Milo shrugged, then beamed to Gy, “This stubborn young Kinsman insists on going spearing with me, and I long ago learned the utter hopelessness of trying to get logic into the head of any of the Teksikuhn Kindred. Do you think you can do it with two of us there instead of just me?”
“As I said before, Uncle Milo,” came the reply, “I can do but my best.”
Milo tested the point and the whetted edges of the spearhead with a thumb, made certain that the steel crossbar below the head was riveted tightly in its place, then took a grip at the midpoint of the hard-wood shaft where rawhide thongs had been wet-wound and shrunk on to offer a sure hold; with his right hand, he grasped the shaft about halfway between the midpoint and the horn-shot butt of the spearshaft. Then he began his cautious advance on the outre beast, erect, but with his knees slightly flexed, moving on the balls of his feet, ready to jump or shift suddenly in any direction necessary.
The well-trained dogs had drawn back from the attack, but they still half-crouched, one on either side of the wounded predator, just out of easy reach of its slavering jaws. The other four young men had each accepted the loan of an arrow from Bard Herbuht’s quiver and now they and he had taken up positions around the killing ground, lest the beast essay to bolt.
Milo could see why the bolas and riatas had not been used by these young warriors who, of all the far-flung Kindred clans, truly excelled in the use of them—this beast was relatively short-legged and went just too close to the ground to be easily snared up in the rawhide ropes.
With a bear, one could often slash a forepaw sufficiently deep with the knife-edge spearblade to cause the ursine to stand erect on the hind legs and give a spearman a clear shot at the heart or throat, but this beast did not look to be of a shape to be able to attack in such a position. Nor did it look to be of the sort that would leap, like a cat, giving a well-coordinated and iron-nerved spearman the opportunity to let the predator impale itself on the spear. No, he thought, this one will come in low to the ground and without a doubt very fast, too; so . . .
He had just set himself to stab at the head of the beast when that toothy head and the rest of the creature lunged at him with what seemed the speed of light. His too-high spearblade just slid across the top of the beast’s flat head, slashing only the edge of a black ear, but then he was able to raise the butt and lower the point enough to sink it deeply into the sinewy neck at its confluence with the shoulders.
Putting his weight on the lucky thrust, he held the beast pinned even while he felt the burning agony of sharp teeth tearing through the thick leather of his boots and into the flesh of the leg beneath. That was when Little Djahn Staiklee stepped up and, crouching, buried the five-inch steel head of his spearblade behind the near foreleg of the beast, just below the withers. At the same time, Gy Linsee took a few quick steps and, at a range of two feet, drove an arrow into the right eye of the outsize mustelid.
As soon as the beast’s remaining eye began to glaze over in death, Milo drew out his spearhead from its body, thrust it into the earth a couple of times in order to at least partially cleanse it, then paced over to where the Teksikuhn still sat crouched in the grass, grimacing with pain, part of his left trouser leg soaked in blood, his face as colorless as fresh curds where not weather- tanned.
When mindspoken, the boy looked up with pain-filled blue eyes, not releasing, however, his hold on the bowstring-and-stick tourniquet in place high up on his thigh. Shaking his head even as he mindspoke, he beamed back bitterly, “No, Uncle Milo, that critter didn’t do meno harm. No, it was that damn fool Bili-Fil come close to killing me! Cast his dart at that whatever-it-is and put the fucker into my leg instead. Sometimes I think my brother is purely set to see ever drop of blood I owns.”
With Milo’s help, the young man stood and then managed to mount one of the horses. “Gy,” said Milo, “get him back up to the camp and tell Djoolya that he took a dart in his thigh. She’ll know what to do. Then ride back down here with some more horses, one with a pack saddle; I don’t want to stay down here in this grass any longer than absolutely necessary. Another of those things”—he gestured at the arrow- and dart-studded body of the strange beast—“or a whole pack of them could be in one of those patches of the higher grasses and we’d never know it until they chose to show themselves.”
Of course, it was not that easy;Milo reflected that it seldom was. The packhorse did not like the smell of the dead beast and refused to go and stay in close proximity of it. The other horses, even the hunters, were no better, and no amount of coaxing or mind-speak soothing by Milo and Gy could achieve equine cooperation. Finally, Gy made yet another trip to the hilltop campsite and came back with one of the big, powerful, gentle mules of the pair that pulled Milo’s cart on the march. She snorted her plain disapproval of the stink and stamped a couple of times, but made no other objections to having the furry, blood-soaked thing tied onto her back.
Once back up on the top of the hill, Milo found the yurts all back up and layered. This time they were arranged in a circle with the empty carts parked between them, the whole forming a barrier to the horses the milled around the rest of the hilltop.
The lashings were loosed and the heavy body was dumped from off the mule-mare, then Milo called in all three cats—the two prairiecats and the jaguar—to thoroughly examine and scent-record the beast, beaming, “Remember this smell, all of you. Spotted One, is this beast at all familiar to you?”
“Who could ever forget such a stench, brother of cats?” She wrinkled her nose and shook her head in distaste. “No, if this cat had scented or seen one of these before, even as a cub, she would certainly recall it.”
To Djoolya, he beamed, “How is the boy? Is he still bleeding?”
“Not much, now,” came back her response. “But even so, I don’t think he should fork a horse or even walk around much for a few days, my dear.”
“Hmmm. Well, I suppose I could rig a horse litter out of two of the pry-poles, a couple of riatas and a cured hide or two. But knowing these southern Kindred, we’ll also have to use a third riata to tie him into that litter, unless you can brew him up a tea to knock him out for the day.” Milo shook his head dubiously. “Or do you think we could pad the load of a cart enough to bear him without further injury?”
“You do mean to move on today, then, Milo?” she beamed. “Do you think that best for us?”
He shrugged. “Far better than staying here, I’d say. That high, dense grass surrounding this hill bothers me; it bothered me to begin, but now, combined with that huge, vicious thing we just killed, it has me very worried, and I’d much rather move on to an area where we can at least see more than a bare score of yards out from the camp. True, mustelids are usually solitary beasts, but I have seen pairs of them hunting together here and there and the thought of so much as one more of that ilk”—he waved at the body with the women, children and cats gathered around it and the flies crawling all over it—“sets my nape hairs to twitching.”
“So, yes, let’s start getting the yurts down and loaded up, the teams harnessed and hitched. Two of the warriors ought to be enough to do for the hurt dogs, two more to go about their yurt and cart. Gy and I and the other one will get the hide off that thing.”
Djoolya wrinkled both her brow and her button nose. “Do you think you’ll ever get the reek out of that hide, Milo? And even if you do, finally, will it be worth the effort of scraping and curing and then sewing up all the rents and punctures and tears with sinew? If you’ll observe, that’s a warm-weather pelage, not a thick winter one.”