Star Hunters

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Star Hunters

Jo Clayton

Chapter I

The faras stepped daintily through the scattered rocks and began walking along the edge of the escarpment. The Sawasawa valley floor far below stretched into the blue distance, dry and lifeless, the scattered patches of juapepo growing over it like tufts of hair on a mangy cat. Films of red dust rose, rode the wind in brief spurts, then dropped. “A long time away, Shindi.” He leaned forward and scratched at the base of his mount's roached mane. The faras tossed his horned head and snorted with pleasure. Manoreh chuckled. “Run in the pastures and roll in the wet grass. We'll both be home soon.” He slapped at the pouch slung over his shoulder and smiled at the rustle of the parchment inside. “With a good bit of new land mapped for the Director.”

Jua Churukuu the sun was hanging low in the east. He squinted matte indigo eyes at the lime-green sun, passed a long-fingered hand over the wiry tangle of his indigo hair. In the strengthening light the faint scale markings on his silvery-green skin became a bit more prounounced. He shifted in the saddle. “Tomorrow night, Shindi,” he murmured. “You'll be in your pasture and I.…” He grimaced. “I'll be swallowing Kobe's insults and quarreling with Kitosime.”

The faras's split hooves clacked rapidly over the stone, the tidy sound tick-tocking into the soft whispering of the wind. The memory of his last encounter with his wife was still vivid in his mind even though six months had drifted by since then.
A long time
, he thought.
Too long? She wants me to take up my father's land and get away from Kobe. My father's land
.… Harsh, painful memories. A line of bodies stretching out, out Endlessly. His mouth tightened.
No! Never! Let the land raise weeds and vermin
. He glanced down at the Sawasawa, closer now as the escarpments flattened and lowered toward a ripple of foothills.

The dust clouds seemed thicker as they hovered in a crimson haze over the brush. Manoreh frowned. Something moved down there. He halted the faras, leaning forward, straining to penetrate the haze.

Flashes of white thickened to a ragged blanket that smothered the soil and brush. Hares. A hare march. “Meme Kalamah, mother protect us,” he whispered. “So many of them. I've never seen so many … sweeping clean this time … everyone … Ah!” He groaned. “So many … so many … so many.…” His hands began to shake. He saw again the bodies of his people. The watuk blindrage ignited and began to take him. He raised his head and howled.

The faras danced about, jerking his head back and forth. For a moment Manoreh's body kept balance automatically while he sank deeper into the uncontrollable rage that shook him like a rag and slammed into the
FEELING
centers of the faras. Then, with a high ululating whine, the animal plunged and reared, throwing him off his back to crash onto the rock. Then the faras ran blindly forward, seeking the easiest way even in his panic, leaving Manoreh stretched out on the rock, blood running sluggishly from a short cut on his head.

When Manoreh woke, the sun was shining directly into his eyes. He sat up slowly, clutched at his throbbing head. Then he remembered the hare march and grunted onto his feet. For a moment he stood swaying, eyes shut, head throbbing, then he forced himself to look at the valley. The herd was still passing, there seemed to be no end of them. He rubbed his eyes. A force weighed heavily on him, stifling, oppressive, impersonal.
Haribu
, he thought.
Driving them
. He pressed his hand to his head.
The Holders … have to warn them … Kitosime.…

Manoreh stumbled away from the edge of the cliff and began walking along the faint trail. As he walked, the pounding of his boots against the stone sent flashes of light and pain stabbing into his brain. Grimly he kept on. Gradually his body settled into a comfortable long stride and the ache in his head eased to a dull throbbing that he could ignore. The feel of Haribu was oppressive but bearable since the demon's attention was focused on the hare herd. For a short while Manoreh tensed himself against a probe, but the blast of rage that had set him afoot must have been too brief to call Haribu's attention.

The barren stone gave way to sun-dried grass and red earth. Manoreh topped a gentle rise and stopped, startled. Several lines of hares were heading for the main herd on the valley floor. He stood, clouds of red dust blowing around him, perplexed by what he was seeing. Hares traveling naturally moved a few paces forward, stopped to graze, moved on, walked a few steps on their extra-long hind legs, dropped on fours again, grazed—continuing this irregular but patterned movement throughout the day. He saw these marching like mechanical soldiers down the hillside and a shiver rippled through his body. He closed his eyes.
Hare walk … the line of the dead … no! Breathe in … breathe out … slow … slow … order straying thoughts into rhythmic patterns. The mountains call me, blue mountains eating the green sky, the plains call me, the great grass sea
.…

Manoreh swung into a smooth lope he could maintain for hours. As he ran, he kept the songs flowing in his mind and ignored the familiar disorientation thrown at him by the patches of juapepo as the hundreds of receptor nodes picked up his emotions and retransmitted them, mixing them with snatches of the plants' own irritations and fears, snatches of the hungers, terrors and satisfactions of every insect, reptile and rodent nesting among its roots.

