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Page 57.

“Siiiirrkk!”

Alex opened his eyes and froze.

He heard that voice again, nearby, unmistakable: “Siiiirrkk!”

Nizin! Alex gripped the knife Tzoofaa had given him, and gradually raised his face. He lifted one fingertip and picked leaves away, one by one, an inch at a time, until his field of vision increased.

It was New Light. He must have fallen into an exhausted sleep. Heart pounding, he felt the muzziness of sleep driven away as he heard Nizin’s oratory of self-praise nearby.

There. The Siirk stood over a dead animal—one of the dog-things that had engaged in a snarling contest with its slavering fellow dog-thing the night before. Nizin finished congratulating himself on his kill and squatted down with a knife upraised to begin preparing his meal.

Alex moved with glacial slowness. He pulled his bow close and strung it. He pulled the special arrow from his quiver and laid it on the bow. He shifted his body around into aiming position, grimacing at his stiffness and the aches he felt.

Meanwhile, Nizin cradled the animal in his arms and extracted from its head what he needed. Once or twice he paused, strangely, as if contemplating what lay between his arms.

Alex held the bow laterally, a foot above the ground. He laid the arrow on it and started to aim.

Nizin paused again, looking slightly to one side.

Alex found he could not aim well this way. He needed the bow to be as vertical as possible. He rose slowly, turning the bow as he did so.

Nizin shifted suddenly where he sat.

Alex rose like a shadow, aiming the arrow that had killed Maryan.

Nizin was faster. He whirled, producing a bow he must have hidden somehow.

Alex was almost at the point of loosing the arrow. Too late he saw the thing Nizin had held was not a dead animal but a hide with a dog-like head attached. Under the hide he had concealed his weapons, and now he rose, spinning, and let loose an arrow at Alex.

Alex sent his arrow flying, but it was too late. In the second after the arrow flew, Nizin side-stepped and disappeared into a nearby cleft in a hill, covered by bushes. In that same second, Nizin’s arrow struck Alex in the shoulder.

The arrow tore Alex’s skin, bruised his exposed shoulder bone, and glanced off. Pain seared through Alex like fire, and he staggered, grasping his shoulder.

Nizin popped up on a tall boulder about 500 feet away cackling. His eyes and teeth glittered manically. “Siiiirrrrk!” he groaned loudly with pleasure and triumph. “Siiiirrrkkk!” He rubbed his belly and laughed. The forest echoed with his voice.

Alex shook his head, for his vision was blurred with shock. He looked to his right and lifted his bloody hand from his shoulder. He saw the white bone there, the torn muscles, flecks of loose body fat lying in yellowish and white streaks mingled with blood in the wound.

“Ha ha ha!” Nizin’s laugh echoed.

Alex staggered back and leaned against a tree. His vision was blurry, but he heard as Nizin laughed again. Nizin hopped off the boulder and disappeared into the brush.

Alex’s shoulder throbbed, and he grimaced with pain each time he moved. What was worse, it smelled bad. Alarmed, Alex retrieved the arrow and sniffed it. He made a face while his stomach contracted in horror. Nizin had rubbed it in feces—probably Siirk feces to add a special insult.

Holding the dagger to his side, Alex made his way down to the water. He threw himself into the water and frantically started wiping the wound with wet silt. Probably filled with all sorts of bugs, he thought, but nothing could be so damaging as Siirk shyte in an open wound. As he washed himself, he sobbed with pain. The stuff burned like acid. He knew Nizin could probably kill him now, but Nizin didn’t. Probably wanted to toy with Alex. Nizin would probably let Alex get sick from infection, then hunt him down, slowly and cruelly torturing him, making his end as prolonged and dreadful as possible.

Ducking under the water, Alex again experienced its coolness and soothing nature. It was nothing like the healing magic of the cave water back on Earth, but it relieved a tiny bit of the fire aching on his shoulder. Luckily, the wound wasn’t in the joint, just in the thin flesh and musculature atop the joint where the arm met the shoulder. Still, even with the feces washed out, there was little hope of avoiding infection. Return to the village? Not a chance—it would bring the curse of this rogue Siirk down on them. He’d chosen his fate, the villagers had warned him of the consequences. Now he must live with them. Alex decided he must have no regrets, no matter what. He had enjoyed life, and had been blessed with a fine woman. Now the game was just about done, in this colossal joke life had played by bringing him into the world a million years after humankind had become extinct. Now the only recourse was to fade from the scene with dignity and pride.

Alex sloshed noisily out of the water, hoping to bring Nizin back for a final fight while Alex still had the strength.

One thing at a time. He must survive, first.

How long before the infection set in? Maybe a day at most. Already the arm was throbbing, and soon parts of it felt numb. The discomfort was spreading into the joint, a sure sign this wasn’t going to get better.

Alex ran into the bush and put a little distance between himself and the river.

No sign of Nizin. The Siirk would be out hunting him, but for the moment he was letting Alex have a little slack to see what he could do. Nizin must be supremely confident of his skills as a hunter, and so far there was no question of that. Alex faded from side to side to spoil the trail a bit. Running endlessly and blindly forward would do nothing but tire him out. This was as much a game of brains as it was of endurance, and so far Nizin had scored the first several points.

Alex resisted the temptation to head back to Leeree’s village. That chapter was now closed forever. He must move on and make whatever of life fate was about to allot him. Instinctively, Alex made his way toward the great wall. Along the way, he ate what he could—flowers, nuts, berries, insects. He drank water whenever he found it. Must stay hydrated, must keep up his strength. His shoulder and arm began to swell up, as did the lymph nodes under his arms. His neck grew sore and stiff, and even his jaw ached. He was running a faint temperature, he could tell, and his vision was a bit blurry.

He could not go on much longer this way.

He felt himself weakening, and knew he must beat Nizin at his own game.

Staggering along, he often had to stop and rest. He supported himself by leaning on a rock or tree trunk as the light dimmed.

He fell down among pine needles and leaves, crawled under a fallen log that glowed with mushrooms (or were those illusions of his fevered brain?) and slept. He dreamt of Maryan, of making love with her in the cave before they’d ever known of the Siirk. He shivered in his sleep and called out for her. He woke several times in the night, thinking a shape hovered nearby, Nizin, plotting how best to kill him so that it would hurt the most. But it wasn’t Nizin, just some flying blanket moss, he saw as the light grew brighter and the first glimmer of daylight grayed among the trees. Surely there was yet some secret in this place. The last boat could not have come to them by coincidence out of the whole million years this place had been spinning in place at L5. Something else was at work—but what? His brain was like a runner, growing tired, even as it stumbled the last few hundred yards in a long race to some finish that was going to be either the finish, the end of all ends, or the beginning of a new beginning.

He fell asleep again, babbling to himself in his mind.