Paws and Planets (8 page)

If the
succulent northern herds are not motivation enough for the Larg
kohorts, the Larg relish acts of war and battle.

The adult Lind
have patrolled their vulnerable coastlines for centuries, defending
their packs, their pack-lands and their nation.

In Kolyei’s
third summer of life, his father Sanvei did not return from one of
these patrols.

Kalya was
disconsolate at the death of her mate, (the Lind mate for life) and
she threw all of her energies into rearing her growing litter, the
only one that she would bear. Unusually, all five survived.

Kolyei and his
lisyas, or sisters, had a happy childhood, his was not the only
family to be hit by the death of a parent. As the seasons
progressed Kolyei extended his horizons beyond the family daga and
into the rtathlians, the woodlands belonging to their pack,
exploring the varied smells and sights.

His more formal
education began when he was around five summers old. With others of
the same age he romped and played in the nursery clearing and began
to learn how to use the talents he had been born with, not
realising that the play fights that concluded each lesson were his
introduction to the more serious matter of war and might well save
his life in later years.

The Lind are
telepathic. From birth they can sense the thoughts and emotions of
those around them. As they grow, they learn how to send and receive
these thoughts and then as their minds develop, progress to sending
and receiving images.

As Kolyei and
his friends learnt to speak so they began to practice ‘sending’
words to each other as well. This they found took a great deal of
effort and energy, precisely why this talent, as they were
informed, was usually kept for messages of great importance. At
this stage they had yet to discover how to keep their ‘sendings’
within a tight beam and how not to broadcast.

To direct
thought to a specific personage and excluding others, has to be
learned and takes many seasons practice. Tight ‘sendings’ are
essential because on a battlefield, such thoughts can be overheard
by the Larg who share the same basic telepathic talents.

When Kolyei and
the other ltsctas reached their tenth summer they graduated into
the all important final classes and spent as much time outside the
domta proper as inside, learning how to hunt and also how to scout
and patrol. They learnt how to remain hidden undercover and how to
sense the Larg. Last but not least, they learnt how to fight within
the ranks of the Lindar, the warrior arm of every Lind pack. Some
who could keep well hidden, run fast and had good telepathic skills
received extra training as potential scouts and would progress in
later years to the dangerous job of patrolling the coastline.

By the time
Kolyei was twelve summers old, it was obvious to all that this was
where his talents lay, although he would spend some seasons within
the more formal Lindar ranks to gain fighting experience.

When a Lind
reaches the great age of fourteen summers, he or she is considered
adult and is required to join the pack’s Lindar and to go into
battle to defend the rtathlians of the nation that is Lind.

In Kolyei’s
year group was one Tarmsei, the only one who could rival Kolyei in
strength and determination. Tarmsei could not run as fast as his
friend, nor was he as good at the scouting exercises but he was
much better in the games of strategy and leadership that became
more and more intensive as the all-important final season of
teachings drew to a close.

“Do you think,”
asked Tarmsei reflectively of his friend during their final day of
carefree youth, “that the Larg will attack soon?”

“Matvei thinks
they will.”

“That is not
good hearing.”

“And I thought
you were so eager to prove yourself,” Kolyei teased.

“Kolyei my
friend, I am indeed but I have no wish for the Larg to come. I
would much rather hunt and play.”

“I think these
days are soon to be over. With adulthood comes our duty to protect
our rtath, our rtatha and every creature who lives within them.
Remember what Alanasei told us in our teachings. The Larg kill and
not just to eat.”

The last time
the Larg had managed to break through the Lindars they had left
large swathes of death wherever they had gone. Eventually
reinforcements had arrived from the west and pushed them back to
the southern continent, but the herds had taken many seasons to
recover in the numbers that had roamed the plains before the
attack.

“I hear rtath
Wlsei and rtath Andiranya are on their way to aid us,” Tarmsei
mentioned.

“That is good
is it not?”

“That
depends.”

Kolyei’s ears
cocked forward.

