Dune_ House Atreides - Brian Herbert [61]
The cruiser alighted in a boulder-strewn meadow; the deck canted at a steep angle, then shifted to norm as stabilizers leveled the craft. Rabban sent a signal from the control band at his waist.
The hydraulic door in front of the boy hissed open, freeing him from his cage. The chill night air stung his cheeks. Duncan considered just dashing out into the open. He could run fast and take refuge in the thick pines. Once there, he would burrow beneath the dry brown needles and drift into a self-protective slumber.
But Rabban wanted the boy to run and hide, and he knew he wouldn’t get very far. For the moment Duncan had to act on instinct tempered with cleverness. It wasn’t the time for an unexpected, reckless action. Not yet.
Duncan would wait at the cruiser until the hunters explained the rules to him, though he could certainly guess what he was supposed to do. It was a bigger arena, a longer chase, higher stakes . . . but in essence the same game he had trained for in the prison city.
The upper hatch slid open behind him to reveal two light-haloed forms: a person he recognized as the hunt captain from Barony, and the broad-shouldered man who had killed Duncan’s mother and father. Rabban.
Turning away from the sudden light, the boy kept his dark-adapted eyes toward the open meadow and the thick shadows of black-needled trees. It was a starlit night. Pain shot through Duncan’s ribs from the earlier rough training, but he tried to put it out of his mind.
“Forest Guard Station,” the hunt captain said to him. “Like a vacation in the wilderness. Enjoy it! This is a game, boy—we leave you here, give you a head start, and then we come hunting.” His eyes narrowed. “Make no mistake, though. This is different from your training sessions in Barony. If you lose, you’ll be killed, and your stuffed head will join Lord Rabban’s other trophies on a wall.”
Beside him, the Baron’s nephew gave Duncan a thick-lipped smile. Rabban trembled with excitement and anticipation, and his sunburned face flushed.
“What if I get away?” Duncan said in a piping voice.
“You won’t,” Rabban answered.
Duncan didn’t press the issue. If he forced an answer, the man would simply have lied to him anyway. If he managed to escape, he would just have to make up his own rules.
They dumped him out onto the frost-smeared meadow. He had only thin clothes, worn shoes. The cold of the night hit him like a hammer.
“Stay alive as long as you can, boy,” Rabban called from the door of the cruiser, ducking back inside as the throb of the engines increased in tempo. “Give me a good hunt. My last one was very disappointing.”
Duncan stood immobile as the craft lifted into the air and roared off toward a guarded lodge and outpost. From there, after a few drinks, the hunting party would march out and track down their prey.
Maybe the Harkonnens would toy with him a while, enjoying their sport . . . or maybe by the time they caught him they would be chilled to the bone, longing for a hot beverage, and they’d simply use their weapons to cut him to pieces at the first opportunity.
Duncan sprinted toward the shelter of trees.
Even when he left the meadow behind, his feet left an obvious trail of bent grass blades in the frost. He brushed against thick evergreen boughs, disturbed the chuff of dead needles as he scrambled upslope toward some rugged sandstone outcroppings.
In the handlight beam, he saw cold steam-breath bursting like heartbeats from his nostrils and mouth. He toiled up a talus slope, tending toward the steepest bluff faces. When he struck the rocks, he grasped with his hands, digging into crumbling sedimentary rock. Here, at least, he wouldn’t leave many footprints, though pockets of old, crystalline snow had drifted like small dunes on the ledges.
The outcroppings protruded from the side of the ridge, sentinels above the carpet of forest. Wind and rain had eaten holes and notches out of the cliffs, some barely large enough for rodents’ nests, some sufficient to hide a grown man. Driven by desperation, Duncan climbed