Cuckoo's Egg

IV

Faith am I when all you trust has died;

Truth am I when all you know has lied.

Choice I bring when the choice you had is sped;

Promise am I when all other faith has fled.

Vengeance am I but I come to you at cost;

One gain am I when all else you want is lost.

Thorn sang. It was a hatani song. Duun listened, as to the other lessons, listened half-dreaming as he played. There was a sweetness in Thorn's voice, all unsuspected, a skill in his hands which ran upon the strings. Perhaps it was a native fierceness that made the boy love this song; perhaps it was the innocence of that downlands child who questioned a hatani's scars, happy in ignorance. Perhaps Thorn only loved the tune. He sang it well.

Duun took over the dkin and strummed out a new rhythm with his two-fingered right hand. Rapped the beat on the sounding-board, and Thorn with native skill took the beat on the small drum.

The young head bent to the music, young eyes looked up slyly from beneath a fall of dark hair, lately shaven lips widened in a grin. Thorn had given up on the hair of his face. That on his body he still cultivated. Besides, the razor burned. (You look better, Duun had told him, when Thorn had done the deed and crept out for approval. And Thorn looked profoundly relieved.)

Vulnerable. Oh, vulnerable, young Thorn.

Green beneath the summer sun,

White beneath the snow,

All fair my land,

And fair the one I know

Whose paths run down

To mine in evenglow.

Love and women and things of the world. "A hatani has no kin," Duun said while his hands played on. "When you are hatani to the heart you will not have me."

The drum stopped. But there was no question. Thorn had betrayed himself and Duun had gone no further; Thorn kept his own counsel, grown wary in his years. And having done that much, Duun kept the melody going, gentle harmony. "When I lost the most of my hand, I thought I would never play. I recovered that. Other things I lost. You gain no virtue from loss you never know. There will never be love, Thorn. Never. Do you know that word? -Take up the beat."

Thorn picked it up, bowed his head till his eyes were hid.

"I tell you," Duun said in the low beat of the strings, the counterpoint of the drum. "There's always something left to lose. When you think there's nothing more you're a fool, Thorn; there's something till you're dead. And after that-gods know. Do you know how old you are?"

Thorn looked up. The beat skewed, recovered itself.

"They know in the city. I know. The meds don't come. Half a year and they don't come. You know why, Thorn?"

A move of the head. No. There was dread in Thorn's eyes.

"Well," Duun said, "they don't. Maybe they know what you are."

The beat kept up, regular as heartbeat and as painful. "What am I?"

Duun looked at him sidelong. "Hatani. Like me. Self-sufficient."

Thorn only stared at him, knowing his tricks. (Foul, Duun-hatani. Wicked and foul.)

"You have a wound, little fish. You bleed into the water. Don't you know this?"

Thorn's jaw set. His eyes were alive with thoughts. "I didn't feel the wind, Duun-hatani. You caught me." "-again." "Meds."

Duun looked up.

"You talked about meds, Duun, and cities. What about them?"

"Oho. The minnow takes to deeper water." "You mean to say something, Duun-hatani. You never say anything you don't want to say." "Deeper still."

"You called them. Did you?" "No." The music grew under Duun's fingers, shifted and changed. "They called you." "Ellud called." "Why?"

"To ask how you are. I told them. Improving, I said. Growing. They were satisfied." "What's Ellud? Why does he want to know?

Why do the meds care? Why do they look at me and never at you?"

"Ssss. There's time. There's a little time, isn't there?"

"Time for what?"

"Tksss. Fool. Walk and breathe at once, can you?"

The beat picked up again, changed, became another thing, strong and temperful.

"Defy me, do you?" Duun launched into a thing more complex.

The beat followed. "Time for what?" Thorn asked. Duun shrugged.

"For Sheon."

"The city? The meds?" Thorn's eyes grew wild, dilate. "Gods-go there?"

"Did I teach you profanity? No. I taught you respect. You're still a child. What a leap of reason. Did I say go to the city?"

"What do you mean-time?"

"That." And Duun launched out on another tune. "Time was, I thought you might beat me, little fish. I thought you might come at me in my sleep. Fair or foul, I said. You ever think of that?"

"I thought of it."

"Why didn't you?"

A long hesitation. "I like my own sleep, Duun-hatani."

"Ah."

