Under the Red Sky

Chapter 10 - Blood of a Beast

Once the hunters had slain the mighty agmagog, time was of the essence. Hikaz sprinted toward the Safe Land to retrieve more men. Raisers would make the slow march to help carry the portioned bounty on sleds.

Cleaning the beast's body was not only a race against rot; the hunters had to keep eyes on the sky for any flying chitin beasts which might approach to pilfer a meal for themselves. This always meant another fight when it happened. The hunters were not afraid of the chitin beasts; they were greedy with their hard-won kill and unwilling to surrender even a morsel of the mammoth's flesh.

When the agmagog died with blood rushing from the wounds in its throat and belly, there was silence. There was stillness. Then, the hunters roared with the furious delight of men who have won against death when held tight in its grasp, the delight of men who have just escaped the strangle of serpents around their hearts and so are now able to breathe again and rejoice even for stifling air. They washed in the agmagog's cool blood.

The men carved the flesh of the beast to make the transport back to the village so that the women might begin smoking the meats as soon as possible. It might take the whole tribe the whole night to prepare the beast's parts for their various uses. Every man and woman would work themselves sick to salvage the agmagog's meat.

When the tribe was done cleaning the corpse, cooking its meat, and storing its fat and bones, there would be a ritual of celebration. The whole tribe would finally feast from their bounty: roasted and slow-cooked strips of meat dripping with dark juices. The tribe would eat that which wasn't cured or smoked into jerky.

During the celebration, women and hunters would couple heedlessly throughout the night, drunk on the whistle and whine of modest music, the cheers of jubilation, the slimy, sour beer from goat's milk, and the sharp incense burned throughout the village.

The men who died along the way? They would be forgotten today or tomorrow or some other time soon. Only the weak mourned. The strong feasted and copulated. Both awoke in the morning to face the burn of the Red Sky.

The hunters dripped with sweat and black blood from their slow work. They rubbed the blood into their skin like an ointment. It was cooling and by all accounts good for the skin, making it tougher and better at healing.

Naethesh suggested that a few of the men head south with the full sleds to go ahead and relay some of the load to the raisers who should have been on their way. No one opposed, and so Naethesh organized the work and gave directions.

Exhaustion saturated the men's bones as much as the black blood of the agmagog saturated their skin. Their arms and fingers and hands began to cramp. They drained their waterskins and reserves of water. A few bold men nourished themselves on the blood that flowed so copiously from the corpse. If it was good for the skin, why wouldn't it be good for the rest of the body?

The hunters made a light camp. They took turns napping in short intervals. They continued to work on the bounty and kept watch lest the scavengers come to steal the meat of the agmagog and even one or two more of the lives of the hunters while they were at it.

The work had been dirty, exhausting, and hot, though now it was growing cool. Those who were well had survived another hunt. A man might fall sick to the heat. Those men died. There were none of those men today, and so the general word about the hunters was that the weak had been culled in the Teeth and by the Agmagog. Those who were left were the only ones truly strong. The men beat their chests. So strong had they convinced themselves they were. 

So it was; this is what it took to live. This is what it took to defy the Red Sky and the Thirsting Lands. Mithash thought of the dead concubine and the dead Ashuza whose name he never knew. He thought of dead Habash, Makaz, and Rasher, and the other nameless hunter who had died by the talons of the agmagog. For the first time, he wondered if his life was really worth theirs.