Darkwing (29 page)

The soricids facing Dusk had increased in number, and now heaved forward as a mass of jagged fur and poisonous red teeth. There was nothing to do but fall back. Sol lay defenceless on the ground. Dusk did not want to abandon him, but he also didn’t want to meet the same fate. The soricids swarmed over the paralyzed elder until Dusk could no longer see him.

“Everyone out!” Auster shouted hoarsely to the colony. “Get out!”

Dusk pressed tight against Sylph, whirling round. Panicked chiropters made for the single exit, climbing over one another. Nobody cared if the felids or hyaenodons were still outside. The predators inside were just as terrifying.

“This way!” said Dusk, leading Sylph up a wall, desperately trying to escape the tide of soricids seeping towards them.

From the ceiling a soricid dropped onto Sylph’s back. Without hesitating, Dusk reared up and sank his teeth into the creature’s flesh. He’d never bitten another beast before, and he felt a feverish surge of excitement and fear. He released his jaws and bit again, deeper this time, and wrenched the soricid right off Sylph. It crashed against the floor, stunned, and Dusk continued to climb, Sylph pulling ahead. If they could just get a clear passage
along the ceiling, they might make it to the exit, though it was already clogged with the other chiropters. In his haste, he hardly felt the bite.

He looked over and saw the soricid at his side, its dreadful red teeth bared, and he knew what had just happened. In terror he imagined the creature’s poisonous saliva seeping into him.

Frantically he tried to lick the wound clean, but it was too far down his flank and he couldn’t reach it properly. He needed to keep moving, to get outside, but he was starting to feel queasy. The more he tried to move, the weaker he felt. He couldn’t even muster the strength to call out to Sylph, now well above him.

A horrible numbness climbed his spine, vertebra by vertebra, clenching the muscles of his legs, stomach, chest, arms, shoulders. The claws on his wings involuntarily contracted, sinking deeper into the wood, and he couldn’t release them to take another step. His body dangled, rigid, from the wall.

Even his eyes were paralyzed. He could only stare unblinking at the advancing soricid and, beyond it, the swarm feeding on Sol’s body. He caught a white flash of a stripped leg bone, and then the soricids’ bodies closed over it.

Dusk’s lungs filled and emptied frantically. His heart flailed in his chest. This was about to happen to him.

He wanted to scream, to bolt, but the soricid’s poison would not allow it. He could do nothing but watch his death come. The soricid gave a series of staccato shrieks, and suddenly there were others coming too, summoned to feed. From overhead he heard Sylph calling his name again and again, and he wanted to tell her to get out, but his throat was clamped tight, barely allowing him enough air. He hoped he would lose consciousness before they attacked.

“Get away from him!” he heard his sister screech. He couldn’t see her, but felt her rearing up behind him, trying to protect him.

Violent scratchings came from outside, the sound of claws gouging into bark.

A ragged hole was suddenly ripped open in the wall, no more than a wingbeat from his body. A pair of clawed paws thrust inside, tearing away more of the wood and bark. Soricids scattered. The hole was enormous now. Moonlight poured into the trunk briefly, and was then blotted out as a hyaenodon’s head plunged inside, jaws wide.

Helpless, Dusk watched the jaws shoot past him, grazing him as they seized two soricids. The tiny creatures managed to twist their upper bodies and necks enough to give the hyaenodon multiple nips on the side of its snout, but then the hyaenodon just gnashed its teeth, cleaving them in two and grinding them into its hungry mouth.

Dusk felt Sylph tugging at him with her claws and teeth, trying to drag him to safety. “Come on, Dusk, move!” she roared.

The hyaenodon shoved its head even deeper inside, turned, and saw Dusk hanging from the wall, wings dangling. Dusk hoped Sylph had the sense to flee. He urged his legs to move, his wings to flap. Nothing.

He could not even close his eyes.

The jaws shot towards him and he gazed straight into the darkly gleaming maw. Bits of soricid fur and flesh were caught between jagged ranges of teeth. A rough tongue undulated hungrily. Suddenly the jaws were veering off to one side, and the hyaenodon’s nose struck him, hard enough to knock him off the wall. He fell, helpless, to the ground.

He could still see the hyaenodon’s head, but it was not making an attack; it was slumped awkwardly through the hole in the trunk. Its tongue lolled. An awful gargling noise emanated from its gullet,
and then it was only the gory heat of its breath that marked it as alive. It had been paralyzed by the soricids it had devoured.

