Dying of the Light

Chapter 12

Dirk was not startled. Beneath his clothing the whisperjewel was still cold against his skin, reminding him of past promises and past betrayals. He had almost ceased to care. He folded his arms and waited.

Janacek looked disappointed. "You do not seem concerned," he said.

"It doesn't matter, Garse," Dirk answered. "When I left Kryne Lamiya, I expected to die." He sighed. "How is all this going to do Jaan any good?"

Janacek did not answer at once; his blue eyes appraised Dirk carefully. "You are changing, t'Larien," he said at last, the smile gone from his face. "Do you truly care more about Jaan Vikary's fate than about your own?"

"How would I know?" Dirk said. "Get on with your plan!"

Janacek frowned. "I considered a landing in the Braith camp and a direct confrontation. I rejected the idea. My death wish has not waxed so greatly as yours. While I might call one or several of the hunters to duel, it would be too obviously in aid of a criminal outbonder. They would never face me. My own status is tenuous at the moment; because of my words and actions in Challenge, the Braiths still think me human, although in disgrace. Should I openly seek to help Jaan, however, I would taint myself in their eyes. The courtesies of code would no longer rule. I too would become a criminal, a probable mockman.

"A second alternative was to attack them suddenly, without warning, and kill as many as we could. I am not yet so depraved as to consider that idea. Even Jaan's deed against Myrik would be clean compared to such a crime.

"It would be best, of course, if we could fly in and locate Jaan and get him away, safely and secretly. Yet I see little chance of this. The Braiths have hounds. We have none. They are experienced hunters and trackers, particularly Pyr Braith Oryan and Lorimaar high-Braith himself. I am less skilled, and you are useless. The chances are excellent that they would find Jaan before we did."

"Yes," said Dirk. "So?"

"I am being a false Kavalar in aiding Jaan at all," Janacek said in a faintly troubled voice. "Thus I will be just a bit more false. In that lies our best chance. We will fly in openly, and I will hand you over, as I have said. That act should gain at least a grudging trust from them. Then I will join the hunt, and do all that I can short of murder. Perhaps I can provoke a quarrel and call some of them to duel in a manner that will not make it seem as though I am protecting Jaan Vikary."

"You could lose," Dirk pointed out.

Janacek nodded. "Truth enough. I could lose. Yet I do not think so. In singled duel, only Bretan Braith Lantry is a really dangerous antagonist, and he and his teyn are not among the hunters, if the aircars you saw are all. Lorimaar has his skills, but Jaan wounded him in Challenge. Pyr is fast and talented with his little stick, but not with a blade or a sidearm. The others are old men and weaklings. I would not lose."

"And if you can't trick them into dueling?"

"Then I can be near when they run down Jaan."

"And then?"

"I do not know. They will not take him, though. I promise you that, t'Larien. They will not take him."

"And meanwhile, what about me?"

Janacek looked over once again, and once more the blue eyes regarded him thoughtfully. "You will be in great danger," the Kavalar said, "but I do not think they will kill you immediately, and certainly not as I will hand you to them, bound and helpless. They will wish to hunt you. Pyr will probably claim you. I hope that they will cut you free and strip you and set you to running in the forest. If some of them elect to hunt you, less will be hunting Jaan. There is another possibility as well. In Challenge, Pyr and Bretan were near to quarreling over you. Should Bretan ever join the hunters, it is likely they would resume their conflict. We can only benefit by that."

Dirk smiled. "Your enemy has an enemy," he said sardonically.

Janacek grimaced. "I am no Arkin Ruark," he said. "I will help you if I can. Before we enter the Braith camp, we will drop-dark and secret, if we can-to this downed aircar you saw, this dead fire. We will leave your laser in the wreck. Then, after they have cut you free and sent you naked into the forest, you can make for the weapon, and hopefully surprise those who come after you." He shrugged. "Your life may depend on how fast and straight you can run, and how accurately you can fire your rifle."

"And whether I can kill," Dirk added.

"And whether you can kill," Janacek acknowledged. "I can give you no better chances, t'Larien."

"I accept the ones you offer," Dirk said. Then they flew in silence for a long time. But when the black knives of the mountainwall had finally fallen behind them, and Janacek had doused all the aircar's lights and begun his slow, careful descent, Dirk turned to speak to him once more. "What would you have done," he asked, "if I had refused to play along with your deceit?"

