Page 60 of I Married Amreth

“We were planning on doing that after the culling,” Aku said.

Ciara shook her head. “I think you should get rid of the berries first or at the same time. The type that you have growing here is what we call day-neutral strawberries, which means that they continuously fruit from spring to fall. I had hoped you would have those that bear fruit only once or twice in a season.”

“Of course, we don’t. That would have been too easy,” Aku said, his voice heavy with sarcasm.

“Culling all the rabid beasts will only have a bunch more roaming around so long as the berries are still getting eaten. So until your people have decided what you want to do with these berries and what the best containment method will be going forward, I suggest that you dig them out completely and we can help you adjust the soil’s pH to make it more difficult for them to grow again. What we’ve come up with so far isn’t a permanent solution, but it will drastically reduce the probability of more creatures becoming rabid and by extension of making your people sick.”

“We can take care of both during the culling tomorrow. The drones can track both the animals and buried patches at the same time. If you dig them out as we go, we can burn them in the shuttle’s incinerator,” I suggested.

“Excellent idea,” Aku said approvingly. “I will round up a few more people to take care of the berries while we hunt.”

That night, being back in that first house felt strange. It was almost like being back home. Naturally, I shunned the guest room to share Ciara’s bedroom, which also had a bigger bed better suited for my tall frame—not that we slept all that much.

It still shamed me how I repeatedly gorged on her emotions. I couldn’t help myself. Over the handful of days spent in Jaln Village, the tribe had started making jokes about my strange habit of casting an insane amount of lightning in the distance every morning. At first, they feared something or someone had infuriated me, prompting me to vent my fury that way. Then their wariness quickly gave way to amusement. When I asked my mate if she had snitched as to the cause of my behavior, she swore her innocence. Judging by her aura, she was speaking the truth.

So how did they guess? Assuming they did…

The thought that they figured it out because of how loud we got was mortifying. Still, it remained a stretch for them to make the connection. Therefore, I convinced myself that they had no idea but were merely entertained by a behavior they deemed quirky.

That morning, Aku and sixteen Kreelars joined me aboard the shuttle. The return would be a little cramped if we planned on flying back with the carcasses of the creatures. In the end, we agreed to burn them on site to avoid bringing back unnecessarily anything that might be harmful to the people.

I released five drones, sending them ahead to scout the neighboring areas of the path the pilgrims would use. In no time, we found the first couple of wild beasts they called a Murthis. Of all the infected creatures, they presented the biggest threat. At least three meters long, and two meters high, the beasts possessed the broad shoulders and sleek body of a predator. Ciara claimed they looked as if a giant lion had a baby with a dinosaur. I had to look up the latter to find out what she meant.

It had a short greenish coat on its underbelly, and green scales along its thick neck, chest, and back. Even bigger scales covered its feline legs and paws, as well as its reptilian tail, which boasted a series of sharp bone spikes along its top side. The head was undeniably reptilian, triangular-shaped, with a wide mouth filled with dagger teeth, and a long, forked tongue. A huge set of horns, also covered in spikes on the upper edge, sprung from the brow and recurved on each side of its face.

Despite its massive size and weight, the Murthis could move at insane speeds. Its jaw was strong enough to cut right through flesh and bone with a single powerful bite. Thankfully, they usually traveled as small packs of around fifteen. Most males only remained with the females and the offspring they sired on them until the cubs were old enough to start hunting alongside their mothers, which normally took about six months. The maleswould then set off again on their own, although they remained within the territory that they shared with up to ten other males.

Just as I was hoping that we wouldn’t have to cull mothers and their cubs, drones picked up a suspiciously large pack, at least two to nearly three times the normal number of beasts. A quick fly over with the drone indicated they were all females with their cubs. They looked nervous, the mothers forming a circle around their offspring.

“The females are joining forces to protect their young from the enraged males,” Aku said. “Please tell me none of them are infected.”

“The scanners do not show any infection among these females or their cubs,” I said with relief.

“Perfect. Let’s take care of the sick males then,” Aku said.

I landed the shuttle in a small clearing, half a kilometer from the closest rabid beast. As with the first time they captured me, the Kreelars weren’t armed to the teeth. You’d think they were simply going off on a leisure stroll in the woods. They all wore those poofy pants with a decorative loincloth on top. Barefoot and bare chested, they had a weapons belt and bracers, with the occasional chest straps.

Where my weapons belt included a blade—not quite a full sword, but longer than a dagger—and a blaster, the Kreelars only had a blowpipe barely thicker than a straw, a dagger, and a small pouch containing the darts they would fire on their targets.

“What?” Aku asked when he caught me eyeing them as we exited the shuttle.

“I was only thinking your weapons are quite minimal to face off against such imposing beasts,” I said carefully.

As one, the Kreelars snorted and huffed, looking at me as if I’d said something ludicrous.

“Watch and learn, off-worlder,” a female said teasingly.

With the same mind-boggling speed they had displayed when they came after me, the Kreelars took off running in the direction my scanner indicated a couple of rabid males were located. They split into two groups, one climbing on the trees on the left, and the other on the trees on the right. Aku kept running on the ground straight ahead. I activated my stealth shield and took flight, following the leader.

Watching his tribemates swing from tree to tree took my breath away. Now that I was no longer attempting to flee them, I could admire the physical prowess it involved. They easily leapt over six to eight meters to the next tree, catching a branch with one hand, and using their momentum to propel themselves towards the following tree. It reminded me of the hypnotic motion of a pendulum, their bodies swaying from side to side as they caught themselves with the left hand, leapt to the next tree, caught a limb with their right hand, and leapt again in an infinite loop.

The movement of all those Kreelars traveling at comparable speeds and in almost perfect synchronicity made the whole thing resemble some sort of lethal choreography. Acting as bait, Aku dashed forward on the ground towards their target. As soon as the beast noticed him, it charged with a blood-curdling roar. I fought the instinctive urge to swoop down and haul the Kreelar leader out of harm’s way.

The bold confidence with which he continued to race towards a feral beast at least four times his mass boggled my mind. Watching him simply whip out his blowpipe felt even more reckless. But his aura indicated no fear, just focus and determination. He suddenly veered towards a tree as the beast closed in on him. At the last minute, Aku leapt at an impossible height over the Murthis. It reared on its back legs to try and eviscerate the Kreelar with its vicious claws but completely missed. Before it could get back down on all fours, at least threeor four darts found their marks in its underbelly, fired by the tribemates swarming the trees.

But my eyes were locked on Aku. With phenomenal grace and dexterity, he kicked off the trunk of a nearby tree, caught a branch with his tail, using it to swing himself around back towards the creature, and fired a blow dart at the back of its head. He loosened his tail, using the momentum to land back a short distance from the creature. My jaw dropped as the Murthis staggered under the effect of whatever drug coated the darts. It collapsed just as Aku was running up to it.

Grabbing the thrashing creature by the massive horns framing its head, Aku snapped its neck with one powerful movement. And just like that, it was done. The respect I felt for his people grew a thousandfold. Admiration for their skills was only a tiny part of it. It was the merciful and efficient way they dispatched the animal that truly impressed me. I also loved that, as their leader, he didn’t safely sit back at home and let them do the dirty work. He got down into the trenches and took on the most dangerous role.

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