Return by Peter S. Beagle; Maurizio Manzieri Page A

Goro slew the first, and I killed the second only by the luck of his arrogance—I blithely assumed that I was free of them and could go my way without forever looking behind me by day, or waking on my feet in the night. What I did not know then was that there is always a third: the leader, moving ever apart from the other two, and more dangerous than both of them together. The exact moment of my education in this regard was personally memorable, but unimportant. I survived it, a fortune well beyond my deserving: the still-tender spot on the back of my head reminds me yet that the gods must have a certain fond indulgence for ignorant children. And over time I continued to survive, the passages of my life measured by a kind of Hunter clockwork. For while they were not perfect killers, those chuckling little people, they never left your trail until all three were dead; and then, as I discovered, after some time there would be three more following in their tracks, and three more after that, on and on.
    But the third stands ever apart, and the second is always more cautious than the first. Through years, nearly decades, it had always been so. Until now. Here in this forest clearing I saw something I could not have imagined, for the third Hunter was clearly restraining the second .
    It was only for a moment, but unmistakable. Then the second broke free from his fellow’s grasp—I saw blood fly from his forearm—and he came for me.
    No gentle, smiling assassin, this one, but an animal mad and blind with rage. He came flying and hissing at me, swift as a striking falcon, those deadly hands seemingly gutting the air. I met him with an arrow in each of my own hands, and he was dead before he hit the ground. It had all taken four seconds, at most. From the time I’d first come to my feet, fifteen.
    I looked into the eyes of the third Hunter then, seeing nothing at all and having no idea what might possibly come next. He held my gaze for a long moment, then backed three steps into the trees, turned, and was gone.
    And I went after him, which was more foolish, and by a far longer chalk, than anything I had done since I was old and experienced enough to know better. Hunters are hunters, not fugitives: they find you when it suits their purpose, never yours. You do not plunge off blindly into the woods in pursuit of one—especially not a third one, for all sakes’ sake. But I had killed two within a quarter of a minute, and I admit I was as drunk with it as a much younger fool would have been.
    I willsay in my defense that I was aware of, and alarmed by, the ease with which I followed the trail of the third Hunter. I am not the best of trackers—Lal is far better, and the fox is as much her superior as she is mine—but at least I know this, and never imagine otherwise. Yet I was having no least difficulty in my pursuit: there were footprints, torn vines, broken twigs and branches—everything but signposts every few feet to point the way. Again to do myself justice, I went slowly, fully expecting a strike from every possible direction, including the trees. But for hours there was no sign of the Hunter himself, only of his strange, stumbling passage, until I pushed through a tangle of underbrush and came abruptly upon what looked like his sprawled corpse, face down in the dirt and leaves. I watched for half a dozen breaths and he did not stir, but even so I held my dagger at the ready as I moved towards him.
    He was lying on his face, but as I knelt he turned and smiled up at me: not in the sweetly pitiless way that is the last mortal sight so many have ever seen, but with something resembling actual warmth. All Hunters have the same light, eerily cheerful voices, as identical as though they had all been issued them in training, but this voice was heavy with death, which is a sound I know as well as any. He said, “Fitting…fitting it is…wicked Soukyan—turncoat, betrayer. Fitting…”
    He coughed, but I saw no blood, nor any