Chapter 82 - The Last Mammoth Hunter part 8

The featureless tundra seemed to stretch endlessly ahead of us, but we continued south at Ilio's insistence. Every now and then, the arid emptiness was broken by a line of low hills or a few trees gathered around a small creek or pool of water, but for the most part, the world was little more than two parallel planes: flat grasslands and empty blue sky.

On the third day, gray clouds crowded into the heavens, threatening rain—or snow, perhaps—but there was no precipitation, and the clouds finally drifted past.

Within three days, I had mastered the tongue of Ilio's people. Our language barrier broken, Ilio told me of the monster who'd killed his uncle—the frizzy headed hunter named Lene'Hab—and all the rest of his party. His recounting filled me with shame, but I was glad he seemed to have no suspicion that I was the monster he spoke of. He confirmed what I'd supposed earlier, that he was an orphan being raised by the hunters of his tribe. I agreed to accompany him the rest of the way to the base camp of the Mammoth Hunters, which was about five days further south.

His people called themselves the Denghoi, he told me, which basically meant the Mammoth People, although there had been fewer of the wooly beasts of late, and his people were beginning to rely more and more on the fish in the nearby lakes and streams, and the herds of reindeer that thundered across the tundra, for their livelihood.

"I guess when all the dengh are gone, we will have to call ourselves the Hap'phenoi. The Reindeer People," he said solemnly.

I chuckled sympathetically. "I suppose so."

"Where are your people from, Thest Un Mann?" he asked me.

I shrugged. "I do not know. Far away from here, I suppose. I was hurt and lost my way, and now I do not know how to get back to them."

"That's sad. Did you have children?"

"Yes. Many children."

"Did you love them?"

I frowned at the boy, who was walking stride by stride beside me. "Of course I did."

He nodded. "I'm sure my father loved me, too, although I don't really remember him. He was killed when I was a baby. A great bull ran him down and squashed him during a hunt. That is what my uncle told me. Dengh are very heavy, and the males will knock you down and step on you if they get angry. My mother died the year after. She got sick with the coughing illness and the medicine woman could not heal her."

"My mother died when I was young, too," I told him. "A venomous serpent struck her on the heel."

"Really?"

"Yes."

"I bet you missed her a lot."

"Yes, I did. I still do. I try to hold all the people I love in my heart. If you don't forget them, then they are not completely gone, even when they pass on to the afterlife."

Ilio nodded. "I think you're a very wise man," he said. "I'm glad I found you."

I nodded, feeling very ashamed of myself.

Travelling with the boy was very agreeable to me. At night, after he'd fallen asleep, I stole away to hunt for us both. When I returned, I snuggled up to him and slept as a living man slept: at night, with the stars gleaming in the heavens over my head. As long as I filled my belly with blood every night, my thirst was not too difficult to resist, although I was a little fearful to let myself slumber beside him at first, afraid I might attack him in my sleep without knowing I was doing it. After a night or two, however, I put that fear to rest. My vampire body did not harm him of its own accord while my mind was dreaming.

Travelling in the daylight was uncomfortable. Vampire eyes are extremely sensitive. I can see in pitch dark as easily as a human sees in broad daylight, so you can imagine my misery traveling in the sunlit hours. Imagine staring into a stage light for twelve hours straight every day, and perhaps you will understand.

The morning of the sixth day I traveled with the boy, as I was lying asleep beside the fire, I felt warm living fingers exploring my flesh and roused in alarm.

Ilio was lying awake beside me, and he was stroking the skin of my shoulder and chest, where my clothing had gaped in my slumber. "Your skin is very strange. It is cold and smooth like stone," he said. He moved to touch my face and I rolled away from him, pushing his hand aside.

"My people are different than yours," I told him. Thinking fast, I expanded upon the lie, "My people are from an icy land with lots of snow, far to the north. That is why my skin is so pale and cold."

He nodded. "Your eyes are different, too. When it's dark, the firelight fills them up. It's very peculiar."

Ilio was a bright, curious boy. Had I thought he was oblivious to my vampiric traits? Ha! I was the oblivious one.

I was more careful to deceive him after that.

