The Hunt

While Yuya had spent much of his time on Nod in the searing heat of the Galkha Desert, Grant’s time was just beginning with it.

And he already couldn’t wait for it to be over.

He was better used to the heat than Yuya had been, Austin being a hotter city than Osaka. But Austin heat was different from this sort of heat. Grant had visited relatives before in Phoenix, and the Galkha Desert was Phoenix-hot. A dry heat, sure, and that made it easier to manage than Austin’s muggy weather, in certain ways– shade was actually helpful, where it could be found, and sweat would provide evaporative cooling, rather than simply leaving you the same temperature, only now damp. But there was something deeply oppressive about the way the sun was so overtly hostile in climates like these. It left a constant burning sensation all over the surface of your skin, and you turned pink particularly easily. The glare made it difficult to see long distances in one direction or most, depending on the time of day. And the dryness… cracked lips, taught skin, and a constant cottony sensation wherever the tongue reached. It made the mirage-puddles on the horizon painful down to the heart to look upon.

But the water he saw now was not a mirage. The fellow hunters he and the khans were to meet waited with their entourages.

One, sitting atop a camel in desert robes with a quiver of javelins, was the governor of Jalabarta’s Eastern Province. While Cain hoped to find the right mixture of honeyed words, promises of gold, and threats of violence to bring Jalabarta’s king over to his side, this governor had already made a secret compact with the Khan of Khans. In the event of any future attacks on Jalabarta or Lugo, he would send provincial foot soldiers and engineers to assist the horse-bound nomads in the one sort of battle they lacked the skills for: sieges. If this involved betraying the king who had appointed him, he would be made a direct vassal lord to Cain, free of any obligations save to provide troops in times of war and with total freedom to choose his own successor.

Beside him was Cain’s insurance policy, in case the Jalabartan provincial troops proved inadequate or unreliable. As Grant, Abutai, and the other tribal nobles and warriors of renown approached, a brigandine-clad man on foot approached Grant, and held out a hand. For a handshake. Grant noted the Mark on his palm, and his fellow Penitent followed the Mark on the back of his hand. Their handshake was mutually crushing.

“Zdravstvuyte, tovarishch.”

“How do you do, partner?”

“Call me Misha, comrade.”

“Grant.”

There was irony in how Mikhail Alexeivich Golovko, Penitent of Greed and the condottiere of the largest mercenary company Vetania had to offer, had adopted as his company’s heraldry a golden hammer and sickle crossed on a red field. At least it matched the buckle on the aging military belt he used to clasp his surcoat. On one hip, he still wore what Grant recognized as a Soviet-Afghan War era Kalashnikov bayonet, while the other hip bore a large falchion, and he held a long pike over one shoulder. He was in remarkable physical condition for a man of sixty or so years, embattled against the elements and peoples of Nod for at least half that time.

Grant nodded. “You ready to hunt a worm, comrade?”

“A worm.” the Russian snorted. “You make it sound as if we’re digging for earthworms in my babushka’s garden.”

“How dangerous can a worm be?”

“How dangero– how long have you been on Nod, American?”

“Couple months, I think?”

“And already Cain is honoring you by sending you out alongside his vassal khans on formal occasions?”

“Testing me, I think. Sounds like he has a plan to finish off the Bekhites, and he’s still trying to figure out what role to give me in it.”

“Well, the Death Worm is no mean test, comrade. If the Jalabartan governor over there were half as soft as his counterparts, this hunt wouldn’t have been chosen as the occasion for him to meet with the khans. Hunts like these may be an aristocratic pastime, but the Death Worm is a quarry for a true warrior aristocracy, not limp-dicked pencil-pushers like what passes for high breeding in Xinqian or Ak-a-Kartam.”

“There’s something awful funny about a guy dressed like he’s about to go on crusade in the name of Communism talk about breeding and judge some aristocrats as better than others.”

“Earth was a confusing place when I left, at least for a soldier of the Motherland like me. Here on Nod, they have a simpler, more straightforward outlook on a lot of things. And I’ve come to believe that makes them wiser than us moderns. As for my choice of symbols, well… symbols have the meaning you give them. A hammer and a sickle are tools of the urban and the rural worker, but there are a lot of ways you can go with that association. Give more symbolic weight to the golden color, for example, and the promise of the symbol changes from classlessness to upward class mobility. Divorce the red background from the history of revolutions in the last couple centuries of Earth’s history, and it becomes the blood of whoever you’re getting paid to kill. Call me a regressive counterrevolutionary for dealing in the capital of violence on behalf of feudal lords, but it’s the sort of promise that the peasants and urban poor of Nod flock to, especially with all the famines wracking this world lately.”

“Speaking of, is this worm thing… any good to eat?”

“The flesh is poisonous, but there are other useful parts of its body. Alchemists prize many of its organs, and the venom is a cruel but effective addition to an archer’s kit.”

“Venom? The worm is venomous?”

“It has three kinds of venom, in fact. Its spit seems harmless, at first, but if you allow it to linger on your bare flesh for more than a few seconds, you will go into convulsions, and may die. It also has fangs in its mouth with a powerful paralytic. This is meant to stun prey larger than men, so it may well stop your heart, also killing you. Finally, the stinger at the end of its length…”

“Also might kill me?”

“Will kill you. Before you hit the ground. Your horse, too, if it is struck.”

Linshou rode up beside Grant. While Grant hadn’t seen the eunuch’s former mistress since passing her on the way into Enoch, he had turned up before this expedition with a horse and a salary from Cain, to act as Grant’s squire and manservant. Grant was uncomfortable with the arrangement, at first, but everyone else on this ride had some kind of assistant with them, and Linshou was quite adept at working around a charge with an independent streak.

“Master Grant. My former proprietor, the patriarch of the Luo clan, was an avid hunter. He wished dearly for a trophy of the Galkha Death Worm, but by imperial decree, the gentry of Lugo forbidden to hunt it. The fatality rate of such expeditions was simply too high.”

“Linshou, how big do these worms get?”

“Master Luo spoke of wanting a tail-stinger at least the size of one of his smaller swords, and a head to mount over the clan hall’s central hearth. He was concerned, however, that the chimney, being three cubits across, would not be able to accommodate one of the larger specimens.”

Grant had puzzled out a standard Lugo cubit to be about an American foot and a half. These things could get over four and a half feet across?

He eyed the Russian’s twelve-foot pike. “Misha, I think you picked a good weapon for this hunt.”