Thorn gave him a wary look. Duun grinned at him in no merry way. So Thorn got the joke as well. Jaw set. Eyes flickered in alarm.

(Guard your sleep, little fish. The rules just changed.)

Thorn smiled suddenly, darkly, without humor, and complicated the drum-pulse, making irreverent changes in hatani songs.

(What is a hatani? Duun. Duun is Duun. Like the sun. You become Duun, little fish, and never ask what Duun might be. Duun is the trees and the mountain, environment. Duun is faith kept. You sing the song. Hear the words, Thorn, wei-na-mei, minnow in my brook.)

Thorn poured the tea, sitting cross-legged on the riser in the room before the fire. His hand trembled and there was a shadow about his eyes, a bruising where no one had struck. "Eat," Duun said, on its other side. "You'll climb the mountain today."

Shadowed eyes lifted to him. Shoulders were already slumped. Perhaps Thorn thought of protest. If so he gave it up. Thorn knew the game.

"The black thread," Duun said, sipping at the tea. "Across the door last night. It's a very old trick. Did you know that?"

"No."

Duun grinned and swallowed down a mouthful. "Eat. Eat. You'll break your neck on the rocks."

Thorn filled his mouth and choked it down. He had shaved. He had washed himself. He had waked last night with a knife being laid at his pillow. "You're dead," Duun had whispered, ever so softly, the fifth night, the fifth night of Thorn's sleeplessness.

Thorn had started up, grasped Duun's wrist and lost that battle too, in the pitch black, in the haze of sleep caught for night upon night in fitful snatches.

"You'll try to sleep today," Duun said quietly, over tea. "It might be wise."

Thorn looked at him in bleak dismay.

Duun grinned. "On the other hand, it might not be. Want to sleep, minnow? You might take me now, face to face."

"No. There's a pebble in the pot, Duun-hatani."

Duun stopped in mid-sip. Looked at the haggard face.

"I've drunk no tea," Thorn said.

Duun set the cup down on the riser, in front of his crossed ankles.

"I won't ask my question," Thorn said hoarsely. "That was foul. I'll take you fair. With warning."

Duun drew in a long breath. Thorn had braced himself. Centered himself against the chance of a blow. And Thorn trembled.

For a long moment Duun did not move. Then he held up his left hand in a slight gesture that meant no attack forthcoming, and reached to his belt with the two fingers of this right. He laid the pebble on the smooth surface. Thorn glanced at it. There was only that. His eyes lifted, strangely clear.

"I would have given it to you before you left," Duun said. "I would have given it to you when you told me. But, minnow, you offered me quarter. To offer that to me-" "I'm sorry, Duun."

"The thread was clever. To change the rules was cleverer. Then pride blinded you. Minnow, you've changed the rules. Do you understand?" A hoarse whisper. "Yes, Duun-hatani." "Be wary of everything, minnow. And never grant quarter to a hatani. Fair is a teaching-game. Fair is a box I drew. Should I have used all I had and discouraged you? Now the walls are down, minnow. What will you do?" "I'd be a fool to tell you, Duun-hatani." Duun nodded slowly. Thorn picked up his bowl to eat. Set it back then, with a soft click of the spoon against the bowl and looked up at him.

"Yes," Duun said. "It would be good to wonder what's in the food. Wouldn't it? Eat, minnow. I give you that grace. It's quite safe."

Thorn edged back on the riser, set his leg over the edge. "You said no quarter. I believe you."

"And not my telling you it's safe?"

"No." Thorn got to his feet and walked across the sand, gathered up his weapons from the shelf, his cloak from beside the door. He stopped there and looked back.

Turned and left then. Running, feet thumping down porch steps.

Duun sipped at his tea and set it down at his knee. Thorn expected a little start. Such things he took for granted.

Duun got up, gathered up his own weapons, and his cloak.

No quarter then.

Thorn ran, ran, knowing that there was no time. There was no time to rue the attack, no time for any regret, only the running and the land-

("Wind and land, wei-na-ya: wind and land.")

("Scent-blind: but my knee aches when it rains-")

Turn and turn and turn: a fool's need rules his wit; a wise man's wit governs need.

("A hatani dictates what another's need will be.")

Fool, to do what a hatani said to do!