Garse Janacek swiveled in his seat and laid his right hand on Dirk's arm. The untouched glowstones burned very faintly in the iron of his bracelet. "The bond of fire-and-iron is stronger than any bond you know," the Kavalar said in a grave voice, "and far stronger than any bonds of fleeting gratitude. Had you refused me, t'Larien, I would have cut your tongue from your mouth so you could not tell the Braiths of my plans, and I would have proceeded. Willing or unwilling, you would have played your role. Understand, t'Larien, I do not hate you, though you have earned my hate several times over. At times I have even found myself liking you, as much as an Ironjade may like an outbonder. I would not have hurt you out of malice. Yet I would have hurt you. For I have considered carefully, and my plan is Jaan Vikary's best hope."

As he spoke, not the faintest trace of a smile could be seen on Janacek's face. For once he was not joking.

Dirk did not have long to reflect on Janacek's words. They dropped down through the night like some impossibly light boulder and flitted wraithlike above the tops of the chokers. The wreck still smoldered a dim orange (the light seeping from the core of a blackened, fallen tree), and a haze of smoke obscured its contours. Janacek hovered over the crash, opened one of the great armored doors, and tossed the laser rifle to the forest floor a few meters below. At Dirk's insistence, he also threw out the Braith jacket Dirk had been wearing, whose fur and heavy leather would be a godsend to a man running naked through the forest.

Afterwards they soared straight up again, high into the sky, and Garse bound Dirk hand and foot, the thin cords tight and painful, threatening to cut off circulation, and so very authentic. Then, after flicking on his headlamps and running lights, Janacek took them swooping toward the circle of lights.

The hounds were staked out and sleeping by the water's edge, but they woke when the strange aircar descended, and Janacek landed in the midst of their wild howling. Only one of the Braiths was about, the skin-and-bones hunter whose unkempt black hair stood out as stiffly as if it had been fried to a charcoal crisp. Pyr's teyn, Dirk knew, though he did not know his name. The man was sitting by a low campfire near the Braith hounds, a laser rifle by his side, when they first saw him, but he scrambled to his feet swiftly enough as they came down.

Janacek unsealed the massive door again, swinging it up and open and letting the cold night flow into the warmth of the cabin. He pulled Dirk to his feet and shoved him roughly outside, forcing him to kneel in the cool sand.

"Ironjade," the man on guard said harshly. By then his kethi had started to gather, pulling themselves from their sleeping bags and piling out of the aircars.

"I have a gift for you," Janacek said, his hands on his hips. "An offering from Ironjade to Braith."

The hunters were six in number, Dirk saw as he looked up from where he knelt; all of them had been in Challenge. Bald, bulky Pyr had been sleeping outside near his teyn; he was the first one on hand. Soon afterwards Roseph high-Braith and his quiet muscular companion joined them. They too had been asleep on the ground near their aircar. Lastly Lorimaar high-Braith Arkellor, the left side of his chest wrapped in dark bandages, came slowly from the domed red air-car, leaning on the arm of the fat man who had been with him before. All six of them appeared as they had slept-fully dressed, and armed.,

"The gift," Pyr said, "is appreciated, Ironjade." He wore a sidearm on a black metallic belt, but his baton was missing, and he looked almost incomplete without it.

"Your presence is not appreciated," Lorimaar said, as he struggled to join the circle. He was leaning much of his weight on his teyn, so that he seemed hunched and broken, no longer quite the giant he had been. And Dirk, looking at him, thought he could see new creases in the dark, deeply lined skin-fresh-carved runnels of pain.

"It is obvious now that the duels for which I was named arbiter will never come to pass," Roseph said evenly, with none of the heavy hostility that thickened Lorimaar's voice, "so I have no particular authority, and I cannot pretend to speak for High Kavalaan, or Braith. Yet I am certain that I speak for all of us. We will not tolerate your interference, Ironjade. Blood-gift or no."

"Truth," Lorimaar said.

"I do not seek to interfere," Janacek told them. "I seek to join you."

"We hunt your teyn," Pyr's companion said. "He knows that," Pyr snapped. "I have no teyn," Janacek said. "An animal roams the forest, wearing my iron-and-fire. I would help you kill it, and reclaim the thing that is mine." He sounded very hard, very convincing.

One of the hounds was stalking back and forth impatiently on its chain. It growled and stopped long enough to wrinkle its rat's face at Janacek and bare a row of yellowed canines. "He is a liar," Lorimaar high-Braith said. "Even our dogs smell out his lies. They do not like him."

"A mockman," added his teyn. Garse Janacek turned his head very slightly. The shifting firelight woke red highlights in his beard as he smiled his thin and threatening smile. "Saanel Braith," he said, "your teyn is wounded and thus insults me with impunity, knowing I cannot call on him to make his choices. You enjoy no such safety."

