DUMPED

1563 4D

The weather warmed. They stopped playing with Andrew‘s wounds, dragged him outside, and threw him in the back of a van. The roar of the nearby air regeneration tower receded into a bumping whine as the van‘s engine labored up a long steep slope. Cresting with each bounce and jolt, agony assaulted him; he moaned softly, afraid they would hear him and draw their knives again.

They discarded him by the side of a distant stretch of farm track, high along a mountainside meadow. A harsh voice said, “Let him rot — he’s damn near dead, finally. Tough cock, wasn’t he? The colls and the indies won’t pick him up, not after last time, hey, see that? the buzzards are waiting for him.” A heavy breath, a pause. Close in Andrew‘s left ear, the sound of urine splattered into dirt. “I’m thirsty. Let’s go down to the Chain Link and find Ardre and Jessa.”

Another higher voice, “Aren’t they too old for you? I thought you went for the young ones.” The voices faded.

Andrew opened his eyes, staring up into a hazed deep-blue sky. A rare flight of orneys, their flaked scales flashing silver in the late afternoon, outlined a wavering echelon far overhead. The van that had brought him here harumphed and began its undulating groan, trundling back the way it had come.

His tendons cut, he fought to rise. His blood slowly left him. The flying creatures dwindled to a twinkling uncertain streak in the north. He slumped back into early fragrant greenery. Spring. Had it been that long? An endless string of horrors shuttered past. He hadn’t seen the light of day in… he couldn’t remember.

A great shadow flicked over him once, and again. Andrew‘s dimming sight caught the awesome spread of the wings of a tononnsar, drawn down by the smell of fresh and drying blood, gliding, turning, ready for a carrion feast. Its razor-edged beak clacked once, twice; an answering clack, a little farther away, came from a second flyer. It would not be long.