A dozen men passing and repassing had hacked a fair gap through the second hedge, and Lycon was glad he did not have to worm blindly through again. The tiger leaped it effortlessly and was speeding across the empty field at a swifter pace by the time he stepped through. Lycon lengthened his stride to stay within fifty yards.
More stars broke coldly through the clearing sky. The cat looked as deadly as Nemesis rippling through the moonlight. Lycon grimly recalled that he had thought much the same about the pack of Molossians. The tiger was every bit as deadly as the blue-scaled killer, and probably five times its weight. Speed and cunning could only count for so much.
The third hedge had not been trampled, and Lycon's belly tightened painfully as he dived through the gore-splashed gap where the killer had awaited the dogs. But the tiger had already leaped over the brushy wall, and Lycon disdained to lose time by detouring to the opening farther down. He pushed his way free and stood warily in the field beyond.
Here the soil was too sparse and rocky for regular sowing. Left fallow, small trees and weedy scrub grew disconsolately between bare rocks and shadowed gullies. The wasteland was a sharp study of hard blacks and whites, etched by the pale moon.
The tiger had halted just ahead, his belly flattened to the rocky soil. He sniffed the air, coughing a low rumble like distant thunder. Then his challenging roar burst from his throat-moonlight glowing on awesome fangs. Far away an ox bawled in fear, and Lycon felt the hair on his neck tingle.
A bit of gravel rattled from the brush-filled gully just beyond. Lycon watched the cat's haunches rise, quivering with restrained tension. A man-sized shadow stood erect from the shadows of the gully, and the tiger leaped.
Thirty yards separated the cat from his prey. He took two short hops toward the lizard-ape, then lunged for the kill. The scaled creature was moving the instant the tiger left the ground for his final leap. A blur of energy, it darted beneath the lunge-needle-clawed fingers thrusting toward the cat's belly. The tiger squalled and hunched in mid-leap, slashing at its enemy in a deadly riposte that nearly succeeded.
Gravel and mud sprayed as the cat struck the ground and whirled. The sauropithecus was already upon him, its claws ripping at the tiger's neck. With speed almost as blinding, the cat twisted about, left forepaw flashing a bone-snapping blow against the creature's ribs-hurling it against a knot of brush.
The cat paused, trying to lick the stream of blood that spurted from its neck. Recoiling from its fall, the blue-scaled killer gave a high-pitched cry-the first sound Lycon had heard from it-and leaped onto the cat's back.
By misjudgment or sudden weakness, it landed too far back, straddling the tiger's belly instead of withers. The cat writhed backward and rolled, taloned forepaws slashing, hind legs pumping. Stripped from its hold, the lizard-ape burrowed into the razor-edged fury of thrashing limbs.
It was too fast to follow. Both animals flung themselves half-erect, spinning, snarling in a crimson spray. A dozen savage blows ripped back and forth in the space of a heartbeat as they tore against each other in suicidal frenzy.
With no apparent transition, the tiger slumped into the mud. His huge head hung loose, and bare bone gleamed for an instant. Blood spouted in a great torrent, then ebbed abruptly to a dark smear. The tiger arched his back convulsively in death, as his killer staggered away.
Lycon stared in disbelief as the blue-scaled killer took a careful step toward him. Blood bathed its bright scales like a glistening imperial cloak. The tiger's blood or the lizard-ape's? Its scaled hide had to be unnaturally tough-else it would be gutted like a fish.
Murder gleamed joyously in its eyes. Lycon readied his spear. He knew he was fast enough to drive home one good thrust, and after that…
Another step and the lizard-ape stumbled, bracing itself on the ground with one deadly hand. The other arm hung useless-its shoulder certainly broken by the tiger's mauling. The sauropithecus jerked erect and grinned at the hunter, its demon's face a reflection of death. It started to lunge for him, but there was no strength to its legs. Instead it skidded drunkenly on the gravelly soil, again groping for balance. It must have suffered massive internal injuries, but it staggered upright once again.
Lycon knew a stir of hope and dared take a step forward, advancing his boar spear. His own legs felt none too steady, but there had to be an end made of this night.
The lizard-ape spun about gracelessly, suddenly making for the farther hedge. Despite its stumbling gait, it easily pulled away from the pursuing hunter-Lycon afterward wondered if he might not have run faster-and gained the distant hedge. Too weakened to rip through the interlaced branches as before-or to vault the barrier-it darted headlong into the base of the hedge, wriggling snakelike between the rocks and roots.
Lycon hesitated, realizing his chances but not willing to abandon the hunt. From beyond the thorny barrier he heard a quick splash, then silence. Gritting his teeth, Lycon dropped to his belly and crawled after the lizard-ape, following the bloodtrail through the hedge.
Nothing lay beyond the hedge but the steep-banked Tiber, and the bloodtrail slid down the muddy slope and into the oblivion of black rushing current.
The moon glared down, drowning the stars with chill splendor, and casting light over the river's unbroken surface. Lycon shivered, and after a while he walked back to the road.
He felt old that night.
Chapter Three
The starship hung in orbit like a mountain of dirty ice.
To RyRelee, watching the viewscreen as his shuttlecraft drew near, the Coran starships always called to mind a congealed comet, bereft of its tail and frozen in some ungainly posture. He loathed embarking from the firm-walled compartments of the trim shuttlecraft from his homeworld to enter the seemingly organic mazes of a Coran starship, but a summons from the rulers of the measurable galaxy was not to be denied.
Such occasional summons invariably had prefaced demands upon his considerable abilities to carry out certain tasks for the Cora as their emissary-usually without the knowledge of those to whose world RyRelee was sent. While such missions inevitably entailed deadly risks, RyRelee did not normally respond to their summons with such a sense of fatalistic dread as he now felt. While the Cora had not yet informed him of the reason for this summons, RyRelee thought he knew why, and had there been any possible alternative but to obey, he would have taken it.
The interior of the Coran ship was small improvement over the comet-like appearance it gave from the outside. It had the look of something hacked from soft stone, or foamed into shape out of the spittle of an insect. The hatch closed behind his shuttlecraft as though it were growing together by a process of greatly accelerated crystalline accretion. The efficiency of Coran science was beyond question, but the organic nature of it bothered RyRelee every time it called itself to his attention. It disturbed him that he, himself an interstellar emissary and one whose race had long ago developed its own stardrive, should nonetheless be unable to comprehend the technology of the race that ruled the galaxy.