"For the moment he does," Roseph said harshly. "That is a trick we do not allow you, Ironjade. You will not duel us, one by one, and save your outbond teyn."

"I have sworn that I have no wish to save him. I have no teyn. You cannot strip me of my rights under the code."

Small, shriveled Roseph-the smallest of the Kavalars by half a meter-stared at Janacek and refused to flinch. "We are on Worlorn," he said. "And we do what we will." Several of the others muttered agreement.

"You are Kavalars," Janacek insisted, but a flicker of doubt passed across his face. "You are Braiths and highbonds of Braith, bound to your holdfast and your council and its ways."

"In years past," Pyr said with a smile, "I have seen many of my kethi and even more the men of other holdfasts abandon the old wisdoms. 'This and this and this are wrong,' the mincing Ironjades would say. 'We will not follow them.' And the sheep of Redsteel would echo them, and the womanly men of Shanagate, and sadly many Braiths. Are my memories false? You stand and preach code at us, but do I not recall the Ironjades in my youth telling me that I may hunt mockmen no longer? Am I misremembering the soft Kavalars who were sent to Avalon to learn spaceships and weaponry and other useful things, who returned full of lies about how we must change this way, and that way, how so much of our old code was a thing of shame, when it had been so long a pride to us? Tell me, Ironjade, am I wrong?"

Garse said nothing. He folded his arms tightly against his chest.

"Jaan Vikary, once high-Ironjade, was the greatest of the changers, the liars. You were not far behind," Lorimaar said.

"I have never been to Avalon," Janacek said simply.

"Answer me," Pyr said. "Did you and Vikary not seek to change old ways? Did you not laugh at the parts of the code you disliked?"

"I have never broken code," Janacek said. "Jaan… Jaan would sometimes…" He faltered.

"He admits it," fat Saanel said.

"We have talked among ourselves," Roseph said in a calm voice. "If highbonds can kill outside the code, if the things we know as truth can be changed and disregarded, then we too can make changes, and shun false wisdoms we do not care for. We are bound by Braith no longer, Ironjade. It is the best of holdfasts, but that is not good enough. Our old kethi had taken too many soft lies to their hearts. We will be twisted and toyed with no more. We will return to the old true things, to the creed that was ancient before Bronzefist fell, even to the days when the highbonds of Ironjade and Taal and the Deep Coal Dwellings fought together against demons in the Lameraan Hills."

"You see, Ironjade," Pyr said, "you call us false names."

"I did not know," Janacek said, a bit slowly.

"Call us truly. We are no Braiths."

The Ironjade's eyes seemed dark and hooded. His arms were still crossed. He looked at Lorimaar. "You have made a new holdfast," he said.

"There is precedent," Roseph said. "Redsteel was birthed by those who broke from Glowstone Mountain, and Braith itself grew out of Bronzefist."

"I am Lorimaar Reln Winterfox high-Larteyn Arkellor," Lorimaar said in his hard, pain-filled voice.

"Honor to your holdfast," Janacek answered, holding himself stiffly, "honor to your teyn."

"We are all Larteyns," Roseph said.

Pyr laughed. "We are the highbond council of Larteyn, and we keep the old codes," he said.

In the silence that followed, Janacek's eyes went from one face to the next. Dirk, still helpless and kneeling in the sand, watched bis head move, turning from one to the other. "You have named yourself Larteyns," Janacek said at last, "and so you are Larteyns. All the old wisdoms agree on that much. Yet I remind you that all the things you speak of, the men and teachings and the holdfasts you invoke, all these things are dead. Bronzefist and Taal were destroyed in highwars before any of you were born, and the Deep Coal Dwellings were flooded and empty even during the Time of Fire and Demons."

"Their wisdoms live in Larteyn," Saanel said.

"You are only six," Janacek said, "and Worlorn is dying."

"Under us it will thrive again," Roseph said. "News will go back to High Kavalaan and others will come. Our sons will be born here, to hunt these choker-woods."

"As you will," said Janacek. "It is no matter to me. Ironjade has no grievance with Larteyn. I come to you openly and ask to join your hunt." His hand dropped to Dirk's shoulder. "And I bring you a blood-gift."

"Truth," Pyr said and was silent for a moment. Then, to the others: "I say let him come."

"No," said Lorimaar. "I do not trust him. He is too eager."

"For a reason, Lorimaar high-Larteyn," Janacek said. "A great shame has been put on my holdfast and my name. I seek to wipe it clean."

"A man must keep his pride, no matter the pain," Roseph said, nodding. "That is truth enough for anyone."

