“Were you at my tale-telling this night?” beamed Milo.
“Yes, for the first part only, though,” Subchief Hwaltuh beamed in reply. “Snowbelly mindcalled me from up above. Crooktail had found a strange scent out a few score yards from the area of short grasses, where the horse herd is biding this night.”
“And you found … ?” inquired Milo.
The Linsee warrior shrugged and shook his head, his braided hair flopping. “No tracks that I could see in the moonlight or feel with my fingers. I couldn’t smell anything, either, except a trace of skunk or weasel musk in a couple of places. Nonetheless, I told the cats that I’ll bed down up there tonight, close to the herd. With a strong bow and a ready spear and a few darts, I’ll be ready for whatever may befall, I think.”
Milo nodded. “A wise decision, that one. Now make another one, Hwaltuh. When we return to the Tribe Council Camp, Gy Linsee will announce his intent to wed Karee Skaht and Myrah Skaht. I ask that you not only not oppose this match but give it your full support should your chief object.”
“Oppose it, Uncle Milo?” The Linsee warrior grinned. “Why should I oppose it? Those two Skaht chits show taste and intelligence rare in Skahts. Besides, they both look healthy and strong enough, and that Myrah Skaht has a fine eye for archery. Certainly I’ll favor the match should the Linsee object to it for some reason, but I don’t see why he would. How does this matter sit, though, with Tchuk Skaht?”
“He is of the mind that it will be a good thing for both clans,” Milo replied. “And he has offered unasked to intervene with his chief, the girl Myrah’s sire, on the matter.
“But that is not all on which I want your help, your voice, Hwaltuh,” Milo went on after a brief pause. “After the hunt is done and Gy is married to his two wives, I mean to take him with me and Tribe-Bard Herbuht Bain of Muhnroh for a few years. The Linsee may object to it, the boy’s sire is almost certain to do so, and a few words in favor of the idea from you would be at least helpful.”
“Why in the world would you want to take a fledgling warrior with two young wives who are both certain to be rendered gravid in a very short time with you and the Tribe Bard, Uncle Milo? If it’s bows and swords behind you you want, I can think of a goodly number of Linsee men who could and would ride with you for a couple of years for a reasonable figure, just as warriors hire out as guards for the trader wagons now and then.”
“No,” beamed Milo, “you misunderstand me. Bard Herbuht and I and our party carry very little of value with us, we both are ourselves proven warriors and our women too, so we need no hired guards. Look you, Hwaltuh, Gy has a rare gift of a voice and of a memory and of improvisation; he should rightly be a bard, he longs to be a bard, yet you know as does he that he never will be allowed by his sire to become the Clan Linsee bard, in favor of his elder brother. Not so?
“Well, I hate to see natural talent of any sort or description wasted needlessly, and Bard Herbuht is of like mind. I want Gy to wend with us for long enough for Herbuht and me to fully test him and make a determination as to whether or not he will be suitable material for the next Tribal Bard.”
- “A Tribal Bard? A boy of Clan Linsee to be Tribal Bard?” Hwaltuh Linsee was so shocked that he spoke aloud, in a hushed tone. “That is so great an honor for the clan that I feel safe in saying that you’ll get no single objection from the chief, and any that the clan bard might voice will be overridden by the chief and the Linsee Council. The Song of Linsee tells of right many mighty warriors, brave and wise chiefs, skillful hunters and the like, but nowhere of a Tribal Bard of our blood.
“You tell the Linsee your plans for our Gy … or better yet, let me have the time to tell him before you come to the chiefs yurt. I feel free to promise that there will be no slightest objection or condition to Gy going off with you and Bard Herbuht.”
When, the next morning, half the horses were mind-called down from the prairie above to be saddled for the hunting and foraging parties, Hwaltuh Linsee came down astride the bare back of one of them, not looking as if he had slept well, if at all.
“There’s some something nosing around up there, right enough, Uncle Milo,” he reported. “It’s never gotten really close to the herd, and it’s canny enough to stay downwind so that neither the horses nor the cats can scent it properly, but it’s there, anyway.
“You take half of my hunt with you, today. I’m going to keep the other half of them and both of the prairiecats with me here, and I mean to find out just what is up there and whether or not it represents a danger to the horses.”
Milo shook his head. “Hwaltuh, recall if you will, these aren’t grown warriors we’re dealing with, Jthis hunt. If whatever is up there is at all dangerous or very big or there’s more than just one of them, you’re going to be hard pressed with only a handful of boys and girls to back you, with or without the cats and a few stallions. Keep your entire hunt here today. I know exactly where I’m taking mine, for a change, and immediately we’ve harvested those pigs, I’ll bring them back with the meat. We’ve done a lot of butchering down here in the last week, and who knows what sorts of predators or scavengers we might have attracted.”
Once up on the prairie level, Milo rode close enough to the now-reduced horse herd to mindspeak the two prairiecats, Snowbelly and Crooktail.
“Uncle Milo,” Snowbelly informed him, “I have never smelled this scent before. It is a little like a big weasel or a skunk, but also it is a little like an average-sized wild cat or a tree cat or even one of the cats of the high plains.”
“Does it smell at all like one of your kind?” queried Milo, thinking that they still occasionally came across a wild prairiecat, though such occurrences were getting rarer and rarer.
“No, Uncle Milo, not one of our kind,” the cat’s beaming assured him. “Whatever it is is as big as a full-grown wolf, but it is no wolf—no wolf ever smelled like that.”
“Well,” Milo beamed, “Subchief Hwaltuh is staying behind with all of his hunt today, and he means to find it, whatever it is.”
Aided by the exceptionally keen-nosed Snowbelly, Subchief Hwaltuh Linsee with a half-dozen members of his hunting party had backtracked one of the creatures that had been prowling around the vulnerable horse herd. Now he and the youngsters were squatting on the muddy bank of a small stream, some mile or more from the campsite. Strange tracks, big tracks, were all about them, and the odor which had so bothered the cats was here strong enough for even the humans to catch its powerful, musky reek.
Wrinkling up his nose in clear distaste, the big prairie-cat beamed, “There are nine of the beasts, at least in this pack, and they made a kill in this spot last night. The smell of deer blood still is strong in this mud, despite the other stench overlying it. They killed it here and ate it here.”
“Then where are the bones?” beamed Hwaltuh puzzledly. “What became of the hooves, the skull, the antlers, if any? Foxes?”
“No, Subchief,” Snowbelly’s powerful telepathy replied. “No recent smell of foxes or any other kind of small scavenger is here. Those strange beasts must have eaten the entire carcass—meat, guts, hide, bones, hooves and all. And I find this most odd, for this was no small deer they killed, Subchief Hwaltuh, and they did not lie up here and gnaw away at those bones like normal beasts, but seem to have eaten them as quickly and as easily as they ate the softer parts. No wolf could do such —or would so do in a country so full of game—yet you can see by the size and the depth of the spoor, these smelly beasts are none of them larger than an average prairie wolf.”