Page 95 of Blacktail

The end of his long path lay in sight, a wide and low place of men that sat atop a barren hill. It was not House, where they went to sleep and be with their mate and puppies, but a day place. They came here to wallow in reason, to learn the nature of infection and disease, to study the migration of blood and bile. Here they infected the creatures of the Forest God in order to study them as they died.

It stood empty now, but when the sun was high, it would swarm with men. It had no name that he could understand, but screams rose up out of it like the smoke from hell’s deepest pit. He thought the screams named it as well as any word. The place was surrounded on all sides by wooden posts. Between the posts ran metal vines set here and there with thorns. He tested one with his jaws and found it strong.

HelpmelordHelpmehelpmelordhelpme

He heard the prayers all the time now, not only when he slept. This one, he thought, is very close.

Blacktail closed his eyes and saw a ghost standing on the other side of the barrier.

He was a black dog of no particular breed, a prisoner of this place who had by great courage and good fortune somehow managed to escape this far, only to be stopped at the final barrier. His mate had died long before him, drowned before his eyes in the choking gases, together with their litter. His right eye had been burned away in some study of men, leaving an empty socket and a knot of twisted pink scar, but he was otherwise handsome. He could see the forest before him, this ghost, smelled it on the wind, but his way was blocked by the metal trees and thorns. The two-legs that hunted him were, now and forever, near on his trail. They would capture him, they would cage him, and he would be damned, caught up in the cage and forced to watch his mate and puppies murdered before his eyes. There was nothing he could do. He had died long ago but stood here still, bound forever in the moment when the last hope faded.

Blacktail stretched out, gripped the metal in his teeth, tore it away. He walked in and spoke to the ghost, scented him, licked his blasted eye and made it well. The dog knew him by sight; no words were exchanged. Behind Blacktail the path stretched out to the Far Hill, where his puppies chewed one another and his mate bounded in the grass.

I slept too long, Blacktail thought as he watched the dog go.

But now sleeping was done. He went to the front gate of this terrible man-den, this cathedral of reason. He stood before it a moment, sniffing about the edges, then took it in his jaws and cast it aside. Once he had entered places of men by stealth, but those days were long ago. Matters were different now. He was different now. The noise brought two of them, blue-cloth hunters with the gunshot sticks in their hands and a cloud of fury all around them. The sound of their footfalls carried well against the hard walls of the burrow. He heard them long before he saw them, running hard to stand against the invader.

When they rounded the last corner and saw him, they skidded to a stop and stood slack-jawed, not only in terror but also awe. Blacktail of the Far Hill stood before them in his full fury. In all the long age of man’s dominion no one had ever seen such as him. Perhaps they did not know him for what he was, not precisely, but they understood enough.

The nearer one died of stroke, the arteries of his mind letting go with a cascade of tiny pops as the image of Blacktail radiated outward from his optic nerve. It killed him quickly enough that he did not feel his heart burst. The other simply ceased to live, his body unable to support the sight before him.

At the sound of their death cries, the prisoners of this hell woke. Some of them began to call out. Blacktail padded slowly down the hall, ripping the gates from the walls to free each place in its turn.

To his left lay a burrow of cats. Their fur had been shaved away, the flesh beneath it ravaged with burning bile. They hid their faces when he entered. They would not look at him, even as he tore away the walls of their cage and pointed the way to freedom outside.

To his right were the dogs, whose veins had been stuffed with poison until tumors sprouted like mushrooms in their guts. They looked at him with wide, staring eyes. He went through the place, crushing the cages in his jaws, freeing each of them in their turn. As he opened their cages, they rolled over and showed their bellies in submission. Unlike the cats, who bolted at the first chance, these dogs remained, silent and watchful—penitents to his pack. Their eyes flashed in the dark as he passed.

One of them, a young boxer with broad shoulders and strong jaws, had the look of a hunter. Blacktail spoke to him for a moment through the metal before freeing him. “How are you called?” he asked softly.

“I am Craft,” said the dog.

“Were you slave or free?” Blacktail asked him.

“I ran free for a time, lord.”

“Then you know of stealth and hiding?”

“Yes.”

“And the hunt? Do you know the way of the hunt?”

“A little,” he said.

“Very well,” he said. “When the time is right, you will be the one to lead.”

Blacktail turned and spoke to them all. “I have healed you,” he said. “In a few breaths you will be running free in the night. Take what pleasures from this as you see fit, and welcome. You have bought them at a high price. But when the sun rises and the pleasure is done, you must think of food, and survival, and the hunt. For most of you this will not be an easy bone to chew…but I think not so hard as what you have already done.

“The lands outside are as you remember them—worse, perhaps. You must stay hidden for a time. Some of you will be captured, I think. Some of you will be killed. But before the moon has finished its next cycle, I will have cleansed the world, and things will be as they were before I lay down to sleep. When it is done, you will find that things are much as they were in the old age. You might come together then—for friendship, and warmth in the night…and the hunt.” He paused. “That is all I have to say.”

The free dogs turned and went out into the night. They moved cautiously at first. But when they crossed the lawn and saw the way open to them, they began to run. Blacktail took a moment to watch them go. He smiled faintly in the moonlight.

When the last of them had vanished into the woods, he turned and walked deeper into the man-den. “Where is the hell of the blood curse?” His voice rattled like bones down the long burrow.

iii

He waited a long time before an answer came. An old monkey, his voice thick and raspy with fluid, called out, “We are here, lord,” from the foulest, blackest recesses of the den.

Blacktail padded down the length of the hall. He did not walk in his full rage—those trapped here had known enough fear to last a lifetime, and he would not add to their burden—but his eyes glowed bright as the red moon and his muscles writhed like thick snakes beneath his fur.