Hares in the hills
. None of the teaching songs spoke of hares outside the Sawasawa, even the songs of Angaleh the Wanderer, who'd mapped most of the Grass Plain in the far side of the mountains. Manoreh smiled. Angaleh the legend. Poet and singer. Explorer and mystic. Forgotten now except for his songs and the stories about him, sunk into the anonymity of the Directorship of the Tembeat. Manoreh smiled again. During the past half-year he'd added a small new triangle of territory to Angeleh's maps.

The land dipped and flattened. Manoreh slowed to a walk, the hare rumble closing in on him until he wove a precarious path through the lurching bodies of the hares ambling along at the edge of the monster herd. More than ever he regretted the loss of the faras. By nightfall he could have been.… He dismissed could-have-beens and lengthened his stride, closing his mind to the hares.

But he couldn't shut out memory.
Haribu Haremaster
. Manpreh's feet thudded against the ground, moving faster and faster as the sight and smell of the hares triggered the watuk blindrage, and that rage disrupted the rhythm of his breathing and the coordination of his body. He stumbled, slowed, took in great gulps of dusty hot air … lost in memories.…

The hare walk … the tide of white pouring over the land stripping it greedily.…

He groaned.

The line of bodies stretching out and out … the days following the line of the dead with Faiseh beside him, burying his kin, bonded and blood … bodies … father … mother … sister.…

He sobbed. Tears cut through the mask of dust on his face.

His sister splashed out on the ground clutching her dead baby, arms and legs twitching, eyes blank, face empty, every touch of human burned out of her.…

He tried to hold her, slapped her, tried to wake her out of that terrible blank animal state. There was nothing left in her. He knelt beside her, watched her for awhile. Faiseh found him there, offered to do what was necessary, but Manoreh shook his head. As the moonring became visible in the darkening sky, he pressed his fingers against her throat and waited until the artery was still under his fingers. He buried her, the baby on her breast, and went on with Faiseh until there were no more twitching bodies.

Hare walk. Driven to walk and walk. To walk without stopping. To walk until muscles no longer responded to will. To crawl. Finally to lie on the ground, hands and feet twitching while the last feeble glow of life dimmed and died.

He groaned as he thought of the hares ringing Kobe's Holding, focusing their malice on the Kisima clan … on Kito-sime … on his son Hodarzu … until minds burned out and they began to walk.

Manoreh's foot caught under a juapepo root and he crashed heavily into the red dust. The pain jarred him out of his memories. He pushed onto his knees as the juapepo picked up and reinforced his pain. He sucked in a deep breath and began pulling together the Tembeat discipline, distancing himself from the troubling emotion, slowing the body, filling the mind. He got clumsily to his feet and looked up. Jua Churukuu was halfway down the western arc of his day path. He turned and faced along his backtrail. The grumble of the hares was a low murmur on the horizon. Around him scattered herds of kudu leaped and galloped to the northeast, frantic to get away from the creeping menace behind them. He checked the urge to race with them. If his spurt of blindrage had exhausted him, it had at least won him a long lead on the hare herd. Enough. No good burning himself out. The warning had to be given. He swung back into the lope, his body moving smoothly, the thick red dust stirring about his feet.

An hour later he stopped to rest a few moments at a water tree standing in the middle of a mud slick. He knelt by the multiple trunks and drank from the small cold stream, heard a rustling in the coarse grass growing rankly about the slick. A hare pushed out of the grass and sat daintily at the edge of the mud, bulging brown eyes staring blankly at him. Another rustle and a second hare crouched beside the first.
The blindrage
, he thought ruefully.
This time Haribu noticed it
. The hares rubbed the sides of their heads together, then rose onto their hind legs, eyes fixed on him, long ears pointing stiffly at him. He felt a dulling pressure. His sight blurred. There was a whining in his ears.

Working against a compulsion strong as tangleweb, he forced his hand to the darter on his belt.