The blackdeath bent low, its head barely clearing the ground, its massive jaws snapping together with a sound like cracking thunder. Galpook was only just managing to stay out of the creature’s reach.
The jaws snapped again.
Galpook managed to scramble through some ruins that the giant would have to negotiate around and thus renewed her lead.
The wooden wagon holding the great ball was only a couple of body-lengths away now. Galpook leapt up onto the wagon, its planks creaking in protest under her impact. The smell of shovelmouth hide was strong, and the wooden boards were gummy with old blood. Galpook dug in her footclaws to hold her balance, but she tumbled forward, slamming prone against the wood.
Pain sliced through her and thunder rang in her ears. She dared not halt even to look back, but it was clear to her that the blackdeath’s jaws had closed on her tail, nipping off the last couple of handspans of it. She literally leapt up from the position she had fallen in and sailed over the far side of the wagon, where most of the other Quintaglios were.
The bossnoses were scattered now. Two had gone clear into a ragged copse of trees, others were cowering behind the parts of ruined buildings that poked up from the vast flat basalt plain.
The blackdeath let out a loud sticky roar, and, the final indignity, Galpook saw it spit aside as not worth swallowing the hunk it had taken out of her tail. Between them and it lay the wagon, with the giant ball covered with glistening hide. The inside of the blackdeath’s mouth, flashing red with flesh and white with teeth, seemed almost to float disembodied in the black space made by its massive form. Galpook made a sharp gesture with her hands, and the others froze, save for Foss, whose tail was swishing back and forth in unconcealed fear.
The blackdeath was close enough that Galpook could feel the hot wind of its breath. It tipped its head to one side; it could clearly smell the hide of the shovelmouth.
The situation could not hold for long. Even a creature as dumb as the blackdeath would soon realize that it could simply walk around the caravan of wagons to get at the hunters—or, for that matter, could burst through the caravan, crushing the vehicles as it went. It brought its muzzle in low to sniff the ball, then nudged the skin, its face coming away freckled with dried blood.
Galpook nodded slightly to a hunter on her right. He swiftly brought his own jaws together on a thick rope. The cord snapped, and the floor of the wagon’s carriage compartment, spring loaded from beneath and hinged along the side facing the blackdeath, shot up with a whoomp, tossing the giant ball into the air, hitting the blackdeath in the throat. It bounced off and fell to the ground.
The blackdeath was outraged. Its maw split wide, wider still, to its maximum extent, showing bluish membranes at the corners and massive white curved teeth, teeth that were to daggers what boulders were to pebbles. The stench of the creature’s openmouthed exhalations washed over everyone, and then, and then, and then—
—the blackdeath chomped down on the bloody giant ball, teeth slicing the hide with ease, sinking and sinking and sinking into the soft material of the sphere, a collection of gums and saps and rubber gathered from hundreds of trees and plants, glue-like, adhesive. The giant attempted to roar, but its teeth were firmly lodged in the ball. Its tiny hands worked in a frenzy, but could not grab the sphere firmly enough to dislodge it. The more the massive jaws worked, the more firmly they became mired.
“Now!” shouted Galpook, negotiating her way around the wagons. The hunters she’d originally called upon burst toward the blackdeath’s rear and immediately leapt on the beast’s back. Galpook followed suit. There were six, now seven, now eight, now ten Quintaglios leaping onto the blackdeath’s spine, pommeling it with clenched fists, trying to drive the beast to its knees. The giant humped its backbone, trying to buck the Quintaglios, and one indeed did go flying, ending up lying dazed some distance away. But after a moment she got back to her feet and leapt again onto the back of the blackdeath. The giant staggered under the weight of ten adult Quintaglios. It moved in broad circles, stooped from the waist. The hunters continued to ride it, the setting sun glaring into their eyes each time the beast swung around. The blackdeath tottered, lurched, its torso heaving raggedly.
Its head swung left and right, but the great sticky ball in its mouth was vexing it more than the members of the hunting pack, for it interfered with the beast’s breathing and was depriving it of its best weapon. At last it tipped forward, bringing its right leg up, in hopes of using footclaws to clear away the gunky sphere. Galpook and her team slammed their bodies against the great blackdeath in unison, and, at last, it flopped to the ground, a cloud of dust choking them all as it hit.
The secondary team now swarmed in from its hiding place in the foothills, some fifty Quintaglio engineers and builders, a vast green tide flowing over the ruins of the temple, brandishing block and tackle. They threw nets laced with interlocking hooks that came together into a continuous web, half covering the monster.
One of the Quintaglios forgot that the blackdeath’s arm puny only in comparison to its body, and Galpook watched in horror as the limb swung out, opening up the belly of a male engineer, his guts spilling like a sacrifice onto the stones of the Temple of Lubal.
But the weight of the rest of the Quintaglios was enough to keep the blackdeath from regaining its feet. The Quintaglios were risking a territorial frenzy of their own, but naked fear of the giant hunter was enough to keep that in check for a short time. Soon the blackdeath was trussed up, its legs bound, thick leather cord wrapped around its arms and tail.
Galpook herself stood in front of the beast’s muzzle: a blocky black shape, warty this close up, the size of Galpook’s own torso. She signaled for a pair of gloves to be brought to her, and when they arrived she put them on. They had holes at the fingertips allowing her claws to poke through.
Terrified, she furtively brought her hands in toward the creature’s face, carefully pulling on the rounded edge of the sticky sap, which had oozed up and around the tip of the muzzle. She drew the sap away from the blackdeath’s giant, flaring nostrils, ensuring that it could breathe well for the long trip back to Capital City. The thing’s great black eyes stared at Galpook, and it made snorting sounds around the sticky gum.
Although it took well into the night, illuminated by five bright, dancing moons, the blackdeath was eventually transferred onto a massive cart. Galpook’s people were able to round up three of their bossnoses to pull the cart; the other two were long gone.
Most of the secondary team had to disperse as soon as they were no longer needed, for such prolonged close contact was putting nerves on edge. Many went off with some of Galpook’s hunters to try their hand at nocturnal tracking. Others simply chose their own paths back to the Capital.
In the light of the semi-ten of moons, Galpook walked slowly beside the captured killer, its mountainous hide heaving as it breathed.
She did not envy Dybo and the others. Not at all.
*26*
My time sense is malleable. If I scatter myself widely, signals between parts of myself take longer to travel The delays are completely undetectable to me, of course. It simply seems as though the external universe has speeded up, since my senses are sampling it less frequently. Likewise, if I collapse myself into a smaller area, my thoughts are processed more quickly, and I see the external universe move by at a slower rate.