"Let him hunt," Roseph's teyn said. "We are six and he is alone. How can he harm us?"

"He is a liar!" Lorimaar insisted. "How did he come to us here? Ask yourselves that! And look!" He pointed at Janacek's right arm, where glowstones burned like red eyes in their settings. Only a handful were missing.

Janacek put his left hand on his knife and slid it smoothly from its sheath. Then he held out his right hand to Pyr. "Help me hold my arm steady," he said in a calm conversational tone, "and I will cast away Jaan Vikary's false fires."

Pyr did as he was asked. No one spoke. Janacek's hand was sure and quick. When he was finished, glow-stones lay in the sand like coals from a scattered fire.

He bent and picked one up, tossed it lightly into the air and caught it again, as if he were testing its weight, smiling all the while. Then he drew back his arm and threw; the stone sailed up and off a long way before it began to fall. At the far end of its arc, sinking, it looked a bit like a shooting star. Dirk almost expected it to hiss when it sank into the lake's dark waters. But there was no sound at all, not even a splash at this distance.

Janacek picked up all of the glowstones in turn, rolled them in his palm briefly, and gave them to the lake.

When the last of them was gone, he turned back to the hunters and held out his right arm. "Empty iron," he said. "Look. My teyn is dead."

After that there was no more trouble.

"Dawn is near upon us," Pyr said. "Set my prey to running."

So the hunters turned their attention to Dirk, and it went much as he had been told it would go. They cut him free of his bonds and let him rub his wrists and ankles a bit to get his blood moving once again. Then he was pushed back against an aircar, and Roseph and fat Saanel held him still while Pyr himself cut his clothes away. The bald hunter handled his little knife as deftly as he did his baton, but he was not gentle; he left a long cut down the inside of Dirk's thigh, and a shorter deeper one on his chest.

Dirk winced when Pyr slashed him, but made no effort to resist. Until he was finally naked, and beginning to shiver in the wind, his back pressed too hard against the cold metal flank of the aircar.

Pyr frowned suddenly. "What's this?" he said, and his small white hand wrapped around the whisper-jewel where it hung against Dirk's chest.

"No," Dirk said.

Pyr yanked hard and twisted. The fine silver chain dug painfully into Dirk's throat; the jewel popped free of its improvised clip.

"No!" Dirk shouted. He threw himself forward suddenly and began to struggle. Roseph stumbled and lost his grip on Dirk's right arm and went down. Saanel hung on grimly. Dirk punched him hard in his bull-thick neck, just beneath his chin. The fat man let go with an oath, and Dirk swung around at Pyr.

Pyr had picked up his baton. He was smiling. Dirk took a single quick step toward him and stopped.

That was enough of a hesitation. Saanel slid a thick arm around his head from behind and began applying a headlock that gradually turned into a choke.

Pyr watched with disinterest. He thrust his baton into the sand and held the whisperjewel between thumb and forefinger. "Mockman jewelry," he said disdainfully. It meant nothing to him; there was no resonance in his mind with the patterns esper-etched into the gemstone. Perhaps he noticed how cold the little teardrop was to his touch, perhaps not-but he heard no whispers. He called to his teyn, who was kicking sand onto the fire. "Would you like a gift from t'Larien?"

Saying nothing, the man came over and took the jewel and held it briefly, then put it into a pocket of his jacket. He turned away unsmiling and began to walk around the perimeter of the Braith camp, extinguishing the ring of electric hand torches planted in the sand. As the lights went out, Dirk saw that the first blush of dawn was on the eastern horizon.

Pyr waved his baton at Saanel. "Release him," he ordered, and the fat man undid his chokehold and stepped away. Dirk stood free again. His neck ached, and the dry sand beneath his feet was coarse and cold. He felt very vulnerable. Without the whisper-jewel, he was now very much afraid. He looked around for Garse Janacek, but the Ironjade was off on the other side of the camp talking intently to Lorimaar.

"Dawn is already here," Pyr said. "I can come after you at once, mockman. Run."

Dirk glanced over his shoulder. Roseph was frowning and massaging his shoulder; he had fallen hard when Dirk yanked loose. Saanel, smirking, was leaning back against the aircar. Dirk took a few hesitant steps away from them, toward the forest.

"Come, t'Larien, I am certain you can run faster than that," Pyr called out to him. "Run fast enough, and you may live. I will be on foot as well, and my teyn, and our hounds." He took out his sidearm and tossed it through the air, spinning, toward Saanel, who caught it and smothered it in two massive slab-fingered hands. "I will carry no laser, t'Larien," Pyr continued. "This will be a pure clean hunt, of the oldest sort. A hunter with his knife and his throwing-blade, a naked prey. Run, t'Larien, run!" His bony black-haired companion had come over to join him. "My teyn," Pyr said to him, "unchain our hounds."

