Extraordinary Zoology (13 page)

“Here you go,” Lynus said, tapping her on the shoulder. He was holding her rifle, offering it to her.

She flashed him a smile. “Thank you.”

The big farrow stopped next to the creek. The smaller one walked past it toward the bluff.

“Make that twice the size of Horgash’s bison,” she said. “It’s standing down there in the mist. The little one is coming to us. Hands are empty, raised a little bit.”

“Weapons ready, but low,” said Pendrake.

The farrow who stepped into the firelight was about as tall as Professor Pendrake, but easily as broad as Horgash. Not exactly “little” after all. Edrea revised her estimate of the bigger farrow’s size yet again.

This one wore a heavy coat and had several bandoliers of ammunition draped across its chest—no, ammunition and cigars. A large-bored lever-action carbine hung at its side, the barrel cut short. A crime, really. The action and barrel appeared Llaelese, perhaps from a Dunmont, but was now cut down and restocked to look like a common pig iron.

Edrea decided not to say that aloud.

“I’m Rorsh,” he said with a grunt. He thumbed back over his shoulder. “That’s Brine.”

“Victor Pendrake.” The professor nodded, un-nocking the arrow he had ready.

Rorsh grunted again and scratched his jowl. “Pendrake? Really?”

“You’ve heard of me?”

“Hearing Groth tell it, I thought you’d be bigger. But you do have the coat.”

Pendrake laughed. “I do indeed. We’re on our way to see him. How is my old friend doing?”

“Well enough. Just saw him this morning. Got breakfast.”

Rorsh looked around at the others, and Edrea wondered why his gaze lingered on her. Oh . . . she still had a bracelet of runes spinning around her wrist. Rorsh would have no way of knowing whether she was readying a blast of arcane fire or just warming a bedroll. She released the spell. Rorsh gave her a very subtle nod and then turned back to Pendrake.

“Speaking of which, it’s almost breakfast time again.”

“We’d be happy to offer you a meal,” said Pendrake, “but I’m afraid we didn’t bring provisions enough for your friend Brine.”

“Oh,” he grunted. “Well, then. How much for a horse?”

Edrea blanched.

“They’re not for sale,” Pendrake said.

“Neither is the bison,” said Horgash.

Rorsh grunted wordlessly, sounding almost exactly like a large pig. He withdrew a cigar from his bandolier and lit it with a match struck across his chin.

“Brine’ll just have to keep truffling. Me, I smell bacon.”

The farrow’s sense of smell must be acute, since they hadn’t had bacon since yesterday. Then it occurred to Edrea that bacon might be terribly offensive to farrow.

Lynus apparently had that same thought.

“Oh, Morrow take me,” he said. “I’m so sorry. It’s . . . it’s just a thing we eat.”

Rorsh laughed. “A very tasty thing,” he said, running his tongue along his upper teeth and across his snout for emphasis.

Pendrake and Horgash laughed along with him, then. Edrea relaxed, and Lynus sat heavily on a camp stool.

“Breakfast is usually at dawn,” Pendrake said, “but since we’re all awake and the fire is hot again, I suppose we can have an early start on the very tasty bacon.”

Horgash and Lynus both groaned, simultaneously, and then looked at each other. Edrea stifled a laugh. She then remembered exactly how tired she was. Two hours of sleep was not going to be enough.

“Professor,” she said, “if it’s all the same to you, I think I’ll take a nap while you breakfast.” She turned to Rorsh. “Well met, Rorsh.”

Pendrake began talking, his voice a comforting sound that Edrea had dozed off to numerous times during the winter of 602, when she’d attempted to audit eleven classes. But she would never tell Pendrake that. She fell asleep pondering the provisioning necessary for giant farrow.

Edrea snapped awake. The sky was still dark. The fire had died down a bit but still crackled. Everything else was silent. Nobody was talking.

She sat up. Everyone was looking to the east. The grizzled farrow’s ears twitched, and Edrea heard footfalls. Running hard, and coming fast. Pendrake drew his sword, and Horgash had both of his blades out and ready. Taking a cue from them, Edrea slipped out of her bedroll and grabbed her rifle.

“Rorsh, are you expecting someone? Because we are not,” Pendrake said.

“No.” The farrow gestured in the direction of the footfalls with his pistol. “But those are farrow feet.”

The footfalls grew heavier and closer, and Edrea heard hard breathing along with them. A young farrow burst into the firelight, chest heaving and tongue lolling, his shirtless, furry flanks glistening with sweat. He stopped just two steps into the camp and doubled over, struggling for breath. A spear and two arrows protruded from the thick, hairy ridge of his back.

“He’s injured!” Edrea said.

“Those are Tharn arrows,” said Lynus.

“Shhh,” said Pendrake.

Rorsh grunted at the newcomer in the farrow tongue.

The young farrow responded in squeals and grunts, punctuated with pained gasps.

Rorsh shook his head and grunted again, holding out a hand as if for coin.

The young farrow squealed weakly, tears in its eyes.

“
Shhhh
,” Pendrake said again, finger to his lips. “Something followed him.”

Edrea drew in a deep breath and wove for sight. She was still exhausted, but the runes spun to life about her wrist easily. The forest resolved into sharp, tin-grey detail. Amber silhouettes again outlined each of her companions, their mounts, the two farrow, and the huge farrow beast, Brine.

