Descent

He crept behind the three, the woman and the two others, along another of the paths radiating out from the large clearing. The going was slow as they dragged the large beast's carcass behind them. They pulled it towards a hole in one of the structures along the path, one which had a set of stairs leading underground. They had to reorient themselves, two in the front and the woman behind, to haul the beast down the stairs.

A room lay at the bottom of the stairs, its walls and floor kept clear of the dust and gravel from above. The light filtering down the stairs from above was dimmer here. More beings were there, both male and female, some larger and some smaller. They squatted around the very edges of the light, near a long tunnel that curved off into the darkness, but once they saw what the three hunters had in tow they made sounds of jubilation and fell upon the carcass with short blades, slicing into the hide, skinning the beast with ruthless efficiency.

They let nothing go to waste. Organs were cut out and set aside. Some of the smallest ones brought containers of metal to catch the blood which trickled from the cuts, dipping their fingers into the collected liquid and popping the stained digits into their mouths when the larger ones had their attentions focused elsewhere. Others of the group, bent and bowed from age and hardship, brought out scraps of material and one of them ignited the pile. Before long a fire danced, its smoke collecting in the high-vaulted ceiling and drifting gradually down the tunnel. He breathed its scent in, heady and ripe, and again experienced a flash of remembrance, something at the edge of awareness.

They threw slabs upon meat across thin spears of metal and seared them in the flames while others processed the organs, hacking them up and mixing them in with the buckets of blood. After a while, some of the group took the skewers of meat and ate from them, or brought them to the weakened members of the group, and fresh meat was placed on fresh skewers, and the process was repeated. They worked quickly, furtively.

He felt no need to intervene or partake. He merely watched. He remained attentive and could see, then, better than they when a cluster of shapes came from one of the tunnels. There were nine in all. They looked like the others, but they were dressed fully and wore mantles woven of a red fabric about their heads and shoulders. They carried weapons, ones that looked finer than the ones borne by the three hunters earlier. Though they were outnumbered nearly two-to-one by the stairwell-group, they approached without hesitation and one of them spoke.

The stairwell-group cringed and its members looked at one another. Their expressions were hopeless. The sole exception was that of the young woman. He could see anger in the set of her jaw, in the whiteness of her clenched fists. She did not like these strangers or what they represented. She wanted to act, but refrained from doing so.

The strangers in red spread out and watched the stairwell-group work. The smaller members, when they went to dip their fingers in the garish soup of blood and organ meat, were struck by the strangers in red. They shouted, and the smaller ones fell back with whimpers of pain and of fear. When the chunks of meat were finished roasting over the fire, they were taken aside and placed into trolleys brought from the shadows, crude sleds resting upon wobbly wheels.

When the trolleys were filled to the satisfaction of the strangers in red, some members of the stairwell-group were pulled aside and made to push them down the tunnel under the close eye of the strangers in red. The woman was one of the chosen. She hid her disdain for the strangers in red when one of them approached, lowering her eyes and appearing deferential, nodding her head sullenly in time with his words. The facade did not last longer than it needed. He could see the seething hate she felt the moment the stranger in red turned away from her.

When she and the others were lined up to take the carts, she attempted to delay, to take a place at the very back of the group behind the rearmost of the strangers in red, but the one who had first addressed the stairwell-group noticed, and ordered a pair of the strangers to fall in behind her. The larger group set out, marching down the dark tunnel. The members of the stairwell-group, standing forlorn, watched their brethren fade into the shadows. When they had vanished, they returned to their labors, making use of the offal and hide and bones which the strangers in red had not deigned to claim as theirs.

He found little reason to remain there. He trailed the strangers in red.