Dirk spun and began sprinting for the edge of the wood.

It was a run out of nightmare.

They had taken his boots; no sooner had he gone three meters into the trees than he cut his foot on a sharp rock in the dark and began to limp. There were other rocks. Running, he seemed to find them all.

They had taken his clothes; it was better in the shelter of the trees, where the wind was not so bad, but he was still cold. Very cold. He had gooseflesh for a time, then it passed. Other pains came, and the cold seemed less important.

The outworld wilderness was too dark and too light. Too dark to see where he was going. He stumbled over roots, skinned his knees and palms badly, ran into holes. But it was too light as well. Dawn was coming too fast, too fast, the light spreading agonizingly through the trees. He was losing his beacon. He looked up at it every time he reached a clear space, every time he could see between the dense overhanging foliage, looked up and found it. A single bright red star, High Kavalaan's own star aflame in Worlorn's sky. Garse had pointed it out to him, and told him to follow it if he lost his way. It would lead him through the woods to his laser and his jacket. But dawn was coming, coming too quickly; the Braiths had delayed too long in cutting him loose. And every time he looked up again and tried to go the right way– the forest was thick and confusing, the chokers formed impenetrable walls at points and forced him to take detours, all directions looked the same, it was easy to go astray-every time he searched for his beacon, it was fainter, more washed out. The eastern light had taken on a reddish tinge; Fat Satan was rising somewhere, and soon his homing star would be washed from a mock-twilight sky. He tried to run faster.

It was less than a kilometer to run, less than a kilometer. But a kilometer is a long way to go through a wilderness, naked, close to lost. He had been running ten minutes when he heard the Braith hounds baying wildly behind him.

After that, he neither thought nor worried. He ran.

He ran in animal panic, breathing hard, bleeding, his whole body trembling and aching. The run became an endless thing, a thing outside of time, a fever dream of frantic pumping feet and snatches of vivid sensation and the noises behind him of the hounds, growing ever closer-or so it seemed. He ran and ran, and got nowhere, and ran and ran, and did not move. He crashed through a thick wall of firebriars, and the red-tipped thorns cut his flesh in a hundred places, and he did not cry; he ran, he ran. He reached an area of smooth gray slate and tried to scramble over it quickly and fell and smashed his chin with a crack against the stone and his mouth was full of blood and he spat it out. Blood on the rock, as well, no wonder he had fallen; his blood, all of it, from the cuts on his feet.

He crawled over the smooth stone and reached the trees again and ran some more, wild, until he remembered that he was not looking for his beacon. And when he found it again, it was back behind him and to the side, very faint, a small shining dot in a scarlet sky, and he turned and went to it and across the stone once more, tripping over unseen roots, tearing the foliage away with wild hands, running, running. He ran into a low branch, sat down hard, got up holding his head, ran on. He tripped on a slimy bed of moss, black, smelling of rot, rose covered with the slime and the smell, ran on, ran on. He looked for his beacon star, and it was gone. He kept going. It had to be the right way, it had to. The hounds were behind him, baying. It was only a kilometer, it was less than a kilometer. He was freezing. He was on fire. His chest was full of knives. He kept running, staggered and tripped and fell, got up, kept running. The hounds were behind him, close, close, the hounds were behind him.

And then suddenly-he did not know when, he did not know how long he had been running, he did not know how far he had come, the star was gone-he thought he caught the faint odor of smoke on the forest wind. He ran toward it, and came out from among the trees into a small clearing, and ran toward the other side of the barren open space, and stopped.

The hounds were in front of him.

One of them, at least. It came slinking out of thex trees snarling, its little eyes deadly, its hairless snout drawn back to flash its ugly fangs. He tried to run around it and it was on him, knocking him over, slashing at him and rolling with him, then jumping up. Dirk struggled to his knees; the hound circled him and snapped savagely whenever he tried to rise to his feet. It had bitten his left arm and drawn more blood. But it had not killed him, had not torn out his throat. Trained, he thought, it was trained. It circled him, circled, its eyes never leaving him. Pyr had sent it out ahead and was coming behind with his teyn and his other dogs. This one would keep him trapped here until they arrived.

