Merrin reined in the passive thought and signed for those behind. "I can hear it." And he did. It was the thumping on water—splash-sounding. The creature, the sound, however, was slow, deliberate. This fur back seemed intelligent. Merrin reached over the peak, lay flat, winced at the heat, and peered downwards. Darkness below. Tortile. Dangerous, certainly.
But yet, the sound seduced him. The glee seemed a thing pulsing from the future. Oh, how much he wanted to see it. He signed—a single word. "Move!" And they did. Ashmen did not hesitate. There was no need to. The darkness was home. Many creatures made it their domain, but the ashmen. Now, they were born of it.
The cohort passed by him in quick but silent steps. They rolled down from the landslide of the mountain. Wet. Lubricated. A thing that increased their falling pace. Moreover, it masked their other sounds. Breathing. Merrin heard some beasts could even hear the flowing of blood in veins. Weird.
He followed and jumped, sliding down in a roll. The mud bathed him—warmed. But that mattered little. The slide fell into the wider chasm of saitan. The mouth mountain. An adequate name, as it was more of a round chasm than a peaked Munro. In virtue of that, beasts, often fur backs made it their den. Ashmen hunted it once a year—in hoards. Now, Merrin came in few, and as the last hunt was months ago, saitan was yet to produce a hoard.
This was good. This was fortunate.
He felt the end of the slide. Felt, not seen, as the tumbling and swirling of the world brought his senses to heel. Nothing except blurred colors of black and white could be seen, but felt, now that was a thing of different entirety. He enjoyed this, the whipping of the wind—storms. The churning above. All of it.
Merrin sensed closeness, kicked up against the mud slide, and twirled in the air. There was practiced knowledge to what he did. Not seen, not calculated. This was the effect of the dance. He landed against one of the spikes of saitan, and looked down.
Saitan was like a worm—a strange open maw with spikes rounding the rim. Stone spikes and in this center was a collection of hills, chasms, caves. Many things. Some among the old Ashmen believed saitan was once a mighty creature. One that swallowed many things in the world, and upon its death, the mountains within its belly became the chasms. Superstitious wrongness, the shamans had once said. But who would know?
The ideation was once shared too by him.
Merrin looked to the side and saw the rest, hands wrapped around spikes. Pinned there, showered by the rain. Wet in wholeness. He smiled and signed. "It's inside."
They accepted the deduction, and the daring eidan signed. "So what exactly is the plan?"
Merrin explained. "I will sound, listen for my sound, and attack as one."
"We stay here?"
"You stay here."
That beautiful mind is a thing I claim the world unworthy of. His love. His peace. His means. Oh, those were the days. The days in those mines. Yet, the historians would call these events a falsity of food-deprived miners. An act of sheer delusion from miners seeking upon themselves, a savior—Collected from the diary of the last living sun witnesses. Childless. She taught her life as a scholae.
Merrin crawled behind a boulder, saw the passing wall-bug. The heat seldom bothered it. But the blindness did. Oh, the blindness did. He listened. And heard the far scuffling of stone. Pat pat. The creature stepped slowly, deliberately through warm mud. A careful action, no mistakes. But Merrin, he heard it nonetheless. He remained by the rock, staring at the far rocky wall. Glyphs, many sprayed over the wall. Ashmen writings. Testament to the former raids.
An instance of quiet contemplation passed, and Merrin found himself wanting for a chance at those walls. To draw, to paint. To mock Leim. How furious he would be….But…He reined in the desire and knew the moment for it unavailable. That took a few seconds, and as the sweet calmness washed through him, observation returned. Turning, he stared out from the corner of the stone. And saw there, the fur back.
A giant creature, dark furred, with a snouted face, and a height of three highstones. That's a big one, Merrin thought, glee-filled. The fur back had no eyes, just a flat face that wrinkled out into two large ears. Always twitching, always listening. It would tremble at any sounding. Searching. Hungry.
