Looking around her at the honking and hooting hadrosaurs numbering in the hundreds streaming northwards, Kahla declared, ‘Not unless they're all as ugly as him and sport a white blotch on their foreheads. I'm certain of who I saw. It's not hard to put two-and-two together from that.'

  The old cow reluctantly gave up thinking that her charge had forsaken her streak of disobedience. ‘I'll deal with the matter,’ she rumbled promisingly.

  'Can I make a suggestion?’ Kahla asked innocently.

  Balticea eyed her bothersome kin dubiously, as her motives were always ulterior. ‘You have until I reach Bronte,’ she granted, resuming her plodding.

  The pair lumbered up to the pensive cow five minutes later.

  'Bronte.'

  The sky-gazing Thunderfoot, seeming not to have heard the Grand Matriarch, remained entranced by the unremarkable cloud cover.

  'Bronte! Come back to earth this instant.'

  The teen cow slowly blinked back to awareness. ‘Grandma?'

  'We have to talk.'

  Shrugging off her melancholy, Bronte noticed her backstabbing cousin. ‘What's she doing with you?'

  'You get to answer the questions, my girl, not ask them,’ Balticea stated, her firmness ending any objections. ‘Do you still sneak away to meet Chappy?'

  'So you finally recognise he has a name.'

  'Don't be flippant with me, Bronte.'

  'I'm now an old, mated cow, grandmother, not some calf you can tell off whenever the mood takes you.'

  'You aren't too old that I can't spank your rump,’ Balticea said, waggling her serpentine tail warningly. ‘Have you been with that Duckbill after dark any time recently?'

  'I spend my nights with Darved, as I'm meant to.'

  'Did you see that infernal flat-nose last evening or not?'

  'Yes! The night of my mating.'

  Balticea sighed her disappointment. ‘Why must you continually disobey me, child? I thought our earlier chat had remedied all of this.'

  'There are other issues...'

  'I don't want to hear any of your lies, Bronte!’ The Grand Matriarch stamped a forefoot mightily in demonstrative anger to curtail her granddaughter's protests.

  Kahla revelled in the family squabble. She so enjoyed dysfunctional kith. It lessened her personal estrangement.

  Composing herself, Balticea informed Bronte, ‘Your cousin has come up with a solution to your misbehaviour.'

  Bronte let slip a rumbly growl. ‘I can't wait to hear this.'

  'So tell her then, Kahla.'

  Terribly pleased with herself, Bronte's watchdog elucidated. ‘It's quite simple really, cousin. Chappy is the cause of your misdeeds. He's the one leading you astray. You must, therefore, say goodbye to him—permanently.'

  Balticea stepped in to fill in the blanks. ‘Kahla is right. It's her idea that this unwholesome association is broken once and for all. There is no better time to terminate your relationship. The Duckbills are migrating north and your friend should soon be joining them. We'll stay put until you've said your goodbyes. If you won't farewell Chappy yourself, I will make you do it.'

  Bronte was flabbergasted. ‘You can't mean this!'

  'What other choice have you left me? You flout my authority at every opportunity. In case you've overlooked the obvious, I've not made you matriarch yet.'

  'What about my ascension?'

  'That'll be delayed until such time I feel you are to be trusted.'

  Kahla snickered. Things were going rather badly for the favoured heir.

  'Is Darved aware of your indiscretion?'

  'Of course not,’ Bronte told her dominating grandmother. ‘He was sleeping when I rejoined him well after moonrise that night and put my tiredness the next morning down to our ardour.’ She shot a patronising glance Kahla's way.

  'Thank goodness for that. We'll leave him in the dark. If Bodiah ever hears of you consorting with a two-leg, she'd have a fit. I need her unequivocally on side for the takeover.’ Balticea shook her small head. ‘When will you learn to act with propriety, Bronte? By not focusing on your duty you're jeopardising two herds. A matriarch must sacrifice friendship, even family commitment, for the sake of those she leads.'

  'How true,’ Kahla agreed wholeheartedly.

  The look Balticea gave her niece went from being irked to crafty. ‘Kahla, I have the perfect task for you. I don't want to linger in this region longer than necessary. This parting can be hurried along if you find the Duckbill your cousin is so fond of and bring him directly to us.'

  'But aunty, there are so many flat-noses around here. How can I possibly locate one individual?'

