She ducked her head at that, clicking her beak in agitation for the blasphemy.
Chilaili stroked her daughter’s soft fur, gentling her. “No, do not apologize for having spoken the truth, Sooleawa,” she said quietly. “It is one thing to serve Those who made us, in gratitude for our making. It is quite another to die for them, to the last poisoned chick, when the creatures they would have us fight are virtually the equals of the Ones Above.” She held up her hands, clawtips glinting in the firelight. “We hunt with these, and with spears and knives and bows. Do you think any Huntress at this Council fire doesn’t understand how primitive our best weapons are, compared with the least weapons of the Ones Above? Or those of the humans?”
A low murmur of assent rippled through the gathered Huntresses.
The akule, tone almost pleading, said, “When the command to fight came, the Ones Above promised to send greater and greater weapons to carry on the fight, weapons more powerful than any the human devils possess.”
“More weapons?” Chilaili countered sharply. “Yes, I can well believe the Ones Above are willing to give us more weapons. But they do not show themselves, for all their wondrous skill in crafting such things. I want to know why, akule, it is left to us to fight and die, when the Ones Above are so much more capable than we of carrying out such battles? They sit safely in their nests among the stars and the moons, their claws bloodless. Why don’t they fight these devils, if the humans are truly so deadly?”
It was the wrong thing to say; Chilaili knew it the instant the words exploded past her beak. But she could not unsay them and she knew, in her very bones, that they were nothing but naked truth. The akule cried, “Chilaili! The Ones Above send us to battle to test our worthiness! Everyone knows this! It is the way things have always been. It is part of the great plan for our race—”
“Proving our worthiness by destroying ourselves? That aids no one! Ourselves, least of all.” At the stir of fright that shivered through the gathering, beaks clicking softly in agitation like branches in the wind, Chilaili gentled her voice. “I am katori. My own Grandmother’s Great-Grandmother passed down the story of the grand plan, to see which clan’s ways will prove strongest, most viable. Icewing Clan is the only one in all the world ruled by Mothers and Grandmothers. While our Daughters and Mothers hunt far from the nest, our bigger and stronger males remain behind to guard the nest against all predators. Even against the males of other clans. The Grandmothers watch the hatchlings and make all critical decisions while the Grandfathers incubate the eggs. Because this is so, ours may well be the only clan of the Tersae capable of saving our race.”
“How is that?” a young huntress across the Council fire asked in puzzled tones.
“Because,” Chilaili said very gently, “in our clan, Grandmothers choose which males to breed with which females to strengthen the bloodlines. They are wise enough to select carefully for intelligence, for speed and endurance, skill of dexterity and resistance to illness, all the critical factors that mean survival for a clan—or death, if the choices made are poor ones.”
Great-Grandmother Anevay spoke again. “I have worried about this very thing, for the clans we trade with most often have gone dangerously unstable. The males now making decisions think of nothing but food in their bellies and weapons in their enemies’ entrails. There is much merit in your words, Chilaili, although they disturb me more than I would like to admit.”
Chilaili bowed her head. “Your wisdom has guided us for many years, Great-Grandmother Anevay. And these are disturbing things to face, deeply disturbing decisions we are forced to make. We argue issues tonight that will be the death of our clan—perhaps the death of all the clans—if we decide wrongly.”
The akule broke silence, at that. “You are more right than you begin to guess, Chilaili,” he said, voice heavy with fear as he rolled one eye toward the cavern where the Oracle rested, the small cavern Kestejoo and his mate had shared for so many hatchless winters. “What you have forgotten—what all of you have forgotten—is the solemn warning we live under. The Ones Above demand obedience. Anything less is punished—severely and irrevocably. We all agree the weapons they have given us are terrifying. But you, Chilaili, have forgotten that the Ones Above can turn those weapons on us as easily and swiftly as young hotheads issue challenge.”
A profound silence fell across the entire, assembled clan. The Council fire crackled ominously, portent of worse fires to come. Chilaili shivered. The fur along her spine crawled. She could make no answer to the akule’s words, for there was no answer any Tersae could make. The Ones Above had created them. They could just as easily destroy.
Very softly, Chilaili said, “The akule speaks the truth in this. To our shame, we are helpless before them, helpless as unhatched nestlings. I believe attacking the human nests is profoundly wrong and more dangerous than any of you can understand. But I cannot deny the threat the Ones Above hold over us. Decide amongst yourselves what you feel is best. I will abide by the Council’s edicts.”
Rebellion surged in her heart, but there was nothing she could do.
The vote did not take long.
Within the hour, the warriors were packing joyously, bringing weapons out of storage, spears and swords and carefully cached weapons from the Ones Above, stored years previously in the deepest caverns of their permanent winter nest. The clan had held them for generations against future emergency, such as this current crisis. Yiska glanced at Chilaili from time to time, his expression troubled, but the Council had made its decision and he would never disobey a direct order from the Grandmothers. The younger males sang as they worked, for once not bickering and fighting amongst themselves. Ancient Grandfathers incubating eggs not yet due for another round in the blessing chambers watched with sad and dreaming eyes as others claimed the honor of battle.
“The warriors will form one war party to attack the large human nest three days’ travel away,” Yiska was saying. “We will bypass—for now—the smaller, closer nest. The two attacks must occur simultaneously or the nests will reinforce each other. That would make victory far more costly. The huntresses will attack the smaller nest, since we do not have enough warriors to attack both at once. The warriors must travel three times the distance, so they will leave first. The huntresses will set out two days after they leave, to time the attacks properly. We will strike both nests at dawn of the fourth day.”
Chilaili felt ill, listening. To send the clan’s huntresses to war was a decision lost in utter folly—and should have been a powerful argument against attacking at all. But when the Ones Above dictated the rules, logic flew out of the cavern on crippled wings. She watched her sons chanting war songs with glee in their eyes and a joyous spring in their steps, and hated her clan’s helplessness.
And she hated the Ones Above. Their makers had—according to the oldest of the akule’s teaching stories—raised them up from the nests of flightless, clever beasts that still roamed the deep forests. Had taken them in as pets and playthings, had doctored them with machines and with substances Chilaili would never even be able to pronounce, let alone comprehend. Then, having created them and given them language and understanding, they had taken their pets and placed them back down in the forests and set them at one another’s throats, with pretty-sounding laws to live by—laws that kept the clans fighting one another without ever quite allowing the males the dreamed-of joy of ripping and rending everything in their paths.
With the humans, no such restrictions existed.
The males were now in the only version of heaven they were ever likely to know firsthand. How the Ones Above must laugh at the blind, stupid, battle-mad Tersae, the fools down in the dung and the dead leaves and the blood, obediently—joyously—dying for their creators. Chilaili watched sons she had loved to distraction singing and laughing on their way to slaughter and knew she had to do something besides sit like a feeble Grandmother in the shadowed corner of her living cavern. The semiprivate chamber reserved for the katori had never seemed so lonely, not even in the aftermath of losing her beloved mate, killed in a mindless challenge. She watched with growing despair as the little ones played amongst the star-weapons.
It is our future the Ones Above are stealing, she realized bleakly. We are toys to them, to chuckle over during conversation around an evening’s cookfire. Did the Ones Above even have cookfires? They created us, but why? They care nothing about us. Our welfare, our anguish, what brings us joy through the wheel of the year means as little to them as a rotting log in the forest means to me. Less, perhaps. A rotting log at least provided an abundance of edible and medicinal fungi.