Thorn caught his breath and sprang for the rocks, bare feet doing what claws might do, shaping themselves to stone as Duun's could not, clinging with their softness: bare hands clinging where Duun's hands might not-swinging on a branch that gave a shortcut round the cliffside, dropping to a slant where Duun's feet would skid, where Duun's leg might fail-

The wind, O fool, the wind is at your face; Duun had checked the wind this morning. There was no corner Duun-hatani did not see around before his quarry even saw the turn-

The pebble in the tea-

Upland or downland? Do what Duun said and surprise him with obedience? Or do the opposite?

Run and run: he was quicker than Duun, that was all he was. He had grown up in these hills; and so had Duun. Thorn was more agile. He could take the high slope on his bare feet at greater speed than Duun-

– but Duun knew that.

Wild choice, then. Logic-less. He darted downslope.

Wind in his face, wind carrying his scent; and he had to get around that bend first, around the mountain shoulder.

Duun was at his back. It was not the pain Thorn dreaded, though pain there would be. It was Duun. Duun himself.

The wind carried scent and Duun breathed it- fool, Duun thought, at the edge of the rocks; but twice a fool is a hunter too secure. There was the easy temptation-to win at once, to take the rash chance, the wide chance.

But it was hatani he hunted. No more minnow, but fish in dark water.

He smelled the wind and knew Thorn's direction and his distance; he knew the branch of the trail that gave access to the cliff and knew the way Thorn could take that he could not-he knew every track in the hills.

Thorn knew he knew. That was the conundrum: how well he had taught the fish.

And what kind it was, how native-adept, what skill was bred into its bone and blood… what intelligence, what instincts.

Five-fingered hands; a surer grip; a talent at climbing: these it had. It had youth: strong legs, that felt no pain.

It knew-if it used its wits-how a once-maimed shonun had to compensate for these things.

And it would, being hatani, try to predict; try then to seize events and turn them.

It smelled of fear and sweat, even when the wind had cleaned the scent. It stank of something else, a bitter, acrid taint.

Run and run: it was speed Thorn had first for advantage. It was agility-Duun's was greatest, hand to hand. But Thorn's was more in distance, in the rocks, in the quick scaling of a tilted tree across a crack-

(Fool! he'll know-)

(But it will cost him time.)

And Thorn had gotten the mountain between him and Duun, gotten stone between them, to confuse the scent.

But Duun could smell where a hand had been, if he got his nose down to it. So Duun claimed.

(Run, minnow. I'm coming, little fish…)

Downland. The opposite of what Duun had said he ought to do: should he confound the choice? What was there to do that he had never done?

(Gods, his gut, his bowels ached. Fear? The chase? The jolts from rock to rock?)

(Something in the food?)

Duun tripped the support. The log rolled down the gravel slope. Hastily done. Rife with scent. He spotted the second trap too, the limb drawn back, and drew back his hand in time.

Double-snared.

(Good, fish. Well done, that. But not good enough.)

Thorn knelt on hands and knees. He had reached the road and crossed it, leaving tracks; he paused to set a rock up on a twig, on a slope where haste might set a foot, then hurled himself downslope, leaving further tracks, leaving a bit of skin on the stones below.

He miscalculated further, sprawled. His face stung with shame. He gathered himself up again, doubled over a little farther on sweating and resisting the easy support of a tree.

(Touch nothing, leave no trace-)

Duun would hurt him. That was nothing. It was the look in Duun's gray eyes. The stare. The scorn.

Thorn bent and caught his breath; and wits began to work. He looked up at the slope he had left.

(Take me now, face to face.)

(The walls are down, minnow. What will you do?)

(Did Duun sleep? Could Duun sleep more than he did these last nights in the house?)

Was Duun-hatani lying awake 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.

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 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?)

(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 choice he tries? Knowledge or fool's choice?)

(How old is he in his own terms? Not man yet. Not grown. But near.)

(Thorn-that-I-carried. Haras, Thorn, that wounds the hand that holds it, the foot that treads it, that tangles paths and bears bitter blooms and poisoned fruit.)

The shadows multiplied in the sinking sun. Thorn gasped for air, withheld his hands from their instinctive reach after support on trunk and log and stone as he descended the valley. He sighted on a stone and went to it, for his legs wandered. He sighted on the next and followed that. Such little goals led him now.

