Arrain and the other men had heard the roaring and bellowing from the stoma. It was a large predatory sound that sent a shiver of horror down his spine. The realization that he had sent his son and the other boys out into the dark with that thing jolted him to his feet and sent him and the other men running unarmed back to the village's common area. They arrived just as the fight ended and gaped at their sons holding bloody spears and standing in a circle of dead wolves, gasping for breath.
Noticing the two boys lying on the ground, Naipho rushed over. "It's Garick and Somek," he said as Arrain joined him. "Get Anzell and Tolma."
Somek was unconscious but breathing. Garick was conscious, but had lost a lot of blood.
"Get them both to Mahd Mela," Naipho ordered as the other men picked them up.
Arrain turned on Karux. "What happened here?"
Amantis angrily stomped toward them. "We came back to the korion and that thing appeared."
"Angoran," Karux offered.
"What?"
"They're called angorym—angoran if there's just one."
"Fine. That angoran," Amantis snapped, turning back to Arrain," loosed his wolves on us. We fought the wolves, then we fought the angoran."
Arrain scanned the field of battle, his eyes lingering on the snow soaked in Garick's blood. "And did it not occur to any of you to run away?"
"It loosed the drwg as soon as it saw us," Karux said. "If we had tried to run, they would have pulled us all down. None of us would have survived."
Arrain watched the men turn the monster over on its back. It still had two spears lodged in its torso. Its body was much like a man's, only larger and more heavily muscled. It had a wide mouth with large canine teeth and a wide flat nose. Its yellow eyes, glazed in death, lurked beneath a heavy brow ridge.
"You are lucky any of you survived as it is," Arrain said.
No," Amantis said. "It wasn't luck. It was preparation. And if we'd had a little support, maybe Somek and Garick would be standing here with us now."
"Now wait a minute—"
"Karux has been trying to warn you for mahts."
"Is that true?" Arrain asked. "Did you foresee this?"
"Sort of. I saw Garick fall."
Amantis threw a questioning glance at him.
"And you didn't tell anyone?" Arrain asked.
"Would you have believed me? Did anyone listen? No one wants to hear about my visions. I'd even begun to doubt them myself."
"Arrain, it's too cold to stay out here," Naipho called out as he and the remaining men dragged the bodies away. "We're going to put these in Ghett's barn for now."
Amantis stepped up next to Karux. "This is not over either. He's had other visions as well, much much worse ones."
Arrain didn't say anything. He just gave Karux a questioning look.
Karux nodded.
-=====|==
The elders declared a feast on the following day. Somek had recovered and was showing off the large knot on the side of his head where the Angoran had struck him. Karux, Macander and Bazma were sitting with Garick who lay on a pallet in his house. Mahd Mela had managed to stop the bleeding and, though he looked frighteningly pale and weak, he seemed in good spirits.
"Yes. They're treating us like heroes," Bazma told his brother.
"Pronos and Somek are milking their fame for all its worth," Karux added. "You'd think they'd each fought a dozen of those things."
"And you should see the food," Macander said. "They're really laying it on thick."
Sjaiwa appeared in the doorway with a bowl of soup and a basket of food. "He will if you three will just move out of the way." She sauntered in, brushing Bazma aside with her hip, and plopped down next to Garick's pallet. He tried to take the bowl, but she held it out of reach. When he stopped, she began spooning food into his mouth and cooing about her brave and handsome man while expressions of joy and disgust warred across his face.
"I, er, guess we'd better go." Karux said, clapping Macander on the back and giving him a shove towards the door. "We'll check back later and let you know what's going on."
Garick nodded at them as Sjaiwa pushed another spoonful in.
-=====|==
Everyone in the village wanted to hear the story of the fight repeatedly, so that each participant got to tell and retell the story from their point of view. As they talked, a number of the men examined their spears, amazed at their strange two-headed design, and asked how they were used. This frequently resulted in a spontaneous demonstration of their unique fighting technique.
Toward the end of the feast, which was held in the stoma since it had the only roof large enough to accommodate the whole village, Arrain stood and raised a drinking bowl. "To our brave—"
"And dangerous!" a voice called out.
"Yes, our brave and dangerous young men. We are grateful for your courage, your foresight," here he looked at Karux who felt a slight thrill of vindication. "...your preparation and your dedication to your korion. I would hate to think what could have happened had that angoran entered our korion while half our men were away in this stoma and the other half were asleep and unarmed." He paused here and the whole village froze, bowls uplifted, frowning at the unrealized nightmares flitting through their minds. Finally someone broke the somber moment with a cheer.
