Ronon smiled and stroked the pistol at his side. “No. Not any more.” He faced the smaller man. “Teach me how to hunt. Then I will show these Wraith what happens when they allow a Satedan to live.”
“Good.” Nekai clapped him on the back. “We’ll start at once. But for now — ” he gestured to the cave entrance. “We should get back inside. They might have noticed us while we were separated.”
Ronon nodded, but hesitated a second before crouching and ducking back into the cave. “Is this part of being a hunter?”
“What, sitting in narrow spaces for extended periods?” Behind him, Nekai laughed. “Oh yes, my friend. A very big part.”
Ronon sighed. Still, if it meant being able to kill many Wraith, it would be worth it.
Chapter Seven
“You’re dead.”
“What? No!” Ronon rose from his crouch, but slowly. It wouldn’t do to move too quickly — not with a pistol pressed against his temple like that.
Nekai lifted the pistol, then holstered it. His reply was a single word: “Again.”
Ronon was still processing recent events. “How did you find me?” he demanded. “I was careful!”
“Not careful enough,” his mentor told him.
“I watched where I stepped.” Ronon insisted. “Nothing but solid rock. No tracks.”
That got a smug smile from the other man. “Too bad you didn’t look up.”
Ronon glared at him. “Explain.”
“You did a good job with the tracks,” Nekai agreed. “But you forgot that the ground isn’t the only way to keep track of someone’s progress. You brushed against branches, vines, tree trunks — you bent leaves and disturbed moss.” He shook his head. “It was even easier than following footprints — at least this way I didn’t have to stoop.”
Ronon sighed. “This isn’t working,” he complained, leaning against the nearest tree. “It’s been weeks, and I’m not getting any better. Actually, I think I’m getting worse.”
“Learning to hunt takes time,” Nekai told him, but he perched on a nearby tree root himself. “There’s a lot to cover. And I’ve got to unlearn you a lot as well.”
Wasn’t that the truth, Ronon thought, idly drawing, spinning, and holstering his pistol in a single move. Before Nekai, he had thought he was an expert fighter, a trained warrior and strategist capable of handling any combat situation. But it turned out that was only true for open warfare. This was hunting, the art of tracking prey and then moving in silently, striking without warning and killing quickly and quietly, and for that he had no background. In fact, much of his prior military training directly contradicted what he needed here — he’d been taught speed over stealth, maximum damage instead of subtlety. This was all different. He really did have to forget half of what he knew so that he could learn a new way of doing things.
Fortunately, Nekai was proving to be a patient teacher. No, that wasn’t really true — he wasn’t patient, not in the sense of waiting for Ronon to figure things out on his own or leaving him time to get things right. But he was persistent, and dogged. And he yet to explode at Ronon, to insult him or belittle him or call him stupid — all standard tactics in Satedan military training, getting the recruit angry enough to focus past the pain and fatigue. Nekai kept telling Ronon he was doing well, that this took time, that he had fine skills and excellent potential, but he also never let up. This, too, was a whole new way of doing things.
Case in point — Nekai leaned back on his perch and shut his eyes. “Two hundred,” he announced softly. “One ninety-nine. One ninety-eight. One ninety-seven. ”
Ronon rose with a groan. He had already learned that Nekai didn’t kid about training, not at all. If he was counting down, he meant it — and when he reached “one” he would open his eyes and shoot Ronon where he stood if he was still in sight. And the Wraith stun-pistol Nekai used — apparently his backup weapon, but since Ronon now had his usual pistol and no intention of ever giving it back Nekai was using the stun-pistol entirely these days — hurt like hell when it hit you. It didn’t stun Ronon completely, not on the first shot, but it did stop him in his tracks, and Nekai had no compunctions against following that first hit up with two or three more to make sure he’d put Ronon down.
One of these days, Ronon swore to himself, he was going to turn the tables on the stocky Retemite. He was going to sneak up on Nekai and stun him instead. That thought was now just as powerful a motivation as the idea of killing more Wraiths in keeping him moving and training.
Which meant that perhaps Nekai’s way wasn’t all that different from Satedan methods after all.
Ronon woke up at dawn two months later to discover that he was alone. That wasn’t entirely unusual — Nekai often woke before him and scouted the area, or found some sort of food.
Food — that had been another new experience. Ronon had never hunted before. Now he was learning how to hunt Wraith, but he was also learning to hunt animals. They kept moving, switching to a new planet every two to three days so the Wraith couldn’t pinpoint their location during the times when they were far enough apart that both their tracking signals would be clear, and Nekai could tell at a glance whether a planet held edible flora and fauna. Ronon was learning how as well. It had to do with recognizing various plants, noticing telltale hints of poison in their fruit or nuts or roots, but also in searching for and reading animal tracks, teeth marks, dung, and other signs. Now he knew the difference between marks made by a small burrowing mammal and a large, poisonous reptile, and could tell whether fluttering overhead was from harmless birds or dangerous bats or deadly winged snakes.
Even so, the first time he’d had to shoot an animal he had found it incredibly hard. He had lowered his pistol several times before finally taking the shot. And it had been set on stun, because a killshot from the weapon would have charred the creature and left it inedible.
“Why is it,” he had wondered out loud after the beast had fallen and he and Nekai had crouched beside its still form, “that I can shoot a man or stab him or cut him without a second’s hesitation, but I could barely bring myself to shoot this thing?”
“Because the man was trying just as hard to kill you,” his mentor had pointed out. “This beast wasn’t doing anything to us. It couldn’t hurt us if it tried.” Judging from the sharpened horn gracing the animal’s brow, Ronon wasn’t entirely convinced of that, but certainly it had made no move toward them. It had raised its head in alarm when Ronon had lowered his weapon the second time, its delicate ears swiveling toward the faint noise, but had looked poised to run away rather than to charge.
“Don’t feel bad for not wanting to kill it,” Nekai had assured him. “That’s natural. It means you’re not mean-spirited — you kill it because you have to, not because you want to. But you do have to. We need to eat to survive, and this creature wasn’t smart enough or fast enough to escape you. That makes it prey.” He’d pulled a knife from somewhere — Ronon was never entirely sure where his mentor stashed all the knives he seemed to carry — flipped it over so the blade was resting atop his palm, and had offered it hilt-first to Ronon. “Now you have to finish the job.”
Ronon had forced himself to slit the creature’s throat, making sure the cut was fast and smooth so it felt no pain. He had lost whatever food had already been in his stomach the first few times Nekai had shown him how to skin, gut, and dress an animal, but by then he was able to handle the chore without difficulty or pause. Nekai was right — they needed to eat. And any beast foolish enough to be taken down by them probably deserved it. Especially since they never killed more than they needed, which meant it was only the slowest, stupidest animals around that became their prey. That had made it a little easier, but not a lot.