The Hunter Victorious

by Rose Estes

  That hatred rose up in him again, along with the fear, as the dwarf lost himself in the dark corridors, running without thought wherever his feet took him. If Braldt was right, if they were looking for him, it was only a matter of time before they hunted him down and killed him. He stopped then and leaned against a door, gasping for breath. Maybe he would die; it didn’t really matter so much. There was no way he could help Braldt now, but he could do one thing. He could make certain that Gunnar Bakkstrom never laughed again.

  15

  Barat Krol fought to keep the elation from his face. Could it be true? Could he actually be making progress at last? Time and time again he had visited the Madrelli compound, a stinking, crowded dormitory where males and females, adults and young were housed. There was absolutely no privacy. Every function of their lives, from copulating to elimination, was open to view, their own and that of anyone else who cared to watch.

  He had tried to make them see the inequity of their lives, but he had never made any headway. They simply did not care to listen. Then he thought about incentives. True, it was a shoddy trick, but there was so little time to spare and so much at stake, at this point he would have seized upon any ploy that would work.

  And work it had. He had plundered a storeroom and stolen several sacks of sugar, which the Madrelli loved and seldom received. Using the sweets as an incentive, he had bribed them to listen to him and grudgingly agree to do as he asked, but only after he had promised them a continuing supply of the forbidden sweet.

  What he had asked was that they allow him to inject them with the drug that had elevated his own tribe’s intelligence to a level equal to that of the Scandis themselves. As yet he had no real idea how he would go about doing such a thing; he had no knowledge of where the drug was kept, nor even if there was an adequate supply on hand to inject everyone. He could only guess at the effect it would have on them, for they had never been given the drug before.

  Barat Krol had wrestled with the ethics of what he intended to do, asking himself if his actions would make him no different than the Scandi scientists who had manipulated Madrelli minds and bodies for so many centuries. He did not have the time to give the drug in carefully metered doses, increasing the amounts slowly, allowing the Madrelli days, months, years to adjust to their development.

  He was fighting for their very survival, whether they realized it or not. If it earned him their hatred, at least they would be alive to hate. He could only hope that such a large concentrated dose would not have an adverse effect. There was no way of knowing. He had not dared to tell Uba Mintch of his plans, knowing that the old one would never agree.

  He handed out the cubes of sugar, smiling at the way the young ones seized it, seeing the naked joy and greed on their faces, and feeling happiness mixed with worry at what he was about to do.

  Events began to move with a momentum of their own. Otir Vaeng’s doctors had managed to stop the infection from advancing, but they had not been able to destroy it. Although they had not shared their concerns, they feared that it was but a matter of time before the infection overcame their newest drug.

  They did not dare inform the king, for he was in no mood to be philosophical or forgiving about their failure. Others had departed this world as well as other worlds for displeasing the king, and failing to save his life was certain to earn his displeasure! Then too there was always hope and prayer. The doctors hoped and prayed harder than ever before in their lives that they were wrong and that the king would somehow miraculously survive.

  His hand and arm were a hideous sight of suppurating flesh. Dark blood and thick, yellowish pus mingled and dripped continuously. He could not bear the weight of bandages which would have served no real purpose except to hide the gruesome limb from view. It only took one glance to know how serious the situation really was.

  Otir Vaeng was not stupid. He had to realize how grim the outlook. But he was strangely calm; even the frequent outbursts which so terrorized his court had ceased. He was often lost in his thoughts and did not seem to hear when spoken to.

  It might be thought that those who attended the king, those who had suffered the most from his unreasonable rages, might have drawn comfort from his strange quietude. Instead, it troubled them; as with a persistent pain that suddenly vanishes, they could not help but wonder when it would return or what would replace it.

  Nor would they have been reassured if they could have read his mind, for after a long, long scientifically extended lifetime, Otir Vaeng was tired of his life. As his mind floated on currents of pain that the drugs could not adequately mask, it seemed to him that his rotting arm was a visible symbol of his entire life.

  The pain, so clear and sharp that sometimes it quite literally took his breath away, was more real and true than anything he had felt in many a year. As much as it hurt, he savored his agony and wondered when he had ceased to feel. He could not even remember. It had been a very, very long time since he had genuinely loved or felt true happiness. He could not even remember the last time he had felt such an emotion.

  There was something very sad in that. Moisture welled in Otir Vaeng’s eyes and he realized with a sense of shock that he was crying! He could not even recall the last time in his long, long life that such a thing had happened, and that made him even sadder.

  A part of him recognized what was happening and tried to force his mind back into its accustomed grooves. After all, he was the king. There were important matters to be tended to, decisions to be made, plans to be laid. But somehow none of it seemed to matter anymore. He just didn’t care.

  He wondered if this was how the end would come, awash in a sea of indifference. Strangely, even that did not seem to matter. He found his wandering thoughts focusing in two directions, backward and forward. Memories of his earliest years surfaced most often, for he had been happy then, loved and loving in return, unaware of the long years of intrigue and worry that were soon to come.

