The Thunder Beast

The afternoon had been bright and cloudless as we trudged on horseback across the featureless moorland, hauling rough-hewn pine logs in our wake. However, by the time we arrived at the raised earthworks, the sun had dipped below the rock-strewn embankment and a diaphanous mist appeared as if offering moral support. After settling our horses, a pitiless breeze caught the prairie’s desiccated buffalo grass and it trembled in the darkness. I rubbed my hands together to revitalise numb fingers and edged closer to our flickering campfire. The feeble orange light illuminated stern faces in the gloom and made our eyes glisten like distant constellations. It was quiet enough to hear the gentle cluck of roosting grouse and the blink of reptilian eyelids. My cousin jabbed the fire with his spear.

   ‘You idiot!’ hissed the Shaman. ‘You'll give away our position.’

   ‘The monster will know we’re here.’

   ‘This is madness,’ whispered my brother. ‘We should be in bed and asleep.’ 

   ‘It's death, not sleep, we're seeking,’ said the Shaman with a withering stare.

   ‘But why?’ whispered another. ‘It never visits the town.’

   ‘Silence, cowards!’ said the Shaman. ‘It eats the lonely, travelling from our village to the next and by sunrise his victims are strewn amongst the hills.’ 

   ‘What a land of nightmares.’ The second man sighed. ‘How many braves have challenged it and failed already?’ 

   ‘Enough of that!' The Shaman put his ear to the ground. ‘We’ve work to do.’

   A black velvet shroud enveloped the shimmering grasslands after midnight while my brothers built a blockade on the monster’s pathway. As the youngest member of the war party, it was my responsibility to keep watch and assist where required. I held two flaming torches aloft until they’d completed their demolition work, separating the glinting parallel tracks from the heavy timber. We had no choice but to wait for the thunder beast’s arrival, even if it took all night.

   The nervous conversation ceased as we congregated around our campfire’s smouldering tinder. My breath hung in the air like a pregnant cloud as I surveyed our group of warriors. All my brothers were of an age to prove themselves and the Shaman had insisted they volunteer to kill the creature. Once they’d agreed to his dirty work, he ceased engaging with any of them and kept an air of mystery, as if he alone received orders from unseen deities in the spirit world. 

   No one ever questioned his wisdom and few dared to analyse the incantations that passed those paper-thin lips. I recall catching his beady eye as we embarked on today’s mission. He lowered his antler-horn head-dress and glared at me as if challenging my unwelcome presence. He hadn’t invited me, but resisted spitting an eternal curse, turning away with disdain. 

   In previous years, the boldest of our young men faced the mysterious monster with little success. It had dispatched the bravest souls with impunity and we dreaded its inevitable return. Our journey here was about revenge for my oldest brother’s murder. His shocking death last year still haunts our family. The community remembers him as the bravest man ever to face the thunder beast. He’d followed the Shaman’s instructions and accompanied him to the parallel pathway, where they waited to confront the monster. My brother hovered on his faithful steed with his sturdy lance at the ready. Meanwhile, the Shaman’s horse pawed the ground, fidgeting while his master paced back and forth, sniffing the night air. For three hours, they waited in silence with only the ratchet-like rattle of clammy horsehide disturbing the bridle and reins. 

   The grassland’s wind-melted landscape had witnessed a million sun-burnt leaves shaken from far-flung forests beyond the horizon. It’d seen a thousand souls die alone and confused in its mists of despair and eddies of pure darkness. This was no-man's-land and beyond the power of mere men to own and exploit. The fog was a faceless emptiness of sudden frost, storm, and deafening thunder, which moved behind the pure white flashes of shattered glass. Impatient gales and flurries of rain soaked the sodden earth until, at last, a hush. Still, the two men marked time, waiting for the thunder beast to appear.

   ‘That’s it,' whispered the Shaman. 'It’s coming…’

   Miles off, but rushing with a rhythmic roar - the monster.

   In silence, my brother raised his unwieldy lance and steadied his horse, tightening his grip on the reins. An unworldly shriek scythed the mists of the great plain as the beast’s roar announced its approach. A dazzling amber glare exploded on the hill line, followed by its dark trailing muscular physique. It poured over the rolling countryside like a predaceous arthropod and plunged down out of sight.

   ‘Get ready!’

   My brother gripped his steed with his knees, assuming an offensive stance.

   ‘Charge!’

   He braced his lance with rigid fists and urged on his horse.

   The thunder beast rounded the bend. Its glaring amber eye blinded my brother as he rushed onward. With a deathly howl, it charged toward him.

   The lance struck under the unlidded eye ball, buckled, and catapulted my brother through the air. The thunder beast struck him and ground over him, rending him asunder. Careering by, the solid mass crushed the luckless horse into the rocky pathway, tearing it limb from limb. All the while it shrieked, shrieked, and shrieked again and spat fire and exhaled billowy clouds. The monster shot through a gully and vanished on its way, leaving bloody devastation on the ground and sooty smoke and steam dissolving in the fractured air. 

* * *

The fog was swirling around us like a cauldron of curds and whey when the Shaman stretched his limbs and proceeded towards the thunder beast’s path. I thought we’d wasted our time when he lowered his right ear to the ground. In silence, we daubed white lime paste on our cheekbones, chins and foreheads. The war paint is our face of death.

   The Shaman raised a single forefinger for total silence, so he could focus on the earthborn vibrations. Out of nowhere, I heard a distant rumble and the loose grit on the embankment tumbled down the gentle slope. 

   My spine stiffened, and I tightened my eyes on hearing the remote shriek. A cloud of meadowlarks exploded into the air with a startled flurry of beating wings. Then we heard the shriek that set my teeth on edge. It sounded like a bison’s agonised howl reverberating in the firmament, beseeching some nameless god for mercy.

   We clutched our spears and bows in readiness as it scorched the night and pierced the swirling autumnal mists. The terrible blazing eye illuminated our destructive handiwork. We’ve done our worst and must face the future consequences. It’s too late for misgivings and regret.

   We rose to greet the careering abomination as its ear-splitting death yell permeated the wilderness. The beast convulsed in violent spasms before losing its way and tumbled sideways down the rock-strewn embankment. It exploded in a mighty burst of volcanic fury and disgorged its pale-faced spawn. Its parasites were wretched-looking beings who scampered back up the slope for cover and ran for their lives into the fogbound pastures.

   Those weaklings with their thunder monsters aren’t worth chasing and, besides, they’re beyond redemption. They’ve wounded the sacred earth; burrowed deep inside it to extract precious minerals, drilled far down to steal its vital oil reserves and poisoned streams and lakes with their effluents. 

   ‘They deserve to die,’ the Shaman said as we launched arrows after them. 

   ‘But will they learn the lesson?’ I asked the Shaman. 

   He dismissed my question by walking away. 

   Our warrior spirit knows they’ll be back. 

   They’ll want revenge for this atrocity. 

   Who knows how we’ll fight them?

   This will be our undoing.

The End