The Codex of Desire: A Tragic Tale of Prehistoric Love

By Lauren Alder

Love and violence, war and lust, lies and betrayal — even intelligent feathered dinosaurs fell prey to such savage impulses, more than 67 million years ago.

When Raoul Deguchi, a human palaeontologist, touches the alien-forged metal band wrapped around the forearm of a small theropod dinosaur fossil, he is mentally transported back in time to experience the tragic intersection of five dinosaur lives. Girn'ash, a shrewd and secretive female slave, falls in love with Tir'at~Esk, a dashing military prisoner — and she will do anything in her meagre power to win his freedom. But Girn'ash's queen is determined to coerce the handsome warrior into her harem, and when so many ferocious desires collide it might doom an entire civilization to nuclear extinction.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lauren Alder
• Release date: Aug 23, 2018
• ISBN: 9781999409418

Lauren Alder

Lauren Alder (the pen name of Laurie E. Smith) has forged at 25-year career in the professional comics industry, including projects for the Big Three and an Eisner Award nomination (which she shared with her husband, comic book veteran George Freeman). She is a lifelong science nerd who harbours a powerful fascination for dinosaurs, archaeology, and the sociology of food. She loves stories that provide the reader with plenty to think about after the last page has been turned, and considers the following comment from a beta reader to be the highest possible compliment: "[The Codex of Desire] is not a restful book. It will challenge your paradigms and leave you exhausted at the end. AND I LOVED IT. I look forward to reading this book again and encourage anyone who likes a different point of view to read it." "The Codex of Desire" is the tale of a human paleontologist who unearths a small feathered theropod dinosaur fossil with a decorative metal band wrapped around one of its forearms. When he touches the bracelet (which is an alien-engineered memory storage device), he is mentally transported back in time, 67 million years, to experience the tragic entwining of five dinosaurian lives. Love, violence, lust, war, secrets, and betrayal unfold before his eyes, and when so many savage desires collide it might lead to the nuclear extinction of an entire civilization.

Book preview

Chapter 1: The Palaeontologist

SHALLOW TIME

University of Alberta, Canada, Saturday June 19th 2027 C.E.

These were the days when summer seemed destined to last forever. The afternoon just past — hot and humid, brazen and bright — had been darkened toward evening by gunmetal grey clouds that sent weak gusts of rain clattering against the Department of Palaeontology's windows and hissing through the tall dry grass in the fields beyond.

Now the night sky was clear, with a full moon shining at the zenith like a round eye fully opened and relentlessly watchful. Its otherworldly glow bathed the rear face of an out-building, where a dense curtain of hardy vines crawled up the old wall between tall dark panes of glass, slowly but surely breaking apart the weathered blood-red bricks with sly insinuating fingers.

The vines were in bloom, tiny pallid blossoms tightly closed against the moon's chilly gaze. Close by, in front of the propped-open back door and under the strong but localized glare of a small sodium arc lamp, stood a tallish skinny man in a time-worn brown leather jacket, a rumpled grey t-shirt, and dusty black jeans. His feet were clad in lightweight hiking boots scuffed from many digs in the Badlands, and an e-cig dangled in his right hand as he gazed pensively out across the parking lot (empty except for his own elderly compact car) toward the gloomy prairie scrub-field burnished silver with moonlight.

Professor Raoul Deguchi took a long pull on the cig and fidgeted, rattling the loose change in the left pocket of his jeans with restless fingers, then dragged a sharp breath through his nose with considerable force — or tried to, anyway. The skies might be clear, but his aching sinuses certainly weren't... and his state of mind fared no better. Still, he had to admit it: as he waited for either vindication or humiliation to arrive on swift wheels, this was one of those rare nights when everything around him felt vibrantly, subtly, almost mystically alive.

Sarah is going to kill me. The thought of his wife made his hungry stomach curdle and twist in his lean belly. Missing our tenth anniversary party, and things already so horrible between us... but this is real, this is more important than anything. The twist became a sharp pang, so he pushed the mental image of his wife's sour face away and concentrated on what really mattered: the object in Lab 2, assuming it wasn't a mere fevered hallucination.

