“I’ll take care of him, then,” Sheppard offered. “You and Teyla stay here with Rodney.”
But the Satedan was already shaking his head. “You don’t know Nekai like I do,” he pointed out. “I know how he thinks. I know how he hunts. I can anticipate that. You can’t.”
Sheppard stared at him for a second. “You’re just doing this to avoid having to put up with Rodney,” he accused finally. Ronon laughed even as Sheppard sighed. He knew arguing about it was hopeless. And Ronon was right — he was the only one of them who stood a chance against the V’rdai leader.
“Good luck,” he told his friend.
“Don’t leave without me,” Ronon replied. He was already turning back toward the rocks in the direction of the wrecked V’rdai shuttle — Sheppard had missed seeing that firsthand, but Rodney had told them all about it. Within seconds Ronon had slipped between two rocks and was only a shadow. A rapidly receding shadow.
Sheppard started to turn away when he noticed something. There was a small, dark shape where Ronon had been, a patch against the gray rocks. Too small to be a weapon, but too even to be a stray shadow or a natural indentation. Curious, he walked over to check it out. What he found was a small, dark metal square with a faintly glowing rectangle inset on one side. He recognized it immediately.
The tracking monitor.
“What — did Ronon drop it?” Teyla asked when he rejoined her and showed her the device.
“Not likely,” Sheppard answered, studying the object. “He’s not that careless, and this is too important.” He tossed it from hand to hand. “I’m betting he left it behind deliberately. This way we can tell exactly where Nekai is.”
“But he cannot!” Teyla pointed out.
“No, he can’t,” Sheppard agreed. “He’ll have to do it the hard way.”
“Do you think he will be all right?” Teyla asked, scanning their surroundings again.
“I think he’ll be fine,” Sheppard replied. “I hope we can say the same for us. Rodney, hurry it up!”
“Don’t rush me,” Rodney snapped, still working. “Unless you want to crash before we even make it off of this planet’s ridiculous surface!”
Sheppard shook his head. Ronon had completely disappeared already. Barring any sudden problems, Sheppard knew he wouldn’t see his friend again until they were almost ready to leave this place. Or until Ronon had settled his dispute with Nekai for good.
Ronon paused once the Jumper was out of sight. He had to shift his focus now. It was all too easy to fall into camaraderie and carelessness when he was with his friends. He knew he could count on them to watch his back, even Rodney. But out here, it was just him against Nekai. One on one. He had to be completely alert, as sharp as he’d ever been, and fully self-sufficient. There wasn’t anyone to cover for him if he made a mistake, and any errors could be fatal.
Taking a deep breath, Ronon closed his eyes and forced himself to relax. Being tense when hunting wasn’t a good thing. People assumed it was because if you were tense you were alert, cautious. But tension actually made you paranoid and jumpy — you started at everything, overreacted, overcompensated. And when you were up against someone clever, someone who could plan and prepare and set snares, that meant you could get distracted by obvious dangers and overlook the more subtle signs that pointed to a trap. Better to be calm, cool, and careful. Nekai had taught him that.
Nekai had taught him a lot.
But not everything, Ronon reminded himself. Yes, Nekai had taught him how to hunt. But he’d had six years since then, five of them completely on his own. He’d learned new tricks, things the V’rdai leader probably didn’t know because he didn’t have to. There were a lot of situations a lone Runner came up against that a group never would, and because of that Ronon had been forced to adapt and to find new solutions.
And he had. He’d grown. He’d improved. He’d become a better hunter than he’d ever been with the V’rdai, and a better Runner than any of them. He thought about what he’d heard Adarr and that other V’rdai saying — the legend of a lone Runner who’d evaded the Wraith for years, and who no longer had a tracking device so he could strike at will. All true. And to them it had sounded like an impossible fantasy, a fairy tale. But it was his life.
He was more than a match for any of them now.
Even Nekai.
Which didn’t mean this was going to be easy. He had to watch out for overconfidence. Nekai knew it was him by now, of course — Adarr would have told him after he’d helped Sheppard and Teyla escape. So the V’rdai leader would be setting traps and leaving clues with Ronon in mind. He knew how Ronon thought, how he hunted, how he fought, and he’d take full advantage of that knowledge.
