Honor to the Good Boy (Part 2 of 4)
Budaqov shouted, and some of the other humans in the pack tried to intercept Mehdi, but he was too quick. He wove among them and charged up the game trail. The cliffs loomed over him, and then he was through the gap that led to Ead territory.
The grapefruit scent became almost overwhelming – almost. Mehdi detected a path of churned-up air, whirling eddies that had been caught up in Shoghad’s breath. He followed them. Tantalizing food aromas came from the burrows to either side of the trail, tempting him to turn aside, but he kept his focus on finding the predator. He also ignored the humans who shouted and pointed as he passed.
The trail led Mehdi off the main game trail and down a westward track. Soon he could feel Shoghad’s breath directly, rather than just the wake. The pull led him to a cleft between two human burrows. He slowed to a halt and stuck his head out just far enough to peer into the cleft.
The khodro lurked within. A large park of men, at least twice the size of Budaqov’s pack, swarmed around the beetle’s rear. They were pulling out the wooden boxes and hurling them to the ground. A pack leader stood off to the side, barking orders. Curiously, while the pack all reeked of grapefruit, the leader did not. His also had a pelt like Teacher’s, loose and flowing, rather than the tighter hides the other men had.
When more boxes than Mehdi could count were scattered across the ground, the pack leader gave another order. The pack reorganized. What followed was a strange, shuffling dance. Slowly, groups of four men removed two more boxes from the khodro. Each of these smelled like it had a human whelp inside it. Then came another box, also held by four men. This one held Shoghad, Mehdi was certain, for it was breathing. Finally, two more boxes of whelps came, in the same manner of as the first two. All the men were straining to hold the boxes up at the same level and to keep Shoghad’s box in the middle. The men who made it to the ground first had to hold their boxes over their heads to match the ones still in the khodro.
Mehdi couldn’t make sense of the dance. Then he felt a caress on his ruff. The Shepherd of Dust spoke to him.
“They can’t move Shoghad without the cambions to hide him. Don’t worry, Mehdi. Amāstrī is coming.”
Mehdi hoped Amāstrī was close. There was a cave near the khodro, leading into one of the burrows. If Shoghad got inside, following him would be suicide. Every hyena knew not to follow a predator into its own den.
The last of the whelps were borne out of the khodro. The pack leader yapped more orders and the men strained to lower the boxes in union. Mehdi had no doubt they’d head into the cave next.
He had to stop them from moving.
Mehdi rushed into the cleft.
The pack leader saw him coming. From the loose folds of his pelt, the leader drew out a npafttir. The stinger was small and shiny, not unlike the ones Budaqov and the rest of the pack carried. The leader aimed it at Mehdi
Instinctively, Mehdi juked left.
The npafttir let out a piercing crack, and an acrid smell stung Mehdi’s nose, but npafttir’s sting missed him.
Then Mehdi reached the rest of the pack, using their bodies to shield himself. He didn’t waste time. His jaws sank into the nearest leg. A single crunch pulverized bone.
The victim collapsed with a shrill scream. The box this man supported tipped out of the hands of his packmates and crashed to the ground. Mehdi sprang out of the way just in time. With a loud crash, the box burst open, spraying straw and bits of wood.
A single whelp lay amidst the debris.
With the whelp out of position, Mehdi smelled Shoghad’s almonds-and-milk stench again. Then he heard the predator’s voice. It was a moist, unctuous sound, and as with the Shepherd, Mehdi understood every word.
“What’s going on out there?” Shoghad slurred.
The npafttir cracked again. The sting hit Mehdi’s side, slamming into the magic pelt with a force like a powerful kick. Mehdi felt sideways. Rolling over, he skittered around the knot of men, trying to put him between him and the leader.
“Nothing, my Lord,” the leader declared, storming through the midst of the men. Mehdi couldn’t understand his words, but his tone was unmistakable. There was a loud click as he stroked the back of the npafttir. “Just an animal.”
Mehdi changed direction, but the leader was too quick. The npafttir let out another crack. Mehdi felt a sharp pain in his left ear. Before the leader could stroke the npafttir again, Mehdi sprang at him, knocking men aside and biting down on the leader’s wrist. Bones crunched, and blood filled his mouth. The leader roared as Mehdi tore his hand off, taking the npafttir with it.
That was when sweet smoke blasted Mehdi.
The ground between the pack of men and the mouth of the cleft exploded. A hyena made of shimmering white flame, large enough to devour Budaqov’s entire squad, burrowed to the surface. From its jaws sprang an enormous woman, human in shape but twice the size of any woman Mehdi had ever seen. Her robes resembled Teacher’s, except these shone like the sun, so bright they stung Mehdi’s eyes. She wore a metal helmet, not unlike Budaqov’s pack did, but shaped to resemble a hyena’s head. A long pole with a wicked claw at one end gleamed in her hand.
