Second Skins
By Christian Klaver
Lieutenant Yos Hoguan stopped briefly at the rise of the ridge and looked at the daily solar eclipse. Later tonight, he’d be able to see the nightly lunar eclipse, too. He’d already traveled a full day from where the Nightwalker shuttle had dropped him. Why they couldn’t just take him to where the hunt would begin, Yos didn’t quite grasp. His ship had been given clearance for the landing strip only, and a Nightwalker shuttle had brought him most, but not all the way to his destination. They’d dropped him in the middle of nowhere.
What a buggered up stupid planet, Yos thought. Not even a real planet, really, just a moon with atmosphere. Night’s Garden orbited a Jovian planet his guide called ‘The Jewel’. Still, it made for pretty scenery. The part of the sky in front of him was empty, and the pale manila sky deepened into dark without ever gaining much color. Like a silhouette of a landscape, all sharp edged blacks and near whites. He wondered idly how much of the difference was Night Garden’s sky, and how much was the genetic treatment he’d given his irises, then gave it up. Hardly important.
This was the least populated part of the planet, at least underneath the canopy. The city smells were all behind him, now it was only plants and wet earth. He liked that part. It didn’t sound like Earth, and it sure as Hell didn’t look like Earth. But if he closed his eyes, this part of Night’s Garden smelled like the rain forests on Earth. Or at least the Terran Rainforest garden on Drexicon. It was strangely comforting. He could hear the distant whine of a Nightwalker ship over the light rustling of the wind in the trees, but he was otherwise alone. It was good. He didn’t like people, anyway. It didn’t really matter what planet they were from.
He rolled himself a cigarette, another comforting smell, and leaned against something the guide book called an Ang-ang tree while he watched the eclipse finish up. Enjoy it, he thought. He wouldn’t see much of the night during the hunt, and he wouldn’t have all the equipment he had now. No accu-lenses or powered Plas rifle. Still, he wouldn’t exactly be going unarmed or unprepared.
It was fully dark now. When this planet went from day to night, darkness fell quickly and completely, like a falling safe.
He brushed at his arm and another clump of thick black fur fell away from his arm. The fur coat he’d grown for hunting Karlacks in the Terinian arctic would be completely gone by tomorrow morning. No need for it here. It’d be plenty warm enough. The skin underneath was nearly black now, protection from the brutal sun. It would look like polished obsidian by the end of the day. He’d completed the last of his genetic treatments yesterday on his ship, the Pequod’s Revenge. The signs would be subtle, and he doubted highly that the D’rinm could tell one Earther from another, anyway. And from what he’d heard, it wasn’t exactly a bioscan kind of place.
He risked one technological weapon: a Laz Capsule implant in the back of his hand. It was self contained, mostly organic, and highly resistant to scans. But it would only fire one or two bursts. Three if he kept the duration very short. He’d have to break the capsule before he could shoot, and the blast would scar his hand pretty badly, but that was a small matter.
He checked to see that his grav disc still floated at a short distance behind him. It did. He toggled the electronic tether off with a switch on his wrist and turned the anchor on so it wouldn’t drift away. With it stationary, but still floating a few feet off the ground, he could unpack enough of his provisions to make a light dinner while he walked.
He reset the tether to keep the disc a constant 10 feet behind him, and started walking again. He wanted to make sure that he got there by tomorrow night. Damn Nightwalker regulations. Otherwise he could have just landed the ‘Revenge at the starting point for the hunt. D’rinm regulations actually, his infoplants told him. He was trying to avoid using them until the burn period was over. You needed a few days for the information to settle or risk splitting headaches. He could feel the start of one already. He’d have to stick to the guidebook for now.
He toggled another switch on his wrist band for some painkiller. The flood of relief was instant. Won’t have that, either, Yos thought.
He walked on a little farther, a flat and stony path that might have been treacherous without the ocular enhancements. There wasn’t enough dirt for the plant life to cling to the ridge line, so it formed a narrow path through the muck and greenery that sloped down to either side. The scent of standing water and the universal sewer smell of swamps everywhere filled the thick and steamy air.
He could already hear the chanting from here. A deep, resonant hum that sounded more like planetary machinery than aliens. Natives, he corrected himself. I’m the alien. Many of the pilgrims came just to hear the D’rinm chanting, which Yos thought of as useless. Of course, the aesthetic pilgrims didn’t get eaten, either, but where was the rush in sitting and listening to a bunch of half-brained aliens sing themselves stupid? According to the guidebook, they often went without food or sleep for days during important celebrations, singing for nearly weeks until they had to spend another full week just to recover from the ordeal.
Yos trudged another six hours, local time, before he was ready to make camp. He didn’t need his chronometer, either. Just like clockwork, the lunar eclipse broke up the middle of the night. Yos wondered idly if the regular cycles of this planet had something to do with the stranglehold that Night Garden’s religions had on it’s denizens. For a race that had star flight and interstellar war, they were a remarkably superstitious people. Peoples, he corrected himself. No less than three distinct intelligent races were native to Night’s Garden.
And he was here to hunt one of them.
Already, Yos had a growing hatred for this planet. At least underneath the canopy. So far, Night’s Garden seemed like a religious convention standing knee deep in their own waste.
He fished another cigarette out and smoked while regarding the green haze that covered half the sky. That was where he wanted to go. Tomorrow night. He unpacked his autotent and went to bed. He could have pressed on, but he didn’t want to be too early and have to hang around the D’rinm church any longer than necessary. They wouldn’t let him up into the canopy until the hunt began.
He wondered what an Idrik Dragon looked like.
There was already a mass around the building when he climbed a rise and got his first site of the Incantorium. It being Night’s Garden, on the dark side of the planet, they were in the middle of another one of the ubiquitous eclipses, and the area was entirely without light. Yos had prepared his eyes for large amounts of sun, such as was on the canopy, so he needed the enhancers in his suit to keep from bumping into things.
The building was a huge stone bowl, big enough to land starships in and open to the sky so that the music rolled and reverberated upwards like an audio spotlight. The guidebook called the place the Incantorium. Balls, Yos thought. Just another damn church. Scattered around the outside of the arena were hundreds of hovels built right to the stone foundation of the outer walls of the Incantorium. In the center, Yos could see the enormous stalk of the Idrik tree climbing up into the sky like a leafy skyscraper. About a 3000 feet up, it angled sharply to a gentle incline and stretched away into the haze. The whole business looked like a giant granite radar dish buried into the ground, caught in the act of blasting plant matter into the upper atmosphere.
The lip of the Incantorium rose up in a wall eighty feet high, forming a solid rock barricade that ran the perimeter. Yos wondered idly what shaped it, and why they’d bother using rock when so many other materials were more practical.
The ground in front of Yos sloped down, and then up again before it came to the Incantorium. At the base of the wall, hundreds of temporary looking buildings clustered around. Yos could smell cooking meat over the aromas of strange plants and brackish water. Advanced to space travel or not, the Nightwalkers were apparently devoted carnivores.
