Star Hunters (9 page)

In the light from the sinking moon cluster she saw a walled court much like the one at Kobe's Hold. It was crowded with layers of old leaves and dried weeds, the patterned pavement visible only where the decaying mulch had been swept away by the car's passage. There was a musty, abandoned smell circling through the heavy night air. The court was eerily silent now that the whine of the motor was stopped. Aleytys shivered then probed cautiously with her mind, searching for possible danger. She felt a distant ripple around the edge of her reach as if something might be hovering beyond the horizon, waiting and watching. Then she thought she might have imagined it as the feeling dissipated.

She slid out, the leaves crackling under her feet. When she opened the back door, Manoreh lifted his head and looked at her. “Well.” Her lips twitched. “Good to see you coming back to life.”

His mouth moved. He shifted a hand a short distance, then let it fall.

Aleytys leaned into the car. “Relax,” she said. “Let me take care of this.” She chuckled. “Poor baby, hauled around by a woman. You didn't like me much before. I hate to think how you'll see me now.” She pulled his legs out. He toppled over. She leaned in again and caught hold of his hands, pulling him up until his long body was draped over her shoulder. Grunting with the weight, she straightened with effort and began plodding toward the barn, silently blessing her Vryhh heritage and the fact that her birth world had a somewhat stronger gravity than this. She nudged the sliding door open and trudged inside.

She propped him against the stanchions and held him upright. “Manoreh!” She slapped him hard across the face with one hand while she held him upright with the other. “Manoreh!”

There was a flicker of response. She slapped him again. “Manoreh, help me! What do I do now?”

She felt a slow growth of awareness, a spread of feeling along his numbed limbs. He blinked filmed eyes and moved slightly. A dry tongue searched cracked lips. His head turned as far as it could. “In there.” One hand pointed feebly into the interior of the barn.

“Help me,” she repeated. She lifted his hands and curled his fingers over the wood. “Hold yourself up.”

He swayed clumsily but he managed to stay on his feet.

“Good boy.” She wriggled through the stanchion and stood in the manger. “Now, give me your hand.”

They moved slowly into the darkness. The link began to pulse between them again, rousing as Manoreh roused from his dullness. When they reached the haystack, he pushed her roughly away and staggered toward a dim, red figure that crouched before the moldy hay. She saw the ragged image rise. She saw the hooked beak come down on Manoreh's neck and the claws pierce his body. His arms rose to embrace the ghost. She felt an intense surge of grief-fear-rage, then the surge washed out as the smoke figure melted into him.

His shoulders moved, the stiffness went out of his body, his shakedown was energetic and strongly graceful. She felt a deep sense of well-being flooding through him, felt the drowning emotions rushing through him/her, wild as lightning-kindled fire. He felt/she felt intensely aware of her femaleness/his maleness. He came/she came irresistibly toward her/him. She was strong, warm, soft under his hands. He was furiously alive, alive, alive. His hands/her hands were on her/him. His hard body under her hands warm and strong, strong and hard, their two, strengths clashing until she yielded/commanded, let him push her down, moaning, pulled him to her. Shipsuit torn off. Wriggling wildly out of it. Pulled him down to her tearing at the fastening of his shorts. Then he was in her, she around him.

Aleytys smoothed the shorts closed then pulled the jerkin over her head. The room was dusty, with a close, dead smell, but the dryness of the air had kept mildew out of the abandoned clothing hanging in the dead boy's closet. Manoreh's younger brother. He'd been a well grown boy that year he took the walk; the jerkin's shoulders were a bit too wide. But her breasts put a strain on the leather. She tugged at the thongs that closed the neck opening and got a little more room to breathe.

She grimaced in the mirror at her bruised face and her swollen mouth.
You look like a whore
, she thought. She undid her braids and ran the boy's comb through the crimped strands, dropping straw fragments onto the floor. This second reminder of her animal rut in the barn sickened her. She'd been raped before, had learned to endure and shake off violence done to her. This was different. Manoreh had violated her mind and soul as well as her body. She jerked the comb through her hair, cursing as it tore loose snarls from the matted strands.
No
, she thought as she finally dropped the comb back on the dresser and went to sit on the bed.
Not violated. Worse than that. I raped him as much as he did me. Like two animals
.… She shuddered and touched her face. Then she reached for her healing water.

