They’d been dangerous alone, even more so together. Unlike the solitary hunters of the yan-kanat, the nixirs preferred to fight in groups. Despite being generally smaller in size, with rare exceptions, they were clever and inventive and could prove quite deadly in numbers. The role of guardian was not an easy one, and other Jotahas had been lost to nixir groups in the past.
With the help of the zayul, the nixirs were usually separated, lured off in different directions by the urvak zayul’s projected phantasms and pheromones until they grew lost in the urvaka. Then Jotaha hunted them down and dispatched them before their cunning minds figured out a way out of the maze.
The last team had been more focused, and possessed tactics and combat movements that were impressive enough that Jotaha had taken note of them for future training of jotahs. Their use of teamwork was also something he wanted to discuss with the elders, because it was time for the Jotahas to consider working together like the nixirs did, even if yan-kanat usually preferred solitary hunting. If the backstabbing nixirs could manage to unite for a singular cause, then the yan-kanat should be able to overcome their territorial instinct to protect their hunting grounds from encroachment by others of their kind.
If the urvak zayul had not driven those last nixirs half mad with their disorienting phantasms and alluring pheromone trails, he might have struggled to take them down alone. Given the increased number of incursions into the urvaka by nixir warriors lately, it was time the yan-kanat started learning from their enemy—before the nixirs managed to overrun them and defeat the urvaka and its guardians in numbers large enough to pose a real threat to the yan-kanat people.
If he had not been close to the boundary when his own drahi had crossed it, she also might have been led astray by the urvak zayul phantoms. The realization of how vulnerable she was in this place only made him more determined to get her back to the skilev, where she would be safe.
He hadn’t wanted to leave Sarah alone, but it would take time for another Jotaha to make their way to this side of the urvaka, since this was his territory. No matter what, the nixirs must be stopped. It was possible the urvak zayul could lead them to dead falls, or into traps Jotaha had set up, but the most recent batch of nixirs had been far too cunning to blunder into those easy kills.
Strays from elite warrior teams like that had managed to escape the urvaka in the past, though never under his watch. They had either found their way back through the boundary to their own tunnels, or made it to the barrens above—the last territory that protected the skilev from discovery by the ruthless invaders.
Sentils hunted the rare nixirs that made it aboveground, but in daylight, the alien creatures held more of an advantage with their strange weapons. The sentils of the barrens were more accustomed to hunting animals, not sentient killers with ranged weapons that killed from a distance so vast that an average yan-kanat hunter could not even see them when their projectile struck. Too many sentils had to fall before a single nixir escapee was dispatched in open lands.
He had been close to defying his duty, determined to get Sarah out of the urvaka to safety, when it occurred to him that the nixirs might be here for her. Why else would they arrive so close on her heels? It only made sense that they were tracking her down. His initial belief had probably been accurate. She was a shataz, cherished by the nixir males, and they would not allow the yan-kanat to keep their skillful breeder without a fight.
That realization filled him with an even stronger urge to kill these invaders. They had come here to steal back what was rightfully his. Seta Zul had decreed it. Sarah belonged to him, and he would destroy anyone who tried to take her from him.
He relayed his concern to the hive through the chanu zayul, demanding they repay his vigilance by keeping his drahi contained within his cave. Given her fear of the urvak zayul, she would probably avoid either exit if she spotted them blocking her way, but he wanted that to be a last resort. He didn’t want to terrify her, unless he had no choice, but he also couldn’t have her wandering around the urvaka. Not with all the dangers she could stumble into.
She had appeared to understand his warning, and he tried to take solace in that belief. There was sincerity in her body language, but he knew the nixirs were masters of deception. Their body language couldn’t always be trusted. Not even with his drahi.
It was because of this lingering distrust of her motives that he left the cave with more fear than he’d ever felt when hunting nixirs. Not fear for himself, but for his drahi. He wasn’t worried the nixirs would find her and hurt her. Even for such a brutal, vicious species, historical documents claimed that it was rare for the nixirs to kill their own females. Rare, but not unheard of. Still, the shataz were prized, and the nixirs would not seek her out only to harm her. They would try to reclaim her, but he would find them before they escaped with her.
No, he was afraid she would find her way out of the safe area surrounding the cave, perhaps overcoming her fear of the urvak zayul, only to disappear into some dead fall, or fall upon a pike trap, or topple into a lava well. His mind could not stop cataloguing all the potential dangers the urvaka held for the unwary.
For now, he had to focus. As he made his way through the tunnels towards the boundary, his concern only grew. The nixirs were not responding to the urvak zayul’s attempts to lead them astray, heading in a fairly direct line along the path Jotaha had carried his drahi earlier.
Heading towards his cave.
He heard them before he entered a grand cavern not far enough from the cave where he’d left Sarah. They made sounds he had never heard the nixirs make, and those sounds came from all around him. They echoed even far above him, in the shadows of the ceiling between the stalactites.
They were short, shrieking sounds, not loud, but with a high enough volume to echo in the empty space. The sounds did not appear to be the nixirs’ usual language—though he was told they had many, and those languages changed over the generations of nixirs.
He kept his glow suppressed as he crept into the cavern, his tongue flicking out to taste the air. The scent of the nixirs lay thick on the damp, heavy air, but it was slightly different from what he’d tasted before. They smelled wrong. It wasn’t just that they appeared to have traded their odd clothing and weapons for fur.
He closed his inner lids and allowed his thermal vision to guide him. He spotted three heat signatures, and his concern grew as he noticed that two crouched along the walls and one had climbed to the ceiling, where it clung upside down with apparent ease.
If the urvak zayul weren’t so convinced that these were nixir invaders, he would have suspected that both he and they had made a mistake in identifying them as anything more than some new animal that had left the nixir world and found its way into the urvaka. The way these new nixirs moved seemed very animalistic. They crawled along the walls and ceiling like beasts instead of walking upright like both yan-kanat and nixir.
Their soft shrieks continued as they made their way from one end of the cavern to the other, approaching Jotaha, who was concealed in darkness as he slowly withdrew his blowgun and loaded a poisoned dart.
He raised the blowgun, aiming at the first heat signature that clung to the wall closest to him. Its shrieking grew louder. Then its head suddenly turned so that it appeared to be staring right in his direction, even as he blew a gust of air to release the dart.
There was no way a nixir could spot him in pitch darkness. Even with their strange eye coverings, they could not detect him by heat, as his body temperature took on the temperature of the surrounding cavern.