Chapter 11

The company returned exhausted, with several hours of daylight and much work still ahead of them. Kalus had gutted the antelope before starting up the ridge, but climbing the pathless slope with such a burden had proven an ordeal nonetheless. By the time they reached the ledge outside the Mantis’ cave, he could go no further. His legs and shoulders ached, threatening spasms, and the wound at the back of his head throbbed with pain each time his heart beat heavily, which for the past two hours had been almost constantly.

Setting down the kill, he looked up at the remaining distance to the smaller enclosure. He thought of Skither’s instructions, but could only shake his head.

‘We skin the carcass here,’ he proclaimed, breathing heavily. ‘What the Mantis does not know, cannot trouble his sleep.’ Lifting the carcass one last time he brought it inside, into the relative safety of the larger cave. Akar and the girl followed him in, too tired themselves to protest.

Akar lay down immediately in the coolest place he could find. He had run close to thirty miles that day, much of it flat out, and nursed emotional, as well as physical fatigue. Neither he nor Kalus had ever hunted one with the other, and the experience had not been easily productive. It was true that between them they could bring down larger game, but their timing together was far from perfect. The wolf could not begin to remember how many times he had circled the smaller herds, trying to drive the stragglers to the place where Kalus waited with his spear. The toil was frustrating and often dangerous, as this predator or that would react to his unorthodox, and therefore unacceptable presence.

But the real danger had come while stalking the plains elk. Instead of bolting when he appeared, the herd leader had turned on him suddenly, nearly grinding him into oblivion against the side of a large boulder. Even now he shuddered at the sight of those enormous antlers, coming at him with such startling speed and agility.

He thought then, very deep inside himself, of how easily the pack had hunted such game in the past, and of the honor and respect they commanded. This in turn led to burning memories of his brother, and of the murdering half-breed that had brought the pack to such shame. The injustice of it all was more than his mind could accept. It tore him up inside, and he couldn’t get it out.

He wanted to KILL him. He wanted to kill him.

Sylviana was almost in a state of shock. If Kalus had intended to sober her opinion of what they were up against by exposing her directly to it, then he had resorted to overkill. Never had she felt so helpless and exposed as in the presence of that ever-changing panorama of landscapes and formidable creatures. It was like a bad dream without waking: being in some monstrous zoo, and then finding that the bars of the cages had suddenly disappeared. Like but unlike the prehistoric mammals she had dreaded, inexplicably mixed from the family of continents, they were, in a word, overpowering.

She had not been so frightened by the large herd animals---these gave an air of self-satisfied indifference---as she had been by the fierce predators that hunted, literally, right alongside them. Kalus had said not to worry, that there was an unspoken understanding when on common ground and in times of abundance (he had stretched the truth). But it was hard to remain calm while looking up sandstone hills at mountain cats seven feet long, with dark traces of mane draggled across impossibly muscular shoulders. She thought of the subtly changed hyenas, probably the most unnerving of all, that had swelled like a tooth-edged tide of hatred to the very limits of their borders, snarling and threatening. And Kalus, shaking his spear in answer, and crying out like an animal himself.

And finally the kill, after so many hours ... she tried to block it from her mind. But she could not. There it was right in front of her: Kalus driving the spear deep into the antelope’s shoulder as it ran past, the sudden look of terror in its eyes as it fell. Then the way he had ripped the knife from her hand and slashed its throat without hesitation. True, he had ended its suffering quickly. But why did they have to kill it at all? And what was the point, if this world was so utterly wretched and cruel? Again the questions came much too easily. The answers did not.

By the time Kalus finished skinning the carcass it was nearly dark. They (or rather he) then decided to cook it there as well, rather than risk the long climb in darkness. The girl halfheartedly suggested they take it up through the shaft, but this too was impractical. They built their fire near the back of the curving frontal chamber, concealing the flames. Kalus made a crude spit from wood gathered earlier, and began the long, slow process of cooking the meat in strands, that nothing would be wasted.