The Middle Temperocene: 150 million years + 1000 years post-establishment
Reign of Fire: The Firethieves' Siege
Pale-Beard awoke with a start.
There was but the faint slosh of the crashing waves that could be heard from their den by the coast. Yet something felt not right.
It was the Longest Darktime, a time in the cold-season where the great yellow-sun never broke the horizon to bring forth the day.
So what was the golden light that glowed far away?
He gently nudged Sharpstripe awake.
"There is light. Not yellow-sun." he urged.
"It is Darktime", Sharpstripe whined, aroused from her shallow sleep. "No yellow-sun."
"Not yellow-sun!" insisted Pale-Beard. "Not right."
Sharpstripe perked up in high alert. She quickly rose and grabbed her wood-tooth.
"Stay behind. Watch pups."
Her mate Strange-Eyes, leader of the pack, and the rest of the family, were away on a hunt. Him, Switch-Eyes, and the three younger ones, all too far away. Only Sharpstripe stayed behind, to watch her two youngest pups. And Pale-Beard as well, now too frail to hunt.
It was only her to stand against whatever was out beyond.
She emerged from the den, wary as ever, inspecting the source of the glow. Was it a strike of the sky-light, that set the grass ablaze? She thought so at first.
Except the sky-light did not speak.
She heard voices, in the distance. Many of them.
Could it have been the other packs of coast-folk? She knew some of them, but these ones spoke stranger tongues she knew not.
And they were fast approaching.
"What brings here?!" she cried defiantly, toward the distant sounds, brandishing her wood-tooth. "ANSWER!"
It was a great taboo in baywulf culture to trespass upon another's land. There were many neutral 'public' territory where packs could meet amicably. This was not one such place.
"WHAT BRINGS HERE?" she repeated, with fury and fear. "ANSWER!"
But they gave no reply, nor halted their advance.
She grew ever more uneasy.
She saw them, eyes glowing in the darkness. A pair, then two. Then many. Carrying tools like wood-teeth, yet they glowed with the flame of sky-light. Their distant scent was pungent and foreign. She knew at once they were not friendly.
She had to run.
Sharpstripe fled back to the den, where the two young pups and Pale-Beard anxiously awaited her return. The pups trembled beneath their grandfather, huddling by his wizened paws as comfort.
"Run," Sharpstripe urged. "MUST."
"Why?" Pale-Beard questioned. "Danger?"
"RUN."
-------
"LET THE FOLD-PAW PUPS NOT GROW!" Whitesmoke cried, leading the charge.
Dozens of paws thundered across the loose sandy ground as the Firethieves, fiercest of the Outlanders, made their uninvited entry onto baywulf land. Land rich and plentiful, that could keep their people alive another snow-season.
Land kept from his kind, land they were driven from, by the Them. There will not be more like Wind-Storm. There will not be more Us lost.
Even at the cost of Them.
"There!" called a packmate. "One of Them."
A lone baywulf, a shore-people. Calling out in a strange tongue.
"One of Them. Many of Us." growled another Firethief, arrogantly.
"Chase away out! Destroy if must!" commanded Whitesmoke, as he pushed onward. Ahead, the lone shore-people lost their nerve and began to flee.
The Firethieves began to give chase.
-----
Sharpstripe bounded across the dry coast grass as fast as her strong paws could carry her. Yet she paused from time to time, as her companions were young and old.
Pale-Beard was seventy-four seasons old, and could not run like he used to.
Now was the worst possible time for the rest of the pack to be away on a hunt, Sharpstripe thought. She hoped, against all odds, to whatever forces governed the works of this world, that they would return soon, and fast.
She called out into the wind, into the dark twilight sky that may or may not have an answer.
A loud, eerie call heard a long way away, a call for help, that was taken with utmost seriousness. A call that pups were taught never to make unless they were in real danger.
Today was a time that warranted the call.
--------
"Mother." Switch-Eyes suddenly cried, in the midst of the hunt, breaking their stealth.
The grazer-beasts they stalked took notice, and began thundering away in panic. Their cover was blown and the hunt had failed.
