Nor did great riches or noble birth suffice to get one to the throne, or else Serithorn, descended from half the great Coronals of antiquity, would have had it. Prince Serithorn, though, was not the kind of man who was suited for the job. He lacked the necessary seriousness. Septach Melayn, the High Counsellor, would never be Coronal either, it seemed, for the same reason.
But Lord Prestimion, obviously, had proven himself fit for the post. So had Lord Confalume before him. And Akbalik, too, that calm, steady-minded, quick-witted, hard-working, reliable man, might have the stuff of Coronals in him. Dekkeret admired him inordinately. It was much too early even to speculate about who might succeed Prestimion as Coronal when he became Pontifex; but, Dekkeret thought, how splendid if it turned out to be Akbalik! And how good that would be for Dekkeret of Normork, too, for he could plainly see that Akbalik looked upon him favorably and regarded him as a highly promising young man. For a moment, just a moment, Dekkeret allowed himself the wild fantasy of picturing himself as High Counsellor to the Coronal Lord Akbalik. And then it was back to correcting misspelled names on deeds of trust, and sorting out conflicts in land titles that went back to Lord Keppimon’s day, and authorizing refunds for taxes that had been levied in triplicate by overenthusiastic revenue inspectors.
Two months went by in this fashion. Dekkeret grew enormously restless at his job, but he plodded gamely onward and allowed no hint of discontent to pass his lips. In his free time he roamed the city, bowled over again and again by the splendors he found everywhere. He made a few friends at the office; he met a couple of pleasant young women; once or twice a week Akbalik joined him at a local tavern for an evening’s amiable exploration of the excellent Zimroel wines. Dekkeret had no idea what sort of assignment it was that had brought Akbalik to Ni-moya, and he did not ask. He was grateful for the older man’s company, and wary of seeming to probe matters that obviously did not concern him.
One night Akbalik said, “Do you remember that time when we were in the Coronal’s office and Septach Melayn spoke about our going on a steetmoy-hunting expedition while we were here?”
“Of course I do.”
“You’re bored silly with the work you’ve been doing, aren’t you, Dekkeret?”
Dekkeret reddened. “Well—”
“Don’t try to be diplomatic. You’re supposed to be bored silly with it. It was designed to bore you. But you weren’t sent here to be tortured. I’m about ready for a break in my own work: what say we take ten days up north, and see how the steetmoy are running this time of year?”
“Would I be able to arrange a leave of absence?” Dekkeret asked.
Akbalik grinned. “I think I could manage to get one for you,” he said.
8
The countryside changed very quickly once they were north of Ni-moya. The climate of most of Majipoor was subtropical or tropical, except along such high mountain ridges as the Gonghar mountains of central Zimroel and atop Mount Zygnor in far-northern Alhanroel. Castle Mount itself, where the weather-machines devised by the ancients eternally fended off the bitter night of the stratospheric altitude, enjoyed an endless springtime.
But one sector of northeastern Zimroel reached far up toward the pole and therefore had a cooler climate. In the high, mountain-bordered plateau known as the Khyntor Marches, snow was not at all uncommon during the winter months; and beyond that, walled off behind the tremendous peaks known as the Nine Sisters, there was an unknown polar land of perpetual storm and frost where no one ever went. In that grim and virtually inaccessible region, so legend had it, a race of fierce fur-clad barbarians had dwelled for thousands of years in complete isolation, as unaware of the comfort and warmth and prosperity enjoyed by Majipoor’s other inhabitants as the rest of Majipoor was of them.
Akbalik and Dekkeret had no intention of going anywhere near that myth-shrouded land of constant winter and unyielding ice. But even just a short distance back of Ni-moya, its stark influence on the territories bordering on it was quickly apparent. Lush green subtropical forests yielded to vegetation more typical of a temperate climate, dominated by curious angular deciduous trees with bright yellow trunks, set very far apart from one another in stony meadows of scruffy pallid grass. And then, as they entered the foothills of the Khyntor Marches, a further increment of bleakness became evident. The trees and grass were far sparser, now. The landscape here was a gradually rising terrain of flat gray granite shields with swift cold streams slicing down out of the north. In the hazy distance the first of the Nine Sisters of Khyntor was visible: Threilikor, the Weeping Sister, whose dark facade was glossy with a multitude of rivulets and streams.
