Turned and left then. Running, feet thumping down porch steps.
Duun sipped at his tea and set it down at his knee. Thorn expected a little start. Such things he took for granted.
Duun got up, gathered up his own weapons, and his cloak.
No quarter then.
* * *
("Wind and land, wei-na-ya: wind and land.") ("Scent-blind: but my knee aches when it rains—") 42
Cuckoo's Egg
Turn and turn and turn: a fool's need rules his wit; a wise man's wit governs need.
("A hatani dictates what another's need will be.") Fool, to do what a hatani said to do!
Thorn caught his breath and sprang for the rocks, bare feet doing what claws might do, shaping themselves to stone as Duun's could not, clinging with their softness: bare hands clinging where Duun's hands might not—swinging on a branch that gave a shortcut round the cliffside, dropping to a slant where Duun's feet would skid, where Duun's leg might fail—
The wind, O fool, the wind is at your face; Duun had checked the wind this morning. There was no corner Duun-hatani did not see around before his quarry even saw the turn—
The pebble in the tea—
Upland or downland? Do what Duun said and surprise him with obedience? Or do the opposite?
Run and run: he was quicker than Duun, that was all he was. He had grown up in these hills; and so had Duun. Thorn was more agile. He could take the high slope on his bare feet at greater speed than Duun—
—but Duun knew that.
Wild choice, then. Logic-less. He darted downslope.
Wind in his face, wind carrying his scent; and he had to get around that bend first, around the mountain shoulder.
Duun was at his back. It was not the pain Thorn dreaded, though pain there would be. It was Duun. Duun himself.
* * *
43
Cuckoo's Egg
The wind carried scent and Duun breathed it—
fool,
Duun thought, at the edge of the rocks;
but twice a fool is a hunter too secure.
There was the easy temptation— to win at once, to take the rash chance, the wide chance.
But it was hatani he hunted. No more minnow, but fish in dark water.
He smelled the wind and knew Thorn's direction and his distance; he knew the branch of the trail that gave access to the cliff and knew the way Thorn could take that he could not— he knew every track in the hills.
Thorn knew he knew. That was the conundrum: how well he had taught the fish.
And what kind it was, how native-adept, what skill was bred into its bone and blood… what intelligence, what instincts.
Five-fingered hands; a surer grip; a talent at climbing: these it had. It had youth: strong legs, that felt no pain.
It knew— if it used its wits— how a once-maimed shonun had to compensate for these things.
And it would, being hatani, try to predict; try then to seize events and turn them.
It smelled of fear and sweat, even when the wind had cleaned the scent. It stank of something else, a bitter, acrid taint.
* * *
Duun's was greatest, hand to hand. But Thorn's was more in distance, in the rocks, in the quick scaling of a tilted tree across a crack—
(Fool! he'll know—)
(But it will cost him time.)
44
Cuckoo's Egg
And Thorn had gotten the mountain between him and Duun, gotten stone between them, to confuse the scent.
But Duun could smell where a hand had been, if he got his nose down to it. So Duun claimed.
(Run, minnow. I'm coming, little fish….)
Downland. The opposite of what Duun had said he ought to do: should he confound the choice? What was there to do that he had never done?
(Gods, his gut, his bowels ached. Fear? The chase? The jolts from rock to rock?)
(Something in the food?)
* * *
Double-snared.
(Good, fish. Well done, that. But not good enough.) Thorn knelt on hands and knees. He had reached the road and crossed it, leaving tracks; he paused to set a rock up on a twig, on a slope where haste might set a foot, then hurled himself downslope, leaving further tracks, leaving a bit of skin on the stones below.
He miscalculated further, sprawled. His face stung with shame. He gathered himself up again, doubled over a little farther on sweating and resisting the easy support of a tree.
(Touch nothing, leave no trace—)
45
Cuckoo's Egg
Duun would hurt him. That was nothing. It was the look in Duun's gray eyes. The stare. The scorn.
Thorn bent and caught his breath; and wits began to work. He looked up at the slope he had left.
(Take me now, face to face.)
(The walls are down, minnow. What will you do?)
(Did Duun sleep? Could Duun sleep more than he did these last nights in the house?)
Was Duun-hatani lying awake each night— thinking a minnow might try him? Expecting it?
Was Duun as tired as he?
(Fix the breakfast, minnow. Hear?)
Hatani tricks. A hatani decides what his enemy will do.
A pebble in the tea. (Fix the breakfast, minnow.) And what his enemy believes.
Anger came into him. He purged it.
(Wield anger; it has no place, else.)
(Is there a use for fear?)
* * *
46
Cuckoo's Egg
And a sudden bleak thought came to him.
Predictive. His heart doubled its beats. He had chosen the hunter's part. It was that part habitual with him; Thorn seldom turned, only tried to disarm his attacks, to defend— to set snares. It was wise in Thorn (Face to face with me— Thorn challenged, and: no, said Thorn, when I offered him a fight.)