"Switch-Eyes!" snapped Strange-Eyes irritably, until he too heard the faint, distant call, from far, far off.
He knew that voice all too well.
"Sharpstripe!" Strange-Eyes barked, abandoning the hunt and urgently retreating to the den.
The hunt could afford to fail.
This could not.
--------
The intruders were close by. So close that Sharpstripe could see the one that led the siege, a great pale one taller than the rest with a face streaked with white.
Pale-Beard began to falter.
"Run. Take pups." he called out, wheezing. "Leave me."
"Not leave." urged Sharpstripe.
In the wild, the weak fell behind. The slower, the older were left by the rest, left to be prey. Yet they were the story-telling hunt-beasts, unlike any other beast. They were not wild.
Not like these, the savages, the ones that brought the flame of the sky-light.
At last Pale-Beard could run no more. With the last of his strength he protectively put himself between the two young pups and the attackers.
Sharpstripe intervened, standing her ground in front of Pale-Beard and her pups. She gripped the wood-tooth tightly between her jaws, swinging it through the air, jabbing its sharp end at the intruders threateningly, in defiance. A show of resistance that at last gave the attackers pause, at least for the moment.
"You not hurt them. Will not." she growled.
To take the life of another of their kind was a ghastly crime in the eyes of the southhounds.
Yet Sharpstripe was prepared.
----------
"Something scared horn-herders," Brightbrow alerted.
The valley pack of highbrows were settling down for the evening--not that this meant much in the Longest Darktime, when the most they got of day was faint twilight. In thr Darktime it was merely the time the horn-herders gathered and bedded down to rest. Yet tonight they seemed uneasy.
"Do you think voiceless-ones?" questioned Hightail, running over to his sister's side. "Or hill-pack?" he mused, wondering if it could be highbrow rustlers.
"Not know. Look." was all she could reply.
The horn-herders, tame and placid at most times, now paced and grunted, agitated, sometimes irritably jabbing at one another with their horns. This was not typical of their usual behavior.
"It is Longest Darktime, not?" asked the young Shortear.
"Yes. No yellow-sun for long."
"But yellow-sun rising," Shortear insisted, facing westward where a pale yellow glow could be seen in the distance.
"How many yellow-suns?"
Brightbrow froze in place, petrified with fear, once she inspected what, for only a moment, seemed to be the rising yellow-sun-- and realized at once what it really was.
"OUTLANDERS! OUTLANDERS!" she yelped in urgent alarm, springing to her paws in an instant, running off to warn the others.
"Outlanders?" asked Shortear.
"OUTLANDERS!" Hightail cried, and from the mere tone of his brother's voice Shortear knew at once it was serious.
"Where Outlanders?" Broadpatch called.
"Wake all," urged Black-Ruff.
Brightbrow grabbed her stick, a broad, heavy staff with a tough, blunt end, and prepared for the worst. She had dealt with the Outlanders before.
And she could never forget.
But young Shortear had never met an Outlander, and she and Hightail hoped the day would never come. Yet now it had.
A pinprick of golden light in the distance became two, then three and four and more. The Outlanders had stolen the flame of the plains-folk, who cherished the gift of the sky-light.
The Outlanders plundered that gift, and defiled it.
A deep rumbling thundered across the hills as the horn-herders began to stampede in a panic. The highbrows stuck close together, back to back, wielding their staffs in anticipation of what was to come. The lights were but the torch-bearers. There were many more concealed in the darkness.
"LOOK OUT!" cried Hightail, tackling his younger brother out of the way as the frightened horn-herders narrowly missed him as they galloped in unison away from the flickering lights.
And amidst the dark and chaos, it all began.
Sounds of snarling, angry cries, as the invaders made their assault. The sounds of pain, and fear, as highbrows were beset by fierce teeth in the faint light, only to be backed by startled whimpers as the assailants were struck and beaten back by the staffs and clubs of the shepherds.
Shortear had never seen such terror before.
Not even the assault of the voiceless-ones he faced not long ago came anywhere close. Those were beasts that merely hungered. These were their folk. Better creatures, wiser creatures. Yet why did they strike out? Why did they behave as wild beasts? Did they want the horn-herders? They did not seem to be taking them.
