The Kingdom

A young female Trican surged free of the pack of stampeding prey animals and headed straight for me. It was a brave move and one for which I was supremely grateful. To face the threat, coming up fast behind me, alone meant certain death for her, yet she was coming full on as the herd forsook her and headed off down the valley.

To the herd there was no overcoming the beast behind me without greater numbers and so, listening to their fear, they gave flight, but there were still special ones like the big female before me that still listened to directions given to them by man.

Kuri had told me that all the animals had once been so responsive to the dictates of man and had even spoken in a common tongue, but that ability had been lost at some point in the distant past. The Tricans could still detect dire emotional context though and one had listened and heeded my cry for help.

It appeared she would run right over top of me for a moment, but at the last moment her great head dipped downward and I vaulted upwards to land standing on her lower horn, with my body poised between her two upper horns. Great chunks of sod went flying through the air as the young female in her prime peeled off to the left in a desperate lunge to avoid a head on course with what was behind me.

The change of course successfully made the Trican beneath me begin to put forth the greatest effort of her life. I looked up and over her raised protective neck frill of sinew and bone to see slavering death just behind us.

I vaulted upward to stand on her upper horns and then I flipped over her neck frill to land on her neck. Looking up, I saw that the fallen order beast was gaining on us. It seemed unnatural to me how it could be faster than the beast I rode, which had the benefit of four legs and less overall bulk.

The fallen order beast may be faster, but it would not eat us this day. It was the last of its kind and I intended to see it die just as all the others had over the past year. I had nothing against predators in general, but this fallen kind Kuri had marked for slaughter as it was nothing but a mouth that knew only endless hunger and was never satiated, but killed for the joy of killing.

I pulled my bow off my back. It was a powerful bow and the muscles of my arm stood out in stark relief as I fitted an arrow shaft to it and let it fly. The arrow sped true and launched deeply into the gut of the beast all the way up to the feathers of my fletching.