Unhewn Throne 01 - The Emperor's Blades(51)

“He found a goat slaughtered by an unknown creature. Two brothers and I investigated, but we were able to come to no conclusions. Since then, three more of our goats have gone missing. Rampuri and Altaf have found two of these, each far from its normal grazing range, each beheaded. Each with the skull split open and the brain missing. Recently, they found a crag cat in the same condition.”

No one spoke, but the air hissed with a collective intake of breath. This was news to Kaden, and from the looks on the faces of the rest of the monks, it was the first they were hearing about it as well. Kaden glanced over at his friend. Akiil grimaced and shook his head. It was one thing to take down a goat, even brutally, but crag cats were natural predators. Even a brindled bear would have trouble bringing one to ground.

“The first animal was killed eight miles from here, but each successive carcass has been found closer. We had hoped, initially, that whatever found the goats was a migratory predator, killing then moving on. It seems, however, that this thing has come to stay.”

Nin let that thought sink in, then continued. “It’s not hard to see why. The Bone Mountains don’t offer much in the way of game, especially in the winter. Our flock makes comparatively easy prey. Unfortunately, we need those goats to survive. The best solution open to us seems to be to hunt down this predator and kill it.”

Akiil raised an eyebrow at that. Hunting might be something the monks could manage, but killing wasn’t part of the Shin discipline. They knocked down a few dozen goats each year for the refectory pots, of course, but that was hardly preparation for whatever was tearing apart the monastery’s livestock. Kaden wasn’t even sure what Nin expected them to kill the creature with. Each of the monks carried a simple knife hanging from the belt of his robe—a short-bladed, all-purpose tool that one could use to trim back bruiseberries or skewer a chunk of mutton in the evening stew—but it wasn’t likely to be much good against any kind of predator. Kaden tried to imagine attacking a crag cat with the pathetic blade and shuddered.

“The first step,” Nin went on, “is finding the thing. It took us the better part of two weeks to come across a track—evidently the creature prefers to stick to the rocks—but Rampuri found one finally. He has painted several copies.”

“So there weren’t any tracks to memorize,” Kaden said under his breath, thinking back to that first, brutal session with his umial, feeling resentful and vindicated at the same time.

“You’re not a complete failure after all,” Akiil replied with a smirk.

“Shhh,” Pater hissed from atop Kaden’s shoulders, batting him on the head with a small, imperious hand.

Nin was passing a few scrolls to the monks sitting in the front row. “I’d like to know, first, if anyone has seen these tracks before.”

He waited patiently for the scrolls to circulate slowly toward the back of the room. Kaden watched as each monk took the paper, memorized it, then passed it on to his neighbor. The novices required more time, careful to make sure they etched the correct details on their memories, and a few minutes passed before the paintings reached the back. Someone handed a parchment to Akiil, who held it out where those around him could consider it.

Kaden wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting: a variant on a crag cat print maybe, or something with the broad paws and deep claws of a bear. What he found himself staring at, however, was unlike any animal track he’d encountered. It wasn’t made by a paw or pad—that much was clear. He couldn’t even tell how many feet the thing had.

“What in ’Shael’s name is that?” Akiil asked, turning the parchment in an effort to make sense of it.

The painting showed a dozen indentations, the kind of marks a medium-sized stick might make if driven repeatedly into the ground—a sharp stick. None of them measured more than two inches across, but the spacing suggested a creature the size of a large dog. Kaden looked closer. Half those marks appeared to be divided in two by a thin line, as though the foot, or whatever it was, was split.

“Cloven,” Akiil observed. “Maybe some sort of hoof.”

Kaden shook his head. A cleft would be wider, separating the two toes—the whole point of a cloven hoof was to offer the animal stability; it was what allowed the goats to keep their footing on the uneven terrain. Besides, the shape of the prints was wrong. They didn’t look so much like hooves as they did like claws with the pincers squeezed shut. Reluctantly, he called to mind the saama’an of the goat’s mutilated carcass, studying the severed neck, the shattered skull. Claws could inflict those sorts of wounds—big claws, at least. An uneasy chill tickled his spine. What kind of creature the size of a goat had twelve pincered legs?