Akbalik had hired a team of five hunters, March-men, lean leathery-skinned mountaineers of the northlands who dressed in rough, crudely stitched robes of black haigus-hide, to guide them into the Marches. Three of them seemed to be male, two female, although it was not easy to tell, so thoroughly were they engulfed in their bulky robes. They said very little. When they talked to each other, it was in a harsh mountain dialect that Dekkeret found practically impossible to understand. In addressing their two Castle lordlings they took care to use conventional speech, but he had trouble with that too, because the thick-tongued mountaineers spoke with heavy accents tinged with the rhythms of their own tongue, and also Dekkeret was often unfamiliar with the Ni-moyan idioms that peppered their speech. He let Akbalik do most of the talking.
The mountain folk appeared to regard their city-bred charges with amusement verging on scorn. They definitely had no great respect for Dekkeret, who had never been in wilderness country before, and who was obviously uncertain of himself despite his size and strength. They looked upon him, he was sure, as an inept and useless boy. But they seemed not to have much esteem even for Akbalik, whose aura of competence and capability usually won quick recognition anywhere. Whenever he asked them something they would reply in curt monosyllables, and sometimes could be seen to turn away with sardonic smiles, as though barely able to suppress their contempt for any city man who needed to ask about something so self-evident that any child would know it.
“The steetmoy are forest creatures,” Akbalik told him. “They don’t like it much out here on the open tundra. That’s their home territory down there, that dark place in the shadow of the mountain. The hunters will scare up a pack of them for us in the deep woods and drive them into a stampede. We select the ones we want to go after and chase them through the forest until we have them cornered.” Akbalik glanced at Dekkeret’s oddly short legs, heavily knotted with muscle. “You’re a good runner, aren’t you?”
“I’m no sprinter. But I can manage.”
“Steetmoy aren’t especially fast either. They don’t need to be. But they have plenty of stamina and they’re better than we are at barreling through thick underbrush. It’s easy for one to make his way into dense cover and get away from you. The problem then is that they sometimes come slipping around behind you and attack from the rear. They live primarily on berries and nuts and bark, but they don’t mind eating meat, you know, especially in winter, and they’re very adequately equipped for killing.”
Turning to his pack, he began to draw weapons from it and lay them out in front of Dekkeret.
“These are what we’ll take with us. The hooked machete is for cutting your way through the brush. The poniard is what you use for killing your steetmoy.”
“This?” Dekkeret asked. He picked it up and stared at it. Its blade was impressively sharp but no more than six inches in length. “Isn’t it a little short?”
“Did you expect to be using an energy-thrower?”
Dekkeret felt his face going hot. He remembered, now, that Septach Melayn had talked about how steetmoy are hunted with poniard and machete. Dekkeret hadn’t given it much thought at the time. “Well, of course not. But with this thing I’d have to be right on top of the steetmoy for the kill.”
“Yes. You would, wouldn’t you? That’s the whole point of the sport: hunting at close range, great risk for h
igh reward. And also, doing as little damage to the valuable fur as possible. If it comes down to a matter of your life or the steetmoy’s, you can use your machete, but that’s not considered very sporting. Imagine Septach Melayn, for instance, hacking away at a steetmoy with his machete!”
“Septach Melayn has the quickest reflexes of any man who ever lived. He could kill a steetmoy with an ivory toothpick. But I’m not Septach Melayn.”
Akbalik seemed unworried. Dekkeret was big and strong; Dekkeret was determined; Dekkeret would look after himself quite satisfactorily down there in the steetmoy forest.
