Pluck and nip, turn the head, grasp the beak, wrench the neck, swallow it whole. Simple routine, precise and practiced. Such was the manner with which Billowbeck, the lord, entrepreneur, and (eventual) plunderer of all that he surveyed, enjoyed his breakfast. Today, it was jackrabbit. The poor little thing had been barely moving, weighed down by a leg so infected it was a miracle it drew breath, let alone dragged itself over who knew how many metres of rocks and dirt. Billowbeck, munificent as he was, had dispatched the casualty of life with a sharp peck to the skull.
“A fine thing,” he said to himself between mouthfuls, as he was prone to do (buzzards are social and friendly creatures, but they spend much of the day alone, hunting for carrion, and thus must make their conversation where it can be found). “A very fine thing. Tender. Almost too fresh, but not quite. Mustn’t grumble. Wonderful flavour in the liver.” He grunted contentedly and flapped his winds, taking flight once more. The desert swept itself away from his talons below as the thermals took him, turning a fumbling half-flight into a smooth, endless soar that he could ride in his sleep. His nostrils, his keenest of sensory organs, peerless among all creatures, touched the wind lightly with their discrete expertise.
“That was fine,” he reminded himself, “but more is good. More is always good, even if one overindulges slightly and must lighten one’s load before departure. Such happens. Hello, what’s this?”
The last remark was aimed at a smell he did not scent frequently. A certain kind of sweat, one blended with strange oils and leathers, overlaid with the odours of a dozen dozen tools, vestments, and odds-and-ends. Only one sort of food dressed itself so thoroughly, and rode in company with the tangy musk of horses.
“Odd to scent them so far from home,” remarked Billowbeck, idly wheeling himself to face the source of his interest, which also carried the rich, tantalizing aroma of blood with it. “I believe one shall see what this business is all about.”
It was, of course, about humans. This did not surprise him. What did surprise him was the sheer quantity of them.
There was one human, the one he’d first scented. His horse was tired, run-down, and bleeding, and he wasn’t much better off. In the saddle with him rode a bundle of rags and little else. Behind him, some few miles, rode three others. They were scarcely better off, bar having a few more packs and a few less shallow cuts and scrapes. They followed in the footsteps of the first, which led Billowbeck to his next conclusion.
“A hunt,” he declared, snapping his bill decisively. “Hunting each other, of course, which is the favourite sport of humans. Such waste. They don’t even eat them. Dreadful waste.”
He circled thoughtfully, then made to follow the pursuit in a lazy spiral of figure-eights.
“Dreadful, but most useful. And they are quite meaty.”
Additional facts presented themselves to Billowbeck as he circled the slow, laborious pursuit that was most unworthy of calling itself a “chase.” They took time to emerge, as he had to rely on his eyes for details rather than his nose (keen, yes, but less so than his razor-sharp nostrils!), but revealed they were.
Firstly, the pursuit was both dogged and grim. The man being chased was too tired even to seem fearful, and his followers displayed not a hint of joy nor prospect of a smile as clues of their prey appeared before their trudging, landbound gaze. Small news, as the nearest place of humans was a long distance even for Billowbeck’s wings. He pitied their worn, weary, stubby groundling legs the trek.
Secondly, the pursuit was over some manner of great import, and most likely would be undergone to the death. Both the length and extremity of the journey spoke of this, but added weight was the treatment predator and prey gave to their weaponry – constantly touching, caressing, examining, fidgeting, maintaining. That very meticulous attention, combined with no trace of eagerness or fear, spoke only of blankest expectancy.
Thirdly, as indicated by the onset of the setting sun, the pursuit would not be over come the eve, and this was by far the most pertinent and irritating information to enter the noble head of Billowbeck, infusing him with great vexation towards his eyes.
“Thrice-damnation under three suns and four moonless nights,” he harrumphed. “Bloated gizzards! Can he not just give up and die? Or give up and kill them. Either would be a more-than-acceptable outcome. Alas,” he sighed, and began a slow wheel towards a convenient dead tree, a corpse not so much palatable but very much inhabitable.
