A New Night

The Hunter of the Mountain

At last feeling a ledge after climbing in the dark of night, I pulled myself up, rolled, and braced my arms for an attack. But none came. I lowered my arms. Nobody was there, but … I was at the top! Shakily, I stood to my feet and looked around. The summit was about four or five acres. It was mostly just shrubs, a few vines, and orange flowers. The trees only grew as tall as my hip, with round yellow fruits on them. Around fifty long-necked creatures with thick gray wool grazed on the leaves of the small trees. When they lazily looked up at me with the mildest interest, I noticed they only lifted their heads a few inches. Though they looked more like llamas or alpacas, their neck gave me the impression of inverted giraffes. Instead of their heads staying in the air, these animals seemed permanently stooped so that their heads could only rise a few feet above the ground.

I turned around and stumbled back a couple feet when the immensity of the height startled me. Beyond the immediate drop, however, I could fully see the entire jungle. It was encircled by the Gods’ Wall and sea beyond on every side.

Seeing it triggered another tinge of Deja-vu. In my imagination, I saw a time when there was no water or jungle. Then the feeling was gone, and I tried unsuccessfully to remember more.

“The answers to your questions can only be found if you climb up to seek them.”

I jumped, turned, and saw a Hunter who I distinctly remembered not having been there before. He was much taller than most of his kind. He was similar in stature to the Queen, only clearly better nourished. His snout was also thicker, showing teeth that jutted like large round fangs. Across his black body and his almost invisible leopard-print pattern, there were old scars. He held a staff—the first weapon I’d seen in this world other than my own. His voice was deep, giving a low rumble of unannounced power.

The Hunter of the Mountain continued, “You have not come here for answers. You still follow the path of the slave, trying to save your friend. Unfortunately for you, I cannot allow anyone to take this mountain away from me.”

“Is that why you killed the other Hunters down there?” I asked, trying to put on an angry and defiant tone and not quite managing to do so.

The Hunter of the Mountain blinked as if the question didn’t interest him. It made me angry and terrified all at the same time. But my mind was on what he had said, the real reason I was here.

It was true. The most important thing to me was to save Romalla. But how could I do that? The Hunter hadn’t attacked me, at least in the last few minutes. Also, I still wasn’t completely sold on the moral ramifications of goading him into attacking me if it was in my power to keep that from happening. Somehow, it didn’t seem all that different from an outright attack.

“True, it would be the same as killing me in cold blood,” the Hunter of the Mountain said. He had read my thoughts.

I felt my cheeks glow pink, and I remembered to repeat an annoying pop song in my head. With what was at stake and with my brain so scattered, this was even harder than before.

“Fortunately for you … you have shiny outer bones that may be the answer to ascending to the city,” the Hunter of the Mountain said. For a moment, he just studied my hands—claws still extracted—and then my feet. Then, without warning, he turned slightly and sent his tail at my face.

My machetes responded immediately, and I shielded my glass face with them. But the attack never came. Oh no …

The Hunter of the Mountain used the distraction to close the fifteen feet between us by pole vaulting with his staff. He landed with an impaling motion that left his staff impaling the dirt beneath one of my feet.

“You missed-” I began to stutter, unable to believe my luck.

He knelt and then used both hands to lift the opposite end of the staff over his head. This tore through the ground beneath my foot and sent me tumbling backwards. Clearly, he hadn’t missed. I crashed onto my shoulder and then rolled onto my back. I lifted my hands to block just as the staff struck, driving me deeper into the earth with the surprising impact.

The Hunter switched his grip and pulled his arm back to hold the staff like a spear, ready to impale my head. His eyes showed a cold look that promised he would absolutely kill me.

They triggered my memories—the man with the gun. Fear ran like electricity through me, and I screamed, seeing nothing but the hazy yellow blast and the tiniest bit of red before everything went black. Then … ever so slowly … I found that I could see again.

I saw the Hunter’s throat in one of my clawed hands. Blood was pouring from his nose, and the end of his staff was now in my other hand. This new situation was the only indication of what I’d done; I had no memory of it.

In the back of my mind, something told me that all I had to do to save Romalla was to kill this lousy, murdering Hunter. I was ready as I could possibly be. The importance of his wretched life paled in comparison to that of Romalla.

But it wasn’t enough. My determination left me, and I dropped him to the ground. I watched him for a moment, considering whether to throw his stick off the cliff or hit him with it to ensure he didn’t attack again.

But the Hunter of the Mountain just studied me from where he had fallen in the dirt. There was none of the rage or wounded ego that I had expected. Instead, he examined me again, just like before. Clearly, he had no intention to attack again.

I dropped his stick and sighed. This had been a waste of time. I turned and began to walk back to the edge of the cliff. I would have to find a way to sneak through the jungle and get to Romalla. If nothing else, maybe my climb had at least served to trick whatever Hunters had been sent to watch me. Or perhaps if I grabbed the badly disfigured heads of one of the dead Hunters on the mountain, I could trick them.

The thought of this made me feel more than a little nauseous. Still, it wasn’t as bad as severing the head from a living Hunter. And the idea didn’t make me feel … wrong on the inside.

