He leaned back against his bedroll and closed his eyes. "It takes place during a great battle, when one of the warriors bolts and tries to hide behind his mother's skirts. She's not exactly a peacemonger. The best I ever translated the song went:
Into the hall-alone, my son?
Now hear your mother's prayer.
Go back onto the battlefield
And aid your father there.
I'd far prefer your blood be spilled
Like water on the ground
Or have you in your shroud arrayed
Than as a coward found.
Go thou into the hall and see
The portraits of your sires.
The eyes of each and every one
Alight with raging fires.
Not mine the son who would disgrace
His family's name and home.
"Kiss me, my mother dear," he said,
She did, and he was gone.
He has come back unto the door,
No longer does he live.
His mother cries, "My son, my son!
Oh God, can you forgive?"
Then comes an answer from the wall,
"While rivers run through Wales
Far better is the hero's death
Than life when courage fails..."
The silence following the song was total, and it took a few moments for Cadmann to realize how deeply into the song he had wandered. The words still resonated in his mind, now carried by the rough, untutored tones of his grandfather.
That's what a man is made of...
"Do you like that?" he asked, almost shyly.
"I like, Cad. I like song. You teach it to Ernst. Soon."
An unstrained chuckle bubbled up through the embarrassment, as Cadmann realized that he felt more comfortable than he had in a hundred and twenty years. At least. "You know, there's something I've always wondered." He paused, his thoughts interrupted by the soft plaintive moans of the calf. "How many of those songs do they sing as entertainment, and how many are behavioral mod? I mean—my grandfather would never have said that he'd rather have a dead grandson than a live coward, but the message was pretty clear." He shook his head irritably. There was a tension headache in there somewhere, but it hadn't wormed to the surface yet. "It sure as hell was. And the worst part of it is that I don't even know what I think of that."
He stared into the heater. It was a poor substitute for a campfire, and he felt vaguely discontented. He made a fist, examining it in the dim light. His skin was the same tough, weathered hide it had been since his late twenties. A faint smile: Let's have a big hand for the oldest, strongest fingers on Avalon.
Absently he caressed the stock of the rifle, running his thumbnail into the engraved hardwood. With sudden, disturbing clarity he realized that he had never touched Mary Ann more lovingly. He grimaced. "Maybe I do know what I think about that. Sometimes you just have to be satisfied with what you are."
Ernst reached out with one large hand and gripped Cadmann's arm warmly.
Together they waited.
Relationships.
There is a relationship between hunters, between hunter and prey, between a hunter and his own body, his aches and pains and fears. Between a hunter and time itself.
They mingle, this complex set of interrelationships which varies in every case, and within a single hunt varies from instant to instant.
But whatever the variables, there is one thing that remains constant:
There comes a moment in which time ceases to have meaning, when aches and pains and fears dissolve into insignificance. When friendship or antagonism, hesitation or eagerness all meld together to create an instant of pure feeling, clear intention, when the observed and the observer are one. At this moment the mixture of awareness and involvement is like a supersaturated solution: one vibration, one degree's variance of temperature triggers irrevocable change, a shockingly abrupt crystallization of potentials.
Cadmann and Ernst, cradling their rifles, gazing out into the darkness, existed in that state. The night sounds, the constant shuffling of the calf, its occasional whines all absorbed into the gestalt of the experience.
Waiting without wanting. Preparedness without hope. Empty vessels, delicate balances awaiting a trigger.
Joshua the calf strained at his tether, pulling toward the northern edge of the plateau. He was staring out into the darkness to the south, eyes huge and shiny, all sound stuck in his throat like a chunk of frozen grass. He reminded Cadmann of nothing so much as a deer transfixed by the headlights of an oncoming jeep.
For just one moment the tableau was stable.
Then the calf tried to bolt. It strained at the tether, pulled until the plastic line was as taut as a bowstring: vibrating, singing against the spike in the ground.
"Don't see anything..."Cadmann whispered. "Where--?"
