Chap. 387 The Susi Hunt

After recovering from his fright, he waited for what seemed hours for the susies to exit the cavern. But there had been no sign of activity, save for insects flying in and out in the morning sunlight. Did I really see eyes? Did I imagine them blinking? Maybe it HAD been mica, scattered through the rock? and a night flyer flew in front of a bit of it, making it appear to be a blink? Maybe they were another type of cave dweller? One I’ve never seen before? An insect?

“Duh,” he said, “I have the camera. I am such a dolt!”

Sssh, Raventh said, no matter what they are, they have good hearing.

He pulled the datalink out of the holster on his belt and pressed it against the back of the camera.

beeeeeeedleeep!

Camera linked with datalink. Downloading data now.

The screen lit up with something incomprehensible, but the data below it showed time, date and location. So it DID take pictures, he thought. The first one was a blurred smear from motion, as was the second one. The third one showed part of his knee.

The fourth and fifth ones showed a group of susies, several appearing to be full grown, with many cubs peering from around and behind them. The flash lit up every eye and showed fairly well defined bodies.

Without willing it, his breath came faster. Yes. Not mica. Live susies, looking directly at the camera. Not hundreds, though it had seemed that many. Why haven’t they come out? I know they hunt during the day.

Why didn’t they ATTACK?

The fact that they haven’t speaks volumes, he thought. Maybe they have never seen a human before? No. The female whose eggs I stole has seen me at least once. The cub I released is familiar with humans.

They were not afraid. They were looking at you, wondering what you are just like you were them. They are intelligent, they were waiting to see what YOU would do. And look, here comes one, now. I think it heard the datalink sound.

He was right. K’ndar carefully raised his binocular, although he was close enough to not need it. A very large adult susi had poked its head out of the cavern, the snout raised to sample the wind.

Raventh had chosen a spot to land downwind of the cavern, but still, the susi saw them immediately. It pulled its head back into the cavern.

They can’t be afraid of us. Why aren’t they coming out?

I don’t know. Make the link make that sound. I think that’s what caught it’s attention.

I don’t know how, K’ndar thought in frustration. Inspiration hit him.

But I DO know how to make it make a natural sound.

He typed “sounds small wherry”.

The datalink emitted a cukcukcukcukcukcuk!

The adult immediately emerged from the den, scanning the area ahead of it for the wherry. It seemed to realize that there was none. It sat down, just watching. Its expression seemed to be one of ‘not funny, mate.’

At the same time, a few more courageous cubs tumbled out of the cave, joined by a second adult. That one tried to herd the cubs back in, but once the stopper had been pulled, the rest couldn’t resist. Within moments, the two batches of cubs were in the bare area, rampaging about, teasing the teenagers or each other.

He counted five full adults, two teenagers, no, three, and sixteen cubs, of two different sizes. So Suzy had been accepted by the pack, he thought, relieved.

The wind shifted for a few moments, sending his and Raventh’s scent to the susies.

The adults alerted on K’ndar and Raventh. Two of them moved to shield the cubs. But the cub’s curiosity was not to be controlled.

One of the older cubs moved further from the pack. She moved to the edge of the bare ground in front of the cavern, then sat to look at him, as if pondering her next move.

I bet you’re Suzy, he thought. He almost called her name. She probably wouldn’t respond to it, being a wild animal. He noted that she seemed heavier than the rest. She’d been better fed, he thought.

One of the adults made an odd rasping sound. Suzy stood up, gave him one last look, then returned to the pack. She joined the cubs playing with the adults.

“Must have been your mum, eh?” he said, forgetting to keep silent.

Every adult susi flinched at the sound of his voice. They turned golden eyed attention on him and Raventh.

You must be silent Raventh said.

He slowly raised the camera, and being that he was in daylight, found the buttons to take their photos. He pressed the button and again, it gave out a soft beep. How do I get it to stop beeping?

