Brian D'Amato

by In the Courts of the Sun

  Zhhhweeeee—

  Another. Duck!

  Thhgdg.

  Damn. They couldn’t see me through the trees, could they? They’re throwing by sound. Just chipping. Don’t worry. Stay out of kill range and you’ll be fine. I veered right. Shit. Antlers caught. I could hear a couple of the fastest hunters panting up the hill after me. Potential puncture wounds tingled over my back. Pull. Branches. Pull them out. Pull. Vines. Ouch. Neck. Dammit.

  Whzhhweee. Bkt!

  There. Got my antlers free. Left. I hightailed it uphill and left. Up. Left. Left. Shit—

  Whzeeeeeeeeeee …

  Overhead. Down. Crouch. Down. Don’t let them get a clear shot. Keep the trees between us, then get up to the torch line somewhere, find a hole. Damn. The place didn’t offer cover like a natural forest. It was more like hiding behind pillars of a colonnade. You had to keep moving from trunk to trunk. Okay. Up. Antlers unbalancing me. Head heavy. Damn. I got an image of myself as one of those prehistoric Irish elks with the racks as wide and heavy as two Yamaha Road Stars. No wonder they didn’t last. Gotta get these fuckers off. I dug my fingertips in under the leather straps around my head, but there was some sort of gum or resin under there, bonding to my skin. Never mind.

  Quiet. Run silent, run deep. They’re fast too. Just keep going.

  Got to vomit. The thing is, if you really run faster than you can, you throw up. Gotta go. Gork. Uchg. Whew. I think I managed to do it quietly. Anyway, there wasn’t much there. Keep going. Come on. Don’t worry about where you’re getting your strength from, just where it will take you. Hup. Hup.

  I veered uphill and south. Can’t take this abuse much longer. Such a knot of pain in my heart. Lung. Whatever.

  It was quiet again. No more shouting. They were still coming after me, though. Listening. Slow down. You’re too noisy.

  Stealthy. Healthy and wise.

  Hmm. The line’s right up there. Just a little farther. Just go for it. No, wait.

  I paused.

  Oh, shit. Close behind me on the left. Damn. Twigs snapping. Better—

  Wait. No. Making too much noise. Too showy. He wants to drive me forward into the others.

  Think. What are they doing?

  They’re above you. Waiting for you. And the rest are spreading out. A few trackers were going to stay on my trail as I went up the slope, and the rest would fan out in front of me. And then they’d close in.

  The hunters above me were settling in. Listening.

  Stay put. You run for it, yousa goin’ die.

  You’re going to have to go for the line from a different spot. From the left.

  Okay. Back down. Retrace.

  I padded backward as silently as my feet knew how, back toward the valley. The ground here was clear, but some of the eucalyptus branches drooped down to chest height. Watch it. I turned around and stumbled downhill. Now that I was facing southwest for the first time I saw a vague larger glow beyond the next ridge of the sierra, a glow that Chacal’s brain knew very well, the temple watch fires of Ix.

  De todos modos. Just curve west and try again. They probably expect you to go counterclockwise. Everything around here goes counterclockwise. Go clockwise.

  I couldn’t see the ridge, but the stars were like having a GPS. Judging by 9 Death’s Head, that is, Regulus, it was right over there.

  I figured it was about seventy difficult steps up the burnt turf from here to the torch line.

  Bueno.

  Go.

  I headed up the hill in a wide curve, aiming to come out of the line of trees as far to the west as possible—

  Close. Something. I threw myself on the ground without knowing why.

  Cht-tzii—thkgk.

  Shit. I jumped up, whoa, falling back, no, grabbed, damn, my neck, cońo Dios, holy shit, a hand on my goddamn antlers. I wrenched my head forward but he had me by the main shaft of the right fork. I pulled left, no, too late, he had me, but then without thinking I arched my back and slammed my points back against him. There was a moment of resistance and a sharp exhalation of breath, and as I twisted forward again the hunter’s hand released and I spun around facing him. His legs said he was from the Ocelot House, and he was twelve or fourteen at the most, but with tauntingly long hair, like, Hey, go ahead, grab it. He was holding his left hand over his right collarbone where a point of my antler had gone in. I repositioned myself and jumped frog-style at his face. The shock wave went from his skull to mine like we were a couple of pool balls. Eat horn, fathermotherfucker. Ty spikes the baseman. Fuck y’all. He grabbed my horns and twisted them, Theseus-and-the-Minotaur style. I let myself turn and fall, got a hand around the big knot at the front of his sash, and pulled my points up into his neck again. This time he stumbled back and when I arched my back again his hands let me go.