Manoreh sat on the porch sensing the woman moving about the house behind him. The link between them was so strong now he could feel the rubbing of her shorts against her thighs as she walked quickly from room to room. He felt inadequate as he wondered gloomily what he should do about her.

She came out of the house and dropped onto the bench beside him. He looked down at his hands, opened and closed them nervously. “I'm sorry,” he muttered. “I didn't know that would happen.”

Shifting between amusement and anger, she ignored him. After a while amusement won and he winced as he felt this along the link. It diminished him and he resented that. “I know just how sorry you are. Not very comforting to my self-esteem.” She began playing with the neck thongs, staring out at the courtyard, as he fought down a surge of anger.

Abruptly she leaned forward, her whole body tensing. Her eyes were fixed uneasily on the sky to the northeast.

“What is it?”

She started at the sound of his voice, swung around to face him, her blue-green eyes wide. “You don't feel it?” Then she shook her head: “No, you don't. I see that.” She stood and walked to the railing at the front of the porch.

Eight carved posts supported the roof, each representing one of the Eight Families. She moved along the rail, pulling fingers nervously through her long red-gold hair. “I don't know.” She stopped beside one of the posts and began tracing the symbols with her fingertips. “Sometimes I think I'm imagining it.” She shivered. He felt her unease and began to be restless himself. “At night sometimes you see things—shapes—at the edge of your vision; you're never sure they're really there; you keep staring at them; sometimes you're not sure … not sure.…” She pointed toward the mountains, more or less directly northeast. “There's something out there watching us, I think.”

“Haribu?”

She shrugged. “I don't know.” She stared northward, reaching out, concentrating, trying to touch the presence flowing elusively about just beyond the horizon.

He felt nothing at first, then something like a brushing across his nerves, there and gone before he could catch hold of it. Then nothing again. Leaving her straining on the porch, he went down the steps to the groundcar. He was hungry and began poking about for something to eat. When he found nothing he slammed the door shut and stood looking around the court. There was no cover on the Mother Well. That hurt most; Mother Well was the heart symbol of the Holding and to see her.… Hesitantly he crossed to the coping and looked down. Choked. Half filled with debris. He walked away, moving to the arch. He leaned against the stone and looked out over the churned devastation left behind by the hares.

“Faiseh and Grey should be here soon.” She was deliberately ignoring his grief. “None of us thought of food last night.”

Manoreh glanced up at the sky. The green-gold morning flush behind the mountains was brightening rapidly into full day. Jua Churukuu was a crushed green half-circle sliced across by the peaks. “I don't remember much about yesterday.” He kicked at the muck on the tiles and was abruptly on the brink of blindrage.

“No!” The woman came off the porch, moving so fast she was at his side before he could react. Her hand closed on his arm. Her blue-green eyes were intent on his, demanding his attention. Coolness flowed like water from her fingers, quenching his anger. He tried to pull away but her long, narrow hand had a surprising strength. Suddenly the touch of her flesh nauseated him. She was alien and terrrible, and frightening.

She dropped her hand and stepped back.

“Sorry,” he mumbled.

“Forget it!” Her mind was screaming at him:
ANNOYANCE/ANGER
. Finally she spoke, her eyes fixed on the ground, “Neither of us can help how we feel. It's our bad luck we don't have the comfort of hypocrisy.” Before he could try to answer, she'd swung away from him and was staring back toward the mountains. “He's laughing at us.”

He felt it too, a ghastly chuckling, barely perceptible, coming from something that hovered beyond the horizon. He frowned. “Haribu, but different. I don't know. Like Haribu, not quite the same feel. But he does change his touch. I don't know.” He faced the woman. “He's waiting. Why doesn't he strike?”

Her eyes had a blank look. For the first time he saw her really frightened. “What is it?”

