My knuckles ached as my fist clenched my bow.
A borog…
One had not been seen since Gahn Seerak’s death.
“Where-” I broke off in sudden confusion. I’d wanted to ask him where Arton and Jael were so that I could question them on what they saw.
But instead, I’d almost asked him, “Where is Nazreen?”
“In the new territories,” he said again, misunderstanding my half-formed question. “They believe they have found evidence of burrowing where our new territory borders the neutral lands near the Vrika’s peak.”
This was territory that was ceded to us in the alliance with the new women and, by extension, Gahn Errok. Territory that had proven flush with meat for our hunters. But if there was a borog present, it would be safe for no one. Not hunter, not Gahn. Borogs were largely solitary creatures. They could live twice as long as a man, and the older they got, the larger they grewand the deeper they were capable of burrowing. Sometimes they slept for ages upon ages, their position unknown to the people living above. Until they woke up.
And wreaked havoc.
“Where are Arton and Jael now?”
“In the braxilk cave.”
Together, Warrek and I moved with purpose through the mountain, travelling upwards until we reached the braxilk cave. The braxilk cave was not a closed room, but rather a cave that was open to the air. The cave was deep, stretching back far enough and then turning slightly to give ample shelter from the elements and creating a safe, windless haven for nests. But the open quality allowed the braxilk to come and go, to stretch their wings upon the sky and plunge down to the pools of water in the valleys below for fish.
Adult braxilk were scattered about the place, some resting on high ledges, others standing near the edge of the cave, as if deciding whether or not to go into that cool, pre-dawn light. Arton and Jael stood close together, their braxilk with them, their faces grave. My own braxilk, a sturdy male named Yeralk, watched me with his six silver eyes.
“Tell me what you saw,” I said to the men.
Together, they described their flight through the new territory. They spoke of the broken stone, the churned-up ground, the yawning mouths of new tunnels.
“But you did not see the creature itself,” I pressed them.
They both snapped their tails. “No, Gahn,” Arton said.
I was about to ask them about the scent – but then I remembered. Arton and Jael were both much younger than I was. They were mere children the last time a borog had plagued our people, and they certainly wouldn’t have been close enough to any of the confrontations we’d had with it to remember such a thing.
But I remembered. The scent of the borog, forever intertwined with that of Gahn Seerak’s blood.
Warrek was younger than me, but not so young as these two. He would remember, just as I did.
“Get some food and some rest,” I told the two young hunters. No doubt Arton in particular would want to get back to his newly pregnant mate, Zaria. But before I let them go, I made them describe exactly where they’d seen the new tunnels.
“What would you have us do, Gahn?” Warrek asked once they’d left, sombre, but not afraid.
“For now, you and I will fly to confirm what they saw,” I said. “We will not do anything beyond that yet.”
A borog was an incredible foe. We were not prepared to fight one today. We hadn’t truly recovered from the last one, even though it had been ages ago by now. But one advantage we did have was flight. Borogs were ground dwellers. Even if we encountered the creature this morning, as long as we had our braxilk, we would be out of its reach.
Warrek raised his tail, a quick gesture of acknowledgment of my command. He clicked his tongues, and his female braxilk, Peeley, flew down from a higher ledge in the cave on her wide grey-and-purple wings. Yeralk must have sensed I wanted him, as he was already walking towards me on his many nimble legs, adjusting his wings at his back and dipping his head towards me. I gave him a brief stroke along the elegant crest of his head, down his long neck, before I gripped him and mounted him, settling myself upon his back, just behind his wings.
Warrek did the same. Together, we leapt from the cave and dove into the sky.
The mountains came into vivid life as the sun hauled itself up into the sky around them, then above them. The shapes and colours of the landscape seemed all at once more beautiful than they had to me at any other point in my life. And I could notaccount for this, except for the fact that some unspoken part of my mind had suddenly compared the stark soar and plunge of the mountains to the arresting beauty of Nazreen’s features. The sharp wings of her dark brows. The high, bony arch of her nose. The twin peaks of her pink upper lip, and the curving valley of the lower. And then there were those eyes, which seemed to have no equal. I had never seen anything in my mountains that came close to the precise shade of her sight stars.
Warrek and I kept quiet, bent low over the necks of our mounts, as we sought out the place that Arton and Jael had described. I smelled the borog before I saw its tunnels. The foul scent, for a moment, sent me tumbling ages into the past.
“There,” Warrek called to me, indicating an area below by pointing his bow at it. By now, the sun was climbing higher, everything bright, glinting light and shadow. The evidence of the borog was grimly clear. I directed Warrek to land with me along a stony mountain ledge, and we descended there together. A great hole had been dug across the valley from us, stones upturned and turned to dust. I had not seen one in ages, but I could immediately recall the incomprehensible strength of the beast; the huge, pointed crest on the top of its flat head, almost like the shape of an arrowhead, that it used as a hammering pick. The unbreakable, digging claws, each one nearly as long as half a man’s height.
And now it was here. Again. A new one to replace the one Gahn Seerak had killed and been killed by.
I strained to listen, but heard nothing. I asked Warrek, and he admitted the same. The creature had likely burrowed deep below ground in this place, and was now in silent slumber.