What lay in Lab 2 was so utterly unbelievable, so explosively revolutionary, that when he'd glimpsed the first sign of its wonders twenty-seven days earlier he'd banished all fossil preparators from the room and undertaken the task of macro-preparation himself. Working doggedly over the specimen day and night, barely sparing time to snatch a quick snack from the faculty vending machines or steal an hour of sleep in his office chair, he'd cleared the fine-grained sandstone matrix to a depth of about half what he deemed necessary to fully expose the fossils locked within — and now, finally, he was ready to get a second opinion on what had been —

The urge to sneeze came in a white-hot pulse: he barely had time to snatch a Kleenex out of the pocket of his jacket and capture the spray of thick mucous. He studied it critically in the sodium glare, analyzing the colour: still pale yellow, with none of the grey-green indicating a more serious infection. Good — he had no time for a doctor right now, not with so much work to be done. Hell, he still had to figure out how to reveal what he'd uncovered without exposing himself to serious repercussions: this kind of discovery either made or broke careers, and he was in no financial position to go hunting for a new post with the tin cans of 'fraud' or 'incompetence' tied to his tail.

As he prepared to fold the Kleenex and shove it into the stained plastic garbage bin beside the door, something caught his eye in the smears of mucous — many tiny isolated glints, brighter than liquid. He scowled and peered more closely —

— but a car pulling in at the far end of the parking lot diverted his attention: a stylish newer model Tesla, cobalt blue and spotlessly clean. Tension bunched the muscles across his shoulders: he only wanted to see one person right now, the person he'd invited here tonight, and he was in no mood to expend valuable mental energy convincing anybody else to go away.

The car parked beside his own pumpkin orange vehicle, and when the driver shut off the engine and stepped out he let go the breath he had been holding. It was exactly who he'd been expecting: Professor Susanna Ahimsa from the Department of Archaeology, whose area of study was ancient Sumerian metallurgy.

Deguchi disposed of the Kleenex without a second thought. He turned off his e-cig and tucked it into his inside jacket pocket, turning towards his visitor as she strode to meet him in an aura of dress-pants-and-tailored-jacket authority — then winced when stabbing pain sank into his forehead, in a vertical line directly between his eyes. It briefly settled there, throbbing, and though he'd been having similar episodes on-and-off for most of the day it still annoyed him in a resigned sort of way.

Professor Ahimsa, he greeted her with a nasal inflection, stepping forward to shake her hand.

She reciprocated with a firm grip, her dark gaze intently analyzing his own muddy green eyes. Small and plump, about eighteen centimetres shorter than he, with skin a couple of shades darker than the complexion Deguchi had inherited from his Brazilian/Japanese parentage, she wore her long blue-black hair pinned in a meticulous bun. Deguchi, with his mess of ragged dark-brown spikes and three-days stubble, immediately felt as grubby as if he had just come off a full day's work in the Badlands.

Professor Deguchi, she said crisply, scanning him up and down in a way that made him feel even less reputable. So — what did you want me to take a look at?

And he hesitated, because — how was he supposed to explain it, without coming off as completely out of his mind? It think it's best if you see it for yourself. Come on, I'll take you through to Lab 2.

She nodded, and followed him through the propped-open door. He let it click closed behind them and led her through a dimly lit storage area, out into the building's main corridor, then down the hall to the room which took up the entire south-east corner: Lab 2, about ten metres by twelve, currently empty and dark except for the central prep table. Overhead spot lighting brilliantly illuminated the table, a clear blaze of unforgiving radiance, and beneath the glare lay an object as inexplicable as it was revolutionary: a block of pale sandstone measuring three hundred and twenty centimetres by two hundred and forty-two centimetres. Partially cleared fossil bones protruded a scant couple of centimetres above its finely textured surface, surrounded by the faint impressions of ancient plumage long since disintegrated.

As they stepped up to the table side by side, on the edge directly across from the large blue holographic screen which combined a video feed of the prep table with current measurements of all excavated elements, the pain in Deguchi's forehead spiked to a dazzling pitch: for a fraction of a second, he actually saw stars. But it passed, sinking back to its baseline, and if he had grimaced Professor Ahimsa didn't see fit to comment. He removed two dust masks from the nearby caddy and passed one to her, and they both donned them: if he sneezed again, at least it wasn't going to wind up all over the specimen. She plucked a pair of latex gloves from the box he offered her prior to taking and pulling on a pair of his own.

Ahimsa glanced briefly at the numbers on the holoscreen before intently scanning the flat block of partially prepared stone before her, her gaze lingering briefly on the square of opaque blue plastic which covered a twenty centimetre by twenty centimetre portion of the lower left quadrant. What am I looking at here?

