Hunters of the Red Moon

by Marion Zimmer Bradley,;Paul Edwin Zimmer

  He had hoped to bring his group all through alive. I've lost Cliff-Climber and now Rianna. Dallith lay close to him, holding him in her arms; she was crying, too, and Dane knew that she shared his own agonized grief and sense of loss as if it were her own. He clung to the knowledge that they had not found her body, or so much as a drop of blood. But where can she go, wounded, alone, without food or water, for all we know dying? Maybe dying alone, while we lie here waiting, he thought. Finally, since he could not rest, as soon as Dallith and Aratak had rested a little, he got up and made them search the ruins by moonlight.

  This would be a fine time for them to hit us. Who cares?

  As the sun came up, bathing the ruins with clear light, Aratak finally called a halt. "Dane, my dear, my very dear friend," he said gently, "we cannot search every old building in this city. If she could have heard us, she would have answered. If she could move, she would have come back to us. Dallith says she does not feel Rianna's presence anywhere. I. fear, my dear friend, we must bow to the inevitable. Rianna is dead, and the dead are beyond our pity or our help. We must save our strength now for ourselves."

  "I can't give up like that," Dane said, despairing. "We should all live, or all die, together!"

  Dallith was drowned in tears. Aratak came and embraced them both, a giant arm around each of their shoulders, as if they were little children clinging to an adult. He said in his deepest voice, "Believe me, I share your grief. But would Rianna want you to die?"

  "No," Dallith said, wiping her face on a corner of her cloak. "Rianna would tell me to stay alive and look after both of you. I'm sorry, Aratak. We'll go."

  Dane grimly summoned his strength. Rianna was gone —maybe. But Dallith was alive and she still needed his protection. "Let's not go back to the fountain square," he said. "Let's get through the ruined wall somewhere else."

  "It will mean climbing down that long cliff—" Aratak demurred.

  "So much the better," Dane said. "It's too steep for anything to come on us unawares. If they come at us from below, we can hold the slope. If they come at us from above, we can push them down."

  But there was no need for either attack or defense. The sun shone brilliantly over the broken walls and abandoned buildings and on the slope below the city, but no living forms moved except their own.

  We must have killed four of them last night. I wonder how many Prey ever bag six Hunters at a clip? Dane thought. It's no price for Rianna. But it's better than nothing.

  At the last Hunt there were forty-seven Hunters and eighty or ninety Prey. And nineteen Hunters killed, and one surviving Prey.

  We're not doing so badly. But then, they said they had a hard time getting dangerous ones. I guess they got their money's worth on us.

  It occurred to Dane that possibly, in a day of Universal Sapience and the like, a barbarian from a world with a warlike history had a better chance. The Hunters wanted a fair fight, maybe, and not just mass slaughter. But a race which could take literally any form— Yes, they would have trouble finding Prey fierce enough to give them a good game.... Maybe a few hundred years ago there were more fighters in the Galaxy. Now there seemed to be the Mekhars, the spider-men, and not much else that was tough enough to fight. Without his help, Dallith and Rianna would probably have been killed off first thing. Dane had organized their defense. Hell—without his help maybe the others would all have gone peacefully enough to the Gorbahl slave mart—and Dallith would have peacefully died.

  Maybe that would have been better. For all of us. But what's done is done.

  At the foot of the long hill, where the boulders lay strewn like vast tumbled giants' heads, Dane gave the signal for extra caution; this was all too good a place for an attack. He glanced quickly over his shoulder, taking a long last look at the city. Rianna had wanted to explore it; now she would lie there forever.

  At the edge of his vision a solitary figure caught his eye; small, slight, sturdy, crowned with a cloud of curling red hair. Dane's grief and rage exploded in wild fury and he ran forward, sword whipped out, ready to run the Hunter through, the foul thing that had taken Rianna's shape as one of them had taken his own before Dallith. He ran, swinging his sword, until Dallith's shriek caught him

  "Dane! No, no, no, it's Rianna, it's Rianna, it's really Rianna—"

  Momentum carried Dane on so that he could only turn aside, at the last moment, gasping. He lowered the sword and spun around, looking at Rianna in suspicious, disbelieving amazement.

