Dogchild

As Starry went quiet, momentarily closing his eyes and letting out another weary breath, I knew what he was going to say next. I could feel it coming---I could feel his eternal guilt and sorrow rising up inside him.

I never even thought of helping anyone else, he said softly. Kesra, Pooli, you, Rahmat---I just abandoned you all. The idea of staying with my family, of fighting with them---it never even entered my mind.

He wiped a tear from his eye.

I left you all to die, he muttered.

You werent thinking straight, I told him, as Ide told him a hundred times before. Youd been knocked out, you were concussed—

I was a coward.

I said nothing. Wede talked about this so many times before that there was nothing left to say. There was no way of changing his mind. And besides – and again, this was something Ide thought about countless times before – it was possible that he was right, that he had been a coward that day.

But even if he was, Ive never held it against him.

We are what we are.

Anyway, he continued, wiping his eyes again and clearing his throat, the dust was so thick that I couldnt see anything at all, so I didnt know that the canyon pass had been completely blocked off by the landslide, and it wasnt until I actually stumbled into the wall of boulders that I realised it was there. And it was then, just as the dust cleared for a moment and I saw the great pile of rocks in front of me, that I was hit by the first arrow. I didnt know what it was at first. I just felt a sort of thumping sting in my leg, and when I looked down I saw the feathered tail of an arrow sticking out of my thigh. It didnt seem to hurt all that much – at least I dont remember much pain – and when I began clambering up the boulders, and another arrow took me in the arm, that didnt seem to bother me much either. I just kept going, climbing blindly upwards. I was vaguely aware of the sounds of fighting coming from the wagon – screams and shouts, crying and wailing – and there were muffled shouts coming from the other side of the landslide too, but none of it seemed to mean anything to me. It all belonged to a different world. My world was just the dusty silence of the fallen boulders, the feel of the rock under my hands and feet as I climbed, and the absolute and only desire in my gut to keep going, to stay alive, to keep going, keep going, keep going---

He went quiet again, staring way out into the distance, and then after some time he blinked ponderously and went on.

The next thing I knew, he said emptily, I was lying in the back of a moving wagon and my leg had been amputated. It was only a few days after the attack, but the arrow wound had become infected so quickly that if my leg hadnt been taken off I would have died. I was still very ill, feverish and hallucinating, so it wasnt until some time later that I found out what had happened. The rest of our people – the ones whode passed through the gap before the ambush – had realised straightaway that wede been attacked, and as soon as the rocks had stopped falling theyd done their best to save us, climbing up and over the blockade as fast as they could, but by then it was too late. The wagon was already disappearing into the distance, moving at some speed, and there was no sign of anyone at all – your mother and father, Rahmat, you and Jele---you were all gone. It was assumed you were all in the wagon – the 2 men unquestionably dead, the rest of you probably still alive.

Starry looked at me.

The Wild Ones would have raised you and Jele as their own and kept your mother for breeding.

And my father and Rahmat were just fresh meat, I added.

Starry nodded. The Wild Ones knew every inch of the mountains, and there was no doubt they would have had an escape route planned, which meant that once theyd left the canyon and disappeared into the mountains thered be no chance at all of finding them. So our people took off after them, running as fast as they could. They must have known it was pointless, that theyd never catch up with the Wild Ones, but they kept going, more in hope than anything else---and then all at once they saw the wagon veering sharply to one side, almost toppling over, and then suddenly it stopped. It was about a quarter of a mile ahead of them at the time, and at first they couldnt work out what was happening, but then they saw the dogs. There were dozens of them, at least 30 or 40, the largest pack of Deathland dogs anyone had ever seen. And they seemed to have appeared from nowhere. One minute there was no sign of them at all, and then all of a sudden they were everywhere, tearing into the Wild Ones and the wagon like a horde of crazed demons. Whether it was the smell of blood that had attracted them and sent them into a frenzy, or they were just mad with hunger---

He glanced at me, as if looking for an answer.

I just shrugged.