And so the day ended, with Billowbeck’s resolution to check upon the manner when the morrow dawned. As he dropped out of sight of his quarry, in the last light of the setting sun, he saw no sign of pause in their motions.
“Perhaps I shall have a larger breakfast upon the morrow,” he mused.
It was not to be. After a refreshing awakening and a brisk sunbath, Billowbeck’s spread wingstrokes led him only to disappointment. Despite their exhaustion, the humans had not ceased their chase – indeed, they looked to have not stopped all night; very much so in fact. The horse of the pursued was making wet sounds from its mouth instead of breathing.
“Such stubbornness! What rudeness.” Despite his impatient words, Billowbeck was prepared for food. The slobber smelled of blood.
By noon the horse laid itself down, dying midkneel. The human scrambled awkwardly from his tumbling perch, cushioning the fall of the bundle of rags that lay strapped behind his back with his own body and cultivating a few more gashes, bruises, and scrapes in the process.
“A waste of blood,” murmured Billowbeck, basking in the vapours above.
The human didn’t seem to mind his own injuries, preferring instead to check the well-being of the bundle’s contents with an anxious air and the closest thing to care that a thing in his piteous condition could manage. He struggled upright, clasping it in his arms with all the strength he could manage, and took to his heels, feet smacking against rocks in boots worn so thin that he might as well have gone bare.
“And lo, there is meat,” said Billowbeck with relish, and fell upon the carcass with the speed and grace of a rock from the heavens. It was scrawny and bare of bones, but its eyes were as tender and succulent as they could ever be, and he was by far the least picky eater upon the winds. He frolicked with gay abandoned amidst the entrails, plucking open the thin, sensitive skin at the gut and genitals and burrowing in to grope at the juicier meats.
“Delectable! A delight! Well worth the wait,” he chuckled between gulps. The tender task of ripping open the stomach occupied his beak for a moment, and it was in this silence that he was aware of the noises behind him. He spun to face the fly-bitten coyote creeping up behind him just in time, vomiting on it immediately and with great violence.
“Despicable!” he scolded as he lifted off, leaving behind him a one-animal chorus of gagging, retching sneezes. “Vile wretch! Competition is acceptable, a fine law of the land and understood to my mind, but assassination is a poor tool, a thing worthy of only the lowest of the low! Away with you and your ilk! If one were not present to claim carrion for your kind, who would? A plague on your fur and a festerment in your liver! You are not worth the meat one has purged upon you.”
Still fuming, Billowbeck ascended once again, robbed of a chance to bloat himself so fully that he could no longer fly – the true, great meal that all wished for. He looked down upon the pursuers and envied them their succulent flesh, and he looked down upon the pursued and wished that he might stub a toe, or find himself trapped in a rockslide, or something, anything that might hasten his demise and gift him a meal, something to tear and peck at and remedy his ill mood.
“Meat,” he grumbled, upon witnessing the slowness of the pursuit, “is wasted upon these fools. No doubt they will fill his hide full of metal from those guns of theirs. Guns! Hah! Who needs guns!? One needs no guns. Coyotes need no guns. There is something queer about humans and their mewling, craven craving for guns. And when it is not guns, it is bows! Bah. Aha, they’ve found his horse! Now we shall see if they can make a little haste.”
There was haste, yes, but only when the men saw the corpse – a rush to its side, an examination, an exclamation of disgust at the missing eyes (“Philistines,” sniffed Billowbeck), and then some sort of argument. It appeared that the man who rode in front was very much of the belief that the target had fled this way, as far and fast as his shaky legs could handle, and must be chased immediately at full speed, and the man who rode behind him was sure that he must be on his last dregs of stamina and had holed up nearby in the hopes they’d pass him by in their haste to catch him.
“Half-right, the both of you,” said Billowbeck. “He has fled as far as his legs could carry, yes, but (inefficient little stumps that they are) he has only made it over the next gully, and is searching for a holdout. Hurry up!”