It wasn’t just a crowd, but more like a temporary festival that sprang up overnight. Yos consulted his guide again. Which of the three races were which? Scanning through the pictures, Yos decided that the throng around the Incantorium were Nightwalkers. The name was appropriate. They were sensitive to light in the extreme, and most of their population avoided the sunlight. With a daytime bisected by a lengthy eclipse and a nighttime by an equally lengthy lunar eclipse, this wasn’t hard for them to do, especially if they kept to the Darkside. The planet didn’t rotate in relation to the sun, and the Sunside had a more normal light pattern, in theory, but the thick and plentiful canopy blocked much of this. Night’s Garden was a murky and dark place for visitors in the best of days.
Already, a low drone rolled out from the concrete bowl, providing an oddly rhythmic background noise, just on the edge of perception.
Something struck his shoulder lightly.
Yos’ reaction was instantaneous. He twisted and spoke a command: “Cha!”, that triggered a multitude of devices on his person. His left wrist powered up the small laz-charge blaster, while his right hand snapped out to catch the plas-rifle that flew unerringly to his hand by means of a sophisticated grav retrieval device. Several protective energy fields flickered on around him, including a dark reddish patch that covered his eyes like a pair of goggles, and a computerized targeting screen flickered into life before his gaze, picking out the figure in front of him.
Yos regarded someone that looked like a cross between a six-legged lizard, and a walking, talking, man-sized flying squirrel. It didn’t seem surprised or concerned by Yos’ reaction and display.
“Very impressive, you,” the Nightwalker said to him, “I imagine that our tiny little garden here must seem like quite the pit of dirty excrement, eh?”
Yos didn’t see any obvious weapons pointed at him, and swept a quick look around to see if there were others. They didn’t show up on Yos’ sensors, but neither did the creature in front of him. He turned to face the creature again, who was speaking. A fair amount of the Nightwalker language was filled out with gestures, so Yos’ translator was more complete when he could see the speaker. He expected that.
“Ah,” the Nightwalker said. “Forgive my horrible breach in etiquette, you. I thought perhaps the Sunstalker clan might be trying to sneak a hunter in during their off season. It wouldn’t be the first time. Forgive me.” One of his free clawed hands fiddled with something on the bandolier and his image winked into place on the tactical map in Yos’ goggle display.
“You’re surprised,” the Nightwalker went on. “Of course, not all of us spurn galactic trade.”
“Just most?” Yos asked.
“Most that you have seen, perhaps,” the Nightwalker said. He pointed a claw idly at the crowd behind Yos. “It’s not a trend you will find among the warrior class, no, no.”
“I guess not. Then you’re here for the hunt, as well.”
“I am.” The Nightwalker said. It clicked its claws together in a staccato rhythm that Yos’ translator related as a formal greeting between warriors, followed by “Hu”, which must have been the Nightwalker’s name. Yos thought it sounded like something he’d name his dog.
“Come,” Hu said. “I will show you to refreshment.”
The Nightwalker made a number of fluid gestures Yos’ translation device told him meant: “Follow me”. The translation was unnecessary. The beckoning gesture was universal.
While two of his hands gestured, two more were idly holding some kind of weapon, which the Nightwalker made a show of pointing in the opposite direction. He was covered in tan fur, with great tufted ears that flicked erratically in the wind.
Yos didn’t see any reason for a trap, and thought he was more than a match for the weapons he could see, but he was still wary. He was more concerned with the many devices that he could see on a bandolier draped across the Nightwalker’s chest. One of them must hold something that foiled Yos’ proximity sensors. There was no sign of the creature on the tactical display in Yos’ artificial goggles.
Boredom won out, and he followed the creature rather than stand in the mud, waiting.
The Nightwalker looked to see if he was following, and showed a great snout full of predatory teeth. His head was lowered in a submissive gesture, so it might have been meant as a reassuring manner. Repeating the beckoning gesture, the Nightwalker led Yos around the perimeter of the Incantorium.
The creature hopped fluidly from rock to rock, avoiding the muddiest parts, and Yos was pleased to find that he could follow the creature effortlessly. His treatments had prepared him well for the gravity shift. Like the Nightwalker in front of him, Yos had grown a flap of skin like a flying squirrel. The webbing spread like a kite from his wrist up his arm, down the side of his torso and all the way to his knees. It felt funny, like carrying a small blanket under each arm, and he kept expecting something to fall whenever he lifted his arms. Still, he was getting used to it gradually, and Yos was eager to try out the new gliding apparatus. His outfit was large and baggy, to camouflage the mod, prevented him giving it a test run.
Yos followed up the incline into the encampment proper. The furry press of Nightwalkers became a jostling crowd quickly, but it wasn’t hostile. Yos saw occasional D’rinm too, huge and shaggy like walking mammoths in priest robe. There were no hostile looks, or even veiled curiosity, but most of them nodded to him like an acquaintance. Accepting, if a trifle distant. Yos found it a great improvement over his usual reception. Yos couldn’t see any real building, just temporary structures like a giant, moving fair.
The Nightwalker led him most of the way around before they came to a modern looking one-storied structure nearly stadium sized. It was mostly open, like a pavilion, with a number of other Nightwalkers lounging around. They seemed interested in Yos, but welcoming. Yos’ information told him the Nightwalkers had an unusually welcoming attitude towards aliens such as himself. They had a deep respect for the lives of the D’rinm and the Idrik Dragons. Any Nightwalker that killed a D’rinm was put to death by his own clan. Outside the hunt, the relations with the Idrik were peaceable. And the hunt was in accord with Idrik customs. In contrast, the Nightwalker clans raided and warred on each other constantly.
The pavilion had a rough floor of reddish earthy hue, and columns running up into a dark irregular ceiling. Running water bubbled in several places down artificial shelves and into pools. It seemed more like an artificial replica of the outdoors than a real building. As if the Nightwalkers had built their own zoo for themselves. The water had a metallic smell, compounded with an electrical smell that must have been created by one of the devices that made the pavilion work. The trickle of the fountains and constant Nightwalker chattering filled the air, making it hard for Yos to make much out. He filtered his translation pickup to only translate sounds within three feet, so that he would still understand when the creature spoke to him.
His host showed him his teeth again. Yos wondered if it was really a smile. “Much mudhole, this planet, yes?” it said. The Nightwalker chittered loudly, and two of his clawed hands clicked together like castanets. Yos’ translation software told him was laughter.
“This man nearly shot me when I surprised him out there,” he told the other Nightwalkers. He seemed pleased. “These are my Sword Brothers, Ay and Ta. He indicated them in turn, one russet, like Hu, one nearly a deep black.
“Yos,” Yos said, following the guidebook’s advice and leaving out his last name or any further descriptors. That seemed enough formalities for the Nightwalkers.
Yos looked around, his tactical display told him there were nearly a hundred Nightwalkers all roaming around in small groups, eating, drinking, singing and beating each other up. His information had suggested less than twenty would go on a typical hunt. There were a lot more than that here, but apparently the majority were some kind of hangers on.
“Come,” Hu said, leading him past one Nightwalker pounding the head of another into one of the fabricore building supports. He led him to a number of low barrels filled with various liquids, bubbling brown to reddish clear.
