The White Hunt.
White-toothed, white-clawed, red-ragged-dyed in blood. Their names whispered in fear that it might be the speaker who falls as next prey. The terror and the arm of the White Empire of old: they ride in frost and descend from the tops of icy mountains that slay any mere mortal to attempt their dizzying heights.
The names, and certain of their gifts, remain in legend. The Princess Bone, rider of the vast white Shatter. Fire-breathing Charnel and the pale rider known only as Maiden. The riderless dragon called the Infernal Device, walking bones bound together by grey, unable to be slain as part of the already dead. Guillotine, the ice-wielding mistress of polar realms. The dragon Precipice, known to be the size of a mountain, ridden only by the human called Shear. Apollyon, the silent flyer; Azriel, scythe-wielder. Green Melany Free, spring-legged. Brown deadly Revanche and pitiless Avail. Turquoise Oubliette, queen of imprisonment and slow torture. And finally but never last in power, predator Dominus and the masked Scarf.
There are others known only by name. Scourge. Gibbet. Ipoliita. Dahomey. Hua. Signe Nero. The White Hunt were legion, and while some fell other hunters were quickly found to take their place. Tribute aplenty was given them in their days of glory. Fear followed them when they hunted at whim.
Toward the end of the war they disappeared. Some say they were buried by snow and ice in an earthquake upon their lair in the white mountains. Another tale is that they chose to sleep in deep stone caverns until a new age of bloodshed awoke them. A third is that they were all slain by one of the powers still mightier than they: but legends should not be counted on in this world to so easily die.
It is simpler to remember them by old verse.
White Hunt, White Hunt. Fear no pity by the Hunt.
Flee horn of ice, flee sight of wings, flee that name.
Flee in snow, flee in stone, the Hunt finds you again.
White Hunt, White Hunt. Fear no pity by the Hunt.
But outside legends there are plenty who merely live their daily lives.
—
The ice winds froze the fur on my parka. Sharp grey crags still split the outline of the snow up above. I rubbed off part of the layer of icicles on the grey border of my hood, staring past the snowy wind. They had to be here; I knew alinaks like I knew the lines on my palms. The oiled wood of my bow was warm in my gloved hand, waiting for the moment I'd draw the string like every other hunter in the past three thousand years. I brought down the goggles and switched to infraview for a check.
'Course, in three thousand years you expect the odd technical improvement. Alinaks nest deep in the snow, cold-blooded beasts they are; they move themselves and dig out the survivors when there's a quake; and a seisgram reading's a great way to hunt them down in the new century. I was at the right angle to spot where they'd try a wind-sheltered stretch, and then there came the nice dark blue sign of movement. Pakak raised his wide nostrils and sniffed the air. He and I hadn't hunted so high in the cliffs before, but Inge's alert was good enough for me. The dark blue shapes piled over each other: flock getting ready and no doubt twittering with the alpha bird. Not much time left. I cleared the goggles: my aim's best when I do it the old-fashioned way, since my sight matches just right to the range of the auxobow.
Then the white shapes rose up for me to see them. I drew the green string taut; the arrow's rounded targhead beeped at me. The flock headed just right where I'd put them, and I fired into the middle. My aim's good, but the auxobow makes it even better. The pulse shot scatters into the whole crowd of birds and it's a bad day where I don't get eight in one hit. The surviving alinaks squawked and scattered around the cloud of feathers mixing with snow, but I got off two more crowdshots into them: and then there were the aggressive ones who'd try to take a crack at the invaders.
Everyone's got to eat. Everyone's got to look after their territory. I don't blame them, even as I switch to the light stilodart arrows. One piercing the first alinak's chest, getting her even as she got her lightning currents running blue and trying to kill the metal through her. She was a big one even for a female. Then a male puffed up as if he'd eggs inside him went for me: my mind notes these things deep down in the back, even as most of me's focused on drawing back the bow before the next one claws me to pieces and sizzles me like a spitroast with those electric shocks of theirs. One was trying a dive-bomb behind me, but Pakak guarded my back like the good dragon he is. The sharp tip of his tail impaled Missus Killer Alinak, and even if she'd got her lightning up it needed the charges of much more than one to get through his scales.
(Sometimes I think they're way too thick around Pak's head. But he likes a bit of action, and more than once he's saved me in the wild.)
Two more arrows, and Pakak had leaped up to claw two more alinaks to the snow. The rest of the flock had skittered off on the grounds of too much trouble, and I let them go. Even when I hunted in two-pair we never extinguished a flock: you want some to live for next time. Pakak's long red tongue lapped up the blood on his claws, but like a well-trained fetcher dragon he left the rest of the dead alinak for me, and loped away through the snow to retrieve the rest.
We'd made enough to eat again. The brooding male had eggs in him after all, and you'd be surprised what some fool traders pay for warm alinak eggs. Some folk are stupid about what they'll consider for a pet. I got out my skinning knife and thermic holder and made the slit over the scales on his broodpouch, careful not to break anything and quick about it. The eggs felt warmish, the sensors above each sealed eggcup bleeping a fair red, and by the time Pak and I got back the readings would tell for sure if any would turn into baby alinaks. They're fragile, eggs and young alinaks. Then I took out my ferrowool and went for the arrows. The head of one had broken off; the other three were scratched but still good after a clean. Pakak had made a mini-pyramid of dead alinaks out there for me to load on his back, and I took back the pulse arrows too, their energy gone inert.
There was plenty of snow flying in the air. I pressed the button on my comm to check the signal here to the last marker I'd left on the trail. We had the connection. So there was time to let Pakak nose around for a bit of extra business: high here in the snow you never know what other people leave behind. Sometimes what other people leave way behind. I swear Pakak's nose's better for bits of old stone than it is for animals, no matter what I've tried to teach him. He bounded over the slide's rocks: there was one little alinak lying only barely crushed by a medium-sized lump of stone, and I picked it up and threw it to him for a treat. He gulped it down as if he wanted to deny the three packs' worth of powdered synth he'd had only that morning, blood staining his white chops and sharp teeth and feathers flying down to the snow. Everyone's got to eat.
I'm smaller, so I fit more places, and I know how to shoot a mean rappel line; Pak can't exactly fly, but he acts like he can bounce everywhere. He kept sticking his nose deep in this place. It was way high, deserted since like ever, and that could mean something for us. I saw a black hole to somewhere down by my left foot, a hollow about big enough for a newborn alinak at a stretch; it looked pretty deep, but in case of anklebiters you didn't stick limbs down cave holes blind. I kept my eyes peeled while Pakak did his usual trick of poking his long nose into places it wasn't wanted.
I saw his head snap up; something small and grey was in his teeth. He shook his head as if he'd gone suddenly rabid, and then flung it to me with a sharp spin of his head. I caught it and he gave a dragon's big nod. Piece of old carved stone in a rough-circle shape, a couple swirly lines on it maybe meaning something to someone who knew about ages back. I stuck the stone in my belt and sealed it.
"Anything else up there?" I yelled through the wind. The snow was getting thicker, and it'd be just my luck for the comm signal to cut out our link to the marker. Pakak poked his head around a bit more, then started to wander back. I set a new pointer in the ground and got on his back in front of our haul. The wind whipped over my face and I lowered the goggles to see in front. Pakak loped forward, heading back from another two days' hunting for what Celandine called the Mountain Bow Crew when he wanted to be pretentious.
—