Star Hunters by Clayton Jo;

Author:Clayton, Jo;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Open Road Media Sci-Fi & Fantasy
Published: 2016-05-10T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter XIV

Grey leaned against the bars, rubbed lightly the muscles of his arm though the itching was just below the shoulder muscles on his right side. The implant had made itself felt a little earlier. He closed his fingers into fists, then deliberately loosened them. I want you loose to pry me out, she’d said. He began prowling about the cage, muscles aching from his need to stay calm, in control. Control! He dropped beside the low door and stroked the cool metal. So easy, out of here in seconds. And then? He laughed suddenly, drawing a startled look from silent Faiseh sitting in the corner of the cage. Grey waved away the unspoken question and sat down, leaning against the bars. In the trap now, he thought. He closed his eyes and sought her. Twenty meters northwest, thirty meters up. Located in one of the cavities he’d plotted out before. Haribu’s nest. He fidgeted, wondering if the time were now. Wondering if she wanted or needed his help. He looked up at an exclamation from Faiseh.

A figure was being carried on a stretcher from the gray-floored corridor. His bearers carted him into the lab. Grey raised his eyebrows. Faiseh nodded. “Manoreh,” he said. He frowned. “Now?”

Grey looked down at his shaking hands. “No,” he said suddenly. “Not yet.” He smiled. “Let her move first.”

Faiseh looked skeptical but went to watch the door into the lab.

Grey frowned. Losing my center, he thought. Need to make the trek again.

The trek. The winter trek into the Wildlands. A struggle to survive hunger, cold, fear, the endless dark solitude of the gray days and gray nights where night and day had no firm edges but merged with imperceptible slowness one into the other, where light was so diffuse most days that nothing had a shadow and all things took on the eerie unreality of nightmare. The trek. To make a great circle and lay his tokens on the cairns of Jothan and Linka and var-Himboldt. Add one more marked stone to the great stone piles at the three stages of the trek.

He could turn back with honor at the first, but forced himself on, taut with excitement and terror. He remembered looking into the gray haze over rock and snow, the endless cheating haze that tired the eyes and the spirit. He climbed carefully to the top of the cairn and added his stone to the others, then turned slowly. Without his Wolff-gift of direction he’d have lost himself a hundred times before he reached this spot. Circling cautiously on the unsteady top stones of the cairn, he saw nothing to mark the way ahead from the way he’d already crossed. Once again, he could turn back with honor. This time he hesitated. He was beaten fine by the ordeal, with little fat left on his bones. He stood on top of the cairn looking ahead into the haze but searching inside for the answer. The will … had he the will to go on?

When he made the third cairn he was a gaunt shadow in shadows.

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