Free Return by Peter S. Beagle; Maurizio Manzieri

Master Caldrea had dropped it. I ran past him, looking desperately for my bow. I came on it blindly, fumbling in the cold, dry grass, and the quiver just beyond, and turned to face four Hunters, spreading out now to come at me from different directions. Depending on range, and a few other things, I can often have a second and third arrow in the air before the first has found its mark; but the distance was too short and my assailants far too adept to let themselves become easy targets, popinjays, for my convenience. I did bring down one—a lucky shot, he nearly charged right into the arrow—and then the rest were too close for arrows, so I threw the bow away, as far as I could, to keep it from tripping me up.
    I can give only a few details of what followed. The Hunters’ hands kill by breaking your neck, crushing your windpipe, rupturing your liver with one open-palmed, stiff-fingered jab. You must keep them at some distance to have any hope at all of survival, and the trimoira gave me a life-saving length of arm. It was all in and out, dodging and lunging, sideways leaps and rolls and back somersaults. I was not nearly as swift as they were, but I had a knowledge of their favored tactics that they did not have of mine, for all they’d been inculcated in their caterpillar wombs with the supreme need to kill me. And even so…
    Even so, I should be dead. My one providence lay in the fact that these were not quite the Hunters I had feared and fled and fought since I was too young to understand what they were. Dangerous still—deadly, deadly dangerous—but changed by a shadow’s depth from almost invincible to almost vulnerable. The Tree’s growing exhaustion had made that much difference.
    The trimoira and the confusion accounted for one, surprisingly quickly; the survivors drew off, consulting together without speaking, as Hunters do. From the smoothly coordinated way they moved, I thought this pair might have been born a unit, and that much more dangerous for it. I seized the moment to scramble after my bow and quiver, and to loose off two arrows. Both struck home with a satisfying certainty—try that with a dagger, Lal—leaving me in command of a field grotesquely strewn with nearly-identical bodies. Bow taut, my last arrow notched and ready, I looked for the third Hunter, the one wearing my blood, but did not see him among the upright or the slain.
    The monks were rapidly vanishing themselves; only Master Caldrea remained, standing before the Tree with his arms stretched wide, unafraid, but plainly sensing what I had in mind. “There will be others,” he called defiantly as I approached. “There will always be others.”
    “Not from this tree,” I said. I took my flint and steel from my pouch and knelt in the grass.
    Then I remembered. I remembered the helplessness—the laughing blue eyes—the whisper, so unbearably close. Nothing you do ever harm the Tree, never…no axe you swing…no spade…no poison…no fire you set…
    No fire you set…
    So be it: let this among his prophecies come true. I put my flint away, and picked up a brand from the monks’ own dying fire. I said, “Come away, Master.”
    “No,” he said. His face was like slate, like old ice. “No, you cannot do this. I will not letyou.”
    “Come away,” I said again. He turned his back on me then and clung to the Tree, crying out in the language of his chant, as though appealing to it for protection, but the Tree had nothing to give him. I pulled him away by main force, and when he struggled free to run back, I hit him. Not hard, just hard enough that he sat down, dazed, which was all I wanted.
    The scrubby grass was so parched that it went up with one touch of the brand. A hot wind played across my face, and for a few moments it was difficult to breathe.
    Master Caldrea screamed. I turned to lay hold of him again, but he was on his feet, stumbling toward the Tree. I sprang after him, at the same time glimpsing movement in the corner