips. It was not long before Nivoth offered her scraps too, and she sniffed at the tidbit. A blue appendage slid out of her mouth, coiling against the wherry bones, and Nivoth, and she started to pull both into her jaws. But Unath blinked, and before anyone could point out the mistake she unwrapped her tongue from the hatchling. She nipped up the wherry by itself, and her happy rumble accompanied the grinding of the pieces. There was half-a-wing left for Nivoth's own chewing needs.

When Q'sis had accepted this task, and invented his lesson, he had not known Sh'len would be so unsuited to it. "We'll do this again," he promised as he finally cracked off a drumstick and held it out to the greenweyrling. "Until you can watch your own dragon eat, and hunt without flinching. Until you are a man, I suppose." The ex-trader smirked, though the repetition had not been chosen simply to torture Sh'len. There was some satisfaction in knowing that even if the boy lacked the stomach for the work, he had still managed a modicum of skill for it. Stomachs could be strengthened, but clumsiness and stupidity had no place in the Weyr. His goal was relatively simple. "Take the first bite."