“Cut straight up from between the legs to the thoat,” he said, handing Wilhuff the knife. “And take care not to make a mess of the innards.”
Fortifying himself — worried as much about fainting as about disappointing his elders — Wilhuff plunged the point of the weapon through the creature’s fur and flesh and tasked the vibroblade to cut. Hot maroon blood spurted, striking him full in the face. The Rodians seemed almost gleeful as it dripped from the tip of his nose to his chin and down the front of his pristine vest, saturating the seams and pockets he had stitched with such care.
“Good cut,” Jova said when the carcass had parted, the smell of the beast’s entrails nearly overwhelming Wilhuff. “Now, you reach deep in there”—he indicated a place in the torso—“and follow the rear curve of the breathing muscle until your hands find the liver. Then you pull it out. Go on: Do it. Do it, I said!”
In went his hesitant, shaking hands, maneuvering through squishy bulbous organs until they found a heavy lump rich with blood. He had to yank several times before the liver broke free of its fibrous net of blood vessels and ligaments, and he nearly fell backward when it did. Then Jova took the slippery, uncooperative thing into his callused hands and began tearing chunks from it.
“This one’s for you,” his uncle said, placing the largest of the pieces in the palm of Wilhuff’s already bloodied hand. He motioned with his chin: “Go ahead now. Down it goes.”
Once more Wilhuff focused on living up to expectations, and when he had gotten past his revulsion and devoured the chunk, his uncles and the Rodians celebrated his act with a short song in a language Wilhuff didn’t understand; celebrated Wilhuff’s first step, the opening stage in an initiation that wouldn’t conclude until years later at the Carrion Spike.
While Eriadu didn’t have indigenous creatures as large as the rancor or as unusual as the sarlacc, it did boast ferocious felines, carnivorous crustaceans, and a species of veermok far more fierce and cunning than others in its primate family. For the next month Wilhuff did little more than follow in the tracks of his elders, observing predators of many varieties killing and devouring one another, and learning how to keep himself from being similarly devoured. There was no denying that witnessing death up close was a far more visceral experience than watching such events transpire in holodramas viewed in the airy tranquillity of his bedroom. Still, he struggled to understand just what he was supposed to be taking away from the close encounters. Could daily brushes with death transform a simply ordinary person into one who was larger than life? Even if that was possible, how could that transformation have an impact on the lives of Nomma and others like him? He might have been able to puzzle out the answers were he less preoccupied day to day with being set upon and eaten by the beasts they stalked.
Gradually the routine changed from merely observing kills to stealing them. Frequently the Rodians would use their vibro-lances to drive killer beasts back from their quarries and hold them at bay while Wilhuff rushed in to complete the theft. Other times it would be Wilhuff’s turn to wield a vibro-lance, and someone else who would make the grab.
“We’re teaching them how to behave in the presence of their betters,” Jova said. “The ones who learn, profit from the laws we lay down; the rest die.” He wanted to make certain Wilhuff understood. “Never try to live decently, boy — not unless you’re willing to open your life to tragedy and sadness. Live like a beast, and no event, no matter how harrowing, will ever be able to move you.”
When his uncle decided that Wilhuff had experienced enough stealing, it came time to do the actual hunting. And so Jova and the others began to teach him tactical methods for taking advantage of the wind or the angle of the light. They taught him how to defend against attacks by groups of beasts by confounding them with unexpected moves. They taught him to kill by concentrating all his power on one point. All the while the vest became more bloodied and tattered, until ultimately it was useless except as a rag, and he was on his own, without a uniform or costume to hide within.
The routine of tracking, hunting, killing, and cooking over fire continued as the land surrendered the last of its moisture to the blinding sky. His feet turned raw and his sunburned skin blistered, his mind given over to memorizing the names of the Carrion’s every tree, animal, and insect — all of them serving one purpose or another. Late one evening the speeder’s powerful forward lamps illuminated a rodent as it leapt from the saw grass, and with a carefully aimed collision Jova sent it flying. Wilhuff was instructed to use his vibroblade to excise a scent gland buried where the animal’s thin, hairless tail met its plump body. From that gland the Rodians prepared a musky gel that they then used in their hunts for more of the same rodents. Similarly, they prepared stimulant concoctions from residue drained from the stomach of long-necked ruminants or the droppings of felines that had ingested certain plants. Wilhuff grew accustomed to eating every part of an animal and to drinking blood on its own or mixed with mind-altering plants gathered during treks across the plateau.
Over time he became so inured to the sight, smell, and taste of blood that even his dreams ran red with it. He kept waiting for the adventure to conclude at some log-walled shelter stocked with prepared food and soft beds, but the days grew only more harrowing, and at night half-starved scavengers would circle and howl at the edge of a meager cook fire, their eyes glowing furiously in the dark, waiting for a chance to rush in and steal back what food they could.
The tight-knit band of humans and Rodians didn’t always succeed at remaining at the top of the food chain. Jova’s cousin Zellit was killed during a nighttime raid by a gang of reptiles whose saliva contained a powerful poison. By midseason Wilhuff knew real hunger for the first time, and came close to dying of an illness that caused him to shake so violently he thought his bones would break.
Sometimes even the smallest of the plateau’s creatures would catch them unprepared and get the better of them. One night, when they had been too exhausted to set up a perimeter of motion detectors, he dreamed that something was feasting on his lower lip, and what his numb fingers found there was a venomous septoid, its pincers anchored in his soft flesh. Waking with a start, he hurried through the open flap of the self-deploying tent only to land in a stream of the segmented critters, which were all over him in a moment, hungry to find purchase wherever they could. By then his pained cries had woken the others, who themselves became targets, and shortly all of them were all hopping around in the dark, yanking septoids from themselves or plucking them off one another. When at last they had retreated to safety, it became clear that the assailants comprised only a narrow tributary of the insect river; the principal torrent had gone up and over the tent to where the Rodians had stored pieces of the beasts the group had slaughtered and dressed earlier in the day — all of it now devoured to the bone.
But regardless of whether they had won or lost the day, Wilhuff would be treated to tales of his ancestors’ exploits: the lore of the early Tarkins.
“All of Eriadu was similar to the Carrion before humans arrived from the Core to tame it,” Jova told him. “Every day, on their own, as pioneers and settlers, they waged battles with the beasts that ruled the planet. But our ancestors’ eventual triumph only altered the balance, not the reality. For all that sentients have achieved with weapons and machines, life remains an ongoing battle for survival, with the strong or the smart at the top of the heap, and the rest kept in check by firepower and laws.”
Jova explained that the Tarkin family had produced a succession of mentors and guides through the many generations. What made him unique was his decision to make the Carrion his home following his initiation in young adulthood. That was how he came to have tutored Wilhuff’s father, and why he might even live long enough to tutor Wilhuff’s son, should he have one.
They spent the remainder of the dry season on the plateau, leaving only when the rains came to that part of Eriadu. Wilhuff was a different person when the speeder carried them down from the mesa and back into civilization. Jova had no need to lecture him on what technology had allowed his ancestors to achieve in the planet’s handful of cities, since it was evident everywhere Wilhuff looked.