  "It's really me," Rianna said hoarsely. "Don't run me through, Dane."

  Then he believed her. Never yet had he heard any Hunter utter any sound except the characteristic wailing scream when wounded. Dallith ran to clasp the other girl in her arms.

  "I thought we'd lost you for good," she said shakily, and Rianna said, "I thought so too. I was sure you'd have gone away by midnight; I only hoped to find you at one of the neutral zones—"

  "What happened? What happened?" Dane caught her close, in surprise and relief. Too good to be true, too good... but don't question it, accept it, this fantastic gift of their luck. It was really Rianna, returned to them beyond hope.

  "I'll tell you, but let's move along," she said soberly. "I think perhaps there aren't many Hunters around. There's something very funny about this place—"

  They clustered together, moving across the rock-strewn plain and beyond the cleft where they had fought the spider-man, Dallith keeping a defensive lookout to the rear; but none of them wanted to let Rianna out of reach.

  "I ran into the building," she said. "I heard one of them behind me, I thought. I tried to turn around and make a stand, but I couldn't see anything; I'd come beyond daylight. I wandered in the dark, trying to find my way out, getting more and more lost in the darkness, and then they came."

  "They came? Who are they?"

  "I don't know. I never saw them clearly," she said, and she looked and sounded puzzled. "They couldn't have been Hunters. In the first place—I told you I've been taught nonverbal communication techniques for peoples without translator disks—they made it clear to me that that meant me no harm. They gave me food—it wasn't, good, some kind of fungus, but they evidently knew I could eat it without being harmed. And they rebandaged my wounds, cleaned them, set my elbow; it wasn't broken, just dislocated. Look." She showed them her arm, fixed in a careful sling of some dark-red fiber, quite unlike the terra-cotta tunic material. "But even at the best it was semi-dark—there are miles and miles of caves and tunnels under the city. There aren't many of them... the people, I mean; they must be the old inhabitants of the city. But I suspect that's why there are as many survivors of the Hunt as there are; evidently helping the Hunted is nothing new to them."

  She was silent, puzzling it out. Finally she said, "In the morning they led me down, through the caves, and showed me an entrance—an exit, I should say—at the foot of the cliff below the city. But I never got a look at them."

  They journeyed in silence for some time, each of them thinking over this new factor in the Hunt. If there were only some way to find out what they could do... but probably the Hunters came near enough to exterminating them, ages ago....

  Aratak said quietly, "On my own planet's satellite—our world's twin, as this one is the Hunters' World—we had a like civilization, and they came near to wiping us out. But in the end they learned enough of our philosophy to realize that one hand cannot clap alone, and now they are our brothers. This tells me again what might have become of our world without that—"

  They left the rock-strewn plain and began to traverse again the hilly land, cut through by streams and underbrush. Dane figured, roughly, that the nearest neutral zone lay about six miles away, now. If they weren't delayed by fighting they could reach it before sunset. Since the Hunters liked to attack at sunset it was very likely they'd use it as a salt lick—waiting for the Prey to come for rest or refreshment—but that was a chance they had to take. Maybe they could stand them off until sunset again. When, when, when was that damn
ed Eclipse? Dane tried to reckon up how many days they had come, but he found he had untraceably lost track of time. He kept trying to add up days and nights and coming up with different sums. Let's see, was that the night we slept in the neutral zone? Did this happen before or after we lost Cliff-Climber? Was that the seventh or the ninth day we fought the spider-man?

  It's getting toward afternoon and the Hunters' World isn't in the sky yet. That means it's near full, and when it's full, the Eclipse comes; it's near, but God, how near? The Eclipse could be tomorrow night or even tonight—if it is, we might, we just might make it....

  Is it tonight? And again he began the obsessive counting up. The first night when we slept here and the Hunt began at dawn and Dallith and I were together, and we spent one, or was it two, nights in the city.... The night we forded the stream...

  No use. His brain, half dazed by fatigue and stress and emotion, completely refused to focus on time. The Hunt was all there was and he could not tie it to time at all.

