The Reward of The Oolyay Read Online Free Page A

child prophet started whining and grabbing Inlojem’s arm, and Inlojem pushed the child away from him by the forehead. The child began to cry, and amidst the chaos the other children began to cry as well. The ancient Hagayalick caretaker looked severely dismayed. Inlojem turned around and stared at all three children like a Shade just before it cuts open its victims. Their cries ceased. Inlojem turned away with a grunt and continued his B-line toward Teftek.
    Teftek instinctively gripped his repeater and mentally prepared himself to speak to the towering old Oolyayn Necrologist, who lumbered at him in a manner that was also strangely elegant. Teftek straightened up as Inlojem reached him, and Inlojem stared Teftek down. The old Vesh’s eyes seemed to hold the world in their grasp; a looming sense of hatred that could not be manufactured over time, but seemed to have been built into him from the start. There were a thousand wrinkles around them, each one telling Teftek a new story about the trauma that this Vesh had either witnessed or had imposed upon others.
    But Teftek knew something about trauma. The weapon at his side had eliminated villages, and no matter how creepy or strange, no Necrologist with some half-cocked belief about an ironic death-deity could scare him. He swallowed hard and then creased his brow as Inlojem finally spoke.
    “This is it? You’re a boy!” Inlojem barked.
    “I am Captain Teftek,” Teftek protested, “and I’ll have you add-“
    “A little boy! They expect me to bring a child-prophet to the edge of the world, and they give me a little boy with a dung-popper to lead the way,” chastised Inlojem. His words were directed both at Teftek and to someone else entirely, as if cataloging this perceived misfortune to his deity. “What nonsense.”
    “You will address me as Captain Teftek!” He barked.
    “Captain of what? O ther boys ? Do you know what’s out there? Have you ever been in the country of Shades? Do you know what the Oolyay brought us on these vessels? I have slit the throats of boys like you in their sleep and spread their blood all over the camps, so that-“
    “Are you going to get in the truck or are you going to stay here?” Teftek asked, losing his patience as he felt his fingers wrap themselves around the trigger. Inlojem’s eyes burned holes in Teftek’s neck, his own hand gripping his sickle-blade readily. Slowly, Teftek heard Inlojem’s footsteps, as he moved around the Captain, so smoothly that the motion was invisible at first. Teftek’s eyes followed Inlojem until he met Pojlim at the back of the truck. Still glaring at Teftek, Inlojem jumped up into the back of the truck, ignoring Pojlim’s tilted, respectful head and his outstretched helping hand. Teftek holstered his gun and pulled his eyes away, finally releasing the breath he'd been holding.
    *  *  *
     
    Inlojem sat upright on one of the pakrim benches inside the transport truck as its three-wheeled structure bumped along over rough gravel. Surrounding him were other boys , he thought, whose only differentiation from their captain were their muscles. Many had thick red or orange beards that spread from their chins like explosions frozen in time, and some had tattoos of Fio Rij Hagayal, or of The Oolyay. They had given Inlojem and the child prophet some space, leaving them on a bench of their own, pressed up upon the front of the truck’s tent-like enclosure against the back of the cab.
    They looked and acted like grown Vesh, a couple of them singing and going on about a fight that had occurred in the town’s tavern. Yet, their voices quivered like prepubescent adolescents when they mentioned the dreaded alien ships that crashed throughout the planet. A hint of doubt entered Inlojem’s mind as he heard one of them attempt to explain the situation calmly using words like “fission frags” and “nuclear fires”. Such things elicited a more intense level of fear within the eyes of the young boys