Ernst nudged his elbow, and pointed south. Cadmann's goggles whirred noiselessly as they adjusted for range. Gradually it came into focus: a faint blotch of orange beyond the jumble of dead trees and thorn brush.
It slowly changed from an indistinct blob to a real shape: oblong, rear portion low to the ground, upper body more erect. "Komodo dragon," Cadmann said into the tiny tape recorder in his pocket. "Komodo dragon, but the tail's thicker. Head's rounder. It can walk bipedal but doesn't much. Uses the short front legs to get over the brush.
"Jesus Christ. The bastard must weigh two hundred kilos, easy."
The calf strained against the noose until he was gagging. His swollen tongue bulged from his mouth. The legs were as rigid as iron pipes, and the eyes protruded whitely, rimmed with red.
The thing stalked out of the south. It waddled toward them, toward the trembling calf, moving with confident slowness, stopping for a moment to survey the plateau, even pausing to stare at the blind.
"It knows we're here," Cadmann dictated. "Knows and doesn't give a damn. Christ, it's like it smiled at us." You're next, it thinks. Well, maybe not.
"Well insulated. Not giving off much heat. Hard to get details." Cadmann cursed and turned his goggles up another notch. The creature paused for another leisurely look at the blind, then turned away to move toward the calf again. Its infrared glow was like a will-o'-the-wisp gliding across the land.
Cadmann grinned. Gotcha. I don't know what you are, but we're sure as shit going to find out. "Don't shoot until I do," he whispered.
"Aye aye, Colonel."
Was Ernst remembering? No time to think of that. Wait. Come on, baby, come on, further from the edge, out onto the plateau. I don't know what you're made of, but ten rounds of this ought to finish you.
"Parasites," Ernst whispered. "Careful. And maybe it has young—"
"Good thinking." Parasites. Like fleas on a dying rabbit. They can be dangerous once we've killed it. He is remembering. Adrenaline? The creature had moved closer. Come on, come on...
The creature was within fifteen meters of the calf. It continued slowly, paused often to sweep its head around. "I think it can see in the IR," Cadmann dictated. "Probably sees us better than we see it."
The calf was bleeding from the neck as the nylon braids rubbed and cut, but adrenaline drove him on. Just an instant now—
The thing moved like a boneless crocodile, each step, though apparently clumsy, rippling back through its body like rhythm through the legs of a millipede. It was hypnotic to watch, and now that he could see it more clearly, he could see and sense the raw animal power of the thing. "It's smart. As smart as a dolphin, maybe. Give it enough time, it might evolve intelligence." He felt a fleeting moment of sadness.
Then the tether snapped, and Joshua bolted. The creature rippled after it.
Ernst fired first. Cadmann let the rifle swing easily to follow the creature and squeezed off a round. As he did, the creature moved again. Cadmann's shot went wide of the mark. "Jesus, it moves fast," Cadmann shouted. Ernst fired again. The creature's body was slammed by the first shell, and suddenly it was moving. It whirled and dashed toward the blind, moving at an impossible speed across the rocky plateau.
Shock piled upon shock. The infrared goggles flared as if a thermite bomb had ignited in the creature's bowels. The rangefinders couldn't adjust fast enough as the creature dashed toward them. Its image remained out of focus but flared until he saw nothing but a bright glare. Ernst fired three times more. It was impossible to tell whether he had hit the creature. It screamed, in pain or defiance or challenge, or all three, and it hissed like a steam engine. Suddenly it was upon them.
Ernst stood. He had removed his goggles and was firing blind into the blood-tinged darkness. The dragon hit the thorn barrier. Branches bent, split, splintered. Thorns and bark exploded into the interior as the monster slid sideways into them. It thrashed its tail and a section of the wall fractured and slammed into Cadmann. He fell. Spikes pierced his face and hands and legs. A flying broken branch struck the left side of his head and knocked the goggles askew. Cadmann tried to stand, but one knee didn't want to work properly. A thorn branch hung from his left hand. He had to set the rifle down to tear it free. Blood followed the thorns.
Less than five seconds had passed since the first shot.
