The mountain folk appeared to regard their city-bred charges with amusement verging on scorn. They definitely had no great respect for Dekkeret, who had never been in wilderness country before, and who was obviously uncertain of himself despite his size and strength. They looked upon him, he was sure, as an inept and useless boy. But they seemed not to have much esteem even for Akbalik, whose aura of competence and capability usually won quick recognition anywhere. Whenever he asked them something they would reply in curt monosyllables, and sometimes could be seen to turn away with sardonic smiles, as though barely able to suppress their contempt for any city man who needed to ask about something so self-evident that any child would know it.
“The steetmoy are forest creatures,” Akbalik told him. “They don’t like it much out here on the open tundra. That’s their home territory down there, that dark place in the shadow of the mountain. The hunters will scare up a pack of them for us in the deep woods and drive them into a stampede. We select the ones we want to go after and chase them through the forest until we have them cornered.” Akbalik glanced at Dekkeret’s oddly short legs, heavily knotted with muscle. “You’re a good runner, aren’t you?”
“I’m no sprinter. But I can manage.”
“Steetmoy aren’t especially fast either. They don’t need to be. But they have plenty of stamina and they’re better than we are at barreling through thick underbrush. It’s easy for one to make his way into dense cover and get away from you. The problem then is that they sometimes come slipping around behind you and attack from the rear. They live primarily on berries and nuts and bark, but they don’t mind eating meat, you know, especially in winter, and they’re very adequately equipped for killing.”
Turning to his pack, he began to draw weapons from it and lay them out in front of Dekkeret.
“These are what we’ll take with us. The hooked machete is for cutting your way through the brush. The poniard is what you use for killing your steetmoy.”
“This?” Dekkeret asked. He picked it up and stared at it. Its blade was impressively sharp but no more than six inches in length. “Isn’t it a little short?”
“Did you expect to be using an energy-thrower?”
Dekkeret felt his face going hot. He remembered, now, that Septach Melayn had talked about how steetmoy are hunted with poniard and machete. Dekkeret hadn’t given it much thought at the time. “Well, of course not. But with this thing I’d have to be right on top of the steetmoy for the kill.”
“Yes. You would, wouldn’t you? That’s the whole point of the sport: hunting at close range, great risk for high reward. And also, doing as little damage to the valuable fur as possible. If it comes down to a matter of your life or the steetmoy’s, you can use your machete, but that’s not considered very sporting. Imagine Septach Melayn, for instance, hacking away at a steetmoy with his machete!”
“Septach Melayn has the quickest reflexes of any man who ever lived. He could kill a steetmoy with an ivory toothpick. But I’m not Septach Melayn.”
Akbalik seemed unworried. Dekkeret was big and strong; Dekkeret was determined; Dekkeret would look after himself quite satisfactorily down there in the steetmoy forest.
Dekkeret himself was less confident. He had never asked for this adventure. It had all been Septach Melayn’s idea originally. He had been eager enough to undertake it, yes, back there in the Castle, but that was without any real awareness of what hunting steetmoy in their native territory might involve. And, though he had heard plenty of exuberant hunting tales from other young knight-initiates during his first few months at the Castle, and had envied them greatly, he realized now that it was one thing to roam the walled hunting preserves of Halanx or Amblemorn in search of zaur or onathils or bilantoons, but it was something else entirely to be roaming around in a cold northern forest looking for a ferocious steetmoy that you planned to kill with a tiny dagger.
Cowardice, though, was no part of Dekkeret’s makeup. What lay ahead sounded like a tough assignment, but perhaps the hunt wouldn’t turn out to be as risky as it seemed just now, with his imagination leading him to anticipate the worst. So he picked up his poniard and his machete and hefted them and took a few fierce swipes through the air for practice, and told Akbalik cheerfully that on second thought the poniard seemed more than adequate for the job and he was ready for the steetmoy hunt whenever the steetmoy were ready for him.
Akbalik had a new surprise in store for him as they followed the five March-men down a long boulder-strewn slope into the dark glade where the steetmoy lived. Reaching into his pack, he drew forth two blunt-nosed metal tubes, stuck one into his belt next to his poniard, and handed the other one to Dekkeret.
“Energy-throwers? But you said—”
“Lord Prestimion’s orders. We want to behave like proper sportsmen, yes, but I’m also supposed to bring you back from here alive. The poniard is the prime weapon, and if you get into difficulties you use the machete, and if you get into real difficulties you blast the damned animal with the energy-thrower. It’s not the elegant way, but it’s a sensible last resort. An angry steetmoy can rip a man’s guts out with three slashes of his claws.”
Feeling more ashamed than relieved, Dekkeret tucked the energy-thrower into one of the loops of his belt, wishing there were some way of pushing it down out of sight to keep the March-men guides from noticing it. But that hardly mattered. They had already made it quite clear that they looked upon Dekkeret and Akbalik as a pair of shallow self-indulgent fops so doltish that they could find nothing better to do with their time than take themselves off into the forests of the north and hunt dangerous animals for no motive more worthy than their own amusement. It could scarcely lessen them in the March-men’s eyes if one of them suddenly happened to pull out an energy-thrower and blaze away at an inconveniently rambunctious steetmoy. All the same, Dekkeret quietly vowed that he would not use the weapon even as a last resort. The poniard and—if necessary—the machete would have to do the job.
It had snowed during the night. Though the temperature was a little above freezing now, the ground was white everywhere. A few solitary flakes still were coming down. One of them struck Dekkeret’s cheek, causing a little burning sensation. A strange feeling, that. The whole concept of snow was new to him, and very curious.
The trees in this glade had yellow trunks like those farther to the south, but they carried heavy growths of blackish-brown needle-like leaves rather than showing bare deciduous branches, and instead of having their trunks and branches contorted into odd angles these trees stood tall and straight, with their thick crowns meeting far overhead. Underneath, a dense darkness prevailed. A stream dotted by big boulders flowed past on one side, and on the other, the one closest to the mountain, the land dropped sharply away into a swooping valley.
The five hired hunters led the way, with Dekkeret and Akbalik close behind, following in the tracks that the March-men left in the snow. Gradually the pace picked up until they were trotting through the forest, moving in easy loping bounds along the bank of the stream. Hardly ever did the hunters look back toward them. When one of them did—it was one of the women, a flat-faced, wide-mouthed one with big gaps between her teeth—it was to give Dekkeret a mocking grin that seemed to say, In five minutes you will be frightened entirely out of whatever wits you may have. Perhaps he was wrong about that. Perhaps she was just trying to look encouraging. But it was not a pretty grin.
“Steetmoy,” Akbalik said suddenly. “Three of them, I think.” He pointed off to the left, into a dark grove where the yellow-trunked trees stood particularly close together and the snow lay thick on the ground. At first Dekkeret noticed nothing unusual. Then he glimpsed a zone of whiteness in there that was different from the whiteness of the snow: softer, brighter, with a lustrous gleam instead of a hard glitter. Large furry white animals, moving about. The sound of their low muttering growls came toward him on the wind.