  Ouch. Was my neck broken? No, then I wouldn’t be moving. I stepped back and looked sideways up at the Ocelot. The right side of his head was shiny black in the starlight, blood from a gouge below his eye. He staggered toward me.

  Don’t worry, he’s too messed up. I backed away from him.

  He’s losing blood, he’s getting weaker. Just hold him off until he collapses and then pop him. On the other hand, maybe I should just run.

  Or should I take the time to kill him so he won’t give an alarm? That’s ridiculous, just run. They can already hear where the hell I am. Speed. I ran. Just make it up there and you’ll be free to leave. Free as a bee, free to bee, you and meeee—

  Whoa. Who’ hoppen?

  I was prone on the ground again. I rolled over and sat up. My right leg was hot. Hmm. A javelin had hit it on the back of my thigh, two inches above the knee. Oh, hell, I’m hit. Shit doggy dog. Blunt or not, those things still do some damage. Not deep, but still. Bloody. Bloody hell. As I was checking out the cut I noticed the javelin was still in one piece and lying on the ground, and as I was looking at that, it slid away from me, backward through the grass like the tail of a snake. I grabbed it by the fur covering, just below the joint where the replaceable ferrule attached to the main shaft. Somebody tried to yank it away. I yanked back and looked up. It was the same Ocelot blood. Oh, Christ. Face it, dude, you’re beat. We glared at each other but there wasn’t any real communication there. Fine, I thought, just don’t yell for backup. Save me all for yourself. I twisted the javelin against his thumbs, but he wouldn’t let go. I lowered my antlers between us and got into a squat and managed to climb back onto my feet, still holding the spear shaft. Okay, Jed, just don’t let go. I twisted behind the tree, still hanging on to the spearshaft, and I circled counterclockwise, keeping the roughly eight-inch-diameter trunk between us, using it as a fulcrum, going faster and faster. I took my right hand off the spear, swung it around the trunk, and got my hand onto a leather-and-jade band around his upper left arm, and I had him by both arms, with the tree between us. He seemed to recoil as my skin touched his and for a moment he was off-balance, his feet still on the ground while mine were already walking up the trunk. I tightened my grip on the leather band, leaned back, and straightened myself. There was a beautiful thwotch sound as his chest slammed into the trunk. The muscles of his wrists went slack for an instant, but he didn’t let go of the spear shaft and I choked my left hand farther up on it, finally getting to his wrist cuff, and then grabbed that and pulled again. This time, even through the wood of the trunk, my feet could feel his mandible mashing into his upper jaw. Chew tree, scuzzface! Power to the dirty fighters! He shouted something, slurring badly, and then just went into a series of yelps to help everyone locate the direction of the sound. Fucker. He must have decided that he’d had it and he might as well turn me in. Shut up shutup shutupshutup, I thought, you are bumming me out and you are buttfucking dead. I twisted around the trunk to the right, got enough arm slack to move my right hand off the shoulder strap and up onto the back of his head, got a good grip on his beaded topknot, and pulled him into the trunk again, feeling the skull split somewhere, and from the way it shifted you could tell it had lost its rigidity, like an egg with a
cracked shell that hasn’t yet popped its membrane. The yelping stopped. You are over, I thought. Got that? I am the hottest shit known to man, I thought. Hah. Sure, I’m a little woozy, but none the worse for wear. I can handle this. Anyway, I’m armed now, right? I’ve got a javelin, my mind singsonged, I’ve got a javelin. I have the technology. Up. Firelight right up there. Not far at all. Come on.

  There were weird sounds behind me. Oh, cripes.