The animals froze. He couldn’t tell if the camera was catching their activities. I hope it is, he thought. The adults turned their heads back and forth, sniffing the wind. The cubs, after a few moments of inactivity, returned to playing. The adults relaxed and lay down, allowing the cubs to swarm them.

They have decided we are not dangerous. It may be they have never seen a dragon before.

Other than the one who saw me steal her eggs.

That one is the one who approached first, and called the cub.

They’re enchanting beasts, he thought, watching the pack play with the cubs. The cubs would gang up on the adults, pulling their tails and grabbing their forelegs. The adults and the teenagers would flatten a cub to wash it, the cub struggling to avoid it. He’d never seen a saurian bathe another. As the time passed, more and more of the cubs began to ‘kiss’ the adults, making an odd twittering noise.

It sounded oddly familiar. Siskin chittered, softly, mimicking them and sending feelings of hunger. Ah, it sounds like a hatchling fire lizard wanting something to eat. They’re hungry.

The adults stood up and put their heads together, as if in conference. Then, having made a decision, the five adults and two of the teenagers trotted out onto the steppe, leaving one of the teens to babysit.

Several of the older cubs attempted to follow, but the teenager hissed and herded them back to the cavern entrance.

They’re going hunting Raventh said.

I don’t think we can follow them without frightening the prey. But I want to see a hunt.

They might not find anything. It’s not as easy as it looks. Sometimes we dragons have to fly a long way and time before we find prey. And I don’t see anything out there.

But I do see outcrops. Let’s fly out a few kilometers, upwind, keep them in view, but let’s stay high enough to keep any prey from bolting.

He could see they had a steady pace, one that seemed they could carry for hours. Most of the steppe grasses had been either grazed off or flattened by the winter rains and snow. The pack moved single file along a well defined game trail. The entire steppe was crisscrossed by such trails. As the pack moved, they flushed small birds and wherries.

In the distance, he saw what appeared to be two mounds, or lumps. Those aren’t outcrops, he thought. He was about to divert to look at it, when Raventh said Off to our left, there is a herd of those fast moving animals we saw near the sea Raventh said.

The sea? You mean the sea coast?

Where the trader is. Where he was hurt.

I remember!

Lizard’s new cothold. Yes.

He put the binoculars to his eyes, but a ride on a flying dragon is anything but level and smooth. And looking through nocs made him a bit motion sick. He dropped them just in time to see dots moving away at high speed.

What ARE those beasts? Pronghorn? I thought I saw horns.

No. Bigger than pronghorn. I’ve seen them in the past but I don’t know what they are called. They know dragons, I don’t know of any dragon ever managing to catch one. Cattle are much easier prey.

I am amazed at the wildlife I’ve been seeing, he thought. It’s as if they’ve come out of hiding. Maybe because Thread is gone, their populations are recovering? Like the susies? Argg, yet another line of research I want to do.

Siskin saw the raptors first. He hissed a warning.

See the scavengers? Flying high in a kettle, there are raptors, too. Something is dead or dying beneath them.

Once again he wished he had the eyesight his dragons, both big and small, had. But as they flew closer, the smudge in the sky turned into a kettle of avians and scavenger wherries.

Without a word, Raventh gained speed and lowered until he was just skimming the grass.

What are you doing?

Flying downwind of the scavengers to catch a scent. I want to beat the pack to it. I think the pack has the scent and is heading that way.

What is it?

A wher. And a giant wherry.

Raventh’s fast wing beats soon had them above a crowd of scavengers surrounding a wher.

It was feeding on a freshly killed giant wherry.

The grass around the wher had been flattened. On the fringes, scavengers waited at a safe distance for the wher to finish. More circled overhead. They scattered at Raventh’s approach, protesting but not daring to harass him.

There was no outcrop to land on. Do you mind circling over the kill? I don’t think it wise to land.

I can circle. I think it’s safer up here, even though whers can’t fly and susies don’t have wings.

He turned downwind, allowing them a view of the oncoming pack.

Look, Raventh said, having turned to see the pack, the susies come, they have caught the scent of the wher’s kill.

