Salvation полностью

The moroxes began calling to one another. Dellian was convinced there were now at least six of them out there in the darkness beyond the firelight. Yirella’s right. What do they eat?

Dellian flung some more logs on the fire. Sparks skittered up into the night, swirling like orange galaxies. Boulders glimmered yellow, transforming to dusty moons in a frozen orbit around them. The moroxes were closer now, the cries lower, more intense. Something moved in the gloom between boulders, a deeper shadow eclipsing empty air.

“Come back in,” Yirella said from the fuselage split. “Pile some more logs on, and get safe.”

Dellian was inclined to agree. Looking at Falar and Orellt, he couldn’t see any argument. He bent over to pick up a couple of logs.

“Look out,” Falar yelled.

The morox came hurtling out of the dark, skipping onto a boulder and leaping. The beast had pale gray skin like wet leather, mottled with green webs. The forelegs had huge paws, with seven knife-like talons fully extended. Its head was slim and streamlined, almost aquatic somehow, with wide white eyes and fangs longer than a human hand.

Some deep xenophobic instinct told Dellian this rapacious creature had never been born on Earth, adding to his fright. It was the fear of the other. He dropped to one knee, swiveling as he did so to bring the axe around in a powerful arc. On either side of him, Falar and Orellt were assuming a lunge pose, their knife poles stabbing forward. The three of them acted in unison as they’d done so many times in battle games, coordinating as fluidly as any munc cohort.

Too late, the morox tried to turn from the trio of deadly blades. Dellian’s axe caught its flank, ripping open a huge cut. Dark purple blood squirted out. The morox howled and landed badly, legs scrabbling for purchase.

“Fall back,” Dellian shouted. “Falar in first.” He could see another two black spectral shapes circling the fire’s radiance, biding their time.

“I’m in,” Falar called. Then: “Danger left!”

Dellian and Orellt faced the new morox as it sprinted toward them. This time Orellt dropped to his knees. Dellian instinctively knew what he was doing—thrusting the knife blade ahead and low, forcing the morox to leap. Orellt began his swipe. Sure enough, the creature saw the blade solid and unmoving at its own head height, and sprang—

The axe hit it directly on the side of its short neck, penetrating so deep Dellian could barely wrench it out. Only the inertia of the creature’s falling corpse helped free it.

Orellt was squirming backward through the gap. Dellian took two fast paces and saw the next morox appear on the top of the fuselage. No time. He flung the axe, sending it spinning through the air as the morox leaped at him. It hit the side of the beast’s forelimb and bounced away, clattering off the rocks. And Orellt was standing in the gap, the knife pole ready to throw like a spear.

The creature smashed into Dellian, its forelimbs lashing out. He felt talon tips slash down his left arm, then it juddered, a knife pole sticking out of the back of its neck. Its weight was on top of him, carrying him to the ground. The fall dazed him, and all he knew was the mass of the dead carcass pressed unmoving against him, pinning him down. Then boys were yelling all around. Hands dragged the dead creature off him. He glimpsed Orellt and Falar back in the open, their knife poles jabbing into the darkness. Hable retrieved the axe. Xante, Janc, and Colian were holding burning branches, scything them about furiously. Uret picked him up and manhandled him through the gap, where Yirella half carried, half dragged him to a seat. She and Ellici were immediately busy with antiseptic sprays and long strips of a-skin while behind them the boys performed an orderly withdrawal back into the flyer’s cabin.

“You’ll be fine,” Yirella was saying loudly as torch beams wobbled about, shining on his arm. There was plenty of blood. “The cuts aren’t deep at all.”

Orellt’s face loomed up in front of him, grinning wildly. “We got another one! And we reset the fire. It’ll burn for another hour at least.”

“Terrific,” Dellian gasped, and winced as Ellici applied a strip of a-skin to his bicep. It stung as it adhered.

“Drink this,” Yirella ordered, shoving a flask at him. “You need fluid.”

“It’s not piss, is it?”

“No.” She grinned. “I’m saving that for breakfast.”

—

The surviving moroxes howled to each other for the rest of the night. One even ventured up toward the gap in the fuselage again, only to have Xante and Colian ward it off with the knife poles.

Dellian dozed for most of the time, falling into a deeper sleep sometime well past midnight, only to be dragged from slumber by a fresh morox howl. He saw Colian in the gap, holding a knife pole ready, but not jabbing or shouting for help.

The next thing he knew it was dawn, and the cabin was full of his yawning friends. A wan gray light was shining in through the small windows, and the smell of smoke was heavy in the air.