  The last mile's always the hardest. Aboard the Seadrift the worst stage of the voyage had always been when he was actually within sight of land.

  Dallith touched his arm. She said in an undertone, "Hunters. Along that rise and beyond—in the underbrush."

  Damn, Dane thought. I meant to go that way. He nodded, tight-lipped, and said, "Right. Don't stay in contact any more than you have to," and beckoned to Aratak to change his course. It would mean a long detour, but they could still make the neutral zone by nightfall. Better yet, just after. I'd hate to have to fight our way in.

  After a time Dallith nodded in agreement and Dane relaxed a little, knowing they were at least temporarily out of range.

  God, when is that damned Eclipse?

  Rianna was walking better. Evidently food and rest, and the tending of her wounds, had done her a lot of good. I only wish Dallith looked as good, poor kid! Rianna's arm was still in the bandage, but it wasn't her knife-arm.

  The neutral zone shouldn't be more than a few miles, across that ridge—

  "Hunters," Dallith said in a shaky whisper, "It's us they're hunting. Oh, Dane, Dane, they have a picture of us... I saw it—"

  "Easy. Easy." He put his free arm around her. "Get out as fast as you can. Here. Hang onto me if you want to. Here, down this way...."

  Rianna said, low-voiced, "I think they're herding us, Dane. Trying to trap us down in the wedge of the hills here. Look—" She drew a quick diagram with the spear-point. "Hills to the right. Hills to the left. The neutral zone down here, off sunward, but they're driving us down away from it."

  Dane considered that for a minute. By now the Hunters must surely know that they were traveling in a pack and sooner or later the Hunters were sure to gang up and attack them that way. "We'll avoid them while we can," he said, "but if we have to make a stand, better to do it before sunset than after midnight. I'm not eager to fight those critters in the dark—not even by moonlight."

  "The Divine Egg has told us: it is well to see one's enemy by daylight," Aratak said.

  Dane said sourly, "I'll bet you'll quote the Divine Egg on your deathbed."

  "If I am fortunate enough to have one, what better place?" Aratak retorted.

  That was so incontrovertibly true that Dane only said, "Let's start looking for a place to make a stand."

  If the Hunters were herding them, they flushed out one or two other of the Prey; once Dane saw a fleeing form far away, another indescribably strange one pursuing it; a distant bellow of triumph or rage, a clash of swords as they turned and faced one another. Something died, and lay motionless, and since the survivor did not flee but quietly melted into the underbrush again, Dane surmised that another Hunter had his catch for the day.

  "Dallith. Can you tell if they're still following us?"

  She nodded wordlessly. He thought, If they hit us, she's exhausted, and finally made a decision.

  They were finally coming out of the hills laden with underbrush that they had traveled all afternoon, and into the bottom of the valley. To the left lay a deep stream, or perhaps a shallow river; over it hung a dark cliff shadowed with caves.

  "We don't want to get trapped between the cliff and the stream," Dane said. "Let's ford the stream before it gets any deeper, and make for the underbrush. The neutral zone is that way. If we can hold them off till dark—"

  Rianna held him back, and pointed. On the far side of the stream stood a tall figure. Dane's instant reaction was, "Is that a bear, or a Russian, or what?"

  Rianna, literal as always, said, "It's a Hunter. In proto-ursine shape—he probably killed the proto-ursine we saw on the ship."

  Dane had his sword out. Dallith said, uneasily, "Why doesn't he attack?" She had her sling out, but the Hunter was out of range. "He just doesn't want us to cross the stream—"

  Dane said grimly, "Maybe he's already picked his own choice of fighting grounds. Or maybe he's waiting for reinforcements." He thought, if it's as near the end as I think, there may be no other Prey left alive—and they're free to concentrate on us. One survivor last time, one survivor last time, pounded in his head. Prime targets, that's us. Good sport.

  Dane looked around. To the left the stream flowed; at their back the cliff was sheltered by an overhang, and to the right there was a flat place, hard and rock-strewn. Dane's mind, trained to crisis, thought, Fighting room.

