Hunter

by Mercedes Lackey

  I didn’t say anything. I just pointed right at him, then at my feet.

  The eye widened. The tuft of hair vanished. Bya looked at me and dog-grinned; he could hear the kid coming. I couldn’t, yet, but I knew he wouldn’t be grinning at me otherwise. I looked away for a moment, peering in the direction the kid would be coming from, and when I looked back, the game was at Bya’s feet. You know, I never can figure out how he does that.

  It was about that time I sensed Knight moving in behind me, but he didn’t say anything, so I ignored him for the moment.

  The kid edged nervously around the corner of a building and paused. “Come here,” I ordered, in a quiet, but carrying voice. He sidled over, but his eyes were on the game. And I was right about him being half starved. “You got folks?” I asked, figuring not.

  He shook his head. That explained why he’d fallen for the Goblin ploy. No adults to warn him.

  “You got friends?” I asked.

  This time he nodded.

  “Come get this, take it with you, and share it,” I ordered him. “And from now on, don’t trust anything that’s not a Hound or a human. Got it?”

  He nodded so hard I was afraid for a moment his head would come off. Then he scuttled the last few feet between us, snatched up the game, and ran off with it.

  “I never thought of doing that.”

  “Plain old hunting, or feeding the kids with it?” I asked, turning to face him.

  “Both.” He looked off in the direction the kid had vanished into. “I thought about bringing food out here, but—”

  “Don’t bother, there’s food all around here, and your Hounds will probably be willing to drop at people’s feet whatever you shoot or they snatch out of the air.” I absently ruffled Bya’s ears—or what passes for ears. “I know a bunny here and a squirrel there might seem like next to nothing—”

  “You forget, I’m a turnip too,” he reminded me. “One bunny can mean the difference between getting by and not making it. That was a very Christian—I mean, compassionate thing you just did.”

  I half smiled. “And likely it will be cut from the vids,” I said. “So let’s go find something to keep the ratings up.”

  IT LOOKED AS THOUGH taking down the Goblin market had put a good scare into anything else that had been prowling the area. Knight’s Hounds and mine decided to liven things up by herding everything they could find toward us in one large mob. All mere nuisances to fully armed Hunters with good magic; the main challenge was putting them down before they could get away. There were a couple of Black Dogs, a lot of Piskies, a few Goblins in their natural shape, and a single big Redcap. Redcaps are vicious buggers. They look like those cute little statues that used to be in gardens: little, old, bearded dwarfy things in pantaloons and jackets, that stand from knee-high to maybe chest-high. They wear pointy red hats that give them their name. They carry knives as long as your arm, they’ve got skin that can turn away small-caliber bullets. And they like to dye those red hats with the blood of their victims.

  Of course, Redcaps are no match for a Hunter and a Hound or two. Even a mob wouldn’t have been a match for me and Knight and our pack. At least it gave the hovering cameras something to broadcast.

  I waited until we were in the pod taking us back to headquarters before bringing up what I’d been thinking about, off and on, for the last couple of days. “Can I borrow your Perscom?” I asked. He looked at me oddly, but passed it over. I typed in how he could contact one of the least obnoxious of the Christer leaders back home, Brother Vincent. I passed the Perscom back to him.

  “I don’t know if your people would be willing to move,” I said slowly. “But that’s an option. There’s plenty of work, and no poison in the water or the soil.” I nodded at his Perscom. “They’re Christers, one of the settlements I used to patrol. Actually most people are around that part of the territory, but some of them don’t much get along with others of them, and I’m not sure what faction your people would belong to.” Truth to tell, the stuff the Christers argued about always made my head ache. Whether water had to be splashed on you or you had to do a full-on ducking, whether it had to be when you were just born or when you were old enough to understand things for yourself…and those were just the easy things they argued about.

  Well, at least the folks thereabouts knew better than to tell about the Monastery on the Mountain. If there’s one thing that they all have in common it is a deep understanding that if they reveal the Monastery is there, they lose the protection of the Hunters that would be co-opted by the government. Even the most hostile might not much like us, but they like being eaten, overrun, or otherwise turned into easy prey a lot less. Something the Diseray taught them was not to depend too much on being right and righteous to save them from bad things.