  Snuffling.

  They’re sniffing for my sweat. And blood. Damn. Damn.

  Quiet.

  Inhale. Hold. Exhale. Softer. Inhale. I synchronized my panting with the trills of a nearby cricket. Blend in. Think like a bush.

  Still, they’ll smell me. Better move out soon.

  Now. No, wait.

  Either the fear or just the whole situation or something was triggering flashes from Chacal’s memories, a snippet of his early training, a sort of character test when the pilomancers, that is, the hipball augurers, had led him down into the Hipball Brethren’s soul cave. They’d walked through the caverns without torches, feeling their way by grooves in the floor, and laid him naked in a stone sarcophagus. And then they’d gone away, supposedly. At the time he’d believed he’d been there for days before the voices started. They started as faraway whispers, Who is this, I smell someone who shouldn’t be here, let’s eat him, let’s jawbone him. They were the uayob of ancient disgraced hipball players coming to take him to Xib’alb’a, drawing closer and closer, demanding secret names that he’d sworn never to divulge, ordering him to leave the casket and come with them, and when the voices nestled right in next to him, so loud and close they seemed to be burrowing into him, he didn’t know whether he’d ended up shouting along with them in the hurricane of screams, but he knew that he hadn’t run away, that he hadn’t told the name, that he hadn’t even moved. When they’d lifted him out the next day, the eight-year-old who was going to be Chacal had passed the point of utter insane terror into something else. And by the time he’d realized that it was only the pilomancers calling through tubes that fed into the vents of the casket, it didn’t make any difference. The boys who’d survived that and the other tests had either been born with a flint core or had grown one. They were opaque to suffering. Twenty-first-century people would have said that the trauma of the tests deadened their day-to-day emotions and seeded a rage that could blast out with almost no provocation. Here it just meant they could become bloods.

  A leaf crinkled twenty feet behind me. Nothing else for it. Go. Gogogogogo.

  I ran.

  Oh, shit. Too soon.

  There was a spear whistle on my left. I jumped left, rolled forward, and pushed myself back upright with the javelin shaft. For a second I thought I’d done everything right, but then my right leg slipped out from under me. Did it get hit? I wondered. If so, why didn’t I feel anything? Too much adrenaline, or what? I caught myself enough to fall on my knees and spin around in a squat. A Snuffler Clan blood was charging me, holding the headless shaft of his javelin like a club. I stuck the butt of my javelin into the ground and braced for a collision. Off to the right there were two hunters about three hundred arms away, coming up with their javelins raised, ready to throw. One of them was an Ocelot and the other was the Harpy kid with the sweet round face. I knew his name, I thought, Chacal had played hipball with him, he was a new initiate into the Harpy hipball team, I knew his name, hah, that’s it: Hun Xoc. 1 Shark.

  Okay, I thought, just get through these three stooges and you’re in. I snapped back to attention and angled my javelin up at the Snuffler. He dodged the point and swung around my back, raising his shaft to brain me, and I turned to try to parry it. For an instant, and for no reason that I could see, he hesitated and took a half-step back, settling himself. Oh, I know, I thought. I’m polluted. Superstitious dick. I spread my arms and lowered my head rack and lunged at him. His shaft came down and knocked two points off my right rack but only grazed my forehead. You’ve spoiled your trophy, dude. I shook the dizziness out of my head, got my javelin in gear, and swung it in a wide arc eight inches above the ground. Snuffler Dude jumped and got his left foot clear, but the ferrule connected with his right one and snapped off the shaft. He tipped over, hit the ground, and sat up on the grass. Without needing to think I pulled back the javelin shaft for a thrust, and for an instant it was as though his skin was so thin and tight in the starlight that I could see through it. I zeroed in on where the exterior iliac artery was swelling and slackening, right inside the crotch, and jabbed the splintered end of the headless javelin in and around and dug for it. There was that gooey split-second resistance and release as the wood made it through the skin and twanged off a ligament and then I struck oil, an artery popped and I got that spurt of blood, yeah, spurt, spurt, SPURT! Ha! Wow, I really am hot shit, I thought. The Snuffler blood stayed silent and the only reaction in his face was maybe a flicker of disappointment in the eyes. I rolled away from him, hanging on to my javelin shaft, and wrenched myself upright.

