Extraordinary Zoology Part 2

They arrived at The Bodger's Bed and Barrel just after dusk. This particular inn, one of the first along the Great Northern Tradeway between Corvis and Merywyn, was a common enough stop for Pendrake's crew on northward trips that it felt like a home away from home to Lynus.

The food was good, the fire warm, the stable well tended, and the beds clean. Lynus sat and stared across the common room at the glowing hearth, his eyes tired from reading.

Fire, he thought, is a great way to destroy a village. Even farrow, those barbaric, boar-headed bipeds, would know to set fire to thatch. In fact, he couldn't think of any intelligent or mostly intelligent group that wouldn't resort to fire to raze a village. Maybe his epiphany about a war for territory was completely off track.

Unless . . .

"Friend Lynus." Kinik's voice startled Lynus out of his musings. "Sorry for disturbing you. Would you write your name?"

Lynus blinked, his eyes blurring from staring at the fire. "Excuse me?"

"Your name. Would you write your name for me?"

He was baffled. "Whatever for?" And then he noticed her worn copy of the Monsternomicon, almost completely swallowed up in the grasp of her ma.s.sive left hand.

"You helped Professor Pendrake write this book. You drew pictures." She clutched the tome to her battered breastplate. "Your name is inside already. But not written in your hand."

Morrow and marrow, Lynus swore to himself. He closed his eyes as if to squeeze the rest of the hearth fire out of them.

"That's the silliest thing I've ever heard," he said, shaking his head, his eyes still closed.

"I thought it was a splendid idea."

Lynus opened his eyes and snapped his head up so quickly it almost hurt. Pendrake stood next to Kinik, a quill perched on his right ear along the stem of his gla.s.ses.

Pendrake continued. "King Leto asked for an inscription once. It's a practice that honors everyone. And you ought to treat even my most junior students at least as well as I do." He dropped his chin almost to his chest and looked down at Lynus over the rims of his gla.s.ses. "Perhaps even as well as I treated you, when you first entreated me for studies."

"Yes sir." Lynus fumbled around in his satchel for the quill and bottle he'd stowed.

"Use mine, lad." He offered Lynus his quill and an open pot. "No point cleaning two of them tonight."

Lynus took Kinik's copy of the Monsternomicon from her and opened to the frontispiece. There was Viktor Pendrake's signature, and beneath it, Edrea Lloryrr's. Lynus dipped the quill, gave it a light touch against the side of the pot, and carefully signed his own name. It looked, to his eye, like the first thing he'd done properly all day.

The next morning they departed the Tradeway just two miles beyond The Bodger's Bed and Barrel. The signpost marking the side road east toward tiny Bednar and the vast Widower's Wood was so weathered it looked more like a dead tree than directions. The side road, if it could be called a road at all, was overgrown enough that Lynus wondered if the not-so-distant Widower's Wood was reaching out to stake a claim. This path looked more like a pair of goat tracks than a proper road.

"That's the end of the warm beds," Horgash announced as they struck east. "No more inns, no more mead, no more hearth fires surrounded by fat merchants and wary mercenaries. It's all bedrolls and brambles for days if we venture into the Widower's Wood."

"I take expeditions along tracks like these rather regularly, old friend," said Pendrake.

"Yes, yes. I was speaking for the benefit of the young ones back there."

"We're among those he takes," Lynus said. "I, for one, am no stranger to bedrolls and brambles."

"Begging your forgiveness," said Horgash with an exaggerated flourish. "I didn't realize the young librarian was such a seasoned explorer."

"I'm not a librarian."

"I think he knows that," Edrea said, her voice just above a whisper. "He pokes fun at youth, a common enough practice among folk who think they've gotten old."

"I don't just think I'm old," said Horgash. "The mighty outcroppings upon this weathered chin announce my advancing age any time I'm unfortunate enough to see my reflection, and I've long since stopped trying to ignore them."

"I'm familiar with the ravages of time," Edrea said. "Take that signpost back there. Why, I recall when one could still see the white paint in the carved letters."

"Hah!" said Horgash. "The Cygnarans haven't whitewashed those letters since the Lion's Coup."

"Oh, has it been that long? It seems like just yesterday." Edrea winked at Lynus as she said this. Leto had a.s.sumed the throne twelve years ago.

"Well, that's just . . ." Horgash paused. "Hrmph." He muttered something Lynus couldn't make out. He might have heard the Molgur-Trul slur for "elves" in it, but it could have been the word for "apples." Pendrake chuckled quietly, and the banter gave way to the sound of creaking saddles and clopping hooves.