  'You said so yourself that the bull is boldly conspicuous. It shouldn't be too hard for a busybody to track him down.'

  'I'm a Thunderfoot, not a gofer.'

  'It was your suggestion, niece. It's only fitting that you see it through.'

  'As you order, Grand Matriarch,’ obeyed Kahla, a venomous look in her carefully lowered eyes. She detested being anyone's lackey.

  Balticea considered her wayward scion. ‘As for you my girl, you'll return to Darved's side and not leave him again for any reason whatsoever. If you break that rule, I'll have to reconsider shielding him from your illicitness. I doubt your bull will look kindly upon you for keeping secrets from him. No mating is off to a good start when it is based on lies.'

  'You don't know the half of it,’ Bronte muttered dejectedly, her sullen eyes straying back to the cloudy sky.

  * * * *

  The cold moon shone palely from above.

  For two days Kahla searched the Duckbill masses for Chappy, or at least she pretended to. Balticea's scheming niece was following her own private agenda that had nothing to do with the Grand Matriarch's orders. She intended only locating the bull hadrosaur when the timing suited her own purposes. Till then, she fobbed off her aunt with the excuse of trying find a pine needle in a forest. Her ploy seemed to be working, though Balticea was plainly chaffing at the bit to be done with this business and head the herds away from Killjaw territory before the Bloodletting commenced in earnest. Kahla decided otherwise. It was in her devious interest that the Thunderfeet stay awhile.

  She left the combined sauropod bands at dusk on the sixth day of their reunion on the pretence of searching for Chappy once more in the nighttime forest. It was a plausible enough reason. The scurrilous Duckbill indulged in prowling about the woods at night, so Kahla convinced Balticea she stood a much better chance of chancing across him after dark. The old leader naturally assented in light of her kin's failure to find the wayward bull during the daytime hours.

  Old fool! Hastening along the outer fringe of the woodland as fast as her plodding legs could carry her massiveness, Kahla headed due south. Balticea was far too trusting, making her unfit to rule in her niece's disloyal eyes. Kahla secretly opposed the looming merger with the southern Thunderfeet, regarding her neighbours as half-breeds. The northerners, herself especially, were directly descended from the founding Thunderfoot ancestors and their pure bloodlines need not be diluted and tainted in some misguided gambit for preservation. There was but one way to guarantee sauropod survival and only Kahla thought that she was brave and wily enough to tread that hazardous path.

  After an hour of uneventful plodding had gone by, Kahla left the outlying trees to venture into the moonlit forest depths. She struck a course due west, worming her way through shrubby thickets and stands of closely-knit evergreens that in time thinned before changing into more spacious willow copses. A sickening pungency assailed her nostrils, nauseating the Thunderfoot with its taste of windborne mouldering decay. Shoving through the droopy willows, she happened upon the eastern foot of the Swamp of Despair.

  'Yuk!’ was Kahla's reaction to the festering tract of marsh revealed in the stark and unflattering moonshine. She surveyed the unwholesome fen with a look of profound disgust on her haughty snout, searching for something—or someone.

  'Where is that confounded two-leg?’ she rumbled irritably.

  'You are sssolitary?’ a sinister voice slithered from the forlorn treescape at the cow's rear.

  Swivelling her bulk around, Kahla edgily watched the Nightclaw detach from the shadows like a black wraith and shuddered. ‘I am alone, as you instructed,’ she confirmed.

  Sweeping the vicinity with his searchlight eyes to satisfy himself that the Thunderfoot was indeed on her own, Shadower simply said, ‘Follow,’ before gliding back into the dark wood.

  'I can't!’ she blurted out.

  Poking his beaked head out of the night-imbued shrubbery, the full intensity of the Nightclaw's unblinking gaze fell upon Kahla and he silently demanded an explanation.

  'The foliage is too dense deeper in the wood for me to breach. I had enough trouble getting this far in. I can't possibly penetrate any farther. I'm simply too big.'

  Shadower pivoted his birdlike head to regard the inky trees and bushes at his back before returning his paralysing stare to the baulking Thunderfoot. ‘I mussst consult my massster,’ was all he rasped, melting into the blackness.

  Kahla was relieved to see the Nightclaw go. The Killjaw spy may be acting as a go-between on her behalf, but he was a detestable reptile with a knack for making her uncomfortable.

