The Hunter Returns Read Online Free PDF Page B

rhinoceros stamped his ponderous feet and snorted at them. He shook his massive head. Hawk watched dully.
    The bent shaft, he knew now, was not a good thing. Its magic worked when conditions were exactly right, but one who lived by his spear must be ready to hurl it in a split second. He could not always depend on finding the right sort of ground into which he might drill the hurling stick, and drill it fast. Nor could he know when the power might choose to leave the shaft, and the wood break. And all of it together had led to banishment.
    Willow moved painfully. Steadying herself against a stone, she stood up. Hawk glanced at her, as though for the first time aware of her presence. She was only a girl, and crippled, scarcely able to move without help. Therefore she was useless, and the tribe had been right in abandoning her. But as long as she was still alive, she seemed in some way to be his responsibility. Hawk looked again to his weapons, checking his spear shaft carefully for strength and making sure that the head was properly bound.
    Fire was the first essential to keeping alive, and though Hawk had never built or tended a fire he had watched Kar and his assistants do it. He knew the stones from which Kar produced the spark to ignite his fires, but he was not sure he could find any along the river meadows. Nor did he know whether he could control the power of fire. However, the fire at last night’s camp was sure to have live sparks buried in its dead ashes. It would be wise to return there.
    Hawk swung on his heel and started away. Then he stopped and looked back at Willow. She was leaning against the boulder, her eyes fixed despairingly on the meadow grass. She had made no protest when Hawk walked away from her. It was the creed of the wild land in which they lived that cripples had no right to expect help. But they were both forsaken, and though Hawk knew that Willow could not help him in her present condition, her mere presence was reassuring. She was human, one of his own kind.
    “Come with me,” said Hawk with unaccustomed gentleness. “We will go back to last night’s camp.”
    The dull despair left Willow’s eyes, and hope flashed within them. She had been resigned to her fate, knowing that the wounded never lived long. Now, even though she knew that both of them together had small chance for survival, the will to live was strong. She let go of the boulder and took a stiff forward step. She stumbled, almost fell, and caught herself. Hawk picked up one of the extra spear shafts the departing tribe had left behind, and offered it to her. Then he started out, spear and club ready.
    Twenty yards away, a small mottled wild cat crouched in the grass. Its tail twitched, tufted ears were erect, and yellow eyes gleamed. So silently had the wild cat come that even Hawk had not detected its presence.
    Knowing that the smaller of these two humans was wounded, and having marked her as its prey, the cat glared at the man in rage. But it made no move to attack because it had no wish to face an armed man. It crept back into the tall grass and disappeared.
    Hawk’s keen eyes followed the little cat’s circling course through the grass, and he took a new grip on his club.
    They walked slowly, Hawk suiting his pace to Willow’s hobbling shuffle. He was aware of the cat that slunk around them, of furtive life represented by hares and other small creatures, but there was nothing large, nothing that meant danger. They stopped on top of a hillock and looked down at a grove of trees.
    A monstrous ground sloth, a beast fully eighteen feet long, moved slowly among them. The dull-witted, harmless creature reared to curl its long tongue around a small branch and strip off the leaves. Bruising them between its hard, toothless gums, it swallowed the leaves and reached out for more.
    Hawk looked questioningly back to where the tribe had disappeared. It wanted food, and here was easy game to last all of them for many days to come. The