Chapter 1

Trae Quinton pulled the arrow back until the barb was just short of the rest.

Without consciously thinking about it, he tipped his recursive bow back slightly and aimed just to the right of true to allow for the slight crosswind that would affect its 40m of flight. He waited a moment as the cuttail glanced to her left and exposed her neck.

He released the arrow and then quickly drew the next from his quiver. He was sighting down the second arrow before the cuttail had reacted to being shot by the first. He held off for a moment as his eyes caught a movement to the left where the cuttail had been looking.

Trae, sucked in a breath as a second larger animal came to investigate why its mate had not come to join it. The large male sniffed at the still female. It lifted its head and roared. Trae released the arrow and grabbed his third.

His second shot had not been as good as his first. The male thrashed his head and battered at the 25cm protrusion sticking out of his breast just below his neck. Trae sucked in a fresh breath and released the third arrow as he breathed out. Its thin, flat, metal head slithered between two ribs and sliced deep into the lung of the large male.

The male hastened his own death. As he spun his head to hook the second arrow with his long canines, he pushed the first arrow in deeper, and it found an artery. The cuttail grunted and paced several times as it tried to breathe before finally dropped over onto his side.

Trae held the bow ready, but he did not draw as he watched the cuttails. He examined the female, but he didn’t believe she was feeding young. Silently he hooked his bow back over his neck and shoulder and slithered down the tree.

Retrieving his bow, he notched a new arrow and quietly made his way across the rocky ridges towards his prey. He remained alert as cuttails commonly hunted in small family groups. He worked his way around several stubby bushes and over to the ledge that held the two bodies. When he was 10m from them, he stopped with his back to the cliff and observed them.

Neither moved and they had the glassy eyes and relaxed poses of the recently deceased. No other cuttails had come to investigate the roar of the male. He hooked the bow back over his head and shoulder and slid the arrow back into the quiver. He pulled the long-bladed hunting knife from his scabbard and looked around again.

He saw no other movement in the vicinity, so he approached his kills. He pulled the female’s head back and sliced her throat. Blood welled, but her heart wasn’t pumping, so it fell more from gravity than any other reason. He did the same to the male and was pleased that he too was dead.

Two kills was a good day.

Trae now had the jobs of skinning and butchering to do.

Cuttail could be a rather tough and tangy meat. However, the organs and the haunches were worth retrieving since they were a young couple. If slow roasted the hunches were good eating and considered a delicacy in many circles. The meat also pickled well.

If the organs and flesh were smoked until dry, then ground with grains and dried fruits, they made fine travel food that tended to keep for many months. While not Trae’s favourite source of meat, he still had many uses for it.

Trae was pleased to find that the large cavern the two cuttails had been sunning themselves in front of, would be easy to defend and it was quite spacious inside. The opening sat back far enough that he’d not previously noticed it from the road, as he’d never seen cuttails on this ledge in all the years that he had lived here.

However, he would need his lankys to shift them into the cave. They were large, solidly muscled predators and these two were prime specimens. He whistled. He watched Sage emerge from the trees and start to make her way to him dragging Della with her.

He looked over the shelf and decided he’d dump the guts over it, as he had a fall of 30m on that side. His fires should keep the other predators that came to feast, from looking for more in his cave. He bent down, ran his knife down the female’s underbelly and parted the skin. Hooking the membrane, he opened her up.

Now for the dirty part, he pushed his hands in and started scooping out her guts. He was surprised when a part of it wiggled. He opened her womb and retrieved a sack. He split the membrane as the cub wiggled. He was surprised that she had only carried one cub, as a normal litter was three to four.

He wiped the cub’s face as it sucked in a breath. It then sneezed mucus from its nose, before it cried pitifully. He looked at the blind cub that was about 26cm long and speckled black on grey like its mother. He needed both hands to hold it as it squirmed. He wondered what in the Void, was he was going to do with her.

He should just smash her head against the cliff, but for some reason, he just couldn’t do it. He knew he was daft, as he had nothing to feed it. It would be helpless for weeks and need to be fed milk of some description for months. He’d never heard of anyone raising a cuttail cub. They were wild animals and predators.

Trae pinched and then stripped the placental cord. He walked back into the cave and noticed a small hollow the female had dug out to secure her cubs. He removed a dirty shirt from his pack and placed it and the cub in the hollow. He then went back outside to finish gutting and butchering of the parents.

Sage and Della finally worked their way up to him. Sage was used to the smell of his kills, but Della was a bit flighty. Being heavy in foal made her even more skittish than usual. Finding one of his rags from a pack, he wiped his hands on it. He released Della from the tie-ring on Sage’s saddle and led her into the cave.

He dropped the light packs from Della and left her tied to a boulder. Grabbing ropes and a tarp from his pack, he went back out to the kills. He hooked the ropes to the back saddle rings and to the corners of the tarp and spread it out. He removed the heavier pack from Sage and told her to stay.

He stripped back the pelt of the female and then started slicing off the meat and retrieving the organs, that he planned to keep. He dropped them onto the tarp, so they stayed clean. As practised as he was, he still took a good hour to butcher and skin the two cuttails. Once happy with what he had collected, he pushed the carcases over the cliff.

He retrieved one of his water bags, rinsed off his arms and his knife and then diluted the blood left on the rocky shelf. He broke off a branch from one of the scrubby bushes nearby and used it to sweep the clotted bloody mess off the shelf as best as he could before he rinsed the skins.

Trae led Sage into the cavern. He was able to pull the tarp closer to the back wall on one side. He was glad it was such a large cavern as he could put Sage and Della off to the other side and away from where he wanted to build a fire and a smoke rack. He didn’t plan to stay any longer than one night, as he was heading home.

