“Yes, honored cat brother,” agreed Milo, “I, too, am certain that the full Clan of Cats is the largest of all the clans. Fourscore are the Kindred Clans, and each sept of the Clan of Cats averages some twelve, plus cubs, so there are well over one thousand prairiecats following the herds with their two-leg brothers and sisters. Nor does that figure include some that still are living wild, apart from the clans.
“The wild life is a good life for a healthy sound cat in its prime.” stated Bullbane silently, “but illness or serious injury or advanced age in the wild presage naught but a slow, painful death. Far better that a cat live our his life with his two-leg cat kin, secure in the knowledge that his abilities are valued, that his belly will be full as long as the bellies of his kin are full, that he will be protected and fed in illness or if injured, and that he will be vouchsafed a quick, painless death when he feels that the time has come for him to go to Wind.”
XI
Tim stumbled into the yurt a little after the dawning, half frozen, his knitted face mask stiff with ice rime. Dark blood had hardened on his mittens and in splashes up his sleeves, with blotches here and there on his trousers. His exhaustion was too great to allow him to do the normal things, so Mairee and Chief Dik’s other two wives made haste to fetch his gear from off the horse, then drape the mount with sheets of felt until it had had time to cool properly.
Bettylou helped her husband out of his wet, filthy clothing and into the lighter garb worn within the warm yurts. When she had seen him with a full bowl of last nights stew, she took his bare icy feet into her lap, under the swell of her belly.
Mairee and the other two came in laden with the gear as well as with two stiff-frozen winter wolfskins, each of them of a creamy, almost-white color.
“White wolves are rare, this far south,” remarked Chief Dik. Skillfully assembled, those two will make a fine, warm, heavy cloak, like my own black wolfcloak.”
“There are at least two more of these white ones out there,” said Tim, mindspeaking, so that he might continue stuffing his mouth with cold stew unhindered. “And they are huge, a third again as large as the biggest of the other, more normal-sized wolves, they’re braver, too, and more ferocious and cunning. This brace let the others go after the cattle and occupy our attention while they sneaked into the herders’ yurt and tried to drag out a sleeping stripling—a lad of Clan Skaht. They did kill him, but his shouts alerted those of us who happened to be in that vicinity. I was just riding in off herd guard, so my bow was strung. An arrow was enough for one of them; the other I had to get down and take on my spear, which is why the larger pelt is so ragged in the breast area.”
Shaking his head reprovingly, old Chief Dik said, “You must learn to exercise caution, Tim. You are the last Krooguh in the direct line of the chieftaincy. Were there not other armed clansfolk about who might have faced that wounded wolf in your stead?”
Bettylou felt her husband stiffen then, but when he spoke aloud his voice was controlled. “Uncle Dik, even when or if I am a chief, I never will ask or expect another man to fight for me against man or beast. Yes, there were other armed folk about out there, but I was closest and my bow was strung. You are chief and you bear honorable scars of manhood, marks of your bravery in battle and in the hunt. Would you advise me to not win such, then? If so, then choose another for your successor, for I would far liefer be a common clansman who fought and died in honor than a living but cowardly chieftain of the richest clan on all the plains!”
Bettylou expected rage from the older man at Tim’s words, but Chief Dik only nodded gravely. “A good answer, Tim, and though strongly worded, spoken with all due courtesy. You much put me in mind of my own uncle. He was a very good chief, and I harbor no doubt but that you will be every bit as good a leader of our Clan Krooguh. A chief must be courteous and display a level head even when driven to anger, you have shown us here that you possess right many of the needed attributes of the chief you soon will be. You please me mightily, nephew.”
Hwahlis Hansuhn of Krooguh was born a little later that day, and, of course, the wolves made their attack against the camp that following night. Asleep with her newborn boychild. Bettylou did not really notice Tim, Mairee and the two other women arm themselves and leave the yurt.
Chief Dik, so stiff and swollen and painful were his joints this night, could not even arise from his sleeping-rug, much less arm and fight. But still the old man insisted that a spear be left within easy reach of both him and the sleeping young mother, for with wolves all about the camp, anything might chance.
Starving one and all, the gaunt wolves made frantic efforts to thrust their bony bodies through the frozen, thorny brush that blocked the apertures of the horse stockade, and each one of the few that succeeded not only encouraged their packmates to renewed efforts but heightened the panic of the milling equines within that stockade. Nor did lupine successes make any whit easier the efforts of their human opponents.
As long as the furry shapes were outside the stockades or even worming through them, the combination of bright moonlight and vaunted Horseclans archery was certain to cost the attackers most heavily. But once inside the stockades, flitting hither and yon among the legs of the milling horse herd, it were a dangerous waste of precious arrows to try for the intruders, and the only options were either to leave them to the horses themselves with the probability that they would kill or cripple one or more before being themselves killed, or to send a brave man in after the marauder with spear and dirk; neither choice was one pleasant of contemplation to the Horseclansfolk.
But the hard choice was made, twenty times or more was it made during that hellish night by desperate men against equally desperate beasts. Some of the horses were savaged by wolves, some were wounded or killed by arrows. But, too, some spearmen were trampled by terror-stricken horses or were injured or slain by wolves as they tried to avoid those heedless hooves.
The deadly carnage went on and on, the survivors of the pack not making a withdrawal until the first rays of Sacred Sun were streaking the sky away to the east. Only then did the weary men and women sheathe their steel, case their bows and wend their way back to the yurts.
Fresh horrors there awaited them.
Tim could only stand and stare at the huge dog-wolf that lay stiffening beside the firepit, the bared fangs coated in the blood it had coughed up after the spear blade had pierced its chest. The second wolf—this one the smallest—had the look of having been clubbed to death. The third had taken the spear at the confluence of throat and chest and lay in a wide-spread pool of coagulated blood.
The three women who had crowded in behind him were no less dumbstruck by the grim tableau presented by the bloody, well-dead carcasses littering the floor of the home.
Mairee was the first to recover from the shock, saying to Chief Dik. “Well, old one, is this what must be expected every time we leave you alone with sharp toys?”
He regarded her without speaking for a long moment, then he spoke, gravely. “Had it been me alone, Mairee, I would have been in that dog-wolf’s belly long since, as I cannot so much as close my right hand around the haft of my spear.”
“Then who …?” the chorus began, then all eyes sought out the only other adult human in the yurt, where she now lay in slumber with her day-old infant. “Behtiloo?”
The old chief showed his worn yellow teeth in a smile. “None other! She had but just arisen and hung the babe high—which was fortunate—while she fetched me a sup of water, when that monster forced open the door and entered. She did not even hesitate, but took up the spear that lay by me and, waiting until he rose for her throat, skewered him as neatly as any wolf I’ve ever seen speared.
She had dropped the spear and was retching when the bitch wolf came in and made directly for me. I was able to do no morn than flip a blanket over the beast, but before it could wriggle free of that binding hindrance, our Behtiloo had lit into it with the iron spit; I could clearly hear those wolf bones crack and crunch under those blows, too.