The sixteenth hunter played no games. In fast, his blade high, he picked a slower animal, leaped, and stabbed, pulling it clear. He rose, dagger lifted.
“A fat one,” Tabor said, trying to mask his tension. “Gereint’ll want that one tonight.”
The seventeenth man killed, too, throwing from almost directly over top of his eltor. He made it look easy.
“Tore won’t miss,” Dave heard Tabor say, and saw the now familiar shiftless figure whip past their knoll.
Tore singled out an eltor, raced south with it for several strides, then threw with arrogant assurance. The eltor dropped, almost at their feet. Tore saluted briefly, then sped off to join the other Riders on the far side of the swift. Seeing that throw, Dave remembered the urgach falling two nights before. He felt like cheering for Tore, but there was one more to go, and he could feel Tabor’s anxiety.
“Cechtar’s very good,” the boy breathed. Dave saw a big man on a chestnut horse leave Levon’s side—the leader was alone now, just below them. Cechtar galloped confidently towards the racing swift that the others were steering past the knoll. His knife was drawn already, and the man’s carriage on his horse was solid and reassuring.
Then the horse hit a tummock of grass and stumbled. Cechtar kept his seat, but the damage was done—the knife, prematurely upraised, had flown from his hand to fall harmlessly short of the nearest animal.
Hardly breathing, Dave turned to see what Levon would do. Beside him, Tabor was moaning in an agony of distress. “Oh no, oh no,” he repeated. “We are shamed. It’s a disgrace for all three Riders, and Levon especially for misjudging. There’s nothing he can do. I feel sick!”
“He has to kill now?”
“Yes, and he will. But it doesn’t make any difference, there’s nothing he can—oh!”
Tabor stopped, for Levon, moving his horse forward very deliberately, had shouted a command to Tore and the others. Watching, Dave saw the hunters race to turn the eltor yet again, so that after a wide arc had been described, the swift, a quarter of a mile away now, were flying back north, five hundred strong on the east side of the knoll.
“What’s he doing?” Dave asked softly.
“I don’t know, I don’t understand. Unless . . .” Levon began to ride slowly eastward, but after a few strides he turned his horse to stand motionless, square in the path of the swift.
“What the hell?” Dave breathed.
“Oh, Levon, no!” Tabor screamed suddenly. The boy clutched Dave’s arm, his face white with terrified understanding. “He’s trying Revor’s Kill. He’s going to kill himself!”
Dave felt his own rush of fear hit, as he grasped what Levon was trying to do. It was impossible, though; it was insanity. Was the hunt leader committing suicide out of shame?
In frozen silence they watched from the knoll as the massed swift, slightly wedge-shaped behind a huge lead animal, raced over the grass towards the still figure of Tabor’s yellow-haired brother. The other hunters, too, Dave was dimly aware, had stopped riding. The only sound was the rapidly growing thunder of the onrushing eltor.
Unable to take his eyes away from the hunt leader, Dave saw Levon, moving without haste, dismount to stand in front of his horse. The eltor were very close now, flying; the sound of the drumming hooves filled the air.
The horse was utterly still. That, too, Dave registered, then he saw Levon unhurriedly draw his blade.
The lead eltor was fifty yards away.
Then twenty.
Levon raised his arm and, without pausing, the whole thing one seamless motion, threw.
The blade hit the giant animal directly between the eyes; it broke stride, staggered, then fell at Levon’s feet. Right at Levon’s feet.
His fists clenched tightly with raw emotion, Dave saw the other animals instantly scythe out away from the fallen leader and form two smaller swifts, one angling east, one west, dividing in a cloud of dust precisely at the point where the fallen eltor lay.
Where Levon, his yellow hair blowing free, stood quietly stroking his horse’s muzzle, having stolen in that moment, with an act of incandescent gallantry, great honor for his people from the teeth of shame. As a leader should.