“Eat, if you wish, you,” Hu said. “Or drink.”
Yos didn’t need any food, but he liked to sample new things. He surreptitiously thumbed the analyzer on his left hand and raised his eyebrows at the numbers that flashed on his display. It wasn’t exactly poison, but intoxicating to a nearly lethal level for the average Nightwalker. Their biology was close enough that it would have affected him similarly, if his biosystem didn’t scour the chemicals clean first.
Most of the rest of it was meat of endless shapes and variety, highly spiced, and not much removed from their original shapes. If Yos hadn’t known that the Nightwalkers were carnivores, he did now. He tried a few and found many of them quite delicious.
“This Sunstalker clan,” Yos said. “Did they really try and sneak someone in here? Is it that important?”
Hu stopped motionless with his hand halfway to one of the dishes. He turned and regarded Yos with a blank stare.
“Of course,” he said, finally. “We were counting on it. As you can see, they were all discovered.” He gestured expansively at the largest crowd, gathering around the food barrels. Yos looked around, confused. He couldn’t tell, but presumably all the members around were of Hu’s clan. He didn’t want to display his ignorance, so he didn’t ask the Nightwalker to explain.
Yos accessed the guide again. The tactical display shouldn’t be visible to the aliens, and he wanted to know enough to stay on the Nightwalkers’ good side. He didn’t want any trouble until he’d been admitted up into the canopy. According to the guide, the Nightwalker death rate due to continual raiding was nearly 90%. It seemed Nightwalkers didn’t die from anything else than other Nightwalkers. It didn’t make any sense. How could such a race survive? Yos wondered what it would be like to live with such vicious and continual raiding. Worse than other wartimes he’d seen.
“This is a great honor,” Hu went on. “To go on the hunt is the ultimate risk, but also the surest way to join our ancestors in the stars.”
“Lucky you didn’t draw home watch, then,” Yos said. Hu gave him another stare and Yos knew he’d said something wrong again. But it didn’t seem to matter. As long as they didn’t start shooting, they could think him as strange as they wanted.
“That would be stupid,” Hu said. “What would be the value in that? They are, of course, ready for death. I hope the Heroes find me there, too.”
Yos was lost. Clearly the data he’d absorbed so far on Nightwalker society wasn’t very thorough, and he wasn’t gleaning enough from the guide to be any real help. Yos wasn’t entirely sure that he understood what the smaller alien was talking about, but Yos didn’t think he envied the Nightwalker maternal figure, if such a thing existed.
Hu continued to be solicitous, making sure that Yos had his fill of food and drink before he eventually withdrew, leaving Yos to himself. Apparently, whatever obligations Hu had as host were over.
The floor of the building was uneven, seemingly deliberately, in the same way that rocky ground might be. There were some flat spaces where groups of Nightwalkers were all sitting, as if around a campfire, and quite a few Nightwalkers were sleeping in crevices, or curled around the support pylons on little shelves. Yos was comfortable, but would have preferred a little privacy. The Nightwalkers didn’t seem to go in for seclusion.
Yos found the closest thing to a chair that he could and settled his back against it. It was part of the floor, but not metal, possibly a polymer. It had a comfy give to it. He shifted his rifle to the other hand.
“Don’t set anything down,” a voice said. Yos was surprised at the absence of a translation. Someone was speaking Earther. He looked back and down to find a smallish alien looking back at him.
“The Nightwalkers would never risk injuring you, that would be sacrilege. But they’ll steal anything from you they can.” Yos realized with distaste that the alien was wearing the robes of a Tibetan Monk. The religion was nearly dead among Earther colonies, but had gained a surprising new life on alien worlds.
The alien was dirt brown, with bristly skin, like a dirty scrub brush. It was about half of Yos’ size, bipedal and round, penguin shaped. His head reached only to the height of Yos’ belt.
The alien’s voice was pitched low, but if the large upright ears were any indication, the Nightwalkers had exceptional hearing. If any of the Nightwalkers understood and took offense, they gave no sign. Yos wasn’t sure if they had translators or not. The guide listed them as present, but rare, and recommended bringing your own.
“Why would it be sacrilege to hurt me?”
“They think you have no soul.”
“They honor me because I have no soul?”
“No, they pity you, us, because this life is all we’ll get. Kill one of us, and it’s murder, strictly. Kill one of the Opanek, the assured,” he gestured to include the Nightwalkers around us, “and it’s just a change in timing. The Opanek will live on forever, so it hardly matters when the new life starts. That kind of killing is a holy act of murder, of course. When they kill another Nightwalker, it’s accepted, approved. At least if it’s from another clan. Especially if it’s a seasoned Uscheck, a hunter. Or a mother or priest. They call them Usanoonan and Anan. They’re safe, too. That’s because their souls are already assured a place in the Great Hunt. It’s the young and untried that are in danger. Their death is a tragedy, but hardly a crime. Or at least not a major one. There are fees and reparations to be made to a family if you kill their child, but that’s just a matter of good manners. To the Nightwalker mind, it’s not murder such as you or I think of it.”
“What would you know about how I think,” Yos said. “And who in the Hell are you?”
“My Dharma name is Sambhota,” the alien said, and gave an affected bow. “My given name tends to offend, so forgive me if I do not repeat it.”
“You’re here to convert Nightwalkers, eh?”
“Oh no. I, too, am here for the hunt.”
“I try to stay away from temples and churches, but doesn’t Buddhism frown on that sort of thing?”
“Ah, yes, original humanitarian Buddhism. Yes, but right thinking is different from world to world, and this would conflict with the teachings of spiritualists of my world.” The little alien smiled, showing a maw of teeth that might make the Nightwalkers jealous. “The middle path between them. I take this. Chikorian Buddhism differs, something like the development of your Bushido code.”
“It’s not my damned code,” Yos said. His father’s ancestors had been from Korea before it and China became provinces of Neoteric Japan. His mother had been Navajo, once. Before the American Consortium had subdued and absorbed them. When the Americans annexed Canada and Mexico, things became a lot worse. Both occupations had been harsh. He and his sister had been raised with their mother on one of the harsh and unforgiving welfare work camps that the Consortium favored for the poor. They were all dead now. Yos was the only one ever to leave America, let alone the planet. As a result, he wasn’t fond of either of the prevailing governments of Earth, or their religions.
“Forgive my offense,” Sambhota said blandly. It was hard to be sure, but he didn’t really look very concerned with Yos’ reaction, despite the rote phrase. The little alien smiled again, making Yos wonder if it was taught to him by other humans. Primal facial expressions tended to be parallel among mammalian races, but not always, so there was no way to be sure. The last 100 years, Earthers had encountered the Salini, who had offered faster travel technology and introduced them to a staggering number of other aliens. Yos didn’t keep close track, but it was easily over a hundred new races. He’d never heard of a Chikoran, or Chikorian or whatever, but that wasn’t surprising.
