“Probably not,” replied Milo, adding, “Nonetheless, please keep both of those dogs in your yurt tonight; we all have another long, hard trek tomorrow, remember, and the very last thing that any of us—man or beast—needs this night is sleep-robbing excitement. Once we arrive at the new camp, then we’ll see about this strange cat.”
The night passed peacefully enough, but at day-break, while the twolegs were nibbling their hard cheese and drinking down the mugs of a bastard brew that the far-southern Kindred clans called by the name of “kawfee,” the two tooth-hounds, roaming out beyond the perimeter, began to make anxious-sounding noises.
At once, the young warriors dropped their mugs, crammed the last remnants of cheese into their mouths and lunged for weapons of the hunt—bows and quivers, darts, spears, slings, riatas and bolas. Even as they all trotted off in the direction from which came the canine sounds, Little Djahn Staiklee beamed to Milo, Bard Herbuht and Gy Linsee, “Brutus and Bearbane, they done found where something big and mean has been, sure as rain. They don’t use that there tone for just deers or bulls or pigs and the like.”
Fretfully, the middle-aged tribal bard beamed back, “If you lot want to go rambling off into that high grass down there after who knows what, then go; but you’d better leave at least a couple of you here to strike and load your yurt and gear, saddle your horses and hitch up your team. Otherwise, we’ll leave them here. You must learn to honor precommitments under any circumstances.”
“Djeri-Djai, Sami-Hal, you twostay back yonder and do for the rest of us, heanh?” Clearly grudgingly, the two young men trudged back up the hillock, stacked their weapons and commenced to strip the coverings from the frame of their yurt, muttering under their breaths to each other about elderly spoil-sports.
While their women dismantled the yurts, Milo and Gy called in their mounts for this first part of the day’s march and saddled them before calling in the cart horses and harnessing them. They had not quite, either of them, finished this last when a furious din erupted down on the prairie some hundreds of yards distant from the hilltop camp.
Their ears buffeted by snarls, barkings, growlings, human shouts and at least one agonized scream, Milo, Gy and Bard Herbuht ran to their saddled and equipped mounts and were quickly astride and all stringing bows. Mindcalling the two young warriors who were themselves about to mount, he said, “Not so fast. Call in the mounts of those out there and saddle them all before you leave here. If we three can’t be of help in whatever is going on, then the addition of two more would be of no value either. And if this develops into a chase, everyone will be needing a horse, not just five of us.”
As he passed out of camp at a fast walk, Djoolya ran over and placed in Milo’s hand a six-foot hunting spear. The grass below the cleared hilltop was as high as or higher than a mounted man and grew more thickly with every yard they descended, severely hampering visibility if not movement, the rough, sharp edges of the grasses slashing at exposed hands and faces like so many knives.
But they did not need to see to find the scene of the bayed beast; they had ears, still, and the sounds of battle still smote them, not seeming to move fast or far. Bard Herbuht and Gy Linsee both nocked a shaft, grasping a brace of others between the fingers of their bow hands, ready for rapid loosings if need be. As they got nearer to the uproar, Milo beamed a mindcall to Little Djahn.
“What have the dogs cornered?”
“I don’t know, Uncle Milo,” came back the telepathic message, “and I thought I knowed every critter on the prairies and plains, too.”
“Well, what does it look like?” beamed Milo. “No, don’t try to tell me—open your mind and let me enter and see for myself, boy.”
Milo had never seen anything exactly like the beast either. He thought it bore a vague resemblance to both the badger and the wolverine, though it looked more like a monstrous stoat or weasel. It was as big as a black bear, though far more slender, and most of its supple body was the color of dead grass, though its feet, legs and part of its tail were either black or very dark brown, as too were its ears and its muzzle. The jaws were filled with white teeth of a respectable size, most of those easily visible being cuspids—biting, tearing teeth. If there were more than just the one of these predators around . . . !
He mindcalled the king stallion, his warhorse, “Brother, take the herd onto the hilltop, where it’s easier to see for a distance. Crooktail will stay with you, but I have need of the other cats.”
Then he mindcalled Snowbelly, saying, “Cat brother, bring the Spotted One and come to the sounds here in the grass. There is a very singular beast here and I need to know if there is more than just this one about.”
To Djoolya, he beamed, “Leave off whatever you’re doing, you and all the others. String your bows and be ready for the herd to shortly come up there. Keep your eyes peeled for a light-tan-colored animal. It looks like a bear-sized weasel with black feet and tail and ears. Tell those boys that I said to stay up there, too. That herd is of more importance than anything else, and this thing is easily big enough to kill a horse or just about anything else that takes its fancy.”
As the three riders finally cleared the patch of tall grasses, they could see the knot of men and beasts less than a hundred yards distant in a trampled-down area of two-foot grasses. The beast now bore a resemblance to a porcupine, so many were the arrow and dart shafts standing up from its snaky body, but apparently no one of those missiles had struck a really vital organ, for the beast still moved fast as greased lightning, as it tried its best to get a few teeth into the dancing, bleeding dogs and the cautiously stalking men. That it had already succeeded in its purpose more than once was evident from the gashed hounds and one of the young warriors who sat hunched over in the grass. Since the remaining five men were advancing with spears and bolas, Milo assumed that they had expended their supplies of arrows and darts.
To Gy, he beamed, “You’re our best archer. If I can get the beast on my spear and hold him more or less still for an instant, do you think you could sink a shaft into one of his eyes?”
“All I can do is my best, Uncle Milo,” was the reply.
Cursing himself for not having chosen to ride a trained and experienced hunting horse this day, Milo rode as close as he was able without losing all control of the nervous, clearly frightened dun gelding, then he slung his bowcase-quiver across his back, took his spear into his left hand long enough to wipe the sweaty palm of his right on his thigh, dismounted and trotted toward the fray.
Close up, the stink of musk almost took his breath away for a moment. Yes, this creature was definitely of the mustelid clan; whatever else it might be, that much was patent truth. He also now recalled where he had seen a creature—also a mustelid—that had at least a superficial resemblance to this one. The American plains ferret was colored almost exactly like this beast, but there the resemblance ended abruptly, for the few black-footed ferrets he had ever seen were none of them more than eighteen inches long, including the tail, where this one was, overall, a good eight feet or more.
“Call off the dogs,” he beamed to Little Djahn Staiklee. “And try not to get into Gy Linsee’s way. I’m going in and try to hold it on the spear long enough for Gy to put an arrow into its brain through an eye.”
“Not alone you’re not, Uncle Milo,” Staiklee beamed back. “You don’t know just how fast and supple that thing can be, and I do. No, I’ll take Djim-Bahb’s wolf spear and go in with you; that critter might dodge one point, but not two, and with any kind of luck, we’ll get both of them into it.”