His home was still several hours ride away as he had a pregnant lanky in tow. He had hoped to get Della home before she foaled. However, the cuttails had moved into this area in the two days between his trip to town and his return. He had meant to pick Della up several weeks before, but he had been delayed by the Roe River being in flood and over the causeway.

The river was located 20km from town and blocked the start of the road that led to the mountain pass and onto the township of Clawton. The locals didn’t farm on his side of the river. He had only just crossed over the river when he spied the cuttail up on the ledge.

He lived 70km north of Catton and to the west of the pass through the range to Clawton. He knew the farmers on the other side of the river wouldn’t be happy having cuttails this close to them. It was rare for them to venture this close to the river. It acted a lot like the dividing line between civilisation and the mountains.

Since he hunted cuttails and other predators, it made sense for him to live in the mountains. He patrolled the pass over Mt Ear during the early spring and late autumn months before the snows cut the pass during winter.

They didn’t get a lot of snow, as the Sister Islands were in a tropical zone. However, the pass climbed as high as 4km above sea level. For at least two months of the year, it did get cut off in the bowl-shaped valley they used to pass by the highest peaks of Mt Ear.

Trae believed the valley was the belly of an extinct volcano. It has a large lake off to the eastern side and the highest peaks were to the west. The water had eaten down the sides of the valley in several places. On the south side, it had created a ledge wide enough that they could pass into the valley.

On the northern side, there had been a huge landslide at some time, and it was easier going down beside the river that drained that way. However, the snow did get deep enough in the valley, and the terrain was rough. Landslips were common, so it wasn’t safe to travel around the rim in winter.

Catton was located about 2.5km above sea level, 130km inland and north-west from the sea. It didn’t snow there but it did get cold enough that you knew it was winter. Most of the time, it was hot, humid and raining. Locals reckoned it rained 300 of the 360 days of a year, but Trae didn’t think it was that bad.

On the north-west side of the Catton Range, it was a lot dryer. Most of the north-western side of Cuttail Island was scrubby bush and desert until you got to within about 25km of the coast again. It was a strangely shaped island, reminded Trae of a long-necked snail. It was about 1200 km from nose to tail (east to west) and about 1000km from shell to the foot (north to south).

Catton was located about where the neck and foot came out of the shell with the head to the east. The capital city of Cuttail Island, Hilton City, was on the top of the head in what he thought of as the ear. It was to his north-east and was nearly 700km away by road from Catton. Trae had never ventured to the capital.

He had ridden as far north as Clawton and east to Merton. He’d been to the seaside towns in the south, Pixville and to the west of south-west to Darina. He’d even gone over the range from his valley once, just for a look. He had also crossed the passage to Wing City on Eagle Island because it was closer than Hilton City and a good place to sell his merchandise.

Clawton was the furthermost he had travelled, as it was close to 300km by road from Catton, thanks to the range and the forests. It was close to four days of travel just to get there, even on a good lanky. Wagon trains took as long as a week (6 days) to eight days even in good weather.

He knew he could get to Clawton faster if he owned a traveller, but they weren’t much use without a good road and for his line of work, the lankys were still the best option. For a hunter, the lankys made less noise too.

He wondered if the road would ever be good enough for a traveller to use.

A little bit about Trae and the Pix people.

Trae believed he was mostly of the Pix race. He had suspected for a while that he had a bit of some other race mixed in but that was common these days. As a generality, male Pix people averaged about 120cm in height.

In the home solar system, Keltria, where the people of Tara had come from, they were at least 10cm shorter. Tara had a lighter gravity and the average height of the people had increased over the thousands of years that they had lived here. Trae was considered very tall at 160cm. This was one reason why he knew he was of mixed heritage.

The inhabitants of the Sister Islands had arrived on Tara close to 5,000 years before. The two settlement ships that had landed in the Sister Islands, one on Cuttail Island and the other on Boa Island, were mostly filled with people from the Burgis, Prol, Pix and Faerie races.

The other three dominant races, the Genteli, Grandteli and Shifters had only very small numbers on these ships. More people of these races had moved to the Islands since they had landed ships on other continents and island groups, but they weren’t dominant.

Trae didn’t know exactly how many ships headed for Tara but he knew that his ancestors hadn’t been on the only ships to land on the planet. Tara had many small continents and groups of islands that allowed the different races to spread out and do their own thing and most of them had populations. Since the races were fleeing a doomed system, he guessed that quite a few did make it here.

As for Trae, while he had the backward pointed ears of the Pix, they were not as long as he had seen on Pix who were still more pure of race. His teal coloured eyes were also unusual in that they were not purple. While the skin on his arse was pale pink, his exposed skin tended to tan a light creamy brown.

The Pix also tended to be very slim, but he was built a little studier. He still had a tiny arse, but his shoulders were wider and he muscled up when working. Even his thighs were thicker. He did have the big feet and the long fingers that were common to the Pix race.

He was very strong for his height and weight, more like a Burgis. He suspected he did have Burgis in him, as his body shape was more like theirs. They were also inclined to be of similar height to him. Burgis people were on average, darker of skin than he was and darker of hair. They also had much smaller ears and wider noses.

Trae’s other oddity was the thin, pale blue-green streaks in his otherwise white-blonde hair. He kept it one length and plaited down his back, as it wanted to curl when he let it loose. It was longer than was the norm, as it went down past his scapulae, mostly because he couldn’t be bothered getting it cut.

The only people he had seen with hair similar to his were called Shifters. He’d never felt inclined to shift form or gender, so he wasn’t aware if he had this ability or not. While many Genteli had red, dark pink or white-blonde hair, they didn’t tend to have the distinct streaks like him.