  Brother Vincent at least has a decent attitude. “God defends our souls,” he’d say. “He leaves our bodies to us.”

  Knight nodded. “You know, you would have a true understanding of that if you—”

  I held up a hand. “White Knight, you are my mentor, but I’m old enough to know my own mind, thanks. I’ve been around a fruit salad of Christers all my life, and none of them made a dent and neither will you. Truce?”

  He looked a bit annoyed but nodded. I figured on the annoyance. I have never yet met a Christer that liked being told I didn’t want any part of his religion, thanks. Oh well.

  “I don’t know if your people will get along with this bunch. I don’t know if they’d want to move. But we have mines—mostly for metals, and mostly boarded up, and there are Knockers in them, but ordinary folks can kill Knockers with fire and bullets, and your people ought to be able to get some metal out to make a living. At least they’ll be able to drink the water safely, and grow food they can eat on clean land, and there’s plenty of land and never enough farmers.” I shrugged. “Like I said, it’s an option. And if the Cits have to replace your miners with machines because they’ve moved, well, that’s their option too.”

  About then the pod pulled up at headquarters. I was hungry, so I was out of the car pretty quick, while Knight was still sitting there looking like he was thinking hard.

  After I left my load-out at the armory, so was I.

  As in…what was I thinking, sending someone I didn’t even know all that well in the direction of the Mountain?

  But the Hounds liked him. And the Hounds are pretty darn good judges of someone. And…well…I just hated to think of anyone trying to live on poisoned ground. That just added one more lead weight to the stack of misery anyone outside the Barriers has to cope with.

  But then I thought about what the Masters would say about compassion.

  And about putting yourself in others’ shoes. Which, truth to tell, I hadn’t done when it came to the Christers. There was Knight, with his burden of guilt, and maybe they were all like him, laboring under the burden of feeling they deserved to be punished, and even looking for that punishment. Maybe that’s why they were so unpleasant. Guilt and self-loathing tend to make you cranky.

  I ducked in and out of the shower fast, because I have to say, I was starving, and I wanted to get to the mess quick. Then, before I went to dinner, I took a moment to look at the ratings and I nearly passed out in shock.

  I was—number two? But—why?

  Then I remembered what else I’d been seeing when I checked on their Hunts, Ace and his pack, and I realized that even our mass drive of pathetic nuisances would have been more exciting than what Ace was probably doing today. I felt my mouth twisting in a cynical sort of grimace.

  Ace, you can only coast on being spectacularly handsome for so long when people tune in to see something die.

  Which gave me a little pause. How often did they tune in hoping to see the Hunter die?

  I shivered. But I let it pass. Right now I was hungry, and right now I wanted to get in and out of the mess hall before Ace and his crew turned up. I didn’t want a confrontation right now. I would probably get one sooner rather than later
, but I didn’t want one right now.

  Much to my happy surprise, though, the first person I saw when I cleared the door was Karly.

  She looked a lot less shaky. She spotted me as soon as I came in, and started to tentatively raise her hand, as if she wasn’t quite sure if I would acknowledge her or not. But I ran right over, of course, forgetting how hungry I was, and plunked myself down in the chair across from her.

  “How are you feeling?” I demanded. “Did you overwork yourself, helping me with the date? Do you still have the headache? Are you even a little dizzy? Numb anywhere? Having muscle control problems?” Those were all signs of persistent nerve and brain problems after suffering a Gazer attack. And when she’d been walking me through all the stuff with the designers and the gown before my date, she’d been pale and very shaky, though I hadn’t said anything in front of the non-Hunters. You kind of don’t do that. Especially if we’re supposed to be making Cits confident about us. “Are you actually feeling good yet?”

  “Not bad, no, yes, no, no, and no,” she laughed. “But the headache’s easing off and is almost gone. They’ll clear me to hunt tomorrow, or the next day, or at least they think so. You forget, we get the good tending here. No trying to guess whether or not you’re healing up when we have machines that can tell us.”