“Come, eat!” Hu was back at Yos’ elbow again, seeming to graft to this new alien as well. Sambhota waddled in an ungainly fashion over to the low barrels, at Hu’s direction and began to consume enormous quantities of everything. The little scrub-brush alien easily put away as much meat and alcohol as any six Nightwalkers.
“Buddhist, my entire ass,” Yos said.
The songs of the D’rinm priests hummed and ohmed and rattled Yos’ teeth while they all waited for the close of the morning ceremony.
Yos watched the lightening to the East, muted and indistinct, and starting to obscure the greenish haze of the canopy far above. They were all here for the morning ceremony. After the sun was completely revealed, the nearly blind hunters would all start up the huge plant stairway. Up the beanstalk. The light would have been barely enough to see by last week, but now the sun’s last rays felt like they were lasering into the back of his skull. He could see the Nightwalkers having the same reaction. It was the one alteration he’d made that was going to work against him, but he felt it was essential to his understanding of the Nightwalkers.
He didn’t know if Nightwalkers suffered from hangovers, but the rocket fuel they’d all consumed last night couldn’t have helped. Many had light fabric tied over their eyes like blindfolds. None of them seemed to be doing very well, blindfolded or not.
Yos had been required to leave all his mechanical gear behind, as expected. At least no one had seemed to notice his genetic alterations. There was a casual inspection for advanced weaponry, but his body wasn’t actually scanned, just the surface. Yos kept his breathing and heart rate even during the inspection, but he could feel the tension leave his shoulders when it was over.
For weapons, they all had the ceremonial Ulafa spear. It had two forms. In its “fixed” position, it looked like a misshapen coil with a barbed triangle on both ends. You were supposed to wedge yourself inside and stick the back end into the ground, bracing yourself inside the coil as you tried to ram the front spear head into a rampaging Idrik Dragon. Yos didn’t think much of that plan. Since that gave you only a couple of feet or so between the supposedly transfixed Idrik Dragon and your head, and since Yos was too tall to use it, and didn’t have the right number of hands, he didn’t consider that much of an option.
The other form wasn’t much better. There was a small switch in the middle that caused the twisted “shaft” to hang loosely like a coil of rope. A few of the Nightwalkers had provided Yos with an incidental demonstration by warming up. With the stabilizer off, the shaft was like a coil of rope with two sharpened weights on either end. He saw some very dexterous displays by some of the more proficient Nightwalkers, whirling patterns of spinning blades. Beautiful and deadly, against a similarly armed opponent, but Yos wished he had his rifle.
They all stood in a small group. Yos was taller than any of the Nightwalkers and had a good view, even with the dwindling visibility. The Nightwalkers had a way of sitting on their tail like a tripod, but something about their build made it awkward to get in and out of. Nightwalkers in action tended to lean forward, sometimes on all six limbs. Yos didn’t see Sambhota, but he did see another alien, taller than him with some kind of irregular carapace. It looked like a train wreck on legs. Maybe legs. Yos couldn’t actually tell from here.
The D’rinm were bigger still. Something like Rastafarian elephant monks carved out of stone. They had a peculiar grace, slow and effortless. Yos had read about that before, in the guide. Something about buoyancy. The D’rinm couldn’t actually leave the ground, but buoyant sacks underneath their skin helped support their enormous weight. Even more striking was their voices. Their music penetrated everything, and sometimes went so deep as to nearly inaudible, but never actually stopped. The noise was always carried by at least a few of the priests, but Yos wouldn’t have called it a song. More like someone sleeping on the keys of a nuclear-powered organ. He could hear gradual tonal changes, but if there was a tune in there, it was too subtle and glacier-slow for Yos to hear it. He understood the structure of solid rock now, and the temporary-looking buildings scattered around it. Any normal building would be shaken apart in a short amount of time. It was like being near a waterfall, or his ship’s internal core.
It was getting dark enough to see the priests were all gathered around the edge of the Incantorium, as long as you were looking at the ones that were away from the sun. Yos and the other supplicants were all positioned around the base of the huge tree below. The tree was mammoth, more like an uprooted island than any plant.
The song abruptly trailed off, and the Nightwalkers immediately started climbing the huge wall of plant. Yos followed. At first, it reminded Yos of really easy cliff climbing. The surface was uneven and foot and hand holds were easy to find. Still, he couldn’t keep up with the Nightwalkers. With their six limbs, they nearly ran up the vertical surface. The climbers weren’t so densely packed anymore. Yos could see Sambhota and the other alien, each some distance from him on the tree. Shortly, Yos and the other two aliens were left behind while the last Nightwalker climbed lithely out of sight into the morning fog above them. According to the guide, average climb time for a Nightwalker was 30 local hours before they reached the hunting grounds. Yos expected to be climbing for a few days.
The other two aliens didn’t climb anywhere near as well, and Yos soon left them behind so that he was alone. The sun came fully out, draping everything in an blindingly bright golden mist. The glow obscured anything farther than 100, above or below. Yos couldn’t see the sky, or the ground below him. If he fell here, it would be more like floating in the golden mist than falling. Until he hit the ground. He didn’t plan on falling anyway. The fragrance of the tree was strong, but not unpleasant.
Occasionally, there would be offshoot tendrils or other irregularities big enough to stand or sit in, so there were plenty of places to rest. He made good progress.
Part of him wanted to be irritated. This kind of climb was surely the priests’ idea. Try and pound some religious significance or sacrifice or some crap into the event. Any reasonable organization would have taken a shuttle up. But his irritation was thin, and he found to his surprise that he was enjoying himself.
He climbed for most of the morning, then took a break in the crook of one of the leafy branches. He rolled and smoked a cigarette. Then he started up again and climbed for the rest of the day.
By the time it was starting to get dark, Yos had reached the part of the tree that slanted, and it was more like hiking through a garden then hard climbing. Of course, if you wandered off the garden path, you plunged to your death, but it didn’t bother Yos too much.
He took some time to practice with the Ulafa spear. He discarded the idea of using the fixed shape and concentrated on learning the weight of the coiled rope form. He’d had a great amount of experience with hand-to-hand combat, but always with more practical weapons. He took some practice swipes at standing tree fronds before deciding that it wasn’t going to be much use to him without weeks of practice. He had ways to make better weapons. He did note that the rope seemed fairly unbreakable, at least by his own hands or weight. That was good to know.
He found a crook in one of the extra sprouts that came up like a small tree. He caught a few hours sleep there, which was all he needed, and was underway again.
He reached the canopy’s underside a day and a half later. From farther away, it looked like an overcast sky, but for the last part of the evening he could make out the individual shapes, like small continents floating at an altitude over 5 miles high. They didn’t just look that way, Yos knew. The islands were floating. Made entirely of plant matter and buoyed by methane gas, the canopy was a nearly uninterrupted series of floating islands linked together.
There was some migration, but the floating islands were mostly static. Tethered to the ground by long vines and strands like the one Yos had just climbed, even when they moved, they didn’t change much in relation to each other.