Deguchi had rehearsed this speech in his mind many times, and launched smoothly into his explanation: This fossil was recovered from the Alberta Badlands, near the town of Carson Ridge, in the first week of our 2020 spring dig. What we've got are two theropod dinosaur fossils embedded in a fine-grained sandstone matrix. You can clearly see partial feather impressions on the forearms and the hind legs above the ankle joint, as well as at the terminals of the tails. He pointed out each feature as he described it. I've tentatively identified them as a member of the Dromaeosauridae family, similar to Velociraptor in size and morphology — note the single prominent killing claw on each hind foot — but with teeth which might indicate an omnivorous diet. They're also over ninety percent complete and fully articulated, which is something we almost never see.

Which was a purely clinical description of the most dramatic fossil Deguchi had seen in his entire professional career. Embedded in this stone block lay the fossils of two dinosaurs — but dinosaurs not locked in combat, nor tumbled together at random. No, these dinosaurs were entwined — there was no other word to describe their position, the smaller specimen tucked back-to-front with the larger, the top of the head of the smaller at rest against the lower jaw of its considerably bigger companion. The larger specimen's left arm lay draped across the ribcage of the smaller, and even their tails were stretched out side by side, curved upward in the rictus of death. Around them lay the faint impressions of intermittent feathers: long sprays from the forearms, smaller arrangements on the tips of their tails.

The extended left arm of the smaller dinosaur was concealed by the square of plastic, but for the moment Ahimsa ignored it. The size difference is considerable.

Deguchi nodded. "One is approximately one hundred and seventy centimetres long, the other over two hundred centimetres. Neither of them would have stood much taller than my knee. So, two morphs — possibly male and female. The pelvis of the larger specimen exhibits elements of the tilt that's been associated with females in T-rex."

She clasped both hands behind her back and leaned a little closer, a scowl creasing the skin between her neat black eyebrows as she studied the fossil's finer features. It looks like they were winged. Are the feathers supposed to show those big gaps?

Deguchi shook his head. There's no way to tell for certain, but we don't see any modern birds with feathers missing in those patterns, so it's possible that the wings were somehow damaged. In any case, they wouldn't have been capable of flight.

Ahimsa's keen eyes narrowed, then shifted to look at Deguchi sidelong as she straightened again. This isn't my area of expertise.

His pulse quickened. The moment of truth had arrived. No, he said, but I'm hoping you'll have an opinion on this, and with a little flourish he plucked the square of opaque plastic from the left forearm of the smaller raptor.

A gleam of white reflections leaped to meet the glare of the overhead lights, and to rival them. Smooth clean curves similar to Celtic knotwork, clearly the product of craft, flowed around the small forearm-bones in a finely composed lattice which bore tiny enigmatic symbols similar to cuneiform, engraved in neat strips. The silver armband, still half-embedded in the matrix, mutely challenged both scientists to explain its existence.

And in the wide round eyes of his visitor, Deguchi saw a replay of his own expression when he'd first brushed away crumbs of rock from this object on this very table, on an early summer afternoon, and seen the artificial light spark heretical fire off its unrepentant brightness.

After a long silence, Ahimsa spoke coldly: This is some kind of joke.

He shook his head emphatically. No! No, it's part of the fossil matrix, embedded in the sandstone. It's contemporary with the fossils. No human hand put it there.

That's not possible. Her voice hadn't warmed a single degree. This is from... how many millions of years ago?

Sixty-seven million, more or less.

This time outrage burned in every word: Metalworking wasn't invented until human cultures developed it, no more than seven thousand years ago!

I'm well aware. A hot sweat suddenly prickled onto every square inch of his skin: he could feel it soaking his t-shirt, and silently offered up a prayer that he hadn't developed a fever on top of everything else.

So this, an accusatory glare at the armband, is simply impossible!

One month ago, I would have agreed with you. Now he felt faintly dizzy. His hands were swimming in sweat inside the latex gloves; absently he stripped them off and tossed them into the caddy, to be disposed of later. But it's here, right in front of us. There are even metal spines embedded from the armband into the bones of the forearm, and there are tiny lines of metal on the surface of other parts of the skeleton — see here, at the eye ridges and on the scapula, and to a lesser extent on the dorsal vertebrae? But only on the smaller specimen. The larger one seems unaffected.

She leaned in close again, peering at the armband from a distance of about twenty centimetres. I'm not seeing anything.

A flash of annoyance on top of the flush and the headache made him grit his teeth, and he couldn't quite keep the annoyance out of his voice when he leaned in beside her to point: Right here. You can clearly see a spine through this gap in the lattice, penetrating the ulna and —

He was about to say the radius, but he never got the chance. He was unsteady, he'd taken off his gloves — and his fingertip, in the act of pointing, wavered slightly before coming into direct contact with the metal of the artifact.