The man who rode in front was very much opposed to this plan and argued solely for speed and haste. Something about his sister cropped up here, and if the man riding behind cared about seeing that justice was dealt for her. The man riding behind passionately reminded him that he cared very much and was in no hurry to lose that chance because he, the man riding in front, felt a little impatient.
Weapons were brandished. Billowbeck’s beak clicked involuntarily with relish, then relaxed in sad disappointment as the argument cooled with the mutual realization that both men wanted the same thing.
“Impertinence,” he muttered. “Gross perversity. One’s meal remains lost and spoilt and now the rabble refuse to provide a substitute.” His ire only deepened after the men left, as the coyote crept from a nearby crevice to feed upon the horse again. It locked eyes with him on each bite, savouring the crunch with mocking glee.
“Filth,” Billowbeck said, genuine malice entering his mouth for the first time that day in place of his scolding disgruntlement. “Story-hoarding slug. Thief of plunder! Is it not enough for you to take every hint of glory under the hard sun for yourself, not enough to prank and jape against all for your own amusement? No! You must harass and pilfer! Pfah!” He worked himself into such a lather that his bald head began to fairly burn with heat, and he was forced to cease his rant and flap his wings for a wind. Urine flowed down his legs, streaking and mussing the chalky remnants of his last cooling.
“Enough time wasted,” he grumbled, and took to the skies again. The chase still awaited, but the end, when it came, was wanting. The day was inconclusive once more, with the predators missing their quarry by some scant yards as they picked through the gully’s rim. He lay on his belly, shaking arms wrapped tight around his rag-wrapped burden, whispering strange and calming, frantic words into it as the boots of his trackers stomped away from him.
Billowbeck bunked down in some brush, dreaming darker, cloudier, sullen thoughts. He felt doubly cheated, and his mood improved no more when he awoke in the midst of the night at a rustling of grass near his bedchamber.
“Insidious vagrants,” he said to himself, peering into the dark purely for show – his keen eyes had no hold in the night, but his nose still crowned all its competition. Still, it was not often it had to work from ground-level, much less in the cold night, and the air currents puzzled him mightily. As he strove to disentangle the alien breezes in his nose, a polite sneeze was emitted perhaps seven feet from his earholes.
Billowbeck wished he could say that he did not recall taking flight. That would have greatly spared him the humiliating, terrifying, endlessly lengthy moments that followed, in which he attempted to lift off in every conceivable direction (including straight down), void his bladder in shock, vomit in defence, and grunt in alarm, all at once. At the end of it two things had changed: he was in the air (many fluid ounces lighter), and there was a fly-bitten coyote underneath him, laughing its ass off.
Billowbeck had no words for its behaviour this time. None he knew were strong enough, and despite their gentile veneer, there is no subset of Kingdom Animalia better versed in matters scatological than the scavengers. Instead, he simply hissed, long and loud, with venom that would’ve made a diamondback rattler turn pale and wan, and flapped away in the dark, divorced of dignity, to find a more sheltered roost.
He slept poorly: the coyote chuckled underneath his tree ‘till dawn.
The third day began, and Billowbeck found himself for once ahead of the game. Impatient for a meal, he was on the wing far earlier in the morn than was his custom, fighting reluctant, youthful thermals and a rumbling belly both. Yet it was his curiosity he was most eager to indulge, eyes hunting for signs of the humans.
They had moved during the night, but had also rested, driven at last to pure, physical immobility. Not even the effort made to lay out bedrolls had been spared; the men had simply dropped where they stood, asleep on their feet. Billowbeck made a closer pass to see if any scorpions had tried to nest on them in their sleep – perhaps in the cracks between arm and body, or other spots that might induce accidental crushing followed by stinging – and was sorely disappointed.
The pursued was already up and moving, but moving slow. A somewhat modest butte seemed to be his target, or at least his vague aim. His aimless wandering through crags was bringing him in that direction at least, and whenever he lost strength to carry his burden and sank to his knees for a time, it was towards its rubbled mound that he turned his face as he cried.
