The hunters had paused by the edge of the grove. A few unintelligible muttered words passed among them; and then they began to move toward the trees, fanning out in a wide arc as they did so.
Quickly Dekkeret came to understand what was happening. The steetmoy—three of them, yes—had picked up the scent. They were moving slowly about amidst the trees, as if working out their strategy. Dekkeret could see them clearly now, thick-bodied beasts built low to the ground, with long jutting black snouts and flat triangular heads out of which golden eyes, rimmed with red, were staring intently. They were about the size of very large dogs, but heavier and sturdier. They looked graceless but powerfuclass="underline" their thighs and haunches were massive, their forearms plainly held great strength. Long curving claws, black and shiny, jutted from their paws. Dekkeret could not believe that he would be expected to kill one of these creatures with a mere handheld dagger. But that was what was done, supposedly. It seemed improbable. He hadn’t forgotten Septach Melayn’s words: “Beautiful thing: that thick fur, those blazing eyes. Most dangerous wild animal in the world, so far as I know, the steetmoy ”
The gap-toothed mountain woman was gesturing at him.
“First one’s yours,” Akbalik said.
“What?”
Dekkeret had expected the older, more experienced Akbalik to go first. But the meaning of those gestures was not at all ambiguous. The woman was beckoning to him.
“They’ve decided it,” Akbalik said. “They usually know the best match of hunter and prey. You’d better go ahead. I’ll be right behind you.”
Dekkeret nodded. He stepped forward, still apprehensive and uneasy. But with his first step toward the dark glade an astonishing thing happened. All uncertainty dropped away. A strange cool calmness settled over him. Fear and doubt were utterly absent from his mind. He found himself entirely ready, primed for the kill, utterly focused on his objective.
And an instant later the hunt was on.
The March-men now had positioned themselves across a lengthy curving front that spanned the place where the three steetmoy were moving about and extended well beyond it on both sides. The woman who seemed to be Dekkeret’s guide was at the center of the line. She led the way forward, with Dekkeret close behind her. The two hunters at farthest left and right were moving inward at a sharp angle, pulling the line in toward the animals. They started now to set up a terrible din with brass hunting-horns that they had drawn from their packs, while the other two March-men began to clap their hands and shout.
The idea, Dekkeret saw, was to separate the animals, driving two of them away to give him a clear path to the third. And the noise was having its intended effect. The steetmoy, puzzled and bothered by the strident blaring sounds, were up on their hind legs, raking trees with their claws in what seemed to be a reflexive expression of irritation, and their growls no longer were low rumbling mutters but reverberating bellows of anger.
The March-men continued to close in. The steetmoy, showing no apparent fear, but only annoyance and perhaps disgust at being harassed in this fashion in their own domain, turned slowly and began to lope away in different directions—each heading, perhaps, for its own den. The five hunters ignored the two biggest ones, allowing them to slip away undisturbed into the deeper woods. They gave their attention to the remaining one, a female, perhaps, smaller than the other two but still a formidable beast. They were advancing on it in high-kicking strides as though on parade, and making noise for all they were worth.
The animal seemed befuddled by the uproar for a moment or two. Then, blinking and grumbling, the steetmoy swung around and headed at a slow but steadily accelerating pace toward the cover of a clump of shrubbery a few hundred yards away.
The gap-toothed woman stepped aside. Dekkeret knew that this was his moment.
He went rushing forward, machete in one hand, poniard in the other.
At the fringe of the glade the trees were fairly far apart, but they quickly became more dense, with saplings and brush occupying the spaces between them and semi-woody vines dangling from their lower branches. Before long Dekkeret was moving through one difficult thicket after another, chopping away furiously with the machete as he scrambled through. He drove himself onward in a kind of frenzy, heedless of obstacles. And yet for all his frenetic exertions he was losing ground. He could still see the retreating steetmoy up ahead. But the beast, slow-moving though it was, seemed easily able to clear a path for itself with its powerful forearms, leaving a tangled trail of shattered underbrush and torn vines behind it that only made Dekkeret’s task harder. Very gradually it was widening the distance between itself and its pursuer.
And then it disappeared entirely. He was all alone.
Where had it gone? Into a hidden burrow? Had it wriggled under some impenetrable pile of brush? Or, Dekkeret wondered, maybe it had simply stepped behind some thick-trunked tree up ahead, and was at this very moment wending its way back toward him, slinking from one clump of brush to the next, moving into position for the lethal counterattack that Akbalik had said they sometimes made.
Dekkeret looked around for the mountain woman. No sign of her. Somehow in his pell-mell race through the woods he had left her behind.
Clutching his two weapons tightly, he turned in a full circle without moving from the spot, staring warily into the dimness, listening desperately for the sound of ripping underbrush, of falling saplings. Nothing. Nothing. And now thick mist had begun to rise from the snowy ground to veil everything in white. Should he call out for the woman? No. Possibly her disappearance was deliberate; perhaps it was always the custom to leave the huntsman alone with his prey in the final moments of the chase.
After a few moments he began to move cautiously off to his left, where the mist seemed a little thinner. His plan was to traverse a circular arc back to his starting point, searching for the steetmoy’s hiding-place as he went.
In the forest, all was still. It was as if he had gone into it on his own.
Then, as he came around past a copse of straight-trunked young trees that had sprouted just inches apart from one another so that they formed a tight palisade, everything changed in a hurry. On the far side of the copse he found himself looking into a little clearing. The woman stood at the center of it, peering around in all directions as though searching for the steetmoy, or, perhaps, for him. Dekkeret called out to her; and in the same instant the steetmoy came bounding out of the woods on the other side.
The gap-toothed woman, already turning toward Dekkeret, swung around swiftly to face the angry animal. The steetmoy, rising on its hind legs, swatted her aside with one swipe of its forearm. She went sprawling to the ground. Without a pause the steetmoy went pounding on past the astonished Dekkeret toward the nearest group of trees.
It took him a moment to break from his stasis. Then he too was in motion, running after the steetmoy once more, knowing only that this was his final chance, that if he let the beast get away from him a second time he would never see it again.
Knots were forming in his thighs and calves. He could feel the muscles writhing. As he made a sharp turn he stepped on a slick snow-covered slab of rock, and slipped, twisting his ankle and sending a jolt of fire running up his left leg. But he kept on going. The steetmoy no longer seemed to be trying to take evasive action; it was simply trotting ahead of him, moving now through a sector of the forest that was open enough for both of them to move readily through it. That gave an advantage to Dekkeret, who, slow runner that he was, should have been able in open terrain to move a bit faster than the steetmoy.