An entire arboreal ecosystem lived up here, dramatically different from the ground. Yos saw several different creatures in his climb. Small life in different shades of brown and green, nothing exceptional. The most interesting was a furred lizard with flying-squirrel like flaps, similar to the Nightwalkers. Yos was itching to try out his own, but wanted to get higher up, just in case. He didn’t see any signs of the Idrik dragons. They couldn’t move around here well, and only occupied the top of the canopy. He didn’t see any signs of the other hunters, either. They were undoubtedly to the top by now.
He didn’t trust the lichen, though he suspected the larger ones would support his weight. There was the slightest of swaying, like on a large ship. After a short time, the branches obscured his vision downward, and he couldn’t see the open air that he knew was beneath him. There was less open space than he expected. Huge platforms of lichen and moss grew around the branches themselves, forming a haphazard landscape in places. And the canopy was nearly a mile deep. Any creature that slipped and fell might fall to its death onto a large trunk or bole without ever leaving the canopy.
Yos kept climbing. As he went up, the growing feeling came to him that he was an insect, dwarfed by the trees and branches around him. The climbing was getting harder, since a slimy film covered most of the wood. Everything was wet and moist, with a pervasive uniformity. There might be different animals and fungus that lived in the tree, but one look around at the monotonous bark-brown and leaf-green landscape was enough to remind Yos that it was all one big plant.
When he found a good enough open space, Yos decided it was time to test his new gliding modifications. He hadn’t had the opportunity to examine them too closely during the climb. Before that, he’d had to hide them from the priests.
He worried slightly about the lead the Nightwalkers had on him, but the hunt usually lasted at least 15 days. Rarely did anyone actually kill an Idrik dragon during that time, which was part of the glory of it. The few that did were rarified heroes. It was no modest honor to survive the hunt, too, even with no kill. The longest record was 30 days. No one ever returned after that.
Some other kind of tree was growing inside the great tree, like a geode. It was a spare plant with long and supple stalks, nearly black and rough to the touch. He was near enough the top of the canopy that a few beams of pale white sunlight slanted through the greenery. The narrow trees dominated the area with plenty of space between them, so the area around them was largely empty. It was like an arena filled with ebony bamboo. The floor of the makeshift arena was some kind of thicket fifty feet below. If he made a mistake, he’d fall at least to the thicker foliage a few stories below. It might break his fall. If not, he’d plunge out of the canopy into the open air underneath. He didn’t want his first gliding test to be free-falling to the planet’s surface underneath. But he didn’t want to try gliding on top of the canopy, either, where he’d be exposed to the predators above. Best not to fall, then. This was as likely a place as he was going to find. He took off his outer garment, leaving his torso bare. It was plenty warm enough.
He jumped.
The gravity was low on Night’s Garden, and the atmosphere thick. His glide was long and easy, and he crossed the makeshift arena in one long jump before he had to clutch at one of the vertical trees to keep from crashing into the thicker nettles. The landing knocked the wind out of him, but he was otherwise unharmed. He tried again. He found that with a very little practice, he could weave in and out of the trees with even more maneuverability than he expected. He would have liked to have included a tail, but there hadn’t been time to grow one. He’d also been worried about his greater weight. The Nightwalkers were very strong for their size, but most of their skeleton had a honeycombed structure, making them far lighter. Still, with the thick atmosphere, he could steer easily and intuitively, stretching his arms the way he wanted to go. He looked back. He’d lost surprisingly little altitude during his glide. He knew the Nightwalkers would have even greater control with the stabilizing factor the tail gave them. Still, he was taller, and his skin flap longer as a result, and it worked admirably, tail or no. He didn’t stay airborne long enough to catch updrafts and gain any altitude. He couldn’t actually soar like a glider plane, but he was still happy with the results.
Satisfied, he treated himself to a dinner of rations and water. Then he allowed himself a single cigarette, using the ancient sulphur cubes given to him by the priests. Used much like an old match with one side treated in chemical. The only fire making implements allowed and in limited supply. He dropped the spent piece of carved wood of wood, thinking to watch how far it went. But it only stuck onto the bark of a branch a few feet before, caught in some kind of sticky sap. Yos shook his head in disgust and went back to climbing.
He climbed for another half day, before he broke past the canopy into the upper world.
The trunks didn’t taper off near the top, but bent to run horizontally, like bridges and paths scattered through the upper landscape. He felt like he was climbing a bridge in the clouds when his head first stuck up past the last clump of greenery.
It was beautiful, a huge pale open horizon. But it was stark and the light bit harshly into Yos’ eyes. He sensed a great open space, with an open horizon stretching to the distance. A pale expanse of searing yellow. But the light was too painful to look at, and he couldn’t make his gaze focus. It was like coming to the surface after a long period underground. Not wanting too much exposure, he backed a little further into the underbrush to a place that offered a little cover, trying to let his eyes get used to the blinding light.
Only it wasn’t happening, not really. And he knew why. He’d deliberately conditioned his eyes to mimic the Nightwalkers’ vision, and they just couldn’t handle this much direct sunlight. He moved through a glowing pea soup. His vision didn’t go much further than sixty feet ahead of him. The priests didn’t allow his tactical equipment, so he was literally operating blind. Even with the limitation, Yos knew he’d made the right choice. The hunt was only part of why he was here. To learn the Nightwalker point of view, he would have to literally see like one. He’d move like a Nightwalker, see like a Nightwalker, and hunt like a Nightwalker. This was important.
It was blinding. Yos felt like he’d stepped out into the desert. White light drenched everything, paler, sharper than he expected. Even the reflective glare off the waxy tree leaves hurt his eyes. These leaves rustled loudly in the open wind, but otherwise, there was no sound. A scorched desert landscape lay up here, an arid crust of baked dead plant life on top of the canopy. A hot, dusty smell hung in the air.
He spent some time sitting just underneath one of the larger tree trunk bridges, sheltered from the sky, watching and listening. He’d have to wait for nightfall before he’d be able to see much. His sense of smell was no match for the constant winds. They were about even there. The Nightwalkers had had a better sense of smell long ago, but it’d been largely replaced by technology in the past century, and Yos guessed it wasn’t something the Nightwalker hunters of today cultivated. What noises the wind carried to him (once gunfire, and once the screech that could only have been a descending Idrik dragon) sounded a long distance off. The gunfire intrigued him. Apparently, he wasn’t the only to sneak a weapon in.
This was the height of the day, when the sun was at its peak. The hunting time for the Idrik dragon, and the best time to find one. Also the best time to get yourself killed by one.
But Yos wasn’t planning on exposing himself in this light. He wasn’t really here hunting Idrik dragons, though he wouldn’t mind if it should work out that way.
He was here, in this place, at this time, because it was the one time he could get away with hunting the Nightwalkers. None of them were expected to return anyway, and there were no recording devices and no witnesses, except the Idrik Dragons, and no one from the surface ever spoke with them.
Yos could hunt the Nightwalkers with impunity, and he’d have plenty of time for the Skinwalker ceremony here. If he survived. He would honor the Nightwalker hunter, and come to know them, in a way no one else would. In a way no one else could.