“Cry a little louder, perchance,” muttered Billowbeck, “and mayhap they will find you. One grows famished.”
The man did cry a little louder, but they did not find him. They found his tracks, some hour later.
And so the hunt was on again, but more even now as the ground grew shakier and the horses of the pursuers more reluctant to go on. At the very base of the butte, a second argument occurred. The man who rode in front refused to watch the horses and demanded to face the prey alone, and the man who rode behind, though reluctant to give the possibility of an escape to their quarry, seemed reluctant to allow this. Personal feelings must not get in the way, especially when the lunatic has killed your sister and her husband both. The man who rode in front considered this and then smacked him between the eyes with such force that Billowbeck nearly heard the thump from three hundred feet up.
“Temper,” he commented. He watched the man begin to scale the cliff and considered paying a visit to his friend’s unattended eyeballs, but decided against it. Humans were worse than coyotes up close, and he’d not lived a full and healthy (if often scabrous) life by dint of approaching living prey. Such matters were not for his talons.
Atop the peak, the madman was preparing his stand with such feverish intensity that Billowbeck rather suspected he wouldn’t see an opponent arriving until it breathed down his neck. Rocks were strewn haphazardly, shoved with feeble, trembling limbs into a parody of a barricade that would not have shielded a mouse. His ammunition – all eight shots of it – was carefully loaded, unloaded, and reloaded, with the extras placed on a rock and accidentally crushed during a fit of defensive renovation. The gun was tucked away in the deepest, vilest recesses of what remained of his pants. The bundle of rags was tenderly placed in a safe spot at the heart of the fortress, where he glanced often.
“Please, do not shed your last scraps of fat for this thing’s sake,” said Billowbeck. “One would rather prefer a somewhat more substantial meal. And it seems that it’s not long due,” he added. The head of the man who rode in front had just crested the rim of the butte. It had been an easy climb for him, and an easily tracked trail; following the crusted blood and spilled rocks of his quarry would have been a small task for a blind man, or a mole, a mole that vaguely reminded Billowbeck of the thing grubbing in the dirt mere yards from the cold, flat gaze of his hunter.
Out came the gun from its holster slow, steady, purposeful as a snake watching a hypnotized mouse.
Billowbeck circled, craning his wrinkled red neck for a better view, beak glinting as it wobbled from side to side in the sunshine.
The man who rode ahead asked the quarry to stand up.
The quarry did not respond.
The man repeated his demand.
The quarry twitched, but continued to grub for rocks.
The man who rode ahead quietly snapped and walked forwards, vaulted effortlessly over the impregnable rock wall, and yanked his prey up by the scruff of its neck, slapped a gun barrel to its skull. Even well-fed he would’ve loomed over it, and in its malnourished state it was like watching a buzzard make off with a coyote pup.
“Only once,” remarked Billowbeck to himself, “but oh so sweet. Dangerous though. Take a minute, a month too long, and they chew. Strike too soon, the mother’s there. One must be discreet.”
Below, words were exchanged. Well, words were given. Flung, perhaps. There was screaming, about kidnappers and murderers and thieves in the night, the audacity and wickedness of kidnapping the mayor’s wife – of kidnapping his sister – and above all and yet running strongly beneath it, where-is-she-now. There were many where-is-she-nows, scattered wilfully and freely throughout the diatribe, and each one was thrown aside hastily in favour of another remark, as if the querying man was fearful of an answer. In fact, he was so fearful of the answer that it took him over a minute of verbal abuse before he realized his questions had been answered with a single, wavering arm and pointed finger, directed at the bundle of rags.
Contemptuously, the hunter threw aside his quarry, stalked to the bundle of rags, lifted a corner, and seemed to shrink in on himself.