Dizziness became a jolt of disconnection from his own body. He felt himself sucked out, floating free as a confusion of images rushed up toward him from the central field of his vision, crowding out the brightly lit fossil and the darkness of the lab all around him. Foliage green and sunlight yellow, the silver of moonlight and the rough planes of stone... he involuntarily lurched forward to meet them as the lab disappeared completely —

Oh God, I'm having a medical emergency! — some kind of seizure or stroke! — no, I can't, not now! —

But he plunged helplessly into the well of swirling visual impressions, through a tunnel that felt a million miles long and immeasurably deep. Panicking, he screamed and flailed, but he had no body to obey the frantic impulses of his simian hindbrain.

Down, at terrific speed...

Down, ever faster, past infinitesimally quick flickers of shadow and light, moon and sun...

Slowing, slowing, the flickers becoming flashes, the flashes becoming the span of a day, an hour, a minute...

... and when he came fully to rest again and felt himself clad once more in solid flesh and pulsing blood, he found himself a passenger in a body and mind which were not simian in the slightest degree.

[[[Sunlight through lush leaves. Hot. Humid. Impressions rushed in: dense bushes close around him, unpaved earth beneath his feet... but his axis was horizontal, not vertical. His field of vision, while still binocular, was not seen through human senses: the colours were too vivid, the smells too intense. Immersed in green light and the keen scents of woodland and water and something warm-blooded enticingly close at hand, he was moving, stalking, the weight and elegance of feathers cladding his whole form including his long stiff tail —]]]

[[[— and on his left forearm, he wore a vambrace made of no metal forged on Earth.]]]

Chapter 2: The Courier/Scribe

DEEP TIME

Northern Hemisphere, two days before the Summer Solstice over 67 million years ago

The small white-spotted rodent had doomed itself as soon as it strayed too far from its haven in the broken cliff face, although it had no conception of the danger keenly observing it from the shadows encircling the isolated mountain glade it had claimed for its own.

Blithely unaware, it skittered between scattered clumps of grass across pale sandy ground covered with shifting patterns of leaf-shadow, cast by moss-clad deciduous trees towering overhead. Wind gusted through the branches, and the restless sigh of their flexing concealed the stealthy footfalls of the watching presence who had stalked slowly but relentlessly nearer to his oblivious prey.

[[[Deguchi tried to feel his own heartbeat, but couldn't: only the bird-rapid pulse of whatever he rode... a dinosaur? It had to be! Excitement overwhelmed his fear. Trapped in such strange flesh, he marvelled at how the hunting saurian body felt around him: the muscle-flex in the hind legs, the proud curve of the neck, the long tendon-reinforced tail acting as a counterbalance...]]]

Two full Greatest-lengths from its burrow, the mouse sat upright on its hindquarters to nibble at a cluster of grass-seeds — when something, perhaps a fugitive shimmer of sunlight across brilliant blue feathers behind the nearest bush, finally caught its attention. It froze, its tiny black eyes bulging — an instant later it scampered back towards the sunny cliff face at full speed, a plump grey blur —

— but not fast enough to outpace its Greatest saurian pursuer. The male raptor exploded from cover, sprinting two-legged into the clearing and lunging to flare his forearm-mounted feathers around the racing mouse, kicking up tiny spurts of dust where their tips brushed the ground. The panicked rodent instantly reversed course, trying to skitter between the raptor's digitigrade hind feet —

— and quicker than thought, he darted his head forward to snap it up with the sharp teeth at the tip of his long lean muzzle. An agonized squeak — one flick of his head, a swift swallow — and the mouse was gone. Had the prey been larger he would have performed a dashing leap-and-pinion-with-his-hind-foot maneuver, but it was scarcely worth wasting so much effort on a meal as small as a mouse.

