Page 47 of Meat

He was nearly there.

Suddenly, a sharp cry came to him over the twilit crags of the mountain pass. That sound chilled the blood in his veins.

The woman.

Something was wrong with the woman.

She was in pain.

Another cry erupted from the direction of the camp, and Ravnar ran even faster, pumping his legs with every ounce of explosive strength coiled in the powerful muscles of his thighs.

Cool breeze blew over sweat speckled skin. Breath came sharp as a dagger, fast like the thumping of Ravnar’s heart.

What was wrong? What was wrong with the woman?

As more muffled cries burst across the face of the mountain, Ravnar scrambled up a steep grade, vaulted over the brush-lined crest of a ridge, and landed with a thud at the edge of the campsite.

Krogg and Jale turned toward him with concern in their eyes.

The woman lay between them, twisting and writhing in agony. Her skin was greasy with sweat. As wet as Ravnar, and he had just run up a damn mountain.

This was bad.

He rushed forward and dropped to his knees beside her.

He was about to ask what was wrong when the woman shrieked again, and this time he realized it wasn’t just a sound. She was saying something. A single word in their language, which Jale had been teaching her.

Meat.

The little woman who had been mostly herbivorous these past days, with the exception of an egg here and there, was now screaming for meat, begging for it.

“It’s the little ukkur,” Krogg growled. “It must be. The little ukkur in her belly needs meat, Ravnar. It’s craving it.”

“Then get her some fucking meat!” Ravnar snarled.

“We’re all out.”

Of course. They had eaten the last before entering the mountains. The meat they had hunted in the forest would spoil, so they had gorged before setting out with the intention of fasting for the following days until they emerged into the prairie on the other side.

They had not expected this. How could they?

“Fuck it,” Jale growled, “We have to do something! She’s in pain. She could be dying.”

The brave young ukkur leaped up and strode to where they had unloaded their supplies. He rummaged briefly, came up with a stone ax for splitting firewood, and raised it as if preparing to lop off his own arm.

Ravnar sprang forward, barely catching the lad’s ax hand in time to stop him.

“Fool!” Ravnar cursed. “What the rot are you doing?”

“She needs meat,” Jale snarled. “So I’ll feed her mine.”

“What about the skriks.”

“We need them to get over the mountains.”

“More than you need your rotted arm, boy?”

“I have another.”