(Get beyond the pale, get to paths strange to both of us. Duun knows the mountain too well- far too well.)

(Go where Duun would not have me go-make him angry-anger in my enemy is my friend, my friend-)

He smelled smoke. It was far away in the valley, but he went toward it.

(Let Duun worry now. Let him come here to find me. Here among the countryfolk. Here among others. Other people.)

(Run and run. Stop for wind. Let us play this game in and out of strange places, in among stranger-folk who know nothing of the game.)

– There must be food, food for taking with hatani tricks. ("They're herders," Duun had said. "Herder-folk. No, little fish, not hatani, nothing like. They respect us too much to come here. That's all. They lived here once.")

(Where houses are is food, is shelter: he'll have to search, he won't know if they'd lie, these countryfolk, or hide me-Perhaps they would.)

There was a trail. There was a stink of habit here even his nose could tell, musty, old dung, the frequent passage of animals.

Thorn jogged up it. Stink to hide his stink. To confound Duun's nose. Tracks to hide his tracks. Let Duun guess. Thorn gathered speed and coursed along the trail. There was the taste of blood in his mouth.

("-They never bother anything," Duun said of farmer-folk. "They don't ask to be bothered and we don't go there.")

("Couldn't we see them, Duun-hatani? Couldn't we go and see?") Thorn wondered if they were like the meds and Ellud; if there were- (-O gods, if there were some like me.) In all the wide world Duun spoke of, there must be more like him.

It was what Duun had thought. Fool! he cursed himself. Fool! To maneuver the enemy and not to see it-that was the greatest fool in the world. Scent-blind, sick with livhl, Thorn was seeking a hiding-place, seeking some place rife with scents, with smoke, with tracks and confusion. Cover himself in shonun-scent.

Thorn was going to the one place forbidden him. Change the rules. Upset the game.

Find outsiders and raise it another level still.

(Duun, what's wrong with me?)

(Slick, the infant said, rubbing at his stomach.)

Faces in the mirror.

(Duun, will my ears grow?)

Duun laid his own ears back and put on speed, risking everything now, risking shame, that a minnow might trap him.

But Thorn already had.

There was a house in the twilight-not a large house like theirs up on the mountain, but a ramshackle thing part metal and part wood. There were fences, put together the same way, of bits and pieces. Fences-Thorn guessed that word: fences, Duun said, kept countryfolk cattle from the woods: and cattle Thorn had seen, from high on the mountaintop, white and brown dots moving across the flat in summer-haze. ("City-meat comes from those," Duun told him. And Thorn: "Can't we hunt them?" "There's no hunting them," Duun had said. "They're tame. They're stupid. They stand there to be killed. Staring at you. They trust shonunin.")

("And they kill them, Duun?")

White animals huddled in their pens. Lights burned near the house on a tall pole in the twilight. Thorn saw the power lines, that led from there two ways, the house, and off across the land- (The power unit's far away then. Can there be other houses near?) He skirted brush, came up nearer, where he had a closer view of the house, the dusty yard beyond its fence. Hiyi grew there, along the row, all in leaf in this season, flowerless. He heard high voices, the closing of some door. "I'll get you," someone shrilled, but there was laughter in the voice. "I'll get you, Mon!"

More shrieks. Thorn came closer, taking to the road. Beneath the lights, in front of the porch, two small figures ran and raced and played chase.

"Come in here!" a voice called from the open door. "Come in, it's time to eat."

They were children. They ran and shrieked and yelled-

Duun's kind. Thorn's heart stopped. He stood there in the road and looked beyond the fence and likewise the children stopped their game and stared, they on their side, he on his.

They were like Duun. Like him, in grayer, paler coats. With Duun-like ears, eyes, faces- with all that made up Duun.

"Aiiii!" one screamed. The other yelled. They hugged each other and yelled-to frighten him, he thought; he stood his ground, trembling at the sight. More of Duun's kind came out.

But children were like Duun. Children were not born hairless; he was not a child gone wrong, failed in growing-

– He was-

(Duun!)

He drew back. A man had run out onto the step. "Get in! Get inside!" Thorn thought it meant him, and delayed. " Ili! Ili ! Get the gun!"

(O gods! Guns! Duun!)

