Robert Adams
The Clan of the Cats
I
Icy-toothed wind soughed through the denuded branches of the overhanging trees, increasing the chill of an already-frigid day. Somewhere within the forest a branch exploded with the sharp crack of a pistol shot.
But the Hunter had never heard a shot of any kind and so ignored that sound as she did all natural sounds, concentrating the whole of her attention upon getting as close as possible to her browsing quarry before commencing the deadly rush and pounce that would, hopefully, result in her acquisition of almost her own weight of hot, bloody, delicious meat. Meat! Meat to fill the gnawing emptiness of her shrunken belly, meat enough, maybe, to be worried at by the three kittens waiting back in her den.
But the Hunter knew, too, that she must be close, very close, to have a chance, for she now had but three sound legs. Her left foreleg, deep-gored by the same shaggy-bull whose horns and stamping hooves had snuffed out the life of her mate, was healing but slowly in these days of deep snows and scant food.
As the manyhorn browser ambled a few feet farther and began to strip bark from yet another sapling, the Hunter carefully wriggled a few feet nearer, amber eyes fixed unwaveringly upon her prey, twitching nostrils seeking for the first faint odor of alarm or fear. Then, suddenly, the Hunter stopped, froze in place, even as the heads of all four browsers came up, swiveling to face a spot just a little to the Hunter’s right.
The Hunter saw the muscles of the largest manyhorn bunch under the skin of his haunches. But before he could essay even the first wild leap away from the danger all sensed, a volley of little thin black sticks came hissing from the thick cover of a stand of mountain laurel and all four of the browsers collapsed, kicking their razor-edged hooves at empty air, one of them coughing quantities of frothy blood forth to sink, steaming, into the deep, white snow.
A vagrant puff of wind wafted to the Hunter the rare but still-hated scent of two-legs, and her lip curled in a soundless snarl. They were trying to rob her of her manyhorns, tying to rob her and her helpless cubs of life itself, for if she did not have food, she knew that she soon would lack the strength to get food, and her kittens were still too young to hunt for themselves. Outside the den and without her protection, they would be the hunted rather than the hunters.
The lung-shot browser, a hornless doe, struggled to her feet and staggered across the tiny glade. Another of the hissing black sticks sped out of the laurel covert, thunnk into her heaving flank, and she fell again, this time almost under the Hunter’s paws. The heady scent of her hot blood filled the Hunter’s nostrils and set her stomach to growling, while her tongue unconsciously sought her furry lips.
Dik Esmith unstrung his short, powerful recurved bow and replaced it in his bowcase quiver. The other three archers emulated their leader, while Dik mindcalled back to where the rest of the hunting party waited with the horses.
“Uncle Milo, brothers, once more has Clan Esmith demonstrated for all to see the matchless skill at stealth and the deadly accuracy of its bowmen—”
“And,” broke in a mindspeak that Dik recognized as that of Rahn Linsee, “the longwinded boasting for which Clan Esmith is justly famous. Get to the point, Dik—did you and your blunderers kill the deer or not?”
Dik’s horny hand unconsciously sought the well-worn hilt of the saber he had left behind at the beginning of his stalk. “Blunderers, is it? I had always thought, Linsee, that that title was exclusive to Clan Linsee … along with ‘cowards’.”
“Enough, children, enough!” Command was unmistakable in a third and exceptionally powerful mindspeak. “We are out this wretched day to kill game to feed our folk, not to carelessly begin bloodfeuds. How many deer, Dik?”
“Four, Uncle Milo. But the Linsee filth started it. He had no right to—”
“Enough, I said!” came Milo’s retort. “Perhaps I should have been certain I brought men to hunt with me. You do all look like men, you bear the weapons of men, but just now you put me in mind of pugnacious herd boys wrangling over a sickly heifer. Next time I might be better off to bring a few maiden archers, eh?”
“I … I’m sorry, Uncle Milo,” beamed Dik sheepishly. “But he—”
“No ‘buts’!” Milo’s thought beam cracked like a whip. “Rahn was simply joking, weren’t you, Rahn Linsee?”
“I … oh, yes, yes, of course, Uncle Milo, I was joshing dear Brother Dik.”
“And you are lying in your teeth,” thought Milo to himself. “You were deliberately trying to provoke a fight with the Esmiths because I chose to bring their archers rather than Linsee bowmen on this hunt. But,” he smiled to himself, “those are my Horseclansmen for you; if there’re no outsiders around to fight, they’ll hop at each others throats.
“Be that as it may, though,” he thought on, “I must have done more than a few somethings right, over the years, else you and your cousin would not be around to snarl and snap at each other. A bare hundred years ago, thousands, millions of people lived hereabouts, and now you could ride for weeks in any direction and not meet any human who does not claim kinship to one of the Horseclans. And I doubt that all fifty-odd clans together number as many as five thousand souls.
“I think we’re somewhere in northern Nevada, or maybe it’s southern Idaho. A century back, great, glittering, thoroughly modern cities reared out of the desert to the south of us—hell, they even raised crops in places where we’d now lose all our herds from thirst and hunger were we crazy enough to try to make it across.
“Who could ever have imagined, back then, that ten dozen scared, ragged, starving kids could not only survive the death of the world into which they’d been born, but that their direct descendants could so well adapt to a hideously hostile environment and become fearless, self-reliant men like these?”
The Hunter flattened her long-furred body to the snowy ground and moved not a whisker, for she wanted none of the black sticks coming at her. But neither was she willing to leave so much meat, either.
She watched four two-legs, covered in animal hides and furs, rise up from the shrubs that had hidden them. Pulling out long, shiny things, they went from one to another of the downed manyhorns, cutting open the big throat veins and holding hollow horns to catch the hot red blood, which they then drank off with smiles and relish.
The Hunter could hear other two-legs and the rather stupid, hornless four-legs that often carried them on their backs coming closer from upwind, if she was to have any chance of getting clear with one of those dead manyhorns, it must be done quickly.
The first four two-legs had stopped drinking blood, and now three of them were dragging the largest manyhorn toward a large tree on the other side of the glade. The fourth was shinnying up the bole, a rawhide lope clenched between his teeth.
The Hunter had wormed herself to the very limit of available concealment. Only a partially snow-covered log and a body-length of open ground now lay between her and the dead doe. With careful speed, she drew her powerful hind legs beneath her, then sprang over the log, landing almost beside the carcass.
Rahn Linsee strode into the glade. just behind Uncle Milo. Though big for his breed, Rahn still was a head shorter than Milo Moray. The other differences between the one man and the others were not so easily apparent, not that any Horseclansman or woman would have even considered questioning said differences. They all had known or known of Uncle Milo all their lives—he did not winter with the same clans every year. Their parents had known him all their lives, and their grandparents and all their ancestors back to the very Sacred Ancestors whom Uncle Milo had succored and led upon the path to their present greatness.