A heavy body fell at Shortear's feet and he flinched with a yelp of terror. It was Broadpatch, his face bloodied, almost black in the faint orange light.
"Run..." was the only word he could muster, before he gave a choking cough and was still.
Shortear obeyed.
"STAY CLOSE!" called Hightail, leaping over Broadpatch's motionless body and shielding his younger brother from the onslaught. On all sides, the horn-herders milled about in terror, grunting and bleating and adding to the confusion of an already chaotic scene.
Hightail huddled over his younger brother, who peered out from beneath his wounded body, eyes wide in horror at the sight. The horn-herders parted as the wave of torch-bearers forced their way through to the front-
-and then, they saw him.
One Outlander, greater than all the rest. His eyes gleamed with a blazing fury unlike any they had seen, reflecting the light of the torch he waved in his jaws, leaving trails of embers as he brandished his fiery flag. In the orange light, they glimpsed his face: a face of death, a white shape like a bleached skull yet eyes as dark as their own, not pale like the white-eyes.
He cried out a command in a foreign tongue, and for one tense moment the Outlanders froze in their tracks, still as stones: then, within but a second, they were possessed with renewed bloodlust and threw themselves at the highbrows, ten, twenty, even more.
"ESCAPE! NOW!" howled Black-Ruff, valiantly making one final stand against the tide of assailants in the dark. He swung his staff with utmost force and heard a skull break-- but there were many more, piling onto him.
"ESCAPE!" he cried one final time.
"ESCAPE! ESCAPE!" urged Brightbrow, pushing her brothers onward.
It was a lost cause to stand their ground.
--------
"Let the fold-paw pups not grow," Whitesmoke crooned to himself, the mantra his father, Ashfall, had taught him.
Yet these weren't fold-paw pups.
They were pups of houndfolk.
Two of them, cowering beneath the frail legs of their elder, gazing up with frightened eyes.
For a moment, Whitesmoke hesitated.
These were but pups.
Yet he hardened his heart, and knew what he must do. They were Them. He would do it for Us. They were but pups, but only for now.
He prepared to wreak the unspeakable upon the young Thems, before they could become old, dangerous Thems, but, in the last possible instant, was halted by the chorus of howls that echoed from the distance, and were approaching fast.
Five dark figures, bounding over bearing wood-teeth. Led by one, front and center, one eye gleaming blue as the sea, the other brown as the earth.
Whitesmoke braced himself as the reinforcements gathered.
The shore-people had company.
And the sight of their wood-teeth, sharp ends darkened by grazer-beast blood, extinguished whatever fragment of compassion he felt for the pups of Them. Of what they could become, of what they could make.
Let the fold-paw pups not grow.
-----------
Sharpstripe's ears pricked up with elation as the chorus of familiar howls came closer. At last, by utmost fortune, they had finally arrived. Strange-Eyes, Switch-Eyes, and the three younger ones, Sunbeam, Brushtail and Shade, all armed and posed to fight.
The invaders pounced: but the small cavalry was ready. Sharpstripe seized her own wood-tooth and joined the fray. For her pups. For Pale-Beard.
The wild ones paced around them, some waving torches of golden light, others skulking in darkness, striking unseen. One lunged, and Strange-Eyes hesitated not: a sharp strike, a pained yelp, and the intruder ran back, leaving a trail of dark blood on the light sand. Others came, others pounced, trying to break the morale of the pack, trying to reach Pale-Beard and his young ones--
--and mayhem ensued as, unseen, an invader that had snuck to the rear threw himself at the helpless young, but found his jaws clamp against old, sinewy flesh instead. Rotting, broken teeth gnawed feebly in retaliation, but it was scarcely enough to loose his grip.
"FATHER!" cried Strange-Eyes.
At once the pack leader was upon the Outlander, striking and spearing with his wood-tooth until the cruel jaws fell limp against the elder's nape. At the front, Brushtail protectively covered his younger siblings, unattended, while his sisters flanked him and their mother on either side.
