I am all for being saved at this point. Exhaustion is making it difficult for me to keep up, and Liz is so weak that Raahosh decides to carry her slung over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes.
One of the scouts appears, waving his spear overhead. “Sa-kohtsk,” he calls into the driving wind. “In the valley. Hurry!”
Vektal puts an arm around my waist. He is now carrying Tiffany, who’s too exhausted to lift her feet. “Come, my resonance,” he tells me. “Not much further.”
“I’m good,” I tell him, plodding ahead. “I—”
The ground shakes under my feet.
“What was that?” I ask, stopping. Terror ripples through me as it happens again. Even the snow at my feet vibrates.
“That,” Vektal says, urging me forward again, “Is a sa-kohtsk.”
Oh, shit. I’m a little terrified of what we’re about to find, but we’ve come this far. Vektal and his men press ahead, so we have little choice but to keep up. “Have you hunted these a lot?” I ask him.
“Not often,” he tells me. “Only when a khui is needed. They are too fierce otherwise.”
“Great,” I say dryly.
“This will go well,” Vektal tells me and gives me a comforting pat on the arm, which only sends a flare of pain through my new wound again.
At least when I get a khui, Maylak will be able to heal me. At this rate all she’s going to have left are a bunch of Georgie-shaped pieces. I ready the knife I carry with me.
“What’s happening?” one of the new girls asks, shivering in her furs. Her name’s Nora, I think, and she’s one of the stronger newbies.
The ground thumps again, and Vektal points at a copse of pink feathery trees ahead. “Take the women there. If the creature comes for you, hide amongst the trees.”
“By climbing them?” I look at the other women. “I don’t think they can climb.”
“You won’t need to climb,” Vektal says. “He cannot get to you through them.” I wonder at his words, but there’s no time to talk. He presses a kiss to my forehead and then passes Tiffany off to me. She’s so weak that she clings to me, and I have to drag her over to the trees with Nora’s help.
It feels a bit sexist to have all the women huddling under the trees as the men go off to fight, but I look at the women around me and feel a little despair. We’re weak, exhausted, and not used to all this cold. If the little green men showed up right now, we’d be helpless to fight back against them, even if we outnumbered them.
The ground shakes again, and at my side, Kira clutches a spear while Liz moans unhappily. “What the fuck is that Jurassic Park shit?”
“I don’t know,” I tell her. But I ready the knife I carry with me.
Something gives a high-pitched roar, and the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. It seems close, really freaking close, and the ground shakes again. Megan chokes back a sob of fright, and the other women are whispering. I hiss for silence because I want to know what the hell is going on, damn it. The thought of Vektal out there with some huge monster frightens me.
What if he gets hurt? What if he . . . dies? My heart clenches at the thought. In such a short period of time, I’ve come to care for him more than I like to admit, even to myself.
I don’t want to be here if Vektal is not.
A gigantic head rises over the trees. I suck in a breath, staring in horror. There’s a thing with four glowing blue eyes, two sets stacked on top of one another. It’s got enormous tusks and is covered in long, grayish shaggy fur. It gives another high-pitched roar and lumbers forward, the ground shaking. It’s taller than all the trees, and as it moves past, I see long, twiggy legs with wide feet pushing through the snow. An alien hunter hangs off of one side, clinging to a spear sticking through the creature’s flank.
“Holy shit,” Liz says. “What the hell is that?”
“I think it’s a sa-kohtsk,” I say, feeling faint. It looks like a Macy’s Parade float with legs. And they’re going to kill that thing? Dear God. Be careful, Vektal, I send out quietly. More of the men run past, chasing after it with spears. I try to pick out Vektal in the group, but I don’t see him. He doesn’t carry a spear, only knives and a sling, and the thought fills me with dread.
“I wish I had a bow,” Liz says as we stare at the creature lumbering past.
“That’s random,” Kira comments, her tone awed. We can’t take our eyes off the sa-kohtsk.