Far-Seer

Cadool guessed there were seventy paces between the two forces. On this side, 500 hunters. On Yenalb’s, perhaps 120 priests, scholars, and palace staff members, each atop an imperial mount.

The palace loyal were a sorry lot: many of them had lived soft lives, relying on butchers such as Cadool himself to do their hunting and killing. No, they were no match for the Lubalites, either in number or skill. But their mounts were fresh, not exhausted from the long march to Capital City. Cadool took a moment to size up the animals they rode. Armorbacks had daggers of bone coming off the sides of their thick carapaces and had solid clubs at the ends of their muscular tails. A hunter would never use such a club in battle, but scholars and priests might indeed sink so low. One swing from an armorback’s tail could stave in a Quintaglio skull.

And then there were the hornfaces, with three pointed shafts of bone protruding from the fronts of their skulls: a long one from above each eye and another, shorter horn rising from the tip of the muzzle. In his time, Cadool had seen many hunters, either too daring or too careless, gored by such beasts. Even Dem-Pironto, who, excepting Afsan, was the finest hunter Cadool had ever known, had been felled that way. Further, the great neck shields, rising like walls of bone from the back of the animals’ skulls, would help protect the scholars and priests.

And then there were the spikefrills, such as the one Yenalb was riding. These were a rare breed of hornface with long spikes of bone sticking out of the short bony frill around the neck. They had only one real horn, a huge one sticking up from the snout, although there were small pointed knobs above each eye.

But even as he tried to make a critical assessment, Cadool realized that his own control was slipping away, his blood coming to a boil.

“Advance!” Yenalb had shouted through his brass speaking cone. “Clear the square!” The palace loyal began moving slowly. The square was crowded; their mounts jostled each other. Beasts that size could crush the foot or tail of a Quintaglio without noticing a thing.

It’s madness, thought Cadool. Absolute madness. And then he growled, low and long—

Afsan felt the ground shaking slightly, knew that imperial mounts were starting to move toward him and the hunters. The air was thick with pheromones. He didn’t want this, had never wanted it. All he’d wanted was to tell the truth, to let them see—see what he no longer could see.

The blind leading the blind.

Afsan felt his claws unsheathe.

Cadool charged, pushing through the crowd of hunters. Other Lubalites were lunging forward, closing the gap between themselves and the imperial contingent. Being on foot, Cadool had greater maneuverability than those upon mounts. He and a hundred others surged ahead, three-toed feet kicking pebbles and dirt into the air, a cloud rising around them.

Cadool’s heart thumped in time with his footfalls. The hunt was on!

Forty paces. Thirty.

The air filled with wingfingers, rising in droves from statues at the periphery of the square. Their squawks, like claws scraping slate, counterpointed the dull thunder of feet pounding the paving stones.

Twenty paces. Ten. Cadool could smell them, smell their stimulation, smell their fear.

Five paces—

He leapt, kicking off the cobbles, flying into the air, cutting across the distance between himself and the closest of the opposing forces, one of the ceremonial imperial guards, straddling the back of a hornface.

The tri-horned brute bucked at seeing the screaming Quintaglio flying toward its flank. It tried to move to the left—

—and crashed against an adjacent hornface, this one of the rare variety with a boss of bone where the nasal horn would normally be—

Cadool hit the tri-horner’s huge side, rippling waves moving through its tawny flesh, radiating from the impact point.

The butcher’s claws dug in, pulling him up onto the beast’s back.

The imperial guard, a female slightly bigger than Cadool, fumbled to get out of her saddle—

—and Cadool’s jaws snapped down upon her throat.

He released the leather restraints holding her dead form to the beast’s back and let it slide to the stones below, splattering them with blood—

—and then leapt from the back of this hornface to the adjacent beast, his feet forward, toeclaws out, smashing into the chest of its horrified rider, a scholar Cadool knew slightly, knocking him to the ground.

He swung to look at the skirmish line. Every imperial loyalist was engaged by a Lubalite. Jaws snapped. Claws tore. Blood washed stones, dappled the hides of mounts, smeared muzzles of individuals on both sides. With a bone-crunching crack, Cadool saw Pahs-Drawo from Carno dispatch a loyalist atop a running beast, but then watched in horror as Drawo himself fell victim to a choreographed lunge by Yenalb’s spikefrill, the beast’s huge nose horn impaling Drawo, running through his gut like a fingerclaw through rotted wood.