He noticed I never ate. It seemed to disturb him so I pretended to share meals with him. I would bring the food to my lips as if I was putting it in my mouth, but instead of putting it in my mouth, I would cup it in my palm and work my jaw like I was chewing. He also noticed that I did not need to empty my bladder or bowels. He asked me to accompany him to the bushes, and when I told him I did not need to go for the tenth time, he demanded, "Don't you ever need to pee or poop?" I shrugged, unsure how to explain that one. Finally, when he would not budge on it, I said, "My people don't do that very often. But you go ahead. I will guard you while you relieve yourself."

If he was older and more experienced, my strange habits might have alarmed him more, but he was still a year away from manhood, at least. He'd yet to get his first real spurt of growth, and his body was hairless aside from a bit of fuzz on his upper lip.

His youth was probably all that preserved my ruse. Children are so much easier to deceive. For them, the world is full of strange, unknowable things.

The days began to grow a little warmer as we travelled, the land more hilly and populous with trees and shrubbery and bodies of water.

"We're very near my home," he said, examining the landscape around us. He finally seemed at ease, happy almost. He no longer jumped at every strange noise. He no longer clung like a babe to me at night when we slept by the fire. Perhaps he thought we'd finally escaped the monster that had hunted his people, left it behind in the colder climes of the northern country. Perhaps our nearness to his home was comfort enough to ease his fears.

I found myself reluctant to part ways with the boy. I had grown fond of him. But I knew it was something I must do. I'd promised myself I would deliver him safe to the village of his people. If he stayed in my presence, I would eventually harm him, I knew, whether I wanted to or not. It was simply the nature of my curse.

Even as I loved him, I wanted to kill him and drink his blood.

I tried to push aside the urges, ignore the fantasies that flashed unbidden in my mind—holding him down, sinking my fangs into his throat, gulping the hot red blood that gushed out of him.

It would make me sad to part company with him, to be alone once again, but it was a necessary thing… for his sake.

At last we came upon a wooded rise. At the sight of it, the boy grew suddenly very excited. He looked at me with a broad grin, his blue eyes bright. "I know where we are now! The camp is just over this hill!" With that, he dashed ahead of me.

"Wait! Stay with me, Ilio!" I called, but he paid no heed.

Frowning, I jogged to catch up with him. I ascended the ridge and found him just on the other side of it, frozen in his tracks. He was staring down at the ruins of a small settlement. The blood had drained from his face. His mouth hung agape.

"What happened?" he asked softly, his eyes wide, uncomprehending.

I moved past him, scowling fiercely.

Down below, the village of the Denghoi lay in shambles. Human bodies sprawled in the dirt, unmoving. The huts and various wood structures of the village had been smashed flat or burned to the ground. There were no signs of life in the boy's semi-nomadic camp, not even a dog sniffing at the carcasses. The only movement in the destroyed camp was the fluttering clothes on the bodies of the dead, stirred by late winter's chill winds.

"What happened to everyone, Thest-un-Mann?" Ilio asked, trying to take my hand.

I pulled away from him. "Quiet, boy," I said. "Give me a moment."

I opened my mind, allowing all the sensoria my vampiric senses could detect to come blasting into my awareness. One learns quickly, after the transformation, to block most of that sensory information out of the consciousness. It's that or be dazed by the sheer overwhelming copiousness of it—the miasma of smells and tastes, the overpowering stimulation of sight and sound and touch. You can let down your guard, let the whirlwind in, but first you must steel yourself for the assault. You must gather your strength to endure it.

As Ilio waited beside me, I opened my mind and let it all swirl in. The smells, the sounds, the tastes, the sights. The overriding impression was death, violence, panic. I was assaulted by the rank odor of dead human bodies, the acrid stench of charred wood and leather and woven plant textiles. I could smell the blood soaked into the earth, the phantom scent of fear hormones still lingering in the atmosphere, flyblown organs spilt from guts, the shit and piss that had dribbled from the bodies of the dying, now long dried.

Whatever tragedy befell the boy's people, it had occurred more than a week or two before our arrival. I sensed no marauders lingering in the woodlands that encircled the area. I sensed no living men for miles, aside from the boy at my side. The sun gleamed on the surface of the creek that wound alongside the settlement, and carrion birds swept through the air, turning in slow circles in the sky. Yet in the village, there was only death, long grown cold and bloated.