Well, anyway, he went on, whatever it was, by the time our people reached the wagon there was virtually nothing left. The dogs had gone. The Wild Ones had gone. Your father and mother, Rahmat, you and Jele---just gone. All that was left was the bloodstained wagon, a few scraps of flesh, and clouds of flies buzzing in the heat.

He wiped sweat from his brow.

Our people found me on their way back. Ide passed out and fallen down into a gap between some boulders, and luckily one of our men heard a faint groan as he was clambering back to the other side. They pulled me out, carried me back over the rockfall with them---

Starry turned and looked at me.

And thats just about it really. Thats as much as I know of the story from the outside, or at least as much as I can manage for now. The rest of it is yours, Jeet. And only you can---

He stopped suddenly, his attention drawn to the beach, and he swore violently under his breath. I didnt have to ask him what hede seen. I could see it myself. A small girl, no more than 3 years old, had appeared on the beach – seemingly from nowhere – and was skipping down towards the shoreline, stopping every now and then to pick up pebbles that caught her eye.

Its Sheren, Starry muttered. Laolys little girl.

She was lost in her own small contentment, totally oblivious to potential dangers, and completely unaware of the vast black head that had risen from the oily ooze at the shoreline – a head dripping with black slime, its small yellow eyes gleaming like glass, its half-open mouth showing rows of brightwhite needlelike teeth.

Even as Starry opened his mouth to yell out a warning, the giant eel launched itself from the pool of black mud and began streaking across the beach towards the little girl.

As I leaped down off the wall and began racing across the beach, the dog in me instinctively took over – heightening my senses – and I could see and hear everything all at once and with perfect clarity. I could see little Sheren, alerted by Starrys warning shout, looking over at him, then seeing me running towards her, her previously happy face fading into an expression of confusion and wariness. And then – as she heard or sensed the eel, and looked round to see it arrowing towards her across the beach – her wariness turned to outright terror. The eel was about 20 feet long and 2 feet thick, and it was moving incredibly fast, not snaking or slithering, just streaking across the sand like a great black spear. I heard a scream then, not from Sheren but from a young woman of about 15 or 16 whode just appeared at the top of the beach. It was Laoly, Sherens mother. I saw Sheren turn at the sound of the scream, and I saw Laoly waving wildly and yelling at her daughter to run to her, but Sheren was too petrified to move.

A gunshot cracked loudly from behind me.

Starrys pistol.

The eel kept going.

I kept running.

I had my knife in my hand now, and I was running so fast my feet were barely touching the ground, but I knew I wasnt going to make it. Despite my speed – and although Ide never been able to keep up with the dogs when they were running at top speed, I could still easily outrun any human – the eel was faster than me. And it was already closer to Sheren than I was.

I was maybe 10 yards away from her now.

The eel was no more then 5.

I heard another gunshot, but this time it didnt sound right – too loose and cracky – and at the same time I heard a yell of pain from Starry. I knew what had happened – his ancient Dragoon had blown up in his hand – but I gave it no conscious thought. The eel was almost upon Sheren now. She was frozen to the spot, petrified, not even making a sound. Just standing there, as if she knew it was already over. Her mothers screams had turned to hopeless sobs.

As the eel closed on Sheren, I fleetingly thought about throwing my knife at it, but it was moving so fast that even at close range I couldnt be sure of hitting it square in the head, which was the only way of stopping it, and if I threw the knife and missed, my only chance of killing the beast was gone. It was probably gone anyway. The giant eel was lunging at Sheren now, its monstrous jaws wide open, and I was still a few yards away.

I took my only chance and leaped as hard as I could, launching myself off the ground and flying at the eel, swinging the 9-inch blade at its head. I very nearly made it, but just as the blade was about to sink in, the eels jaws engulfed Sheren with a crunching snap and it instantly twisted its head away from me. I still caught it a hefty slash with the knife, but the impact was nowhere near its head, and as it doubled back on itself and began streaking back towards the mud – with Sherens poor little head and shoulders hanging limply from its jaws – there was absolutely no indication at all that Ide hurt it.

