Skritt by Matt Gilbert

3866.CE

The view from the ridgeline revealed the true extent of the previous night’s slaughter. The new sun had breached the horizon, and with a begrudging apricity, had begun to gently melt the chill morning dew from the ground. Skritt eased back down the slope. While the weak sun was a welcome antidote to cold bones and stiff joints, it hurt his eyes, and the glint of light on a buckle or poorly concealed weapon could expose his location.

The cursed father-kin had broken camp early, taking their remaining beast-things and riding south. Obviously wary that more of the gnorr pack would follow the scent of death to this place, they had quickly moved on. Skritt flicked his tail at an early morning fly as it flitted lazily across the wet grass. They would also be trying to reinforce their own filthy kind and once again attack the nest. Skritt had been told that his home had once belonged to the father-kin, but some green-ones had taken it from them. And the gnorr had then rightfully claimed it for themselves. But that was many birthing cycles ago, and Skritt only had five cycles to his name.

Apparently there were different types of father-kin – but they all looked the same to Skritt. As well as trying to retake what they had lost, they had recently been fighting amongst themselves. Good. The only useful father-kin were dead ones. Skritt had never seen the real fathers, those the gnorr reserved their true hatred for. But the father-kin, as with all foul creatures that were not the gnorr, were things to avoid.

Or kill.

Skritt pulled a severed hand from his belt – a prize from the previous night – and tore off a strip of flesh with his teeth. The previous owner had a liking for nasty, glittery stones and gold rings; the sort of pointless trinkets that somehow denoted wealth or power. Skritt sneered and ripped them from the lifeless fingers, tossing them into a pool of half-frozen water. The rings skittered across the thin covering of ice and then plopped into the murky water below.

Hastily gulping down his snatched meal, he stuffed the remains of the hand back in his belt and gathered his weapons. Stretching his muscles, he then moved down the slope and paused to sniff the air. He almost choked and squeaked – the air here, where the sun had not yet reached, was chill and damp. Squinting in the growing light of the day, he longed for the warm, dry air of the nest, where his eyes were at their best in the near-darkness.

As time moved on and the sun rose slowly in the sky, Skritt darted from rock to rock, shrub to shrub, seeking cover not just for his body, but for his afflicted eyes. Eventually he found it – the tunnel entrance his group had emerged from in the blissful dark the previous night. Skritt couldn’t count, but there had been many-lots of his pack with him. Some of them had even been quite competent. Two had survived: Skritt and a powerful young gnorr that called himself Hirka. Hirka had been wounded, but had still slashed the throats of two of the brock-beasts before losing his sword, buried in the body of a heavily armoured father-kin he had fought. Escaping with Hirka back to safety had been frustrating and tiring, and Skritt reasoned that not only would he be slowed down by a potential rival, but it would look much better for him if he was the only brave survivor with a story to tell. Despite looking like he would survive his wounds, Hirka had unfortunately passed away – quietly – in the hours before dawn.

A crossbow bolt narrowly missed Skritt’s muzzle and ricocheted off the boulders in front of him. Diving to the floor, he scrabbled at the rocks blocking the tunnel entrance. Another bolt grazed his arm, and Skritt yelped as he heaved aside one particularly recalcitrant boulder. He threw himself into the darkness and kicked the triggerstone his engineer had left in place. Rocks and dirt collapsed the entrance, and Skritt rolled clear. He sat up on his haunches. Pausing briefly to savour the faint smells of the nest and the excited, musky odours of his death-team that still lingered in the gloom, he made his way further into the dark to make his report and gather a new band of volunteers. The survivors of the father-kin had not gotten very far, and the gnorr had a lot of tunnels across the whole area. And a lot of gnorr.

There would be another hunt tonight.

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