  Nightclaws were purported to possess a nasty range of powers, most earthly, some supernatural. They were aid to be able to turn invisible at night, a fallacy attributable to their superb camouflage and surreptitious nocturnal habits. Woodland legend had the dark runners stealing the souls of hatchlings still cocooned in their eggs, draining their prey of blood before consuming the flesh, and even assuming the shape of a Lizardwing to flap through the night air like a malevolent reptilian bat. Nightclaws were, in essence, saurian vampires, if popular myth was to be believed.

  Kahla settled down to a nervous wait. The better part of an hour passed and there was no indication of Shadower coming back. Had he gone to confer with the Killjaw king, or was the ghoulish reptile lurking unseen in the shadowed brush tormenting his giant victim with doubts and anxieties prior to shape-shifting and swooping in to suck her dry? She was despairing if the stealthy dinosaur was ever going to show himself again, or if she would even get out of this encounter with the blood left coursing through her veins, when the harsh crack of a branch snapping underfoot announced the Nightclaw's sloppy return.

  'It's about ti...’ Kahla's moan died on her lipless mouth as a Dwarf Killjaw brazenly stepped from the grove of weepy willows into the silvery lighting. She reflexively backed away, only to have her unthinking retreat halted by the ooze of the swamp, her back feet sinking into the spongy earth.

  'You aren't the Nightclaw,’ she accused.

  'How observant of you,’ Festur sniped. ‘Shadower's job is done. From here on in you deal with me.'

  'It was arranged that I meet with Rexus himself.'

  'The king is indisposed. He sent me in his stead.'

  'That's unacceptable. I desire to talk with the Killjaw king personally.'

  'I'm telling you that I speak for King Rexus. Whatever cowshit you wish to say to him passes by me first.'

  Kahla remained foolhardily steadfast. ‘After coming this far I won't let an underling fob me off.'

  'You don't have a choice,’ intoned the Killjaw captain, advancing menacingly.

  Preparing for the worst, Kahla positioned herself so that her swishing tail was free to whip out at the threatening predator. Festur instinctively covered his snout with his foreclaws.

  'We appear to have reached an impasse.'

  Festur paused mid-step as the hulking speaker of that resonant growl emerged from the sooty timberland.

  'Ease off,’ Rexus commanded.

  His captain promptly pulled back. Festur was trying doubly hard to regain his liege's favour after suffering that humiliating beating from Bronte.

  'You must be Kahla,’ the king of the Killjaws snarled ingratiatingly.

  The cow nearly fainted on the spot. A Thunderfoot normally only glimpsed a Killjaw at such close quarters when ambushed, and that was a first and final look. To cower within spitting distance of the largest living meat-eater, their ruler no less, terrified Kahla.

  'Are you Rexus, the king?’ she meekly asked, fighting to maintain her shaky composure. She had to make sure.

  'No, I'm the fang fairy. What did you want to see me about, Thunderfoot, before I have you butchered for encroachment? The meat of a trespasser is said to be especially tasty.'

  Kahla gained an absurd measure of surety. ‘You won't kill me.'

  Rexus laughed heartily at her audacity. ‘You lineage alone warrants instant execution—Balty's blood niece and wannabe pretender to the grand ole matriarchy itself.'

  'Your spy serves you well, Rexus.'

  'Show proper respect to His Majesty,’ Festur growled in reproof at Kahla from the background. ‘He is your king!'

  The cow humbled herself accordingly. ‘Forgive me ... sire.'

  'I am curious, Kahla,’ said the despotic regent, ‘at how you managed to coerce my pet Nightclaw into organising this little get together.'

  'Didn't he say, your kingship?'

  'Shadower is no great talker.'

  Kahla's confidence grew. She had leverage over her enemy. ‘I bumped into your stoolie while he was spying on my herd. Rather than expose him, I took advantage of the opportunity presented to me and persuaded the Nightclaw to deliver my request for an audience, or else I'd turn him over to my aunt.'

  'Blackmail? I didn't expect a plant-eater to stoop so low. It's a pleasant surprise.'

  'I'm not your typical Thunderfoot.'

  'Obviously. You are either incredibly reckless or mind-bogglingly stupid. I can't decide which. How did you know Shadower wouldn't just bolt without doing what you “asked” of him?'