Amāstrī had arrived.
She soared over Mehdi’s head and smashed feet-first into Shoghad’s box. As it flew from the hands of the men holding it, she whipped the pole forward. Amāstrī to an abrupt halt and balanced atop this slim spike.
Shoghad’s box bounced off the khodro’s rear and burst open.
Noxious green coils – far more than should have been able to fit inside the khodro, let alone the box – unspooled. The head of a fanged serpent, large enough to swallow a human with ease, rose high above them all, reaching nearly to the top of the cleft. The monsters glowered down at the Amāstrī and roared, “How dare you!”
“I greet you in Truth’s name, Shoghad,” Amāstrī answered cooly. She half-turned her head, and Mehdi felt her attention rest on him. “Protect the children.”
Her tone made it clear that, if Mehdi obeyed, he’d have all the sausages he could ever want.
Shoghad struck at the Amāstrī. She sprang straight up – no, the ground beneath her bucked, hurling her into the air while flinging Mehdi, the whelp, the boxes, and all the men outward. Shoghad’s head smashed into the empty space they’d all occupied. Mehdi scrambled up in time to see Amāstrī land on the serpent’s back and begin to hack at it with her claw.
Shoghad recovered quickly. He curled around Amāstrī, creating a ball-shaped cage of coils. This ball rolled down the alleyway, crushing the khodro as it went. Flames flashed within it, and Shoghad screeched in agony.
The pack of men fled towards the mouth of the cleft, slowing down just enough to drag along the pack leader and their crippled comrade. Mehdi was left with the whelps. The boxes holding the remaining three had all smashed open when they’d hit the ground. For a moment, he wondered why all four of them lay sprawled inside the wrecked boxes there instead of running, but then he realized they were asleep. The taryak scent he’d caught earlier came from them. No amount of yowling woke them up.
Frustrated, Mehdi head-butted the closest whelp until she rolled over, exposing the cloth ruff behind her neck. He delicately took this in his teeth. Straining with all his might, he dragged her towards the mouth of the cleft.
By the time he got there, the cleft’s opposite end was burning. Amāstrī had summoned fiery worms to aid her against Shoghad. The serpent’s thrashing sent out violent tremors.
Mehdi ran in to fetch the next whelp.
He had just returned to retrieve the fourth when Shoghad and Amāstrī careened back towards Mehdi. There was no time to find the whelp’s ruff. Mehdi bit his hand, hard enough to draw blood, and ran. There was a pop as the whelp’s arm twisted the wrong way.
Shoghad smashed into the space where the whelp had lain, causing the ground to buck under Mehdi. The almonds-and-milk smell intensified. He risked a glance back to see the serpent’s coils dissolving into gray flames. Within seconds, only Amāstrī remained.
Mehdi let the whelp go and cocked his head at Amāstrī.
The victorious predator surveyed the cleft. Mehdi couldn’t see most of her face, as a cloth hung down over her eyes and nose, but he could see her worry from her mouth. When she saw the whelps piled at the cleft’s mouth and Mehdi standing over the last one, she smiled and approached him.
“Pasar khob,” she praised him. She sounded very tired, and she swayed slightly as she went down to one knee to stroke his head. “Well done.”
Mehdi licked his bloody chops, expecting his sausages.
“The Shepherd will reward you greatly for this,” Amāstrī assured him. Her face lifted towards the mouth of the cleft. “I’m sorry, I must go. The Inquisition’s here.”
Sweet smoke swirled around Amāstrī. The ground beneath her yawned open, and she burrowed beneath the earth. The hole closed behind her without a trace.
Mehdi yowled softly. He’d been denied twice in one day.
Still … she’d said he would be rewarded. His bones told him he’d get what he was owed. He just had to be patient.
A storm-cloud scent caught his nose. Mehdi turned to see a black khodro pull up to the mouth of the cleft. This was a small one, with its mouth making up most of its body. Two humans with black pelts sprang out of it. Mehdi recognized that they were from the same pack that had stolen the human carrion that time. Back then, Budaqov had told him to sit quietly and wait for them to leave. He did so now, licking his chops again.
One of the black humans checked the whelps Mehdi had already pulled to safety. The other strode into the cleft. Her eyes went from Mehdi to the fourth whelp and back again.
“Damn idiots let their beast off its leash for ten minutes, and look what happens,” she muttered.
Before Mehdi could move, the woman pointed a npafttir at his face.
Thank you all for joining for Part 2. Part 3 releases on October 7th. I hope you’ll join me as the story continues.