  I didn’t snort and tell her the truth, which is that some of the Masters are so good they are better than any machines. I just nodded, didn’t hide my relief, and went to grab something from the line before returning to her table.

  “So, watched your Hunt today—you did good,” she continued, as I slid into the seat and began on my food. “Smart to herd all those little monsters into one pack; that made it a lot more impressive.”

  “We just do it that way at home because it’s more efficient,” I said, telling the truth. “One Hunter, one set of Hounds, big territory. You waste a lot of time and energy chasing vermin all over the landscape, otherwise.”

  Karly nodded and took a drink from her glass, and that was when Ace and his gang chose to materialize.

  I saw from the look in his eye he was going to start something, and I braced myself. But he turned toward Karly.

  “So, Hunter Karly, I hear you figure you’re ready to go out and rack up some more ratings points already—” he began, and sneered. “I reckon you think hanging out with this one is gonna help you out big time. Hunting with her—”

  “Seriously, Ace,” I interrupted, “You sound like you’ve been chewing loco-weed. Nobody is hanging out for ratings, and nobody was glory-hounding. If there’d been an Elite free to take that Gazer, we’d have waited. But it was almost shift change, there were Cits coming into the danger zone, and we didn’t have any choice.”

  He turned and stared at me with his mouth hanging open before shutting it with an audible snap.

  “You just use that head of yours for something besides holding up your hair,” I continued. “You just ask your Perscom to show you how things have been getting worse, and more and more Othersiders are getting past the Barriers over the last six months.” He had a pole-struck-ox look on his face. Evidently it never occurred to him that someone would figure out he’d been coasting. Sure, the Cits in the richer districts deserved protection, but they were so well insulated behind layers of Barriers that whatever got that far could be taken out by police with a shotgun loaded with blessed salt and iron shot. “I’ve seen your old Hunts. You were hot good. You earned every point of your rating. You got whole rookeries of Ketzels all by yourself! You got entire clans of Redcaps. You got most of a Goblin market. You could do that again, anytime you wanted to! Hunt Spillover. Hunt Warehouse, Industrial, Farm. Hunt Northside. Check the stats for the last week or so to see where things have been the worst, where stuff’s cropping up the thickest. What’s outside the Barriers is getting in and it’s about time the Hunters put a stop to it.”

  “More than time,” Karly seconded grimly.

  Now everyone in the mess hall could hear this. I wasn’t making any effort to keep it quiet. By this point Ace had gotten over his shock and was starting to get mad, and was about to lay into me—verbally at least—when his brother, Paules, interrupted the tirade before it began by poking him hard in the ribs with an elbow and jerking his head sideways at the rest of the room.

  Ace turned a little and saw what I’d seen. Those very few that weren’t staring hard at their own food were nodding at what I said. All my friends from the nights in the lounge were nodding hard. Especially those who had hard districts to patrol and, like Karly and Knight, had been finding worse than the usual nuisances lurking. Ace took a second look around, and I could see the moment that he realized this was not the time to force a confrontation, by the way he lost all expression.

  He didn’t answer me, though. He just turned and left, with his friends following him. I went back to my dinner, and after a moment, so did everyone else. I wondered how much, if any, of this would turn up on the vids.

  Probably none. Fighting among ourselves over ratings was not something I expect people running the vid-feeds wanted Cits to see. I resolved to skim over the channels again, though, and see if I could figure out what they did want the Cits to see besides Hunting and Hunters playing in glamorous places. Though I still couldn’t quite wrap my head around why they’d want to see us cavorting around in the first place. Wouldn’t they rather go do the cavorting themselves? Maybe they couldn’t afford the clubs that Ace went to, or that restaurant and place that Josh took me to, but having a little shindig with friends in your own street is more fun than watching someone else have a good time. Isn’t it?

  Well, at least Ace had been put on notice now, and so had his friends. I’d fibbed about looking at his old Hunts, but I reckoned he had to have been a fine Hunter or he wouldn’t have gotten that rating in the first place. I wondered why his own Hounds hadn’t gone at him before I did. My Hounds sure give me notice when they think we haven’t been working hard enough. Rightly so—they get the manna from the stuff we kill, and if we don’t kill, they don’t get the manna.