Five more silhouettes glowed deep in the woods, each the size of a bear, yet spiked like thistle blossoms. They moved as a group, like wolves, only far larger. The pack fanned out, flanking the camp.

“Spine rippers,” Edrea announced. “Five of them. They’ve got the bluff circled on three sides.”

“Morrow preserve us,” said Lynus, drawing his sword. Kinik picked up her polearm from where it leaned against a tree.

“Gonna lose a couple of horses,” said Rorsh. He drew deeply on his cigar and blew out a thick cloud of smoke. “Or Brine can guard ’em, and you only lose one.” Edrea heard the giant farrow stamp and snort down by the creek, near the mounts. Oh, Aeshnyrr, that monster sounded hungry. Edrea opened her mouth to speak.

“We need them both,” said Pendrake. “I’ll pay eighty crowns.”

“Crowns don’t feed Brine. Four hundred.”

“Five times my offer? Please. One sixty.”

“A horse is worth at least that in these woods,” Rorsh said. He drew on his cigar. “Two fifty.”

“Two twenty cleans me out.”

“Two twenty and a pound of that bacon.”

Pendrake tossed a bag of coins at Rorsh. “Money down. Bacon on delivery.”

“Done,” Rorsh said, catching the bag and dropping it into a coat pocket already bulging with other things. Cylindrical things. Edrea thought she saw fuses.

“Lynus,” Pendrake said, “what can you tell us about spine rippers?”

“Spines everywhere, thumb claw is poisonous, belly is like a long, shallow mouth edged with spines. Food works its way up that track to the true mouth. If they pounce on you, you’re food.”

“Arterial placement? With these odds we need quick kills.”

“On it.” Lynus speared his sword into the ground, grabbed his satchel, and began digging through it.

“I bet it’s not in your trollkin songbook.”

“Stow that, Horgash,” Pendrake snapped. “Circle up while Lynus finds us the best place to cut. You take the south side, Kinik on the north, I’ll take the east, Edrea and Lynus in the middle. Rorsh, you take the west, where you can see Brine and the horses.”

“Don’t need to see ’em,” Rorsh said, tapping his head and waggling his heavy brows. “Magic.”

Edrea wondered at this.
Vossyl liumyn
let her see things clearly through brush or fog, but she couldn’t actually see through the bluff.

The young farrow wheezed and collapsed. Its amber outline flickered once, then vanished.

“Ran his dumb self to death,” muttered Rorsh.

“Those are big and very ugly,” Kinik said.

Lynus looked up and his eyes went wide. Edrea realized the spine rippers were now close enough to the fire’s light that everyone else could see them too. She blew out a breath and released the spell, conserving strength for the fight to come.

“Quickly please, Lynus,” said Pendrake. “I remember that false maw being tender, but that’s the extent of it.”

Lynus flipped furiously through a stack of papers loosely held inside a makeshift cover of worked leather. “I’ve got dissection notes in here somewhere.”

The spine rippers prowled the edge of the firelight, their eyes flashing in reflected yellow as they glared at the group. A pack of wolves would have been intimidated by six bipeds with weapons drawn, but these beasts were too big and too hungry for that. And their prey, the poor farrow who had run himself to death to deliver a message to Rorsh, lay in plain sight. They grew bolder, moving farther into the circle of firelight.

Edrea moved closer to Lynus traced
fheyissa, the
sigils for “fortress,” in the air. She drew in as much power as she could and clenched her fist around the symbols. A circle of runes appeared, flat on the ground with Edrea at their center.

“We’ve only just met,” Rorsh said, “but I accept.”

“Accept what?” asked Pendrake.

“I’m weaving for protection,” Edrea said. “It reaches everybody. I didn’t know Rorsh had a choice.”

Rorsh snorted. “I brought my own. You’ll see.”

“Found ’em!” Lynus announced. “No big arteries in front. Two two-chambered hearts, one inside each lung, left and right of a heavy sternum. Massive artery and vein pair running up the ventral face of the spinal column. You’d have to break its back to sever that.”

“Or go in deep through the false mouth,” Pendrake said. “I really had hoped to have forgotten something more convenient.”

“What’s this note here?” Lynus asked, half to himself. “Smudged it in the lab.”

Edrea thumbed back the hammer on her rifle with a click.

Rorsh snapped a glance at her. “You fire, they pounce,” he grunted, waving his gun. After his comment about feeding their horses to Brine, Edrea felt pretty good about dubbing it pig iron.

“Good point,” said Pendrake. “Together, then. On three. One . . .”

A spine ripper bounded into the firelight from the north, leaping wide of Kinik and charging Rorsh on the east. Rorsh fired, and the beast flinched, then leaped past him over the edge of the bluff. Edrea hoped Brine waited ready, but it was abruptly too loud to listen for that.

Two more leaped, snarling, into full view, one at Kinik and one atop the corpse of the young farrow, which it dragged out of the firelight.

Kinik, roaring with exertion, swept her polearm toward it. The creature veered from the blade, shifting its charge just to her right, toward Pendrake.

For just a moment, Edrea had a clear shot. She fired, sure she hit, but for all the spine ripper noticed she might as well have thrown an apple at it. It leaped, pouncing on Pendrake, who ducked under it, sweeping up with his sword as he did. The spine ripper kept moving, streaking blood. Pendrake rose, his coat torn, but appearing otherwise unharmed.