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

Sensing my impending attack, Alice slams her head and neck into a tree. The tree falls, but not before knocking me senseless. I feel myself slip a little, but I tighten my grip before falling. Having felt my loosened grip, Alice repeats the technique, but misses the mark, slamming the tree over with her snout instead of my head.

As she lines up the next strike, I can see it will be more accurate. A voice shouts to me before I can brace for the impact.

“Ull!”

It’s Kainda.

I look toward her and see her hammer flying through the air at me. For a moment I suspect she is trying to kill me, too, but the trajectory of the hammer’s flight reveals otherwise. She is arming me. We are working together.

For the moment.

Alice begins her strike.

I let go with my feet, place them on the back of her neck, and leap.

Alice hammers the tree over and then looks about, no doubt wondering if she’s knocked me free.

Above her, I catch the hammer. It weighs far more than I was expecting—how on Earth can Kainda wield such a weapon—but I put everything I have into controlling it. I line up my strike as I descend and put all of my strength into the blow.

The connection is solid. Stone and bone collide. The impact shakes my arms and the hammer falls free. But the damage is done. Alice falls limp, her skull crushed beneath the weight of Kainda’s miniature replica of Thor’s hammer, Mj?llnir.

I land in the grass next to the giant cresty, breathing heavily. Alice, however, doesn’t breathe at all.

My enemy is dead.

I know I should cheer or shout some kind of victory whoop, but with the fight over, Ull’s personality has gone missing. All that’s left is Solomon. I place my hand on the giant’s side and tears form in my eyes. She wanted nothing more than to kill me, but she was a force of nature. Killing her seems wrong somehow.

“You weep for your prey?” Kainda says, scoffing.

“I respected her,” I say.

“She was a beast.”

“And yet she was your better.”

I look at Kainda, still lying in the grass. She glowers at me, but does not argue. She knows it is true. The cresty defeated her. If not for my intervention, Kainda would be dead.

“Her ilk may yet kill us both,” Kainda says.

When the first of the remaining twelve cresties, a twenty foot male, steps around Alice’s motionless form, I realize she might be right. The male is followed by the others, which form a partial ring around us. I could run. They’ve given me the opportunity. But it would mean leaving Kainda behind.

I’m tempted once again to leave and let the cresties solve that problem, but I can’t have killed Alice for nothing. I am here to save Kainda’s life, like it or not, and that’s what I intend to do—

The male steps toward me.

—if I can.

I look for Whipsnap and find it twenty feet away. With a focused blast of air, I can bring the weapon back to me or send it flying into the neck of the male cresty. But I pause. Something about this cresty is different. Cresties shriek while hunting. They bare their teeth like wolves. They snip at each other in anticipation of the kill.

None of that is on display here.

The male steps slowly forward again, lowering its head. For a moment, I fear it will pounce, but then I see its eyes, turned down to the ground.

Subservient.

I hear Kainda gasp behind me. She sees it too.

I step toward the beast and its head lowers even further, hovering below my chest. We’re only five feet apart now.

Do they fear me now? I wonder. Have I become the pack leader by killing Alice? It makes sense in a strange underworld kind of way, but I don’t think that’s what’s going on. I think…I think I’m being thanked.

During my time here I’ve watched Alice rule over this place like a ruthless despot. Everything, both prey and family alike, feared her. And now she’s gone. The queen overthrown.

I step forward again and reach out a hand, placing it on the dinosaur’s snout. It looks me in the eyes and I realize I have made several more friends today. “I’ll call you…Grumpy,” I say, naming the dinosaur for the Tyrannosaurus Rex in Land of the Lost that constantly fought with Alice the Allosaurus. “Go, enjoy your giant goats.”

When I smile, Grumpy stands tall, lets out a roar and turns away. The pack charges into the jungle without looking back. When they’re gone, I turn to Kainda and find her wide eyed and stunned. The expression makes her look human—kind even—and for a moment I get a glimpse of what Ull sees in her. But the spell is broken by her words.

“You have made a pact with our sworn enemies.”

I laugh. It’s a silly thing to say really, though I suppose not to someone who has never known anything outside of the harsh subterranean hunter culture. Realizing that Kainda has never known anything else, I picture her being broken as a child and steeped in a culture of hatred and combat. Had she grown up in the outside world, she might have been an artist or a songwriter. She might have worn pretty dresses and smelled flowers, and laughed. Really laughed.

But she didn’t. She doesn’t even know those things exist.

I pity her.

A single cautious step toward Kainda is all I’m allowed before she takes up a defensive posture. “I’m not going to hurt you,” I say.