Far-Seer

Afsan could feel the creature’s pulse, a rapid beating beneath the thick hide. Again he reached up the neck, again he pulled himself up, shimmying his way.

The beast was making good progress toward the clearing. Small tree trunks snapped as it barreled ahead. Afsan pulled, pulled, pulled, afraid to look down, afraid to see how high up he now was.

The neck was tapering slowly; Afsan’s arms encircled it halfway now. But the tiny head was still dizzyingly high above him. He climbed harder.

Suddenly the thunderbeast’s front end was free of the trees. The creature swung its neck in a wide arc. Afsan did look down now, and screamed. The ground swept by in a blur, air whipping over his body. He continued to climb, clawing. Blood from the wounds made by his hands flowed down the snaking tube, making it harder for him to get traction with his feet.

The neck swooped down. Afsan saw the ground swelling upward. Then the neck swung back up, and Afsan felt his ears pop. He clawed ahead.

Another swoop. Another painful popping. Diving down, swinging up, dizzying, dizzying…

Fingerclaws on his left hand clicked against those on his right. He could now encircle the entire neck.

The neck swung to the left, and Afsan saw the beast’s brown and blue abdomen looming in. But before he could be squished against it, the neck reached the limit of its flexibility. It swung back to the right, curving outward, sweeping Afsan inrough the sky.

The head was only a small distance away now. The squared-off snout was visible as the creature’s face swung from side to side, the giant black eyes, bigger than Afsan’s fists, batting opened and closed. The thunderbeast let out a scream, in response no doubt to Telex’s handiwork far below. Afsan could feel the neck expand and contract as the low rumbling erupted from the animal’s throat. He gave one massive pull iand brought himself to the end of the neck. The head, ridiculously tiny on a beast of such bulk, was smaller than Afsan’s own torso. It spread out before him, wrinkled. The beast’s nostrils, high on a dome of bone between the eyes, flared uncontrollably. The creature’s mouth, still open from the scream, showed pink innards and peg-shaped teeth.

Afsan loosened his grip so that he could slide around to the underside of the neck. There he opened his jaws wide, as wide as they could go, his left and right mandibles popping from their sockets, and with all the strength he could muster he chomped down on the soft flesh on the underside of the neck. The thunderbeast gasped. Afsan bit again and again, cutting through the neck at its thinnest spot. Blood geysered out of the widening cavity, liquid crimson fists beating against him.

Another massive bite, and then another, and another. Afsan felt hot air rush out of the hole he had made, forced out by the bellows of the creature’s lungs, far, far below.

Craning, Afsan could see that the beast’s nostrils had stopped flaring, that its black eyes had closed for the final time. All at once, Afsan felt the rigidity go out of the neck and, like a massive flexible tree trunk, it came hurtling toward the ground, air rushing about him as it did so. Just before the neck hit, Afsan leapt off, lest he be crushed beneath it. He kicked away with all the horizontal force he could muster. While still airborne, he heard and felt the thunderous slam of the great weight of flesh as it hit, and then everything went silent as Afsan himself smashed into the dirt.

*8*

“How is the eggling?” Tak-Saleed’s voice betrayed no special concern as he looked down at the unconscious Afsan, lying flat on his belly on a marble surgical table, the youngster’s head stretched out so that the bottom of his jaw was against the cold stone.

Most denizens of Capital City had left to enjoy the spoils of the hunt—more thunderbeast meat than many of them had ever seen in one place. But Saleed, giant and ancient, was too old and too slow to go so far for a meal. One couldn’t unequivocally interpret his having stayed behind as showing any particular worry about his fallen apprentice, and yet he had come here, come to the hospital, where those trained in medicine did what they could for the hunters who had been injured during the day’s spectacular kill.

Unfortunately they couldn’t do much. Oh, they cleansed wounds with water. Some lacerations were wrapped with leather. Broken bones were braced with splints. Mangled extremities were cut off with twist-saws so that they could be regenerated. The saws were different from the cleavers Pal-Cadool used; these wrenched and tore so that blood vessels would seal. With a simple severing, a Quintaglio would bleed to death.