Abi taught him to wield a sword, and built cactus dummies for him to practice on. By the age of fourteen, he could block his aunt’s blows, and she had to actually work to make a strike. At fifteen he landed his first blow. Then he realized his aunt had been holding back after all.
He learned marksmanship with a bow. At sixteen he could hit a nesting raptor from seventy paces. As Abi always reminded him, a good archer rarely went hungry.
Even as his skill with weapons improved, Abi said there was more to survival in the waste than fighting, as important as it was. He learned how to make a sword from the limb of a basalt tree—the pale wood so hard it had to be burned from the trunk—and to construct a composite bow from firehound horn, spruce, and raptor sinew. He fashioned arrows with obsidian heads, learning to value each and every one and retrieve them whenever he could.
All of his instruction centered on the daily struggle to stay alive. One year, Abi’s precious nursery was ravaged by plague beetles, and for six months Taimin hunted from dawn to dusk so that they had enough food to eat. He learned that survival in the wasteland meant focusing on the one thing no creature could do without: water. He became adept at finding water beneath ancient riverbeds and in the hearts of lifegiver cactuses. He used the tracks of the wherry and the firehound as a guide, following them to shallow pools in caverns where water seeped up from subterranean sources. Where he found water, he inevitably found food. Sometimes he had to escape becoming food himself.
Always, his inability to run threatened his life.
The homestead was protected by cliffs and close to the firewall, but the creatures of the wasteland still managed to harass Taimin and his aunt. Twice Abi and Taimin fought off curious wyverns, the big flyers a regular presence as a result of the homestead’s proximity to their nests. Raptors, scorpions, and snakes were a constant menace. Once a pack of firehounds called to each other in the night and kept the two humans in the homestead awake for hours.
But there were also much more dangerous threats Taimin might encounter—potential enemies possessing intelligence. Abi made sure he knew about each and every one of them as she smashed her larger weapon against his hardwood sword again and again.
“What’s a trull’s weakness?”
“They’re slow,” Taimin would gasp. “They can be goaded to anger.”
“Where are the soft parts on a bax?”
“Under the chin . . . but not the throat,” he puffed. “Under the armpit . . . slanting down.”
“How do you know when to fight, and when to run?”
“I can’t run,” he would say. “I have to avoid battles I can’t win.”
One day, he asked his aunt again how she knew all these things.
“I can fight.” She shrugged. “It’s what I’m good at.”
Taimin sensed there was a lot she wasn’t saying, but she was reticent at the best of times. He changed the subject. “What was that sword the rover had? The one who killed my father. It wasn’t made of wood.”
Abi looked surprised. They rarely spoke of the event.
“He had white hair—” Taimin began.
“I remember,” Abi interrupted. “You don’t see steel swords very often, and you tend to remember them.”
“Steel?”
“It’s a metal. Red ore is dug up from the ground and when it’s heated to very high temperatures it melts. Coal is added to the melted ore to form steel when it cools. Steel is harder and can be made much sharper than the wood of the basalt tree.”
“We already have coal. Should I look for red ore?”
Abi snorted. “Leave it, Taimin. There’s more to it than my simple description. Steel swords are rare and valuable. Men will kill you for them. That rover probably killed someone to get his hands on that weapon, just like he killed your parents.”
Taimin again experienced the frustration he’d felt that day. He now considered himself a man, and he wished he had been able to tip the balance in his parents’ favor. Sometimes he had vivid, savage dreams, where he took his vengeance upon two tall rovers with hard faces and pale hair. If he ever saw them again, nothing would stop him.
Seeing his expression, Abi spoke. “Taimin, one thing you should know . . . Those rovers are probably long dead. Even if they’re not, you’ll never see them again. Here, close to the firewall, we have a life of safety, but also solitude. We might as well be the only people alive.”
3
Taimin dangled his feet over the edge of the cliff, close to the place where he had watched his parents die. Wyverns wheeled in the sky, high above the plain below. The yellow sun Dex hung low on the horizon, casting slanted morning rays over the towers of rock, clumps of green cactus, and dried riverbeds.
He was nineteen. Eight years had passed since he had looked out over this same view and wondered what lay beyond the cactus fields. He had now followed the steep trail to the foot of the cliffs, and explored some of the caves at the bottom, but he couldn’t travel much farther and still make it back to the homestead before nightfall. He still knew little about the wider world.
He looked down at his right foot, which appeared much the same in the boots as his left. He had outgrown the pair Abi made him after a year but she had made him another. This pair, he had made himself, with the skin of a wyvern he had hunted down on his own. Only just undergone metamorphosis from its wherry state, the wyvern had been uncertain with its new wings and fallen prey to his arrow.
As he took in the view, Taimin dreamed.
He wanted to explore. He wanted to meet other people. Yet with his slow speed, any travel would be risky.
He watched one of the soaring wyverns as it circled and looked for prey. Then he thought about the four-legged creatures the rovers had been riding on that fateful day.
An idea struck him with force.
He climbed to his feet as he recalled everything he knew about wherries. Wyverns laid eggs on the cliffs. The eggs hatched, and while the wherry young were small, the location kept them safe from predators. Then, when the wherries grew too big for the nests, the wyverns transferred them to the ground below so they could hunt. The strongest wherries, the healthiest, grew in size until they underwent metamorphosis. Wings sprouted from their shoulder blades and their strong forelegs shrank and tucked in under their bodies. They became wyverns, mated, and the cycle repeated.
Wherries were as fast on land as wyverns were in the air. Taimin looked down at his foot. He couldn’t run but, with a wherry, he could ride. On the back of a wherry, he wouldn’t be a cripple anymore.
Taimin wiped blood from his forehead and grimaced as he examined the smear of red on his fingertips. He had just lost the wherry as it darted from under his net, and then tripped and fallen hard. He now watched the four-legged animal bound away, scampering over the rocky terrain until it disappeared from view.
Abi thought him a fool but left him to his own ends, muttering to herself as she trimmed the leaves on her plants, caressing them with a delicacy she never displayed in any other task. Now he was starting to believe her; after months of effort clambering around the rocky terrain below the cliffs, he hadn’t even come close to success.
Shaking his head, he decided to give up for the day, and perhaps for good. He gathered his net and put it into his pack. As he scanned the irregular cave mouths that peppered the bottom of the cliffs, his gaze alighted on the cave where he had left four brown lizards he had killed earlier. He would collect them before heading for the trail that would take him up to the summit. Bow in hand, he walked warily, the way Abi had taught him, checking the sky and the rust-colored rock in all directions.