DogForge (10 page)

“Why are they here with us?”

Grat yawned again and closed his eyes.

Denali sniffed the knuckle and went back to her thoughts.

The morning stretched into the high sun time, when the light shifted into yellows and whites. The trees in the valley below swung from side to side in the mountain wind. The pack was ready, but still, they did not move.

Barley pulled the caribou hide lashings tight with her teeth. The pups whimpered and cried beneath her. Grat stood with his head held high and a web of caribou hide tight to his furry throat. The canister, Denali’s canister, was woven under a mat of sharp hairs and rawhide.

“It won’t fall out?” Denali asked nervously. She paced next to Barley and eyed up every knot. “You’re sure?”

“It won’t,” Grat said.

Barley nudged Denali out of the way and deftly tucked a wide scrap of rawhide with a loop gnawed in it. Then she grasped the end of the rawhide with her teeth and tucked it through the loop. Slowly, with every tuck and pull, the knots grew and the web grasped the canister tight. Grat stood patiently through it all.

“Done?” Denali asked. She fidgeted and wagged her tail.

Barley gave her a sideways glance. “Go, check them all.”

Denali ducked under Grat’s head and nudged his chin up higher. She pulled at the bindings, nudged the canister and did everything she could to dislodge it. Finally, after testing it from every angle she sat and smiled sheepishly. “It’s good.”

Grat shook his head and the canister hardly moved. “We used to haul scrap like this. We’d dig and dig, get nothing but the best.” His eyes drifted into a dream place and his ears drooped low.

“Grat,” Barley snapped and herded the bawling pups close.

A placid look grew across Grat’s face and he leaned down to lick at the pups. “We’re another week out. It’ll be quiet for a couple of days, and then the other packs will come close.”

“What then?” Denali asked.

Grat sniffed in deep. “Well, we don’t have a pack of maulers for show.”

A howl sang out and dogs leapt to their feet all across the camp. Barley picked up the pups, one by one by the scruff of the neck, and plopped them onto the sled of scrap.

“And then we try and get you in for the test.”

“Try?” Denali stammered. “What do you mean—
try?
”

Barley stepped close to Denali. “Shh, we’ll get you in. You’ll do fine.”

“I have to, I mean if I don’t...” The words trailed off and Denali felt her heart race.

Grat stood and howled in response. It was a sound deep and old, with a crackle at the end. He coughed and sputtered.

“What if I don’t get in?” Denali pleaded.

“Stay by me, until I tell you to go.”

“Why?”

Grat looked to Barley, then back to Denali. “Sometimes all the pups can go in, and the test is fine. Other times, well, other times one pack tries to stop another from sending the pups in.”

“Grat...” Barley placed a black and white pup back into the sled.

“She has to know,” Grat said, and walked slowly to the front of the sled. “Now help me in,” he said to Denali.

Denali ducked under Grat’s stomach and latched an ancient frayed nylon cord. The edges were white and fuzzy, but the core was still strong. Stronger than any caribou hide.

“Walk,” Grat said, and pulled.

The sled hissed in the dirt. He lined up with the other sleds. The maulers skirted the edge and pulled no scrap, nor carried any pups. Each sled was tended by a female, or small male. In the front, young dogs sprinted out and howled, yipping forward.

“There will be a fight,” Grat stated.

Denali looked up at him and watched as his eyes focused straight ahead.

“When they charge, you must stay close to me. Must.” Grat paused and waited for the sled ahead of him to continue moving.

Denali felt the fear rising inside her. The pack moved again and she stopped and scratched an itch that wouldn’t go away. She caught back up and listened.

“They’ll come in behind—”

Denali cut him off: “What about the pups?”

“They won’t go that far. Our goal is to get our young ones in for the test. Once that’s done, the tension drops, things go back to normal.”

“Then why do we have all the salvage?”

“You ask many questions,” Ivan said. The energy shield crackled in the breeze, a sound like hissing snow. He surprised Denali with how quietly he moved.

“To pay for lazy dogs like Ivan,” Grat said.

Ivan snorted and kept walking forward.

“Is that true?” Denali asked.

Grat ignored the question. “I’m going to lead one wing, Samus will be on the other. Stay by me. When we get close, I’ll give you the canister and you go in.”

