“Come on!” said Cadool. “The gate’s open. Go!”
He whacked it again on the rump. The shoveler’s belly expanded as it took in breath, then its wide-brimmed mouth opened, and Cadool was blasted by a call like thunder and a rock slide and giant waves slapping against a ship’s hull all rolled into one. Cadool staggered back, covering his earholes. Nearby, another shoveler, this one with a tubular crest sticking out of the back of its skull, lifted its head from the grass and also regarded Cadool.
He was trained in the art of animal handling, but it was a hot day, the tiny, white sun beating down. This beast seemed completely uninterested in heeding Cadool’s wishes. But perhaps that other one…
Cadool hurried over to the tube-crested shoveler and gave it slap on the flank. This one seemed a little less recalcitrant. It turned halfway around and was now facing toward the open gate—
—which, Cadool suddenly realized, meant it couldn’t see the gate at all, since the beast’s eyes faced to the side. Cadool danced to the left and the head tracked him, the long cylindrical crest cutting a swath through the air as it did so.
And, finally, the stupid animal caught sight of the open gate. This one, at least, was interested in escaping. It began a slow march toward the opening. Time was of the essence, and Cadool couldn’t countenance such an indolent pace. He shouted at the creature and pounded it again and again on its flank. Finally it began to gallop, and, a moment later, it made a different, deeper, more resonant call than the one the other shoveler had pumped out earlier.
Another shoveler reared up on its hind legs to see what was going on, then, almost at once, it dropped back to a quadruped stance and began to charge after the tube-head. Two more quickly joined in, each making its resounding call. Three adults and a juvenile, all with double-spiked crests, began to run for the gate too.
Cadool suddenly realized he was very much in trouble.
The shovelmouths were stampeding. Clouds of dust were swirling into the sky.
It was, more or less, what he’d wanted, but he hadn’t planned on being in the way. They would trample him as though he were a shrub. He moved quickly, his long gait coming to his aid again, and with a smooth motion, hauled himself up on the back of the shovelmouth with the semicircular crest that he’d originally approached. The creature seemed startled, but Cadool moved his hands quickly to the sides of its neck, soothing it in the traditional way employed by animal handlers. Even over the pounding of feet around him, Cadool could hear a faint whistling with each of his shovelmouth’s breaths as air moved through the curving passages of its crest. He pushed his feet against the shoveler’s hide, taking care that the bony spurs on his heels did not pierce the rough skin. This shoveler, at last, was spurred into motion, galloping toward the open gate, Cadool holding on to the base of its neck tightly.
The ride was rough, and Cadool’s full stomach threatened to heave, but soon he and his impromptu mount were out of the stockyard and heading down the streets of Capital City.
Pandemonium. Quintaglios shouting, individuals running back and forth, tails flying. Over there, two females locked in a death struggle, muzzles bright red with blood. To Cadool’s right, a male’s corpse, the neck ripped wide open, a vast puddle of blood spilling away from the wound. Ahead, a juvenile, still many kilodays shy of his first hunt, leaping through the air, claws extended, landing on the back of an older fellow in a merchant’s sash, the force of the impact driving them both down onto the paving stones.
He heard no voices, only guttural screams, animal wails, and the ululations of the stampeding shovelmouths, five or six beasts in front of Cadool’s own, several tens more bringing up the rear.
“Kalahatch!” shouted Cadool, as loud as he could, again and again, desperate to be heard over the din. “Kalahatch! Kalahatch!”
It was an ancient cry, a traditional call to the hunt. The animal beneath him bucked, as if it knew what the word meant. Cadool moved his hands so and the beast’s back stopped snapping up and down.
The pounding of shoveler feet and their deafening calls were enough to break a few of the Quintaglios out of the blood rage. In front of a shop he was passing, one fellow pushed aside the female he’d been grappling with and looked up. Cadool turned to him and shouted imploringly, “Kalahatch!”
The fellow looked indecisive for an instant, then charged toward the nearest shovelmouth, one of the rare ones with a crest like two crescent moons. He leapt onto the shoveler’s side and brought his jaws together in a great scooping bite. The female he’d been fighting charged after him, as if to tear him apart, but then with a visible effort of will at the last instant she changed her course and also leapt onto the shoveler, chomping into its meaty rump.
Cadool was carried farther down the street. He continued his hunting cry. Ahead, right in the middle of the road, was a ball of green arms and legs and tails—perhaps six or seven Quintaglios locked in mortal combat.
Cadool jabbed his feet into his shoveler’s side, this time toes in, deliberately piercing the hide. The tube-crester pumped out an anguished cry, splitting the air like all the thunder of a storm discharged with a single blast. Heads appeared from the ball of limbs, slick all over with blood. “Kalahatch!” shouted Cadool.
Three individuals disentangled themselves from the ball; the rest, dead, dying, or dazed, didn’t get out of the way in time and were trampled by the stampede. But the ones who had escaped ran to the sides of the road, ensconcing themselves in recessed doorways, letting part of the shovelmouth herd thunder by. Cadool looked back long enough to see two of them leap onto shovelers. The third, a male apparently more injured than Cadool had first thought, collapsed slowly to the paving stones as the rest of the herbivores pounded on.
Cadool continued into the center of town. He was having about a three-quarters success rate at getting the crazed Quintaglio to switch from killing each other to hunting the shovelers. As for the rest, there was nothing he could do.
Suddenly the street widened into a large square, dotted with the red-spattered bodies of the dead or dying. Entering the square from the opposite direction was another cluster of shovelmouths. Quintaglios were attacking them, purging their rage through the hunt, coming together in the hunt, cooperating for the hunt—
But how? Where were these other shovelers coming from?
And then Cadool saw. Dybo, the Emperor himself, riding atop a shovelmouth with an orange-and-blue-striped hide, one of the imported Arj’toolar beasts kept in the private imperial stockyard. Dybo, unaggressive to the point of docility, thought to be the weakest of his mother’s hatchlings, all but immune, apparently, to the clouds of pheromones drenching every corner of the Capital. Dybo, risking his life to quell the madness in his people.
Cadool saluted the Emperor, and Dybo waved back. The tide was turning, the madness abating, the population releasing its bloodlust. Shovelers fell to the paving, and Quintaglios feasted together, their mode shifting from violence to the torpor brought by full bellies.
Many had died, but most had survived—this time. But Cadool knew this was only a temporary reprieve.
Next time, they might not be so lucky.
*40*
The first thing Toroca heard was a voice.
“What happened?”
It was Delplas. Toroca tried to rise, but made a small groan instead. “My head hurts.”
“You banged it when you collapsed,” said Delplas. “What happened?”
Toroca opened his eyes. It was dark; eight moons moved overhead. “When that inner door opened, I got this gush of air in my face. It was stale, musty. It smelled wrong. Then I collapsed.”