Yos only hoped that he wasn’t too late, that the dragons hadn’t already claimed all the Nightwalkers. No sense worrying, it wouldn’t help. He’d gotten here as fast as he could. He also wondered about the two aliens behind him. Again, he’d have to deal with that if he ran into them. Nothing he could do now.
If you want to know someone, you have to walk within their skin. This was the way of the Yee Nadlooshii. He grit his teeth in a sickly grin as the thought took him back to his younger years, back among the tribe. He’d been unpopular before becoming a Skinwalker. After, he was hunted at every turn. The Skinwalkers were abominations to the Navajo. Worse than a Satanist among Catholics. One of the many reasons he could never go home again. If he’d had any family left, they would have killed him without hesitation and been happy of the chance. His criminal record was another reason he could not return. Murder had no statue of limitations under Consortium law.
Yos settled in to sleep for the rest of the day. At night, the real hunting would begin.
The scream woke Yos just at dusk.
Yos came awake instantly and sprang to his feet. The tendrils of night were still creeping into the blush of the fading sun and the perfect tint gave Yos’ nightwalker eyes an unparalleled view of the open sky. The stars barely twinkled and there was no sign of the Jewel in the sky. Yos remembered now; there never would be. This side of the moon always faced away. It never saw the Jewel.
Yos noticed a peculiar depression just a few feet away. Like something had sat there, watching him sleep. Yos couldn’t tell much about who or what in the curious fungoid plane that was the closest thing the canopy had to walking terrain. Grayish green dust blew around, obscuring any tracks.
Yos thought about the little scrub brush alien, Sambhota. Yos knew nothing about the Chikorian or his capabilities. He’d have to be more careful.
Yos’ eyes picked up movement nearly a mile away. For the Nightwalkers, this would be the end of the hunting day. The Idrik Dragons only came out during the day. A blurred shape resolved into a winged shape as it flew closer. Impossibly huge and graceful in the air. With the fading sun behind it, the silhouette could be seen for miles, but Yos couldn’t make out any details. It was still some distance away, but Yos settled back into his hiding spot. Yos couldn’t begin to manage how you would try and kill one with a glorified spear.
A small piece of shadow detached itself from the Dragon’s silhouette and plummeted down. The scream came faintly to Yos’ ears as it was halfway down. A Nightwalker. Yos barely had time to wonder if the skin flaps would be enough to pull out into some kind of controlled dive before he had his answer. Apparently not. The shape fell straight down and the frail cry drifted away like smoke on the wind.
A luminous pale jade line of weapon’s fire crossed the sky, but the Dragon drifted lazily out of the way. Two more pulses, but they never even came close and then the Dragon was apparently out of range. It seemed someone else besides Yos had smuggled in contraband technology. Energy pulse weapon. They must have left behind any kind of targeter, though. Maybe that would have been more easily detected.
Yos grabbed his things and got moving. This could be a stroke of luck and he wanted to make sure he was the first one to the body.
He was the first one, but only just barely.
He found the place where it landed fairly easily, one of the great expanses of hard fungus patches that seemed more like walking on land, and less like climbing trees. The body was in a small depression, like a small pet dimpling a green cushion. There were scatterings of plant sprouts that grew up through the fungus like brush, but it was still the largest open space in the area. The Dragon had dropped it here on purpose. Just about anywhere else and it would have crashed through seventy feet of tree branches. The Dragon wanted the body to be found.
The body gave Yos his answer about the flight capacity of the skin flaps, too. Or at least this Nightwalker’s capacity. Two lacerations left ragged holes in either side of the Nightwalker’s body. The Dragon had made sure this Nightwalker couldn’t glide himself to safety. Yos imagined one huge claw pinning the Nightwalker to the ground while the Dragon did its surgery. Probably with it’s mouth.
But the parts that Yos needed were still intact. He’d have to be quick, though. With a practiced skill, he flipped the body over and used his sharpened thumb claw to cut an incision around the area of the back, down the legs and all the way up to the back of the neck. He had a small kit with bigger cutting knives in it, but he was in a rush and it pleased him to use his new armaments. The Nightwalker’s sides were a ruin, but it didn’t matter. Yos took the skin off in one complete piece, pleased with himself. Next he took the hands, all four. He needed some bone, and the small bones of the hands would be ideal. Besides that, he only needed the skin off the fingertips, but he’d do the more delicate work later in a safer place. He’d wanted to take all the extremities, and anyway, the Nightwalker hands and feet (which were the middle pair?) all seemed remarkably similar. But he was running out of space in his bag. He had to yank the kit out after all, and rummage for a pair of clippers in order to take the digits off the feet. He only got partway through one foot before he heard noises coming.
The hands and toes were in a small bag which he cinched shut. He hastily folded the skin a few times, hoping to avoid any dripping. He dashed off. Hopefully, the Nightwalkers wouldn’t see his tracks and would blame the Dragon for the mutilation of the body.
He got about a hundred feet off before he was forced to fling himself behind a medium size growth on a gentle slope of the ‘land’. It was the best cover he could find, but it wouldn’t do much if they got closer than 20 feet. He peered carefully around the leafy stalks. He didn’t recognize the Nightwalkers, but that didn’t mean much. One of them carried a short, blunt metal tube. The pulse weapon. Yos would have to even the odds. He had most of what he needed for that, now all he needed was a little time for preparation. He was pleasantly surprised to notice that the plant he was hiding behind had stalks that looked hollow. That would be useful. They looked about the right size, too, which saved him some time. He quietly pulled a few stalks, then he backed away.
They didn’t see him. They were too busy with the body, and when they did look around, their eyes went to the sky. Night or not, they were worried about the Idrik Dragons, not someone like him.
There was a flash as some kind of incendiary device went off, consuming the body. Simple. Elegant. And more smuggled weaponry. They were making some kind of ritual growling that might have been singing. Yos was pleased. It was how he would wish to be honored when he passed to the next world. Yos had chosen well to come here, the Nightwalkers were a people after his own heart.
He slipped away slowly, crawling. It took him nearly an hour of stealthy creeping before he was far enough to rise and continue more quickly, gliding across dips and caverns in the canopy’s surface.
He had barely enough time for the rites he needed. The skin from the fingers and toes, what would have been the fingerprint area on a human, he separated carefully from the rest of the Nightwalker hand and put aside. They were more like the pads of a cat then human fingers. It didn’t matter. Every race was different. He peeled the rest of the flesh off, discarding it and saving the bones underneath.
He went into the pouch, and pinched out a few of the precious ashes that nestled there. The source of his spiritual power. He carefully rubbed his fingers to drop them onto the small pile of Nightwalker pads. His power, his sacrifice. Combined with the essence of who the Nightwalkers were.
He needed a small fire, of course. A necessary risk, but he hoped the hollow he found would be safe. He didn’t have any place to dig a fire pit, and there wasn’t any rock up here to shelter the fire. Still, he needed the fire and he wasted precious time before he found some wood that seemed sufficiently petrified to be reasonably fireproof. He didn’t want to set the whole canopy ablaze.
His problem turned out to be quite something different.
