Maverick

Chapter 5. Maverick

Dusk came to the mountainside forest with the soft chittering of waking nightclimbers and the plaintive cooing of lovesick redwings. It came on a gentle southerly breeze that spoke of young green shoots bravely thrusting up through the warm, damp soil, and twisted old trees grudgingly coming to life again after yet another long dormant season.

Like the silent gray ghost of the winter just past, Maverick padded quietly through the lengthening shadows of the tall trees, alert to the soft sounds and drinking in the earthy smells of the warm spring evening.

He moved quickly and confidently across the needle-covered forest floor, as befitted an eighty-kilo carnivore with something on his mind. Yet there was a nervous twitch in his naked, whiplike tail that suggested different emotions at work; an occasional darting glance over his shoulder suggested he was not as brave as he seemed. At the edge of a clearing, as he stopped and stood up on his hind legs, it became apparent that he was favoring his left rear leg. For a moment the breeze ruffled his mottled grayish-brown fur, exposing the long pink scar of a recently healed wound; he was leaning against the tree trunk for support, not cover. Closing his ice-blue eyes, he lifted his muzzle and tasted the air.

A faint, acrid scent caught his attention. “Sharpfang!” He added a guttural curse in BeastTongue; as if in answer, a deep bellow echoed across the valley.

Maverick’s long, fur-covered ears shot up, and a look of puzzlement crossed his wolf-like face. “That ’ s not right. ” He closed his eyes again, cocked his head sideways, and tried to concentrate on what the wind was telling him. “ A female scent, but a male roar?’, The bellow sounded again-quite nearby now-this time accompanied by the loud, rending crack of a fair-sized tree being knocked flat.

Maverick’s eyes snapped wide open, and he grabbed for the stone knife in the scabbard on his left shoulder as if a knife could really be of use against a hungry sharpfang. A moment later the beast leaped into view not fifty trots away across the clearing, and Maverick froze.

The giant reptile charged across the clearing on its two massive hind legs, ploughing through the undergrowth and crushing everything in its way like a scaly brown juggernaut. Maverick stood rooted in one spot, staring at onrushing death. The sharpfang’s head was huge; long, armored, and bristling with teeth, it whipped back and forth as if the beast had brain enough to feel fury. Long-taloned hind feet slashed through the brush; the thick, muscular tail trailing behind thrashed whatever had survived the talons into a pulpy green mass.

The sharpfang did not even break stride as it raised its head and opened its great jaws to roar again.

For a long fraction of a second, Maverick watched the dying sunlight flash off the beast’s long wet fangs. Then he sniffed the air again, let out an anxious little whine, and dropped his ears in hope. Maybe, just maybe, the toothy monster wasn’t interested in him. Allowing for windage, there was a family-minded female sharpfang down in the marsh about six hundred trots off to his left.

And if he were wrong?

Maverick carefully loosened the knife in its scabbard. With his injured leg, he knew he couldn’t outrun the sharpfang. That left him only one other option: Wait until the beast was close enough to lick, and then hope that a fast and intelligent counterattack could overcome its overwhelming but mindless strength. He shifted his weight onto the balls of his feet. Reflexively, his naked, whip-like tail tucked itself between his legs and coiled around his thigh. He had to wait for the right moment; exactly the right moment…

A moment later the advancing sharpfang apparently caught a whiff of the female and had a change of heart. It veered off toward the marsh. Saplings crunched; redwings screeched; Maverick stood his ground and pretended to be a tree stump. The beast passed close enough for him to take a long look straight into the fiery, bottomless red pit of its left eye.

Another moment later, and it was gone. Ears erect, Maverick listened to the crunching and roaring as it receded into the distance. Then he lolled out his long pink tongue, wuffed out a little laugh, and cracked into a wide, extremely relieved, panting grin. “They say love has no sense of smell. I’d guess it’s blind, too. ”

He dropped to all fours, nosed around the base of the tree, marked it with his scent, and gave the male sharpfang more time to see if it was coming back for another pass or being followed by any competitors. When the forest at last grew quiet again, save for the thrashing and bellowing of giant lizards in love, he slipped the knife back into its scabbard and set off toward the northwest at a rapid trot.

“Well, Mavvy old boy,” he told himself as he jogged along, “I’d say you handled that pretty well. There’s not many kin who’d stand up to a charging sharpfang like that.

“Of course, the old ones always said that it’s the running away that attracts their attention. ”

He paused to sniff around the base of a rock outcropping and mark it with his scent. Then he went on.

“But here’s another thought: Their eyes are on opposite sides of their heads. Maybe the reason sharpfangs swing their heads when they walk is because they can’t see what’s straight in front of them.

“Interesting idea, Mavvy. So the best way to attack a sharpfang is from right under its chin? That little piece of information ought to be worth something to the next pack we run into. ”

At the thought of a pack, his left rear leg gave him a little twinge to remind him of the last pack he’d run into. “Ooh. A bad night for rock climbing, old boy. Still, it’s got to be done. ”

After a year as a packless outcast, Maverick had stopped noticing that his silent thoughts had turned into one-kin conversations.

He detoured around a patch of stingwort, stopped to mark another tree, and then continued. “But while we’re on the subject of sharpfangs: Mother, they sure are noisy things, aren’t they? It’s a wonder they ever manage to surprise a hunting pack.

“Actually, no it isn’t. The kin in hunting packs spend so much time arguing with each other and bickering over status, the wonder is that they are ever able to surprise anything. ”

As the last ebb of the sunlight slipped away, Maverick finally broke out of the tall forest and reached the foothills. He sat down, paused for a reflective scratch, and stared up at the forbidding, rocky crags.

“Yes,” he told himself, “running solo is definitely the way to go. No status fights, no orders, no drooling little pups slowing you down. ”

His voice took a darker turn. “No food, no warm cave to sleep in, no family. ” Maverick’s voice dropped to a breathy whisper, as if he had finally become aware that he was talking to himself. “Let’s face it, lad. We’ve been on the run too long. We-l have got to find a pack to join. ” He thought back on the winter he’d just lived through and shuddered involuntarily. “I’ve got to find a pack soon. ” Taking a deep breath, he dug his paws into the loose gravel and started up the side of the mountain. Smallface, the lesser of the two moons, was just rising. He had a lot of climbing to do before Largeface rose.

Halfway up the slope, he surprised a feeding whistlepig. The stupid little furball tried to hide in plain sight; scrabbling and clawing, Maverick fell on it and bit its head off with one snap of his long, toothy jaws. The meat was tough and nearly tasteless, but he carefully chewed and swallowed each bite.

Excluding carrion, it was the first meal he’d eaten in three days.