"Huzzah!"
Everyone lifted their bowls and cheered.
Afterwards, as they passed the angoran's large knife around to be examined, one of the younger boys got a little careless with it and nearly cut another boy.
"Enough you two," Anzell rose and took the knife. "I think I had better keep that. You can't be trusted with it."
"Hey!" Amantis leaped to his feet. "That's mine!"
"What?"
"I killed that thing. I ripped its throat out. I should get its knife."
An awkward silence followed as the men exchanged questioning glances. No one offered a reason to deny him and so with one last puzzled look at the knife, Anzell passed it toward Amantis.
"The knife is too big and awkward for any sort of practical use. Why do you want it?" Naipho took the blade and handed it to Amantis.
Amantis wrapped his hand around the handle. It was big enough to comfortably hold in both hands. "I don't know," he shrugged. "I thought it would make a good trophy."
"In that case, I want one of the wolf skins," Pronos said.
"Me too!" Somek said.
"And me!" Theris and Karux both shouted in unison then laughed.
Bazma did a quick count on his fingers, figured out there was one left and shouted, "I want one too!"
"I think the last one should go to your brother, don't you?" Anzell asked.
Bazma frowned. "I guess so. But then I want one of the chains."
"Me too!" Macander laughed.
"Very well. Anyone else?" Arrain said. "Someone want one of the angoran's ears?"
"I already got a fang," Theris announced. He pulled out a leather thong from which a large white fang depended.
"Hey! Who said you could take that?" Amantis demanded.
"Fangs and claws for everyone!" Karux laughed.
"What were you going to do with it?" Theris asked Amantis. "Did you want the whole body too?"
"As a matter of fact, I do."
"You do? What in the world for?"
"I plan to drag it back up to the eastern pass and chain it to a tall tree so that if there are any more of those things out there, they'll see it and know to stay away from here."
"Er, I don't think that's a good idea." Naipho said.
"I agree," Arrain added. "That would only let them know we're here. What's more, they may see it as a threat and almost certainly attack again. The last thing we need is a whole tribe of those things coming over the mountain."
The elders nodded in agreement.
Amantis was not persuaded. "No. Even a dumb animal will recognize their own dead as a sign of danger to be avoided. And these angorym seem pretty intelligent." Here he raised the long knife as a demonstration of their work. "I don't think they'd be so stupid as to return here once they saw the body."
"You don't know how they think," Thoma the elder spoke up. "None of us do."
"That argument works as much in my favor as yours," Amantis said insolently.
Several elders looked scandalized.
"When a large predator starts to pray on our herd, do we not hunt it down and kill it? They will come after us in the same—" Rennon began. Amantis started to reply, but Thoma interrupted in disgust.
"One death is not going to scare them—"
"We're not talking about killing herd animals here—" Amantis' voice began to rise.
Ghett cut them both off. "Enough! We shall not escalate the situation unnecessarily and we will not display our presence with Amantis' plan. Let us hope this was an isolated incident, that the rest of the angorym are unaware we are here, and this is the last we'll see of any of them."
"Agreed," the other elders said.
Amantis scowled down at his trencher of food. After a few moments of silent fuming he interrupted the elders' conversation again. "Well, as everyone is taking skins as trophies, I want the thing's head."
"Very well, you can have the head," Ghett said. "But the body will be taken out and burned at first opportunity along with the wolf carcasses and that will be the end of it."
"Fine," Amantis snapped.
Karux, watching the exchange carefully, could tell all was not fine with Amantis. He had something in mind. That he wouldn't speak of it only convinced Karux the elders wouldn't like it.
-=====|==
Two days later, a fever took Garick and he died.
Sjaiwa was inconsolable. Nearly crippled with grief, her father supported the wailing girl as the whole village followed Garick's family to the burial site. Each villager carried a large stone with them as they climbed the hill to where Garick's father, uncles and male cousins had chiseled a shallow grave out of the frozen ground. They piled the stones next to the grave and watched as Garick's shroud-covered body was lowered into it.
Amantis stood apart watching the spectacle with a strange unease. He normally felt no sympathy for these goat-turds, but Garick's absence felt somehow wrong. Only a few days before, Garick had been helping to train some of the younger boys who had wanted to become wolf-hunters. Now he was gone and Amantis was unsure how he felt.
Arrain stood by the grave and told the story of Andrae and Cynae, the first couple created, of how they were tricked into leaving the mountain of creation and became lost in the land of judgment and how they all waited for the promised one, the Simarrah, to descend the mountain and show them the path of return.
