"My baby—what did it do to him?"
She convalesced slowly, haunted by the fear. Her son was born five weeks later and her fears proved to have been groundless. He was perfectly normal and healthy.
And hungry—and her slowly healing breasts would be dry for weeks to come.
By a coincidence that had never happened before and could never happen again there was not a single feeding-time foster-mother available for the baby. There were many expectant mothers but only three women had young babies—and each of the three had twins to feed.
But there was a small supply of frozen goat milk in the ice house, enough to see young Johnny through until it was time for the goat herd to give milk. He would have to live on short rations until then but it could not be helped.
Johnny was a month old when the opportunity came for the men of Ragnarok to have their ultimate ally.
The last of the unicorns were going north and the prowlers had long since gone. The blue star was lighting the night like a small sun when the breeze coming through Schroeder’s window brought the distant squealing of unicorns.
He listened, wondering. It was a sound that did not belong. Everyone was safely in the town, most of them in bed, and there should be nothing outside the stockade for the unicorns to fight.
He armed himself with spear and crossbow and went outside. He let himself out through the east gate and went toward the sounds of battle. They grew louder as he approached, more furious, as though the battle was reaching its climax.
He crossed the creek and went through the trees beyond. There, in a small clearing no more than half a mile from the town, he came upon the scene.
A lone prowler was making a stand against two unicorns. Two other unicorns lay on the ground, dead, and behind the prowler was the dark shape of its mate lying lifelessly in the grass. There was blood on the prowler, purple in the blue starlight, and gloating rang in the squeals of the unicorns as they lunged at it. The leaps of the prowler were faltering as it fought them, the last desperate defiance of an animal already dying.
He brought up the bow and sent a volley of arrows into the unicorns. Their gloating squeals died and they fell. The prowler staggered and fell beside them.
It was breathing its last when he reached it but in the way it looked up at him he had the feeling that it wanted to tell him something, that it was trying hard to live long enough to do so. It died with the strange appeal in its eyes and not until then did he see the scar on its shoulder; a scar such as might have been made long ago by the rip of a unicorn’s horn.
It was the prowler he had known nineteen years before.
The ground was trampled all around by the unicorns, showing that the prowlers had been besieged all day. He went to the other prowler and saw it was a female. Her breasts showed that she had had pups recently but she had been dead at least two days. Her hind legs had been broken sometime that spring and they were still only half healed, twisted and almost useless.
Then, that was why the two of them were so far behind the other prowlers. Prowlers, like the wolves, coyotes and foxes of Earth, mated for life and the male helped take care of the young. She had been injured somewhere to the south, perhaps in a fight with unicorns, and her mate had stayed with her as she hobbled her slow way along and killed game for her. The pups had been born and they had had to stop. Then the unicorns had found them and the female had been too crippled to fight….
He looked for the pups, expecting to find them trampled and dead. But they were alive, hidden under the roots of a small tree near their mother.
Prowler pups—alive!
They were very young, small and blind and helpless. He picked them up and his elation drained away as he looked at them. They made little sounds of hunger, almost inaudible, and they moved feebly, trying to find their mother’s breasts and already so weak that they could not lift their heads.
Small chunks of fresh meat had been left beside the pups and he thought of what the prowler’s emotions must have been as his mate lay dead on the ground and he carried meat to their young, knowing they were too small to eat it but helpless to do anything else for them.
And he knew why there had been the appeal in the eyes of the prowler as it died and what it had tried to tell him: Save them … as you once saved me.
He carried the pups back past the prowler and looked down at it in passing. "I’ll do my best," he said.
When he reached his house he laid the pups on his bed and built a fire. There was no milk to give them—the goats would not have young for at least another two weeks—but perhaps they could eat a soup of some kind. He put water on to boil and began shredding meat to make them a rich broth.
One of them was a male, the other a female, and if he could save them they would fight beside the men of Ragnarok when the Gerns came. He thought of what he would name them as he worked. He would name the female Sigyn, after Loki’s faithful wife who went with him when the gods condemned him to Hel, the Teutonic underworld. And he would name the male Fenrir, after the monster wolf who would fight beside Loki when Loki led the forces of Hel in the final battle on the day of Ragnarok.
But when the broth was prepared, and cooled enough, the pups could not eat it. He tried making it weaker, tried it mixed with corn and herb soup, tried corn and herb soups alone. They could eat nothing he prepared for them.
When gray daylight entered the room he had tried everything possible and had failed. He sat wearily in his chair and watched them, defeated. They were no longer crying in their hunger and when he touched them they did not move as they had done before.
They would be dead before the day was over and the only chance men had ever had to have prowlers as their friends and allies would be gone.
The first rays of sunrise were coming into the room, revealing fully the frail thinness of the pups, when there was a step outside and Julia’s voice:
"Father?"
"Come in, Julia," he said, not moving.
She entered, still a pale shadow of the reckless girl who had fought a unicorn, even though she was slowly regaining her normal health. She carried young Johnny in one arm, in her other hand his little bottle of milk. Johnny was hungry—there was never quite enough milk for him—but he was not crying. Ragnarok children did not cry….
She saw the pups and her eyes went wide.
"Prowlers—baby prowlers! Where did you get them?"
He told her and she went to them, to look down at
them and say, "If you and their father hadn’t helped each other that day they wouldn’t be here, nor you, nor I, nor Johnny—none of us in this room."
"They won’t live out the day," he said. "They have to have milk—and there isn’t any."
She reached down to touch them and they seemed to sense that she was someone different. They stirred, making tiny whimpering sounds and trying to move their heads to nuzzle at her fingers.
Compassion came to her face, like a soft light.
"They’re so young," she said. "So terribly young to have to die…."
She looked at Johnny and at the little bottle that held his too-small morning ration of milk.
"Johnny—Johnny——" Her words were almost a whisper. "You’re hungry—but we can’t let them die. And someday, for this, they will fight for your life."
She sat on the bed and placed the pups in her lap beside Johnny. She lifted a little black head with gentle fingers and a little pink mouth ceased whimpering as it found the nipple of Johnny’s bottle.