  "We'll wait here," he said briefly. "We're all tired from that forced march. If they keep driving us, we're playing right into their hands—tire us out, then pick us off. If we stand here until his reinforcements arrive, we get some rest."

  Rianna demurred. "I don't like it. We're boxed in."

  "We could be boxed in tighter," Dane said, "if we let him herd us into his own favorite fighting grounds." He didn't like the way the Hunter was regarding them; his skin prickled. Is he measuring me for a spot on his wall? Does he have a grudge? Is he, maybe, the one I fought before and drove off, in pseudo-Mekhar shape, twice? He did not need Dallith's half-unconscious nod of agreement to know he had guessed right, and that this must be the leader, if there was a leader, to the Hunt.

  At least the wait here was letting them get their breath back. Dane felt that he could do with a good dinner, but instead he knelt by the stream cupping up water, drinking. His skin prickled as if he were expecting a blow, or an arrow, but none came, and he thought, Maybe they don't use bow and arrows. Maybe they like to feel the blade go in. The water tasted cool and surprisingly good.

  Tonight, if I get to the neutral zone, I'm going to ask old Server for that steak dinner, and see what he says.

  He repeated this to Rianna, and she smiled faintly. "I was thinking about that myself. That victory feast, if we get that far, is going to taste awfully damned good."

  Dallith was twisting her hands nervously. "Why don't they attack? He wants to attack, he wants—"

  Aratak laid his huge paw on her shoulder. "Calm, my dear one, calm. Every moment they do not attack is a moment we have to regather our strength. I beg you to rest yourself as much as possible."

  "Think I'll do the same," Rianna said in an undertone. "My leg could use it." She sat down, carefully keeping the spear at hand.

  Dane looked at her bandaged leg, but it seemed not too swollen and she had no signs of fever. It will be all over soon and we can rest. Wonder if they intend to polish us off for a final tidbit before the Eclipse?

  We probably can't stand them off. It's hope that hurts.

  He rested, sword in hand and alert but his body relaxed, between Dallith and Rianna. Whatever happens to us now, I've loved them both. His mind persisted in grinning behind his back at that. Just like a proto-simian to be thinking about that now. Once again his mind had the acid-etched, fatigue-sharpened, awareness of reality of the first morning of the Hunt. He thought, What better time?

  I thought all my life I was looking for adventure, and now at the edge of death I've found out what I was really looking for. I was looking for reality—the two realities that are never found in
twentieth-century civilization with its emphasis on sex, not love, and cruelty, not death.

  And here I've found them—maybe too late, but I've found the two things which are the only things worth coming to terms with: love and death. Once you've come to terms with those, you know what life is. Everything else is just the trimmings.

  Love—Rianna and Dallith by his side. And Aratak.

  And Death—that Hunter across the hill, and all his little brothers in every shape and form. For an instant, half in a dream, he radiated a mad love toward the Hunter as well, the Hunter who had taught him about Death as Rianna and Dallith had taught him about Love.... He knew he was fey, and tried consciously to grasp reality, the physical situation. The cliff. The fighting ground. The rocks. The hilt of the sword in his hand. But some insane atom of his brain persisted in telling him that this was reality. Each man kills the thing he loves..

  Loves any man the thing he would not kill...

  Love thine enemies....

  Liebestod....

  Dallith suddenly flung her arms around him and kissed him. Her mouth was scalding hot and her face flushed, and he strained her tight in his arms, but he kept his voice low and calm, through the bursting excitement.

  "Take it easy. It's going to be OK." But he kept wondering, Is she fey too?

  Rianna's hand was hard on his. She was breathing deeply.

  "Dane—if anything happens—"

  "No," he interrupted. "Don't say it! Don't say it! Say it afterward!"

  And at that moment Dallith cried a wordless warning, and then the Hunters were on them.

  There was no way to tell how many there were. They came in suddenly from all sides, bursting out from the underbrush so quickly that there was barely time to form their defensive line. Dallith dropped one and then another with her sling while she was running to take up her place, atop a small pile of stones that lay against the overhang. Aratak stepped toward the stream, his great club raised.