At this point a number of people stole curious glances at Karux. Anger flared in Amantis, but it quickly cooled to a warm glow of good humor as those glances turned away. Karux certainly didn't look like any sort of promised messenger. He looked, instead, like a sick goat not long for this world. His nightmare visions had returned on the night of Garick's death. In fact they were saying he had foreseen it, but failed to give warning.
During the funeral, he stood swaying next to his father, his dark circled eyes glazed with the new medicines Mahd Mela had given him. That old woman is going to kill him before the visions can, he thought, and had to fight back a smile.
Charissa cried softly between her parents. She wore her best dress and her hair was fixed up in some sort of arrangement on her head that exposed her graceful long neck. She was somehow, in her grief, more beautiful than Amantis had ever seen her. He longed to fold her in his arms and whisper the words he knew would turn her heart towards him. If only he could find a way to cut her out of the herd.
Arrain finished speaking and someone started them singing a song about the Lord of the Mountain's love and faithfulness, though Amantis didn't think that they sounded like they meant it.
After the song, they shoveled dirt into the grave amid fresh weeping. They were forbidden by tradition from striking the dirt or stepping on the grave to tamp down the dirt. Afterwards the family members each picked up the largest rock they could carry and placed it on the grave. Each member of the village added a stone, building a small mound on the site.
Amantis, who had watched until the others had finished, took up Garick's spear and jammed it among the rocks of the mound. This was one of his wolf-hunters, he thought. He wanted to make sure everyone knew that.
Most of the day was spent in quiet somber reflection, occasionally interspersed in tearful laughter, especially when the women reminisced about what a silly and happy young child Garick had been. This always led to long stretches of thoughtful silence and further comments of what a fine young man he had become and how kind and how brave he'd been.
Amantis suspected the main purpose of this talk was to get them used to hearing themselves speak of Garick in the past tense. After what seemed like hours of patient waiting and discreet lurking, he found Charissa sitting at a table sniffling quietly to herself. Arrain had long ago taken the sleep-walking Karux back to his bed, so Amantis sat down next to her. "How are you feeling?" It was an insipid question given the circumstance, but it was the sort of thing the stone had coached him to say when he asked it how he might possess her.
Charissa looked up blearily, gave him a sad smile, and to his surprise, placed her hand across the back of his. "Oh Amantis, I'm so confused. First Karux, his accident and these visions, then that—that monster and now Garick... how is all this possible? Why is this happening?"
Amantis placed his other hand on top of hers, though the position was a bit awkward, and gave her hand a squeeze. "I know how you feel," Amantis murmured. "It doesn't seem possible. Life was going so well," Amantis almost choked on this. He didn't consider anything to have gone well before he found his seeker stone. Now, at least, he knew how to get what he wanted. "...and to have it turn around like this so suddenly...."
Charissa squeezed his hand reassuringly then withdrew it, hugging her elbows and sort of curling up into herself as she sat hunched over, staring at her lap. "Surely there is some way to help him."
Amantis carefully placed his arm across her shoulders in a one-armed hug. "I'm worried about him too," he lied. "I'm sure we'll find a way."
"Why couldn't he have foreseen this?"
"But he did. He just couldn't find a solution. His stone doesn't work that way. Once he told me about the attack, I asked my stone for the solution and created the wolf-hunters. If we'd had any support from the elders, poor Garick would be alive now. I'm just glad I was able to accomplish as much as I did with them," he said casually, "otherwise we'd all be dead now."
"If only there was some way to help him handle these visions, or make them stop."
Amantis grew irritated at how her thoughts fixated on Karux. She didn't seem to have heard anything he said. He had implied their next course of action, but she seemed too thick to figure it out. "I'm sure we'll find a way," he sighed, giving her shoulder a squeeze.
It took her a minute but she finally looked up at him with a tear-stained smile and a flicker of hope in her eye. He had his arm around her now and struggled with the urge to pull her toward him and savage her with a kiss.
"You could use your stone! You could find a way to help him."
Amantis tried his best to act surprised. "Of course! I'm certain it could show me the way to save him." He beamed at her and couldn't resist wiping a tear from her cheek. "Only...," he let his face fall into a concerned frown. "The solution might not be easy."
"Oh, but you have to do it."
"I'll do my part. But you have to do your part as well."
"My part? What is that?"
"I don't know, but you have to be willing to do whatever the stone tells you to do. It wasn't easy for us to train to fight those wolves. Whatever the stone has us do may not be easy either."
She sat up straight pulling away from him. "But we will. We must."
"Yes." He smiled. "We will."