Free Return by Peter S. Beagle; Maurizio Manzieri Page A

of my left eye. I started to turn my head, and something came down on the back of my skull, just above the neck, so powerfully that I know I lost consciousness for a few seconds. The only reason I lost nothing more than that, I think, is that I was moving when I was struck.
    When sense returned I found the third Hunter sitting on my chest, his knees pinning both of my arms. Behind him, the trunk of the Tree was already encased in rippling fire…along with something darker than the flames that could only have been Master Caldrea, leaning pitifully against it. The Hunter smiled down at me, just as he had done when he first put his hands on me. “All my brothers?” he said again. He raised his hand, canting it at an angle, slowly, just so.
    Then he turned too late, starting to spring up just as his head vanished, and his body toppled sideways, and I was rolling aside myself, trying unsuccessfully to avoid the terrible cascade of blood that pulsed from the severed neck. Corcorua steel never loses its edge.
    Brother Laska was petting the huge sword, mopping away the blood with a tuft of grass. I thanked him—hardly hearing my own words for the ringing in my head—and he grinned his brown grin at me. “I did well? Hard to remember.”
    “You saved my life,” I said. I looked toward the Hunters’ Tree, now completely enveloped in flame. Branches were exploding, bark was peeling away in great sheets and ribbons of fire, the black thorns blazing up and falling to ash just as quickly. I could not see Master Caldrea anymore. I said softly, so as not to disturb my head, “It is over.”
    Brother Laska nodded happily. “No Tree, no more Hunters. The House will grow strong again.” He pointed warningly at me. “Best be gone, you. The brothers will talk.”
    There is a battlefield prayer to be spoken when there is no way, or no time, to bury the slain properly. I said it, and Brother Laska and I started back the way we had come. I turned once for a last look at the Hunters’ Tree, which appeared to be burning even more fiercely than before. Then we went on.
    As fatigued as I was, and as painfully as my head throbbed—the Hunter had missed breaking my neck by little more than an inch—the way back to that place seemed shorter, though the night was no less dark. I had not expected Brother Laska to accompany me as far as the stable, but he insisted on it, as though reluctant for his one adventure to end. “We were together!” he kept saying proudly. “Soukyan and Laska—I saved you, you saved the House. Soukyan and Laska!” He was carrying the two-handed sword now, shouldering it like a spear or a pike, and from time to time reaching to pet it affectionately. I found this touching, and was afraid that he might lose a finger.
    At the stable I bid farewell to Brother Laska, saying, “You have done more than save my life; by heroically aiding me to rid the land of these ancient assassins, you have saved the lives of others whom you will never know. You have their thanks, as surely as you have mine.”
    I bowed to him, turning my back, and knelt to examine my mare’s off hind foot. And perhaps it was a sound, perhaps a shadow, perhaps the familiar whistle of an old man’s inhalation—one of those, or all, or something else, set me dropping and rolling and scrambling to the side as the Corcorua sword sliced into a truss of hay just above my head.
    It took Brother Laska an extra moment to free the great sword, giving me time to get to my feet and put some distance—and a full bale of hay—between us. I was as dumbfounded and speechless as he must have known I would be; not least because his eyes were as bright now as a young man’s eyes, and he was stalking me with a young man’s lithe quickness. Even his voice was changed, turning clearer and stronger, as he said, “But how much more heroic will I be when I bring back the head of the monster, the defiler, who destroyed forever the very heart of our House, the great