  Then again, Ace only had two Hounds, so maybe a few Piskies was enough manna for them.

  “Daydreaming?” Karly asked, interrupting my thoughts.

  “Kinda.” I smiled a little sheepishly. “Was just thinking about how surprised I was when I got my Hounds and there were seven of them.” I stopped myself before I added that pretty much everyone up on the Mountain either got a lot of Hounds, or three or so really big, powerful ones. I mean…bigger than draft-horse big.

  “I don’t know how you control them all,” she replied.

  “I don’t. We’re a team.” I shrugged. “I guess it’s easier when your Hounds talk to you.”

  “Mine…feel, I guess you’d have to say, more than talk. Though mostly what I get from them is this impatient I’m hungry, let’s find something.” We both laughed. I’ve gotten that often enough from Bya.

  “Well, if they’re hungry and you’re worried, call them through and ask them if they want to join my pack,” I offered.

  Karly had this expression on her face as if this was something she had never heard of. “Wait. They can do that?”

  I stopped myself just in time from saying we did that all the time on the Mountain when a Hunter was hurt or sick. No point in the Hounds going hungry, after all. “Did that when my teacher was down,” I said. “Bya will take charge of them.” He would, too. He loves being alpha to a huge pack. “We worked fine, down there in the sewer.”

  Her face lightened. “So we did. They’re telling me a few more days before they’ll let me Hunt, and I can feel my boys getting anxious on the Otherside. It’ll ease my mind to know they’re getting manna.”

  “Well, good. How long have you been Hunting?” I asked, curious now.

  She ran her hand through her hair. “Not as long as you might think. I popped late. I was an agro-squint, if you can believe it, and I was out alone in the fields past the Fourth Barrier checking on an experimental run of beans when I
heard the worst sound I’d ever heard in my life and spotted a full pack of Black Dogs heading for me from where they’d dug under the Barrier.”

  Black Dogs look exactly like they sound. Big, heavily muscled black dogs with fiery yellow eyes, like the breed they called Rottweilers in the old days. They’re probably related in some way to Hellhounds, which we don’t see nearly as often, and are about twice the size of Black Dogs. One of their weapons is their voices—when they howl they can rupture your eardrums.

  “I stuffed my fingers in my ears and ran for my pod, but they were overtaking me too fast, so I jumped up onto one of the robo-tillers, grabbed the wrench always stowed up there, and was about to take out as many as I could when my hands started burning.” She shrugged, with a rueful smile. “And suddenly I was a Hunter.”

  “Happened almost the same for me,” I told her, the whole truth this time. “I was out with a shotgun”—which was almost as big as I was back then—“and instead of the Piskies I was supposed to chase out of the field, I ran into a clan of Redcaps.”

  “And how’d your boyfriend take to finding out his girl was a Hunter?” Karly asked. And the way she said it sounded…weighted.

  “Didn’t have one.” Again the truth. “But I don’t think, if I’d had, he would have liked it, since obviously I had to come here. I don’t know how Knight manages with his girl back home.”

  Karly sighed. “Well, my wife had a meltdown. We’d only been married a couple of months, and she couldn’t take it, couldn’t take that I’d be in danger every day. She hadn’t signed on for that, you know?”

  I did know. I’d seen the same thing happen to old Mary and to Big Tom, and they’d been married to their spouses a lot longer than a couple of months. “I’m sorry,” I said, and meant it.

  Karly must have heard as much in my voice, because she smiled a little, ruefully. “I keep telling myself it was only a matter of time, all things considered. Sure, it was a huge, big stress that broke us up—but little stresses over time can do the same thing if what you’ve got isn’t strong enough. Nobody’s at fault; we were both just mistaken. When I manage to be philosophical about it, I can say that this way at least we didn’t end things in fighting and bitterness. Something bigger than both of us ended it for us, so there was no blame on either side.”