Chapter 5

We waited fruitlessly for three hours, but the orlan never showed up. That attested to the experience of the two hunters with me. They were used to this sort of disappointing and frustrating wait for a quarry that never showed up. I said, “It looks to me like we are wasting our time. I think that the orlan would have returned if it were going to today. Let’s go home and resume our hunt tomorrow.”

Hunter of Bear and Tracker agreed with me, so we left for home. If we did not return soon, we were afraid that the women would worry about us and try to find us. None of us wanted them wandering over the snow in a useless search, so we hurried home as fast as we could move. Dammit, before we left tomorrow, I was going to have the replicator produce some radios so that we could report what we were doing and the women could do the same.

Snow was waiting for us at the cave entrance and jumped into Tracker’s arms the moment he reached the cave. She began at once to chatter about how they had all worried about us and wondered what we were doing and if we were safe. This same thing happened for Hunter of Bear and I as soon as we reached the improved area of the cave.

Things calmed down a bit once the women all had their say about how worried they had been. I said, “Ladies, I must apologize over causing you to worry so unnecessarily. I will fix that problem right now.” I called for the replicator to produce six hand-held radios with a range of about 25 miles over the snow-covered plain. The next few minutes were spent in showing the other five family members how to use the radios.

These radios had a positioning device that was not a GPS system because there was no system of satellites for that yet in place. Instead, the radios used an inertial positioning device that was just as accurate for a short time. It had to be rebooted every 48 hours to maintain its accuracy. That was no problem for us, so we did not miss the GPS system.

Each one of us received a radio and was told never to turn it off. It ran on Dark Energy and did not have to worry about the charge in a battery. I did not go into any detail about that because none of the five would have been interested without a background in battery operated systems.

After supper, Tracker, Hunter, and I talked about what to do tomorrow. We were still fumbling around when Moon said, “I think that you are making too much of the situation. Why not go back to the orlan’s cave and find the most recent tracks? You can follow them to see where they lead. Then you can decide what to do about the beast.”

Moon was startled by our reaction. We all jumped up at the same time to kiss her in thanks for solving our problem for us. Following that, we went to bed and had only a short bout of sex. We all wanted to get an early start tomorrow. I called for an alarm clock and set it to wake me up before daylight. I planned to wake up the others as soon as I finished in the bathroom.

The next morning, we were away from our cave and headed toward the orlan’s cave just as the sun came over the horizon. Tracker and Hunter both had a good sense of their position in the world as that was a necessity for a hunter at this time. A hunter did not live long without that sense.

We headed directly for the orlan’s first cave and were there in about three hours. I led the way because of my added strength, and I was steered in the proper direction whenever I wandered to one side or the other. I had made sure that we had all zeroed our Inertial Positioning System (IPS) before we left our cave, so we could easily keep track of where we were at any time that day.

We kept a careful lookout as we got close to the cave just in case the orlan had come back after we left. As expected, the orlan was nowhere to be found, so we waited while Tracker examined the various tracks to see which one we ought to follow. It only took him 15 minutes to decide, and he led us away from the cave.

We sincerely hoped that this would be the day we found the orlan because we were worried that she would find another village to attack. All three of us were concerned when we realized that we were taking a general course back toward our cave. We kept walking while I called the women on the radio to warn them to be very careful if they left the cave. They had the blasters, but I still was not completely comfortable with the idea of them fighting the orlan. I would be happy if they never saw the beast.

At one point, we came upon four dead wolves. It was obvious to me that they had met the orlan and had lost the battle. One good point was that we saw some orange blood that could only have come from the orlan. I have to admit that I was pleased to see that the wolves had managed to wound the orlan. The orange blood drops did mark the snow for a while, but I was not sure what that meant. I did hope that meant that the orlan was mortally wounded, but I sincerely doubted that. That did bring up the interesting thought of how many wolves would it take to kill the orlan?

I did begin to think that the orlan might be badly hurt because we did spot occasional spots of orange blood on the snow. Well, at least I hoped so. The important point was that these blood spots were at least 24 hours old. Tracker was still leading our party, and I warned him that the orlan might be injured enough that it was lying in the snow. If so, it would be well camouflaged the color of the snow, and it would be a fatal mistake to get too close to it. Tracker nodded that he understood my concern and that he would be careful.

Finally, we came to the place where the orlan had spent the night. It must have been very hungry by then because we saw no signs that it had killed anything else to eat. A hungry orlan is a doubly dangerous orlan, so we were very careful as we approached its temporary home. This creature must have been an even faster learner than I had expected because it had burrowed under a heap of snow to dig its own snow-cave.

We had our blasters ready for quick action if the orlan was anywhere around, but we were lucky, and it had left, probably to do some serious hunting. We stopped for a belated lunch, and I called the women to tell them what was going on. I restated my warning about being cautious. I emphasized again that a hungry and wounded orlan was nothing to be blasé about.

As we were cleaning up to resume our hunt, I happened to glance well away from our current position and saw what looked like a mound of snow quickly moving across the landscape. Dammit, that had to be the orlan! In my excitement, I shouted, “THERE IT GOES! I JUST SAW IT DASHING ACROSS THE SNOW!” We all took off running toward where I had seen the orlan, but I soon outdistanced Hunter and Tracker because of my strength.

Hunter yelled at me to stop and wait for them to catch up. Of course, he was right, but I still hated to waste the time waiting on them. They did catch up to me in only 2-3 minutes, and I resolved not to run away from them again. In fact, I told them to follow me closely, and I would try to break a trail for them so that they would have an easier time of it in the snow that was about 12 inches deep.

The orlan was long gone by the time we came to the trail that it had left, but we were still closer to it than we would have been if we had continued to follow its trail. Tracker took a close look at the orlan’s trail and gave a shout of triumph. “Look, the wolves must have been more successful than we thought. This trail looks to me like the orlan is using only five legs. Surely, it can’t move as fast through the snow if it does not have all of its legs available.”

“I hope you are right. Anything that can slow down the orlan has to be to our advantage. The problem is that we are even more likely to run into an ambush if it is badly hurt. Let me continue to lead because I am more likely to spot an ambush since I have fought orlans previously.”

Hunter said, “Dammit, Demon Slayer, just how old are you? You claim too much experience to be the 20-25 years old that you look to be.”