[[[The iron-salt of blood exploded on his tongue — Deguchi's tongue, incorporeal — sending a pulse of satisfaction through his whole lithe frame, binding human mind and alien flesh ever more tightly in harmony—]]]

[[[— then, a stutter-flash of disconnection: He saw Sarah's face, gazing at him with love on a Christmas day long past with snowflakes caught in her hair, and a physically painful pang of longing ran through him —]]]

[[[— last week, her beauty turned to ugly screaming —It's over, Raoul — I want a divorce —]]]

[[[— he reeled, expecting to feel surprise mirrored back from the creature whose body he shared, but the dinosaur did not react to his distress in any way —]]]]

The edge of his hunger sated, the male paused to fastidiously lick the blood from his foreteeth with an agile tongue, then proceeded to meticulously preen the tips of his wing-feathers where they'd been disarrayed by contact with the ground. It was a fine day on the cusp of Midsummer and even here, high on the mountain slopes in enemy territory, he wasn't inclined to disregard his physical appearance — after all, wasn't he widely acknowledged to be a particularly handsome specimen of the Greatest, with more than a passing resemblance to Pah'tak~Nerr himself, Shogun of the Culture of the Word?

[[[Another stutter-flash: Deguchi faced Mariah Kemp across his desk, watching the student almost jitter out of her chair: "Drugs? I don't — I don't know what you're talking about, Professor..."]]]

[[[— stutter-flash: Deguchi at six years old, hugging and being hugged by his whiskered father, both of them laughing with some long-forgotten delight —]]]

[[[— then back to the dinosaur's self-absorbed thoughts —]]]

Pah'tak~Nerr, however, bore darker blue plumage and a heavier build, his venerable black muzzle starting to grizzle with age. This male Deguchi rode, the catcher of mice in mountain meadows, was smaller and more lithely built, a graceful agile youth whose blue plumage, so fetchingly adorned with black and white accents, was always immaculate. What of it if the rougher soldiers hissed behind his back, calling him 'arrogant' and 'a dandy'? His superiors noted his attention to detail, and thus at the young age of five-fours-and-two he had attained the rank of ~Esk,

[[[a quick snap of the jaws, clack!, before the hissed term of rank]]]

a Courier/Scribe entrusted with one of the rare Codex artifacts of memory-imbued Sky-Metal.

[[[Memory-imbued! An alien artifact! Horror took root and rapidly grew in the fertile ground of Deguchi's growing realization...]]]]

His grooming complete, the male raised his left forearm to admire the play of yellow sunlight on the silver vambrace wrapped around it, a pleasing contrast to his black hide finely striped with scarlet. The long knotwork strip was far more than a lovely piece of jewelry, engraved with characters of the Word by the Sky Emperor's Source-Forge itself: this vambrace, the only cladding the male wore, had been granted by the science of the Codex the power to absorb thought and retain physical memories of the environments surrounding its bearer.

[[[From Deguchi's own memories, a stuttering hiss-whine and a flicker of an ancient computer protocol: Negotiating with Host...]]]]

[[[Oh God, Deguchi shuddered: The armband! It's handshaking with me! Trying to establish a solid mental connection —]]]

As the theropod dinosaur gazed, he also caressed his vambrace with the lightest mental Touch, purring as it hummed in response with a deeply gratifying telepathic resonance: not intelligent as the Greatest were intelligent, but all the more precious for that alien quality of brilliance, lattices of interior scribed characters ever accessible to the mind-gaze of its proud wearer.

The male did not pretend to understand the science behind it — such esoteric knowledge was the province of the ~Parr

[[[scientist]]]

class — but as a Courier/Scribe he recorded events on missions to the Borderlands, the one member of a Warrior squadron tasked with running back to the Settlement in the Heartland if his unit was ambushed by Fighters of the Tribes of the Inspiration. The vambrace served as his mark of rank, and he treasured it for its status-granting properties as much as for its beauty and its utility. After a final caressing glance he lowered his arm and cast his gaze up the face of the small cliff where the mouse had sought to flee, assessing the angle of its ascent with a cock of his skull and a practiced eye.

[[[... I should be... I have to... but it was hard to remember what he should be doing. The tiny part of his mind not yet under the spell screamed that he was being coerced, pulled into line with the vambrace's replay of past events — because what else could this be, with two minds in contact and one of them utterly unaware of the newcomer?]]]

[[[These are just replayed memories! My body is still in the lab! I have to disengage...]]]

His wings weren't large enough to allow true flight, but they proved more than broad enough to provide him with extra lift as he nimbly ascended the rock face, using the single larger curved claw on each hind foot to provide him with additional purchase.

[[[the pull of muscles across his chest and shoulders, such easy power, exhilarating!]]]

The ledge at the top proved too narrow to accommodate the length of his stiff tail. Instead he perched with agile ease and turned sidelong, placing his clawed feet carefully, to gaze down the mountainside through a break in the lush beech trees. Looking north over dense forest toward the valley Heartland, still visible after a day and a half of hard climbing, he saw thin trails of smoke ascending into the clear blue sky from within the massive straight-lined white walls of the Culture's Settlement, all hazy in the distance. The valley spread far below in a patchwork of cultivated land and herd pastures, laid out in regular squares divided from each other by dark grey fences of layered graphene courtesy of the Source-Forge.

