Flowers That Bloom in the Desert (5)
Olgoi-Khorkhoi (олгой-хорхой).
This creature of such a peculiar name was the true culprit behind the mission. The name itself had come down from the ancient tongue of the steppe, a language that had left a deep imprint on the speech of the Prairie Elves. Olgoi meant intestine.
"Doesn't the name give you the creeps?"
"You'll understand once you see one. They're white, translucent worms — they really do look like guts."
Khorkhoi — sometimes rendered khorkhoi — meant worm. Specifically, a worm that could not fly, one that crawled along the ground.
Put together, it meant intestine-worm.
About the size of a giant grub, maybe?
If a pale grub stretched as long as a man, it might well look like an intestine. Vesta pictured a fat caterpillar writhing across the sand. Call it a sandworm, if you wanted another name.
"Dismount."
Ushun bellowed Ahor's order down the line. Vesta glanced around for antlion pits, wondering if another of those had appeared.
Ushun caught the look and barked a laugh.
"We're getting close to olgoi territory."
"The flower field?"
"Yes. They nest in clusters around it."
"Doesn't look like the kind of place worms would come out of."
"There are probably a few of them just ahead of us, too."
Sensing the need for a briefing, she called the trainees together.
"Anyone here who's never caught a worm before, raise your hand."
Two hands went up.
"What, you showed up with zero experience?"
"Hehe. We came to watch and learn."
"Hah. Thick-skinned, I'll give you that. Fine — watch close and learn well."
The lesson for Vesta and the two elves began.
"Baatar, can you see where the worms are hiding?"
"Not at all. There's no visible sign."
"Yes. It won't be easy. They're damn good at hiding."
After receiving Ahor's leave, Ushun led Vesta and the elves across the desert.
"Used to be easier to find them. Their tunnels used to sit wide open."
They would ram a long skewer down the hole, or light a bundle of kindling and toss it in. Creatures that had once been cooked as easily as antlions had, at some point, changed their habits.
"They started filling in their own holes."
The theory was that they sealed the tunnels themselves the moment they felt vibrations from a distance.
"They're weaker than antlions, but they're a bigger pain in the ass."
Ushun halted the party and strode forward. Every few steps she stamped her foot against the sand, boom, boom.
"Does Ushun see something the rest of us don't?"
"I'm no born hunter like Asmur, but my instincts aren't half bad."
She stamped. Boom.
"Watch this."
The instant the words left her mouth, sand erupted like a geyser.
Its speed was beyond anything he had imagined — a viper lunging with its jaws thrown wide. Most people would never have had time to react. They would simply have surrendered the first strike.
Not that anyone present was worried about Tamugai Ushun.
A wet, crushing sound followed. A slab of flesh as thick as a child's torso snapped sideways.
"Hmph."
It wasn't the flail Ushun was so proud of that had done it. It was her fist. Her bare fist. She had smashed the sandworm with a punch, and that alone had broken its charge.
"You hit that with your fist?"
Vesta was incredulous. Ushun glanced at him from the corner of her eye.
"If I'd used a weapon, I couldn't have held back. I'd have burst the thing wide open, and then we couldn't get a proper look at it."
Ushun, treating a monster worm as little more than a teaching aid.
The worm slithered, trying to pull itself back into the hole.
A bowstring thrummed. Fluid burst across the sand. A single long arrow had transfixed its body. The sandworm writhed, trying to drag itself down the hole, but the shaft caught and held it.
Vesta turned to see who had loosed the shot — and found Ahor with her bow in hand.
"...You said you shoot about as well as anyone else."
It was a perfectly timed assist. The two of them meshed far better than he had expected. Methodical Ahor, and Ushun, the incarnation of improvisation. On the surface they looked like a mismatch, but Ahor understood Ushun's way of fighting perfectly — as if she were riding a legendary horse named Ushun. Or perhaps it was more like Ahor astride a bull.
Unable to flee, the sandworm turned aggressive. It uncoiled its contracted body and lunged at Ushun.
"Simple-minded thing."
Ushun drove one hand down onto its head and slammed it into the dirt.
A long, grinding groan scraped out of it. A grub probably could not think complex thoughts, but somehow it sounded like a sigh of despair.
Vesta stepped in close to study the sandworm.
It does look a bit like an intestine.
He had been picturing a plump, fat grub. The real thing was far sleeker.
"I was expecting something that crawled along the ground. It looks different from that."
It did have a straight body — just not the way he had thought. Not horizontal. Vertical. A predator that waited in a deep pit, then uncoiled its contracted body in a single strike to hunt.
