The Last Hunter: Collected Edition (Antarktos Saga #1-5)

I spin slowly, meeting the eyes of each and every hunter watching me. I have their attention. Even those that had been pretending to work have now stopped. “They won’t need hunters,” I say with a grin. “Because they’ll all be dead.”


Despite having given a rousing speech worthy of a Hollywood football locker room scene, there’s no cheering, no whoops, or clapping. Only silence. These are, after all, hunters. But then, one of them steps forward. He has wild spiky red hair with a blond streak front and center. His eyes are cold and focused. He moves like a snake, smooth but ready to strike. He’s about my height, but stronger and older. This is a seasoned hunter, not accustomed to listening to the words of anyone save his master.

I glance at Em. She looks unsure and whispers, “He is Tunis. One of our best.”

The man stops in front of me. I can’t read his face. He could be seconds away from slitting my throat and I wouldn’t know.

“What I want to know, last hunter,” he says. “Is will you trust us?”

Xin said to trust no one, but I don’t think that’s a choice. Not really. If I don’t show trust in them, how can I expect it in return?

We stare at each other for a moment. A simple “yes” will not convince him, or the others. I reach down to my belt and the man tenses. I move slowly, drawing my knife and hoping that Xin is wrong, or at least that this is one of the people I can trust. His eyes follow my hand, his muscles tense and ready to defend himself. But then I turn the knife toward myself and place the blade against my neck. He’s so shocked by my actions that he doesn’t resist when I take his hand and bring it up to the knife. When I let go, Tunis is holding the knife to my throat.

“You could kill me,” I say. “There is nothing I, nor anyone else, could do to stop you. My life belongs to you.”

Tunis’s forehead scrunches up. What I am doing right now makes no sense to the man. “You are wrong,” he finally says, and I see something change in his eyes—understanding. He pulls the blade away from my neck and drops it to the ground. It lands between our feet, piercing the earth. “It is my life that belongs to you.”

“As does mine,” says another.

And then another.

The hunters each speak the words and bow their heads to me. This is different than what happened in the jungle. That was awe. Wonderment. At me being alive. And at my hair. This…is allegiance. The phrase is repeated around the circle, finishing with Em who speaks the words as seriously as the rest, despite not needing to.

Only one person remains silent. Kainda. As the others move in to greet me, she slips away.





26



I spend an hour with the hunters, learning their names, who their masters were, where they lived, what weapons they prefer—the kinds of things hunters talk about. As the group disperses slowly and the hunters go back to their work, Em clears her throat signaling that she would like a word with me. I nod a goodbye to the last few hunters and turn to Em.

“Well done,” she says.

I shrug. “I’m not sure how much of this is me and how much is a show.”

“Don’t worry,” she says. “I know you, remember? That was all you.”

I’m not so sure, and certainly not as confident as I appeared. But I don’t argue, mostly because there are other things I want to do.

And as usual, Em can read my mind nearly as well as Xin. She points to the right. “The beach is that way. Go. Spend some time together. We’ll talk tonight.”

Her words, “We’ll talk tonight,” carry weight. The reprieve with Luca will be short-lived.

“Krane. Adoni,” Em says. “Keep an eye on them.”

As I move to the lake, Krane and Adoni fall in line behind me, hands near their weapons. I should probably be wary, too, but as we reach the beach, Luca sees me and beams with excitement. He quickly shows me the sand castle he built, which is really more of a mud castle. I crouch next to him and start to feel like a kid again. I used to build castles just like this when my parents brought me to the beach.

“This is my house,” Luca says. He begins decorating it with leaves, flower petals and blades of grass. “You can build a house next door.”

Slightly embarrassed by the request, I look for Krane and Adoni. They’ve taken up positions twenty feet to either side of us, backs turned to us as they watch for trouble. I have a hundred questions for Luca, but decide the child has the right idea, and I dig into the mud. The earth is wet, but warm, no different from the air really.

Twenty minutes later, I’ve got a foot-tall tower built and glowing in the light of the now setting sun. It has finger indents for windows and a flag-like branch and leaf stabbed into the top. As I smooth out the sides of the tower, I say, “This means something,” quoting Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

Luca laughs like he understands the joke and says, “What could a mud house mean?”

“I have no idea,” I say.