Soul Catcher by Frank Herbert Page B

were
concentrated into a spotlight which illuminated every movement in
the young face.
    Hoquat was terrified. Some part of the boy’s
awareness had translated the hiker’s death correctly. One death was
not enough. The ritual of sacrifice must be carried through to its
proper end. Hoquat must not let this awareness rise into his
consciousness. He must know it while denying it. Too much terror
could destroy innocence.
    The boy shuddered, a sudden, uncontrollable
spasm.
    Katsuk squatted back on his heels, felt a
sudden inward chill, but kept a hand on Hoquat’s arm. The flesh
pulsed with life beneath Katsuk’s fingers. There was warmth in that
life, a sense of continuity in it.
    “Are you awake, Hoquat?” Katsuk pressed.
David pushed the man’s hand away, flicked a glance across the
sheathed knife at
    Katsuk’s waist.
    My knife, David thought. It killed
a man.
    As though his memory had a life of its own,
it brought up the picture of his mother warning him to be careful
with “that dreadful knife.” He felt hysterical laughter in his
throat, swallowed to suppress it.
    Katsuk said: “I will be back in a few
minutes, Hoquat.” He went away.
    David’s teeth chattered. He thought: Hoquat! I am David Marshall. I’m David Morgenstern Marshall. No
matter how many times that madman calls me Hoquat, that won’t
change a thing.
    There had been a sleeping bag in the hiker’s
pack. Katsuk had made a ground cover of moss and cedar boughs,
spread the bag over them. The bag had been pushed aside during the
night and lay now in a damp wad. David pulled it around his
shoulders, tried to still the chattering of his teeth. His head
still ached where he had bruised it when Katsuk had hurled him to
the ground.
    David thought then about the dead hiker.
After he had regained consciousness and before they crossed the
river.
    Katsuk had forced his captive back up the
trail to that bloody body, saying: “Hoquat, go back to where I told
you to hide and wait there.”
    David had been glad to obey. As much as he
had wanted not to look at the dead youth, his eyes kept
coming back to the gaping wound in the neck. He had climbed back to
the mossy nurse log, hidden his face behind it, and lost himself to
dry sobs.
    Then Katsuk, who had called him after a long
time, was carrying the pack. There had been no sign of body or
bloody marks of a struggle on the trail.
    They had stayed off the elk track for a time
after that, climbing parallel to it, returning to the trail on the
other side of a high ridge.
    At dusk, Katsuk had built a crude cedar-bark
shelter deep in trees above a river. He had brought five small fish
from the river, cooked them over a tiny fire in the shelter.
    David thought about the fish, tasting them
in memory. Had Katsuk gone for food now?
    They had crossed the river before building
the shelter. There had been a well-marked hiking trail, a bridge
above a flood-scoured bar. The boards of the bridge had been soft
wet with a pocking of slush on the downstream lip, the air all
around full of smoky spray.
    Had Katsuk gone down there to get more
fish?
    There was a sign by the bridge: FOOT OR
HORSE USE ONLY.
    Game was thick along the river trail. They
had seen two does, a spotted fawn, a brown rabbit running ahead of
them for a space, then darting into the wet greenery.
    David thought: Maybe Katsuk put out a
rabbit snare.
    Hunger knotted his stomach.
    They had climbed under a drizzle of rain. It
had come down in thin plumes from catch-basin leaves to bend the
ferns flat. There was no rain now though.
    Where was Katsuk?
    David peered out of the shelter. It was a
dawn world of cold and dampness with the sound of ducks quacking
somewhere. It was a ghostly world, a dark dawn. No bright cords of
light, just a twisted, incoherent gray.
    He thought: I must not think how that
hiker was killed.
    But there was no escaping that memory.
Katsuk had done it in full view of his captive. A splash of light
on steel and then that great gout of