  'I fibbed to him that I was privy to where his day-lair was hid and would trample him in his sleep if he didn't conform.'

  'A liar and a bully!’ Rexus guffawed. ‘Are you listening to this, Festur? We have ourselves a Killjaw in a Thunderfoot hide. How novel.'

  'Delightful,’ muttered the captaining Killjaw.

  'So just what does our deceitful little friend want from us, hmmm?'

  Kahla had had enough of being made fun of. ‘I have a proposition for you, King Rexus—if you're interested.'

  The monarch dropped his air of levity. ‘What could you possibly offer me, the King of Mother Forest?'

  'Balticea's death.'

  Rexus instantly gave Kahla his undivided attention. ‘I'm all ears. Only make your pitch quick. I need to get back to my beauty sleep.'

  The cow thought it safer not to comment on that. ‘I can position my aunt at any place and time of your choosing for you to ambush her,’ she offered the hideously scarred king.

  'In exchange for what?'

  'I get to be replacement matriarch.'

  Rexus paced the scrubby fringe of flatland separating forest from swamp, his footsteps squelching in the muddy seepage from the bog. ‘My arch enemy dies and you substitute for her,’ he mused. ‘From where I stand you get the better part of the deal. I'll just be swapping one nemesis for another.'

  'Not so,’ argued Kahla. ‘When I'm made ruling cow I'll swear Thunderfoot allegiance to the Killjaw throne. This ancient feud between our races can finally be brought to an end.'

  'It's sounding fairer. Keep talking.'

  'Plus, I'll also offer up the life of my cousin, Balticea's heir.'

  'Two for the effort of one.’ Rexus stopped pacing to stare directly at Kahla. ‘Tempting, but it's not enough. Are you prepared to tender more, much more?'

  'What are you suggesting, Majesty?'

  'Nothing elaborate ... maybe a token of your goodwill—say, a blood offering.'

  'Won't my aunt's and cousin's bodies suffice?'

  Looking pointedly at Festur, Rexus confided, ‘Once I loose my captain over there, it's impossibly hard to control him. I myself can exercise restraint when called for, but when the killing starts Festur goes absolutely wild.’ He let Kahla's imagination conjure up the grisly picture of the rampaging Killjaw officer indiscriminately savaging any and all Thunderfeet he came across.

  She thought fast. ‘In return for the safe passage of my own herd back to our northern grounds, I'm prepared to allow you to do what you will with my southern brethren.’ Kahla liked that idea. It eliminated her unworthy family and impure neighbours in a single stomp.

  Accepting the cow's overture, Rexus did amend it. ‘Done. Additionally, you will sacrifice one member of your herd seasonally to me as a gesture of your continuing good faith.'

  Kahla balked at the counter-offer. The Killjaw king closed on her, his intimidatory growl scaring the rumbles of her overactive gut into feared silence.

  'I won't entirely forgo the taste of Thunderfoot flesh,’ he slavered, eyeing Kahla hungrily.

  Caught between a bog and a scar-face, she reluctantly acquiesced.

  Rexus was content. ‘Excellent. I'll have Shadower keep in touch so that we can work out a day and time for Balticea's misadventure. Oh, just one more thing. Isn't the old bat bound to realise something is afoot when you pilot her on to unfamiliar soil?'

  'I've presently got my aunt wrapped around my tail. She won't suspect a thing until it's too late.’ Kahla watched Rexus reverse, allowing her a free run back to the forest. She edged warily past the staring Killjaws, remarking, ‘I'll sure be glad to vacate this wretched spot.'

  'Why, it's such a lovely vista to conduct a bit of treachery in,’ the king observed. In reality he had specially selected the meeting place beforehand, counting on the stench of the adjoining swamp to mask their scents. Rexus did not intend any other creature gaining wind of this clandestine tryst. Before the lumbering sauropod re-entered Mother Forest he called after her, ‘Tell me, Kahla, what makes a Thunderfoot betray her own kind?'

  The underhand cow paused. ‘What I do is for the greater good of my herd.'

  'Noble claptrap,’ Rexus spat. ‘Personal gain doesn't enter into it?'

  'That is merely the juiciest part of the plant, King Rexus.'

  The tyrant-king howled in mirth. ‘I like your spunk, Kahla, but if you're entertaining the slightest notion of double-crossing me I'll feast on your bones, you traitorous bitch.'

 

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