The wood of Night’s Garden was soft, and unusually moist, somehow. Yos had started fires with native rock on the wet beachfront in the rain, but he couldn’t get the best wood he found dry enough in the sodden atmosphere of this place to even start to take a spark. He tried drying some ripped up moss in the sun, but the soggy pile seemed to hold water indefinitely, no matter how hard he squeezed. It could take days to dry it enough to light.
Finally, he smashed the back of his hand against the trunk of a tree, breaking the laser capsule. A short burst set his kindling alight, and he was able to dry out enough wood the small blaze to get enough of a fire for his needs. He dropped the Nightwalker finger pads with the precious ash into the fire and the sweet, rotten and familiar smell rose up at once. Another necessary risk, that smell. He set the bone fragments around the fire to dry.
Once he was sure it would burn right, he began his own songs.
He returned at dawn, when the light would allow him to move unseen, but limited him to short gliding hops. Mostly, he climbed. He’d only gotten a few hours of sleep, but that was more than enough, and his whole body hummed with power and excitement. The starkly white sunrise was about to glimmer over the horizon and the constant rushing of the wind through the canopy was heavy in Yos’ ears. It seemed to bring the scent of the sunlight with it, clear and light and heady.
They were awake, talking quietly, but not yet on the move. Maybe planning for the hunt, maybe discussing the dead. Neither seemed much use to Yos, though. It was all known.
They didn’t have any fire. Nightwalkers didn’t favor them since it was rarely cold, and the light unwelcome. They just sat in the lee of one of the plants. Yos wasn’t sure how early the Idrik Dragons got alight, but the two Nightwalkers would be horribly exposed when the light was fully up. They would probably get moving any second. No time to lose.
He got close enough slithering on his belly to get a decent shot with his new weapon. He put the hollow stalk to his lips and fitted a bone fragment into the end. Rolled in the ashen corpse powder and another sprinkle from his pouch, it should have all the power it needed. He was going to need a good shot to penetrate the skin, however. He’d roughly shaped the fragments to ensure as many sharp edges as he could, then wrapped each one in a small moistened leaf to give it enough of a seal for the blowgun.
He waited, and watched, aiming carefully, then shot the Nightwalker in the mouth. The Nightwalker coughed and lurched to his feet. His friend also sprang up, but he wasn’t looking for an enemy, just concerned for his comrade.
Yos’ target coughed and spat several times, then seemed to recover. He’d swallowed the fragment, but it made no matter. It would be several hours before Yos’ medicine would complete his work, but the Nightwalker was already dead. He just didn’t know it yet.
The wind shifted, a blessing and a curse. Yos knew the Nightwalker’s keen sense of smell might easily tip them off now. He waited until the other Nightwalker’s attention was fully on his companion before he flung some corpse powder into the air, letting it drift in a translucent cloud towards the two Nightwalkers. Best use this untimely twist of fate to his advantage. He had to use his left hand, now that the laser capsule was broken, it would be possible to trigger the remaining blast by mistake.
The unwounded Nightwalker frowned and looked Yos’ way, his nostrils flaring. It would be a strange odor, but it would smell of ash, not person. Hopefully the corpse powder would cloud Yos’ scent and the Nightwalker wouldn’t realize that things other than Idrik Dragons hunted here. Anyway, the corpse powder had other properties, and it was worth the risk. The Nightwalker frowned, and left his friend, bringing the pulse tube up.
Yos slithered further back into cover. He would have preferred to track them, and wait, but the Nightwalker instincts were too good. Born warriors. It didn’t matter if it knew the scent, it knew danger when it smelled it.
The Nightwalker shook its head once, as if brushing a haziness away, and Yos knew that it had inhaled some of the powder. That would help. It blinked twice rapidly, squinting towards Yos’ hiding place.
Yos thrust his right hand out and squeezed. Even as the Laz Capsule beam took the Nightwalker in the chest, a beam from the pulse tube blew a crater in the fungus floor next to Yos’ left elbow.
Yos rushed to the other Nightwalker. His capsule was spent now, and if the other one got his hand on the pulse weapon, Yos might be in a great deal of trouble. But it didn’t matter. The infected Nightwalker was already hallucinating, and Yos was able to dispatch him with a clawed grip to the throat with only feeble resistance.
Alien or not, the Nightwalkers’ throats worked much like a humans, and the Nightwalker died in a gurgle of blood. Yos shook blood off his clawed hand and surveyed the area. He was alone with two dead bodies in the glittering white sun.
A flicker in the sunlight caused a terrible fear to flash up in Yos’ chest. He crouched in the grayish-green fungus dust and groped madly for the pulse tube. Hopefully, it had enough of a charge left.
He found it, but it didn’t make him feel much better. The sunlight that had shielded him from the Nightwalker eyes now blinded him, too, and he could feel the fear settle into him, the heavy weight of Dragon eyes on the back of his neck.
When it came, he wouldn’t have time to shoot. He’d see it only instants before it crashed into him and made him a smear of meat, blood and bone fragments pounded into the fungus floor.
He knew it would happen this way. The Yee Nadlooshii hardly ever died of old age, and with his enhancements his life span was far longer than any of his ancestors. Any Navajo discovering his nature would kill him, if they could. Anyone that knew his past would do the same. He was a branded criminal in his home land, as well as dozens of others. He’d murdered across the reaches of space. He’d always expected to die brutally.
Like the murderous weasel dies at the hands of the wolf, he thought. Let me die with honor, then. Not cowering in the dust. He rose up on his knees and spread his arms wide. His eyes wide open, he let the pulse tube slip from his outstretched fingers. Even if he got off the impossible shot and drilled the descending Idrik Dragon in the eye, the impending impact would still crush Yos’ body. He would honor the hunter he could not prevent. Just as the Nightwalkers honored him. And the Terinian Karlacks, the Ulkuskans of Regalin Prime, the Spider Deer and the Pitch Dogs, and Yos’ sister, Aditsan.
Every Yee Nadlooshii got their power through death. Becoming a Yee Nadlooshii always involved a sacrifice of the highest order. A loved one. A mother, a brother. A sister. Aditsan’s ashes now sat in Yos’ pouch, her gift to him, so that one of them could rise up and escape from the welfare camps in the only way they could find. Suddenly there were tears in his eyes, and in his last moments before death he prayed to his sister for her forgiveness. It had been her idea, and she’d told him she loved him just before he’d slit her throat from ear to ear, but the horrified look that surfaced in her eyes before they went glassy always haunted him. He’d always felt that death had changed her mind. She could never forgive him.
Forgive me now, Sister! My sweet Aditsan! Death comes for me, and I will strive to face it as bravely as you faced your death at my hands. These two hands.
His right hand still dripped gore onto the discarded pulse tube as he waited.
And waited…
This was how the Idrik Dragons hunted. Yos knew this. They did not miss and they could see for miles. Once they targeted their prey, they pursued it with a frightening single-mindedness. They would even dash through crowds of other prey in their predatory dive, nothing else existing in this world expect the creature that they had first marked.
