by Andre Norton
“Those will be coming—” She mind-pictured Dik striding confidently toward the willows, satisfied that the easiest part of his massacre and pillage waited before him.
“This one will kill if any two-legs tries to—” The words in her mind faded out, but she was aware of movement against the gravel, of seeing a paw—outsize for even the large animal before her—rise claws curved as if already dug into flesh to tear.
“These hunt cats—” She pictured the hide Dik had had made into a cloak and wore proudly.
The young prairiecat spat and whipped out with that uplifted paw to scrape a fall of leaves from a willow branch.
“This one is of the blood of Dark Slayer. No two-legs can—”
“They can stand at a distance,” she interrupted that boastful claim, “and fill you full of arrows. Dik is a master archer.” Deliberately, as she had tried earlier to project what she had deemed had happened to their camp, so did she now mind-picture a gray-brown body well covered with quills which snapped wildly from side to side as a wounded animal expired under feathered death.
“So.” There was an odd note in that. The cat mask again came farther into view—the yellow eyes only slits, the mouth open enough to show the whole armanent of fangs. Though Nancee knew that the cat was hardly yet out of cubhood, still there was something about it which held her in a kind of awe.
“Would you wait here for this two-legged killer of his kind?” came the quick demand then. “He will fill you with his arrows or take a blade to cut you down.”
“The cat warrior knows of a better place?” Out of her resigned belief that she faced an already lost battle a small hope arose.
“This way.” The swaying of the branches was all which remained to mark the cat’s retreat. Because she could think of nothing better, she followed, trying as well as she might to go without disturbing the branches and so betray her path to any who might watch from the hilltop.
However, the screen lasted until she was faced by a stand of grass where a number of bruised stems showed her a new trail. Keeping to her hands and knees, Nancee followed.
In the wall of the hill here there was a break—perhaps some spring storm long ago had eaten away the bank. A tree of greater girth than the willows among which she had taken refuge lay crown downward, its withered and broken tangle of roots uphill. To one side of the trunk there was a scatter of earth and a large hole from which came a musky stench that nearly made her gag.
“The black killer thing is gone,” sharp into her mind came the “voice” of the cat. “That one has left a hidden way of its own. Crawl, two-legs, and you will see. I do not think that those you fear can look into the earth itself. Crawl!”
Obediently she crawled forward into the evil-smelling pit in the soil. She found it large enough that she could still keep to hand and knees, but it was dark, and she had only a very faint scrape of claw now and then to let her know she still followed the cat.
There came an abrupt change as ahead she saw daylight, which was dimmed nearly at once by the cat shouldering its way through. So she came, head foremost, into another stand of grass and brush, warned in time to slither belly down under this other natural cover.
Nancee found herself looking down into the small hollow where they had pitched camp. The first hues of sunset were at her back as she skulked behind a bush to peer through.
Three bundles of red-splashed clothing had been rolled aside. Mik, Hari, and Uncle Roth, she was sure, and had no desire to see them closer and prove her identification right. Three men hunkered on their heels after the way of prairie barbarians. They had ripped open the supply bags and were wolfing down the nearly stone-hard rolls of travel meat, chewing with determined force.
Dik was not there. A ripple of foreboding ran up her spine. Only too well she could guess what occupied the man she had come to loathe. Snooping into the willows—hunting—her!
There was the pound of a huge hoof on the ground. Even where she lay in hiding she could feel the force of that through the earth. Boldhoof, the one treasure Uncle Roth had held fast to, was impatient. Large and armed as she was with hoof and teeth, the mare was generally even of temperament. Nancee had had those soft lips pluck a round marble of maple sugar from her palm and knew she had nothing to fear from the tall mountain of a horse.
The Northhorses were not unknown here in the southern lands, but those who had them gave them great care. None were bred here, being sold only by tribes who were so jealous of their monopoly that they would not ever offer a stallion to be bought by an outsider.
They would not have gained Boldhoof even, had it not been that her former owner had died of the coughing sickness two months back and Uncle Roth had claimed the animal as burial price. The secret he discovered within a day thereafter he had shared only with Nancee. Though Dik might have discovered it by some spying. Boldhoof was in foal! And should she throw a colt, why then their family fortune could be established as soon as the foal appeared.
Hate was bitter water in Nancee’s mouth as she watched the outlaws below. Though they seemed at such ease she was certain that they must have sentries out and perhaps even men on the search with Dik. She counted seven horses—most of them the smaller mounts known to the prairie men. If those were of the Horseclans breed—
She could no longer see anything of the cat, who had gone to earth making itself invisible, its brindled fur one with the ground and the sun-browned grass. Again the girl heard and felt the impatient stamp of Boldhoof. Never had she longed so much for anything before as she wished she could communicate with the huge mare. These rogues had picketed her, but they could not guess the strength beneath that well-groomed hide. Perhaps a single sharp pull would free—
“The evil two-legs!” A flash of warning cut through her own thoughts sharply enough to immoblize her for a moment.
“Sooooo—” That word was drawn out to become the hiss of a serpent.