The wher apparently knew the pack was coming. It looked nervously in the direction of the pack, then proceeded to tear great chunks of meat from its kill and swallow them whole.

He could see the pack was rapidly approaching, running as fast as a horse. They flowed over the steppe, more like dolphins leaping over the waves than the gait of a terrestrial creature. What a beautiful thing to witness, he thought.

I don’t know if the camera will catch this, he thought, but I’ll try.

Raventh’s shadow crossed over the wher and its kill. K’ndar caught just a glimpse of a small animal darting into the grass. It was too small to be seen once it had vanished into the grass.

Did you see it?

I did, but just a glimpse. It looked like a tiny susi

It was one of the longlegged beasts at the speartooth site. It’s gone, I can’t see it anymore.

K’ndar thought of launching Siskin to follow it, but immediately realized there were too many fliers in the area that would gladly eat him.

Siskin, plastered to Raventh’s neck, sent a wave of emotion that was mostly fear. He reached forward to stroke the blue’s neck and head.

“It’s okay, Sis, you stay with us.”

The susies sped up, moving at astonishing speed. K’ndar felt sudden sympathy for the wher. It wasn’t easy to kill a giant wherry. The truly wild giant wherry was over 4 meters tall. The colonists had managed to domesticate the species, but the process shrunk them to a mere 3 meters at best. Still, both wild and domesticated giant wherrys could crush one’s skull with a kick or disembowel one with their talons.

What would the susies do to the wher? A kill of this size was a prize. Whers aren’t cowards, he thought, it might just fight the susies.

They’re also smart enough to know when to surrender, Raventh said.

The pack burst into the clearing. The wher whirled to face them. The susies surrounded the kill, leaving only a small opening in their circle. Two of the susies approached the wher, hissing. The wher hissed back, seeming to expand. One of the adults lunged at the wher, drawing it’s attention away from the susies behind it. One leaped over the carcass and grabbed the wher’s tail. With an agonized roar, the wher spun to face his attacker, and the pack pressed close. For a moment, the air was a cacophony of hissing, spitting, and rasping. The adult susies, shoulder to shoulder, approached the wher as if to say, now or never. The wher backed up, then, hissing, trotted through a gap in the crowd of susies, as if to say, no problem, I was already full.

The two teenaged susies scattered the scavengers surrounding the kill. They lumbered into the air, squawking in protest. The rest of the pack, five adults, stopped at the wher’s kill and began to tear at it. One of them stopped just long enough to look up at him.

I know you, it seemed to say.

He thought the pack would settle down to feed. Instead, he watched as five adults took great mouthfuls of the meat, swallow it, and then turned to trot back in the direction of the den.

What are they doing? he wondered. The two teenaged susies continued to feed, throwing glances up at the circling scavengers.

Oh, I get it! They’re guarding the kill from the scavengers! But why did the adults leave? They couldn’t have been full, they weren’t here that long.

There could only be one reason why the adults left before eating their fill. Let’s go back to the den. I’m betting the adults are carrying food back to it.

Raventh broke his circling flight, climbed and began to fly fast. The pack below was still moving at a brisk pace, obviously heading back to the den.

Raventh reached the den first. He pitched up and landed on the same outcrop as before.

The babysitter saw him and uttered a call. The cubs all ran into the den.

Not long after, K’ndar saw the pack leaping in their dolphin like gait towards them.

The adults entered the clearing before the cavern. The babysitter came to them, it’s tail between it’s legs, making a soft chittering noise.

The cubs boiled out of the cavern, chittering and squeaking, most of them making the same submissive posture, but mobbing the adults.

Amazed, he saw the adults disgorge the hunks of meat from the stolen wherry. The cubs fell upon the meat, along with the babysitter, in a seething, growling pile of susies, gobbling as fast as they could.

“Whoa,” he said,, unable to keep it in. That’s how they keep the cubs fed and safe. Amazing. Within a few minutes, the adults had dropped off all the meat, and turned to return to the kill.

For their dinner, he thought.

