Peter Beagle - The Line Between

allowing him to rise without any hindrance, and the two of them faced each other under the half–moon, the Hunter crouched and panting, the Goro studying him thoughtfully out of lidless black eyes.

The Hunter said, his voice still lightly amused, «I am not afraid of you. We have killed — " he caught himself then, and for a single moment, a splinter of a moment, I saw real, rending pain in his own pitiless eyes — «I have killed a score greater than you, and each time walked away unscathed. You will not live to say the same.»

«Perhaps not," said the Goro, and nothing more than that. It continued to stand where it was, motionless as a long–legged gantiya waiting in the marshes for a minnow, while the Hunter, just as immobile, seemed to vibrate with bursting, famished energy. I began to ease away from the ditch, one slow–sliding foot at a time, freezing for what seemed hours between steps and wishing desperately now for the moon to sink or cloud over. There came no sound or signal from the farmhouse–thing; for all I knew, the old man had taken full advantage of the Goro's distraction to abandon me to its mercy, and that of my own pursuer. Neither of them had yet paid any further heed to me, but each waited with a terrible patience for the other's eyes to make the first move. At the last, the eyes are all you have.

Gradually gaining an idiotic confidence in my chances of slipping off unnoticed, I forgot completely how I had earlier tripped in a rut and sprawled on my face, until I did it again. I made no sound, for all my certainty that I had broken my nose, but they heard me. The Hunter gave a sudden short laugh, far more terrifying than the Goro's strange, strangled roar, and came bounding at me, flying over those same furrows like a dolphin taking the sunset waves. I was paralyzed — I have no memory of reacting, until I found myself on my back, curled into a half–ball, as a shukri brought to bay will do, biting and clawing madly at an assailant too vast for the malodorous little beast even to conceive of. The Hunter was over me like nightfall: still perfectly efficient, for all his fury, contemptuously ignoring my flailing attempts at both attack and defense, while seeking the one place for the one blow he would ever need to strike. He found it.

He found it perhaps half a second after I found the cook's paring knife in the place where the old man had scornfully insisted that I carry it. Thought was not involved — the frantic, scrabbling thing at the end of my arm clutched the worn wooden handle and lunged blindly upward, slanting the blade along the Hunter's rib cage, which turned it like a melting candle. I felt the warm, slow trickle — ah, they could bleed, then! —but the Hunter's face never changed; if anything, he smiled with a kind of taunting triumph. Yes, I can bleed, but that will not help you. Nothing will help you. Nevertheless, he missed his strike, and I somehow rolled away, momentarily out of range and still, still alive.

The Hunter's hands were open, empty, hanging at his sides. The brown tunic was dark under his left arm, but he never stopped smiling. He said clearly, «There is no hope. No hope for you, no escape. You must know that.»

«Yes," I said. «Yes, I know.» And I did know, utterly, beyond any delusion. I said, «Come ahead, then.»

To do myself some justice, he moved in rather more deliberately this time, as though I might have given him something to consider. I caught a moment's glimpse of the Goro standing off a little way, apparently waiting for us to destroy each other, as the old man had hoped it and the Hunters would do. The Hunter eased toward me, sideways–on, giving my paring knife the smallest target possible, which was certainly a compliment of a sort. I feinted a couple of times, left and right, as I had seen it done. He laughed, saying, «Good — very good. Really.» A curious way to hear one's death sentence spoken.

Suddenly I had had enough of being quarry: the one pursued, the one hunted down, dragged down, the one helplessly watching his derisive executioner approach, himself unable to stir hand or foot. Without anything resembling a strategy, let alone a hope, I flung myself at the Hunter like a stone tumbling downhill. He stepped nimbly aside, but surprise slowed him just a trifle, and I hurtled into him, bringing us down together for a second time, and jarring the wind out of his laughter.

For a moment I was actually on top, clutching at the Hunter's throat with one hand, brandishing my little knife over him with the other. Then he smiled teasingly at me, like a father pretending to let a child pin him at wrestling, and he took the knife away from me and snapped it between his fingers. His face and clothes were splotched with blood now, but he seemed no whit weaker as he shrugged me aside and kneeled on my arms. He said kindly, «You gave us a better run than we expected. I will be quick.»

Then he made a mistake.

Under the chuckling benignity, contempt, always, for every living soul but Hunters. Under the gracious amusement, contempt, utter sneering contempt. They cannot help it, it is what they are, and it is their only weakness. He tossed the broken handle of the paring knife — with its one remaining jag of blade — lightly into my face, and raised a hand for the killing blow. When he did that, his body weight shifted — only the least bit, but his right knee shifted with it, and slipped in a smear of blood. My half–numb left arm pulled free.

There was no stabbing possible with that fraction of a knife — literally no point to it, as you might say. I thought only to mark him, to make him know that he had not killed a pitiful child, but a man grown. One last time I slashed feebly at his smiling face, but he turned his head slightly, and I missed my target completely, raking the side of his neck. I remember my disappointment — well, failed at that, too, my last act in this world. I remember.

It was no dribble this time, no ooze, but a fierce leap like a living animal over my hand — even Hunters have an artery there — followed immediately by a lover's triumphant blurt of breath into my face. The Hunter's eyes widened, and he started

to say something, and he died in my arms.

I might have lain there for a little while — I don't know. It cannot have been long, because the body was abruptly snatched off mine and flung back and away, like a snug blanket on a winter's morning, when your mother wants you out feeding the jejebhais. The Goro hauled me to my feet.

«Him," it said, and nothing more. It made no menacing gesture, uttered no horrifying threat; none of that was necessary. Now here is where the foolishness comes in. I had every hysterical intention of crying, «Lord, lord, please, do not slay me, and I will lead you straight to where he hides, only spare my wretched life.» I meant to, I find no disgrace in telling you this, especially since what I actually heard myself say — quite politely, as I recall — was, «You will have to kill me, sir.» For that miserable, lying, insulting, shapeshifting old man, I did that, and he jeered at me for it, later on. Ah, well, we begin as we are meant to continue, I suppose.

The Goro regarded me out of those eyes that could neither blink (though I saw a sort of pinkish membrane flick across them from time to time) nor reveal the slightest feeling. It said, «That would serve no useful purpose. You will take me to him.»

As I have said, it raised no deadly paw, showed no more teeth than the long muzzle normally showed. But I felt the command, and the implacable will behind the command — I felt the Goro in my mind and my belly, and to disobey was not possible. Not possible … I can tell you nothing more. Except, perhaps, that I was young. Today, withered relic that I am become, I might yet perhaps hold that will at bay. It was not possible then.