The crisp autumn air was shortly pierced by the smell of rotting flesh. Lynus shifted uncomfortably in his saddle. Oathammer chuffed in distress, clearly no happier than he about the wafting scent of death.

"Morrow only knows, I would have preferred to approach from upwind," he said, half to himself.

Pendrake raised his left hand and stopped his horse. "Morrow has preserved us with a downwind approach. Do you smell that?"

"I can't not smell it, Professor."

"He means the other smell," Edrea said.

Lynus concentrated, sniffed deeply, and caught the scent of something that was neither autumn nor rotting meat. It was musky, and perhaps sweaty, not as foul as the putrescence on the wind but somehow more rancid.

"Dismount." Pendrake slid out of his saddle and strung his lucky bow. "Rifles at the ready, you two."

Lynus clambered down, stiff from the ride. Edrea, he noticed, slid from her horse with practiced ease, as if she'd been doing it for twenty years.

"Gorax," said Horgash. "Good nose, there, Viktor."

Oh, that smell, thought Lynus. Not many beasts' scents could be caught over the stench of festering death. He should have recognized it.

They tied their mounts to trees along the track. Lynus heard Edrea whisper rea.s.surances to Aeshnyrr. They set off on foot, staying low and moving as quietly as they could up the road toward Bednar. It was a skill that had saved Lynus' life on more than one occasion.

The soft, steady crunching behind him negated any benefit of their stealth. Kinik had no woodcraft at all. Horgash and Pendrake were nearly inaudible, and Edrea was so silent that Lynus had to keep looking to his left to make sure she was still there. But Kinik, who weighed more than some horses, made a disturbing amount of noise.

"Shhh," he said, scowling. He pointed at the ground. "Step around the crunchy bits."

Kinik's face fell. "Crunchy bits are everywhere."

Lynus noticed for the first time just how large her feet were. He also considered for the first time, on this trip at least, how many expeditions he'd been on that returned short by one or more students.

"Just . . . try to step on less of them."

The trail emerged from the scrub forest at the top of the rise and looked down on what was left of the village of Bednar. The ruins lay in a low, lush clearing, the turf churned to mud and pushed into low berms. The houses in the hollow were now nothing more than splinters and thatch, spread flat. The deep greens of the fields above the hollow to the north were just turning yellow and red, heralding autumn's harvest. No churning there, nor in the village orchard to the south.

Not fifty paces beyond the flattened houses rose the misty tree line of the Widower's Wood.

Lynus scanned the village. This place stank of gorax, but the beasts were nowhere to be seen. Perhaps they were hiding in the shadowed mists of the wood. Pendrake pulled a small spygla.s.s from his satchel and gazed through it, no doubt able to see much more detail than Lynus or the others.

"I think," Pendrake said after a few moments, "that perhaps a pack of gorax came through here and ate the dead. We're smelling sc.r.a.ps, and gorax saliva."

The copious, pheromone-laced salivations of gorax were famous for their powerful aroma. The long-snouted, knuckle-dragging bipeds stank of sweat and filth, certainly, but even if you got close enough to smell the pits under a gorax's long arms, it would be the odors coming off the spittle caked on it that would put you off your lunch.

"Some of the homes have been flattened in place," Edrea said. "Gorax love the damp shade of a cave. If any cellars remain intact, the gorax may have taken up residence."

"No cellars in Bednar," said Horgash. "The water table's too high. A cellar would fill right up."

"Let's head down and sweep the area, then," Pendrake said. "Edrea, Horgash, come with me. Lynus and Kinik, fetch our mounts."

Fetch the horses? Lynus fumed for just a moment, then arrived at a solution.

"Professor, what if there are gorax here? Won't the animals be in more danger with us?"

Pendrake grunted and nodded. "That's true. So we all go down together." Lynus might be sent to fetch the horses and that bison later, of course, but maybe Kinik and Horgash would go instead.

Edrea smiled at Lynus, and he wondered why. Then Kinik spoke, right in his ear.

"Thank you, friend Lynus," she said. "We will go together. Watching Pendrake and Wesselbaum and Lloryrr search and work is better than fetching horses."

Lynus frowned and said nothing.

They walked down the track into the village, and the smell grew stronger. Nervous, Lynus unslung his Radcliffe rifle, broke the breech, and chambered a round, then shut the breech with a satisfying snap. Pendrake looked back at him and raised an eyebrow, then unslung his lucky bow.

"Does the boy know something we don't?" Horgash said.

"If he's got a book in front of him, almost certainly," said Pendrake with a grin. "And discretion has always been the better part of his valor. But the smell is a lot stronger down here."

