Mahasingh's mount pounded after Salazar. Light flashed, and Salazar heard the thunderous bang of Mahasingh's big pistol. Again and again the gun roared. Salazar thought he heard the whistle of a couple of near misses, but the dim light and the jouncing of the jutens made marksmanship impossible. At least, he thought, the shots after the first seemed to be coming from farther away, as if he were gaining on Mahasingh. He could understand this, because their jutens were of about the same size, but Mahasingh must have weighed over half again as much as he, Salazar, did.
The pistol banged once more. This time, through his saddle, Salazar felt the impact of the bullet on his juten. The animal gave a piteous squall and collapsed on the stony ground. Salazar was thrown over its head to land on all fours on the soil before it.
"Ha!" roared Mahasingh, pounding toward him. "Now we shall see!" He pointed the pistol, but it only clicked.
Scrambling up, Salazar glanced around. To his left the downward slope offered little cover for another fifty to a hundred meters, where the outskirts of the lower forest, black in the starlight, began. To his right loomed the dark mass of the nanshins.
Salazar pulled out his whistle. Blowing lustily, he ran into the venom trees. He pushed his way through, stumbling in the darkness, going to his knees, and scrambling up again, all the while blowing to burst his lungs. He heard the robe tear as it snagged. Then away went the turban.
Fainter and fainter came the yells of Mahasingh, vainly trying to get his juten into the nanshins. Smart animal, thought Salazar.
Then Mahasingh's bellows ceased, and Salazar heard the thrashing and crackle of a man forcing his way into the forest. Salazar plunged on, confident that the nanshins would treat Mahasingh as they had Cantemir.
The noise kept on and on, growing louder. Mahasingh, Salazar thought, was a stalwart man, but surely he did not have a hide proof against nanshin venom! There was nothing to do but struggle on.
Salazar soon emerged into starlight again. Ahead loomed the huge, squatty, conical mass of the volcano summit. Sounds of Mahasingh's approach came louder. Salazar had no weapon, and in any form of hand-to-hand combat the huge Shaivite would pulverize him. He could do nothing but plod on up the slope, hoping that he could wear Mahasingh down to the point of abandoning the chase.
IX – The Crater Shikawa
Salazar threw away his tattered robe. Jogging on up the slope, he stumbled and fell again, tearing a hole in one trouser knee. His fingers felt a sticky wetness where the rock had gashed his skin. On he plunged.
He climbed and climbed. Now and then the slope became steep enough to require the use of hands. His heart raced and his breath came in gasps, so that betimes he had to stop for his laboring body to catch up. Served him right, he thought, for studying so much as not to leave time for more exercise than he had been taking!
Each time he stopped, he looked back for Mahasingh. But the starlight was too dim to make out a human form among the tumbled rocks and scanty shrubs of the slope behind him.
On he plodded, wondering what to do at the top. If Mahasingh still pursued him, should he skirt the crater and go down the other side, hoping to lose his foe in the nanshin forest? Perhaps he would have been wiser to step aside when he had entered the venom trees at first and quietly wait for Mahasingh to blunder past him.
Perhaps Mahasingh had been fatally stricken by the venom and had never emerged from the nanshins. That was probably too much to hope for, but at least he could take his hike a little more easily.
Then a deep roar killed this hope. Mahasingh shouted from below: "I see you, Salazar! You cannot escape. I shall do you as you deserve for making me fail in my duty!"
Salazar strained his eyes through the darkness. At last he thought he detected movement. A paler patch in the darkness bobbed among the darker shapes of rock and bush. He resumed his climb, berating himself for letting his pursuer catch him against the night sky.
On and on he climbed. The next time he turned to look, Mahasingh was closer. There was something odd about his appearance, but the starlight was not bright enough for Salazar to tell what it was.
Salazar wondered why Mahasingh had not shot at him again. He was sure that with his longer legs, the giant would catch up with him, barring a broken leg or heart failure. The sheath knife at Salazar's belt had a twenty-centimeter blade, useless against Mahasingh's machete save in a clinch. He ought to have cut himself a club from a branch, but it was too late for that now.
On he went despite racing heart and laboring lungs. He remembered the fable of the rabbit who outran the fox; the fox ran for his dinner, while the rabbit ran for his life. If people had unkindly compared Salazar to a rabbit, he would follow the advice of Arjuna in the Hindu epic and be the best rabbit he could.
As they climbed, the air grew colder and mistier. Salazar scrambled over ridges of glassy black obsidian. He stumbled and fell to his knees again, gouging a cut on his palm from the glassy fractures of the lava.
The slope rounded off to a level. A glance back showed that Mahasingh was still coming. The pursuer shouted:
"I have you now, Salazar!"
The man waved his machete; the mist was too thick to make out details except at close range.
Then a puff of breeze slightly cleared the intervening air. In the starlight Salazar saw that Mahasingh was twelve or fifteen meters behind and a smaller distance below him. He also saw what was different about the man: he was stripped to loincloth, shoes, and the scarf around his head.
Evidently Mahasingh had gotten his clothes full of nanshin venom in the forest and had shed them when he emerged. If Salazar had a chance to plunge into the nanshins again, Mahasingh would follow him thither at his peril.
Salazar ran again, heading for the dim red glow in the mist ahead. Soon he neared the crater, whence came the eternal swish-swish of the fountains of lava. If he could lose Mahasingh in this dim, rubescent light ...
In the pit of Shikawa, the silver-gray scum of cooling lava looked black beneath the night sky, while the zigzag cracks and the ever-rising and falling fountains shone a brilliant orange. Salazar turned to the right and jogged along the circumference, jumping obstacles dimly seen in the lava light and lifting his feet lest he trip. Behind came Mahasingh's labored breathing.
The sound receded; Salazar glanced back. Mahasingh had halted on the edge of the crater, gasping; Salazar did likewise. The biologist remembered his father's joke about the time he had dug on an archaeological site in Durango, on Terra. It got so hot there, said Keith Salazar, that when you saw a coyote chasing a jackrabbit, both were walking.
As if at a signal, both men resumed running. Again they halted and again recommenced. Salazar thought he was nearing the end of his endurance, but he suspected the same of Mahasingh. If the foreman had longer legs, those legs had to carry a lot more weight.
Something about the terrain seemed familiar; then Salazar recognized the embayment in the wall that Alexis had shown him. Of the two points of land embracing the circular void, he had previously stepped out on the farther one.
He glanced back at Mahasingh, coming on fast and raising the machete. The lava light gleamed redly on the steel.
Salazar measured the distance between the points of rock, noting irregularities. Then he ran out on the nearer point and leapt across the gap. He came down on the farther point, teetered for a desperate second, and recovered his balance. He ran on a few steps and stopped to watch Mahasingh.
Without pause, Mahasingh launched himself on a leap like Salazar's, but he came down just short of the easterly point. His feet skidded off the edge, and with a hoarse cry he slid down the rock face. At the last instant he grabbed the surface of the point. His scarf-wound head remained above the rocky edge, while his arms scrabbled for handholds. Salazar heard the machete clink as it bounced off the rocks below.