“What are you doing?” the Hunter of the Mountain asked. Without much of a sound, he hopped to his feet and joined me at my side.

I wondered if it was so he could watch my retreat and get some twisted enjoyment out of it. “Go away,” I said, shaking my head and making a face to indicate that I was not in the mood to be mocked for my softness. In the back of my mind, I wondered what sort of irritatingly cute little emoticon my digital face displayed.

“So you intend to return for the friend that the Queen stole from you,” the Hunter of the Mountain said. “What you need to succeed is the help of a Predator who is not squeamish about brutality. In exchange, I need the help of your stone features to ascend to the Sky City.”

I cocked my head. “You’re just going to trick me into killing those other Hunters.”

The Hunter blinked slowly with an expression that could only be described as amused. “It would be a favorable outcome if the Queen were to die. Along with that sniveling cretin that asked for my head. However, they are of secondary importance to my true prey.”

I thought for a moment and then asked, “The Sky City?”

“You understood the double meaning of my words,” The Hunter of the Mountain said with a mild raise of his eyebrows.

“Yeah … we call that a metaphor,” I replied with a tired sigh.

“A metaphor,” The Hunter of the Mountain repeated. “I do hope that the sort of knowledge guarded by the Alpha Predators is more interesting than your labels for speech.”

“Same,” I said, too tired to be overly irritable about his jab.

“While you may not be an Alpha Predator of them in the strictest sense,” the Hunter of the Mountain said, “I have the feeling that you will find things familiar to you if we ascend to their city. Yes, your assistance may be useful for longer than I had initially thought.”

I turned to face him and put my hands on my hip. “What do you want out of me?”

The Hunter of the Mountain paused for a moment and then said, “My intention is to learn their ways. With their knowledge, I can return with newfound power to scatter the city of pestilence and filth that those Hunters below have made.”

I looked past the ledge near us to see the general area of jungle from which I had come. It made sense for him to dislike them, I supposed. They hadn’t struck me as being particularly great neighbors. On top of that, I was beginning to get the feeling that the corpses below were the results of murder attempts from before I had ever entered the picture.

But the way he had said he wanted to scatter them didn’t give me the same impression that the Queen’s murderous insanity had. So I asked, “Why?”

The Hunter pondered on this for a moment. “Hunters must be self-reliant, for we are alpha predators of the jungle. Each of us should be noble, powerful, brutal. Each of us a force to be reckoned with.”

I stared at him for a moment, feeling confused. “But the Queen is powerful. She has an entire fortress.”

“It is a perversion of nature,” the Hunter said, licking his maw distastefully. He looked out at the llama creatures with the long necks, still grazing, with an expression of contempt. “When she started her little herd, she created something abominable. The weak are given a shelter through which to survive. They can use their numbers to destroy truly strong Hunters. They then mate with one another, making even weaker young.”

I studied him closer. While I didn’t particularly care for the Queen’s village, it wasn’t because they lived communally. Quite the opposite, in fact. When the Night People did community, it was to care for all equally. They shared food and warmth, so their community was stronger than any of the bats could have been individually. The Queen, however, was self-serving … and the children were not cared for. All of the community seemed to exist to serve her every whim. It was like her viewpoint mimicked that of the Hunter of the Mountain, except only when it was convenient to her.”

“While you do not understand the value of individual strength in your miserable state of … codependency,” the Hunter of the Mountain said with a nauseous tone. “You still understand. We Hunters are not ants. We are kings … and lowering all but one of us to a state of servitude is vile. If I can show them that, the Hunters who follow her will leave. Nobody will stop me from taking back what is mine.”

“Yours?” I asked.

“My child,” the Hunter said with a rumbling growl that betrayed a depth of rage that I had not yet seen from him. “Instead of being cast into the jungle where he can be shaped into a king like his ancestors before him, he is left to starve and scrounge for scraps in that damn village!”

I suddenly felt cold, not because of the snow or the chilly winds. “The Queen took him?”

The Hunter of the Mountain shook his head. “Far worse. She birthed him.”

I cocked my head again, completely lost for words. “She … and you … I mean, you clearly hate her!”

“I sense soft feelings from you regarding finding mates,” The Hunter of the Mountain said. “Like the one that the Queen took from you. Yes, your emotions for her stink of vulnerability.”

My cheeks grew bright red. I … I had no idea how to process that and cursed myself for failing to keep the Hunter of the Mountain out of my head.

“We Hunters find mates among those we respect in power. To make offspring who will become more powerful still. Despite what the Queen may pretend with her abomination of a herd, even she is not so far gone as to tolerate a weak mate. We conceived despite our mutual loathing; no other is suitable for either of us. It’s why her suitor wants my head.

I sat down for a moment. This situation was getting more complicated by the moment, despite it being overbearingly complex to begin with. “I need to think,” I said and rubbed the top of my metallic head.

“Fine,” the Hunter of the Mountain said indifferently. “I need to get food. You have until then to decide.”

