The supply of meat grew until longnecks and krats were constantly scaling the walls in vain attempts at theft. Claude Delacroix assigned more men each day to the task of guarding the enclosure. By the third week, eight men were standing guard while the rest worked, one hunter to one butcher. The work of butchering a trihorn alone had to be experienced to be believed. Still the hunter had to stand guard, so the butchers simply gritted their teeth and continued, knowing that the hunter who stood guard would be down there butchering the next beast when turnabout came.

On the seventeenth day, Jean and Anton were assigned to hunt together. Anton accepted the rifle, a muzzleloader, and they went over the wall with first light.

The ground was littered with freshly picked bones where the krats had cleaned up after the hunters. The herds had thinned considerably and the bushes were torn and tattered. The pair went straight downriver for nearly a kilometer without spotting game. Finally Anton decided to drop down and try along the river.

Jean had his bow out, arrow nocked, when they came upon a trihorn – an old bull without a mate. There is no meaner animal than a trihorn in full rut and unable to find a female. He heard them, turned and charged.

Anton threw up his rifle but didn’t fire – wisely, for only the one load stood between them and death. He sidestepped right as Jean sidestepped left and then Jean released his arrow.

It was a deliberate act, an act of faith such as men who hunt dangerous game together must make. The arrow could not stop the trihorn; it could only divert its charge toward Jean.

The trihorn charged past Anton, presenting a perfect broadside target. A perfect setup. Anton swung the rifle.

He did not fire.

Jean was poised; he was so certain of the flash and the report that his mind heard what his ears did not. The trihorn did not falter; it did not fall to its knees, heart shot. Jean was momentarily paralyzed by his expectations and when he hurled himself aside, it was too late.

The upper point caught him in the left thigh and pierced to the bone. He felt the shock; heard the grating of horn on bone; felt himself lifted. Jean looked down on the earth as a bird looks, from above, saw the back of the trihorn, saw Anton’s white face, saw the ground rush up.

***

There was talk of amputation and Jean screamed. Then he felt pain such as he had never known and he lost consciousness knowing that his leg was gone.

Somewhere in Jean’s crazed world of pain, he found the will to move his hands. He found a great mound of bandages but there was still a leg beneath it and he let a calmer unconsciousness take him.

The delirium lasted for weeks, first from pain, then from infection. Certain bacteria are highly resistant to antibiotics, and one such lives in the trihorn dung which coats the ground in the time of the melt. All this Jean knew from later report; he remembered nothing except pain and fear. more tomorrow

The barges were loading for the hunting kraals upriver. Scouts had brought word that the main herd had arrived along the Lydia. Two-thirds of the able bodied men in the colony would be out hunting, nearly three times as many men as there were firearms. Of course the rest of them would not be unarmed, but a bow is a poor weapon with which to face an adult trihorn or a prowling longneck.

Jean had nearly reached the wharf when he heard Chloe’s footsteps. She was coming from the north end of town, not from her parents’ house. That puzzled him; later he would see greater significance to the fact. He stepped into an alleyway with her so that their good-byes could be private.

***

They were thirty to a barge, but none rode. Twenty strained at the traces like dray beasts, dragging the obdurate devices against the current, while ten stood guard – four with the offworld double rifles, six with Levi-Stuer’s muzzleloaders. Once they were beyond the town, they would be fair game for leers, trihorns, humpox, and longnecks. There were six barges, their crews assembled by lot. Jean had been chosen to man the third outpost, seventy kilometers upstream; he pitied the unlucky ones who had been chosen for outpost number six.

They made twenty kilometers a day and at night anchored in midstream. After the first day they saw animals everywhere, vast herds that came en masse to water at the river. The herds seemed as endless as the stars, but in three weeks they would be gone, chasing the melting snows southward, leaving the bushes and gluegrass churned and mutilated behind them.

Outpost three was simply an earth and stone enclosure four meters high and twenty meters across with no openings to the outside. The crew entered by climbing the rough walls.

Lone hunting was almost a sport, and had aspects of glory. Not so the communal hunts. They were all business; they put meat in the locker. As soon as the barge was moored and their meager supplies were inside the circle, it began. One man, rifle-armed, would set out with two others, to make his kill. Then he would stand guard while his companions butchered. Load the meat in the hide, drag it back to the enclosure, and trade off, one of the butchers taking the rifle, the former rifleman taking up his knives. And so on, from earliest morning until dusk gave the advantage to the longnecks.

At night they ate cooked meat. When hunger overtook them on the hunt, they ate as they butchered, raw. It was brutal, mankilling work and it was dangerous; for each trihorn or herby the hunters killed, they had to kill at least one krat or longneck intent on robbing them. The nights were punctuated by gunfire and the men praised the three moons for the light they gave. The plains became littered with bones and entrails as the colonists gathered a year‘s meat in three weeks.

