"Clive," she said in a moment, "we're strangers, but it doesn't mean we can't find some kind of love, just while it lasts. Do what you can."
Her blood was black in the moonlight, pooling among the stones. My hand was over her wrist, held loosely there, and I don't know why; to stop the rhythmic spurting from staining her flying suit — one must, yes, keep order; or to tempt me to deny all her arguments and grip with sudden force and reach with my other hand for the pressure point and then a tourniquet and somehow carry her through the mountains; or simply to ease the soreness for her, by the comfort of touching.
"I could have done a lot worse, Clive." The strength was leaving her voice.
"A lot worse?"
"Than finding you, for the last dance."
Her cropped head turned sideways on the haversack, but she straightened it to look up at me, like someone falling asleep and then waking because the time wasn't right.
"I wouldn't have wanted anyone else to be here now," I told her.
"It was a privilege."
"A privilege?" A little dry laugh came. "Oh God, I'm in such a mess." Her lips could scarcely open now. "You must try the cleft in the ridge, Clive… the way I said…»
"Yes." Her head fell sideways again but this time she let it stay there, and closed her eyes. "Sleep well," I said.
"Dizzy… Clive?"
"I'm here." I lay beside her, covering her as much as I could so that she'd know she wasn't' alone. She felt like a child in my arms.
"Clive… good luck…»
The sunrise was beautiful, a filling of the sky with saffron and then rose and then a flood of blinding light across the peaks to the east.
I had stowed the two chutes together and spread rocks over them, and sorted out what extra equipment I'd take along. Helen de Haven was over there, where the heaped stones were catching the first light of the day. I turned away and moved through the rocky terrain, keeping clear of the sheer face and the drop below it.
In an hour I had reached the bottom of the ridge, where she had told me I should go, and rested for a moment against an outcrop; then the shot came and splinters of stone cut through the air near my face and I dropped flat.
18: Hunt
I didn't move.
The splinters were still falling, one of them humming through the air with the loudness of a bee, its sharp edges spinning from the impact of the bullet until it struck ground and skittered across the shale.
Incoming data, item one: no echo to the shot.
He was in cover. There would have been an echo, otherwise, from the sheer rockface between here and the ridge higher up. He was shooting from cover but not from the monastery or anywhere near it: from here the monastery was out of sight above the ridge and a thousand feet higher. He was shooting from a north vector: without raising my head I could see the chipped rock, a few feet south of where I was lying prone.
Moving my eyes only, I looked for the bullet; if I could find it I could learn a lot more about him, and where he was.
At some time during the ritual of love she had said, Don't pity me; I can't stand that; besides, this could be the last time for you too.
There were grasses, higher towards the ridge, and I lay watching them; but their movement was so slight that I couldn't hope to tell the wind's direction; I took deeper breaths, alert for the smell of burnt powder, but as yet there was nothing; even if the wind were from the north he might be too far away for the scent to carry.
The sun was four diameters high, north-east by east and approaching the mountain; it would clear the peak in another hour, and I couldn't hope for shadow. The ground here was still moist from the receding mist, and I began digging into the soil between the rocks, using one of the sharp splinters his bullet had chipped from the rock; no thanks to him for the convenience: that bullet had been meant for my brain.
As soon as I had enough loose soil I began caking it over the buckles of the haversacks and the binocular case to take away the shine; then I smeared my face and hands, taking my time: he wouldn't come close yet, in case I had a gun.
He was using a long-distance rifle; its sound had been a heavy cough rather than a bark, and the chip in the rock was larger than a watch face. He knew I was still alive; to have placed the shot that close he must have seen enough of me to notice how I'd gone down, dropping voluntarily for cover, not spinning or toppling with an arm flung out. He would have reloaded by now, waiting to see what I did.
There were no real options. He was waiting for me to show him any one of the four most dangerous aspects of a hunted man: movement, reflection, colour and human shape. But I couldn't stay here; he wouldn't wait beyond a certain time; there would be the moment when he'd believe I was wounded, and then he'd come slowly, using all available cover until he could see I was either unconscious or unarmed. I had to be gone by then.
I checked the time at 06:17 and took my watch off and put it into my pocket before I moved. There was a wall of rock extending a long way to my left, so I covered fifty yards at a low crouch, scuffling my boots into the shale and dragging their toes across grasses to leave them bent; then as the terrain became firm rock I turned at right angles and went for a cleft running south at an angle and providing cover for twenty yards before it finished in a slope of fallen boulders. I would have to climb there, or come back if I had to climb too high.
He might be using a scope sight; that would change things a great deal; it could mean he was farther away than it seemed, and knew there was no real cover here for me, none that could lead me clear; he'd be content to use me for sport, and watch me go from rock to rock like a rat in a maze. If he were shooting from a great distance it meant he must be on higher ground, and could see beyond my immediate cover to flat terrain where he could finally bring me down.
He would try, in any case, to reach higher ground. That would take him towards the east, towards the ridge on the mountain; I must watch for him there.
Sound of a hammer blow and stone shards flew and I dropped flat. Close. That was close. He was higher than I'd thought, and could see more than I'd thought. I stayed motionless, not knowing whether he was so high that he could still see me, whether he was now swinging the long barrel down and moving the cross-hairs to centre on the back of my head, moving his finger inside the trigger-guard and starting to apply pressure to the spring. Time had slowed down, because I was at the frontier of existence and extinction, a place where, for all of us, man-made time loses its rhythm and real time does the reckoning; if the finger of the other creature out there moved by a further eighth of an inch, the intricate computer inside my skull would become a mess of nerve tissue of interest only to a carrion crow.
The sweet scent of pinewood on the air, and the sound of a bird calling from the lower ground where there was scrub for its habitat.
Perhaps he wasn't absolutely sure that this shape was the right one among the kaleidoscope of rock and shadow; he was waiting for me to move before he contracted his finger.
I suppose he was one of the perimeter guards, patrolling the monastery's environment. Or he could have come down from there, from the ridge, to hunt me.