[[[information surged over Deguchi's mind in a wave of rich detail, attaching significance to each feature of the complex landscape spread out far below... submerging him ever deeper in memories millions of years old...]]]

The Border River which separated Culture-controlled lands from the Borderlands, and which the male's current unit had crossed shortly after dawn, lay hidden from view halfway down-slope behind conifers and great stands of maples and beech; however, the male could see the serpentine length of the Primary River winding through the core of the valley, its muddy surface creased by the wake of several flat steam-powered barges making their way slowly west toward the Settlement, bearing loads of lumber or of iron from the Highlands to the east.

His crest perking erect with satisfaction at the industry of his Culture compared to the shiftless chaos of the Tribes, the male focussed on minuscule clusters of dots in the fields, grazing herds of 'tortahl, the massive Lesser saurians

[[[domesticated hadrosaurs, unfeathered and non-sapient]]]

whose meat supplied the Greatest of the Culture of the Word, but he could not discern at this distance the far tinier forms of the ~Ira'k-el

[[[farmers and herders, the -el designating the plural form of the root word]]]

who he knew must be hard at work: even those whom the Shogun had decreed must spend their efforts upon agriculture had tasks to perform leading up to the Ceremony of the Summer Solstice.

The midday sun burned hot, unfiltered by leaf-shadow and warming him to the core of his hollow bones, but nevertheless a thin thread of sour disapproval entwined itself with the male's general sense of physical well-being. The Ceremony would be held in two days — at which time he expected to still be lingering in the Borderlands, playing kiss-me-in-the-ring with the guerrilla Fighters of the Tribes. And not even with a decent unit, either — down-at-heels and crude, the whole two-fours band of them...

[[[Of course, their hands being four-digit with the little finger extending deep into the wing bed, they must logically count in units of four and eight]]]

But orders were orders...

... orders which had been given to this male's current unit by Pah'tak~Nerr

[[[Pah (tongue click) tak (jaw snap) Nerr (the supreme military commander)]]]

himself!

The male's chest-ruff puffed slightly at the memory of physical proximity to the Shogun, swelling with pride-by-assocation, although the Shogun had of course not deigned to speak to him directly. Pah'tak~Nerr was a full sixteen-fours-plus-one years old, he'd been present at the last visitation of the Sky Emperor and had received his orders directly from the Codex Itself: Increase the Settlement in an orderly manner. Increase the fields and the holdings. Study the Word. Supply the Source-Forge. Protect what you establish. In one span of ur-years, we shall return to evaluate your progress and guide you to the Third Level.

[[[ur-years: eight times ten]]]

The male's chest-ruff swelled to maximum fullness, to match the fullness of pride in his heart. Protect what you establish: such was the task of the Warriors, whose caste he had been chosen to enter when he'd been a mere four years old, a fledgeling still milling around with his youthful companions in the Commons, swifter than any other. He had learned well how to be a Courier/Scribe, and how to fight with even more savagery than the average Greatest raptor; but more importantly he'd learned how to follow orders, which did not come so easily to most.

This male, however, was different: this male, by some trick of temperament, was distinctly cooler in manner and more calculating in mind than most of his fellows. And that could act against him, for in male Warriors of the Culture a certain hot-bloodedness was prized, a seething passion beneath the iron control their caste demanded.

It made him an excellent match for his vambrace — but not so fine a fit with his fellow Warriors. Perhaps that perceived lack explained why after two-fours-and-two years of service, he was still stuck being passed from Borderland unit to Borderland unit, his services never valued enough to secure him a permanent place in a particular squadron. It was sometimes tempting to believe that someone higher in the chain of command was thwarting his natural progression, since most of the captains he served under commended his accuracy and his attention to detail...

His chest-ruff flattened again and he permitted himself a small scoffing cough: such speculations were patently ridiculous. Warriors only suffered penalties if they committed blatant violations of protocol, and this male was as scrupulous in performing his duties as he was in maintaining his appearance. There must be some other reason, one he was not perceiving —

A harsh call from further down the slope, barked in the Inflection Low, interrupted his rueful musings and brought him

[[[and Deguchi]]]

sharply back into the moment:

"Tir! Where'd you scuttle off to, curse your yellow eyes!"

