Cuckoo's Egg by C. J. Cherryh Read Free Book Online Page A

each night— thinking a minnow might try him? Expecting it?
    Was Duun as tired as he?
    (Fix the breakfast, minnow. Hear?)
    Hatani tricks. A hatani decides what his enemy will do.
    A pebble in the tea. (Fix the breakfast, minnow.) And what his enemy believes.
    Anger came into him. He purged it.
    (Wield anger; it has no place, else.)
    (Is there a use for fear?)

    * * *
Duun stopped, not yet in the open. There was the land below. There were the treetops black and green downslope. There was, beyond the trees, the great flat plain, the river-plain, the valley of the Oun, which watered it, narrow in its folds.
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    And a sudden bleak thought came to him.
    Predictive. His heart doubled its beats. He had chosen the hunter's part. It was that part habitual with him; Thorn seldom turned, only tried to disarm his attacks, to defend— to set snares. It was wise in Thorn (Face to face with me— Thorn challenged, and: no, said Thorn, when I offered him a fight.)
    It was constantly the running tactic. The evasion.
    (Find me, Duun-hatani. Find me if you can. Find me where I choose.) In a different place, a change of grounds.
    Duun dared not run. That was always the pursuer's hazard. Thorn's traps were halfhearted, token; but there was no tokenness in a downslope fall.
    Thorn supposed in him a certain degree of care.
    And Thorn was quicker. Younger. Sound of wind.
    Duun set out quickly. Anger rose in him and died a quick death.
    (Well-done, minnow, if this was your plan. I am not ashamed. Not of you.) Duun saw his hazard. And being hatani-trained, perhaps the young fool knew what he did.
    Perhaps.

    * * *
Thorn ached still. The first cramps had bent him double. (O gods, gods, gods, his guts.) He heaved himself down at a streamside he had never hunted yet, bathed his face. Livhl-root. He knew the herb. He knew others and chewed the leaves, a foul taste, but it stopped the spasms in his bowels. He had left sign. He had made mistakes when the pain drove him.
    He chewed the sour leaves he found and swallowed, splashed his face with 47

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    icy water from the spring. His hands were white with the chills that racked him.
    Fool, to challenge Duun. To have offered quarter. To have changed the game. Nothing was safe. He flung himself up again and ran down the stream—
    —Old trick. Ancient trick, Duun would say. Do something original.
    He had no strength left. His knees ached with the struggle with the water and the rocks, his bones ached with the chill: his joints grew loose and ached and strained with the sudden turn of river stones. The cold got into his bones and set him shivering.
    (Can one die of livhl? Was it livhl?)
    His ankle turned; he saved himself from a plunge in icy water, waded to the shore, his arms and the legs under him jerking with shivers like drugged spasms. (O Duun, unfair.)
    No quarter. None.
    Downhill again.

    * * *
The sun went past zenith. The drug had worked. Duun caught the livhl-stink, though Thorn had been wary, and fouled the brook to kill it. It was in his sweat, on the things his hands had touched. He had taken to the stream and followed that— no craft at all to conceal his exit-point. A snare was possible, if Thorn's wits were not addled. Duun went around the place, picked the trail up without difficulty, though water had killed the scent somewhat. (Well-thought, minnow; the brush is thick, the chance for ambush all too great. Am I to follow you into a thrown rock, a deadfall?) (Where's the breaking-point, Thorn? The killing-point? The point you turn?)
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    (Or do you fall first? How long, Thorn?)
    Duun hastened. His limp betrayed him. There was a pain within his side.
    (Old man, old man— they put you back together; you should have let them replace the knee, regrow the hand— now you rue it, late.) He found another way— he guessed which way Thorn must head and guessed amiss.
    (So. He learned that lesson all too well. Does he read me? Does he know?
    Or is it random