He spun on his heel and ran. He heard doors slam, more than once. Heard running come toward the fence, heard voices at his back. "Gods, it's him!" one yelled, and others took it up. "It's that thing-that thing!"

It was a trap. Duun had made it. Duun had snared all his paths, all the world: there was no way, nothing, anywhere, that Duun had not seen and set up to trap him-

(Got you, minnow, got you again-)

Thorn snatched breath and left the road, darted into the undergrowth, hearing the howl of animals at his back, hearing shouts raised- "The thing on the mountain!- It's him, it's come!"

(O gods, Duun-gods-) Breath split his side. Branches tore at him. He ran and something in him had broken, ached, swelled in his throat-

They hunted him. They all did. There was no help.

No quarter.

Leaves burst into flames near him. Beamer. He heard the whine of projectiles.

Splinters burst into his face. He flung his hands up, hit a tree or some such thing: impact numbed his arm and spun him. The ground came up. He felt twigs stab his hand, earth and leaves abrade the heel of it. He scrambled to turn over and get his knees, his legs under him, eyes pouring tears; the numbed arm flopped at his side. He heard more shots whine.

"There he is!"

He dived and dodged and stumbled to his knees again, aware of shock. Once he had fallen from the rocks and been like this, numb from head to foot, and scared and breathless-had risen and walked and run again and known only later where he was, to find Duun gazing down at him from the high rocks.

To find Duun coming down to him, game abandoned, to take his face in his maimed hand, jaw pinched between thumb and forefinger, and look into his eyes-

"You hear me, little fish? You hear me?

Duun!

Thorn slipped to one knee and got up again, turned, his shoulder to rough bark. There were lights, the howl of beasts, there were shapes behind the lights, people shining lights wildly this way and that into the brush, over him.

"Get it! There it goes!"

He put the tree between them and him and ran again, left arm swinging like a dead thing at his side. (I was hit. It was a shot that knocked me down. They shot me. Am I allowed to use my knife?) He ran and ran, sliding on the slopes, tearing himself on brambles. (Is this real? Is it game? Duun-Did you set this up? Am I supposed to kill? Duun, I'm scared!)

He came down the slope, skidded at the bottom, spun on one foot and ran left along the streamcourse.

A shadow rose up in his path. He flung himself aside to escape it, but it was there, shonun-smelling, blocking the strike of his right arm, and a voice said: "Thorn!" before a two-fingered grip came up at his throat and spun him off-balance and crushed him in a choking hold. Thorn bent, caught one-handed at the arm and tried a throw. Sickness jolted through him to the roots of his teeth. He was pulled back and back stumbling in the leaves, and a grip twisted his wounded arm. "Get out of here!" Duun hissed into his ear. "Thorn, Thorn-it's me! Run for it! Get home!"

Duun's hand let go and shoved hard in the middle of his back. Thorn ran. He ran and slipped on leaves and ran again; his side ached. Fire shot through it. His arm ached and the pain jolted through each step.

(Get home!)

(Do I believe you, Duun-do I do what you say? Is it a trap, Duun?)

A gun cracked. Several. He heard the echo off the hills. There were shouts-there were voices, the howl of beasts.

(But Duun's back there.) Thorn stumbled to a stop, hit a tree in his blindness and leaned his back on it. His sight hazed. The pain was one vast throbbing now, beyond pain, or it had gotten to his heart. He blinked the night as clear as it would come. There were lights. There were more voices raised-shouts and cries and howls; again the discharge of a gun.

("Duun!")

Thorn began to run downslope, holding the loose arm still as he could. Branches jabbed into his face and he ducked his head aside, ran blindly, trusting the slope of the land to tell him downhill from up-fended brush finally with the right hand and let the left drag on the brambles in cold, vast shocks. He heard his breathing, felt the tearing of his chest-there was no more night, no more world: it had shrunk to body-size, all sound diminished to the sound of his breath and his heart. (They'll kill him like the cattle! Duun!) A branch thrust into his way, wrapped living round him, locked and held. "Thorn! Dammit- fool!"

Thorn hung there, on Duun's arm. Duun's strong grip spun him, seized him by both arms and shook him, snapping his head back. "Fool! Where were you going?" He could not answer. The pain came on in waves. Duun shook at him again. It was Duun. It smelled of Duun. (Scent-blind. Scent-blind fool.)