[[[Sinking ever deeper into the theropod dinosaur's mindset, Deguchi heard chirps and warbles and growls and clicks of the tongue punctuated by snaps of the jaws, staccato and musical, eerily birdlike... but instantly a swell of sharp emotion overwhelmed rational thought —]]]

The male's forehead crest of feathers flared with annoyance, prickling all the way down his spine to the end of his long tail, at both the coarse Inflection Low (in conspicuous disregard of Pah'tak~Nerr's orders that the flat Standard Inflection be used by all ranks) and the too-familiar shortening of his name. But the voice calling him belonged to his current ~Mir'r

[[[Captain]]]

and a summons was a summons, so he leaped off the top of the cliff, beating his wings to slow his two-and-a-half lengths descent. Landing lightly, he tucked his wings neatly to his sides and flattened his crest before arranging his long clawed hands primly against his chest, then departing the clearing with a dressy strut in his stride, retracing his steps down natural stairs made by the roots of trees to the mountain stream where the Captain's unit was presently gathered for a drink and a rest.

He heard them well before he emerged from the trees: a Great-hooter horde couldn't have made more chattering racket. And in enemy territory, no less! As soon as the male saw them he felt a surge of deeper distaste, although this time he allowed no trace of it to register on his feathered exterior.

The two-fours of males were a ragged bunch of squatters: mostly of a common brown-red colour, and ill-groomed at that. One-plus-four of them squatted around a flat stone playing mark-rounds with dice made from the knuckle bones of a juvenile 'tortahl, while two others stood under the arched roots of a particularly huge tree, busily (but ineffectively) tidying each other's wings with ragged nibbles. Each of the rank-and-file soldiers bore a leather pannier across his withers to carry supplies of food to sustain them during their Wide Patrol; Tir'at alone was unencumbered so he might always run as swiftly as possible — another mark of his outsider status.

The unit's Captain, a large rufous fellow with a battle-scarred grey muzzle who sported a crest of solid black, turned muddy green eyes on Tir'at the instant he stepped into view.

Where were you? the elder growled, still in the Inflection Low. I thought you said you went to make soil.

The male maintained a courteous stance, deliberately — and insultingly — non-confrontational, as if the Captain's sharp tone was not worth noticing. Instead he flicked his inner eyelids briefly closed and inclined his chin in a slight bow, his voice smooth with the Inflection Common which was one step of formality above the Captain's terse Inflection Low. If his own commanding officer was going to talk like a savage from the Tribes, he would gladly play the same game! Tir'at~Esk, reporting for duty.

The Captain stared at him — a gaze of challenge. Answer the question, fledge!

The other unit members had noticed the confrontation, and everyone's eyes, mostly various shades of dull brown, had turned to watch with avid interest. Tir'at's contempt for them had not gone unnoticed, even by these not-very-bright individuals, and they liked him as little as he liked them. The quality of their focus, hot and aggressive, sent another tingle up Tir'at's spine, this one a thrill of danger-warning: these were, after all, predators only a few generations removed from the wild ancestry of the Tribes, their veneer of civilization palpably thin.

Tir'at remained outwardly calm even as his heart started beating faster. I paused to climb a cliff and look back the way we came.

The Captain's glare never wavered. And that's all?

Tir'at inclined his head again. Cooly. Politely. He responded in the Inflection Common, with a scornful hint of the Inflection Exalted at the end: "I saw nothing worthy of report, Sir."

[[[the Inflection Exalted: a deeper thrum in the throat as the term of respect was spoken, rendering it mockingly over-rich]]]

Two of the watching Warriors hissed: they had not missed the insult implicit in Tir'at's calm demeanour. A Warrior being challenged by his commanding officer would normally display clear signs of submission — a lowered head, a slight squat, all feathers flattened, maybe a sincere touch of the Inflection Exalted for good measure as long as they were away from the strict protocols of the Settlement — but here stood the new ~Esk, the dandy, throwing the Inflection Exalted in the Captains face! It communicated a startling degree of arrogance...

... yet Tir'at could not honourably bring himself to display anything better. This ~Mir'r was little better than the leader of a gang of garden-raiders: he scarcely deserved even the degree of courtesy being offered. Again the thought flitted through Tir'at's mind: How had he ended up here? Who had decided that assigning him to this unit was appropriate? But as he watched the Captain's crest flare to maximum height and saw the older male's chest swell with outrage beneath its small ruff of feathers, he knew this situation was on the cusp of turning ugly, very fast.