What kind of worm is this?
Ahor approached the two of them.
"Anything that crawled around under this blazing sun wouldn't last half a day before it dried up and died."
"Well. That makes sense."
Looking at that tender, translucent flesh, it still had the thin, fragile skin of a grub. If a creature like that exposed a body this long to the open air, it would cook in the desert sun. Snakes were a different matter.
"And this isn't even fully grown?"
"Please. This one's nothing."
Ushun, calling a creature this large nothing.
"What on earth does it eat to get this big?"
"We didn't used to see this many of them. As the number of people crossing the desert grew, so did they."
Meaning people were what was fattening them. A distinctly unpleasant thought.
"Baatar, why don't you try catching one yourself?"
"Shouldn't be a problem."
Vesta stepped forward with confidence. There was even a hint of ease about him.
"Ohh, now that's a man. I like that confidence. Looks damn good on you."
Ushun stamped her feet, boom boom, stirring up whatever was hiding in the sand.
"It's coming."
Vesta gripped the Khan's sword and tried to draw it. It still would not budge. Not yet, then. He had to draw the sidearm he carried instead.
The only sound was the sand-laden wind. But Vesta felt a strange tension coloring the air. Nature was not, by nature, a quiet place. Silence, in a way, was an artificial phenomenon. The hunters had deliberately killed their presence, and that had produced a stillness so complete it felt unnatural.
"Here it comes."
Ushun stamped.
A handful of sand sprayed up. A black head shot out, jaws snapping. When a living thing was hit with sudden information, the body locked — and hunters were those who could invade that brief instant. In that sense, the sandworm was a remarkably skilled hunter.
Not that it was faster than the blade-tips of the killers Vesta had known.
He slipped sideways and swung his sword. The sandworm's head spun through the air a few times and hit the ground with a thud.
"Ooooh."
Ushun was delighted.
"I'm good at dealing with opponents who just charge in blindly."
He had spent more time as a Bestiarius, hunting beasts, than as a gladiator fighting men. A fight with a beast was, at its core, close combat. No animal entered the arena with a net and a javelin — not unless it was a thinking being like a Centaur.
Vesta had fought wolves, lions, brown bears — all of them the kind of enemy that came at him in a blind rush. He had had no choice but to get used to it. Beasts showed no mercy to the loser.
"We're here."
We're here meant they had reached the flower field blooming in the desert. Did such a thing even exist? Vesta held onto his doubts until the moment he saw it with his own eyes.
"So that's the flower field."
It was, quite literally, a meadow of white flowers in full bloom. He crossed the garden with the elves. Tall white blossoms filled his vision. From crown to stem they shone a milky, translucent white — a long way from any blossom a person might ordinarily picture.
Recognizing what they truly were was not difficult. Sandworms. Withered, desiccated sandworms, posed as flowers. A garden of dried blooms, in other words. The worms' legs had become the petals.
"They look like lilies. White all the way down to the roots."
Vesta asked Ahor, who was half-hidden behind the dried flowers, how a field like this could even come to exist.
"When a caravan changes its route, it isn't only the caravan that turns. The lizards that follow them, the jackal packs, everything else turns with them."
Ahor came up beside him. A single lily sat on her head.
Technically it's a bug. Should I pick it off for her?
"Then these things have nothing to eat, so they wither and die. With the sandworms wiped out, the caravan comes through this flower field again on its next run, the worms lay their eggs here once more…"
Put that way, wasn't it just like snow piling up in the desert? Perpetual snow, even.
As everyone had expected, there was a merchant caravan passing through the flower field. Ahor met with their caravan master. This was not a conversation Vesta had any place in. He bantered with Ushun until Ahor finished talking and came back, and he welcomed her return.
Ushun asked Ahor,
"Numbers and gear looked decent. Thinking of hiring them?"
"Not right now. I put a word in, though. More importantly — I think there's a large specimen in this area."
"A large specimen?"
"An individual that's survived decades in this desert. Most of the time it sheds the moisture from its body and curls up tight, then it rises in the seasons when prey is plentiful."
It was so massive that, unlike other sandworms, it did not starve to death — it simply lasted longer.
At Ahor's words, Ushun grinned.
"Let's smash it while it's still groggy from waking up, Captain."
Seeing that savage smile, Vesta offered a silent prayer for the large specimen. If it had known a woman named Ushun existed, it would have spent another year lying there, dried and withered.
Going hungry beat walking into a storm.