“Do you know why I'm here? Why
I'm
here?” He shook his head. “Of course you don't; stupid of me. I'm the bait in this rat trap. That thing out there, he wants me. He arranged to have
me
sent on this Hunt. I'm part of the price for his services to those who're trying to clear off this damn world.”

Sick, shaking with her fear and his own, he caught her arm and pulled her toward the car. “Get back to the city. Get off this world. A woman! What the hell were your people thinking of sending you out on a thing like this?”

With that disturbing strength she pried his fingers loose and stepped away. “You don't understand. How could you?” She stepped back from him, amused again and irritated at him. “You've got no idea what I'm capable of. Manoreh, if I give up now, I lose more than.…” She sighed. She was right. He didn't understand her; even when he felt every emotion she experienced, he didn't understand her.

“Hunting means freedom to me, Manoreh. What would you do if you were shut, um … in this courtyard and compelled to spend the rest of your life in it, vulnerable to every force that wished to twist and destroy you?” She was fierce and wild just then; he backed away from her. “No. I'd face more than your Haribu,” she went on more calmly, “to avoid a fate like that.” Her hand went up and rubbed at her temple, a habit she had; he'd seen her do it a number of times and each time he felt a cold loneliness in her. Once again she shook off the malaise, then smiled. “This bait is going to give our friend out there a hell of a bad time. If he swallows me, I promise him the worst bellyache he ever had.”

He laughed, surprised by her sudden humor. Then rubbed his stomach. “Wish you hadn't mentioned swallowing.”

She grinned at him, in control of herself again, beginning to savor the excitement of the Hunt. She turned her head in a sudden flurry of clackings. The uauawimbony tree. Manoreh stiffened, waited, then relaxed. “The others. They're here.”

Chapter X

Kitosime held her sleepy son tight against her as Faiseh and the Hunter rode through the arch with spare mounts and a pack-faras with supplies for the Hunt. She stood stiffly on the porch long after they had gone, even after the uauawimbony's clatter died away.

Hodarzu whined his discomfort and began wriggling and twisting, knocking his strong, small arms and legs into her tired body. She shifted her hold and lowered him to the floor. “Hush, toto,” she murmured. She brushed her hand across her face and grimaced at the film of dirt and sweat on her palm. “Tomorrow, my son, we organize some things. Now we put you to bed. The dirt will wait.”

She took the small, damp hand and pushed the door open. The emptiness and darkness was like a wall. For a moment she couldn't gather the strength to break through it. Then Hodarzu tugged at her hand. He was tired and wanted familiar things about him. The two of them moved into the great hall. Their footsteps echoed eerily, sending shivers along Kitosime's body. She swept Hodarzu up, and hurried to the stairs, moving faster and faster as the darkness crept inside her and stirred ancient terrors. For the first time in her life she was alone. Alone in this great house built to hold dozens of families. She ran blindly at the stairs.

Halfway up the first flight she stumbled and fell to her knees. With Hodarzu crying loudly in his own terror, pressing his face into her breast, she got shakily to her feet and stood clinging to the railing until the weakness went out of her knees and she stopped shaking. Hodarzu stopped his wailing as she regained a little calm, reminding her forcefully that he
FELT
what she felt. She began climbing again. Past the second floor, then the third. To the fourth floor and the snug corner room Kobe's favoritism had given her.

She pushed the door open. Hodarzu's small bed with its high railings was visible in the moons' light coming in streaks through the louvered shutters. The boy was heavy on her hip, breathing noisily in a deep sleep. He muttered briefly as she lowered him into the bed and worked off his crumpled smock but didn't waken. She ran a caressing hand over his springy curls then pulled a light cover over him.

She moved to the window and opened the slats. Later she'd have to hunt out lamps and candles, and see if she could harness a faras somehow to the hand pump to keep the tower cistern filled. She smiled ruefully at the shadowed garden below. So many things to see to.
And I'm so terribly ignorant about all of them
, she thought. After another look outside, she closed the louvers partway, then wandered about the room idly remembering old days, old ways. She slid the closet door back and ran her hands over the dresscloths hanging like ghosts inside. She shivered and shut the door.