Except that Ronon had changed. And he was willing to bet Nekai hadn’t.
That didn’t make the man any less dangerous. But at least it was a familiar danger, and one Ronon thought he could work around.
He was about to find out if he was right. .
*
*
*
A few hours later, Ronon stopped and crouched to study the ground. He’d backtracked to the ledge the V’rdai had used as their staging area and base camp when they’d captured Sheppard and Teyla. The spot was long since deserted now, of course, and scrubbed clean of any trace of the V’rdai, but Ronon had felt it was as good a place as any to start. He knew Nekai had been here, after all, so he figured he could start here and then expand his search outward, circling until he found the Retemite hunter’s tracks.
Most of the ledge was bare rock, which meant no tracks except for bits of stray dirt the V’rdai had apparently tracked in from elsewhere. That wasn’t much help — there was too little dirt and it was too scattered to yield even one partial bootprint, much less a clear set of tracks. But the outcropping the hunters had used as their entryway led to a small clearing between several small boulders, and enough dirt had collected there to give the rocky surface a solid coating. The space had been brushed clean, of course, but staring at it intently Ronon saw what looked like a hint of prints nonetheless, visible as faint depressions just beneath the top layer. He smiled. They’d been left by a man, average height judging by the stride, a little heavy from the weight of the indent but still light on his feet from the evenness front to back.
Nekai.
Ronon’s smile changed to a frown. His old mentor was getting careless — or was he? Nekai had shown nothing but cunning in the trap he’d laid to damage their Jumper and bring them here — never mind that the initial idea had been Ronon’s, all those years ago — and in the snares Sheppard and Teyla had described when explaining how they’d been captured. And Nekai knew he was liable to be followed and even hunted now. Why would he be so sloppy, then? To come back here, where Ronon was sure to look for him, and then not brush the tracks clear completely? Something didn’t add up.
Ronon studied the small clearing again. Then his gaze drifted to the rocks just beyond them, the cluster those almost-vanished tracks directed him toward. He crept over to the nearest boulder there, and then stretched as high as he could, his fingers scrabbling for purchase. After a second he managed to get a passable handhold with his right hand, and hauled himself up far enough to wrap his left arm around the top.
Not the most graceful climb, but it did the job, and a few seconds later he was straddling the boulder. From here he had a clear view of the areas in front and in back, and he studied the stretch behind the boulder as closely as he could from this vantage.
There! Not three paces past the boulder was a spot that seemed a little too even, with the barest suggestion of a circular border around it. A snare! Ronon almost laughed aloud. Nekai had lost none of his guile! The faint track had been a trap, designed to lure him between those boulders and straight into that snare — he was willing to bet another mark lay just beyond the trap, to draw his attention there instead of to the ground beneath his feet. It was a good trap, and he’d almost fallen for it.
Almost.
Ronon considered the scene again. If he’d been Nekai setting up this ruse, he’d have walked along, brushing away his tracks behind him and deliberately leaving a few just visible for bait. Then he’d have circled back, set the snare, perhaps added a second snare just beyond that next boulder in case the prey had gotten past the first unscathed, and then kept going in the other direction. He’d have scaled those boulders on the far side to avoid leaving additional tracks, so he wouldn’t have touched down on dirt again until — there!
Keeping the spot he’d selected in sight, Ronon clambered from boulder to boulder, keeping low so anyone watching would have a hard time picking him out from a distance — his clothes didn’t blend in as well as the V’rdai’s mottled jumpsuits, but his coat was close enough that it wouldn’t clash. At one point as he crawled across a portion of rock something crumbled beneath one hand, and lifting his palm Ronon saw that it was now dusted with dark brown. Dirt! But dirt wouldn’t collect here on its own — it would have been deposited lower down by rain and swirled away by the frequent winds. This had been brought here more recently, and only a little bit.
Just enough to have been trapped in the soles of a man’s boot, and dislodged as he climbed from one side of the clearing to the other.