Behind him, the prey began to mumble. He was talking to himself, or maybe to the world, a justification or an excuse or something of the sort that Billowbeck had never really seen the point of. About husbands, jealous ones. Unfairly jealous ones. And the damage they could do, especially when drunk. And who’d listen? He’s the mayor, he’s trusted, he’s loved, he’s sober in public and unwinds in private in all the wrong ways. And no one’s believing her but him, beggar, shiftless labourer, friend in low places.
(Billowbeck snapped his beak in annoyance at this. Lowly indeed. Groundbound, in fact, and still not yet a corpse. Would the man not shut up and die?)
So there’s a plan, passed along in little notes kept hidden and precious. Run out and away. He can steal a horse, her husband has fine horses. An easy escape. But the mayor only unwinds in private, and he’s not escaped showing his tastes to the town for this long by being a stupid brute. And well, maybe the reason this prey’s in low places, however friendly, is because he’s a touch soft in the head. He’s a bit too obvious, a bit too easily spotted snooping about, and one thing leads to another, with him getting chased away before the eyes of his lady fair.
By now, the hunter is staring into the middle distance. His ears, however, are focused yards behind him, on that mumbling, rambling, sun-cracked set of broken lips that are spilling careless lies – must they be lies? – everywhere.
She’s desperate. She’s alone. She tries to run alone, but she’s not as used to keeping low and quiet as her friend, and she’s found out. Now that might not have led to what came next but for her foresight, and her foresight was to steal a gun. All of a sudden the mayor’s come a cropper, and she’s standing there with the gun when his boys come in. Bang bang whoops and now they’ve got to hide the body. And make a killer.
Now, the friend in low places became confused in his story here, perhaps because this was the moment when he’d become… confused, himself. He’d heard the shots. And when he snuck in to check on her, he made a little more noise than he expected.
He was, as Billowbeck had learned over his days of idle observance, a loud sobber.
Off into the dark he went, bullets at his heels. He’s escaped, they’re excused – a murderer in the dark! – and before the morning’s dawned pursuit’s afoot.
And that was why the hunter was standing here, looking at pages of tattered letters, hidden inside a filthy pile of old rags that had once been a careful stash of supplies, blankets, and clothing. He hadn’t wanted to lose them, he kept saying; he hadn’t wanted to lose them. And the hunter was staring at them, not knowing what to believe anymore.
It was at this point that Billowbeck had taken enough.
“A body after all,” he said. He was too calm to exclaim now, even with the great, festering wrath that was gnawing at his ironclad guts. “One body. And it is buried in a secret grave miles and miles from here. And no doubt already the meal of worms which are the meals of moles which are wholly inaccessibly to one at the moment. One has just about had enough of this.”
Down and low he swooped, light as his feathers, landing with a faint click and a whiff of sour air and bile just behind the quavering, wavering form of the quarry. He stood still, mouth open and soundless, emptied of his story and not knowing what to say anymore. He’d soundlessly extracted his pistol at some point in his tale and was playing with it, spinning it from the sky to his face over and over and over.
“If he will not talk, one shall do it for him,” said Billowbeck. He stretched out his beak, flapped up to a perch on one of the broken rocks that had formed the world’s least likely fortress (now breached), and leaned forwards. A brisk tap on the shoulder, an unexpected squawk of alarm from a madman, a wheel about of the hero, a sighting of the weaponry. Bang. And lo, there is meat.
A short bark from behind.
An unexpected hissing grunt of alarm from a scavenger.
A wheel about of the failed friend, a fumbling of unfamiliar weaponry.
“Bang,” said Billowbeck, the lord, entrepreneur, and (former) plunderer of all that he had once surveyed. The word came out in shock and slowness, as did his craning, failing attempts to twist his head about to see behind him. He was granted his wish as his body crumpled in on itself, wings collapsing like a broken dust devil, and he saw the barest flip of the coyote’s tail and the echo of its laughter as it bounded down the side of the butte.
And lo, there was meat. And in the long days after the men vacated that butte, not one creature came to feed upon it, not even the ants.
A dreadful waste.