James West - Crown of the Setting Sun

The Hunter struck Leitos again, a vicious backhand. He reeled, trying to stay on his feet. Blood ran freely over his face from many cuts, and his skull felt cracked. He stumbled and collapsed.

“That, boy, was for speaking out of turn. This,” he said, kicking Leitos in the ribs hard enough to flip him onto his back, “is to make sure that you learned the first lesson.”

Leitos retched, but felt detached from his agonies and the situation. All thoughts of planning an escape had soared away. He had to act, now .

Groaning, he rolled to his belly. When he could see straight, he dared not look at his assailant, but rather focused on his fists sunk into the mud under his nose. Blood dribbled from his ruined lips in fat crimson drops onto the backs of his hands, staining his skin and mingling with the stinking mud. Below that, the fingers of one hand secretly clenched a river stone.

“Had enough … or do you need another lesson?”

Fury exploded within Leitos’s breast, threatening to drive back all his caution and sense. But if he gave in and attacked the Hunter outright, he would gain nothing, and more than likely lose any future chance at escape. Retaliate or bide his time? It was a difficult choice, left him grinding his teeth in frustration.

Over long moments, a sense of dark calm invaded his senses. He had made his decision, for good or ill. He began crawling away, first on his belly, then on his hands and knees, and then he was up, wobbling along on unsteady feet.

“Where are you going, boy?” the Hunter asked in derision. He made no attempt to follow, and Leitos judged that the man’s self-assurance was too great by far.

Grow strong and cruel , Adham’s voice intoned, swirling like a sweet poison through Leitos’s veins. He kept walking, fueling his strength of will with an image of his grandfather standing tall against the Alon’mahk’lar .

“There is nowhere to go, boy,” the Hunter said, now sounding more irritated than mocking.

Leitos did not respond, just placed one foot in front of the other. A little farther . Dripping mud concealed the stone held in his fist, just in case.

He crossed the rising riverbank and scrambled up and over a sandy berm cut by the river when it flowed even higher than it did now. At his back, the Hunter had finally begun to drift after him. Just a little farther. To the fore, the desert stretched out, all sand, rock, and low-growing scrub made pungent by the rain. The only difference between when he had fled the mines and now was the storm had wetted the land, and clouds blotted the harsh sunlight. That last would soon end, for the storm had relented as it pushed farther north. Some many leagues south, dark clouds, having spent their wrath, were parting, showing patches of blue. Leitos trained his eyes on the west, and stumbled into a trot.

“BOY!” The Hunter bellowed.

With a fleeting wish that he had never encountered the Hunter, that he had been able to remain on his little island where there was food, water, and safety in isolation, he stepped up his pace.

A moment later, he was running. His legs, stiff and shaky at first, soon found their rhythm; the muscles loosened, his stride lengthened. Hard breathing forced the last of the river water from his lungs, and he spat out the silty residue. The throbbing bruises from the Hunter’s blows faded. A single shout, incoherent for the rage it held, chased after him. Leitos did not heed it. Let him catch me! He laughed aloud, knowing a man so huge could not.

The sound of pounding feet, closing fast, evaporated his mirth.

Disbelieving, Leitos looked around. The big man was coming at a clip made all the more terrifying for its impossible speed. The Hunter’s hood still covered his face, but his motley garb streamed out behind him like the shredded wings of a bat.

Leitos bowed his head and ran faster. Where a rock or patch of prickly scrub presented itself as a barrier, he leaped over it. On the flat, his feet splashed through puddles, or dug into mud.

The Hunter matched his speed … then began closing the distance.

Leitos pushed himself into a flat sprint. He could not keep the pace long, but hoped he could outlast his pursuer. Heart thumping wildly, his blood pounded in his ears. Every breath came as ragged gasps, and still the footfalls at his back matched his, falling heavily, beating unceasingly at the damp desert floor, getting nearer with every step.

The Hunter had no trouble catching a breath, and had plenty to spare. “When I catch you, I’ll peel the hide from your rancid flesh a strip at a time!” he roared.

You will never catch me , Leitos thought, but he no longer believed it. He ran as far and as long as he could, fully aware that he was losing the race. There was nowhere he could go that the Hunter could not follow. Grow strong and cruel . His grandfather’s command was his only hope, his only choice.…

Without slowing, Leitos rolled the stone in his palm until he had a secure and, he prayed, a deadly grip.

The Hunter surged closer, growling low in his throat like a demonic creature released from the Thousand Hells. Fleetingly, Leitos wondered again if a man had pulled him from the river, or actually something born of Geh’shinnom’atar .

With the Hunter right on his heels, Leitos pressed ahead with the last of his strength. His searching eyes locked on a jutting rock braced by a pair of scraggly bushes. He flew at it, imagining one possible outcome, and willing what he desired to happen.

At the last possible instant, Leitos turned sharply, ducking the huge man’s grasping hand. The Hunter twisted in a wild bid to catch hold of Leitos, and then his foot collided with the edge of the rock, stopping dead his forward momentum. He flipped through the air, limbs spread wide in four opposing directions. On the far side of the rock, the Hunter landed on his head with a heavy grunt, and crumpled limply to his back.

Leitos skidded to a halt, the stone raised in his hand, intending to hurl it if the man moved. The Hunter did not stir. He sucked wind until his heart quieted, then edged closer.

He is not breathing , Leitos determined, failing to detect the rise and fall of the man’s chest. Still he waited. If the Hunter was merely stunned, he would soon rouse himself, and the race would begin again. If he was dead, then it did not matter.

I cannot run again , Leitos thought wearily. Knowing that, however, meant he needed to be certain the man was dead, which in turn required that he get closer. And what if he is still alive? That question flew out of the darkness of his mind, as did the ensuing answer, the same answer that had come to him when he first began crawling away from the Hunter. Then I must kill him.

Just considering that, and the means by which he would dispatch the Hunter, made his insides queasy. Before, there had been fury in his heart, but with the Hunter sprawled on his back, that fury had changed. He tried to find an alternative course, but the Hunter’s earlier boast weighed on his heart. “I can track a lizard … even a soaring bird.”

Fighting the instinct to flee, Leitos inched nearer, skipping around a tall clump of brush to ensure the Hunter did not move while briefly out of sight. From two paces, the man looked no more alive than he had at ten paces.

Leitos crept closer … closer … until he stood over the sprawled Hunter. His tumble had pulled back his hood, revealing not a brutish face, as Leitos had envisioned, but one that was handsome, even noble. The Hunter was unkempt, to be sure, his strong jaw and chin furred with several day’s growth of beard, which was nearly as long as his close-cropped black hair. Grime made the swarthy skin of his cheeks and brow all the darker. Leitos could hardly imagine him being a betrayer of his own kind. The only flaw that marred the Hunter’s features was a rough, raised scar stretched across his throat. That, Leitos suspected, accounted for the harshness of the man’s voice.