Anton Dumezil was among the men assigned to outpost three. Jean saw him in the course of his work, but exchanged no word. Anton’s earlier irritability had hardened into a sullen hatred. Why, Jean did not know. Three times the two were assigned to hunt together and did so without comment, but the strain was noticeable. more tomorrow

A week later they loaded the gig and set it free.  With the melt in full swing, the North River was high, deep, and muddy. There was a stiff silence between them.

They reached the lake in three effortless days, then spent two backbreaking ones rowing between the mouth of the North River and the mouth of the Lydia. There were half a hundred people waiting at the landing, but most of them turned away when it became apparent who they were. Those would be the relatives of the others who had gone north. Perhaps half a dozen parties of youths had gone out on advance hunts. They would bring back the first fresh meat that the colony had had in nearly a year, but that was not their true purpose in going. It was a testing of manhood, a rite-de-passage, though an informal one, entered into voluntarily. Such hunting was deadly dangerous and that, of course, was its appeal. The main meat harvest would come in another month when the herds crossed the Lydia.

By the time Jean and Anton had tied up, only their families and a few friends remained. Chloe was among them. They heaved up their bundles of furs and lightly salted meat. Jean’s father and younger brother loaded them onto a cart.

“A very good hunt, mon fils; you do us proud.”

“Thank you, Papa.”

It was good to be back, good to see Chloe again, but the edge was taken off it all by Anton’s reaction. After all, he had been Jean’s friend. He walked over to where Anton stood watching his uncle load his furs and meat. “A good hunt, Anton,” he said, “It was a pleasure going with you.”

“You did well enough, enfant.” Jean stiffened at the term, started to retort, then let it die. Something in Anton’s eyes told him that he wanted a fight, and whatever he wanted it would serve Jean well to deny him.

Jean entered the stockade with Chloe on his arm and returned his rifle to the city arsenal. All of the original cartridge rifles were held in common trust, as were a number of Levi-Stuer’s muzzleloaders. A man could rent one of the latter if he contributed a portion of his kill to the colony, but only a proven hunter could rent a cartridge rifle. It was a high privilege.

Of course, one could buy a muzzleloader from Levi-Stuer, but the price was more than it took to equip a farm. Jean, like every other youth, wanted one in the worst way.

It was Levi–Stuer’s standing lament that he could not get an apprentice; the young men preferred bolder endeavors and the older men lacked the steady hands. Jean had even considered becoming his apprentice, but pride kept him from it.

They walked through the stockaded city to the river’s edge. Chloe said she had missed him, called him by tender endearments she said were his alone (a declaration he tended to doubt), and they found privacy beneath the bank where prying eyes were not likely to come.

***

It was early in the melt when Jean and Anton went on their lone hunt. Around the colony the lal bushes were still in bloom. Now the siskal and greenhorn had both bloomed in turn and all three were fully leaved, only a few purple blossoms still clinging to the greenhorns. The gluegrass was a solid carpet as far as one could see.

Jean paused outside the Chambard’s door until Chloe’s mother appeared. No, she replied, Chloe was not at home but would probably be back soon. Jean was surprised and a little hurt, but not so much that he missed the strange look the older woman gave him. It made him thoughtful as he walked down to the wharf. more tomorrow

Among leers, the female is the more deadly and they almost always run in pairs. One always shoots the female and leaves the male.

Jean relaxed his forefinger and waited, sighting past the bayonet fitted at the end of his rifle. The male dipped his head, then tipped it back to drink. Long minutes passed, but a hunter must be patient above all things. The male moved back into the bushes and Jean wondered if he had erred and thrown away his chance. Time passed.

Jean’s caution was rewarded as the female strutted forth, her pink feathers iridescent in the noon sun. She was cautious. After carefully scrutinizing the area she dipped her head, then tipped it back. When her eyes were skyward, Jean shifted his aim slightly to cover the spot where she had drunk. When she dipped her head again, he fired.

The leer collapsed as the shot echoed across the pool. There was agitation in the bushes and the male burst forth.

For a space of four heartbeats Jean watched as he charged. Time seemed to hang suspended. Jean heard the insects buzzing nearby, thought of Chloe, of the warmth of the sun, and of the fabled toothless birds of other planets. He did not think. of his weapons any more than he would think of his foot or his arm. They were simply there, a part of him.

