Thrum: A Fantasy. Chapter 03

rasgriz311 (56)in #writing • 8 years ago (edited)

Thrum
Chapter 03
Tetherhorn

Traveling through the Rollwood down to the open plain of the nearby valley was the same as it always was. This normalcy was exactly what neither of them wanted.

“Not. One. Was Copper messing with you, Ferret?” If Thrum’s teasing nickname for Evrit phased him at all, it didn’t show. Evrit’s focus was elsewhere.

“I didn’t hear it from just him, you know. He’s just the only person who claims to have seen more than one of them in the same place.” It was true that most people went years without seeing a tetherhorn, and their solitary nature contributed to that, but this was supposed to be different. The woods should have shown them at least one, after what Copper swore he saw.

“We’ve heard stories from Copper not worth a nil of his namesake, but that hasn’t stopped you from paying him for a tall tale in the past. Maybe there are a couple tetherhorns around, but you know he was just embellishing as usual.”

“Those times were different. They were perfectly reasonable exchanges between a storyteller and his patron for the entertainment of feminine company.”

“You got him drunk to see if Myrrh would be squeamish about the geezer’s perverted fantasies. She laughed at all of them, and you knew to be as forward with her as you please.”

“As she pleased, I wasn’t forward enough. I had to back up and try again.”

“Spare me. The point is, the guy will tell the tallest tale in town for a mug of heavy cider and bar-hall bragging rights. We’re probably wasting our time out here.”

Rather than argue his determination, Evrit left Thrum a few yards behind to guide Radish. They were here somewhere. They had to be. As the trio walked on, the scrub around the path began to thin. Trees grew farther apart as they neared the open valley. They stopped about one hundred yards from the familiar place where the trail ran next to a small embankment overlooking the valley. They needed to tie Radish here where no prey below would hear them coming.

“This is it, Ferret. I’m looping wide back to the farm if we don’t see anything here. We might still see the one that’s probably hanging around then,” said Thrum. Doubts aside, he held his spear as though he might need it soon.

“You forgot the arrows, dumbass.” Evrit was right. All that excitement to bag a large buck, and now they couldn’t even use the bow.

“Think Radish could get me close enough for the spear to work?”

“No, he’s getting too old for that stuff. I only brought him to help haul it back if we got any. What’s wrong with you?”

“Me? What kind of archer keeps his arrows separate from his bow? I’d have remembered if I saw any.”

“Forget it, alright? Someone must’ve moved 'em. We just need to find one decent bull and see if we can get close enough for a blade or two to hit it before it can hit back. Follow me.” With that, Evrit quietly made his way toward the valley, Thrum just behind him.

They dropped to crawl across the last few yards, hoping to use the terrain as a stealthy observation point. Evrit reached the edge a bit sooner. The very second his eyes crested the slope to look below them, he jerked back out of sight. One finger to his lips was shown to Thrum as he approached, but Evrit’s body language had already been clear enough. As Thrum crept towards the edge more slowly than his brother, their two pounding hearts threatened to spook the game below.

They beheld a river. Almost fifty feet below flowed a steady stream of tetherhorns. From one end of the valley to the other, what could only be described as a herd had gathered from across the distant hills and mountains to march upon some unknown destination. In a lifetime spent traversing the local wilderness, a hunter would consider himself a friend of Luck to see a hundred tetherhorns. Here, right in front of them, were thousands.

Tetherhorns were grazers and foragers by nature. Taller than deer and thick as cattle, they had an imposing air about them. Both males and females were generally solitary, pairing only during the first year of a calf’s life. Then the female would leave the calf to learn their hard nature by journeying with its sire. They were named after the strange appendage growing from the top of their skulls. Where deer would have a pair of antler clusters jutting out, a tetherhorn had one long, thick tether. It was very resilient tissue capable of supporting the heavy mass of the beast when tested, but these were not for lifting. The tether had just enough muscle to augment the trajectory of its swing, or gesture with the last third of its length, where the horn grew. The famous “horn” was something more flail than horn, a cluster of hard ivory points jutting from a dense mass of the same. When a tetherhorn whipped this appendage with ferocious accuracy, nearly everything in the land had second thoughts about continuing an attack.

The duo slid back away from the ledge. One questioned his own sanity with eyes as wide as apples, clutching his spear like an anchor on reality. The other was speaking silently, trying to mouth words that wouldn’t come to him just yet. They could spear one, maybe, but would they survive the second? What of the third next to it, or the tenth?

Eventually Thrum tried to speak some sense into the spectacle passing below them.

“Since when did they have a migration route here? Where are they even going?”

“Tetherhorns don’t migrate, Wjere.”

Thrum did not answer. He barely registered being called “Wjere” instead of some derogative. His mind was still reeling, beginning to develop a functional thought. Evrit was right, of course. They just wandered alone, wherever their mood took them. Thrum already knew that. He also knew that animals didn’t go this far outside of their nature on a whim. Something was wrong.

Something was terribly wrong.
.

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Alright, time to jam. I usually listen to music while I write, and it's fun to share some with you while you read.

Neroche - And Then She Was Gone

Man loops his voice into spectacular song 'Made' by Dub FX.flv

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