For a moment Ryan was puzzled. Michael had said, when he had first seen them from the tree, that the hunt had been moving slowly, well-spread. So, how could they hope to ring down something as fast and powerful as the stag?
Seconds later it all became clear.
Dodging between the pines, head down, panting and stumbling, came the figure of a middle-aged man. His brown jerkin was torn and he had nothing on his feet, which were streaked with mud and blood. As he ran he kept looking fearfully over his shoulder toward the crescendo of barking and shouting.
“Dad?” Dean’s tone was shocked and puzzled.
“Yeah. I reckon that he’s the prey for the hunters. Not the stag. Him. It’s a manhunt.”
Chapter Sixteen
It was instantly obvious that the wretched man was in the last stages of exhaustion, overlaid with terror that had robbed him of all his senses. From less than fifty paces away, Ryan could see the blank horror in the eyes. The man’s mouth hung open, his fingers plucking at the sleeve of his tattered shirt. There was a damp patch on the front of his light brown pants, showing where fear had loosed the control of his bladder.
Dean leaned farther forward, nearly slipping in the loose earth. But Ryan grabbed him by the belt, heaving him back into the ferns, only letting go when he was sure his son had recovered his balance. “Careful!”
The end of the hunt was very near.
The hallooing of the riders was deafening, and the belling of the hounds was right on top of them.
The man dropped to his hands and knees, his stomach heaving as if he were trying to be sick.
He hadn’t moved when the first of the rottweilers came bounding into sight.
“Sweet Jesus,” Mildred breathed, leaning against Ryan’s shoulder to watch the last act of the drama.
It seemed for a moment that the huge dogs, all wearing spiked brass collars, would tear the helpless, cringing figure apart. But they’d been well trained. One or two snapped in a ferocious excitement at the man, but the rest formed a tight circle around him, keeping him there. Heads up, they bayed their triumph to the following hunters.
“Sec men. Coming.” J.B. was alongside Mildred, his eyes screwed up behind the lenses of his spectacles.
Within half a minute the clearing was filled with riders, all well mounted. Twenty-four was Ryan’s quick count. And well over half of them were unmistakably sec guards for some powerful local baron, perhaps from the distant ville that the Armorer thought he’d seen.
Their uniform was a dark maroon, so deep a hue that it almost seemed black in the shadows. Most carried rifles slung over their shoulders, the blasters looking like the Armalite that the Trader had always carried.
There were five people in civilian clothes, four young men and a woman.
But it was the woman that took the eye.
Like the guards, she was wearing shirt and pants in dark maroon. But in her case they were made of fine, soft leather, gleaming with a rich sheen in the late-afternoon sunshine. Her boots were the same color, low-heeled, with savage Mexican spurs. A silver-hilted quirt dangled from her gloved right hand.
Her face was pale, though Ryan could see two hectic spots of bright color on each high cheekbone.
She had narrowed, almost Oriental, eyes and the most beautiful hair that Ryan Cawdor had ever seen.
Krysty’s flaming mane was staggering in its brightness, but this woman’s hair was a tumbling cascade of purest black. But “black” seemed a totally inadequate word.
The softness of midnight velvet.
The edge of a raven’s wing.
The still depths of a woodland pool.
Ryan vaguely remembered once hearing Doc talk about a book or a vid called The Heart of Darkness . That was the nearest phrase he could think of to describe the waist-length hair of the woman on the gray mare.
In passing, he also noted that the flanks of the animal were specked with blood, behind the high-pommeled saddle.
Three of the sec men swung down from their mounts, approaching the kneeling man, one of them beating the eager dogs away with a short-thonged whip.