The leer darted his head forward, teeth aimed at Jean’s neck. A little sidestep, just as old Renou taught; the shock of contact as the teeth met on the hard leather shield at his shoulder; the shock of the bayonet going home; the shock of Jean‘s back striking the sodden ground as hunter and prey fell in a tangle of limbs. Then up, thrusting and parrying against that sinuous, deadly head. Finding the rifle torn from his grip. The sudden fear; the warm comfort of a blade hilt. The sudden overhand slash that ended it all.

Jean swayed on his feet, bleeding from a score of insignificant lacerations; his shoulder was bruised and painful. But the leers were dead, both of them, and he had been alone.

***

Anton jammed a section of leer haunch onto the stick he had sharpened, then held it to the flame. He had not made a kill during the day and he communicated his irritation through curt movements at the fire.

Jean leaned against a backrest woven from a living greenhorn and fought back a scowl. The hearts of his leers hung over the fire, but Anton had given no word of approval. Still, Anton was his friend, so he ventured, “Tomorrow your luck will change.”

“You seem to have it all. Besides, I don’t need luck.”

Jean clamped his jaws shut and started forward, then relaxed. Anton was ready for him to make a move. Anton had always belittled him, but never before had he actually goaded him. “What’s wrong with you, Anton. You act more like an enemy than a friend.”

Anton sat back and something seemed to go loose inside him. He smiled with no humor. “Maybe I’m just surprised that your luck carried you through so easily.”

“Like you said, luck had nothing to do with it.” Anton motioned toward the steaming hearts. “Two leers, one rifle. I call it luck.”

“What’s wrong with you?” .

He shrugged. “Nothing. I was just surprised.”

“Why? When have I ever shirked any task? Why should you expect me to fail as a hunter?”

“Oh, shut up and eat. You’re just strung out from the hunt.”

*****

This Anton is the patriarch’s grandson. The patriarch’s son, also Anton, now leads the community. Ugh, too many people, too few names. more tomorrow

Thomas Anderson, whose views I often disagree with, but always respect, found the transition from Part I to Part II of Jandrax abrupt, irritating, and hard to follow. I told him that I like a tangled web, meaning that I like abrupt jumps followed by the information needed to fill in the blanks. I think his criticism and my response are both valid, but each has its drawbacks. If you tell too much and make the story too cohesive, a certain kind of reader will lose interest. If you jump around too much, another kind of reader will lose interest. It’s a judgement call.

It didn’t help that everybody’s names were too similar. That even confused me.

I could have written . . .

Two decades had passed. Children were born who knew no other life but the life that Harmony offered them. Andrax and the others passed out of everyday conversation, if not out of memory. The elders never talked about them, and the youngsters did not know their names.

A month after the others’ disappearance, Angi married Lucien Dubois, and six months later gave birth to a son she named Jean. Eventually, the patriarch died and his son took his place. Every other melt the herds returned, and everything in the colony came to revolve around their harvest.

It did not occur to me to write such a transition. In the seventies, stories were expected to proceed at a gallop. This is what I did write . . .

Part II
Standard Year 893 and of the colony,
Year 23

Chapter 9

Jean Dubois knelt near the icy pool and waited. Anton Dumezil was somewhere within shouting distance but likewise well hidden. The melt had been underway for a week back at the colony and they had trekked north to meet the oncoming herds; others might wait until the animals arrived nearer home but Jean and Anton were impatient in their youth. Anton was armed with one of the rifles brought in on the Lydia. Jean’s muzzleloader had been made on Harmony by old Levi-Stuer, the gunsmith. It was probably as accurate and powerful as Anton’s weapon, though slower to load, but the cartridge rifles carried an extra aura of prestige.

The wind stirred the lal bush with the soft movements of new growth. The melt is a glorious time, even as youth is a glorious time, for all the wiry, naked bushes take on flowers for a few weeks and then leaves. For a month the sun is warm (though the old ones who remembered Bordeaux complained bitterly of the cold even in high summer) and the world is green. Then the melt is gone and the vegetation with it, and the land is desert again for a season before the snows return.

The old ones complained that there were no rain and no clouds, but Jean found the idea of woolly things floating in the sky and liquid falling from it so absurd as to be unbelievable.

Across the pool the bushes stirred and Jean raised his rifle. It was a leer. They were not prized for their meat but for their skins, which were carefully removed with feathers intact. Anton had a jacket made of leerhide which he wore on ceremonial occasions. Very impressive. The leers were always the first to come with the melt, so Jean was unlikely to get a better target. As the creature worked its way out to the pool, Jean noted with some concern that it was a male. Among leers, the female is the more deadly and they almost always run in pairs. To kill a male with a single shot rifle was to lay oneself open to attack from the female. One always shoots the female and leaves the male. more tomorrow