Barbarian Alien(37)
I’m impressed. “It’s an interesting weapon. You are quite clever.”
She beams at me. “I used to hunt with a bow all the time as a teenager. This isn’t quite the same, and I’m having to adjust as I go, but it’s close. I think I can get it to work.” Liz pats her waist. “Now I need to make an arrow pouch to go here.”
I nod. “I can help you with that when we get back.”
She bites her lip, happiness on her face, and my khui begins to sing. She’s beautiful, even with her flat, strange human features. Her khui responds to mine, and her smile falters a little.
Ah yes. More of the strange human rituals. Denying a mating. I ignore it and gesture at the twin suns, now high in the skies. “Are you ready to hunt then? We can head to the water.”
“Water?” She brightens. “Is it another heated stream? I could use a bath.” She lifts her tunic and wrinkles her nose. “I’m a little sweaty.”
Her scent is like perfume to me, but I shrug. “We can bathe, or we can hunt.”
“Let’s hunt. Maybe we can bathe later tonight?” Her expression is innocent. “If we catch something, I might even let you wash my back.”
I will find her the slowest, most sluggish creature in all the snows so she may fill it with her darts.
LIZ
Hunting with Raahosh is kinda fun. The air is crisp, and even though the snow is heavy, the twin suns are shining and it feels good to get out and explore. I’ve been cooped up too long in that cave. Raahosh isn’t the most patient of men, but I can hold my own. My bow is a work in progress, but I’m confident I can get it to work after a few test shots.
“There,” Raahosh says as we crest a craggy hill. He pulls a strand of hair from his head and releases it, checking if we’re upwind or not. He grunts and then gestures over the horizon. “Do you see the tracks?”
I squint. “How the hell can you see anything from this far away?”
He grabs my chin and tips it down. “You’re not looking at the snow.”
I pull away from him and peer down over the ridge. Sure enough, there are tracks in the snow. They head off over the next crest. “So we’re heading in the right direction?”
“We are,” he agrees. “You look at the snow…or you can follow your nose.”
“My nose?”
“The smell of the water that comes heated from the earth.”
I sniff and he’s right – there’s a faint whiff of rotten eggs in the air, which means there’s water nearby. “Gotcha.”
He arches one heavy brow at me, which is impressive because his forehead is damn near unmovable with all that plating. “What kind of hunting did your father show you?”
“If that’s a crack aimed at my dead father, I will kick your ass—“
He reaches for my chin again and tips my head toward him before I swat his hand away. His hard mouth is curled at the edges in amusement. “So defensive. I meant nothing by it. Your weapons are different. I assumed you had different hunting methods.”
Oh. I relax a little. “Well, my daddy owned some land out in the sticks. He had a deer blind and we’d set up near the trails.” I sketch out to him with words what a deer blind is, and he nods understanding. “And then, of course, there’s the deer corn or the salt lick.”
“Deer corn?”
“Yeah, you kinda feed them in the same spot every day and stuff. Then when they’re nice and fat and used to handouts, they come to you instead of chasing them down.”
He grunts acknowledgment and then shields a hand over his eyes, gazing down at the snow. “We have kits that do that to a few two-fangs back at the home caves. But we call those creatures ‘pets’.”
“Hey,” I say defensively, thwapping him on the arm. “Not every family can afford a freezer full of fresh meat, you know. You do what you have to in order to survive, Mister Judgey.” Of course, I remember saying the same thing to my father back when I was younger. Pot, kettle and all that. “If to puts food on the table, it’s hunting.”
“Wise words,” he says. “But now you must learn to track.”
He’s right, of course. “Lead on, o wise one.”
We cross over the hills and I slog through the snow, following him. About fifty yards away, I see the bubbling pool of water, bright blue against the snow. Which is great…except that there’s a cliff about five feet ahead of us, and it’s a sheer drop for at least twenty or thirty feet. Drinking at the water is a shaggy, pony-like creature that looks like a cross between Bambi and a sheepdog.