Dune_ House Atreides - Brian Herbert [64]
Thrusting the lasgun into the hollow ahead of him, the hunter ducked low, bending stiffly in his protective chest padding. On his belly, he crawled partway into the darkness. “Found you, little boy!”
Using his feet and the strength of his leg muscles, Duncan shoved a lichen-smeared boulder over the edge. Then he moved to the second one and kicked it hard, pushing it to the abrupt dropoff. Both heavy stones fell, tumbling in the air.
He heard the sounds of impact and a crack. A sickening crunch. Then the gasp and gurgle of the man below.
Duncan scrambled to the edge, saw that one of the boulders had struck to one side, bouncing off and rolling down the steep slope, gathering momentum and taking loose scree along with it.
The other boulder had landed on the small of the hunter’s back, crushing his spine even through the padding, pinning him to the ground like a needle through an insect specimen.
Duncan climbed down, gasping, slipping. The hunter was still alive, though paralyzed. His legs twitched, thumping the toes of his boots against the frost-hard ground. Duncan wasn’t afraid of him anymore.
Squeezing past the man’s bulky, armored body into the hollow, Duncan shone his handlight down into the man’s glazed, astonished eyes. This wasn’t a game. He knew what the Harkonnens would do to him, had already seen what Rabban had done to his parents.
Now Duncan would play by their rules.
The dying hunter croaked something unintelligible at him. Duncan did not hesitate. His eyes dark and narrow—no longer the eyes of a child—he bent forward. The knife slipped in under the man’s jawline. The hunter squirmed, raising his chin as if in acceptance rather than defiance—and the dull blade cut through skin and sinew. Jugular blood spurted out with enough force to splash and spatter before forming a dark, sticky pool on the floor of the cave.
Duncan could not spend time thinking about what he had done, could not wait for the hunter’s body to cool. He rummaged through the items on the man’s belt, found a small medpak and a ration bar. Then he tugged the lasgun free from the clenching grip. Using its butt, he smashed the blood-smeared Richesian tracer, grinding it into metal debris. He no longer needed it as a decoy. His pursuers could hunt him with their own wits now.
He figured they might even enjoy the challenge, once they got past their fury.
Duncan crawled out of the hollow. The lasgun, almost as tall as he was, clattered as he dragged it behind him. Below, the hunting party’s trail of glowglobes came closer.
Now better armed and nourished by his improbable success, Duncan ran off into the night.
Many elements of the Imperium believe they hold the ultimate power: the Spacing Guild with their monopoly on interstellar travel, CHOAM with its economic stranglehold, the Bene Gesserit with their secrets, the Mentats with their control of mental processes, House Corrino with their throne, the Great and Minor Houses of the Landsraad with their extensive holdings. Woe to us on the day that one of those factions decides to prove the point.
—COUNT HASIMIR FENRING,
Dispatches from Arrakis
Leto had barely an hour to rest and refresh himself in his new quarters in the Grand Palais. “Uh, sorry to rush you,” said Rhombur as he backed through the sliding door into the crystal-walled corridor, “but this is something you won’t want to miss. It takes months and months to build a Heighliner. Signal me when you’re ready to go to the observation deck.”
Still unsettled but mercifully alone for a few moments, Leto rummaged through his luggage, made a cursory inspection of his room. He looked at the carefully packed belongings, much more than he could ever need, including trinkets, a packet of letters from his mother, and an inscribed Orange Catholic Bible. He had promised her he would read verses to himself every night.
He stared, thinking of how much time he would need just to make himself at home—a whole year away from Caladan—and instead left everything in its place. There would be time enough to do all that