Lords of the Seventh Swarm

Chapter 21

Cooharah and Aaw flapped their wings, struggling desperately in the thin air to climb a ridge of angry red mountains, the evening sun just touching the peaks, painting them shades of crimson and rose.

“Oasis to the east,” Aaw whistled. Cooharah looked down at a cliff beneath him. An ancient diagram painted dark green showed the way,

“Can we trust it?” Cooharah asked, weary of chasing promises.

“What choice do we have?” Aaw asked, chuckling low tones of despair.

In three days, he and Aaw had eaten little food. A few insects, a rodent. In these wastes, nothing could be found. The barrenness of the land surprised even Cooharah. All along this route, their ancestors had left ancient glyphs painted on the rocks, signs for their children to follow. The signs read, “Fly east forty kilometers for food,” or “Oasis past mountain to west.”

But the land had changed over centuries. The oases where Cooharah’s ancestors watered so long ago had long since dried. The promises of food were all empty.

Cooharah had begun to lead Aaw north in hopes of finding a nesting site, an oasis where they might raise their chick. Now Cooharah feared they would die.

It was not just the lack of food. True, they’d eaten little in three days, but if they were safe in an aerie, where they could rest, a few days of hunger would not have been so bad. But this ceaseless flying, the almost frantic zigzagging over the desert, had worn them, was affecting their senses.

After winging so far over the desert, Cooharah felt dizzy. The hot wind ruffling his feathers seemed to suck the breath from him, and his body felt disjointed. It was as if his wings flew of their own accord, without conscious thought.

They veered east, circling a mountain, and hope filled Cooharah. Before them a ragged pink mountain soared, fluted in strange and magnificent shapes.

Cooharah had never seen aeries like this: his people had no names for minarets and citadels, crenellations and vast gardens. His people had never imagined fluted columns, or strangely arched windows that made such odd entryways. Yet the sight before them was magnificent: waters cascading over palace walls in splendid silver threads.

“Oomas, oomas!” Cooharah whistled, using the Qualeewooh word for humans. Neither Cooharah nor Aaw had ever seen the aliens-odd, stubby creatures, with hair like rodents. It was said that they built machines to fly between worlds, and that they were far wiser than even the wisest of ancestors.

Yet they wore no spirit masks, and therefore had no souls.

It was widely known that oomas stole the spirit masks of ancestors, and some of the stubby creatures even killed living Qualeewoohs, tearing off the precious masks. Cooharah could not condone such madness, even though he understood it. If the humans did not have spirits, what extremes might they go to gain one? Killing a Qualeewooh, robbing it of its spirit mask, could not give a spirit to the humans, but despite all their learning, humans did not know this.

“Shall we go? Shall we drink?” Aaw whistled.

Water. The oomas had water flowing from their aerie. At the least, Cooharah and his mate would drink. In this desert, water might keep them alive for another day or two.

“We drink,” Cooharah replied. “Watch for food.”

As they dipped over the ridge, Cooharah let himself glide down the hillsides into the shadows of the coming night, buoyed by the brisk updrafts from the valleys. The fields below were green in the evening. Often, the plants had strange, colorful growths.

Silver things wandered along the ground on tedious legs. Cooharah suspected these were not living beings, yet he wondered. Could they be the stubby-legged oomas his mother had taught him of? Certainly their bodies were silver-like-reflected-water, not tan-like-the-hair-of-desertdiggers. Cooharah did not approach the silver creatures, fearing they might be dangerous.

And how should we treat oomas, if we find them? Cooharah wondered. Should we flock with them, or flee from them? Some Qualeewoohs would flock with oomas, gaining profit thereby, while other Qualeewoohs found death at the aliens’ hands.

The oomas’ reaction to Qualeewoohs seemed to arise from the proximity of other oomas. If many comas flocked together, they would not kill a Qualeewooh. But lone oomas were dangerous.

