She wanted to call it an ostrich, because that was the only frame of reference her stunned brain had to give her, but it bore no more true resemblance to one than a saoq to a deer or a corroki to an armadillo. She wasn’t even sure she could call it a bird. What her eyes wanted to perceive as feathers clearly weren’t; what it had were flat, wedge-shaped plates thrust out from its body, rattling like wind in dry branches when it saw them. It walked on two muscular legs and had five toes each, the middle toe twice as long as the others and bent backwards so as to rest the massive length of its scythe-like talon on its ankle. Its arms were long and ridiculously skinny, terminating not in a hand but only a single blunt claw, with thousands of those plates—long and thin and tapered to points—sprouting from it to make wings. Its neck was long, but very thick and the head that sat atop it was huge and blocky, with a wide, hooked beak that opened now for a deafening, extremely unfunny, goose-like honk.
Scott jumped and turned around. He screamed as Amber heaved herself onto her feet with her spear in both hands. It was a perfectly glorious B-movie scream and the only reason Amber didn’t join him in it was because her stomach and head hurt so fucking much.
The bird opened its wings and shook them, stalking forward with its head low and canted on its side. Amber swung her spear, making just one slapdash attempt to scare it off, but she knew it wouldn’t be scared and it wasn’t.
It lowered its head and charged.
“Run!” Amber rasped, lunging to meet it.
Scott stood there and screamed again.
The bird jumped, both legs folding up and two middle toes slicing out. Amber grabbed Scott’s shirt and pulled as hard as she could while throwing herself forward.
Scott’s scream yelped itself off when he hit the ground, a split-second before Amber drove the point of her spear into the bird’s breast. She heard fabric tear, felt a pulling sensation, and even though she could see it had snagged her shirt and nothing more, she still thought, ‘That’s it, I’ve just been disemboweled,’ and actually heard Meoraq telling her she was dead. Then she was wrenched violently to one side by the spear going crazy in her hands. She lost her footing, but held onto the spear, and was dragged painfully in a wide arc as the bird spun, trying to free itself.
Then it saw her at the end of the spear.
‘You know,’ Amber told herself in a remarkably mild inner voice. ‘It’s never quick when a person goes out this way. You’re always alive when they eat you.’
It lunged, shoving her ahead of it, and its beak clopped shut on empty air where she had been. It tried again, this time with a short running start that pushed Amber through the mud and grass until her butt hit a rock and the unexpected leverage combined with the bird’s momentum pushed the spear in further.
It shrieked, staggering and kicking at her. She fell back but never lost her grip, keeping the spear between them as its talon slashed through her shirt. In seconds, she was wearing nothing but two sleeves, three buttons and some shreds.
It couldn’t reach her. But only just.
Amber burst out laughing. It was sort of an hysterical sound, but honestly, it was funny. If she let go of the spear, the bird would kill her. If she stuck the spear in any deeper, the bird would kill her. Damned if you do, little girl, and damned if you don’t.
The bird let out another of those ear-splitting shrieks, which was easily identifiable, now that it was happening at arm’s reach and not off in the dark somewhere, as the sound of a very pissed off bird and not a mortally wounded one. It didn’t even seem to care that it had a spear stuck in it, only that the tasty bag of meat dangling off the end of it remained just out of reach. The bird lunged at her in a beak-snapping frenzy and Amber felt the spear go in a little deeper and catch again. The bird recoiled, thrashing and kicking and beating at her with its wings, which felt a lot like getting horse-whipped with a bag of broken glass. Her arms went numb before she could even process the pain; the spear slipped out of her hands and she spun through the air and fell on her face.
Well, motherfuck.
Amber flung herself on her back in the perfectly ludicrous hope of fending off the monstrous beak that probably would not kill her right away, and got hit in the face with about a quart of hot blood.
‘Mine?’ she had time to think dizzily and then the bird’s head and about two-thirds of its neck fell to the ground next to her. Some disgusting little tubey bit lapped up against her cheek like an overenthusiastic puppy’s tongue.
And Meoraq’s hand came down to grab her by the remains of her shirt and haul her to her feet.
“You idiot,” he said.
Amber let out a whooping cry of relief so violent it was nearly orgasmic and threw her arms around him.
He recoiled, his already hard-feeling body turning at once to stiff-backed stone, but then clumsily raised a hand and patted her twice on the back. Just twice. There-there.
His obvious discomfort did more than any word of reassurance could have to clarify her mind. Amber let go of him and backed away. Scott’s flashlight was lying on the ground. She picked it up and fussed with it, feeling stupid. “Sorry,” she mumbled.
Meoraq grunted, avoiding her eyes, and moved past her to pull her spear out of the bird’s breast. It wouldn’t come easily, even for him. She heard bones snap as he wrenched the haft and finally got it out. Those little scalloped tips he’d put on it…They’d gotten stuck in the bird’s breastbones somehow.
“If I’d been using my old spear, I’d have been killed,” Amber realized, unaware she spoke aloud.
“All things follow God’s ultimate plan,” said Meoraq, inspecting the tip. He gave it back to her. “He must have known you were fool enough to do this.”
Her blush deepened. “Were there only these two?”
“Three. A mated pair and this, their young one.”
“Their young…? This is a chick?”
He looked at her, at it, at her again. “Half a year. Near its fullest weight, but inexperienced. Its parents were the hunters here. It came stupidly in where it was not prepared to be,” he added, aiming a scowl at her. “And now it is dead.”
That stung. “I’m okay.”
His scowl deepened. “A more experienced tachuqi would have bitten through your spear in one moment and had your belly opened in the next.” He started to gesture at her stomach, then executed a lizardly double-take as he saw it for himself.
“I’m okay,” said Amber again. She clutched at the hanging tatters of the lower part of her shirt and pulled them aside to show him her unscratched stomach. “It only got my shirt. See, it never actually touched—”
His head cocked. He sheathed his sword, took the flashlight, and aimed it at her stomach. Yellow flared to life in the black of his throat. “Who did this?” he asked quietly.
Amber looked down. She’d fallen on the mother of all rocks; now she had the mother of all bruises coming in to prove it. “Oh,” she said. “I fell on a rock.”
He looked at her.
“A big one,” she said lamely and tried to cover herself.
Meoraq caught a fistful of shirt-strips and yanked them aside, tearing them even more.
“Is everyone okay?” she asked.
He grunted in the affirmative, now running the flashlight slowly up her body.
“Even Scott?” she asked, looking around. They appeared to be alone.
“Lamentably.” The light was on her face now. “How did this happen?”
“I fell down,” Amber said again. “Are you sure? Where is he?”
“At the fire with the others. Hold still.” His fingers probed at the side of her head and came away with a small shard of plastic. He studied it in the dim beam of the flashlight, scowling. “So far as I know, you were the only one fool enough to try to chase down a tachuqi in the dark. What is this?”