He jumped to his feet suddenly, lunged toward the trees. The dog leaped, knocked him over again, wrestled him to the ground, and almost tore loose his arm. This time he did not get up. The hound backed off again, stood waiting, poised, its mouth wet with blood and slaver. Dirk tried to push himself up with his good arm. He crawled a half-meter. The hound growled. The others were near. He heard the baying.

Then, from above, he heard something else. He looked up weakly into the small slice of cloud-streaked sky, dim with the dawning rays of the Hell-eye and its attendants. The Braith hound, backing off from him a meter, was looking up too. And the sound came again. It was a wail and a war yell, a lingering ululating shriek, a death hoot that was almost musical in its intensity. Dirk wondered if he were dying and hearing the sounds of Kryne Lamiya in his mind. But the hound heard it too. It was squatting, paralyzed, looking up.

A dark shape dropped from the sky. Dirk saw it fall. It was huge, very black, pitch almost, and its underside was puckered with a thousand small red mouths, and they were all open, all singing, all sounding that terrible shuddering wail. It had no head that he could see; it was triangular, a wide dark sail, a wind-borne manta ray, a leather cloak someone had cast loose in the sky. A leather cloak with mouths, though, and a long thin tail.

He saw the tail whip around once, suddenly, and snap at the Braith hound's face. The dog blinked and stepped back. The flying creature hovered for an instant, beating its vast wings with exquisite rippling slowness, then settled down over the hound and wrapped itself around it. Both animals were silent. The hound-the huge muscular rat-faced dog that stood as tall as a man-the hound was gone. The other covered it completely, and lay in the grass and the dirt like a black leather sausage of immense proportions.

Everything was silent. The hunter's wail had stilled the entire forest. He did not hear the other hounds. Carefully he rose to his feet and walked, limping, around the torpid killer-cloak. It scarcely seemed to stir. In the dawn half-light, it might have been a big misshapen log.

In his mind, Dirk saw it still as it had looked in the sky: a black shape, howling, falling, all wing and mouth. For an instant, glimpsing only the silhouette, he had thought that Jaan Vikary had come to rescue him, flying the gray manta aircar.

The far side of the clearing was a choker tangle, thick and yellow-brown and very dense. But the smoke came from beyond it. Wearily Dirk dodged and squeezed and pushed the waxy limbs aside, breaking them when he had to, and forced his way through.

The wreck had ceased to burn, but a thin pall of smoke still hung above it. One wing had scraped along the ground, tearing a great gouge in the earth and felling several trees before snapping; the other jabbed up into the air, its bat shape distorted by fused runnels of frozen metal and holes punched through it by a laser cannon. The cabin was black and shapeless, open to the outside through a wide jagged hole.

Dirk found his laser rifle nearby. He also found bones: two skeletons twisted around each other in a death's embrace, the bones dark and wet, still brown with blood and bits of clinging meat. One skeleton was human, or had been. All the arms and legs were broken, and most of the ribs shattered and gone, but Dirk recognized the triple-pronged metal claw that ended one twice-broken arm. Mingled with it, and just as dead, were the remains of whatever creature had dragged the carcass from the smoking aircar out into the open-some scavenger whose bones were black-veined and rubbery-looking, curved and very big. The banshee had caught it feeding. No wonder it had been so close. '

There was no trace of the leather and fur jacket that he and Garse had dropped here. Dirk dragged himself over to the cold hulk of the aircar and climbed into its shadowed maw. He cut himself on a sharp metal surface going in, but hardly noticed it; what was one more cut now? He settled down to wait, sheltered from the wind, and hoping he was hidden from banshee and Braiths both. Most of his wounds seemed to have clotted, he noted dully. At least he was only bleeding fitfully, here and there. But the brown scabs that had formed were all crusted with dirt, and he wondered if he should do something to fight infection. It did not seem to matter, though; he pushed the thought aside and held his laser a bit more tightly, hoping the hunters would get here soon.

What had slowed them down? Perhaps they were afraid of disturbing the banshee; that made a certain amount of sense. He lay down in the cold ashes, resting his head on his arm, and tried not to think, not to feel. His feet were bundles of raw agony. Awkwardly he tried to lift them in the air, so they would not touch anything. That helped a little, but he did not have the strength to hold them up for long. His arm was throbbing where the Braith hound had bitten him. For a time he wished fervently that he could stop hurting, that his head would stop spinning so badly. Then he changed his mind. The pain, he thought, was probably the only thing that was keeping him conscious. And if he fell asleep now, somehow he did not think it likely that he would ever wake up again.

He saw Fat Satan hanging over the forest, its bloody disc half obscured by a screen of blue-black branches. Nearby a single yellow sun burned very brightly, a small spark in the firmament. He blinked at them. They were old friends.

