Then there was another wolf, this one a huge, coal-black beast. He killed it, chuckling to himself and thinking, “The Chinese used to say that you should never be cruel to a black dog that appeared at your door. Well, hell, I wasn’t cruel to that bastard; I gave him a cleaner, quicker death than he and his pack would have given me.”
The black wolf had been both bigger and in far better flesh than most of his packmates, so it took the wolf behind a few seconds longer than usual to push the jerking body out of the tunnel, and that few seconds’ respite made all the difference.
With all of Milo’s one hundred and eighty pounds of weight suspended from it, the ancient steel door inched downward, then, screeching like a banshee, picked up speed. Finally, impelled by a last, powerful thrust of Milo’s arms, it slammed shut and latched itself in the very face of the next wolf, which yelped its startled surprise.
Stepping back and carefully wiping off the blood-slimed blade of his saber on the pelt of a dead wolf, Milo mindcalled, “Dik, Djim, the rest of you, take up the lantern and carry it as you saw me carry this one. Be very careful that you don’t drop it or strike it against something. Come down the metal steps one by one—they’re too old and rusty to bear too much weight at once. Proceed through the opened door and down a flight of stone stairs, but be careful where you step at the bottom of those, for rattlesnakes are denned there.
“Those who have a taste for snakemeat can kill them, but any who’d rather have fresh wolf chops need only join me here and skin and gut and butcher their choice of ten or twelve of the bastards, all fresh-killed.
“Oh, and there’s water here too, somewhere; I can smell it.”
Then, suddenly, an intensely powerful mindspeak blanked out any reply the Horseclansmen might have beamed. “What are you, two-legs? You bear a small sun in your paws, you slay many, many wolves to protect cubs not your own, you can somehow open den walls and close them, and you can speak the language of cats, which is a something other two-legs cannot do. Who are you? What are you?”
The Hunter felt that she no longer could trust the witness of her own eyes. At times they seemed to be clouded with a dark, almost opaque mist; at other times she seemed to be seeing the images of three of four or even more identical two-legs and as many of the little, intensely bright suns. But none of these images stayed constant, they shifted about changing not only in numbers but in consistency as well.
Therefore, when first she sensed the two-leg, sun-bearing wolfkiller’s mind projecting that silent means of communication used only by cats and a few other of the more intelligent four-legs, she thought that others of her perceptions had suddenly gone as skewed as her visual perception. But at length she beamed a question … and he answered her!”
Milo just stood and stared at the injured cat for a long moment, deeply shaken by the experience of having an animal actually communicate with him telepathically. Then, moving deliberately and slowly, he laid down his saber beside the lantern and took a few steps in the cat’s direction, extending an empty hand in the ages-old, instinctual gesture of promised friendship.
“You are badly hurt sister,” he beamed. “Will you bite me if I try to help you?”
The sight of him abruptly faded again into the dark mist, but still his message came clearly into her mind and she said, “Help this mother? Why would you want to help this mother? This Hunter killed one of your pack last sun, Two-legs do not ever help cats, they slay cats, just as you slew those wolves there.”
He replied, “Wolves are the enemies of us both, sister, foes of both cats and men. Besides, the other men and I are hungry.
“You would eat wolf flesh?” The repugnance in her thoughtbeam was crystal-clear.
He moved his head up and down twice for some unknown reason and beamed, “Hunger can make any meat taste good, sister.”
All of the Hunters life had been hard, and she could grasp the universal truth stated by this remarkable two-leg. Perhaps, then, he was truthful about wishing to aid her. “If the mother allows you to come close, what will you do, two-leg?”
“The bleeding of your torn paw must be stopped, sister, the wounds cleaned out and packed with healing herbs, then wrapped up in cloth … uhh. something like very soft skins … then the broken bones must be pulled straight and tied in place to heal. All of this will hurt sister, and you must promise not to bite us in your pain.”
“Us?”
“Yes, sister, one of my brothers must help me. He is most skilled in caring for wounds and injuries.”
To himself, Milo thanked his lucky stars that chance had had Fil Linszee with this party. The young man was well on his way to becoming a first-rate horse leech, and was always certain to have a packet of herbs and salves and the like secreted somewhere on his person.
“Does your brother, too, speak the language of cats?” beamed the Hunter. She was feeling very strange, much weaker, so weak in fact that it was now all that she could do to keep her big head up and frame the thoughts she beamed.
She half-sensed an answer from the two-leg, but it was very unclear. Suddenly, nothing was clear for her—not sight, not hearing, not touch, not mental perception. The dark mists closed in, thicker and darker. A great waterfall seemed to be roaring about her. Then there was nothing.
X
As it chanced, Fli Linszee was the first Horseclansman to come through the door into the den area. His long spear was in one hand and the writhing, jerking bodies of a brace of headless rattlesnakes were in the other. But at sight of the cat, he dropped the snakes and grasped his spear in both hands, bringing the point to low guard.
But Milo waved the spear away, saying, “You’ll not need a spear, Fil, not with any luck. Believe it or not, this cat can mindspeak. We two were having quite a conversation before she passed out a few moments back. We … that is, you, are going to try to do what is necessary to heal up those forelegs of hers. Do you think that working on a cat will be radically different from working on a horse?
Fil came further into the den and critically eyed the cat while keeping a safe distance from her, with his spear shaft held cautiously between them. Then, after sucking for a minute on his long lower lip, he said, “Uncle Milo, that cat must weigh over two hundred pounds, for all she’s not really well fed. That near foreleg will be tender as a boil just now, and it needs draining, which means that I’m going to have to cut deeply into it, probably in two places. I value my life and a whole skin, Uncle Milo, so I will not touch the cat unless she is well and firmly tied. She’s bound to be too strong for even six warriors to hold down for long.”
Reflecting that the man was no doubt right in his assessment of the cat’s strength, Milo thought hard, The two or three short lengths of rawhide rope that his party had brought along would be of no good to them at all for the monumental task at hand, nor would their seven belts help.
“Maybe.” he thought, “behind one of those locked doors… ?”
A swift succession of short, powerful blows with one end of the iron shaft that had barred the door to the cat’s den did not even dent the massive padlock, but did tear the hasp and staple loose, which accomplished Milo’s purpose.
Behind the door marked FALLOUT SHELTER, he found a real treasure trove—jerrycans of fuels, boxes of canned goods. several locked footlockers … three long-handled spades, a pickaxe, a grubbing hoe, a chainsaw, a wrecking bar and a sledgehammer. All of the moral parts of these tools had been well coated with Cosmoline, then with treated paper and looked to have just come from a hardware store.
The room was bricky dry and there was almost no dust, since the door had been thick, tight-fitting and weatherstripped, to boot, with a sill three inches higher than the floor surfaces on either side of it. There was an identical door let into the opposite wall, but Milo postponed exploring whatever lay beyond it, for he had found those things he immediately needed in the very first footlocker he had opened—several coils of strong rope, both manila and nylon, plus an assortment of webbing straps fitted with buckle fasteners.