Cooharah found it odd that the actions of an individual depended on whether others of its kind hovered near. Cooharah found this so incredible, he dared not believe it. Better to avoid the oomas altogether, to flee from them.

“If we see oomas, flee,” Cooharah whistled.

“Agreed to the second level of fervency,” Aaw whistled back.

They flew to a stream flowing through the green fields, then dived headlong into the shallows, washing themselves.

The water stunned them, for it was icy so high in the mountains. For a long moment, both Qualeewoohs waded, dipping their mouths into the water, then raising their heads high so the sweet, clear water flowed down their gullets.

The foot of the mountain before them was bathed in sunlight, and Cooharah spotted the natural purple of wild plants from the tangle. Though the humans raised their own strange herbs, an oasis of sorts still survived here.

Above the tangle, a flock of skogs rose, wheeling over the twisted vines like black bullets, dodging between the uppermost branches of trees. It was a strange sight, for skogs seldom flew so high above the tangle. These skogs had not been hunted in a very long time.

“The chase begins!” Cooharah whistled, leaping into the air. He chose a path low to the ground, in the shadows, barely skirting the odd alien vines. Aaw flew at his tail.

They swept into the tangle, winging up through shadows, veering through the branches. Down here, they kept hidden from the skogs above them.

Both Qualeewoohs prepared for the hunt while on the wing.

The silver teeth inlaid into Cooharah’s spirit mask had been filed to perfect sharpness earlier in the morning, and he’d not had a chance to make a kill since then. With a flick, Cooharah used the small hands at the apex of his wings to retrieve a long, thin blade from his weapon belt, then dropped it and caught it in his talons. The blade-the chosen weapon of his flock-was designed for midair decapitations.

In a moment, Cooharah spotted dark skogs pinwheeling above. His belly grumbled; the sight of prey made Cooharah see red. He was so famished, almost the sight of food drove him into acrahas-the frenzy.

But Cooharah reigned his passions. To let himself fall into the hunting frenzy would be dangerous. One did not mindlessly attack a flock of skogs, with their sharp tusks. So Cooharah fought the hunger madness, yet doubled his speed, till his body became a blurred shadow beneath the creepers and branches of the tangle. The best angle to attack a skog was from behind and beneath, rising unseen to slice at a soft belly or to slash a throat. Cooharah had practiced his techniques since he was a chick.

But behind him, Cooharah heard a rattling, a throaty chuckle that spoke of desperate need. Aaw’s hunger had become too terrible to face. She’d fallen into the acrahas. Though Cooharah flew fast, Aaw burst past him, winging up through the trees, the need in her rising from her throat in the closest sound to a growl a Qualeewooh could approximate. Cooharah thought fast. With Aaw mindless from hunger, she’d need his protection in case the skogs circled back to attack.

With the sound of Aaw’s need rising from the tangle, the skogs broke ranks, flying distractedly in every direction, wings flapping loudly. Aaw burst up from the foliage and caught one young hen skog in her mouth, ripped off its left haunch in mid-flight and gulped the bloody meat, tossing the body up and away. Half a second later, Cooharah caught the carcass as it dropped, tore off flesh with his own teeth. He shot up above Aaw in that moment, preparing to toss the bloody remains back to her, when something huge swooped past him.

Cooharah realized that just as he and Aaw had risen from the tangle to attack the skogs, some larger predator had dropped from above for the same purpose. Cooharah dropped the body of the skog in surprise and twisted, wheeling sideways, then flapped his wings hard to slow, and gazed down. He wheeled in a semicircle, watching. He had never seen a creature like this one: the beast was part mammal, part bird. It had vast, speckled wings that rose from the shoulder, and in this respect it reminded Cooharah of a whipparoong-but in no other respect. Instead of antlers on its head, it had long wavy hair, but that seemed to be the only part of its body that had hair. Its face, long arms, and legs were all hairless. It hid its body beneath some cloth much softer than the leather harness that adorned Cooharah’s own torso.