The sound of Braith hounds brought him back to attention. Ten meters away, the hunters came eagerly out of the foliage. Not as close as he had expected them. Of course, he thought, they had gone around the chokers instead of fighting through them. Pyr Braith was almost invisible, blue-black like the tree he stood against, but Dirk saw his motion, and the baton he carried in one hand, and the bright silvery shaft taller than he that he held in the other. His teyn was a few steps ahead of him, holding two hounds on short chains; the dogs were barking wildly and pulling him forward almost at a trot. A third hound ran free at his side, and began bounding toward the downed aircar as soon as it was out of the underbrush.

Dirk, lying on his stomach amid the ashes and the shattered instruments of the wreck, suddenly found it all immensely funny. Pyr hefted his silver shaft above his head and began to run; he was sure he had his prey at last. But he had no laser, and Dirk did. Giggling and giddy, Dirk raised the rifle and took careful aim.

As he fired, a memory came back to him, as sudden and stabbing as the pulse of light that flashed from his laser. Janacek, just a short time ago, stern-faced, shrugging: Your life may depend on how fast and straight you can run, and how accurately you can fire your rifle, he had said. And Dirk had added; And whether I can kill. It had seemed terribly important, the killing; how much more difficult it would be than simple running.

He giggled again. The running had been very difficult. The killing was just something he did, and it was almost easy.

The bright burning knife of the laser hung in the air for a long second, impaling Pyr square in his broad gut as he ran toward the hulk. The Braith stumbled and fell to his knees. His mouth hung open absurdly for a second before he collapsed on his face and was lost to Dirk's sight. The long silver blade he had carried remained stuck in the torn ground, swaying back and forth as the wind whipped at it.

Pyr's black-haired companion let go of the chain he was holding and seemed to freeze when his teyn went down. Dirk moved the laser slightly and fired once more, but nothing happened; the weapon was still in its fifteen-second recycle. That made the hunting a sport, he remembered; it gave the game a chance to get away if you missed. He found himself giggling again.

The hunter woke up and threw himself flat, rolling over the ground into the long gully ripped by the air-car's wing. Down in the trenches looking for his laser, Dirk thought, but he won't find it.

The hounds had surrounded the aircar, barking at him whenever he shifted his position or raised his head. None of them tried to come in for the kill. That was the hunter's business. Dirk took careful aim and shot the nearest one through the throat. It dropped like dead meat, and the other two backed off. Pulling himself to his knees, Dirk crawled out of his shelter. He tried to stand, steadying himself with one hand on the twisted wing. The world was spinning. Savage stabbing pains ran up his legs, and he found he could no longer feel his feet at all. But somehow he kept himself erect.

A shout rang out, something in Old Kavalar; Dirk did not know the word. The huge hounds charged, one right after the other, wet red mouths agape, snarling. And in the corner of his eye he saw the hunter emerging, two meters away, his knife out already. One of his long thin arms flicked it around in a sideways sort of motion, and it clattered off the aircar wing Dirk was leaning against. Already the man had turned and was running, and the nearest hound was there, in the air. Dirk let himself fall and brought up the rifle. The canines snapped, missed, but the beast's body smashed into him, knocking him spinning, and then it was on top of him in the dust. Somehow he found the trigger. There was a brief light and the smell of wet hair burning and an awful whine. The hound snapped again, feebly, choking on its own blood. Dirk pushed the carcass off and struggled to one knee. The Braith had reached Pyr's body and was lifting the long silver blade. The other hound had caught its loose chain on a jagged edge of the wreck. When Dirk rose, it yelped and lunged, and the whole great burned hulk of the aircar seemed to shake a little and move, but still the beast was caught.

The black-haired hunter had the silver thing. Dirk aimed his laser and fired; the beam burned wide, but a second is long enough, and Dirk swung the rifle sharply, right to left, left to right.

The man fell even as he released his weapon. It sailed a few meters, slid off the twisted wing, and stuck in the ground, where it moved back and forth in the wind. Dirk was still swinging his laser, left right left right left right, long after the hunter had fallen and the light had gone out. Finally it recycled and pulsed again for a second, burning nothing but a row of chokers, and Dirk, startled, released his hold on the trigger and dropped the weapon.

The hound, still caught, was snarling and lunging. Dirk looked at it, open-mouthed, almost uncomprehending. Then he giggled. He got down on his knees, found the laser, and began to crawl toward the Kavalars. It took an awfully long time. His feet hurt. His arm as well, where he had been bitten. The hound finally fell silent, but there was no quiet. Dirk could hear crying, a continuous low whimper.