“Well, if Wlsei
and Andiranya are coming they must expect a large number of Larg
kohorts. That is not so good.”

The two young
males left the clearing to hunt, their last hunt of their carefree
ltscta-hood.

The patrol
returned and word came that the newly adult were to join Matvei’s
ryz. Matvei was commander of the rear ryz that was the battle
position of the least experienced.

The rear ryz of
a Lindar is a peculiar mixture of the experienced and the
inexperienced, the former consisting of returnees, usually females
whose litter has become adult and older fighters who no longer have
the agility and stamina to sustain a long fight in the front ryz.
The front ryz (line) consists of the best and heaviest fighters, in
the prime of life, most suited to withstand the Larg when their
kohorts hit the Lind lines. The majority of these are male. The
second, or middle ryz is similar to the front in expertise and
consists mainly of the lighter females, just as experienced as
their male counterparts but lacking the size and stamina that makes
the front ryz so effective.

As soon as
Kolyei and the others joined the ryz, intensive training began.
Each ryz had undergone reorganisation, but Matvei’s was the one
that did the most training because a full half of it consisted of
those who had never experienced a battle before.

Tarmsei’s older
brother Tlsei had been promoted from the rear ryz to the front.
Tarmsei was very proud of him. He intended to emulate him and join
him there before the summer season was over. Kolyei believed that
he just might manage it too, provided he survived.

The Larg attack
was imminent.

Then word came
and the Lindar was running east. At one of the brief rest stops
when the sun was at its zenith, Kolyei flopped down in the shade of
some allst trees beside one of the streams that criss-crossed this
area of the flat lands. Years later, mankind would name this area
‘Patchwork Plain’.

“How do we know
how many and when the Larg are coming?” he asked of his friend.

“Spies,”
answered Tarmsei with an air of one who knows.

“Spies?”

“The Avuzdel.
Surely you have heard of them?” he continued, his voice lowered so
not to be overheard, “I believe that some Lind are even members of
the Larg kohorts, perhaps even in the Larg High Command rtath
itself!”

“Really?” asked
Kolyei in surprise. “How do they hide their colour patterns?”

Each Lind pack
has a different colour striped pattern interspersed with their
brown furry coats. Pack Alanasei’s was a bright blue.

“Bred out.”

Kolyei thought
for a moment.

“I would like
go to the south,” he mused, half to himself.

“Be careful
what you wish for,” cautioned Tarmsei, “Avuzdel members have a
habit of ending up dead.”

“I would still
like to see the south. There will be strange trees and I have never
seen the desert.”

“Hope you never
do. It is dry, little water, no trees. It is all thin powdered
rock.”

Tarmsei looked
at Kolyei and thought hard. His friend always had been the one of
their group who wanted to explore further and further away, always
wanting to run to and over just one more hill, to enter just one
more valley. He thrived on adventure.

“You should be
a scout,” Tarmsei said at last. “I think you would be good at it
too.”

“I like that
idea Tarmsei. I really do. After the battle I will ask Matvei.”

All the tyro
fighters in the rear ryz were nervous about what was to come. Even
the confident Tarmsei was nervous and admitted it, which made
Kolyei feel much better. Training never prepared one for the real
thing, which was why the untried were in the rear ryz.

Twelve suns
later, both Kolyei and Tarmsei knew all about battles. Kolyei felt
sick with the sights and sounds of injury and death.

The Larg
kohorts had broken after a battle that had lasted from sun-up to
sun-down and had been defeated only at great cost. There was barely
a Lind still on his or her feet that didn’t have at least one hurt.
The healers were working overtime to save as many as they could,
but little could be done to mend those with deep bleeding gashes.
Howls and moans of pain could be heard all over the battlefield.
The Smaha root was being applied as fast as it could be brought
forward from the rear, which at least deadened the pain if it did
not stop the bleeding and the deaths.