Another round of sibilant hissing — more throats this time, fully four, and one of the males at the mark-rounds game piped up eagerly with the Inflection Low, though he remained respectfully crouched: Shall we stripe him for you, ~Mir'r? The little preener could use a good claw-lesson!

For a span of three heartbeats the Captain met Tir'at's gaze. The older raptor's pupils dilated sharply, and the muscles controlling Tir'at's foot-mounted scythe-claws automatically tightened in preparation to meet a leaping attack from his rival.

[[[how readily this body responded to aggression with aggression, the hot flow of blood in the eyebrow-ridges and prickling of tiny feathers between the shoulder blades!]]]

But perhaps the Captain was forged from a better substance than Tir'at had initially judged, for instead of attacking — or calling his unit to converge from all sides — the Captain clacked his jaws with barely restrained aggression and lowered his erect crest before turning his angry gaze on the soldier who had spoken out of turn.

What are you, he growled, cracked? We've got raiders to catch! He glared until the soldier dropped his gaze and ducked his head — two heartbeats — before looking round at the rest of his unit, meeting their eyes one by one and receiving the same signal of submission as he spoke slowly, deliberately, over the burning bones of his anger: So pick up your brains and put away those mark-stones — and if you have to water a stump, do it now! We won't be stopping again 'til nightfall. At last he reached Tir'at, who gazed back with another courteous chin-dip and was pleased to see the Captain's crest-feathers twitch fitfully. Lessons can wait until later, when we've put the raiders' skeletons out to rot!

Aye, ~Mir'r! The Inflection Exalted response came from all muzzles present — including Tir'at's, accompanied by another, more elaborately polite head-bow. The regular unit members scrambled to obey, eager to put some distance between themselves and their commanding officer; meanwhile the Captain stared at the Courier/Scribe's head, lowered in a mockery of submission, before snorting and turning on his heel to stalk across to the stream. He dipped up some of the cold fast-flowing water with his lower jaw and drank it with agitated back-tips of his head, displacing his aggression into a less violent activity — and Tir'at, who recognized the signs of his own victory, silently savoured it as he stepped gracefully to the edge of the grassed area, waiting for the Captain's order to move out with the satisfied patience of one who has made his point.

There would be no reprisals — of that Tir'at was certain. After all, he had said absolutely nothing out of turn, and his demeanour, while not entirely military, had been the soul of courtesy.

Still, he knew this would not be a point in his favour when it came to the question of advancement.

Yet even with that knowledge, he could not bring himself to regret his triumph. When one was forced to deal with inferior persons who were slaves to their passions, one learned to use those passions against them — and to find amusement where one could.

Chapter 3: Tir'at

For a mercy, the unit conducted themselves with more decorum — and largely in silence — as the Captain led them single file through the steep mountain terrain, climbing ever higher, picking his way skilfully along established animal trails and using roots as stairs wherever possible. Old growth trees loomed overhead, draped with strings of moss, and the dense undergrowth rose, at times, twice as tall as the Greatest raptors. In many areas the Captain led them, almost crawling, through the clear spaces beneath the lower canopy of the bushes.

Tir'at, at the tail end of the line, kept easy pace with the soldiers: he was young and fit, and this type of landscape was the original home of his kind, so he found the environment natural rather than arduous. That was something the ~Mor'ah-el

[[managers of the Settlement]]

would prefer their Citizens forget, or at least come to view as unimportant, according to the history of the Culture preserved in the First Teaching Chant taught to fledgelings in the Commons by the ~Nikin-el:

Once we lived in the mountains without thought for the future,

Once we prowled on the slopes and killed vermin,

Once we sang wild songs and danced without thought of tomorrow,

Once we were animals, writing nothing,

Reading nothing — until

The glorious coming of the Codex!

The Codex who gave us the written Word,

The Codex who gave us memory beyond the mind,

The Codex who took us to the Heartland valley,

The Codex who guided the building of the Settlement,

The Codex who granted us herds and farms,

The Codex who gave us the gifts of the Source-Forge,

The Codex who taught us the ways of Civilization!

A lesson for younglings indeed — containing truths, but simplified ones. The deeper fact, which no one openly stated, was that the Warriors looked forward to excursions into the Borderlands and considered the supposedly 'onerous' duty something of a holiday. Tir'at had come to this conclusion long ago, analytical as he was, but he was also wise enough (he flattered himself) not to mention it to another living creature.

He could see and smell that the Warriors ahead of him were pleased and excited to be here in the mountain forest,