LYRICAL UNDERGROUND

      Kensington Publishing Corp.

       www.kensingtonbooks.com

      Lyrical Underground books are published by

      Kensington Publishing Corp. 119 West 40th Street New York, NY 10018

      Copyright © 2017 by Richard Jeffries

      All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.

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      Kensington Publishing Corp.

      119 West 40th Street

      New York, NY 10018

      Attn. Special Sales Department. Phone: 1-800-221-2647.

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      Lyrical Press and the L logo are trademarks of Kensington Publishing Corp.

      First Electronic Edition: December 2017

      eISBN-13: 978-1-5161-0500-7

      eISBN-10: 1-5161-0500-1

      First Print Edition: December 2017

      ISBN-13: 978-1-5161-0502-1

      ISBN-10: 1-5161-0502-8

      Printed in the United States of America

      Dedication

      Heaven wheels above you, displaying to you her eternal glories, and still your eyes are on the ground.

      Dante Alighieri

      You gotta watch your fuckin’ step.

      Josiah Key

      Prologue

      Poised majestically beneath a blazing midday sun, the spotted beast stood half as high as the tall tree, its four spindly legs holding a long and graceful neck directly below the clustered branches. There, its elongated horse-like mouth pulled leaves from those strong limbs, causing the great arms to spring a little with each bite. Sometimes, leaves dropped to the ground. The animal’s flat-topped teeth ground the foliage to pulp while the eyes looked ahead at the next bite. The large, flared nostrils handled security for the prehistoric creature, never resting, sniffing for predators—the great cats and wolves, and also the pack-hunters who came from distant caves in the cliff and walked upright and carried pointed sticks that flew through the air with fatal precision.

      Other beasts stood with the largest one, ten in the herd. The adults chewed their meals from other trees, not bothering to spit out the grubs and insects that also feasted on the leaves. Now and then a guttural sound would warn one animal not to impinge on the branch of another. If that failed, a head would be lowered and the antlers waggled at the intruder. Invariably, the animals would part and resume their feast as if nothing had happened.

      The younger, smaller beasts fed on the fallen leaves or on the less-tasty grasses that were nearly knee-high. Stirred by the cool gentle wind, which also ruffled the short but bristled coat of the mammals, the grasses told the herd which way to move so that the scent of the killers would reach them long before disemboweling claws or crippling teeth did—or those sharpened weapons wielded by the two-legged pack-hunters, their tips dark and painfully hard from the fire-tempering they were given.

      Not far away, a river flowed from hills covered with thick layers of ice. It was a new and vital river cutting a new channel, fed by the melting glaciers, and it brought minerals that enriched the plains and allowed the herd to prosper, along with those who fed off them.

      The waters also nourished the roots of the trees and those creatures that lived underground, nested among them.

      * * * *

      Clad in the spotted skins of the very animals they were hunting, their feet covered in viscera that had been pounded into a cushiony softness, three burly men watched the herd from behind boulders that had been left by the retreating ice. By gestures with hands and head, and by rudimentary language—a humming, hissing mss for the target, and a blowing, popping expression of puh to signal the attack—the trio had been successful in hunting mss as well as other big, open targets. As long as the prey did not get much of a head start, the hurled spears could outrace them, wound them so that the men could run forward and gut them with teeth they had wrested from the huge skull of a frightful thing. There were not so many killers like that still alive here. The ice had chased them to the south before living memory and there was still a strong chill in the air so those hunters had not yet returned. The new flowering of the landscape had brought the creatures that fed on plants, however; they were increasingly plentiful. These bipedal hunters, who could retreat to caves for warmth, came with them. Even now, their women and children waited in the cliff-face. The opening had been covered with mist when they left with the rising sun. Now, behind them, it was just a jagged black smudge in the face of a slope.

      The men were on the ground, crawling closer but circling round and round so the shifting winds would not carry their scents to the herd. It was especially hard on the knees, which were bleeding; another smell to deal with, as if their matted hair and lice-infested armpits and groins and sweat-coated backs were not enough. Insects buzzed around them, some stirred by their passage, others drawn by their rank odor and blood. The men blew at the pesky pssts, named after the sounds they made, and shook their heads to unseat those that landed, but remained focused on their targets.

      Mss…puh, whispered one of the men through the tangled whiskers of his beard. He pointed his spear. This creature, the biggest.

      The others grunted in a mix of sounds that blended assent with excitement. One covered his mouth as the mss looked in their direction, sniffing. The three men stopped and remained perfectly still. They heard thumping in their chests and the sound the grasses made when the wind moved over them and the growling of the waters as they raced past them. But they themselves uttered no sound.

      And then the shriek of a mss at the far end of the herd brought them all to sudden attention. Alert but as yet unafraid, they looked that way, squinting and shielding their eyes from the high sun. So did the other members of the herd,