Galpook and Foss grabbed the upper arm of the bellows and pulled down with all their weight. The bellows pumped air into the crest and a great thundering noise emanated from the skull’s nostril holes. Galpook and Foss pumped the bellows again and again. The other hunters covered their ears and the hornfaces made low sounds of pain. After ten repetitions, they were tired and stopped, but for several moments the ersatz shovelmouth call continued to echo off the mountainsides. Galpook lifted her tail to dissipate heat; Foss’s dewlap waggled in the breeze.
The ruse was working on the wingfinger, at least. It had dropped to a much lower altitude, evidently assuming the repetitious bellowing signified a shovelmouth in great distress.
Having recuperated, Foss and Galpook operated the bellows again, pumping air through the shoveler’s skull, forcing out the great cries the skull’s original owner had once made in life. Again and again and—
There it was.
Lumbering around from the south.
Blackdeath.
It stood there, perfectly framed between the two intact hunters’ spires, its whole body so dark that it looked like a silhouette against the purple sky even though it was fully lit.
Galpook heard Foss suck in his breath.
The monster stood, head cocked, eying the scene before it. It seemed confused, perhaps indeed having expected a shovelmouth. But these puny Quintaglios probably looked like tasty morsels, and the bossnosed hornfaces were surely easy pickings. Perhaps the same thought occurred to the bossnoses themselves, for they immediately started jostling each other. Galpook motioned to the riders, and they touched the beasts behind the neck frills in ways meant to calm them.
Of course, all that presupposed that the blackdeath was hungry—which perhaps it was not. The monster tilted its head back and forth, appraising, it seemed, each member of the hunting party, but then after a few beats, it half turned as if to go, as if the Quintaglios and their mounts didn’t sufficiently amuse it.
Galpook leaned back on her tail and yelled.
It was a loud, long shriek, much higher pitched and much sharper than the reverberating call made by the shovelmouth skull. That did the trick: the blackdeath turned back to face Galpook, staring down at her. Without looking back, Galpook held up her hands, two fingers extended on each, to show in the hunter’s sign language that she wanted half her team deployed. She then spread her arms wide, and the four hunters represented by those four stretched-out fingers spread out in a line, with Galpook in the center.
Galpook marveled at how much the great black monster looked like a Quintaglio. Oh, the color was all wrong, of course, and the muzzle sloped back into the head, instead of the head bulging up into an expanded braincase. Further, the arms were tiny in comparison to the body (although in real terms, about the same size as Galpook’s own), and they terminated in two tiny fingers instead of five. The eyes, all but invisible against the midnight skin, were proportionately smaller than those of Quintaglios, although the monster’s did indeed face forward in overlapping fields of vision. But the overall appearance and proportions of the blackdeath were not that much different from those of Galpook herself. That made sense to her, for in both creatures had not God designed efficient hunters?
The blackdeath still hadn’t charged yet. It did indeed seem that it wasn’t hungry—but, then, why had it come at the fake call of a shovelmouth? Or perhaps it had been craving shovelmouth in particular: a hunter so powerful could certainly be picky about what it wished to eat.
The monster was still some fifty paces away. Behind her, Galpook could hear the remaining hunters speaking softly in soothing tones to their hornface mounts. She turned and motioned to them to go to work on the bait. They scrambled up onto one of the wagons and went under the sheets of leather, out of view. It was doubtless stifling under there.
Galpook started walking slowly, brazenly, toward the black-death. With a gesture of her hand, she had the pair of hunters on either side of her begin to do the same. Would the stupid beast never charge?
There were now but thirty paces between the Quintaglios and the black behemoth. It galled Galpook that the blackdeath was content just to watch her approach, didn’t think her worthy of any response. Closer she continued, and closer still, but the beast seemed indifferent to her presence. Indeed, its eyes, so hard to make out against the ebony hide, perhaps weren’t even looking at her. She was near enough now to see the blackdeath’s torso expanding and contracting with each breath. The sun was sliding down behind the beast now, and its black bulk was hard to distinguish from the shadow it was casting on the gray basalt plain in front of it.
In frustration, Galpook clapped her hands together, but the report was soon gone on the breeze. She bent low and picked up a rock, whether a piece of volcanic ejecta or a rounded bit from the ruined temple, she couldn’t tell. She heaved it at the blackdeath, and it arced through the air, bouncing off its belly. The creature tipped its muzzle down, as if puzzled, then lightly rubbed the spot where the stone had hit with its tiny left forearm.
She was now a mere twenty paces from the huge creature. It loomed up in front of her, a dark mountain like a dormant volcano. If only it would erupt…
Another shadow moved across the scene, and Galpook looked up. Low in the sky, directly overhead, was the giant wingfinger, its long snake-like neck weaving slightly as it glided by.
Galpook turned around briefly and spread her arms in a gesture of frustration. She saw that all five of the remaining primary hunters were out in plain sight now, meaning the work beneath the leather sheets had been completed. She decided to take yet another step forward, in case, perhaps, the blackdeath had not yet felt that its territory had been challenged. She brought her foot down, toeclaws clicking lightly against the basalt, and then—
—the beast charging—
—the land shaking—
It shouldered its way through the two intact hunters’ spires, and, as its massive hips scraped past, the one on the right tottered and split along the lines where its constituent segments had been joined thousands of kilodays ago. It fell to the ground, crashing apart, shards of stone flying up in a volley, and a great gray cloud of dust rising into the sky. The hunters farthest to Galpook’s left and right ran in semicircular paths toward the beast, while Galpook herself faced the creature, running backward, taking care not to trip over her own tail, clapping her palms together to keep the monster’s attention.
But in a flash, the blackdeath was almost upon her, its great legs having covered the distance separating them with two massive strides. Galpook turned tail and ran as fast as she could toward the caravan. The other hunters were ready. The two who earlier had gone under the leather sheet on one of the wagons now pulled that sheet back to reveal the prize: the flayed shovelmouth hide, inside out, still somewhat bloody and now redolent in the heat, wrapped over a great ball, the ball’s yellowish-white substance visible here and there through gaps in the hide. The sphere came up to the shoulders of the Quintaglio standing nearest to it. The flayed skin was held onto the ball by its limbs and tail, which had been tied together in knots, making it look like a tight-fitting garment.
The bossnosed hornfaces panicked—as well they should—at the sight of the barreling blackdeath. Their harnesses had been undone, and the hunters let them go. But the other Quintaglios copied Galpook’s actions, jumping up and down, whooping and clapping to keep the black killer’s attention. They all moved behind the wagon containing the great ball, interposing it between themselves and the charging predator.