The creature screamed again. The thorn branches flew again as it lashed its tail. Cadmann tore away the useless goggles. There was blood in his eyes, and he fumbled for his rifle. Everything seemed to happen at once. To his right Ernst was firing wildly at something that tore through the thorn barrier as if it were not there. Nylon line snapped. More thorn branches flew as deadly missiles.
Cadmann's left hand didn't want to work. Blood streamed from the palm, and lifting his rifle was agony.
Ernst fired once more. The creature screamed, whether in agony or rage Cadmann couldn't tell. It seemed to take forever to bring the big rifle around, and then Ernst was in the way. More blood flowed into Cadmann's eyes from the scalp wound.
"Get back."' Cadmann screamed. "Back!"
Everything was moving in slow motion—everything except the monster.
Its speed was impossible, and Cadmann's mind, in a vain attempt to grasp the thing's rhythm, had slowed reality down until he seemed to be swimming in clear syrup. His thoughts slugged along like a holo played at one-tenth speed. Too many impressions per second, too many feelings, too much surprise. Too much of anything and everything, until his entire nervous system was in overload, and for an instant nothing registered but shock.
The monster had torn the fence to shreds. The great tail lashed back and forth. Each time it struck branches and splinters flew at them. It knows, Cadmann thought. My God, it knows! The barrier fence crumbled to nothing.
The world was a blur. There just wasn't enough light. His left eye was blood-blinded, useless, and his right wasn't in much better shape.
Exactly eight seconds after the first shot was fired, the thorn barrier was a mass of splintered ruin. Faster than a cheetah ever ran, than a cobra ever struck, something that was all dark mouth and glistening teeth wiggled through the opening, and Ernst screamed.
It was a sound that Cadmann knew he would never, could never, forget—all of a man's hope vanishing in one overwhelming moment of agony.
The monster's head jutted through the jagged opening. The jaws clamped savagely into Ernst's thigh. Arterial blood spurted. Ernst thrashed and flailed. His arms flopped like a rag doll's. He struck at the creature's head with the rifle, then with great mallet fists that made no more impression than snowflakes on an anvil.
The jaws snapped again, clamping more deeply. The scream arced higher, wavered, began to fade. The monster backed out of the hole, dragging Ernst with it.
Cadmann was watching himself watch, the distance between thought and action expanding until he felt like a man falling down a well, sky and sun and rationality impossibly far above him, growing further with every hundredth of a second. With immense effort he fought his way past the paralysis and forced himself to act.
Outside now, Ernst was still whimpering as the thing crawled up his body, looking into his eyes. Its paws were locked onto his front shoulders, huge face so close that it looked as if it might kiss him. Ernst's own blood drizzled out of its mouth and onto his cheek.
Ernst turned to Cadmann, something beyond fear or pain in his face, only a pleading silence that was shattered by a single urgent word:
"Please..."
Cadmann shouldered his rifle and fired: at the creature, at Ernst, at the night, as logic dissolved and terror coursed through his body like electrical sparks arcing from pole to pole.
And Ernst exploded.
The gas cartridges!
A bright nimbus of flame played around the bodies, and Cadmann shielded his eyes.
The creature howled its wrath and pain as a fireball of jellied fuel engulfed the rough wet leather of its squatly amphibian body. It reared back, shrieking, turned and ran.
To Cadmann it seemed to fly downhill like a meteor or a rocket missile: one long stream of fire ending at the pool. It skimmed across the surface of the pool, then sank almost in the center. Its agonized howl ended suddenly. The flame went out. The pool smoked and steamed like a caldron of soup. A trail of fiery webbed footprints, improbably far apart, sputtered for a few moments and died.
Cadmann pushed his foot at the thorn barrier. An entire section of it simply fell to the ground. His rifle drooped in his arms.
Cadmann doffed his jacket and flailed at Ernst's flaming, smoking corpse. The heavy nylon was melting, burning his hands, but he continued beating at the corpse mechanically, ignoring the pain that was beginning to surface, until the last flickering tongue had died.
Ernst's body was charred and broken and chewed, barely recognizable as anything that had ever been human.