"Leave young pups be, yi-roop!" cried Shade, cursing the invaders with the vilest of insults.
"Mother! What do?" yelped Sunbeam, unsure of her next course.
"Stand together! As pack!" urged Sharpstripe, striking another Outlander with her wood-tooth in the hip.
By now many of the Outlanders were wounded, some limped, yet, still they carried on. For the baywulves, the shore-people, were most skilled at crafting weaponry. Ones they used for grazer-beasts and sea-creatures.
But today, pierced fellow southhound flesh.
At the command of the great pale one the Outlanders circled, like flyer-beasts over carrion, then, they lunged, at once, and were swiftly fended off by a parry of wood-teeth. Pained yelps echoed on as more were wounded as the conflict dragged on, and indeed, the defenders themselves were battered and bloodied. Shade had lost part of an ear, and blood leaked down her head, Sunbeam's face was raked across by fangs and claws, Brushtail bled from a large gash that ran from shoulder to hip.
Young hunters, but eight seasons old, now marked for life by their courage.
Left and right the brave young fighters struck, new in their skill yet pushed to defend their pack. Outlanders persisted, hobbled in pain, some fell injured upon the sand as they pounced upon an enemy that was more resilient than anticipated.
Strange-Eyes tended to his father while Sharpstripe led the fight, side by side with her eldest Switch-Eyes as the Outlanders encircled the pair--
"MOTHER! NO!"
The great pale one lunged at Sharpstripe, and Switch-Eyes leapt to her defense, putting himself--and his wood-tooth-- between the assailant and his mother--
--who, in his blind fury, landed right on the sharp end of the wood-tooth with his full weight, deeper, and then deeper still.
Then it was all over.
"I...I killed him."
Switch-Eyes trembled, with horror, with guilt, as the rest of the Outlanders fell back with a terrified chorus of cries and retreated, as well as they could on bleeding paws, their murderous spirit quenched with the fall of their leader.
"I killed him," repeated Switch-Eyes, paralyzed with shock at what he had done.
He was a hunter. His wood-tooth had pierced flesh and bathed in blood before.
He was no stranger to taking life.
Yet not the life of houndfolk.
Never before.
To end life was a necessity. It was a part of nature. It just was. Yet he, in spite of being a flesh-eating hunt-beast, took no joy in taking life.
And now he was a murderer.
"You did well, what you must," reassured Sharpstripe, knowing his act in the heat of conflict was an act justified by circumstances. "We win. You win. You protect, we win," she said, comfortingly, as her eldest, a mighty warrior, now nuzzled meekly against his mother like a frightened pup.
"I killed him." Switch-Eyes repeated once more, unable to shake the words.
"He deserved. Good to die," Shade snapped bitterly, as Sunbeam nursed her wounded ear.
Strange-Eyes surveyed the damage, as he overlooked the aftermath.
The Outlanders were limping away, bearing their flickering torches and leaving trails of blood in the sand. All but one.
The great pale one lay upon the sand, the wound of a wood-tooth through his throat and deep into his chest. Silent and still as he would for eternity.
Strange-Eyes watched as his pack, his family, nuzzled and licked one another in reassurance, grooming their wounds, cleaning blood--theirs and the Outlanders--off their matted fur.
The battle had been won for the day, but at a great price.
For more than one body lay cold and still in the sand of the shore.
------------
"LET NONE REMAIN! LET THE FOLD-PAW PUPS NOT GROW!"
Ashfall, leader of the Firethieves, roared in fury as he goaded his pack into the siege. The highbrows were scattered and fleeing, their horn-herders gone astray, some of them fallen under the might, the unstoppable might of the Great Half-Spirit and his brotherhood--
"GREAT ASHFALL!" cried an Outlander, rushing to his side, his bloodied flanks heaving from the exertion.
"You DARE abandon?" he snapped, recognizing the individual from the other half of his force. "Your group siege the shore-folk! You are here! WHY?"
The Outlander hesitated with the grim news, dreading the wrath of the feared leader.
"Whitesmoke...dead."