Within the tree, the legion of soricids shrieked in a triumphant frenzy and threw themselves upon the hyaenodon’s head, pouring out through the hole to lay claim to the rest of its meaty body.

Dusk’s right leg twitched violently. His left wing trembled. The poison was wearing off. He felt his shoulders relax, clench, and relax again. He turned his head—

And saw a soricid scrambling towards him, jaws parted, its red teeth glinting.

With a colossal effort he rolled over onto his belly and reared back onto his hind legs, beating his wings. He sent a spray of wind and dust over the soricid, and kept flapping. He lifted. There wasn’t much space for flying in the trunk. He bobbed erratically between floor and ceiling, trying to evade the soricids. Most of them seemed intent on the downed hyaenodon; others were busy feeding on several other paralyzed chiropters.

“Dusk!”

Sylph clung to the wall above him, and he flew to her. “I got bitten,” he said apologetically. “I figured. Come on!”

They scrambled along the ridged wall to the exit in the trunk’s base. Dusk could see the last of the chiropters squeezing through. But converging on them from the ground was a swarm of soricids.

Dusk flapped with all his might, but he and Sylph weren’t quick enough. One of the lead soricids deftly clambered up and blocked the narrow exit. Dusk hurtled down on it. Avoiding its spitting mouth, he clamped his rear claws around the soricid’s tail and beat his wings hard. The soricid was surprisingly light and Dusk dragged it off the wood. He carried it high into the air before flinging it away.

The exit was clear. “Go!” he yelled at his sister.

She faltered. “What about the hyaenodons and felids?”

“Just go!” he shouted.

She dashed through the hole and into the night.

The soricids swarmed to cut Dusk off, but he threw himself at the hole, furling his wings tight and wildly dragging himself through. No jaws snatched him on the other side. Then he was out, and following Sylph as she scuttled for cover in the shadows of the toppled trunk.

He huddled with Sylph in a misty tangle of dead branches. From the other side of the toppled tree came the baying of hyaenodons, punctuated by the snarls of felids.

“Where are all the others?” Sylph whispered.

“Hiding like us,” Dusk said. He hoped so, anyway.

“Fly up and see,” said Sylph.

“You sure?” He didn’t want to leave her alone.

“Just do it fast. Find out what’s going on.” He left their hiding place and lifted into the air, the night silken against his fur. He wanted to be quick, but the soricid’s poison was still ebbing from his body, and his wingbeats were sluggish. He wheeled over the fallen tree.

The paralyzed hyaenodon, its head slumped inside the trunk, was overrun with soricids busily stripping away fur and flesh. A second hyaenodon was dragging itself away from the tree, followed at a careful distance by a large, patient group of the diminutive predators. Each step the hyaenodon took was slower than the last, until it crumpled stiffly to the earth. Despite the furious
barking of the nearby hyaenodons, the soricids seeped forward onto their fallen prey. Carnassial and the other felid stayed well back. But behind them, more tiny soricids boiled up from hidden holes in the ground.

Circling, Dusk caught sight of several small groups of chiropters scattering through the tall grass in different directions. Auster might have been among them, but he couldn’t be sure. It was all chaos. How would they ever find each other again? He felt hopeless watching them all disappear into the mist, but he dared not shout out and draw attention to their escape.

He flew back to Sylph.

“This way,” he whispered, leading her away from the tree. “Where’s everyone else?”

“All over the place,” he muttered without stopping. He wasn’t thinking clearly; he just wanted to keep moving, to get away from all the predators. It was only a matter of time before the hyaenodons and felids retreated into the grasslands, and started sniffing them out. Leaves and twigs whipped against his face. He quietly sang sound, probing ahead. He watched the earth too, sniffing for holes that might release more red-toothed soricids.

“Dusk, where are we going?” Sylph asked after several minutes. He didn’t stop. “Poisonwood tree.”

Sylph looked shocked. “What about the others? We can’t just run away!”

“We’re not
running away!”
he said angrily. “Do you want to get eaten?”

“But how are we going to regroup?” Sylph demanded. “Everyone’s scattered. We’ll all meet up at the tree.”

“What if they don’t know the way?” He stopped, breathing hard. “Auster knows the way, he’ll help them.”