By the time Ide got to my feet again, the eel had disappeared back into the oily black ooze, and the only sign of its existence was a few glooping air bubbles on the surface. I could hear the frenzied buzzing of flies now, and when I looked down I saw the reason why. Sherens body had been severed by the eels powerful jaws – it had probably happened when the eel had twisted its head away from me – and the lower half of her body was still lying in the sand. 2 little legs and 2 little feet, perfectly unharmed, attached to a bottom and waist that had been severed from the torso with such massive power that it looked as if it had been sheared off with a giant sword.

Blood was oozing from the severed remains, the liquid redness soaking into the sand, and the smell of it was already attracting the beach scavengers – tiny crabs, sandworms, small yellow flatbacked beetles. The scavengers were also being drawn to a thick slab of dark meat lying in the sand just a few yards away – the slice of flesh Ide hacked off the eel.

I went over to it, skewered it with the point of my knife, and lifted it from the ground. It didnt smell good – sour and sharp, with a faint scent of ammonia – but it was meat.

Food.

You cant waste food.

I glanced over at Starry. His useless old revolver was lying in pieces at the foot of the wall, bits of it still smouldering, and he was holding his bloodied hand to his chest. When he saw me looking at him, he raised his good hand and gave me a quick wave – and a quick shake of his head – to let me know he was okay.

I looked across at Laoly. Shede slumped down to the ground and was just sitting there – ashen-faced and empty-eyed – not making a sound, not even crying, just sitting there staring at nothing.

I gazed down again at the fly-covered remains of her daughter.

There was nothing to think.

I pulled my knife from the slab of eel meat, wiped the blade on my shirt, and started heading home.

Ime back home now, back in my house, back in my room, back to where I was last night – sitting on the floor in front of the fire with my writing book open in my lap. Ime still not sure if I can do this or not, but Ime going to take Starrys advice and begin with the story of everything I know about myself and my world – the Deathlands, the dogs, the town, the people---the way it all was and the way it all is. And I might as well start at the point where Starry finished – my life with the Deathland dogs.

I remember nothing at all of the day the Wild Ones attacked us, and very little about the following weeks and months. No remains were ever found of my mother and father, and I have no doubt at all that they were killed and eaten by the dogs – or possibly, in my fathers case, killed by the Wild Ones and eaten by the dogs. Ime not quite so sure about Jele though, the orphan baby my mother was suckling. I came across other dogchilds during my time with the dogs, and its possible that one of them was Jele – neither of us would have known, after all – but although theres nothing to say that she wasnt taken by the dogs and raised by them as one of their own, in the same way that I was, I think its probably more likely that she suffered the same fate as my parents. I dont have a rational explanation for believing shese dead, its just that whenever I try to imagine her, whenever I try to bring her to life in my mind, all I ever see is an emptiness.

Theres just nothing there.

And every time her life wont come to me, I ask myself the same question – if the dogs killed Jele, why didnt they kill me too?

I dont know the answer.

It could simply be that my dogmother was quick enough to get to me before I was torn apart by the starving dogs, but Jele wasnt so lucky. Or perhaps there was just something about her that the dogs didnt take to – a wrong scent, a wrong sound, a wrong look.

Who knows?

Dogs have very complex and often seemingly irrational sensitivities.

The only thing I know for sure is that I was taken.

All I can really remember of my early years with the dogs is a fragmented series of vague sensations and 1 or 2 isolated experiences. I remember the thick sweetness of my mothers milk, and the comforting warmth of her fur as she sheltered me during the icecold nights. I remember the rasp of her tongue on my skin, the meaty smell of her breath, the sound of her voice, the soft grip of her teeth on my neck as she carried me for hours at a time, day after day, month after month, until eventually I could walk well enough on all 4s to at least keep up with the pack without getting left behind too often. I remember being hungry too – waiting in the den with the other pups, our empty bellies aching as we listened out for the pack to return from hunting, hopefully with half-digested meat in their bellies which theyd regurgitate for us to eat---or if we were very lucky they might even bring back a whole carcass of something for us to rip apart and eat ourselves – a rabbit, a bird, a human child---

Yes, at times, I ate human flesh.