It was constantly the running tactic. The evasion.
(Find me, Duun-hatani. Find me if you can. Find me where I choose.) In a different place, a change of grounds.
Duun dared not run. That was always the pursuer's hazard. Thorn's traps were halfhearted, token; but there was no tokenness in a downslope fall.
Thorn supposed in him a certain degree of care.
And Thorn was quicker. Younger. Sound of wind.
Duun set out quickly. Anger rose in him and died a quick death.
(Well-done, minnow, if this was your plan. I am not ashamed. Not of you.) Duun saw his hazard. And being hatani-trained, perhaps the young fool knew what he did.
Perhaps.
* * *
He chewed the sour leaves he found and swallowed, splashed his face with 47
Cuckoo's Egg
icy water from the spring. His hands were white with the chills that racked him.
Fool, to challenge Duun. To have offered quarter. To have changed the game. Nothing was safe. He flung himself up again and ran down the stream—
—Old trick. Ancient trick, Duun would say. Do something original.
He had no strength left. His knees ached with the struggle with the water and the rocks, his bones ached with the chill: his joints grew loose and ached and strained with the sudden turn of river stones. The cold got into his bones and set him shivering.
(Can one die of livhl?
Was
it livhl?)
His ankle turned; he saved himself from a plunge in icy water, waded to the shore, his arms and the legs under him jerking with shivers like drugged spasms. (O Duun, unfair.)
No quarter. None.
Downhill again.
* * *
48
Cuckoo's Egg
(Or do you fall first? How long, Thorn?)
Duun hastened. His limp betrayed him. There was a pain within his side.
(Old man, old man— they put you back together; you should have let them replace the knee, regrow the hand— now you rue it, late.) He found another way— he guessed which way Thorn must head and guessed amiss.
(So. He learned that lesson all too well. Does he read me? Does he know?
Or is it random choice he tries? Knowledge or fool's choice?) (How old is he in his own terms? Not man yet. Not grown. But near.) (Thorn-that-I-carried.
Haras,
Thorn, that wounds the hand that holds it, the foot that treads it, that tangles paths and bears bitter blooms and poisoned fruit.)
* * *
(Get beyond the pale, get to paths strange to both of us. Duun knows the mountain too well— far too well.)
(Go where Duun would not have me go— make him angry— anger in my enemy is my friend, my friend—)
He smelled smoke. It was far away in the valley, but he went toward it.
(Let Duun worry now. Let him come here to find me. Here among the countryfolk. Here among others. Other people.)
49
Cuckoo's Egg
(Run and run. Stop for wind. Let us play this game in and out of strange places, in among stranger-folk who know nothing of the game.)
—There must be food, food for taking with hatani tricks. ("They're herders," Duun had said. "Herder-folk. No, little fish, not hatani, nothing like. They respect us too much to come here. That's all. They lived here once.")
(Where houses are is food, is shelter: he'll have to search, he won't know if they'd lie, these countryfolk, or hide me— Perhaps they would.) There was a trail. There was a stink of habit here even his nose could tell, musty, old dung, the frequent passage of animals.
Thorn jogged up it. Stink to hide his stink. To confound Duun's nose.
Tracks to hide his tracks. Let Duun guess. Thorn gathered speed and coursed along the trail. There was the taste of blood in his mouth.
("—They never bother anything," Duun said of farmer-folk. "They don't ask to be bothered and we don't go there.") ("Couldn't we see them, Duun-hatani? Couldn't we go and see?") Thorn wondered if they were like the meds and Ellud; if there were—
(—O gods, if there were some like me.)
In all the wide world Duun spoke of, there must be more like him.
* * *
Thorn was going to the one place forbidden him. Change the rules. Upset the game.
50
Cuckoo's Egg
Find outsiders and raise it another level still.
(Duun, what's
wrong
with me?)
(
Slick,
the infant said, rubbing at his stomach) Faces in the mirror.
(Duun, will my ears grow?)
Duun laid his own ears back and put on speed, risking everything now, risking shame, that a minnow might trap him.
But Thorn already had.
* * *
White animals huddled in their pens. Lights burned near the house on a tall pole in the twilight. Thorn saw the power lines, that led from there two ways, the house, and off across the land— (The power unit's far away then. Can there be other houses near?) He skirted brush, came up nearer, where he had a closer view of the house, the dusty yard beyond its fence.
Hiyi grew there, along the row, all in leaf in this season, flowerless. He heard high voices, the closing of some door. "I'll get you," someone shrilled, but there was laughter in the voice. "I'll get you, Mon!"
51
Cuckoo's Egg
More shrieks. Thorn came closer, taking to the road. Beneath the lights, in front of the porch, two small figures ran and raced and played chase.
"Come in here!" a voice called from the open door. "Come in, it's time to eat."
They were children. They ran and shrieked and yelled—
Duun's kind. Thorn's heart stopped. He stood there in the road and looked beyond the fence and likewise the children stopped their game and stared, they on their side, he on his.