Nothing else moved in the sky in this part of Night’s Garden. The flicker could not have been anything else. Cover and staying out of the sunlight had been Yos’ only defense, and now, quivering in the pure white, revealing light of the sun, he had nothing.
But nothing happened. He waited and the moments stretched out in long, glittering strands.
Confused, he finally picked up the pulse tube and tucked it into his belt. Then he took what he needed from the Nightwalker corpses. He was precise and efficient, but not rushed. Death could take him at any time; he could not outrun it.
But nothing came for him as he went about his tasks. He packed another bundle, dripping crimson into the mold dust as he left the exposed fungoid plain, walking, climbing and gliding back the way he had come.
He danced the next night, and he was full of purpose. The purpose wasn’t a burden, but a lifting spirit. He danced with the newly made cloak of Nightwalker skin wrapped around him. None of this was his, anymore, but it was good. His personal glory and fears had evaporated in the death-drenched sun, but this, too, was good. He did not sing for himself. He danced and sang for the Idrik, and the Nightwalkers and as he went on into the night, dancing and singing, he could feel the ghostly approval drift in tendrils into his lungs, his head, his heart. Newly made corpse powder, with some of his own flesh, the smallest tip of his finger, added to the blaze. His head swam with it all.
He was not worried about discovery. This was long into the hunt, and likely all the hunter besides himself were dead or gone. And anyway, it was in the hands of the ancestors now. As long as he was brave and pure, he need not fear discovery or death, only dishonor.
The prey of his past stalked through his song and hazy vision with the lazy winged Idrik and the magnificently vital gliding and twisting shapes of the Nightwalker in flight. All the creatures he’d hunted were there. And Aditsan, and Yos drank in her forgiveness like it was the sun of his childhood. Not sharp, like the surgical brilliance of this world’s sun, but soft, warm and lazy, like the Arizona sun in early morning.
He whirled in the light of the starred night and light of the campfire, feeling the essence of his skin cloak seep further and further into his bones. His gait altered, his body slunk closer to the ground. The light of the fire caught in his eyes and danced there.
He could feel the cloak clinging tighter and tighter to his body, the fur rippling further and further down his arms, his legs. The middle set of arms on the Nightwalker skin flopped less and less loosely until they started waving with a life of their own, life that was partly Yos, partly the Nightwalker Yos had killed. The cloak stretched back, trailing a long tail behind him as he danced.
“Had I not seen it with clear night eyes, I would not have believed,” a voice said.
The Nightwalker named Yos did not whirl to face the voice, but finished the end of his song before allowing his four arms to settle to his sides. Then he turned to face the intruder with serene acceptance. It had been a good life, and the end worth the pain, worth anything. He was ready.
A Nightwalker sat, comfortable on a raised limb, nearly building sized, that angled like the crooked wing of an old house. Two of his hands held some kind of rifle trained on Yos’ middle. Perhaps a flachette. It didn’t matter. Whatever it did, it would be enough. Despite the clear night darkness, the Nightwalker was difficult to make out, being so dark furred itself.
“It was an amazing thing,” the Nightwalker said. “I believe Hu will be proud of this death. You did honor to him.”
“You’re Ta,” Yos said, guessing. Hu’s Sword Brother.”
“Yes.”
“And Hu?”
“He was the one the Dragon caught. The one it dropped.”
“Ah.” The corpse had been too mangled to identify. It hadn’t even crossed Yos’ mind. It didn’t change anything. It wouldn’t have changed anything if Yos’ had known. “How long have you been tracking me?” Yos said, still motionless.
“I haven’t been tracking you,” Ta said. “I was tracking the Dragon. A Dragon moving on the ground was surprising enough to generate my interest, even if I hadn’t been here for the hunt. But something was tracking you. See?” Ta gestured that Yos come and look, and he did.
There were long, deep groves in the huge branch.
“The Dragon sat and watched you,” Ta said. “For some time. I think it left as I was coming up, though I don’t know why. It could probably have killed both of us at any time.”
With a sudden insight, Yos knew it could have. Tonight. Yesterday in the open sunlight, the night before as he slept. It hadn’t been Sambhota, either, before that. It had all been the same creature. Watching him.
“Why would it spare me?” Yos asked.
Ta made a non-committal barking grunt, oddly universal. “Who knows? They don’t actually hunt that many aliens, or the hunt isn’t personal enough, but they usually kill those they run into. My guess…” Ta bared his teeth. A few days ago, Yos would not have known the gesture, but now he did. All Nightwalkers did. It was a reflective gesture, something like a human sucking their teeth. “My guess is just that you interested it enough for it to want to see how it all ends. They are notoriously curious.”
“Maybe you can ask it when you find it.”
“No. I’ve been here long enough, seen enough daylight for honor to be served. The hunt has gone on long enough for honor’s sake. Most of the survivors have started back. I ran into three Nightwalkers and one of the aliens half a day ago. They are likely feasting on the ground by now. I’m going back to join them. I don’t plan to see the sun rise here again.”
“Which alien?”
“The little one. The tall one died the day before yesterday, I heard.”
Sambhota still lived, then. Surprisingly, Yos found he was glad.
“And know you’ve found me out. You’d better get on with it, then,” Yos said, stretching his arms. He braced for the impact of the flachettes.
“It would be a good death for you,” Ta agreed. “I hope that I will have such a death. But…” he lowered the weapon. “I think that this will be true for you if I shoot or not, and there is no cause. It would be no tragedy, for your place is assured after death. But, I am curious. I would ask many questions, and hear your stories before you or I pass, I think.”
Yos didn’t know what to say.
You are a Sword Brother, a true Nightwalker,” Ta said. “And Opanek, one of the assured, unless I miss my guess. I don’t know how such a thing can be, but I know it is, with my truest heart. Only a Nightwalker would act as you have and bring such a glorious death to my Sword Brother Hu.
“Come, I think you should not see the sunrise come here, either. Perhaps now that you are no longer so unique in the Idrik Dragon’s gaze, eh?”
“Where,” Yos said, “would I go?”
“Have you a clan?”
“No,” Yos said.
“I thought as much. It is good, then. There are precedents for such a thing. And this is the answer then to your question. Eh? You shall go where all brothers of the Bonewalker clan go, Sword Brother Yos, have I not made myself clear? You have acted honorably, like a Nightwalker should,”
“Or a Skinwalker,” Yos said.
“Is there a difference?”
“I…don’t know.”
“As I said, you have acted honorably, and I would not spurn the death you’ve given to Hu. Yesterday, you were clanless, a terrible thing, but no longer. How long has it been since you’ve had a clan?”
“Not for a long, long time. They are all gone, I am the last.”
“Then come, Sword Brother Yos.” Ta got to his feet. “We will make war, and dance, and swap hunting stories with the other brothers and the fat, scruffy alien outsider. Come.”
Thank you, my sister. He used one of his bottom hands to pluck the pouch from his belt. He upended the pouch, scattering the last bits of Aditsan’s remains to the wind. He was Yee Nadlooshii no longer. He didn’t need to be.
The two Nightwalkers left quickly, not looking back and were well below the canopy before the sun came up again.