75 - Pissing in Bottles

The whole enlightened field was infested.  The young postal courier was able to stagger out the narrow path Dukir had made, with Shaidan’s assistance.  The string of postal packbirds… what was left of them… were flattening into the soil as the pitters worked on the undersides of the corpses.   

It was odd, the vile little yellow lizards seemed to crave meat and blood, even as mildly acid as humans were. At the same time all you had to do was piss on them and they reacted like you'd dunked them in quicklime. Of course you couldn’t do anything like that to the big ones.  The Lainz had a saying for the big pitters the size of a man or larger, ‘pissed on is pissed off.’

“Calmly, you crotch rotted bird,” Dukir said, soothingly as he drew the kid’s bird along with the goad hooked into its beakbreak.  It was as young as the kid, barely taller than a man, all raw bones and nerves, and kept trying to flap its trimmed wings and kick with its bloody feet.  It had one toe all but bitten off and limped more and more heavily until, at the edge of the infested field, it sank down and refused to move again.

The kid made to get up from where the Emir-al was checking to see how badly he’d been chewed up and got pushed down.
 

“Your leg is not going to let you just ride merrily off to do your job, kid,” he said. “And the other has that one bite high enough you’re lucky you didn’t either bleed out or lose your wedding tackle.”  Shaidan looked up as Dukir choked.   

“What?”

“Um, Naser Emir-al, the term ‘wedding tackle’ is perhaps a bit rude?”

Shaidan just shook his head, not letting go the bandage he was wrapping around the kid’s thigh.  “It will do.  I’m the Emir-al Shaidan Raghnall and this is my Amir Isfahsalar, enroute to Viltaria.”

“I’m Tahm Gregori,” the kid said, giving only his basic pantronymic without the clan line name.  “I’m the fastest postal courier in this district…” he looked mournfully at his bird as it stretched out its neck along the ground, lying on its keel, panting its distress.  “At least with Ahoo I was the fastest.”

“We’ll see you back to the last village –“

“That would be Stambul,” Tahm cut in, flinching.

“We’ll see if your Ahoo can limp back with us, but I fear she won’t be able to keep up.”  As Shaidan was talking, Dukir handed the kid his flask, that had mead-laced water in it. He took a healthy swig, stopped with a startled look on his face, then took another.

“My mail, Nasers.  I have to go on with the mail to Viltaria.” He was weaving where he sat already.  He’d been pretty dehydrated and exhausted to begin with and had lost a lot of blood.  

“We’ll send someone back for your mail, Naser Gregori,” Dukir said.  “The vermin probably won’t eat that unless someone wrote on vellum, and not that if they have fresh meat first.  We’ll testify about this with you.  Somebody has been neglecting this field for a very long time to have this big an infestation that they’re drawing bush dragons.”

The bushies had drawn back to the closest outcropping of tsingy and settled nearly invisibly into the vertical cracks except for their wildly lashing tails, metal edged scales glittering.  “If they’re flashing like that, they’re breeding.  They’ve been here a while,” Dukir said thoughtfully.  “The biomat is falling apart all along the edges of the fallow, instead of spreading.  It could be someone couldn’t be bothered to haul his compost all the way out here.”

Tahm spread his hands.  He was pale as a sheet and shocky.  “That’s criminal!  That’s… that’s wrong.” 

How flippin’ Milar.  They don’t have rapacious Hive Lords living on the ownership of human safe fields? How community minded of them. Except they don’t always do what they should.

“They… whoever it is… owes the district all my pack birds and my Ahoo!  Is she all right?  I love that bird!”

“s’okay, kid." He stepped between Tahm and his possibly dying bird. "We’ll get you safe back to Stambul and send someone out to get the mail… and investigate.”

Shaidan gave him a look.  If they stayed any length of time to assist with the investigation they’d have to interrupt their search for His Radiance’s... um... boy.  He nodded to show he understood. They were charged to find Kyrus as fast as possible.

“We’ll see, Amir.  Come along, Naser Gregori.  Do you know your family name is the same as a Lainz… Amir… how would I say ‘mythical’ in Milar?  Ah -- a Lainz mythical figure?  We may have to make a sworn deposition and continue on our way.  We are in somewhat of a hurry.” He and Dukir got Tahm to his feet with his arms around their shoulders.  It almost didn’t matter what  was said, it was more to keep him on his feet once they got him there.  “We’ll put you on one of our pack birds…”

And I’m going to start pissing in bottles if there are bushies around.  With our Endarkened luck, we’d find the largest pitter to ever invade human ground.  Nightmare size of course. Diryish, the last time you sent me out of the Empire I ran into those endarkened swarms of glass bugs and whole colonies of oyucks. You owe me, old man, you owe me lots.