He dragged himself through the dirt and the ashes, over the burned-out trunk of a choker, to where the hunters had fallen. They were lying side by side. The gaunt one, the one whose name he had never learned, who had tried to kill him with his knife and his dogs and his silver blade, that one was still, and his mouth was full of blood. Pyr, lying face down, was the source of the whimpers. Dirk knelt by him, shoved his hands beneath him, laboriously turned him over. His face was covered with ashes and blood; he had smashed his nose when he fell, and a thin red trickle still ran from one nostril, leaving a bright trail across his soot-smeared cheeks. His face was old. He kept whimpering and did not seem to see Dirk at all, and his hands were clutching his stomach. Dirk stared at him for a long time. He touched one of his hands-it was strangely soft and small, clean except for a single black slash that ran across the palm, almost a child's hand that ought not to belong to that old bald face -and lifted it away and did the same with the other hand and looked at the hole he had burned in Pyr's gut. A big gut and a small dark hole; it ought not to have hurt him so much. No blood, either, except from his nose. That was almost funny, but Dirk discovered that he had no more giggles left in him.

Pyr opened his mouth then, and Dirk wondered if the man was trying to tell him something, some last words perhaps, some plea for forgiveness. But the Braith only made a thick choking sound, and then resumed his low whimpers.

His baton was lying nearby. Dirk took it up and wrapped his hands around the hardwood knob at one end and placed the small blade over Pyr's chest where his heart ought to be and leaned all his weight forward and down, thinking to give the other release. The hunter's heavy body thrashed horribly for an instant, and Dirk withdrew the blade and thrust it in again, and yet again, but Pyr would not keep still. The little blade was too short, Dirk decided after a time, so he used it differently, found an artery in Pyr's fleshy throat, held the baton very tightly right up by the knife end and pressed it in through the pale fatty skin. There was a terrible lot of blood then, a spurting stream that caught Dirk right in the face until he let go of the baton and pushed himself away. Pyr thrashed again and his neck continued to spurt where Dirk had cut him, and Dirk watched, but each spurt was a little feebler than the one before, and after a time the fountain was only a trickle and after another time it seemed to stop. The ashes and the dirt drank up a lot of the blood, but there was still a great deal of it around, a regular little pool of it between the two of them, and Dirk had never known that a man had enough blood in him to form a real pool of blood. He felt very sick. But at least Pyr was still, and the whimpering had stopped.

He sat alone, resting, in the wan red light. He was very hot and very cold all at once, and he knew he should take some clothing from the corpses and cover himself, but he could not find the strength. His feet hurt horribly, and his arm had swollen to twice its normal size. He did not sleep, but he was barely conscious. He watched Fat Satan rise higher and higher in the sky, approaching noon, with the bright yellow suns shining painfully around it. He heard the Braith hound howling several times, and once he listened to the eerie hunting wail of the banshee and wondered if the creature would come back to eat him and the men he had killed. But the cry seemed a long way off, and perhaps it was only his fever, and perhaps it was only the wind.

When the sticky wet film on his face had dried to a brown crust and the little pool of blood that lay in the dust was finally gone, Dirk knew that he must move again, or he would die here. He considered dying for a long time; it seemed like a very good idea, somehow, but he could not bring himself to do it. He remembered Gwen. He crawled over to where the body of Pyr's teyn was lying, ignoring his pain as best he could, and went through the man's pockets. He found the whisperjewel.

Ice in his fist, ice in his mind, memories of promises, lies, love. Jenny. My Guinevere, and he was Lancelot. He could not fail her. He could not. He crushed the cold teardrop hard in his hand and took the ice into his soul. He made himself stand up.

After that it was easier. Slowly he stripped the dead man of his clothing and dressed, though everything was too long for him and the shirt and the chameleon cloth jacket had been slash-burned across the front and the man had fouled his pants. Dirk pulled off the corpse's boots as well, but they were too narrow for his bloodied, scab-crusted feet, and he was forced to use Pyr's. Pyr had huge feet.

Using his laser rifle and Pyr's baton as canes, he struggled toward the wild. A few meters into the trees he stopped and looked back briefly. The huge hound was barking and howling and fighting to yank free, and the aircar gave a metallic shudder every time it lunged. He could see the naked body in the dirt, and beyond it the tall silvery thing, still swaying in the wind. Pyr he could hardly see at all. Beneath the bloodstains, the hunter's suit had gone to a mottled black and brown, and here and there a dull red, so he blended with the ground he had died on.

Dirk left the hound chained and barking, and limped off through the tangled chokers.