The Wild Lands: Legend of the Wild Man Read Online Free Page B

the scavengers simply left, disease from rotting corpses
would have burned through the herd like the Scourge burned through
civilization.
    Each bird had a wing span of at least 12
feet. Bio-metals had allowed them to grow perceptibly even in the
short time he had been piloting them. They were scavengers
originally, but their size made everything prey. They could kill
monkeys, the big cats that prowled the jungles near the garden,
even an adult biselk , given a pilot with sufficient
skills.
    Skup was sufficiently skilled. He worked
miracles with the flock. He had pioneered ways to use the bird's
body that the vultus hadn't figured out for themselves. The
flock had taken to adapting his deadly innovations. Skup was quite
certain that without him, Spire City would be doomed. And they
rewarded him by withholding information about the Wild Man ?
Who exactly did they expect to pilot the animal if they could
actually catch it? Who did they expect to catch it?
    No matter. It was nearly dawn. His VRC had to
be synchronized with the one in the skull of his vultus before the rest of the flock awakened. Urea and Jacob could wait,
their Evanimals couldn't do much harm on their own, but Skup had a
uniquely important position.
    Besides, Skup had seen Jacob set out the day
prior. The breeding elk he had piloted headed south, out of the
huge caldera that cradled Spire City. His bird's telescopic vision
made it easy to keep tabs on everyone in the garden. Jacob's elk
had headed south, then looped back around, outside the foothills of
the caldera, but still well inside of the electromagnetic field
that powered the VRCs that gave all the pilots bodies more powerful
than their own. Whatever had happened, it had surely happened
there. If it was still in the area, it would not evade Skup and his vultus .
     

Chapter 3

    We stayed on Father Mountain when our brothers and
sisters left. We stay to honor the old ways. They play on the
Earth, like children, while we watch to the West, where the Hidden
sleep, and only their nightmares walk the surface.

    He rises with the sun. He always rises with
the sun.
    His people are far from here. He must risk
his kill and his life and carry the prongbuck through the exposed
hills to be home before the meat spoils. If nothing smells the
fresh blood, he can be home in the late day, when the shadows are
long. He will have time to prepare the meat and have a feast for
his people.
    The hunter cannot untie his rope with his
injured arm, so instead he severs it with his unfinished knife.
Even without being worked, the prongblade is deadly sharp. The buck
lands with a loud snap. He fears the worst. If a prong has
shattered, the blade makers will have less left on the rack to work
with. Prongs are very valuable. A rack of them this large could be
worked into almost anything, surely more than simple prongblades.
Little, broken prongs could be found near prongelk mating
territory, as they often snapped off in duels.
    In a rush he checks the rack of prongs. None
are broken besides the one he had snapped off to make his weapon,
not one. There are dozens of them. This buck's prongs are very
strong. He checks the animals ribs, a snapped rib can puncture
organs and ruin meat, but again, none are broken. He checks the
legs, but those too are undamaged. The only wounds are those he had
inflicted on the prongbuck and the puncture it had just received.
No bones broke, but something did. He leans in close, runs his hand
along its bristled hide. He searches for a clue. A spot of blood on
the back of the neck smells fresh.
    One prong is driven backwards, into the base
of the skull of the elk, but still looks intact. Slowly, he pulls
the prong out of the skull. It is not damaged and slides out with a
loud sucking sound. Like a curious child, he peers into the
wound.
    There is a stone.
    First it glows red, then turns black, then
red, then black. Back and forth like a dying flame or a light bug.
It can be neither.
    He remembers the