Horgash drew his own firearm, a large short-barreled Vislovski carbine that looked like it had Khadoran artillery pieces in its direct lineage. Edrea unslung her Radcliffe as well and nodded at Lynus. Her Iosan magic was always at her disposal, but it never hurt to be able to put a bullet in something first.

Pendrake walked in front, with Horgash close behind him. Edrea, Lynus, and Kinik fanned out some fifteen paces behind. They stepped carefully, and fairly quietlya"Kinik learned quicklya"between and among the destroyed homes. Some were in splinters, others appeared to have been crushed in place. Debris, especially thatch, was strewn everywhere. There were no bodies in sight.

"Friend Lynus," Kinik said, "I read that the gorax has a heavy skull, tough ribs. Where do you aim that," she gestured at his rifle, "to kill it?"

Lynus opened his mouth to answer, then stopped. That exact question had been one of the very first things Lynus asked Professor Pendrake almost five years ago. And thanks to his research with Pendrake, the answer he could give was far more specific than the one he had received then.

"Between the pectoral crease and the first rib below it," he said, pointing to his own torso, "preferably from the left side, but definitely not from in front. An adult gorax has a wide, thick sternum." Lynus tapped his chest.

Kinik nodded soberly.

"Properly aimed, and with enough powder behind it, that shot bursts the heart. The gorax will run maybe three more steps before dropping dead."

"Shhh!" said Pendrake, signaling a halt. Then he pointed. "Where did that come from?"

A gorax pup, first season, no larger than a boot, was rolling around in the mud and thatch, barely ten paces from Pendrake. Its snout was still short and cute, its tusks no more than nubs, and a fluffy tuft of mane poked out behind its ears. Straw clung to most of the rest of it, sticking out like feathers on a baby bird.

Edrea spoke very softly. "It came from right there, Professor. You missed it because it was tiny, asleep, and covered in straw." She bent her knees and twisted, without moving her feet or making a sound, and scanned all the way around them.

"Anything?" asked Pendrake.

"No," she said. "Let me trya"" and the pup mewled in distress, cutting her off.

Everyone was silent. Lynus held his breath.

Several bundles of thatch, still tied to unbroken rafters, rose from behind the pup, and a large female gorax crawled out on all fours, apparently from a burrow dug beneath the fallen roof. Her broad snout, somewhere between feline and porcine, glistened with stinky saliva, and the long, tangled fur of her mane was matted with mud and blood. She blinked against the daylight, reached for the pup with one hairy arm, and snorted, catching new scents.

She looked at Pendrake and growled, a low belly-growl that seemed to say "I hate you" and "I want to eat you" at the same time.

Pendrake backed away slowly. "Do as I do," he whispered, his left hand low, his lucky bow also low in his right hand. Horgash began backing up as well, his carbine held the same way. As nonthreateningly as possible.

Lynus also stepped backward, and his boot squish-crunched in the mud and thatcha"the loudest possible step he could have taken. He looked down to check his next step and saw a boot-sized muddy clump of fur right next to his foot.

Morrow preserve me. Another pup.

It opened a pair of wet black eyes, stared up at Lynus, and let out a low growl.

He looked at mama gorax. She pulled herself the rest of the way out of the burrow and snorted again. She stood, drawing herself up to nine feet of mud, stink, and fur, and swung her low-slung head side to side, snorting.

Edrea took a deep breath to Lynus' left. Had she seen the pup?

"Professor," he said, his voice cracking between whisper and whimper, "there's a second pup between my feet."

Horgash flashed Lynus an incredulous, furious glance.

"On three, run hard to your right," said Pendrake.

Mama gorax took a step forward, still snorting, still searching.

"One."

She drew a deep breath and stared at Lynus.

"Two."

Her yellow gaze tracked down between his feet, and her eyes widened.

"Three."

Lynus froze. He was supposed to jump, supposed to run, but mama gorax . . .

"THREE, LYNUS!" shouted Pendrake.

Lynus jumped to his left, and mama gorax roared. Then he remembered he was supposed to go to his right, but it was too late for that now. Mama gorax was coming, and Lynus could only hope she was having as much trouble running in this mud as he was. The Radcliffe that had seemed so comforting a few minutes ago was suddenly terribly heavy.

A sizzling whistle ended in a meaty thump not far behind him, and the gorax roared, her breath hot and rank. Lynus screamed and threw his rifle. Was it shiny enough to distract an angrya"

Two rifles boomed and the gorax screamed in pain, spittle and stink splattering the back of Lynus' head. Morrow, it was close enough to bite, he could expect teeth or claws any moment.

A huge hand came at him from his right. Before he could dodge, he realized it was in a sleeve.

Kinik!