But I have no remorse, no shame, no guilt.

I was, and still am, an animal.

A carnivore.

I ate, and eat, the meat of other animals.

Humans are animals.

We all have to eat.

I had to stop writing for a while just now. Its not of any importance what I did, but as Ime telling the story of everything I know about myself and my world, I might as well write it down. I put some more wood on the fire. I boiled a pan of water. And then I just sat there for a while – sipping hot water, picking at a few pieces of dried meat, staring into the flames---trying to think, trying to remember things---trying to go back to the times and places Ive spent so long trying to forget---

Most dogchilds dont live very long. Weare so much weaker and slower than dogs, so much more helpless. Our hairless skin burns in the sun and doesnt keep us warm at night. Our hearing is poor. We can barely smell anything. We dont even have the teeth we need to rip into raw flesh or crack open bones. Weare just not made for living in the wild. So most of us die very young. The ones that survive are the ones – like me – whose mothers are strong enough to provide the extra protection and care we need, and committed enough to continue providing it long after theyd naturally have to.

I was lucky. My mother gave me the help I needed to overcome most of my deficiencies.

Apart from that, the only advantage I had over the dogs I was raised with was my mind. It wasnt that I was smarter than them – far from it – it was simply that I had a different way of thinking, which sometimes gave me an edge. Most of the time my human mind was of no use to me at all – and quite often it was a positive hindrance – but very occasionally it worked to my benefit.

One of the few moments I remember with any real clarity – and I have no idea why this remains so clear in my memory – was a fight I had with another dog over a scrap of meat. It wasnt much more than a gristly piece of bone, but we were both half starved – as all of us usually were – and we hadnt eaten for days, so both of us were desperate for the meat, and sharing it wasnt an option. We both wanted – and needed – all of it. Wede grabbed at it at the same time, each getting a good grip of one end, and a tugging match had begun – both of us snarling through our teeth, digging our feet in and yanking as hard as possible, jerking our heads from side to side. It was no match. I was maybe 3 years old at the time, and in human terms I was incredibly strong and tough for my age, but although my opponent was much younger than me, no more than 6 months old, he was virtually a fullgrown dog, which meant he was at least 4 times the size of me, and easily 4 times as powerful. His body was all rocksolid muscle, his jaws as strong as a vice, and his massive teeth were as hard as steel.

I didnt stand a chance.

And I knew it.

I knew I couldnt win.

But I also knew that I couldnt back down. If Ide just given in and let the other dog have the meat without putting up a fight, it would have been seen – and remembered – as a weakness. And not just by the dog I was fighting. All the other dogs watching us would have known that in future they could take whatever they wanted from me without having to fight for it. So I had to keep going for as long as I could, putting up as much of a fight as I could.

And thats what I did.

Within a short while though I was so exhausted that I wasnt really fighting anymore, I was just holding on to the meat and being dragged across the ground by the young male. He knew he had me, and that all he had to do was keep pulling and sooner or later Ide let go of the meat.

So thats what he did.

He just kept moving backwards, step by step, tugging me along with him, his eyes burning fiercely into mine. But I wasnt looking back at him anymore. I was looking over his shoulders at the dried-up river bed behind him. It wasnt very deep – 7 or 8 feet at most – but from what I could see of it, and what I was hoping, the banks were so steep they were practically vertical, and because the young dog was backing towards the river bed, he couldnt see it coming. The only trouble was, he was so convinced of his coming victory that he was hardly putting any effort into tugging me anymore, almost casually pulling me backwards, at no great speed at all. And if he stumbled back into the river bed at that speed, there was no guarantee hede fall into it. So I took a deep breath and dragged up every last ounce of strength I had, and just for a second I dug my feet in and yanked on the meat as hard as I possibly could. It barely stopped him for more than a moment, but it gave him a bit of a surprise, and – more importantly – it annoyed him. And he reacted exactly how I was hoping – by suddenly putting all his power into the fight and lunging backwards as fast as he could. Instead of fighting back, I tightened my grip on the meat and just let him drag me across the ground, and within seconds I saw the sudden shock in his eyes as he felt his back feet disappear into thin air, followed instantly by the rest of his body, and as he began falling backwards down into the river bed, his shock was so great that he simply let go of the meat.

