Uncle Milo never changed. Horseclansmen might be born, toddle about the camps between the felt yurts. guard the herds until their war training was complete, then ride the raid and take heads or booty or women; they might then die, full of glory and glorious memories, surrounded at the last by their get and the get of their get. But Uncle Milo would be the same tall, black-haired and dark-eyed man who had drunk the health at their birth.
Mothers told curious children that Uncle Milo was a god. That he was the only god to survive the awesome War of the Gods. As the children grew older, they found it hard to consciously believe godhood of this man who rode and ate and drank with them, slept in their yurts, often swived an offered young wife or concubine, who sweated and bled and defecated like any other man. But in their subconscious, the teachings of childhood were often strong.
But no less strong was Rahn Linsee’s pugnacity. “Hi, Dik Esmith! Always has it been said that the Esmith clan were a mite slow of thought, but only a very stupid man cannot tell the difference between three dead deer and four dead deer. Or did you have all ten fingers tucked up your arse to keep them warm, eh?”
Uncaring that his tormentor went fully armed with saber and dirk at his belt, Dik spun about from the hung buck he had been flaying, took two running steps and flung himself upon Rahn, seeking to get his teeth, nails or blood-slimed skinning knife into the hated flesh.
At Milo’s impatient mindspeak and gesture, the rest of the party lifted the battling men, jerked them apart most ungently and prudently disarmed them both.
Milo strode before them, scowling darkly. “Damn you both! Your chiefs shall hear of this, from me! While you are in camp, I don’t care if you blind, maim or chop each other into gobbets, but a raid or a hunt is no place for personal grudge-fighting, and you both are old enough and experienced enough to know that fact. What in hell kind of example do you think you’re setting for these younger warriors, eh? Do you even care?
“Your ancestors knew better, knew that their folk were only so strong as their ties—blood and kin—one to the other. Are their descendants then idiots? The hand of every Dirtman, every non-Kindred wanderer, is against the Horseclans. As if those were not enemies enough, the very elements would deny you and your herds life.”
He motioned that the men be released. “Dik Esmith, Rahn Linsee, this winter has been very hard and is lasting much longer than most. We dare not take much milk, now, because the calves need it, but our folk must have food. These deer could mean the difference between life and death for some. So let’s get about preparing them for packing before the wolves scent all this fresh blood.”
As the men began to move off, he raised his voice in a parting admonition. “And hear me, I’ll put my saber through the next selfish roughneck who tries to start a fight here.”
When the three deer were all hung and cleaned and the meat and other usable portions wrapped in their own hides and lashed on to the packhorses, Milo, Dik and Rahn examined the bloody spot on which the missing doe had lain. Several large pugmarks were deeply pressed into the Snow.
“Puma?” mused Rahn, aloud.
Dik snorted. “No puma ever grew feet that big, nor any lynx, either.” He scratched after a flea under his parka hood. “But … maybe one of those spotted cats the southern Dirtmen call teegrai?”’
Milo shook his head. “No; this animal is a little bigger and a good deal heavier—if those tracks are any indication—than any jaguar or tigre I ever saw.” Reaching over to a fallen log, he pulled several long, silky hairs from where they had caught in the rough bark. They were a creamy buff for most of their length, tipped with a dark grey.
He stood, and the two Horseclansmen emulated him. “Rahn, take all but three of your men and go back to camp with that meat. I’m going after that cat—whatever kind it is, I think its pelt would make a handsome saddlecover. Besides, it did steal our deer. I’ll take Dik, two of his bowmasters, and a couple of your spearmen with me. The other two men can stay here in the clearing and guard the horses until we get back.”
A hundred yards into the thickening forest, the Hunter could no longer resist the temptation. Dropping her burden at the base of a tall pine, she used her daggerlike fangs to rip open the doe’s belly, then tore out greedy mouthfuls of the tender, still-hot viscera.
From behind a bush, a vixen thrust out her wriggling black button of a nose and a couple of inches of her silvery-grey jaws. The Hunter placed her good forepaw atop the dark brown carcass and rippled a snarl of warning. The nose and jaws disappeared and the vixen scurried away … but not far; she knew her turn would come and she had the patience to await it.
The sharpest pangs of hunger temporarily assuaged, the Hunter arose, gripped her somewhat lighter burden, and limped on toward the isolated stand of rocks wherein lay her den and her hungry kittens.
When the Hunter was well out of sight among the dark boles of the trees, the vixen crept from beneath the snow-laden bush and first cleaned up every scrap of gut or organ, then began to lap at the bloody snow.
With Rahn Linsee and the bulk of the hunters on their way back to the two-clan camp, Milo and the remaining men unsaddled their horses, then broke down squaw-wood to build a fire for those who would remain in the glade with the animals. That done, they set out on the clear track of the big cat with its stolen deer.
They had only gone a few yards when Djim Linsee, a gifted tracker, squatted over the pugmarks and said, “Uncle Milo, this cat may be big, but it’s hurt, too.”
Milo squatted beside the broken-nosed towhead. “How can you be sure, Djim?”
The tracker pointed a grubby forefinger at first one, then another print. “You see how deep and clear this track is, Uncle Milo? And how shallow and fuzzy is this one? The cat’s putting as little weight as possible on the left leg. It must be a really big cat, though, and very strong, to drag so big a deer so easily with only three legs.”
They went on cautiously, the bowmen with their weapons strung, one arrow nocked and one or two others between the fingers of the bowhand. The spearmen followed close behind, hefting the balance of their six-foot wolf spears. Milo had armed himself with three stout, yard-long darts. Like the others, he had hung his saber diagonally across his back to keep it out of the way in the thick forest.
The vixen’s keen ears heard their approach long before they came into view, and she was nowhere about when they arrived at the base of the big pine.
Djim squatted, picked up a shred of gut missed by the grey vixen, rubbed it between his fingers, sniffed at it and then tasted it. His pale-blue eyes on the ground, he said, “The cat stopped here, Uncle Milo, tore the deer open and ate most of the innards.” Then he fell silent, then bent over to peer closely at a patch of snow that looked to Milo like any other. Extending his tongue, the towhead tasted some near-invisible something, then straightened, grinning. “Uncle Milo, the cat is a she-cat and likely is nursing kittens. That stain there where she laid is milk, cat milk.”
“After she ate her fill of the deer’s innards, she headed that way.” He swept his arm to the northwest. Then a grey fox was here to pick up her leavings.”
As they trudged on after the cat, Milo thought: “Damn! That man is no more than twenty-five years old, yet he’s acquired knowledge and skills, a keenness of smell and an acuity of vision that I’ve not picked up in the hundred fifty-plus years I’ve been around.” Then he mentally shrugged. “Maybe I never will become as these people of my fashioning. I think it’s the early life, the formative years. Mine were spent—to the best of my knowledge, of course; damn, there’s always that memory lapse or whatever to screw up my calculations!—in a degree of urban civilization that these fine men could not even imagine and which, were they suddenly put down in it, they would find terrifying and abhorrent.”