Two of Kolyei’s
sisters were dead. His mother Kayla was injured but the healers
assured Kolyei that she would live although she would never fight
in the ryz again. Tarmsei was in a state of shock, all but him of
his litter were dead and worse than that, his hero big brother
Tlsei had died during the final charge of the day.

Kolyei
accompanied Matvei and others not so badly hurt in a patrol of the
battlefield, ensuring that no Larg remained alive.

But I am
alive
, Kolyei thought;
I have survived my first
battle
.

Matvei stopped
and turned to look at Kolyei.

“I have heard
good reports about you,” he said. “Join Ralei’s scouts for this sun
and the next. He hunts the Larg that got through the ryz.”

“Me? A
scout?”

Matvei’s
blue-striped muzzle wrinkled in tolerant amusement.

“It no
sinecure, believe me Kolyei. There are not many scouts left capable
of running. This was a bad battle.”

“But we won
Matvei, we won,” this from Tarmsei approaching at a limping trot.
He raised his head proudly. “This is our duty and as long as life
is within me, I will fight the Larg to keep our rtathlians
free.”

“The Larg will
not be happy until all Lind are dead,” Matvei added, “they will be
back. You stay with me for now. You must learn how to cope with the
problems of the afterbattle. It will be good training for you if
you hope to lead a ryz in later seasons.”

It was a much
depleted but proud Lindar that returned home to the domta.

The seasons
moved on.

Kolyei remained
with Ralei and the scouts, and Tarmsei was promoted to the front
ryz; his joy in the promotion diminished somewhat by his regret
that his brother and litter-mates were not there to see it.

Despite their
different avocations, Kolyei and Tarmsei remained close
friends.

The two were
twenty summers old when they volunteered to lead a wide patrol at
the eastern edge of the continent. Tarmsei enjoyed a change from
regular Lindar life. The patrol ran east, tails high with the
anticipation of a long run. They were all most surprised to see the
large herds of kura stampeding into the interior.

“We’d better
investigate. It might be the Larg,” shouted Kolyei.

“Where?”
answered Tarmsei.

“At the other
side of the lian, the trees will give us cover.”

The patrol
skirted round the frightened kura and ran on light paws through the
woods until they reached the wooded ridge that overlooked the coast
beside the island chain.

What they found
there is another story.

* * * * *

THE HUMANS –
THEIR PREQUEL

* * * * *

EPISODE 1
-TRUMPET (AL -12)

Cabin 1-G402
was identical in every way to the others of Corridor 4, Colonial
Section 2, (G Deck) of the World Coalition Colony Ship
Argyll
.

It contained a
central living area with a table, four chairs and a comfort and
seating area. Three bed recesses, separated from the main area by
sliding doors lay against one bulkhead. On the opposite bulkhead
lay the storage units and the information and entertainment
consoles. Set against the third bulkhead were the emergency
cabinets.

As Elspeth
McCallum settled the baby in his crib and began to unpack the
family possessions she was thinking hard about the circumstances
which had brought her, her husband Alastair and baby here this
day.

She was a tall,
thin woman with long, slim fingers and a careworn face. Elspeth
McCallum had taught musicianship before her marriage. She hummed to
herself as she placed her father’s last gift to her at the very
bottom of the lowest storage drawer. Perhaps during their long
journey to Riga she might get the chance to try it out.

These last
years had been a difficult time for the McCallum family. Her
husband came from farming stock (as did the majority of the
colonists who were now boarding the WCCS
Argyll
), her
husband’s family having successfully farmed their Ayrshire farm
since the late nineteenth century.

Although the
McCallums had worked hard, they had lived in relative comfort, but
that was before the floods had come, not only for one year but then
a second and then a third. In debt, a third of their arable land
under water, Alastair McCallum had bowed to the inevitable and had
sold the remaining ground and stock to one of the large corporate
amalgamated farms. Elspeth’s husband was not emotionally suited to
a position of under-manager on one of these large conglomerates and
had begun to make enquiries. Shortly after the farm had been sold
he had signed up for the third wave of colonisation bound for
planet Riga.