Hunter's Run by George R. R. Martin Page A

light.
     
    They leveled off. Maneck sat
behind the box’s control panel unshakably, firm and cold as a statue, quills
rippling in the bitter wind. Banking again, they fell at a slant through the
air. He couldn’t have been insensible for more than a minute or two, Ramon
realized; that was the aliens’ mountain just behind them, the exit-hole now
irised shut again, and that was the mountain slope where he’d been captured,
just below. Even as they coasted down toward the slope, the sky was growing
significantly darker. The sun had sunk beneath the horizon some moments before,
leaving only the thinnest sliver of glazed red along the junction line of land
and air. The rest of the sky was the color of plum and eggplant and ash, dying
rapidly to an inky blackness overhead and to the west. Armed and bristling
with trees, the mountain slope rushed up to meet them. Too fast! Surely they
would crash…
     
    They touched down lightly in the
middle of an alpine valley, settling out of the sky as silently as a feather.
Maneck killed the box’s engine. Darkness swallowed them, and they were
surrounded by the sly and predatory noises of evening. Maneck seized Ramon,
and, lifting him like a rag doll, dragged him from the box, carried him a few
feet away, and dropped him to the ground.
     
    Ramon groaned involuntarily,
startled and ashamed by the loudness of his voice. His arms were still bound
behind him, and to lie upon them was excruciatingly painful. He rolled over
onto his stomach. The ground under him was so cold that it was comfortable, and
even in his sick and confused condition, Ramon realized that meant death. He
thrashed and squirmed, and managed to roll himself up in the long cloak he’d
been given; it was surprisingly warm. He would have fallen asleep then, in
spite of his pain and discomfort, but light beat against his eyelids where
there had been no light, and he opened his eyes.
     
    The light seemed blinding at
first, but it dimmed as his eyes adjusted. Maneck had brought something from
the box, a small globe attached to a long metal rod, and jammed the sharp end
of the rod into the soil; now the globe was alight, burning from within with a
dim bluish light, emitting rhythmic waves of heat. As Ramon watched, Maneck
walked around the globe - the sahael shortening visibly with each step -
and came slowly toward him with seeming deliberation. Only then, watching
Maneck prowl toward him, seeing the wet gleam in the corner of its orange eyes
as it looked from side to side, seeing the way its nose crinkled and twitched,
the way its head swiveled and swayed restlessly on the stubby neck, the
shrugging of its shoulders at each step, hearing the iron rasp of its breath,
smelling its thick musky odor - only then did some last part of Ramon’s mind
fully accept the fact that he was its captive, alone and at its mercy in the
wilderness.
     
    That simple knowledge hit Ramon
with such force that he felt the blood begin to drain from his face, and even
as he was worming and scrambling backward in a futile attempt to get away from
his captor, he was losing his grip on the world, losing consciousness, slipping
down into darkness.
     
    The alien stood over him, seen
again through the hazy white snow of faintness, seeming to loom up endlessly
into the sky like some horrid and impossible beanstalk, with eyes like blazing
orange suns. That was the last thing Ramon saw. Before the snow piled up over
his face and buried him, and everything was gone.
     
    * * * *
     
    Morning was a blaze of pain. He had fallen asleep on his back, and
he could no longer feel his arms. The rest of his body ached as though it had
been beaten with clubs. The alien was standing over him again - or perhaps it
had never moved, perhaps it had stood there all night, looming and remote,
terrible, tireless, and unsleeping. The first thing Ramon saw that morning,
through a bloodshot haze of pain, was the alien’s face; the long twitching
black snout with its blue and