  He plucked small, shining moments from his memory and held them like a glowing lamp to warm his heart and mind. He conjured up the face of a woman who had genuinely loved him, cared for he himself and not his power or his wealth. He excluded the memory of her expulsion from his court, for she was not suitable for marriage and too great a political liability to remain.

  He thought of a young boy, the bright, laughing eyes and squeals of excitement as he first discovered the delicious fear of tempting the curling waves of the ocean. He remembered the tiny arms that had wrapped themselves around his neck, the sticky hands. He remembered the sweet, powdery smell of the child, the whispers of shared secrets, and the looks of trusting love.

  He shut his mind against the flood of memories that crowded in, demanding to be heard. Those same trusting eyes had grown calculating and cold; the hands, small no longer, wrapping themselves around the hilt of a blade that the child, now a man, would gladly have thrust into his heart.

  He dreamed about earth as it had been before the temperatures and the seas rose, before the dying began. Clean, cold air, so cold it caused one’s teeth to ache. The sun glinting off the snow on the peaks of the mountains, shining so brightly that tears came. The fjords, still dark blue, nearly black, pure and freezing cold, lancing between the verdant mountain slopes like probing fingers anxious to feel the land. And the scent of the firs! It was a scent that he would never forget and never cease to yearn for. So sharp and acrid, so pungent and heady, more satisfying than the most expensive perfume.

  He shut out the vision of the fjords, thick and brownish yellow with refuse and the corpses of the deepest dwellers who had succumbed at last, their bodies bursting as they rose to the poisoned surface. He refused to remember the naked slopes, rising to the skies, all remnants of green long since vanished, only the bare skeletons of trunks and branches silhouetted against the contaminated earth. These were memories he did not choose to view.

  And now as never before, he found himself thinking of what was to come. On earth he, as the majority of others, had rej
ected formal religion, for it was difficult to believe in gods who would allow such death and utter desolation to befall those who lived their lives according to the proscribed tenets and doctrines.

  Yet, voyaging through space, experiencing the immensity of the universe, watching the earth as it grew smaller and smaller and finally vanished, feeling the fear of death and the exhilaration of discovering a new world, it was impossible to believe that all of it was just an accident. It was impossible to believe that it had all just “happened.” Yet it was also impossible to believe in the old, established religions, for none of them seemed to have any relevance after experiencing the immensity of the universe.

  Strangely, as strongly as they had cast aside their belief in religion on earth, there was now an even stronger compulsion among the Scandis to believe in something other than themselves. It was then that the old gods had reemerged. Otir Vaeng and the volva had recognized the need and resurrected them, Odin and Thor, Freya, Loki, and all the others. And somehow those older, more primitive gods seemed far more appropriate than those that had supplanted them. It was easier to believe in a god who presided over the chaos of the elements than a god who rewarded faithful belief with cruelty and death.

  The old gods had foretold of the coming destruction of the world and just such a thing had occurred on earth. They had also foretold the end of an age and the emergence of a new race of men and gods who would repeople the world in the age that would be. It was apparent to Otir Vaeng that that was exactly what was happening. Things were ending, on earth and now here, on Valhalla. Those who survived the death of this age would people the new world that was yet to come.

  Now, as he approached his own final ending, Otir Vaeng began to wonder what was to come. He and the volva had resurrected the old gods, it was true, but was it also not true that they had always been there? It could be argued that nature had repaid the people in full, taken its revenge upon them for raping the earth. And Loki, that god of mischief, must be enjoying himself, having a great belly laugh at the mess they had made of their lives and their world.

  He wondered if there truly was an afterlife. The thought was comforting, being welcomed into the Great Hall which he now envisioned somewhere in the vast darkness of space, taking his place among all the other warriors and lifting a horn of mead.

  If his mind had been clearer, Otir Vaeng might have marveled or at least had a moment of ironic laughter at the ease with which he had discarded three thousand years of established religion, shedding it like a too-small skin. He might also have chuckled at the ease with which he embraced a religion which he himself had reestablished as a mere soporific to satisfy the masses. But he no longer enjoyed that clarity of vision which had enabled him to rule for such a long time. In the end, as he approached his death, Otir Vaeng was not a king, he was merely a man.

  Dying though he might be, he had no intention of leaving the world with things undone. The gods wished it so; they whispered in his ear when he slept, and now, more often, when he was awake. Sometimes, when the pain and the drugs wrapped him in their grip and tugged him between them, it was hard to know if he was awake or asleep; things seemed to blur more and more often. But he knew what it was that he had to do. And he would not, could not, die until it was finished.

  There was great excitement among the astronomers, those who still remained at the observatory. Using their most powerful telescopes as well as a variety of mass analyzers, they had come to the conclusion that the planet known to them as K7 had not been destroyed as they had first assumed.

  There had been a massive explosion—that much was certainly true, for the entire planet was cloaked by a dense cloud of fine particular debris. At first it was thought that the dark clouds were all that remained of the planet, for Leif Arndtson had sworn that he had set all the charges that would bring about its destruction.