Ronon smiled again. This was the real trail — he knew it. Nekai had thought to fool him, and most likely had circled around to some nearby vantage where he could spy upon the false trail he’d laid and see if anyone set off one of the traps. But by following his real path, Ronon could overtake the V’rdai leader and get the drop on him.
Not that Nekai wouldn’t anticipate the possibility. There’d be traps along this trail as well, Ronon was sure of it. But he knew they might be there, so he’d be watching for them.
Nekai was about to find out what it felt like to be on the wrong end of a Runner’s hunt. .
*
*
*
As he stalked after the older man who had once been his friend and mentor, Ronon thought about the irony of it all. Here he was, a Runner chasing a Runner, a hunter pursuing a hunter, a man using skills against the very man who had taught them to him. It was, in some ways, the ultimate test of Nekai’s long-ago training, and a true contest between them. That was at least part of the reason why Ronon had left the tracking monitor behind for Sheppard. Of course he had wanted Sheppard to have it in case something went wrong here and they needed to know where Nekai and the other V’rdai were, but that wasn’t the main reason. He hadn’t wanted to use the device to follow Nekai. It would have felt like cheating, and it would have tarnished his victory — if in fact he won this contest. But Nekai deserved his best effort, his full attention and utmost skill, and that meant a lot more than staring at a little screen and closing in on the dot it revealed.
Ronon was still musing on this when he came across another clearing, this one a bit larger than the tiny area by that rocky outcropping. He had been following Nekai’s tracks for over an hour and had already eluded one concealed pit and a nasty coiled branch. This was by far the largest empty area he’d passed through, and all his senses went on high alert as soon as he set foot within it. Nekai’s bootprints had led him down out of the foothills and there was brush here instead of boulders, and dirt deep enough to support them and some bristly grass and a few scraggly trees as well. Ronon considered. This was the perfect place for an ambush, with the ground soft enough to conceal snares and the trees scattered around the edges, thin but sturdy and with long, springy branches. It was exactly where he’d set his trap, if he were the one hunting.
Pausing for a minute, Ronon dropped to his haunches and ran his fingers lightly along the ground. He could feel the smooth arc a branch had made as it had been brushed across the dirt, obscuring all traces of Nekai’s passage but leaving those faint marks of its own. This was definitely the place.
Reaching into his jacket and his belt, Ronon extracted what he thought he’d need. A minute’s preparation, then a few more, and he was ready. Or at least as ready as he could be. A lot would depend upon how much Nekai had changed over the years, if he had at all. Rising to his feet again, Ronon studied the trees around him. They bent together over this clearing, their leaves eager for sunlight and forming a loose canopy up above so that the entire space was dappled with shadow. Some of those branches looked sturdy, and Ronon studied two in particular.
Finally he sighed and shook his head. Nekai was close, he was sure of it, and he’d done everything he could to be ready. There was nothing left now but to finish this.
Ronon drew his pistol and started across the clearing, studying the ground carefully before setting down each foot. Despite his care and caution he was still startled when he felt the dirt beneath his right foot shift slightly, and then a tight loop close around his ankle. There was a sharp tug and a whoosh up above as the hidden rope released the bound tree branch and it snapped upright, and Ronon felt his world tilt upside down as he flipped over and hurtled into the air, feet-first. His head spun as he struggled to regain his equilibrium and his breath while the world tilted around him. Damn, he’d never get used to being snared!
Nekai had chosen well, and by the time Ronon’s eyes were clear again and his breathing steady he was a good six feet off the ground, which was more than high enough to render him helpless. Only one ankle had been trapped but he couldn’t reach high enough to grab the snare, and it was tight enough that he couldn’t loosen it at all. His gun had fallen when he’d sprung the trap, and lay several feet below his grasping fingers. His knife, meanwhile, was still snugly in its sheath in his boot — the same boot caught in the rope! He tried grabbing for it, but just bending and trying to grasp his own ankles was enough to make him flop down again, gasping for breath. No good. He was well and truly stuck.