Free The Inferior by Peadar Ó Guilín

The chief had earned some minor injuries of his own. Wallbreaker found him limping up and down angrily in front of the storehouse.
    ‘At last!’ said Speareye. He didn’t enquire about the hunt. ‘I need you to see this…this creature. See what you can tell me about it.’
    Wallbreaker could think only of his brother, but he stepped into the darkness amidst sides of hanging meat. He could hear the creature breathing as his eyes adjusted. His nightmares were always like this: he imagined the Armourbacks driving him into a dark room, where he’d hear only the scuttling of their young across the floor. He shuddered and struggled not to shame himself.
    But already he could distinguish its outline.
Her
outline. A woman such as no woman he’d ever seen; her skin flawless. She stared up at him and he recognized the terror in her eyes. His first thought was:
We have this fear in common
. And it pleased him. His second thought was to wonder why the chief hadn’t claimed her as another of his wives. How could any man resist such perfection? His gaze lingered on her breasts and he saw her dark eyes narrow in response. Then she shouted something at him, something angry and hateful and utterly without meaning.
    At last he understood. ‘The chief doesn’t want you because you’re simple,’ he said. ‘You’ll be volunteered at the next trading…’
    His eyes lingered on the curve of her hips. ‘Such a pity,’ he whispered.
    He reached out a hand to her skin, which got her shouting again. She actually tried to bite him.
    ‘And yet,’ said Wallbreaker, ‘you came from the sky. I saw it! You came from a Globe. You can’t be an idiot, can you?’
    Her struggles had brought a sheen to her skin such as he had when he woke from his awful dreams. Wallbreaker felt exhilarated, and for the moment had even forgotten about his brother. He went back outside to the chief.
    ‘Definitely human,’ he said.
    ‘But simple,’ said the chief. ‘We will have to trade her.’
    ‘Yes,’ said Wallbreaker. ‘Or maybe…maybe I could take her to wife. Since she is without family, I’d have to give the bride price to you, as chief.’
    Speareye scoffed. ‘No hunter can afford to keep a simpleton! She’ll give you children who’re twice as bad! Besides, where would you get another bride price so quickly?’ But Wallbreaker could see the calculation in his eyes.
    The younger man smiled. ‘You didn’t ask about my hunt, did you, Chief?’
             
    Fever ravaged through Stopmouth’s body and had done so for as long as he could remember. Sometimes people came to see him. Rockface brought a gift of flesh. He talked to Stopmouth for half a day, but Stopmouth understood little. On another occasion he heard his mother speaking to Speareye in the next room.
    ‘Come on, Flamehair. You know that leg will never heal right.’
    ‘You don’t know that, Speareye. My boy deserves his chance.’
    The room swam in front of Stopmouth’s eyes. The trophies of his boyhood stared down at him from the walls, the skull of his first kill–an injured Flim Wallbreaker had permitted him to finish off–beside the bones of his father’s final victim. For a moment it seemed as though Speareye’s voice came from one set of remains and his mother’s from the other.
    ‘All I’m saying,’ said the chief, ‘is that you should prepare yourself. If he doesn’t get better, the flesh he consumes now is wasted. Others need it.’
    ‘Wallbreaker brings in enough flesh for all of us.’
    ‘I’ll grant you that,’ said Speareye. ‘His Bloodskin trick has worked with other species too…But it’ll never work twice with the same beasts. Then he’ll have to hunt just like everyone else.’
    Stopmouth missed the rest of the conversation, but his mother cried when it ended.
    Every day a strange woman came to see him.
    ‘Mossheart?’ he asked.
    He never saw her arrive or leave, and when she spoke, his fevered mind couldn’t hold onto her words. The