Dekkeret himself was less confident. He had never asked for this adventure. It had all been Septach Melayn’s idea originally. He had been eager enough to undertake it, yes, back there in the Castle, but that was without any real awareness of what hunting steetmoy in their native territory might involve. And, though he had heard plenty of exuberant hunting tales from other young knight-initiates during his first few months at the Castle, and had envied them greatly, he realized now that it was one thing to roam the walled hunting preserves of Halanx or Amblemorn in search of zaur or onathils or bilantoons, but it was something else entirely to be roaming around in a cold northern forest looking for a ferocious steetmoy that you planned to kill with a tiny dagger.
Cowardice, though, was no part of Dekkeret’s makeup. What lay ahead sounded like a tough assignment, but perhaps the hunt wouldn’t turn out to be as risky as it seemed just now, with his imagination leading him to anticipate the worst. So he picked up his poniard and his machete and hefted them and took a few fierce swipes through the air for practice, and told Akbalik cheerfully that on second thought the poniard seemed more than adequate for the job and he was ready for the steetmoy hunt whenever the steetmoy were ready for him.
Akbalik had a new surprise in store for him as they followed the five March-men down a long boulder-strewn slope into the dark glade where the steetmoy lived. Reaching into his pack, he drew forth two blunt-nosed metal tubes, stuck one into his belt next to his poniard, and handed the other one to Dekkeret.
“Energy-throwers? But you said—”
“Lord Prestimion’s orders. We want to behave like proper sportsmen, yes, but I’m also supposed to bring you back from here alive. The poniard is the prime weapon, and if you get into difficulties you use the machete, and if you get into real difficulties you blast the damned animal with the energy-thrower. It’s not the elegant way, but it’s a sensible last resort. An angry steetmoy can rip a man’s guts out with three slashes of his claws.”
Feeling more ashamed than relieved, Dekkeret tucked the energy-thrower into one of the loops of his belt, wishing there were some way of pushing it down out of sight to keep the March-men guides from noticing it. But that hardly mattered. They had already made it quite clear that they looked upon Dekkeret and Akbalik as a pair of shallow self-indulgent fops so doltish that they could find nothing better to do with their time than take themselves off into the forests of the north and hunt dangerous animals for no motive more worthy than their own amusement. It could scarcely lessen them in the March-men’s eyes if one of them suddenly happened to pull out an energy-thrower and blaze away at an inconveniently rambunctious steetmoy. All the same, Dekkeret quietly vowed that he would not use the weapon even as a last resort. The poniard and—if necessary—the machete would have to do the job.
It had snowed during the night. Though the temperature was a little above freezing now, the ground was white everywhere. A few solitary flakes still were coming down. One of them struck Dekkeret’s cheek, causing a little burning sensation. A strange feeling, that. The whole concept of snow was new to him, and very curious.
The trees in this glade had yellow trunks like those farther to the south, but they carried heavy growths of blackish-brown needle-like leaves rather than showing bare deciduous branches, and instead of having their trunks and branches contorted into odd angles these trees stood tall and straight, with their thick crowns meeting far overhead. Underneath, a dense darkness prevailed. A stream dotted by big boulders flowed past on one side, and on the other, the one closest to the mountain, the land dropped sharply away into a swooping valley.
The five hired hunters led the way, with Dekkeret and Akbalik close behind, following in the tracks that the March-men left in the snow. Gradually the pace picked up until they were trotting through the forest, moving in easy loping bounds along the bank of the stream. Hardly ever did the hunters look back toward them. When one of them did—it was one of the women, a flat-faced, wide-mouthed one with big gaps between her teeth—it was to give Dekkeret a mocking grin that seemed to say, In five minutes you will be frightened entirely out of whatever wits you may have. Perhaps he was wrong about that. Perhaps she was just trying to look encouraging. But it was not a pretty grin.
“Steetmoy,” Akbalik said suddenly. “Three of them, I think.”
He pointed off to the left, into a dark grove where the yellow-trunked trees stood particularly close together and the snow lay thick on the ground. At first Dekkeret noticed nothing unusual. Then he glimpsed a zone of whiteness in there that was different from the whiteness of the snow: softer, brighter, with a lustrous gleam instead of a hard glitter. Large furry white animals, moving about. The sound of their low muttering growls came toward him on the wind.