“What about you?”

“I lead my group to Samus and we get out.”

Denali felt the adrenaline rise and crash against a wall of anxiety. “What about me?”

“Then you meet the machine gods.”

Before she could ask any more questions, Munin loped down the line and barked at Denali. “Move up! Use that nose of yours, eh?”

Denali looked up at Grat. Grat nodded back. “Go.”

She loped away and stopped. She wanted to see Grat come with Barley and the pups. A voice barked at her and she ducked a nip and missed her chance. They were already mixed in with the rest of the sleds.

The pack moved through hills of red stone and mountains that were so old the peaks were dulled like old teeth. They pulled the sleds through fields of rubble, across meandering rivers surrounded by washed gravel, and past the remnants of man. Finally they passed into the forest and were swallowed up by the green.

Denali kept pace on the front edge. She sniffed. And sniffed. And sniffed. Her only break came when the wind was wrong and the sharp eyes of the others was the only defense. Even then she fell back and kept a sharp ear for the warning howl.

But nothing came in those first days. She wanted to be back with Grat, to ask him more, but instead she patrolled in the moist forest air.

The landscape changed again from the high pines and wispy undergrowth to moss streaked maples and oaks. The underbrush was thick and woven together and the bugs assaulted her from every side. There were bugs that bit, bugs that hummed, bugs that crawled, and bugs that tucked into the edges of her eyes.

Whenever she stopped to try and punish the bugs, an older dog, a trialed dog, would snap at her. They were close, and they needed her nose. She put the pain of the stings and bites behind her and sniffed and sniffed. Finally new scents came, things that were old smells, oil smells, man smells.

She stopped on the top of a moss covered knoll, and could just see the broken spires. There was no vines or moss creeping up, just a pure blackness and the lights, visible even in the daytime, blinking unceasingly.

By the fourth day, the pack was close. They left the young pups and the majority of the scrap. The young dogs’ rough caribou hide packs strapped tight, the price for entry to the trial.

The marauders pressed on with the maulers close by. The young dogs, those eager to trial, pushed the front edge. They were eager to prove themselves worthy, or die trying.

Then the smells came. Dogs. Lots of dogs. A mass of dog smells like nothing she’d ever smelled. She had been but a pup the first time the pack came, and didn’t remember this many dogs. The raw smell of feces, urine, and blood clung in her nose.

Denali stopped, sniffed deeply. Something was close. Something was coming. She tilted her head back and called out into the forest. She listened for the answer and heard it behind her and felt good. Then the growls sounded before her and she saw them.

Dogs darted through the green and broke into shafts of light before being lost in the walls of shadow. The color was different than her pack, a brooding yellow, like old mud. They rushed in with growls.

Denali held her ground and glared forward. She’d not back down from any fight, but she was getting nervous. The growls were coming closer. The undergrowth was so thick around her that she couldn’t see far. Her head snapped from one gap in the growth to the next. Flashes of yellow came closer.

Still she stood. Her eyes strained for any sound, she knew the rest of the pack was behind her, but where? The yellow came closer and finally she saw the eyes, dark eyes ringed with a weeping red. She locked her gaze onto the dog and knew that he too was locked on her.

He changed his course and set his head down. Denali took a step back and lowered herself. She growled and felt the fear rising. There was no match between them and she knew it.

He loped closer, his legs pumping and reaching. His face was set with only his gray teeth jutting out from his lips. Then he leaped.

Denali flung her body to the side. The cool undergrowth folded beneath her. She spun around and braced to charge.

As the yellow dog landed, Munin emerged from the thick growth and slammed his massive jaws on the skull of the yellow dog. There was a crunch, a sickening thud, and the yellow dog thrashed silently. Only the rustling of dead leaves signaled anything.

Denali locked her eyes onto the yellow dog. She saw the animal fear that gushed out of him. The prey eyes. Then, the dead eyes. Munin dropped the corpse onto the ground and disappeared beneath a huge curling frond.

There was a rustling and a crash and three young dogs, all near Denali’s age, exploded out from the greenery. They wore looks of savagery, but with normal white teeth.