----------
"The Outlanders...running," Brightbrow noted, looking back from a distance as she and her brothers fled north to the mountains.
The forces of the enemy had suddenly stopped with a furious cry of the pale skull-faced one. Now their forces crept back, like a receding tide, leaving behind them a ruin of a place that was once the highbrows' sanctuary.
Highbrows lay wounded, some cold, motionless. The horn-herders had fled in all directions, a few surviving highbrows bravely trying to round them up.
"We must run." Brightbrow urged. "Not like Outlander to flee. Must be trap. Might return."
"Brother hurt," pleaded Shortear.
Hightail limped, his left rear leg dangling painfully as his hip spurted blood.
"We must go," Hightail insisted, in spite of the pain.
"To where?"
"Anywhere. While we have chance."
----------
Amidst the smoldering glare of the dropped torches, some of which had ignited dry shore grass, a pale body lay still upon the now desolate battleground.
There, the hardest and darkest of hearts broke, its void filled with ever more hatred than ever before.
"Whitesmoke."
The sole ray of light in Ashfall's dark spirit, now extinguished and leaving but blackness.
"You say no other Wind-Storm. Now this, Wind-Storm again!"
Ashfall glanced up at the spiteful voice.
"Dungstain," snarled Ashfall with teeth bared, making it all but evident that a savage in mourning was a savage still.
"Some Half-Spirit you are," Dungstain sneered, pacing around the Outlander leader and his fallen heir. "You say, lead us to glory! No! You lead us to death!"
"You lead Whitesmoke to death!"
"SILENCE!" Ashfall snarled.
"YOU FEAR COAST-PEOPLE! YOU FEAR HERDERS! YOU FEAR THEM AND FIGHT THEM, AND THE US DIE!"
"YOU! ARE! COWARD!" hollered Dungstain, seething with rage and spite.
Had Ashfall not been held back by grief he would have thrown himself upon Dungstain, torn the traitor's throat out with his teeth, shown him no mercy for his insolence.
Yet he held back, as he knew what he had said was true.
Ashfall, the fabled Half-Spirit, had led his own son to his untimely end.
For he feared the Them too much.
Now, he had reason to make Them fear.
"Leave." Ashfall snarled at Dungstain, as he gently nuzzled Whitesmoke's lifeless forehead one final time. "I will not warn again."
Dungstain paced away, grumbling under his breath.
Ashfall was weak and foolish, he thought. Weak and foolish were no place in the Outlanders. Only the strong can belong. Ashfall was unworthy, only paraded and admired by his half-skullface heritage. But he was not a god.
Dungstain glanced back at the great leader, howling at the consequence of his own hubris. Out of earshot, he silently spoke, to himself.
"Ashfall...must fall."
-----------
It was the Longest Darktime, in the midst of the cold-season. Here there was nary a day, yet slowly it had been coming to an end. What would have been noon was now a dull twilight, where the great yellow-sun teased beneath the horizon, lighting the sky in tantalizing yellows and oranges yet never breaking forth from the sea to spread its rays, at least not yet.
"Where now?" Shortear asked.
"Anywhere, not home." Brightbrow urged.
The three highbrows had fled northward, away from home, away from the valley. It was no longer safe.
"What about family?" cried Shortear.
Brightbrow paused, hesitantly.
"No more."
Crooked-Paw. Black-Ruff. Broadpatch.
All gone.
All that remained were scattered highbrows of the other, allied packs, which stubbornly stuck around the valley in desperation. But Brightbrow could not afford to stay.
What if the Outlanders returned?
She had warned the rest of the survivors, but they would not listen.
Alongside them, Hightail limped on three paws. His rear leg was wounded, swollen, yet defiantly he endured. They needed to escape, by all means.
Lest the Outlanders strike again.
---------
Pale-Beard was seventy-four seasons old.
And he had no more stories to tell.
But he had told all he could, what he needed to, to Strange-Eyes, and Switch-Eyes, and the pups.
And both the youngest pups were unharmed with his effort.
The pack had fled their den: there was no cause in staying. The Outlanders might return. Would return. They had been angered. They were now the Firethieves' enemy for a cause.
