The Broken Knife

The loud ringing of a bell woke him, and he, Nadi, and even Yumi scurried to gather up the littlest pups and lead them to the eating area. Their meal was a simple bowl of cooked meat with fungus, but it was well-seasoned and filling, Kaz was even able to openly feed Li, which the dragon clearly appreciated.

Yumi was amazed by how much food such a small creature could eat, and begged to feed the ‘fuergar’ a few scraps. Kaz was a little worried that she might decide she, too, needed a pet, so he silently encouraged Li to snap at the pup’s fingers when she reached toward it.

Yumi yanked her hand back, looking at the dragon in shocked accusation. “It tried to bite me!”

Kaz nodded, reaching up to pet the dragon. “Not safe. Bite. Scratch. May hurt you.”

“Why doesn’t it bite you, then?” She glared at him as if Li’s behavior was his fault, which of course it was.

“Li likes me,” he told her, wagging his tail gently.

“I want it to like me,” Yumi started, but Nadi finally looked up from where she was trying to keep the bigger pups from wandering off while the younger ones finished eating.

“Yumi, beasts aren’t meant to live with kobolds. They’re wild creatures. Soon, Kaz’s fuergar will hurt someone or run away. It’s probably just afraid to attack right now because it’s surrounded by so many of us.” She avoided looking at Kaz as he spoke, but his tail drooped at her words anyway.

Looking around at the older pups, she went on. “Kaz is new to our territory. Watch over him today.”

Yumi narrowed her eyes at Li, cradling her uninjured hand against her chest. “If the fuergar bites someone, I can eat it?”

Nadi sighed, but nodded, and this time she glanced at Kaz apologetically. He reached up to cover Li’s ears as if to protect the little creature from the words.

“No biting. No nipping. No scratches,” he told them.

Nadi smiled sadly, but reached out to pat Kaz. “Good.”

Her head lifted as another bell rang out through the den. She looked around, her gaze landing on each of the older pups. “Time to go gather. Be careful, and listen to your guards.”

A chorus of resigned agreement answered her, and she chuckled as the pups filed out, following a duo of warriors with similarly muddy green fur. The guards were barely older than Kaz, and several of the eldest pups greeted them by name, so they had probably grown up together, and still treated each other as friends, rather than adults and puppies.

The slightly-darker of the two males dropped back to walk beside Kaz. His voice was friendly enough, but his yellow eyes lingered on Li in a way that made the fur on Kaz’s nape lift. “I’m Lan. That’s my brother Lok, up there. Lonti told us about you.”

Kaz tilted his head, widening his eyes and wagging his tail. “Lonti!”

Lan waited for Kaz to say more, and when he didn’t, his expression edged toward a puzzled frown. Kaz was just happy that the male’s attention seemed to be focused on him now, rather than Li. Finally, the young warrior shrugged, and lagged back to fall in behind the group as they entered a dark passage.

All of the female pups had dim, flickering lights attached to stones woven into leather bracelets, and they raised their hands, falling in beside the males so the entire group had at least enough light to see by. It was a little strange for Kaz to return to the dimness that had been his everyday life until he met the humans. Gaoda’s ki orbs flooded their surroundings with far more light than any kobold needed, but the humans seemed to require that level of illumination in order to be comfortable, and only turned it down while they were sleeping.

It was also strange to be among so many other kobolds as they gathered. There weren’t enough males to protect all the gatherers of the Broken Knife tribe, as well as the den and Oda, so the larger male pups, like Kaz, had slowly taken over that job as they grew up. Now, however, Lan and Lok kept sharp watch all around them, barking at any pup who moved too far from the group. They moved in an organized row, and the lead pup would pause to gather anything they saw, then fall in at the end of the line when they were done.

When it was Kaz’s turn at the front, he deliberately walked past a patch of mogu, a black mushroom with bright red gills that could be used as a stimulant. The pup behind him missed it too, but the one after that yipped and plucked several of the spindly mushrooms from the crack in the wall where they were growing.

The oldest gatherer, a male named Jin, chastised Kaz and the other pup, but didn’t stop the group to show them the mushroom properly. It was clear that they weren’t going to pause until they reached their destination.

It took nearly half an hour for the group to enter a large, echoing cavern. To Kaz, this was only a short walk, since he was used to traveling an hour or more each day to reach an area his tribe hadn’t already picked clean, but several of the smaller pups were already whining about being so far from the den. He saw their nervous glances around, and wondered just how bad the mid-levels were going to be, if he ever managed to get there.