-O-

By the time the Hunter of the Mountain had returned from the grove of short trees on the opposite side of the summit, I had decided. In the cover of darkness, I would go back and get Romalla by myself. I was finished being a pawn being played between these people, and none of them would be satisfied without bloodshed. The sun was setting, and I had probably waited long enough for any of the Queen’s Hunters who might be spying on me to think I had died at the hands of the Hunter of the Mountain.

With my mind resolved, I stood and tried to contain the sour feeling in my stomach at the thought of climbing back down.

The Hunter of the Mountain, no doubt sensing what I was about to do, returned. He was dragging a sizeable piece of meat covered in snow. I guessed this was part of one of the long-necked llamas he kept. He beckoned me to sit at the fire while snow began to flurry around us. The wind had also picked up and blew gently through the stones on the mountain with a whistled melody.

“I’m going back for her,” I said before he could speak and put doubt into my mind like his kind were so good at doing.

“You’re still in viewing distance of the Hunter who followed you here,” the Hunter of the Mountain replied, entirely unphased. “As long as they walk in the valley, they will see you if you descend. Wait until they are sure enough that you are dead and return to the jungle.”

I groaned as I put my hands on either side of my head. Then, after a moment, I began to stare into the fire. I was reluctantly warmed both physically and mentally by it. I sighed and then said, “Thanks.”

With a shrug, the Hunter pointed at my arms and said, “I only tell you because your long claws seem like they would work efficiently for cutting meat.”

Of course that was his reasoning. A mental image popped into my head of taking the steak and tossing it off the mountain. Instead, however, I sighed and took the meat. I began to tear it effortlessly with my metal fingers, trying not to think about the fact that I was doing food prep for the same Hunter who I was supposed to have assassinated.

As I worked, I finally asked, “Everybody calls you the Hunter of the Mountain. It’s a mouthful.” I noted passively at the newfound numbness with which I spoke.

“You do use many sounds to refer to me,” the Hunter said, taking a sliced piece of meat from the snow beneath me and placing it on a stone near the fire. It seemed he had no intention of getting it close enough to be cooked, but it was able to dethaw. “I am Dro.”

“Bassello,” I replied.

Dro blinked indifferently, no doubt already knowing my name. Instead of a reply, he changed the subject. “We need to plan how to kill the Queen and her suitor before they can do those we wish to take from her.”

“We?” I asked, almost dry-choking on the words.

“You want to get to the Alpha Predators as much as I do,” Dro said. “With your mate no longer a factor, I will have no need to bargain with you.”

I felt my cheeks burn red. “Romalla is my friend! And besides, I don’t want to kill anyone. I had the chance to kill you but couldn’t make myself do it. So, now your strategy is to get my help to kill two people? Plus whatever Hunters try to defend her?”

“Oh no, I’m not nearly so foolish as the Queen and Gar,” Dro said in a light tone. “I would never try to influence you to take a life.”

“Oh …” I replied, settling a bit.

“Prey like you could never destroy someone as powerful as the Queen,” Dro said. His tone was not patronizing or cruel, just a matter of fact. Somehow, this made it feel more insulting. He continued, “I knew from the moment I perceived your thoughts that you were incapable of killing anything. That the Queen and Gar both sent you out as a weapon further demonstrates their growing weakness and dependence on others. No, I plan to use you as a distraction—which is well within your bumbling nature. While you inevitably and amusingly try to sneak around to find your friend, the Hunter warriors will be distracted. I will sneak in with actual effectiveness and kill them.”

I groaned miserably and then shot him a glare.

“To your credit, I predict you’ll at least put up a good fight when the warriors attack you,” Dro said as if to try to make me feel better.

It was just one thing after another. By “thing,” I meant one sociopathic Hunter after another … not to mention the Golems. Finally, I looked up and said, “You know I’ll try to keep you from hurting them.”

Dro blinked slowly and replied, “Only after you have your … friend … safe.”

I shook my head and let my hang defeatedly. Eventually, I said, “In case you find my friend before I do, her name is Romalla. She’s a green bat.”

Dro nodded, looking like he was chewing on whether this name-sharing was tactically advantageous. Then he nodded and looked at me. “I believe my son is called Scraa. He is … thin.” He flicked his tail.

Scraa! Scraa was the child of the Hunter of the Mountain? Suddenly, I felt a deeper empathy for what Dro was going through. However, this only complicated matters because I knew personally that the small Hunter needed to be saved from that place. I now had a personal stake in getting him out at well.

“You … know him,” Dro said quietly and without emotion. “His condition is poorer than I thought.”

I nodded quietly.

Dro said nothing and did not react visibly at all. As much as I wanted to dislike him, it was … difficult. I couldn’t tell what degree he really cared to. Besides my lack of options, the only thing that made me want to side with Dro was his wanting to remove Scraa from that horrible village. I just hoped that the fate he had in mind for his son wasn’t somehow worse.

I sighed and asked, “How much longer do we have to wait?”

The Hunter’s mouth twitched almost like the hint of a smile. He aimed both his stick and his tail at me threateningly. A darkness like I’d felt in the jungle clouded my mind, and his tendrils of mental influence began to reach in without warning. Then, in a voice that I feel like a low rumble in my chest that then rolled like a cold chill down my back, he said, “It doesn’t matter. You must first be made ready.”