And that was it.

Ide won.

Ide used my mind to beat him. And Ide not only beaten him and won the meat, but Ide humiliated him in front of the other dogs too. So next time a dog tried to steal a piece of meat from me, they might think twice. They might just hesitate for a moment. And sometimes a moment is all you need.

Moments---

I remember other moments with the dogs, most of them hard – always hungry, always hunting, always hunted. There were other packs in the Deathlands, at least a dozen or so in our part of the country. Occasionally some of the packs would come together, as they did when they attacked the Wild Ones whode stolen the wagon, but most of the time they remained rivals – forever fighting over territory and food, stealing and eating each others pups, sometimes even annihilating one another. And all the packs were in constant battle with humans too – the Wild Ones, the Dau, our people. The dogs were a threat to them, and they were a threat to us. Wede kill and eat them if we got the chance, and theyd do the same to us.

It was, and still is, a world of war.

But I also remember some good times with the dogs. These memories are buried away deep inside me now. They have to be to let me live. One of the very first things Starry taught me was that I had to forget everything about my life with the dogs. You can be a dog, he told me, or you can be a human. But you cant be both. If you try to be both, youle die.

And he was right.

But even now some of those hazy memories of the good times still come drifting back to me every so often – running with the dogs, resting together after a meal, sleeping together in the lazy light of a setting sun, just being together---

Moments of pure belonging.

Theres a hurt inside me as I write these words. Its a feeling I cant forget but at the same time cant remember, and I know it will never go away.

It was a combination of hunger and overconfidence that led to my recapture and the massacre of my pack.

Even though the town and the Dau encampment were relatively rich sources of food, we didnt normally go anywhere near them. It was too risky. The humans could kill us from a distance, and their settlements were too well guarded. The potential rewards of a hunting raid were outweighed by the more likely possibility of serious injury or death. So despite the temptations, we kept our distance.

But there came a time when the hunting was so bad that wede barely eaten anything for weeks, and we knew that if we didnt eat soon wede all starve to death. And that turned the scales. It was a simple choice – if we didnt raid the town or the Dau encampment for food, wede almost certainly die of starvation. The likelihood of at least some of us being killed or injured during the raid was high, but it was a chance we had to take. And it was better to go down fighting than to lie around getting weaker and weaker until eventually we just wasted away.

So the decision was made to attack the humans.

And in the end it turned out to be remarkably easy.

The first thing we had to do was choose which of the 2 settlements to raid – the town or the encampment. They both had their advantages and disadvantages. The town was protected on the northside by a great stone wall that stretched in a vast crescent all the way round from the cliffs on the east to the cliffs on the west, and the south of the town was only accessible by the sea – and dogs are born knowing that the sea is a place of certain death.

The encampment wasnt protected by the sea, and it had no walls or fences either, so it was much easier to get into than the town. But there were far more humans in the Dau camp than there were in the town, which meant the chances of being seen were much greater.

The decision was finally made when, after scouting both areas for a couple of nights, one of the dogs came across an unguarded entrance into the town – an ancient animal burrow on the westside clifftop that tunnelled down under the wall. The entrance to the burrow was hidden beneath a fallen tree in a patch of scrubland on the northside of the wall, and the tunnel came out in an overgrown earthbank in a dense thicket of thornbushes just the other side of the wall. It was obvious from the smell of the burrow – or lack of smell – that it hadnt been used for years.

It was perfect – an unknown and unprotected way in and out of the town.

We knew thered be towndogs in the town that would sense our presence and raise the alarm, but there wasnt anything we could do about that. They werent a physical threat – a fullgrown Deathland dog can be up to twice the size of even the largest towndog – but theyd make a lot of noise, alerting the humans, and while it wouldnt be a problem to kill the ones we came across, we wouldnt be able to silence them all. We werent planning on staying in the town for long though. It was going to be a lightning raid – swooping in as fast as possible, grabbing whatever food we could, and hopefully getting out before the humans had time to realise what was going on.