  I wobbled a bit. For some reason I thought of the number eight.

  It doesn’t take a long time to register a lot of things, as long as your mind doesn’t try to move them up to a verbal level. In the span of less than a second I realized the Snuffler was dead, and I realized this was the first time I’d killed anyone. People say that your first time can bring on waves of guilt and elation, that you might get a sympathetic reaction and hear the blood rushing in your ears and get tunnel vision and faint, or you might get an adrenaline spike that can lead to an orgasm, or a sympathetic reaction that can make you faint, and then more guilt, and so on. And despite everything else that was going on, some part of me was expecting at least some of those things. But instead I felt something oddly familiar. It was the way I used to feel when I was shopping, when I’d bought something expensive, like, say, that last Plymouth Barracuda. Or even like I’d just clicked in a big bid on eBay in the last five seconds of the auction. There was the same little peak of tension, and then a release and relief, and then a fading aftertaste that’s a combination of buyer’s remorse and the satisfaction of ownership. It was as though I owned the Snuffler. Or, rather, I’d separated his body from his uay, and now his uay was prowling and snuffling around me, ready to follow me wherever I went, and if I did the right things, I could keep it from taking revenge on me and instead make it my pet. Or, rather, my slave. But then mixed with that I was feeling something like guilt, but not guilt. It was more physical, a sense of defilement, like I’d stepped in dog vomit, say, or like I’d been playing with radioactive chemicals and gotten my arm hot and now I had to be decontaminated. It didn’t feel like there was anything wrong with my character. It was just that I’d gotten close to death, and death is infectious. And finally, I realized that I was feeling these things, and not the things I’d expected, because this actually wasn’t my first kill. I’d killed before. That is, Chacal had killed people before, seven of them, on the hipball court.

  I wasn’t feeling what I would feel, I thought. I mean, what Jed would feel. I was feeling what Chacal would feel. Yes, I was in control of his body, but my emotions were his. And no wonder, because 99 percent of his whole nervous system was still his. And then there was this thin little pattern wrapped around his frontal cortices that told him he was me and not himself. The self isn’t some big cosmic force. It’s flimsy.

  Short Ocelot had come up on my right, yelling his capturing cry. I got up but there was no way I was going to get ahead of him, so I turned around. He had his javelin up like a lance, about to skewer me. I dove and rolled. He reacted quickly and got it together for another run, but he was close enough so I spat a big gout of blood at him and it hit him right in the chest, a big red mucousy splotch. Take that, I thought. COOTIES!!!

  He recoiled. Behind him I could see the Harpy blood hanging back. Why? Maybe he’s afraid of infection too. Or because he’s still kind of on my side? No, it’s just that they’re all really scared of touching me. I’m unclean. Irrationally, I felt insulted. Oh, for God’s sake. Just use it.

>   The short Ocelot was coming back. The torchlight from above me reflected in his eyes, and something in Chacal knew that if he was looking into the light he couldn’t see me as well as I could see him. I dove low and deflected his javelin with my left hand and steered my spear handle up into his mouth. It caught and I felt something soft. Have a tonsillectomy, punk. I jumped back and twisted the shaft out through his cheek. He didn’t make a sound and he didn’t back up, that whole macho ethic, he just got his balance back and came forward again. I wound up and slashed and my shaft bounced on his javelin and slid up it into his fingers. There was a little crunch and his hand released the spear. Try to get it? No, too late. Time to boogie. Step. Step. Eight steps up the hill I heard the telltale rattle of shell jewelry as the Harpy blood adjusted his body, getting ready to throw. An easy shot.

  Damn, I thought, you would have made it. I braced for the shock of flint on my spine, but the javelin hummed through the air to my left with this beautiful sort of lost sound. Two more hops. I heard the Harpy blood trip on something and fall. Weird. Incompetent clod. Maybe he missed me on purpose. Forget it. Just make it the bloody blue hell to the chingado fireline. Details later.