But he remembered how quickly the colony would slide off course without someone in the air. He tried to think like a leader. What was the best thing to do? His thoughts collided and ricocheted. How many groups had the colony split into? Would they dare call out to one another? “We need to find them, Dusk,” Sylph said. “They need you.”

Dusk filled his lungs shakily. He wished his father were here, to tell him what to do. “I’ll take a look,” he said finally. “Don’t go anywhere.”

He lifted, spiralling high to get his bearings. There was the toppled tree, thrusting its dead limbs skyward. And off to the east was the lone poisonwood—the colony’s next destination. He dipped as low as he dared and began a slow circle, parting the tall grass with his echovision, searching for the other chiropters. He hoped he’d find them already on their way to the poisonwood.

The mist thickened and Dusk was beginning to despair, when his echoes brought him back an image of a lone chiropter in the grass. He sped closer, and saw there were others, travelling together. He whispered a greeting to them as he glided in, wings tilting, and landed clumsily in the tall stalks.

“Dusk!”

Auster hurried towards him and nuzzled him quickly, and Dusk felt stronger for it. Auster smelled like his father.

“I saw you get bitten and thought we’d lost you,” Auster said.

“The hyaenodon saved me. Sylph and I were the last to get out. Is this everyone?”

Auster nodded. “We lost seven. One of my sons was among them.”

Dusk remembered the horrible mounds of soricids he’d seen inside the tree, and shuddered. “I’m sorry, Auster.”

“But afterwards the rest of us managed to find each other somehow,” said Auster. “That was good fortune.”

“You’re off course for the poisonwood,” Dusk told him, and nudged his older brother in the right direction. “It’s not so far. I’m going back to get Sylph. We’ll meet you at the tree.”

“We’ll wait for you there,” said Auster. “Please be careful.” When Dusk took to the air again he was startled by how much denser the mist had become. The far hills had disappeared and the grasslands too were starting to dissolve. Some of his landmarks were no longer visible. He wheeled, trying to orient himself. The darkness contracted around him.

Dusk flew on, watching as the mist seeped between the stalks of grass. He was pretty sure he was close now. He didn’t want to, but he had no choice: he had to call out.

“Sylph! Sylph!”

Her answering cry pulled him sharply to the left and he started shooting out sound to find her. He’d never known his echoes to bounce back so quickly, and they nearly blinded his mind’s eye. All he saw was a pulsing barrier of light. “Dusk! I’m down here!”

He forced a deep breath into his lungs, and this time altered the strength and speed of his sonic cries. His echoes returned a blurry image of grass and vegetation, and a bright smudge off to one side: Sylph. “I see you!”

He was just dropping down into the tall grass when something grabbed him. He thrashed wildly, but soon realized it was no animal that held him. His body and wings were tangled up in a web. He’d flown through plenty of spiderwebs—every chiropter had—but none with strands this sticky and strong. He ate spiders from time to time, though they weren’t his favourite food; often they
were venomous, and though he was immune to the poison, it had a nasty taste. He struggled against the web some more, but it was quite useless. He bobbed around a few inches above the earth.

“Dusk?” came Sylph’s voice, much farther away than he’d expected. He’d seen her just over to his right, hadn’t he?

A chill surged through his veins.

“Sylph!” he said. “Where are you?”

“I’m coming, I’m coming,” she said. “Just keep talking.”

But he was now too frightened to speak. He croaked out a barrage of sound and saw the vague shape he’d mistaken for Sylph. It was certainly about her size, but completely motionless. Suddenly it shifted, standing tall on eight bony legs. Moving with shocking swiftness, the biggest spider he’d ever seen scuttled towards him.

Dusk wrenched his neck, chewing furiously at the web. His teeth seemed almost useless against the tough strands. He managed to saw through only one, and then the spider was upon him. Its abdomen was striped and hugely fat. Its face was amazingly hairy, with many globular eyes glinting darkly. Dusk saw fangs.

The spider lurched towards him and he bellowed, flailing about. He’d already been bitten once tonight and was in no mood to be bitten again. He shouted and hissed and showed his teeth, trying to convince the spider to back off. In his frenzy he wasn’t sure what has happening, whether he was being bitten or cocooned, as the spider darted all around him with savage purpose. Only when he felt his right wing pull free, and saw the severed strands of web, did he understand.

The spider was cutting him loose.

Dusk had messed up its web and the spider wanted him gone so that it could get on with catching proper food. Seconds later, he got a firm shove and tumbled down through the mist. He thudded on the ground.

