“The fourth day out, riding through deep snows in territory completely unfamiliar to us, we lucked across a deer yard in a patch of forest. There were four of the bigger, western deer in that yard, and the archers of Clan Esmith dropped them all, only to have one dragged away by some unknown, unseen predator while they were hard at work cleaning the big buck to be certain that the meat would not be tainted.
“Now in our straits, we could not spare the loss of even one of those deer, so it was decided to pack the three carcasses we still had in our possession back to camp along with the most of our party, while I and a smaller party pursued the cat, for such a consummate tracker—one Djim Linszee. he who later in his life was Chief Linszee of Linszee—and I had both determined it must be, And this we did.
“Because of the anticipated terrain in the direction that that feline had taken, we broke down squawwood, built a big fire and left two of our number there in the deer yard with the horses, going on afoot in pursuit of the thief and our deer. The way was long, and the canny cat did not make it an easy trail to follow. Once, in fact, she doubled back and leaped out of a trailside copse full onto my back and broke my neck. Had I been as are most Kindred, I would have died then and there.”
Bettylou glanced around at the faces of the others, lightly flitted through the surface thoughts of the relaxed, unshielded minds with her still-new powers, but she could find no one who doubted a word that Chief Milo had said. She did not publicly question him as she had questioned Djahn Staiklee, but she resolved to find him alone somewhere and satisfy herself as to his supposedly immense age and vaunted ability to survive death-dealing injuries.
“As it was,” Milo continued, “I was some hours recovering from that attack and the attendant injuries and it was while I was doing so that we all became aware that a huge pack of wolves was racing upon our trail. Keeping but a few minutes ahead of those relentless, shaggy pursuers, we sped on as fast as our legs would bear us, our faces all astream with sweat despite the frigid air and the tearing bite of the wind, which had increased in strength through the day. At length, we found ourselves at the foot of a low plateau and climbed up it with the pack leaders actually snapping at our heels, to behold it completely treeless but with a jumble of a complex of ruined buildings centered upon it a few hundred yards away from us.
“It was a very near, a frighteningly near thing, but all of us made it to the ruins, to the top of a crumbling tower of ancient brickwork. The top of that ruined tower was too high for any of the wolves to jump, although almost all of them essayed it at one time or another, so we were safe from them as long as we did not try to climb down.
“But we were confronted there on our perch by another and no less deadly menace, for it was clear to any creature that a blizzard was fast approaching that plateau. And with no more shelter than that offered us by foot-high walls about the edges of that tower top, we would have surely frozen to death in very short order.
“I had not been willing to allow the party to spend their arrows and darts on the wolves as long as we were in a place where the beasts could not get at us and were not truly a life threat to us, preferring to save the weapons for a more desperate occasion. Therefore, they had spent their time in throwing loose chunks of bricks at the nearer wolves—killing a couple outright, injuring several others and at least hurting the rest at whom they aimed.
“But they exhausted the supply of brick chunks after a while, and the wolves gradually circled closer and closer to the base of our perch again as no more hurtful missiles flew at them from its apex. There was more brick rubble atop that tower, but it was sunk in a mixture of old brick dust, bird droppings and windblown debris that over the years had become soil; moreover, there was a layer of ice over everything.
“But none of this fazed our Kindred. As soon as one of them had proved that pieces of this brick rubble could be freed for use against the encroaching wolves, they all were at it, prying up the encrusted, frozen brick chunks with their dirks and, with them, causing anew many cases of lupine agony and consternation.
“But here, this recountal could easily take all night, and we sorely need rest, at least, I do. So I will open my memories and you all can enter my mind and see those archaic events as did I and those others—human and cat—with whom I later conversed.
The night spent atop the mined tower was terrible for Milo and the nomads. Rolling pebbles in their mouths to allay somewhat their raging thirst, they laced their quilted and fur-trimmed hoods tightly and drew the thick woolen blizzard masks up over lips and vulnerable noses. In the very center of the concavity, they huddled together for warmth like so many puppies or kittens, frequently changing position on the hard, uneven surface so that all might have equal time in the warmer centermost spot.
Not that steep came easily, for in addition to the cold, the wolves were never really silent through the whole of that frigid, blustery night—they barked and howled and snarled and snuffled, they paced around and around the tower, they yelped and whined, wolf after wolf after wolf set himself at the sheer walls of that tower, jumping and falling back merely to jump and again fall back until utterly exhausted The pack seemed to be driven mad by the scent of so much manflesh and blood so very near to their slavering jaws, yet so unobtainable.
Although it seemed for long and long that dawn would not make an appearance, at last a grudging light dispelled the worst of the darkness, but there was no visible sun and no cessation of the sharp-toothed wind. Milo knew then that were he and his men to survive the coming weather, they assuredly must get off this exposed, wind-lashed pinnacle and into some shelter of some kind. But how?
The gaunt wolves paced the length and the breadth of the plateau. They numbered at least fourscore, probably more—gray wolves and wolves of a dirty, mouse-brown color, yellowish-brown wolves, reddish-brown wolves, several almost white and, here and there, a black wolf. Milo could almost feel pity for the lupines, for they were obviously not far from death by starvation, with rib racks and spinal bumps clearly visible beneath the dull, matted coats.
The pack had lost or forgotten their previous fear of the hurled missiles during the night and now were ranging close about the tower. But the men soon discovered that there were few handy bits of masonry remaining anywhere near to the rim of the tower. Only in the center, where the effects of freezing had been somewhat offset by their combined body heat through the night just past, did there appear to be chunks that could be pried loose without breaking their dirk blades.
With the supply of missiles decreased, Milo awarded such as were available to the four most accurate hurlers—Dik Esmith, the tracker, Djim Linszee, and his two younger brothers, the fiery-haired twins called Bill and Bahb. Milo and the other Horseclansmen set themselves and their dirks to supplying the four, worrying loose more of the bits and pieces of ancient bricks studding the layer of soil that covered the center of the old tower.
Milo thrust his dirk blade under a brick that looked to be almost whole … and felt his steel ring on metal! He set the others to working upon the same area; slowly, a red-brown ring of pitted, flaking iron was exposed. Shortly thereafter, they had cleared away all of the soil and rubble down to the rusty trapdoor to which the ring was stapled.
One of the Horseclansmen took a grip on the ring and heaved, vainly. Retrenching, taking his best grip with both grubby hands, half squatting so that he could put the muscles of his legs and back behind the effort, he strained until the throbbing veins bulged from his brows, but the soil-streaked trapdoor never budged an inch from its ages-old setting.