Poul Anderson - Hunter's Moon

“Hm, yes, I’d better check on that first. I’ll report in a minute or three. Love you.”

He did, he knew, no matter how often she enraged him. The idea that, somewhere in the abysses of his being, he might have wished her death, was not to be borne. He’d have followed her through a heavier tempest than this, merely to deny it.

Well, he could go home with a satisfied conscience and wait for her arrival, after which—what? The uncertainty made a hollowness in him.

His instrument flashed green. Okay, Erakoum’s button was transmitting, therefore unharmed and worth salvaging. If only she herself—

He tensed. The breath rattled in his lungs. Did he know she was dead?

He lowered the helmet over his temples. His hands shook, giving him trouble in making the connections. He pressed the switch. He willed to perceive—

Pain twisted like white-hot wires, strength ebbed and ebbed, soft waves of nothingness flowed ever more often, but still Erakoum defied. The slit of sky that she could see, from where she lay unable to creep further, was full of wind… She shocked to complete awareness. Again she sensed Hugh’s presence.

“Broken bones, feels like. Heavy blood loss. She’ll die in a few more hours. Unless you give her first aid, Jan. Then she ought to last till we can fly her to Port Kato for complete attention.”

“Oh, I can do sewing and bandaging and splinting, whatever, yes. And nedolor’s an analgesic stimulant for dromids too, isn’t it? And simply a drink of water could make the whole difference; she must be dehydrated. But how to reach her?”

“Your ouranid can lift her up, after you’ve inflated him.”

“You can’t be serious! A’i’ach’s hurt, convalescent—and Erakoum tried to kill him!”

“That was mutual, right?”

“Well—”

“Jan, I’m not going to abandon her. She’s down in a grave, who used to run free, and the touch of me she’s getting is more to her than I could have imagined. I’ll stay till she’s rescued, or else I’ll stay till she dies.”

“No, Hugh, you mustn’t. The storm.”

“I’m not trying to blackmail you, dearest. In fact, I won’t blame your ouranid much if he refuses. But I can’t leave Erakoum. I just plain can’t.”

“I… I have learned something about you… I will try.”

A’i’ach had not understood his Jannika. It was not believable that helping a Beast could help bring peace. That creature was what it was, a slaughterer. And yet, yet, once there had been no trouble with the Beasts, once they had been the animals which most interested and entertained the People. He himself remembered songs about their fleetness and their fires. In those lost days they had been called the Flame Dancers.

What made him yield to her plea was unclear in his spirit. She had probably saved his life, at hazard to her own, and this was an overpowering new thought to him. He wanted greatly to maintain his union with her, which enriched his world, and therefore hesitated to deny a request that seemed as urgent as hers. Through the union, she helmeted, he believed he felt what she did when she said, with water running from her eyes, “I want to heal what I have done—” and that kind of feeling was transcendent, like the Shining Time, and was what finally decided him.

She assisted him from the thing—which-bore-her and payed out a tube. Through the latter he drank gas, a wind-rush of renewed life. His injuries twinged when his globe expanded, but he could ignore that.

He needed her anchoring weight to get across the ground to the ravine. Fingers and tendrils intertwined, they nevertheless came near being carried away. Had he let himself swell to full size, he could have lifted her. Air harried and hooted, snatched at him, wanted to cast him among thorns—how horrible the ground was!

How much worse to descend below it. He throbbed to an emotion he scarcely recognized. Had she been in rapport, she could have told him that the English word for it was “terror.” A human or a dromid who felt it in that degree would have recoiled from the drop. A’i’ach made it a force blowing him onward, because this too raised him out of himself.

At the edge, she threw her arms around him as far as they would go, laid her mouth to his pelt, and said, “Good luck, dear A’i’ach, dear brave A’i’ach, good luck, God keep you.” Those were the noises she made in her language. He did not recognize the gesture either.

A cylinder she had given him to hold threw a strong beam of light. He saw the jagged slope tumble downward underneath him, and thought that if he was cast against that, he was done for. Then his spirit would have a fearful journey, with no body to shelter it, before it reached Beyond—if it did, if it was not shredded and scattered first. Quickly, before the churning airs could take full hold of him, he jetted across the brink. He contracted. He sank.

The dread as gloom and walls closed in was like no other carouse in his life. At its core, he felt incandescently aware. Yes, the human had brought him into strange skies.

Through the dankness he caught an odor more sharp. He steered that way. His flash picked out the Beast, sprawled on sharp talus, gasping and glaring. He used jets and siphon to position himself out of reach and said in what English he had, “I haff ch’um say-aff ee-you.”

From the depths of her death-place, Erakoum looked up at the Flyer. She could barely make him out, a big pale moon behind a glare of light. Amazement heaved her out of a drowse. Had her enemy pursued her down here in his ill-wishing?

Good! She would die in battle, not the torment which ripped her. “Come on and fight,” she called hoarsely. If she could sink teeth in him, get a last lick of his blood—The memory of that taste was like sweet lightning. During the time afterward which refused to end, she had thought she would be dead already if she had not swallowed those drops.

Their wonder-working had faded out. She stirred, seeking a defensive posture. Agony speared through her, followed by night.

When she roused, the Flyer still waited. Amidst a roaring in her ears, she heard, over and over, “I haff ch’um say-aff ee-you.”

Human language? This was the being that the humans favored as they did her. It had to be, though the ray from its head was hidden by the ray from its tendrils. Could Hugh have been bound all the while to both ?

Erakoum strove to form syllables never meant for her mouth and throat. “Ha-watt-tt you ha-wannit? Gho, no bea haiar, gho.”

The Flyer made a response. She could no more follow that than he appeared to have followed hers. He must have come down to make sure of her, or simply to mock her while she died. Erakoum scrabbled weakly after a spear. She couldn’t throw one, but—

From the unknownness wherein dwelt the soul of Hugh, she suddenly knew: He wants to save you.

Impossible. But… but there the Flyer was. Half delirious, Erakoum could yet remember that Flyers were seldom that patient.

What else could befall but death? Nothing. She lay back on the rock shards. Let the Flyer be her doom or be her Mardudek. She had found the courage to surrender.

The shape hovered. Her hair sensed tiny gusts, and she thought dimly that this must be a difficult place for him too. Speech burst and skirled. He was trying to explain something, but she was too hurt and tired to listen. She folded her hands around her muzzle. Would he appreciate that gesture?

Maybe. Hesitant, he neared. She kept motionless. Even when his tendrils brushed her, she kept motionless.

They slipped across her body, got a purchase, tightened. Through the haze of pain, she saw him swelling. He meant to lift her—up to Hugh?

When he did, her knife wounds opened and she shrieked before she swooned.