“Runt!” Mjol yelped out excitedly. His bushy white and gray tail slapped against the greenery.

“Where’d Munin go, runt?” Lefo barked. He yelped and bumped into Mjol.

“Runt! Stay behind us!” Karus disappeared into the brush. His wide glossy ears flopped against his head as he ran.

The other two yipped excitedly at the sight of the dead yellow dog and followed after Karus. Yipping and yelping rang through the thick growth. Denali glanced at the dead dog and decided there was safety in numbers. She followed after her peers.

The forest was a mass of barking, snarls, and hidden violence. The air was thick with fear and the sticky taste of blood. Dogs savaged other dogs. Where both were trialed, the meeting came down to skill, or luck, But where an unblooded youth met one with metal teeth, the ending was always the same.

Denali tripped on fronds and leapt over decaying logs. She caught sight of Karus and his group. Before them, the wall of scent told her that there were many dogs.

She passed a dead dog, a salvager named Killian. His throat was torn out and his tongue dripped blood. Flies buzzed at the wounds. She backed away, snapped her eyes from it, and felt the fear come on strong.

It was then, while she was looking back, that she stumbled out into the open.

The rich green ended in a sudden line. She broke out into a charred waste devoid of any life. It was as if a great thing had suddenly descended and scorched it all. Her feet scrambled on the raw, dead, soil and she retreated back into the undergrowth. The ground didn’t smell burnt, or even charred, just dead.

Then she realized why they’d attacked them in the trees. There was no cover until the starport.

She gazed at it through the shadows of the fronds, oblivious to the fight around her. The great spires she’d seen in the distance looked like dead tree trunks. The light blinked on the top, but it looked lost, forlorn. At the base the complex was huge, almost a flat topped pyramid with branches of concrete and alloy. It was, other than a mountain, the largest thing she’d ever seen.

The entire area was surrounded first by dead soil then by dead machines. Wrecks of man things, things with wheels, things with tracks, things with legs. All dead, weeping stripes of corrosion, and seeping oil. Beyond that was the dog field. Mounds of scrap, sooty fires, and the remains of structures where the dogs slept during the yearly pilgrimage.

It stunk and she didn’t want to get closer.

A noise rustled her out of her thoughts and Karus stumbled in with the other two close behind. All three panted heavily with tongues wide and wet.

“Go on!” Mjol nudged Denali.

“You go on.”

Violence exploded from the greenery. Samus lead the first group out driving the yellow dogs into the ashen waste. The yellow dogs snarled and barked, but they were outclassed and outmatched. The larger dogs from the mountains hammered.

Samus slammed one of the yellow dogs into the ground while crushing the neck of another.

Denali watched in silence with the other three. This was not what she had pictured a battle to be.

Grat led the second group out and even fewer of the yellow dogs fled before them. A howl, thin and worn, caused the yellow dogs to break and flee. Tails were tucked and the violence stopped suddenly. Samus panted on one edge and made his way towards Grat.

Mjol yipped and pranced out onto the ash. The others walked out slowly and watched the yellow dogs flee with dust devils chasing behind them. 

“Denali!” Grat barked at her.

She ran across the crunchy ash and kept her eyes on the yellow dogs. They had slowed and some had even stopped.

The maulers emerged from the treeline, heavier and slower. They walked almost casually towards Samus and Grat.

Denali found herself as the only young dog listening. She glanced at the others and they were all together swapping stories about the fight.

Samus looked grim with blood streaked down his face. Grat had the same look as always, a set determination like a rock.

Ivan glanced at the yellow dogs and then to Samus. “That’s it?”

“I doubt it,” Samus growled. He stared towards the spires. “They’ll be in the cover.”

“Do we try and hold it?” Grat asked.

“Don’t be a fool, we’d need a thousand more,” Ivan growled back.

Grats ear flapped in the wind and he looked away.

Samus took two steps and stared across the ash. He tipped his nose up and smelled.

Ivan looked to Grat and then to Denali. “What do you smell?”

Denali took in a deep breath of gritty air and closed her eyes. She held it and savored every nuance and exhaled slowly. Grat, Ivan and Samus watched her. She stammered, “I smell dogs, more then I’ve ever smelled. I smell old things. I smell dead things.”