The winged beast flapped hard and soared just above the tangle, looking up at Cooharah and Aaw in frustration. It screamed some loud war cry and shook its fist in the air, angered that they had wrested away its prey.

For her part, Aaw still chuckled, her blood hunger, securely under the sway of acrahas. All the skogs had fled, dispersed in several directions, too shocked from the triple assault to form a counterattack. Cooharah watched several of them dive into the tangle, where in moments he knew they would be so far beneath the sunlight he would never catch them again before nightfall.

With nothing left in sight to eat, Aaw shrieked with need, and dived at the strange creature.

The beast rose to the challenge and flew straight up at her, beating its wings furiously. It held something in one long hand, a weapon that discharged with the sound of thunder.

Something flew from the creature’s hand, hitting Aaw’s wing, so that several pinion feathers blew off. Aaw cried out in rage, dived, twisting just to keep aloft.

With fear pumping his heart, Cooharah whistled for Aaw to be patient, so together they could face this beast from the realms of the oomas worlds. With a blinding dive, Aaw hurtled at the strange beast. Their foe pointed its weapon at her, discharged, but at the last second she twisted away. Their foe moved too slowly, and his missiles sailed harmlessly past Aaw’s tail feathers.

Cooharah knew of flocks who used missiles to hunt prey, but he’d never heard of any alien creature that did so, except for oomas.

Aaw managed to spin on her back as she passed, raking the beast’s soft underbelly with her talons. The surgically inserted nails of metal in her talons flayed the beast from chest to groin, so that on second it was roaring and a waving its weapon menacingly, and the next it faltered, trying to hold its own guts in with one long arm.

Distracted by the sight of its own blood, the creature glanced down. Cooharah struck.

Cooharah dived from above and behind, aiming between the beast’s wings, slashing forward with all his might. When his blade struck the beast’s neck, Cooharah was unprepared for the thickness of its bones. He’d never met a foe so strong. The blade nearly ripped from his talons, and Cooharah flapped his wings frantically for half a second, trying to draw it out.

Fortunately, just when Cooharah feared the blade would tumble into the tangle and become lost, the beast’s head severed from its body and tumbled.

The beast itself rolled over through the air, dropping slowly, till it landed with a thud on a worm vine.

Aaw dived to feed. Cooharah followed.

They tore flesh from the creature and gobbled it as the last rays of sunlight illuminated the upper brush of the tangle. They did not speak as they ate. Their hunger was too great; besides, Cooharah feared that predators from the lower reaches of the tangle would be making their journey up for the nightly hunt. He wanted to be away, winging over the plains in the starlight, before they arrived.

In a few moments, they finished feeding on the strange beast. Cooharah and Aaw flew off, heavy from their meal.

They did not speak for a while, but eventually Aaw’s sanity returned enough so she managed to trill, “That was a beast from the world of oomas. Will the oomas be angry with us for killing their beast?”

Cooharah did not know. It was said that the oomas kept some animals for food. Cooharah suspected they had just stolen food from the oomas, but he did not know. If he had stolen food, he owed the oomas a debt; that would be a bad thing. Still, Cooharah could not be certain. The Qualeewoohs did not keep flocks and herds in this way, so there was no correlation between the two species, no way for Cooharah to categorize such a debt.

On the other hand, he and Aaw were not responsible. Aaw had been suffering from acrahas. In ancient times, his people had eaten chicks from one another’s nests when driven by such need. Such things were understandable, though disappointing. All things must be forgiven one who suffers acrahas.

“Perhaps the oomas will be angry,” Cooharah said, “but we must be forgiven if we have killed their beast. Still, it would not be wise to tell them what we have done. We do not know these oomas. They have no souls. Perhaps they would use this as an excuse to try to steal ours. We must leave.”

“Agreement to the third level,” Aaw trilled.

The Qualeewoohs winged their way beyond the palace, heading south, back toward the great desert.