Esrahaddon by Michael J. Sullivan EPUB & PDF – eBook Details Online
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- Author: Michael J. Sullivan
- Language: English
- Genre: Coming of Age Fantasy eBooks
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Tigerwolves
TWENTY YEARS EARLIER
IMPERIAL PROVINCE OF CALYNIA, SUMMER
“This is all your fault, boy,” his father said, glaring down at him. Eleja
was a big man by any standard, hard and fierce. His bare arms displayed
lean muscle, while cracked hands adorned with callouses held tight to his
hunting spear. To a seven-year-old boy, Eleja was a giant — an angry one.
Ezra said nothing.
Outside their little home, people sobbed as the sun set and the last light
faded. The men had spent all day making more walls, trying to defend their
tiny village. But even as young as Ezra was, he knew the bamboo and jungo
leaf panels provided only the illusion of a barrier. Maybe that would be
enough. After all, animals weren’t smart. Ezra wasn’t bright either, but even
he could tell the village defenses would be useless.
The tigerwolves, the largest and meanest kind of hyena, began their
high-pitched squeals and chuckling laughter as soon as the sun vanished
and shadows flooded the valley. There were more of them that night, many
more than before, and they were closer. The sounds scared Ezra. Animals
shouldn’t cackle.
Ezra, his aunt, and her two boys remained inside their mud-grass-andstick house — ordered there by his father. To Ezra, their home, like the
jungo-leaf barriers, provided only the perception of shelter. The door was
nothing but a woven mat that rolled up with the pull of a string.
Animals might not be smart, he thought, but they aren’t stupid.
Maybe some hyena were. They certainly looked dim-witted with their
high shoulders and low-slung heads. But the striped ones, the tigerwolves,
were cunning and vicious. And like dogs, they could dig. So if the mat door
confused them, they could go under it or through the walls.
The home was cramped and smelled of smoke and tulan, which was
drying among the rafters. Members of Haddon Village harvested and sold
the red leaves in exchange for salt and fish oil at the seaside town of
Shahabad. But this year the crop was thin. The wet season had been dry.
Rivers became rock gullies and lakes little more than circles of cracked
mud. Haddon had seen droughts before, or so Ezra had been told. The last
one had been seven years ago — a few months after Ezra’s birth. Animals
came then, too. That time it had been a pride of lions. Some days nothing
happened. As many as three nights would go by, and people talked about
the terror being over. Then someone else would disappear. The cats were
quiet and quick. Fifteen villagers were killed that year. Ezra’s mother had
been one of them — the last one.
Ezra had been with her. She was gathering abbra berries and rom nuts
along the eaves of the forest. She didn’t dare go in; everyone knew the
Erbon Forest was a place of unspeakable horrors. Some had names, others
did not. Only hunting parties went under the forest canopy, and those who
ventured too deep never returned.
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