I turned to Ilio then and took his shoulders in my hands. "Now listen to me, boy. I want you to sit right here beside this bush while I walk down to your village to investigate. I don't want you to follow. Believe me, this is something you don't want to see up close."

His eyes glimmered moistly as he stared up at me. "But what happened? Why is everything burned? There are dead people down there, lying on the ground! I can see them."

"I know. Just stay here. I promise I'll be right back."

Ilio obeyed, sitting abruptly.

I turned then and descended the escarpment toward the camp.

As I approached, the smell of death and violence and blood and ash grew ever stronger, until finally my lips peeled back from my teeth and I had to hold my breath to keep from inhaling any more of it. The stew of foulness made my head spin, sickened me more than just physically.

I was sickened to my soul.

I walked through the remnants of the village, just charred sticks and cold coals now. The Denghoi employed mammoth tusks as part of the construction material of their homes. The ivory was charred, but not consumed, as the wood and hides had been. It gave the impression that their dwellings were not homes so much as great dead beasts, blackened and subsiding into the earth.

There were a multitude of tracks in the bare earth: humans, dogs, the little scavengers that came down from the forest to feast on the bodies, like raccoons and opossums, and there were bird tracks too, the markings of buzzards and crows. But there was another kind of track I'd never seen before, a crescent-shaped mark racing all through the village.

I traced the crescent impressions, trying to imagine what kind of beast would leave such a marking behind, but the sign was an enigma to me. I'd encountered no creature in the valley of the River People that could make such a footprint.

Finally, I turned to examine the bodies.

A female with long, braided hair lay stiff in the dirt a few strides away from me, her belly bloated with gas. Her neck was so mangled it was a wonder her head was still attached to her body. Her belly had been torn open and her entrails dragged out and partially eaten. Insects crawled among the bits of dirt and ash that adhered to her intestines.

A little further away was a young boy. He was lying on his face, his pale body naked and deeply lacerated. His sad little body displayed the markings of blunt injuries, and there was one of the crescent-shaped markings stamped into his spine, just above his buttocks.

Here, an old man clutched a knife in his cold fist, his frizzy white beard stained black with dried blood. There, another female, plump and fetching in life, perhaps, but dead and stiff now, her eyes empty sockets, her tongue protruding from her lips. Her throat was mangled as well, though not, I noted, as violently as the first's.

At the center of the devastation, several bodies were piled haphazardly, one atop the other. The injuries all the Denghoi people suffered were terribly familiar. Wounds to the neck.

Blood Drinkers! I thought to myself.

I was not frightened, but I was angry, and—dare I admit—mightily intrigued. In all my years, I had met no other Blood Drinkers like me, aside from the vicious pair who had plundered my own valley home so very long ago. Of course, I was thinking of the strange little vampire slave that moved like a lizard, and his master, the fiend who made me an immortal. And now, here was evidence of others like myself!

I stood, feeling a heady combination of excitement and apprehension, and I reached out with my senses again, hoping to catch some clue to the direction the Blood Drinkers had departed, hoping perhaps that I would find them at the furthest limits of my faculties, that they were not as long gone as it appeared they were.

Alas! I could detective no evidence of their presence.

But Ilio, I noticed, had chosen to disobey me. He weaved among the charred remains of his people's camp, his face white and drawn with shock even as his eyes jerked this was and that. I turned to chastise him, but saw that he had squatted and was pushing his fingers through the ash of a burned down hut. He pulled a charred figure from the rubble—a carving of a man. It was blackened and its crudely shaped legs had been broken off at the knees. He turned it in his hands, his eyes glittering with tears, then threw it down with an angry expression and walked swiftly toward me.

"Can we leave now, Thest-un-Mann?" he asked, choking only a little on his tears. "There's nothing left here for me. It is all gone, and everyone is dead. I'm the only Denghoi that lives now."

"Yes," I said sympathetically. I reached out and pulled him to my cold body. "I'm so sorry, Ilio. Let us leave this sad place."