Merrin silenced his breath, picked up stone, and tossed it. To a corner, the fur back moved to the sound, ears perked like pierce stone. But it made no sounds of its own. It wouldn't dare. Other creatures listened too.
It's almost time. He tossed again and saw the movements in response. This of course, was not an action of futility. Merrin had to know. What if there were more? What if some hid? This was relevant knowledge.
He flung another and saw the agitation of the beast. Now, it released a low growl. A warning. I can also attack. Merrin thought the creature said. Funny, he felt. That took a breath. Loud. And he knew the creature heard. He took a moment to ponder things—a passing of mentation that flowed in quick procession.
This should be perfect. No mistake. Nothing. Perfect.
And then, he clicked his tongue.
They dropped down like black stones. The young ashmen, stoneknife poised, aimed. The creature roared. It heard heartbeats. Too many. And from this evidence, it must know death had come for it.
Its skin would soon become the ash. And its meat will be fed to the young. Merrin rolled out and primed his stoneknife. They surrounded it. In quick moments, the saiden and eidan had rounded the creature, running in orbicular patterns. This would confound the creature. Exactly what was desired.
Merrin gave the final sign—the last before they dropped into sign sound reticence. This was the pattern. Any distraction was unallowed—they would move as one, fight as one, die if need be.
"Kill it!"
The first to spring was the daring eidan. She produced her stoneknife—brown, ashed at the rims. Merrin saw these things, his last awareness before the mind flowed into the familiar stance of proto-awareness. This self was one for battle. He leaped from a highstone, twirled, and pierced.
The creature, a thing of utter bewilderment, staggered, blood streaming from the furred neck side. There was no exaggeration of motions, Merrin realized, the creature knew itself surrounded, and drew knowledge that further shifting brought the ashmen closer. Not that it mattered. A blade struck it by the knee, blood, blue, spilled out. It issued a roar—louder now. Another cut appeared on the snouted face.
Cuts upon cuts. Blood spilling. Floor staining.
It would fall soon.
And it did.
Minutes after the assault, Merrin fitted out his stoneknife, and saw the fur back, laid. Dead. Over its marred form were cuts, slices. Many. But it felled in the end. That was a sure thing.
An inevitability.
He heaved a deep breath, stood over the corpse, and looked down. Below, the ashmen stared back, their skin begrimed with blood and dirt. The rain, however, slowly cleansed. As it always did.
Merrin looked to them and signed. "We did it."
They offered back a smile.
Leim will be livid
------
Merrin watched from the ravine side—from within he heard the distant murmurs, and smelt the aromatic scent of ash. Itchy. Skin tingling. But calming. Though he heard the lowlanders denied this. That was a wonder.
He sat down at the synthetic stone ledge. A thing of barely a finger's length. His legs spilled out from it, the ground below a vast chasm of darkness, and peaked tops. Mountains. The rain fell still, the sky a veil of stirring darkness, sparked by white flashes, and sure booms. He listened to it, eyes locked on the faint rising mist—steam. He would dance on it, if not for the fact no floor existed.
He knew the intentional quip and giggled. No one heard, of course. But this was the required time—a time to address a plaguing issue. Merrin turned to the side and stared out into the void distance. Shapes blurred, dots of varying light, and a stain of grayness. It seemed an image—a strange rendition of chaotic forms. It startled and brought an unnerving familiarity.
He blinked, and it was gone.
What is that? Merrin asked and found only the silence of mental procession. Stillness. There was no answer, no pondering. Just silence. That chilled him. He leaned back, admitting the dark paradise of the heavens above. Maybe it's moss hallucination, he prayed. And knew in the side parts of his awareness, an ashman who could not know reality from falsehood, courted death, or be banished from the hunts.
Nothing could be worse. He winced, but managed a breath. It barely brought calmness. Merrin then shifted to a different prospect; the object of his current waiting. Leim. He wasn't back yet, and none had returned with paling news. So he lived, just dallying.