Jin assigned each pup a partner, and they separated into pairs to roam around the cavern. Water dripped in the distance, and several walls had dark streams running down over the limestone formations. Mosses were particularly abundant here, and mushrooms grew in clusters larger than anything he could remember seeing for years.

Yumi had volunteered to be Kaz’s partner, and the two wandered in the direction Jin had pointed them. Lan and Lok circled the center of the cavern, keeping their eyes on the gatherers, as well as the darker patches that likely concealed passages or the entrance to smaller caves.

“Hey,” Yumi said abruptly, as she stuffed a handful of firemoss into her pack. “Let me hold your fuergar.”

“Li,” he said, lifting his hand to the little dragon, who was staring around in wide-eyed amazement. This was the first time the dragonling had really been able to just stand in the open and look around, and Kaz felt a sharp pang of pity grip him at the realization.

“Li,” Yumi said, holding her hand out imperiously. “Let me hold it.”

Kaz shook his head, stepping away. “No. No biting. No nipping. No scratching.”

Yumi’s lip curled back. “I’m a female, and you’re a male. Do what I say.”

“No biting. No nipping. No scratching,” Kaz insisted, his voice growing louder.

A sharp bark cut between them, and they both looked around to see Lan glaring at them. “Yumi! Be quiet, or you’ll draw the attention of some beast.” He looked at Kaz. “And you. If this happens again, I’ll kill that thing myself.”

He pointed his knife at Li, who curled its tail tightly around Kaz’s neck. Flickers of images entered Kaz’s mind; his pack, and a golden shape slipping inside. Kaz’s shoulders twitched with the urge to do exactly as the images showed, but putting the dragon in the pack would place Li within Yumi’s reach, and he didn’t want the female to try to steal the pack right off his back.

Yumi fell into a sulky silence, and only spoke up to make fun of Kaz each time he walked past another item that he should have gathered. He did pick up a few of the most obvious plants, but half the time he fumbled them, or pulled them out completely, rather than leaving the clinging tendrils that would allow them to grow back in short order.

At last, the pup simply handed Kaz her own pack and started doing all the gathering herself. She was surprisingly deft, her little fingers making tidy bundles that Kaz placed gently into the pack. He didn’t like her, but he also didn’t want her to get into trouble, or waste the food and materials that she was supposed to bring back to the tribe.

When the female’s pack grew full to overflowing, she had Kaz take off his so they could start filling it, as well. A rank smell wafted out when he tugged the strings open, and he realized that Li hadn’t finished eating the meat he’d put in there before they encountered the Stoneborn tribe. It was beginning to rot, and his already grungy pack smelled like death.

Yumi stared up at him, eyes wide and nose wrinkled with disgust. “Close it, close it!” She waved her hand in front of her snout, looking around wildly.

Lok noticed, and gave Kaz a disinterested glance before focusing on the young female. He stepped away from his patrol pattern and said, “What’s wrong?”

“This male’s pack is rotten!” She glanced from Li to Kaz, her interest visibly declining. “Is that what fuergar make things smell like? Ugh!”

Pointing at a lanky, rust-furred female, she demanded, “I want to trade with Pia.”

The other female looked up, startled to hear her name. Lok called her and her partner over, and Yumi repeated her demand. The male with the rust-colored female brightened, and Kaz could see that he was happy enough with the trade, especially once he saw that Yumi’s pack was already full.

“I… all right,” Pia said, her voice faint.

Soon, Yumi and Pia’s former partner scampered back to the side of the small pool where the other kobolds were gathering, and Lok returned to his patrol. Pia gave Kaz such a forlorn look that he actually felt a bit bad, though he was very glad to be away from the annoying pup.

“I’m not… very good,” Pia murmured. She had shifted her pack around to her belly so she could access it easily, and Kaz saw that it was barely half full. “I’m never sure if I have the right thing.”

Kaz tilted his head, and Pia shrugged, her gaze flicking around until it came to rest on a bunch of dark moss clinging to the wall a few yards past Kaz. She circled wide around him, and tugged a few thin fronds of moss from the clump, holding them up.

She pointed to the slender filaments and said, “See? If this bit here is brown, then this is yumao, right? But if it’s red, it’s duyu, and it’ll make everyone sick if it gets mixed into our food.”

Kaz nodded. Telling the difference between yumao, which made a delicious soup, and duyu, which caused vomiting, was one of the first things a gatherer learned.

Pia lowered her voice even further, squinting at the plant, and Kaz pricked his ears forward so he could hear her. “I can’t tell the difference. They all look brown to me.”