There was a good chance that it wouldnt happen like that – all sorts of things could have gone wrong – but surprisingly it went almost exactly to plan.

It was a moonless night, pitchblack and freezing cold, and the whole pack had made the long journey across the Deathlands to the town. There were 10 of us at the time. My mother, the pack matriarch, and her mate – a jetblack male – together with 5 adults – 3 males and 2 females – 2 young males, and me. The burrow was fairly narrow, so we had to pass through it in single file, and in places it was a very tight squeeze, especially for the adults, but we all made it through, and – as planned – none of us moved from the shelter of the thornbushes until all 10 of us had exited the tunnel. We waited, listening and sniffing for any sign of trouble, but the night was quiet and all we could smell was the thick perfume of the thornbush flowers, a heavy sweetness that hung in the air all around us.

Everything seemed fine.

My mother gave the signal and the raid began.

We stuck together at first, all 10 of us loping steadily into the town, but almost immediately we came across 2 young towndogs who began barking and yowling as soon as they saw us. They didnt even think about standing their ground, they just stood there for a moment or 2, barking like crazy, then turned and ran. At least thats what they tried to do. Theyd barely started running before the jetblack male and the 2 adult females caught up with them and took them down, and within seconds they were both torn to pieces. But the damage had already been done. Their barking – and their death cries – had alerted all the other towndogs, and the night air was now filled with an alarming cacophony of howling and baying.

We split up then, each of us running off in different directions, searching for whatever food we could find. The longer we stayed there, the more likely it was that wede never get out, so the plan was that each of us would grab whatever we could find as quickly as possible and then make our escape, regardless of what might be happening to the others.

As always, my big disadvantage was that compared to the dogs my sense of smell was close to nonexistent. They could smell the tiniest morsel of food from miles away, whereas I had to rely almost entirely on sight, which in the near total darkness wasnt much help at all.

But I couldnt let that stop me.

So I just kept going.

The whole town was awake now – dogs barking, humans yelling and shouting, torches being lit. And it was in the flamelight of a burning torch that I finally saw what I was hoping for. At the first sight of the torch, I froze for a moment then ducked down out of sight behind a low stone wall. I saw a human coming out of a building, the burning torch in his hand, and as I watched him looking around to see what all the noise was about, I saw the dead birds just off to his right. There were 3 of them, all hanging by their necks from a rope that was strung between 2 wooden poles fixed in the ground. The poles were at least 12 feet tall, so the hanging birds were well out of reach. But as the human carried on looking around, I saw another long wooden pole leaning against the wall of the building. It was thinner and lighter than the poles fixed in the ground, and it had a metal hook attached to one end.

I waited, watching the human.

He glanced across at the birds, making sure they were still there, and then – after calling out over his shoulder, presumably to someone else in the building – he ran off into the darkness.

I considered waiting a while to make sure that no one else came out of the house, but I couldnt afford to waste any more time. So I jumped to my feet, ran over to the wall and grabbed the hooked pole, then ran back to the hanging birds, raised the hooked pole high above my head and unhooked the birds from the rope, dropping them to the ground one by one. Then I just picked up the birds and raced off back towards the tunnel.

There was a lot of commotion going on now – more shouting, more barking, even a few gunshots – but I ignored it all and kept running. At one point I turned a corner and ran straight into a human with a gun. He swore at me first, assuming I was just a clumsy child, but it only took him a moment to realise he was wrong. I dont know how I must have looked to him – a human child of sorts, but naked and filthy and wild, with long matted hair and dirtblack skin, and fingernails and toenails hardened into claws---but whatever he thought I was, he knew I wasnt one of his people. And when he saw the 3 dead birds I was carrying, he knew I was the enemy. He took a step back from me and began raising his rifle. Ive no doubt he would have shot me – human child or not – but I didnt give him the chance. I lunged at him and sank my teeth into his leg, ripping away a chunk of flesh, and even as he screamed in pain and stumbled backwards, dropping the rifle and clutching his savaged leg, I was already running away.