The hunters had paused by the edge of the grove. A few unintelligible muttered words passed among them; and then they began to move toward the trees, fanning out in a wide arc as they did so.
Quickly Dekkeret came to understand what was happening. The steetmoy—three of them, yes—had picked up the scent. They were moving slowly about amidst the trees, as if working out their strategy. Dekkeret could see them clearly now, thick-bodied beasts built low to the ground, with long jutting black snouts and flat triangular heads out of which golden eyes, rimmed with red, were staring intently. They were about the size of very large dogs, but heavier and sturdier. They looked graceless but powerful: their thighs and haunches were massive, their forearms plainly held great strength. Long curving claws, black and shiny, jutted from their paws. Dekkeret could not believe that he would be expected to kill one of these creatures with a mere handheld dagger. But that was what was done, supposedly. It seemed improbable. He hadn’t forgotten Septach Melayn’s words: “Beautiful thing: that thick fur, those blazing eyes. Most dangerous wild animal in the world, so far as I know, the steetmoy.”
The gap-toothed mountain woman was gesturing at him.
“First one’s yours,” Akbalik said.
“What?”
Dekkeret had expected the older, more experienced Akbalik to go first. But the meaning of those gestures was not at all ambiguous. The woman was beckoning to him.
“They’ve decided it,” Akbalik said. “They usually know the best match of hunter and prey. You’d better go ahead. I’ll be right behind you.”
Dekkeret nodded. He stepped forward, still apprehensive and uneasy. But with his first step toward the dark glade an astonishing thing happened. All uncertainty dropped away. A strange cool calmness settled over him. Fear and doubt were utterly absent from his mind. He found himself entirely ready, primed for the kill, utterly focused on his objective.
And an instant later the hunt was on.
The March-men now had positioned themselves across a lengthy curving front that spanned the place where the three steetmoy were moving about and extended well beyond it on both sides. The woman who seemed to be Dekkeret’s guide was at the center of the line. She led the way forward, with Dekkeret close behind her. The two hunters at farthest left and right were moving inward at a sharp angle, pulling the line in toward the animals. They started now to set up a terrible din with brass hunting-horns that they had drawn from their packs, while the other two March-men began to clap their hands and shout.
The idea, Dekkeret saw, was to separate the animals, driving two of them away to give him a clear path to the third. And the noise was having its intended effect. The stee
tmoy, puzzled and bothered by the strident blaring sounds, were up on their hind legs, raking trees with their claws in what seemed to be a reflexive expression of irritation, and their growls no longer were low rumbling mutters but reverberating bellows of anger.
The March-men continued to close in. The steetmoy, showing no apparent fear, but only annoyance and perhaps disgust at being harassed in this fashion in their own domain, turned slowly and began to lope away in different directions—each heading, perhaps, for its own den. The five hunters ignored the two biggest ones, allowing them to slip away undisturbed into the deeper woods. They gave their attention to the remaining one, a female, perhaps, smaller than the other two but still a formidable beast. They were advancing on it in high-kicking strides as though on parade, and making noise for all they were worth.
The animal seemed befuddled by the uproar for a moment or two. Then, blinking and grumbling, the steetmoy swung around and headed at a slow but steadily accelerating pace toward the cover of a clump of shrubbery a few hundred yards away.
The gap-toothed woman stepped aside. Dekkeret knew that this was his moment.
He went rushing forward, machete in one hand, poniard in the other.
At the fringe of the glade the trees were fairly far apart, but they quickly became more dense, with saplings and brush occupying the spaces between them and semi-woody vines dangling from their lower branches. Before long Dekkeret was moving through one difficult thicket after another, chopping away furiously with the machete as he scrambled through. He drove himself onward in a kind of frenzy, heedless of obstacles. And yet for all his frenetic exertions he was losing ground. He could still see the retreating steetmoy up ahead. But the beast, slow-moving though it was, seemed easily able to clear a path for itself with its powerful forearms, leaving a tangled trail of shattered underbrush and torn vines behind it that only made Dekkeret’s task harder. Very gradually it was widening the distance between itself and its pursuer.