The Linsee subchief frowned. “It is something beyond my ken or experience, Snowbelly. Can you range the hunt chief? Or Uncle Milo?”
“This cat will try,” beamed Snowbelly, then, after a moment, “No, Subchief, both of them are out of my distance.”
The warrior stood up then, saying, “All right. Let’s see if we can trail them from this place to wherever they went next. Strung bows, everyone, with one shaft nocked and two more ready. Any beast that can carelessly munch the bones of a big deer could just as easily shear through the leg of a horse or any part of one of us. Only a fool would trail such a beast all unready.”
The trail of the smelly beasts wound on down the stream bank for a quarter mile or so, then struck out across the prairie, angling back more or less in the direction of the horse herd and the campsite. This bothered Hwaltuh, and he ordered the pace increased accordingly, for in his absence, there now were no adult humans in the camp, only some bare dozen youngsters—• one of them lying burned and helpless—and Crooktail, the other prairiecat.
Nearer to the herd and campsite, Crooktail had perceived the emanations of a large feline, not one of his own kind, but in many ways similar, and, even as Subchief Hwaltuh and his band rode for the camp, the prairiecat was in silent converse with the spotted, short-fanged cat (Milo would have called her a jaguar, while the far-southern clans would have used the Mekikahn word, teegrai, to describe her).
A young cat, without a clearly defined personal territory as yet, she had followed the migrating herds north in the spring, and she now was headed south again as the weather became colder. She was roughly of a size with Crooktail, though finer-boned and less beefy of body. She seemed fascinated to learn that twolegs and a variety of cat not only lived together in harmony but even shared the hunt and the protection of grass-eaters from other beasts.
When Crooktail “described” the scent of the strange prowlers, the spotted cat replied, “Yes, the skunk-wolves. There are not many of them anywhere, though they are more common farther south than here. They will eat anything living or dead, and although they often kill their own food, they will still take a kill from any other they can find or catch. They themselves are inedible, even the young ones. But tell this cat more of these strange twolegs you claim as brothers and sisters and who keep you fed even when you cannot hunt, in the times of the cold-white.”
Far from Crooktail and his wild feline companion-of-the-moment, away over on the other side of the horse herd, near to the edge of the bluffs, a mare had just dropped a foal. Her dark-bay flanks still trembling with strain, she was licking the infant horseling clean when her heightened senses told her of the imminence of deadly danger to her and her foal.
Two brownish, striped meat-eaters were stalking her in the open in a series of short, sidling rushes. They both stood as tall as or taller than a prairiecat—as much as six hands at the withers, though their bodies sloped sharply back toward the crupper. An erect crest of stiff hair stood up along their withers and thick necks, and their opened mouths were all big, gleaming teeth.
The mare screamed a terrified warning, then moved herself to take a stand between the threatening predators and her helpless foal. Warned by her hearing more than her sight, she lashed out with a two-hoofed kick to the rear and received the brief satisfaction of feeling her hooves make contact with a hairy something that gasped a whining scream and then thudded to the ground some distance away and made no other sounds of any sort. But even as she fought so well, so victoriously, against one of her stalkers, she realized that at least one other had gotten to, and sunk its fearsome fangs into and was dragging off her newborn foal. And even as a snarling prairiecat arrived on the scene at a dead run, the valiant mare felt rending fangs tear through her near hind leg as, simultaneously, still another set of crushing toothshod jaws clamped down on her throat and windpipe.
One glance at the huge jaws and bulging forequarter muscles of these beasts the spotted cat had called skunk-wolves and Crooktail recognized that this fight must be One of movement, rapid movement, slash and withdraw to slash and withdraw again, for to try to close would mean being held and eaten alive by the dog-shaped things. Beaming out a wide-spreading call for aid from the clansfolk and the herd stallions, the cat dashed in to claw open the flank of an attacker that had just messily hamstrung the doomed mare.
The creature turned its head on its misproportioned neck to snap bloody jaws at its own claw-torn flesh once, before returning to its attack on the mare, hunger and bloodthirst driving it harder than pain.
Crooktail drove in yet again, this time at one of the brown, striped beasts that was wrenching loose great bloody mouthfuls of flesh and entrails from the body of the feebly thrashing, piteously screaming foal. As the cat turned to leap away after laying open the back and off ham of the skunk-wolf, he collided full on with another that had been charging down on him; the impact sent both cat and beast rolling to sprawl on the hard ground, winded. Even as Crooktail fought to breathe and regain enough control of his battered body to arise arid keep moving, he saw his nemesis bearing down fast upon him in the form of one of the largest of the huge-jawed skunk-wolves.
At fourteen summers, Daiv Kripin of Linsee was big for his age and race, accurately drew a bow of adult weight, possessed a rare eye for casting darts and was developing rapidly into one of the best hands with saber and lance in the clan. He was sure of himself, as a good leader must always be (or, at least, project the appearance of being). All of his clansfolk recognized that if he lived to adulthood, Daiv would one day be a sub-chief, and Subchief Hwaltuh had felt no qualms at placing the boy in charge of the camp and the herd in the absence of adults.
Daiv had the ability to think ahead, to foresee possible dangers and prepare for them, and he had therefore ordered that a fast and veteran hunter be saddled and accoutered and kept on a picketline in camp for each of the half-dozen boys and girls left to him. Therefore, when the mare’s scream alerted him, he and the rest were already tightening cinches and mounting even as Crooktail’s mindcall reached them.
A MAIN
“Wait!” he cautioned those who would have immediately turned their mounts and essayed the steep trail up to the bluff top. “First string your bows and nock an arrow—there may be no time to do so above in whatever is going on up there.”
As the little party leaned well forward in their saddles to aid their mounts in balancing on the steep, narrow ascent, they all could feel the vibration of the milling, stamping herd, could hear the whickerings and snortings, and could sense the plethora of mindspeaking and mind-callings among the restive, disturbed equines. Horses, even the rare breed of Horseclans stock, possessed nowhere near the intelligence of cats or twolegs, of course; Daiv was of the private opinion that even cattle and sheep were smarter, and he prayed Sun and Wind that this herd would not take it into their empty heads to panic and stampede out into the vast prairie. Not only would that mean many long, wasted hunting days of running the brainless creatures down, as many as had not by then fallen prey to predators, or broken legs caused by their headlong flight, but it would reflect ill on him, since the camp and the herd had been in his keeping this day.
Daiv’s hunter crested the bluff almost atop the spot where a badly clawed doglike beast was gorging itself on chunks of flesh and bone torn from the flopping, twitching carcass of what had recently been a new-dropped foal. Without pause or even thought, the boy drove a stone-tipped arrow fletchings-deep in the side of the singular glutton, just behind the hunched shoulder. And the well-aimed shaft had but barely left the powerful hornbow when another had been nocked and readied for use.