_____________________________________________________________

His stomach reminded him that he needed both food and water.

Let’s return to the cothold he said. We can come back tomorrow.

Then he remembered seeing the odd, lumpy spot in the steppe. He looked up at the sun for the time. We have time.

He pushed the image of the spot to Raventh.

I saw it, too. You want to look at it before we go back to the cothold.

Yes. I don’t know what it is.

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Raventh circled over the spot, then landed. Siskin, seeing that the sky was clear, began to hunt and almost immediately killed a crawler.

The odd lumps were dead cattle.

Oh, no, he thought. Cows. No. Please. My cothold’s the only one in a hundred square kilometers with cattle. If they’re Mard’s and they’ve been killed by susies, I know he’ll hunt them down. I know it. If he does, what do I do? I have to report it. I don’t want to. He’ll be banished, if nothing else. Lord Dorn is a stickler for the Charter. But I know what I know. Oh, no.

Almost reluctantly, he took several pictures of the cows. They’d been dead for a long time.

Two cows and their calves, one alongside it’s dam, the other underneath its mother.

“Underneath your mum?” he said to the carcasses. They showed signs of scavenging, but the skeletons were complete. The bodies had scraps of hide left, dried and matted from long exposure to snow, rain, sun, wind and insects. The cow’s skulls looked mummified, the hide dried like rawhide.

He thumbed the camera awake, hoping he had enough memory. They told me it would record, he thought. So he began to speak.

“Note: There are four bovines here. Two adult cows and their calves. The bodies have been here for several months, I’d say, since last summer. The grass surrounding them appears to have been grazed, not flattened by animals. I see no signs of fight, and I know range cattle, they don’t back down from much, especially cows with calves. These beasts just lay down and died. There is no sign of depredation, even with the bodies fairly well deteriorated. Oh. Wait. No. They didn’t lay down, they fell down. That’s the only way the calf could be under it’s mum. The leg bones are straight out, well, they’ve fallen but, they’re still connected to the carcass. Anything bigger than a winged scavenger would have taken the legs off to eat in peace. None of the skeletons are disarticulated, they’re all in one piece, held together with dried meat and, um..the hide is dried and matted from being rained on, snowed on, but I bet it was dried before the rains started.”

He looked around for scat but saw none.

Something caught his eye. A mark on one of the cow’s flanks drew his attention. The hide was so dried and desiccated that the brand was hard to see, and only part of it was even recognizable. But the small bit that was legible was.

His stomach tightened. “One of the carcasses has a brand on it,” he said to the datalink, “but it’s pretty hard to tell whose.” He was lying. That’s our brand. I know it better than I know my own name. These are my cothold’s livestock.

He noticed the tips of the cow’s horns. Both horns on one of the cows had shattered, blackened tips. One still stuck high in the air, the other holding the mummified skull off the ground. Ah. Look a little closer, K’ndar. The leg, with hide still covering it, was off the ground. Yes. A singe mark on one of the upper legs, almost invisible now that the hide was so deteriorated-but definitely a singe mark.

He followed it, an almost invisible trail, and saw the mark ran all the way up the leg, to the chest, to the head, and ultimately, the horns. He took pictures, avoiding the brand. He held the camera in one hand and pointed out the marks with the other hand.

Both cows and calves must have been touching each other. They all died instantly.

I know what killed them.

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“Not killed by susies?” Mardriss asked, not daring to hope, not used to seeing pictures on a datalink. Those were my beasts, he thought, yes.

“No, Mard, not killed by any animal. They were scavenged by wherries, I’m betting, but see, Mardriss? The skeletons are complete. No, these beasts were hit by lightning. See how the tips of this cow’s horns were blasted? The scorch marks down to the ground? This was lightning.”

Yes, Mardriss thought, it’s obvious. I’ve seen those marks before.

“Lightning. Thank the stars it was just lightning,” he said, feeling as if a noose had been lifted from his neck. “It’s so strange that I’m grateful that it was lightning that killed our stock, not susies.”

Relief filled his soul.