She turned her head unwillingly, still hoping against hope. Looked up. Dik had fulfilled his claim as an expert hunter. He stood there, his unsheathed sword gripped in his hand. Nancee knew the meaning of that threat. Dik could use his sword like a throwing knife. She had seen him win a handful of good silver bits doing just that. One swing and she would be pinned to the ground—and he could place that unwieldy spear exactly where he chose.
“Lady of the House of Bradd!” He made the greeting a jeer, and in his eyes she could read exactly what she knew would be there. “You have been overshy. But all is well now. Come to me!” His soft slur of speech ended with a snap like that of a whip.
She could be a fool and defy that order—and lose everything by being mishandled and perhaps even thrown down to those stinking men huddled around the fire. Or one could rise as Nancee did now, her attention on Dik, wary and waiting for his next move.
“Lady of Bradd”—again his leer and the tone of the words was like a blow— “it would seem that you come late to our meeting. But that you do come is as it should be.” He spoke without the slur of the frontiersman, the garbling of an underling; he might be some man of name in exile.
“There is no Bradd,” she found her voice to say flatly. “As you well know. Roth had no kin land anymore.”
“Which is the same as saying that you are also landless—but that you are lordless is a different matter, my lady. The man who takes you will have his rights, as you are heiress now and there is more fighting in the east. Even as we stay here there could be a reversal of all which has happened and you could call yourself duchess and first lady in Bradd.”
Her lips twisted in a grimace. “That will never be.”
“Ah.” He was smiling, a smile which carried with it the chill of deepest winter. “Never is a word no true man takes for surety. Come!” Again that snap of order, this time fortified with jerk of the swordblade, beckoning her to him.
She rubbed one wrist against the other, remembering her plan born out of the wildest fear at the riverbank. In that camp there would be other weapons th
an her own teeth. Again that death lay beyond was nothing to fear—life, on the other hand, was promised enduring horror.
Nancee took two steps farther and then was rocked by the message which flashed into her head:
“Two-legs, why do you what this piece of stinking guts and evil orders you?”
The cat! “Go,” she found wit enough to return, watching Dik. If the renegade had any mindspeak the creature from the prairies might already have brought a sad fate upon itself. “Go—this one is a killer-of-all, men and animals both. He would wear your hide with pride. Go before he comes to hunt you!”
“There will be a hunting, yes, a good hunting!” The answer seemed as loud to her as if the prairiecat had shouted it aloud in human-formed words. “Be you ready for that hunting.”
She took another short step. There had been no change in that twisted leer with which Dik was regarding her. She was almost sure that he had no mindtouch ability. “Go before he discovers—’’
There was no answer—nothing she could touch which suggested that the cat was still within range. So, for all its confidence in battle, it had indeed followed the prudent way she had suggested. But deep in her there was another small taste of death—she was wholly alone.
“Lookit, Ed. Th’ boss has him th’ ladybird, all nice and easy!” One of the men by the fire had arisen and was staring upslope at them.
“What yuh do now, boss? Bed her and make yurself High Lord—”
“What I do is my concern.” Again the arrogance of a high-kin man, and something in the note of that wiped all the gap-toothed smiles from the faces of his followers.
Nancee’s chin went up a fraction. She might be wearing clothes stinking from months of travel, her hair hanging in wet tails about her head and shoulders, but the manners of the great hall were hers, and now they provided her with a kind of armor, keeping away the horrors which might still face her here.
She had only one thing to depend upon—Dik would seem to have some ambitions laid back in the war-torn country from which she and Uncle Roth had been fleeing. It was true that if Bradd still held any power the man who wed her could sit in the high seat there. But that anyone would now fasten on such a thought made her weigh Dik’s plans the lighter. There was nothing left in the once-rich land which would be worth even a clipped silver piece now. Yet it was still this belief she sensed in the renegade which gave her any kind of a chance.
Without looking back over her shoulder she spoke again:
“Kehlee of the Peaks squats in the ruins of Bradd—unless he has swept the land of everything, even sold our people to slavers. Do you go up against Kehlee’s squadron with this army of yours?” From some inner strength she produced that same flat tone which denied him any thought of having imprisoned more than just her body.
“We shall see.” He did not sound as if he had any fears of her dismal suggestion being truth. “Harz, over with you and let the lady sit there.”
The man directly before her did move, and with a will which suggested that Dik ruled his own following if he did not play overlord in the east. Nancee seated herself with the same sweep of skirts she would have used back in the House of Bradd. Dik had returned his sword to its sheath. Now he made a gesture, and the others of his noisome force shuffled away, allowing him good room to seat himself not too far from his captive.
He now held to her part of a dry and crumbling journey cake, one end of which was covered with thick grease. “Eat!”
She longed to lean forward and throw it into his face, but she ate, the rancid taste giving her queasiness.
“You are wiser than that meat over there.” He spoke clearly, as if determined to make her see the very depths into which she had fallen, perhaps thinking so to cow her further as he gestured to the tangled bodies at the other side of the hollow. “I think we shall deal well with one another.” Now he reached into a saddlebag and brought out a length of dark dried meat, from which he cut a mouth-shaped piece, flipping it into his open jaws with a turn of the knife.