  But then, amazingly, the spectrographs and other delicate analyzers began chattering out their long lists of figures—figures that were not consistent with total annihilation. Now their readings were conclusive. There had indeed been a dreadful, cataclysmic explosion of epic proportions, but the planet itself was still intact.

  Many of them had talked with the old Madrelli Uba Mintch and learned of the existence of the great volcano. Further inquiry had informed them that it was inside the core of this same volcano that young Arndtson had set his explosive charges. Incredible as it might seem, it now appeared that the explosion had merely triggered the eruption of the volcano. While some doubted that a volcano could shroud an entire planet, there were others who had facts to prove that it had happened before on earth.

  Now there was no longer any doubt. For the past several days, their spectrographic equations had raised their hopes, and then, this very morning, the clouds had parted briefly and permitted them a glimpse of the world itself.

  There had been cheering and laughter and finally tears. There was no way of knowing what the surface of the planet was like and what damage had been done by the explosion. It was possible, even probable, that the cloud of debris had cut the world off from the sun, turning it into a frigid, lifeless world similar to the one they currently inhabited.

  But that would be too cruel a joke for even Loki, that god of mischief and deceit, to play upon them. More than likely, the entire planet had not been affected, only parts. Surely the sun had been able to pierce the thick black clouds in some places, allowing life to continue.

  The old Madrelli had fallen silent during their speculations and too late they realized that his entire tribe had lived at the base of the volcano. The odds were very much against their survival. He had nothing more to tell them and after a time he left. They had enjoyed him—he was refreshing, quite different than the smelly, raffish creatures they were accustomed to—but they were also relieved to see him go, for his depression threw a pall over their newfound happiness. They would have to tell the king, but for the moment they held the knowledge to themselves.

  There were many worlds in the universe, it was true, but those suited to life as they knew it were few and far between and all of them had been colonized long ago. The existence of K7 meant that they had found a world to immigrate to, a world to call their own. They would not die.

  It did not occur to those scientists that if the world had survived, so then had the inhabitants who were foolish enough to think of it as their world.

  Braldt flexed his arms for the hundredth time and felt the futility of the action in the ache in his muscles. No matter how hard he expanded his muscles, the bands did not loosen the slightest bit. They adjusted to his every move, never growing larger, but shrinking tighter and tighter each time he inhaled or relaxed. It was hard to breathe now, and there was a constant buzzing in his ears, an accompaniment to the burning behind his eyes.

  He was not alone. There were others who shared his confinement, a sad assortment of Scandis who for one reason or another had run afoul of the establishment. Most of them had avoided him as though he were contaminated, but one woman had seemed overly curious and even now was leaning casually against the wall, staring at him with speculative eyes.

  She seemed to come to some conclusion and strolled over to him. She leaned forward and prodded him with a long, painted fingernail. He met her eyes, which were a deep sea-green, fringed with improbably thick red lashes. There was a light sprinkling of freckles over the bridge of her nose and across her cheeks which might have given her a childish or wholesome appearance, but didn’t. Her skin was fair and pale, almost translucent, and seemed as though it had been dusted with starlight, for it glistened softly in the dim light. Her hair was no less unusual, a deep shade of auburn, thick and silky and magnificent, fairly inviting one’s fingers to twine themselves in their mass. As distraught as Braldt was, the woman’s beauty all but struck him numb. He stared up at her like a small, thunderstruck child.

  The woman sighed, obviously used to the response, and shook her head with aggravation. “Look, do you want to get out of here?” she wh
ispered, her brilliant eyes fixed intently on Braldt’s face. He could only stare up at her and nod.

  The woman studied him, her eyes bright with speculation. She nodded, more to herself than to Braldt. “All right, if I help you get out of those things, will you help me? Take me out of here when you go?”

  Braldt nodded, wondering how she could free him, for even though she was tall and broad of shoulder, it seemed impossible that she could free him when even he could not.

  “Promise? Give me your solemn word? Swear on your mother’s head?” Again Braldt nodded his agreement.

  The woman sighed again and muttered beneath her breath as she busied herself with the ever-tightening bands. “… world where I don’t have to depend on men… always want something…” Then, much to Braldt’s astonishment, the bands loosened and fell away. He took a deep breath, filled his lungs. His eyes closed as he savored the blessed relief and knew that he would never take such a simple action for granted again. Once again the woman prodded him with a sharp fingernail. “You going to sleep?”

  Braldt opened his eyes and smiled at the woman. “My name is Braldt.”

  The woman shrugged, obviously unimpressed with Braldt or his name. “Yes, I know who you are, I know all about you. Shall we leave, or shall we stay and exchange biographies?”

  Braldt was puzzled by the woman’s attitude and stung by the sharpness of her words. And how was it that she knew who he was? A sudden suspicion came to him, an echo of Septua’s sad tale. “Mirna?”

  The woman’s full mouth quirked sharply in a wry smile. She gave a parody of a curtsy.