The blood of one of their leaders stained their wood-teeth.
Now, the family travelled northward, their only hope to survive.
And with them, borne along by Strange-Eyes, Switch-Eyes and Sharpstripe, Pale-Beard journeyed with them one final time.
At last, far from danger at the moment, the weary pack ceased their travel and laid him to rest, on the warm sand of the coasts he had roamed for seventy-four long seasons, where the shore met the sea, lit faintly orange by the red-sun that visited while its great yellow sibling was away. The solemn scene cast its spell, its somber atmosphere hovering over the pack as a reminder of all with a beginning having an end.
After a few silent moments, nothing audible but the gentle lapping of the waves, the humming of the breeze, the calls of the distant flyer beasts, the pack glanced back one last time, and began to move on.
"Look," Switch-Eyes said. "Storm-spirits."
Above where Pale-Beard came to rest, great flyer-beasts began to circle. Flyer-beasts, with faces like houndfolk, the heralds of the storms, began to gather.
"Come," Strange-Eyes urged, for the sky-creatures had come to return Pale-Beard to the world as was nature's course. A sight not very pleasant to see, but a part of nature, a cycle of the world's workings, that they, the story-tellers, the houndfolk, were but merely a small part of.
Sometimes nature was a thing of beauty, sometimes it was unsightly. This was the latter, and the two young pups did not need to witness it. At least not yet.
Pale-Beard will become part of the storm-spirits. And they too some day will become return to part of the world when the time came.
Their three older siblings urged them on.
Soon the flock, and Pale-Beard, were but a fading speck on the horizon as the pack of Strange-Eyes resumed their exodus.
Pale-Beard was seventy-four seasons old, and in those seasons, he had told many stories.
He was never again to tell another one.
Yet those he told stories to now tell them to others still. That was the spirit of the story-telling hunt-beast. The everlasting stories they told endured longer than their fragile flesh and bone.
And in those stories, he lived on, so long as there was someone to tell them.
------
"We are lost," Shortear cried.
Many days, the three highbrows journeyed. Onto the north, where the great mountains rose. Over and through a part where they were not quite so steep and rough, where they, for now, were safe.
There were no horn-herders here. They had to make do with what small prey they could catch. But they were fast and flighty. They were built for bigger grazer-beasts.
"Where now? We are lost," Shortear repeated.
"Not lost." Brightbrow urged. "We go. Find new place. New home."
"Why not home?" asked Shortear.
"No...no more home," Hightail grunted wearily, with gritted teeth, as he limped after the two.
"Brother must stop," pleaded Shortear. And after several days of trekking through the mountains, Brightbrow was forced to agree.
Hightail's back leg had swollen and festered worse, and began to smell of death.
"We need stop now," begged Shortear. "We stop...or he die."
"Yes," relented Brightbrow. "But we beyond mountain. In strange land."
They had crossed the great range of mountains that cut across the edge of the horizon, that they could see from their valley bordering where the sky and the earth met as one. None of their pack, or the valley-folk, had gone beyond.
Until now.
Not that they had a choice.
"Rest," urged Brightbrow, as Hightail laid on the soft grass, in too much pain to continue.
"Where go now?" asked Shortear. "We lost. New place. Strange scary place. Brother hurt. We lost. We alone."
A twig snapped.
"Not alone," Brightbrow said, her ears pricking up in surprise at distant indistinct chatter.
They were in the land to the north, the mysterious land beyond the mountains, a land the herders had never seen. A land, to them, uncharted.
But not uninhabited.
---------
"Grey-ones. Great grey-ones. Folk or beast or some between. True and real and there."
"No such thing. No beast speak?"
"Never see like them. Not before."
"Like scaly-creepers. Speak not think."
"Grey-ones. Speak and think."
"You know?"
"They speak. I hear not understand."
"Where from? What want? Why here?"
"One hurt. All hurt, one bad."
"Maybe...help."
"Why help?"
"Great grey-ones speak. Think and speak. Maybe story-teller. Like us."
"We not speak them. Strange tongue."
"Can try."
------------
82 notes
·
View notes