Kaz felt a rush of sympathy. One of his uncles had had a similar problem. He just couldn’t tell the difference between some colors, and he had been surprised to learn that Kaz had blue fur, not gray. Fortunately, once he became a warrior, it hadn’t really mattered, since a janjio was a janjio, no matter what color it was.

That uncle had been traded away shortly after the Broken Knives entered the mid-levels, and Kaz wondered if he might see him again on the way through, or if he had been one of the casualties of the Bronzearm’s advance. Kaz’s throat tightened at the thought, and it took him a moment to focus again on what Pia was saying.

“-color it is?”She was holding out the moss.

Kaz blinked and took the moss from her, examining the little nodes at the base of the fronds. “Brown,” he told her, wagging his tail happily.

She brightened. “Good! That’s good! Ah… can you look at the colors? Just tell me what they are, and then I’ll know if we should gather it. It looked like you were… having a hard time picking things yourself.”

He was surprised she’d noticed, and his tail wagged even more as he nodded enthusiastically. “Help!” he said.

Pia’s shoulders relaxed, and she wound the bundle of moss in one of its own trailing fronds before tucking it into her pack.

Soon enough, their gathering fell into a quick, easy rhythm. Pia would spot something, pluck it, and hand it to him if it needed a color check. Then she either wrapped it up or discarded it, depending on what his answer was. A few of the plants were new to him, and Pia cheerfully explained what they were when he expressed an interest. The female was actually quite kind and knowledgeable once she relaxed, and reminded him of Rega. Her core was bright, too, and her cycle fast, so he thought that once she became an adult, she could rise quickly within the tribe, if she wanted to.

At last, they reached the far side of the cavern, and stopped as Pia pushed one more clump of mushrooms into her bag. Looking satisfied, she said, “There. That should be plenty. It’ll be the first time I brought back a full pack in… a long time.”

Her ears tilted shyly as she looked up at him. “Thank you, Kaz.”

Kaz nodded happily. “I helped.”

“You did! I never-”

Kaz froze, blocking out her words as a faint slithering sound reached him. Pushing more ki into his ears, he turned to look down a corridor nearby, the beginning of which was faintly lit by Pia’s light. Without thinking, he reached out and pushed Pia behind him, just as he would have done if Katri was standing beside him.

Pia yelped, stumbling to her hands and knees, but Kaz ignored her, his claws already swiping at the broad, flat face of a woshi as it lunged from the tunnel. Red scratches appeared on the woshi’s snout, but he knew that wouldn’t be enough to deter it. It was the largest salamander he’d ever seen, and its jagged teeth were as long as his fingers, gleaming at him from within a maw wide enough to engulf his head.

Howls echoed from behind him as Lan and Lok reacted, calling the other pups to fall back into a group. Woshi tended to be solitary creatures, but if this one had a mate, it could be anywhere.

Behind him, Pia scrambled to her paws, whimpering uncertainly. Kaz risked a glimpse back, barely dancing out of the way of a whipping tail strike.

“Go!” he barked.

She shook her head, though he heard her claws scratch the stone as she backed up. Not far enough.

Kaz felt the fur on his nape lift, and his lips pulled back, revealing his own fangs as he dodged another snap of the beast’s teeth. He wished he dared try to take his knife from his pack, but not only would it take too long, if he did manage it, the Stoneborns would only take it from him after the battle. He couldn’t use anything other than his own claws and teeth while the kobolds watched.

Whirling, he snapped at Pia, barking like he’d gone mad. She stared at him in horror, but finally began to run, staggering and tripping over every stone between her and the relative safety of the group. As she reached them, he was able to catch enough glimpses of their expressions to see both fear and determination, but when a few of the males started in his direction, Lan and Lok held them back.

No one would come to save Kaz.

Sharp teeth latched onto Kaz’s calf, and with a shake of its head, the woshi tried to pull his leg out from under him. Kaz yelped in pain, feeling the searing bite of fang in flesh, but the ki he’d forced into his limbs helped him maintain his balance. He grasped the delicate fronds that swung around the creature’s flat, slimy head, wrapping them around his hands so he could rip them out in a fierce pull.

The woshi’s mouth opened, though it made no noise, and Kaz flung the disgusting, slippery bits away as he jumped back. His paws slipped, and he fell to one knee. The woshi attacked again, its teeth closing inexorably around his entire lower arm, engulfing it in hot, wet mucus and a hundred sharp pricks of pain.

Kaz let out a last pitiful howl as the woshi began to back up, dragging him after it into the darkness of the tunnel beyond.