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He wasfree.
They had already sprinted a long distance before the nith realized they had escaped. The guards opened fire on them, and the shots pelted all around, sending up sprays of dirt and smoke. But the three ukkur were far away, and they were moving targets. The nith could not hit them.
Ahead of them lay a dense, dark forest. If they could just make it into the shadows of the forest, there would be no way the nith could track them.
They had just reached the edge of the woods when a nith guard fired one final shot.
It hit Vam in the head, vaporizing everything from the shoulders up.
Hruk and Dak could hardly believe it. They were nearly out of range of the guns at that point. Even the best marksman on the planet couldn’t have made that shot. Especially not in broad daylight when nith eyesight was not so good. That shot had been sheer luck—good luck for the nith who had fired and bad luck for Vam.
But there was nothing Hruk and Dak could do. Vam was gone. At least he had died free.
They disappeared into the forest and didn’t stop running until nightfall.
Hruk and Dak soon discovered that freedom was not easy. Their slave uniforms were not durable enough to withstand life in the forest, and when the material finally deteriorated, the two ukkur did not have the knowledge or skill to mend or replace it.
An even greater difficulty was food. As ukkur, they had natural predatory instincts, but they had no training, and they struggled to catch animals and fish to eat. Often they went hungry for long periods of time. Back at the nith farm, they had never experienced hunger. Despite their other deprivations, their nith masters had always kept them well fed so they would have energy to work.
Nevertheless, Hruk and Dak never once considered returning. They would rather be free and starve.
When meat was especially hard to come by, the two friends resorted to foraging for berries. The little fruits were not very satisfying to their predatory appetites, but they provided some much needed energy.
There was only one problem. They did not know which berries were safe and which were poisonous, so they were forced to employ trial and error. Whenever they encountered a new type of berry, only one of them would test it at first. That way, if the berries turned out to be poisonous, at least only one of them would fall ill.
One time, after testing some new berries this way, Dak became very sick. Hruk tried to look after him, but Dak’s condition deteriorated horribly, and his once strong ukkur body wasted away.
After only a few days, Dak died.
Hruk was alone.
As he buried his friend’s withered body, Hruk wondered why Dak had been the one to die while he had lived. They had both taken turns testing new berries. It could just as easily have been Hruk getting buried. He attributed it to blind luck. Later his opinion would change.
Without a companion, life in the wilderness was even more difficult. Many times Hruk almost welcomed death, but his will to live kept him going.
Finally, nearly one full solar cycle after his escape, Hruk’s luck turned.
He encountered a pack of three ukkur who had been living in the wilderness for many years. The leader of the pack was an old ukkur named Throlf. He wore a mane and beard of iron gray hair that signaled his maturity and experience. His two younger companions were Okkuth and Gorn.
These three ukkur welcomed Hruk with open arms. They fed him meat they had hunted, and his body soon regained its former strength. What’s more, they taught Hruk techniques for hunting, fishing, and trapping, so that he would never need to go without meat again. Throlf taught him how to fashion arrowheads, stone knives, and spear points. Okkuth showed him how to start a fire. Gorn demonstrated how to tan hides and stitch durable clothing and tools.
For a while, life was good. Hruk had friends, and he had the skills to survive in the wilderness.
But it wasn’t long before misfortune struck again.
Only two moons after Hruk joined with the pack, Gorn was killed in a hunting accident. A wild grelk speared him through the chest with one of its antlers. The sharp tip pierced his heart, emptying his lifeblood in a matter of seconds.
Ten days after that, the pack found itself caught out in a wild storm while they were traversing a mountain range. A stray bolt of lightning loosened a heavy boulder which rolled down the mountainside, crushing Okkuth in its path.
A few paces to the right and Hruk would have been the one who was crushed.
After that, he began to doubt his own good fortune. He began to suspect that there was something wrong with him. He carried a curse that brought death to anyone who befriended him.
As Serenity listened to Hruk’s story, her heart ached for the dark ukkur. She knew his life had been a hard one. That was true for every single ukkur on the planet. But she’d had no idea just how much loss he had endured.
She was also beginning to understand his refusal to let her get close.
Hruk thought that he was cursed.