"I had to hurt someone," Duun said. It was anger. Duun shook at him. "You hear me, fool! I had to hurt someone for your sake."

"I think-I think-" Shock came on him. His jaws passed his control, locked and chattered. And Duun took him to the ground. ("How many times did they get you? Gods. Gods. I see it…") He stretched him out there on the forest slope and probed the arm, while here and elsewhere came and went for him.

"Why?" he asked Duun. "Why did they do it?" While his jaws spasmed and chattered and the pain came and went. "Duun, were they supposed to do that?"

"Shut up," Duun said. And hurt him, whether by intent or accident. Thorn went out a moment, came back with Duun slapping gently at his face. "Can you move the fingers? I've got a gel on it. Move the fingers. Hear?"

Thorn tried. He thought they moved. He clenched his jaws, because Duun hauled him up against his shoulder and pulled him to his feet. The world went upside down as Duun's shoulder came into his groin and heaved. Pain. The arm swung. Jolting pain as Duun moved. The world went black and red, phosphenes darting in his eyes, in the dark. Branches raked his back. There was instability as Duun climbed, so that he dared not move. But the pain, the pain…

There was a darkness. Duun swung him down and let him to his knees on the slope, holding onto him. Duun's breath was in his face.

"You've got to walk," Duun said. "Hear me? Hear me, Thorn? You've got to walk now." Duun got an arm about him and pulled up on him. "Walk. Hear me?"

Thorn heard. He tried. He heard Duun's gasping breaths, leaned on him, struggling for purchase on stone and earth and mold. "Climb," Duun said. "Dammit, climb!"

Howls rose behind them in the woods. They lent Thorn strength. Duun's curses did. Duun carried him a time, and flung him down in the leaves with a jolt that knocked the breath from him. And slapped him after. "Breathe, dammit, breathe."

He tried. He gasped. And Duun lay down on him and panted. Their hearts jolted one against the other and the pain kept time with it.

Another climb. Duun had gotten him on his feet again. Thorn had no memory how. "The road's not far," Duun said. "They won't come above it. Come on."

And sitting then, sitting on a flat roadside stone where Duun set him, Duun holding him with one hand about his arms and the other against his chest. There was color in the world. It was dawn.

"Breathe. You've got to walk again."

"Yes," he said. He questioned nothing. Duun was Duun, source and force. Like the sun, the wind. He sat a moment and got up again, his heart hammering, his body swaying in the height of the world, with the treetops like black water whispering below them.

They walked. He and Duun. Duun's hand in his belt; Duun dragged his sound arm about his ribs and held it by the wrist. Going was easier on the road. Thorn's feet discovered pain, lacerations that small stones wore at. His mouth was dry as the silken dust. The wind was cold on his bare skin and Duun was warm.

Another rest. "Sit down," Duun said. "Sit down." And drew him against him and held him in his arms.

"Why did they shoot?" Thorn asked, because that answer eluded him. "Duun, why?"

"You scared them," Duun said. "They thought you'd harm them."

Scared them. Scared them. Thorn recalled the children. He shivered. Duun's arms clenched him hard.

"Fool," Duun said. He deserved it. He was ashamed.

He slept. He opened his eyes on the ceiling of the big room in the house with no memory how he had gotten from the road. He heard Duun coming and going. (Guard your sleep, minnow. Dared he sleep?)

"Drink," Duun ordered him, lifting his head, setting a cup to his lips. He turned his head away, not wanting to be twice victim. (Fool. Won't you learn?) "Drink, damn you, Thorn."

He blinked, all hazy. "Livhl-"

"Dammit, no. I'm telling you drink, this time."

He drank. It was sweetened tea. It hit his stomach and lay there inert and he was glad to have his head down at level again before it should come up. "I lost," he said. "You beat me, Duun."

"Be still." Duun's maimed hand brushed at his hair. (Duun holding him, Duun playing games, Duun touching him that way long, long ago.) "Meds are on their way. I called them. Hear?"

"Don't want meds." (Ellud standing in the room. An old friend, Duun said. Be polite.) "Duun, tell them don't."

"Hush. Be still." The touch came at his hair again. At his face. "Rest. Sleep. It's all right. Hear?"

(Duun in the bedroom door at night. Go to sleep, little fish. There were no black threads in the doorway. No games. Go to sleep now, minnow.)