LITMIR.BIZ

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Hawk hollered, as he ran in the general direction the man-handed bull had.

      And I followed that crazy old man, running to kill the beast. We clambered through a cleft of broken rock (it hadn’t been broken the last time I’d come wandering down here through the trees—an afternoon full of sun spots and breezes and Friza’s hand in mine, on my shoulder, on my cheek). I jumped down onto a stretch of moss-tongued brick that paved the forest here and there. We ran forward and—

      Some things are so small you don’t notice them. Others are so big you run right into them before you know what they are. It was a hole, in the earth and the side of the mountain, that we almost stumbled into. It was a ragged cave entrance some twenty meters across. I didn’t even know it was there till all that sound came out of it.

      The bull suddenly roared from the opening in the rock and trees and brick, defining the shape of it with his roaring.

      When the echo died, we crept to the crumbled lip and looked over. Below I saw glints of sunlight on hide, turning and turning in the pit. Then he reared, shaking his eyes, his hairy fists.

      Hawk jerked back, even though the claws on the brick wall were still fifteen feet below us.

      “Doesn’t this tunnel go into the source-cave?” I whispered. Before something that grand, one whispers.

      Lo Hawk nodded. “Some of the tunnels, they say, are a hundred feet high. Some are ten. This is one of the bigger arterioles.”

      “Can it get out again?” Stupid question.

      On the other side of the hole the horned head, the shoulders emerged. The cave-in had been sloped there. He had climbed out. Now he looked at us, crouched there. He bellowed once with a length of tongue like foamy, red canvas.

      Then he leaped at us across the hole.

      He didn’t make it, but we scurried backward. He caught the lip with the fingers of one hand—I saw black gorges break about those nails—and one arm. The arm slapped around over the earth, searching for a hand-hold.

      From behind me I heard Hawk shout (I run faster than he does). I turned to see that hand rise from over him!

      He was all crumpled up on the ground. The hand slapped a few more times (Boom—Boom! Boom!) and then arm and fingers slipped, pulling a lot of stone and bushes and three small trees, down, down, down.

      Lo Hawk wasn’t dead. (The next day they discovered he had cracked a rib, but that wasn’t till later.) He began to curl up. I thought of an injured bug. I thought of a sick, sick child.

      I caught him up by the shoulders just as he started to breathe again. “Hawk! Are you—”

      He couldn’t hear me because of the roaring from the pit. But he pulled himself up, blinking. Blood began trickling from his nose. The beast had been slapping with cupped palm. Lo Hawk had thrown himself down, and luckily most of the important parts of him, like his head, had suffered more from air-blast than concussion.

      “Let’s get out of here!” and I began to drag him towards the trees.

      When we got there, he was shaking his head.

      “—no, wait, Lobey—” came over in his hoarse voice during a lull in the roaring.

      As I got him propped against a trunk, he grabbed my wrist.

      “Hurry, Hawk! Can you walk? We’ve got to get away. Look, I’ll carry you—”

      “No!” The breath that had been knocked out of him lurched back.

      “Oh, come on, Hawk! Fun is fun. But you’re hurt, and that thing is a lot bigger than either of us figured on. It must have mutated from the radiation in the lower levels of the cave.”

      He tugged my wrist again. “We have to stay. We have to kill it.”

      “Do you think it will come up and harm the village? It hasn’t gone too far from the cave yet.”

      “That—” He coughed. “That has nothing to do with it. I’m a hunter, Lobey.”

      “Now, look—”

      “And I have to teach you to hunt.” He tried to sit away from the trunk. “Only it looks like you’ll have to learn this lesson by yourself.”

      “Huh?”

      “La Dire says you have to get ready for your journey.”

      “Oh, for goodness—” Then I squinted at him, all the crags and age and assurance and pain in that face. “What I gotta do?”

      The bull’s roar thundered up from the caved-in roof of the source-cave.

      “Go down there; hunt the beast—and kill it.”

      “No!”

      “It’s for Friza.”

      “How?” I demanded.

      He shrugged. “La Dire knows. You must learn to hunt, and hunt well.” Then he repeated that.

      “I’m all for testing my manhood and that sort of thing. But—”

      “It’s a different reason from that, Lobey.”

      “But—”

      “Lobey.” His voice nestled down low and firm in his throat. “I’m older than you, and I know more about this whole business than you do. Take your sword and crossbow and go down into the cave, Lobey. Go on.”

      I sat there and thought a whole lot of things. Such as: bravery is a very stupid thing. And how surprised I was that so much fear and respect for Lo Hawk had held from my childhood. Also, how many petty things can accompany pith, moment, and enterprise—like fear, confusion, and plain annoyance.

      The beast roared again. I pushed the crossbow farther up my arm and settled my machete handle at my hip.

      If you’re going to do something stupid—and we all do—it might as well be a brave and foolish thing.

      I clapped Lo Hawk’s shoulder and started for the pit.

      On this side the break was sharp and the drop deep. I went around to the sagging side, where there were natural ledges of root, earth, and masonry. I circled the chasm and scrambled down.

      Sun struck the wall across from me, glistening with moss. I dropped my hand from the moist rock and stepped across an oily rivulet whose rainbow went out under my shadow. Somewhere up the tunnel, hooves clattered on stone.

      I started forward. There were many cracks in the high ceiling, here and there lighting on the floor a branch clawing crisped leaves or the rim of a hole that might go down a few inches, a few feet, or drop to the lowest levels of the source-cave that were thousands of feet below.

      I came to a fork, started beneath the vault to the left, and ten feet into the darkness tripped and rolled down a flight of shallow steps, once through a puddle (my hand splatting out in the darkness), once over dry leaves (they roared their own roar beneath my side), and landed at the bottom in a shaft of light, knees and palms on gravel.

       Clatter!

       Clatter!

      Much closer: Clatter!

      I sprang to my feet and away from the telltale light. Motes cycloned in the slanting illumination where I had been. And the motes stilled.

      My stomach felt like a loose bag of water sloshing around on top of my gut. Walking towards that sound—he was quiet now and waiting—was no longer a matter of walking in a direction. Rather: pick that foot up, lean forward, put it down. Good. Now, pick up the other one, lean forward—

      A hundred yards ahead I suddenly saw another light because something very large suddenly filled it up. Then it emptied.

       Clack! Clack! Clack!

       Snort!

      And

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