The knife had been riding in his boottop. Nancee made note of that. Then she heard the heavy stamp of Boldhoof’s foot. The Northhorse—if they were lean of loot this outlaw force had at least that bit of luck—there was also what rode in the two panniers. Those had not been loosened from their pack across the mare’s broad back before the raiders had struck.
Metal, always good for sale to the skillful smiths of the Horseclans—some of it dug with her own hands when their small party had chanced upon one of the old ruins before they had joined the wagon train. That train was where Dik had enough interest with the wagon boss to get them cut off and left behind, ripe for his taking.
“Two-legs—”
That voice again sounded in her head. There was no change in Dik’s expression as he watched her. Dared she believe that she was the only one here that the prairiecat could reach?
She took the chance. “Cat-one, this is death for you. Get away while you can.”
Nancee chewed and swallowed. Again she heard a heavy stamp from the picket line. The other mounts were moving uneasily. Then one gave a shrill whinny which brought Dik’s head around.
“What’s to do with those horses, Mish?”
One of the men who had slouched away from the fire spat over his shoulder.
“Jus’ spooked—they’s bin doin’ that for a while. Tree cat hanging around maybe. Tha’s like ’em.”
“See to it.” Dik did not raise his voice, but there was a bite in it.
He turned back to Nancee. “Tree cat,” he repeated slowly as if trying to impress on her the dangers which might be piled mountain-high against anyone in this wild country. “Get one of them on your trail, lady, and you’ll know what ill luck really means.”
Defiance was on the tip of Nancee’s tongue, but she swallowed hasty words. She must let him believe that he had won—at least for now. Perhaps he had, unless she had such courage as that of Mairee.
One of the horses flung up its head and uttered a startling loud neigh. Boldhoof stamped as if in some answer known only to the equine kind.
“Cat-one—” Nancee’s thought was sharp. “If this is your doing—”
All the men in the bowl had turned to look at the picket line now. Two had swords out, and a third was fitting an arrow to the string of his bow. Even Dik had half turned his back on her, though she did not believe that she dared move without his seeing.
“Cat-one—these are ready for the kill!” She could not be sure what game the half-grown cub was playing nor why, but she was sure that the prairiecat was behind it all.
“Get it!” Dik’s order grated and sent the men into action, though she noted that they moved slowly, watching the brush and the two trees between which the picket line had been anchored.
Nancee measured the distance between her and Dik. His attention was now all for the horse line, and he had drawn his own sword. That knife in his boottop—dared she try for it?
As if the hidden clan cat read her purpose, only half-formed as it was, mind to mind, there came a squall as nerve-racking as any sound she had ever heard. The horses, including Boldhoof, went wild lunging at the ropes. That of the Northhorse parted as if it were made of tapestry thread and the huge mare swung around, shouldering its smaller neighbors apart, leading to the break-free of one of those. At the same time Nancee flung her own light body forward. Her shoulder struck behind Dik’s knees, sending the man staggering for a step or two, but not before she had jerked that boot knife free, its hilt fitting into her hand as if it had been made for her alone.
The men pulled back as Boldhoof reared and dropped both hoofs together with a ground-shaking force. While two of the other horses, now free, ran up and away over the edge of the hollow, their fellows flailed out with hooves and jerked their heads against the confinement of the ropes which held them.
“Whar’s tha’ double-be-damned cat?” shouted the archer, his bow swinging from side to side as he tried to find some target.
They we
re all looking upward into the trees, endeavoring to sight the menace. Yet, save for the threshing of lower limbs caused by the jerking of the picket line below, there was nothing to be sighted.
Dik had regained his balance and swung around, his eyes narrowed, the intent look of the hunter on his bristle-cheeked face. He took a single stride to where Nancee was regaining her feet, the knife in her hands.
“What kind of damned witchery—” he began, and then his hand flashed out. Before she could dodge or try to defend herself his fist struck her chin, not full on as he had intended, for some providence allowed her to jerk her head back in time, but with force enough to send her spinning backward, the world a whirl of pain and light around her.
She fell right enough, and part of her waited for the second blow she was sure would come. Instead there was a hoarse shout and her dazed head and misty sight could not warn her. There was the heavy smell of horse scent, and with it the odor of raw fear.
Over her loomed a trampling monster. A great head bowed, and jaws opened and closed again on her hunched shoulder. She was dragged upward, though her feet did not quite leave the ground, and so she passed into a darkness through which came only faintly for the second time the yowl of a cat.
Pain in her back and her feet reached into the dark and brought her out again. She was near stifled by the heavy smell of horse sweat, but she forced her eyes open. Yet, she was being drawn along the ground, backward, unable to see where she might be taken. And it was Boldhoof’s mouth which had closed upon her, the mare’s giant strength seemingly little disturbed by the burden of the slight body she had gathered from the ground.
There was a whistling flight of an arrow, the kind used to frighten game into a stampede during which the stragglers could be picked off. Yet Boldhoof paid no attention to the shaft, which must have passed near by the sound of it.