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The Tooth and the Red-Head

by Janie Hofmann © 2007

 

The horses pulled the coal carts into town, past Bazer's station, their hoofs clacking on the stone road, and he fondly remembered the red-head. In the Sagite Hills, feasting on carrion, he heard wheezing, turned to face a scruffy carrot top cursed with a large, rotting incisor. It stomped its hoof, pointing with fingerless hands at the tooth. Bazer turned away in disgust but the red-head jumped over his head, landing in front of him. Bazer tensed. He did not like being outmaneuvered, and prepared to spring and lock his jaws on the neck of the red-head. But the red-head stepped forward and saluted.

 

He knows, and he's mocking me, thought Bazer. He had herded so many like the red-head into the butcher camps and never seen one demonstrate any intellect. But this vulgarian knew Bazer was man, and a soldier. Morbidly curious, Bazer morphed and reached to grasp the tooth, silently awed as the red-head braced, yellow eyes wide, fearless. The tooth was hanging by a last stubborn cord and Bazer ripped it out in a single yank, was blinded by a torrent of blood and pus. The red-head was already off, prancing across the rocks with a chilling laugh.

 

Bazer still had the tooth, wore it on a chain around his neck. His talisman, even through the Thrace Wars when the red-head and his kind became Uray allies, slaughtering half the canines of Noch. Once, at the killing grounds, he saw the red head, hunchbacked and leaning on a crutch, medals dangling from a neck chain as he limped past Bazer, who did the required bow which the red-head acknowledged with a wave of his paddle hand. So many of the red-head's breed shared the same fate: old, crippled and abandoned, even after the treaty was signed. And whenever Bazer heard hoofs on stone, as he so often did at his post, the defiant, haughty red-head hovered like a ghost of no silence.