Sylph was beside him.

“What’s going on?” she cried. “Are you all right?”

“I got caught in a spiderweb,” he panted. “Oh, honestly, Dusk.” Now she just sounded angry. “All that noise about a little web?”

“It was huge, Sylph, and—”

“Where? I don’t see it.”

Dusk looked up too, but the mist was so thick he could no longer make out the web or the spider. “Just right up there! The spider was as big as me. Its fangs—”

“You don’t seem that scared,” Sylph said. “Why aren’t we running?”

“Well, it doesn’t eat chiropters. It cut me loose and shoved me out.”

She stared at him.

“You believe me, don’t you?”

“I believe anything now. Did you find the others?” He told her about the plan to meet at the poisonwood. “The mist is thick,” he said worriedly.

“What about your echovision?”

“I can’t see very far in this, and it’s all blurry.”

“Just keep flying and scouting ahead.”

“It’s really bad, Sylph. I nearly didn’t find you just now. I’m not leaving you again.”

“Well, let’s just do our best.”

He took a breath. “I think we should wait for the mist to clear.”

“I am
not
waiting here any more,” said Sylph, and he saw how scared she was. “The whole time you were gone I kept hearing things in the grass. Sooner or later something’s going to stumble along and eat us. I want to keep moving. I want to get to the tree.” She started scuttling ahead of him.

“Sylph! Wait!” She didn’t stop, and he saw there’d be no reasoning with her. “That’s not even the right way. Come on.”

He caught up with her, prodded her in the right direction, and together they crept on through the mist.

“I smell them.” The scent was faint but unmistakable to Carnassial’s nostrils and tongue. “Eggs. There’s a saurian nest not far from here.”

Danian stared at him balefully. “Be sure of this.” Carnassial knew that the hyaenodon somehow blamed him for the two deaths in his pack. Carnassial had led them to the tree, it was true, but he wasn’t the one who’d rashly clawed it open and ignited the wrath of the soricids. He’d known many types of soricids, but none with saliva that paralyzed. To make matters worse, in the ensuing panic, all the chiropters had escaped. Carnassial’s belly ached with hunger. “I’m sure,” he told Danian. “I smell them too,” Panthera said.

Since fleeing the soricids, they’d been wandering half blind in the deepening mist, across the grasslands that Danian meant to claim as his new home.

Carnassial inhaled the saurian scent hungrily, but it was very difficult to tell where it came from. The mist confused him, sometimes obscuring the smell, other times intensifying it. Then it would disappear completely and he would have to scramble around in circles until he found it again.

He could not fail. He needed to find the nest to prove to Danian how useful he was. Glancing over, he saw that the four hyaenodons were nervous, heads dipped, ears pricked high. Danian pawed the earth. Carnassial felt some of the hyaenodons’
fear diffuse towards him. They knew these saurians, knew what they could do, even when sick and dying.

All Carnassial’s senses were alert as he paced through the mist, sniffing his way towards the nest.

“We’re lost, aren’t we,” Sylph said.

Dusk grunted irritably. His limbs ached and his fur was soaked with dew. “We should’ve stayed where we were.”

“You said you knew the way.”

“Do you know how hard it is to go straight in this?” he demanded. “You move around a plant and already you’re a bit off course, and it just gets worse and worse.”

“So we’re lost.”

“Yes, we’re lost.”

He was angry with Sylph for hurrying them on, and angry with himself for letting her. They certainly should have reached the tree by now. For all he knew they might’ve walked right past it. Or they might’ve turned in a complete circle and were now back where they’d started. He still clung to the hope, ever dwindling, that the journey was just taking longer than expected, that soon they’d arrive at the poisonwood.

“Does the mist feel warmer to you?” he whispered.

“The ground’s warmer too,” Sylph said.

Dusk slowed down, unsettled. His sister was right, the earth definitely felt warm—even hot in places. He lifted his feet apprehensively.

Sylph gave a sudden cry and hopped almost on top of him. “It’s coming from the ground!” she said. Dusk stared and saw, dimly in the gloom, a skinny column of vapour boiling up from the earth. The only reason he saw
it at all was its dark tinge, making it stand out slightly against the general fog. It carried a heavy, earthy smell. As they moved cautiously forward, he spotted several more jets of warm vapour hissing from the soil. With a shudder Dusk imagined some vast, terrible beast beneath them, exhaling.