Right then. I gave up on the last one, it was crap. Check this out. Once again DISCLAIMER okay that's over with.
Jagged fangs, four inches long, snap shut less than an arms length from my face. Snarling a wordless curse at the fang-tooth, I slam my bone knife under its jaw. Everything happens in slow motion, like I was hit in head. Blood, warm and thick, gushes out over my hand. The fang-tooth pulls back, still alive somehow, blood gushing even more, now that the knife is out. The giant animal lunges forward again, this time razor-edged claws flashing out. I dodge left, out of the path of the claws, but the fang-tooth turns in mid-air and manages to graze my arm. This time, I scream in agony, my arm cut to the bone. I spin and ram my knife into its skull, up to the hilt. The knife snaps off in its skull. Growling one last time, the fang-tooth collapses into a pool of its own blood, dead. The slow motion ends and everything jumps back into focus. The endless desert that my people have lived in for centuries, and the still empty water jugs at my feet. I was filling them when the fang-tooth attacked me. Grimacing in pain, I pull a bandage from my belt-pouch and wrap it around my arm, tying it tight to stop the bleeding. Kneeling down, I open up the first water jug and dip into the tiny trickle of water, coming out of the sheer rock face.
"Kouri, did you get the water?" My father, Joresh, calls at me, from his position inside our family's tent.
"Working on it," I call back. Today will be the end of fortieth journey around our tribe's lands and as ancient traditions state, the armored emissaries of the God-Emperor will come and take the strongest and bravest youths of our tribe to fight in His armies. I will be competing. I have hunted for 6 journeys around the lands and was given the honor of leading a group of other men to strike at the other tribes, to steal women and water. It was a great honor. Tradition also calls for a hopeful to bring the emissaries a totem, to prove their courage. As the second jug fills, I look up, at the fast rotting body of the fang-tooth. The heat and dryness alone would strip the animal of flesh in less than a day, and the stinger-ants, whose bite could paralysis, would cut that time to less than two hours. Smiling to myself, I walk over to the fang-tooth and begin to laboriously cut off its head. Its hard work. The skin is thick, to protect against the searing heat, which had long ago blackened my skin and the neck bone is hard, but flexible. Eventually, I get the head off, and with it tied to my belt, water jugs in hand, I slog through the high sand dunes to my tribes, the Icari, encampment. Usually, we would have left about an hour ago when the sun rose, but not today. This plain, near the sinister Black Rock, was where the God-Emperors emissaries would meet us and take us to the Black Rock.
"Kouri, what happened to your arm" my mother, Yetas, calls out. She's standing in the lee of the tent, out of the harsh glare of the sun, hands on her hips. "And where is your knife?" Without a weapon, a warrior was nothing. My father actually had an autorifle; I think was what it was called, which shot bullets, not bolts or arrows. He left me fire it once. I will never forget that feeling, the kick of the rifle and the burst of blood that erupted from the Terpth tribesman. No arrow could do something like that, no spear either, no matter how hard it was thrown or thrust.
Grinning, I point at the fang-tooth skull as a way of explanation, the broken edge of my knife still visible. I also grabbed a thigh-bone to carve a new knife out of. My mother yanks my web of pouches and bags from my scrawny, white robbed shoulders and peers under the bandage, before glaring at me and forcing me to sit down on the pile of saddle blankets and light sheets that we sleep on.
"You couldn't wait till you're fighting in the Emperors army before you start earning scars." She mutters as she pulls a long, thin tendon and a bone needle out of one of her pouches.
Smiling, my father hands me a black flash, marked with a sword. It was my father's alcohol. I took a pair of swigs, enough to block out most of the pain of my gashes. I nod and hand the flash back to my father. Yetas smacks my face, forcing me to look away and she begins sewing up my arm. Even with the alcohol, it hurts more than anything I've felt. I ended up passing out.
By the time I woke up, the sun was at my back. My father's worried face greeted me.
"Kouri, the emissaries are coming."
