by Andre Norton
Noble Warrior’s eyes narrowed. There had been so many strange, dark, and unpleasant emanations in this place that only now he realized that other-space chill.
“You are dead,” he said harshly as the fur along his spine quivered.
The black cat’s mouth stretched now in a grin. “Just figured it out, have you, new boy? Only you may call it dead—I find my present state most satisfactory. You’d better be worrying about your own. The Princess there,” he nodded again to the other prisoner, “she hasn’t long to go now. He’s decided she’s not worth the trouble of feeding her.”
Noble Warrior looked at that other captive. She had raised her head a fraction and was eyeing the stranger cat almost pleadingly.
“This herder of Khons is not going to get me to serve him!” Noble Warrior emphasized that with a deep throated growl.
“Keep on believing it, youngster. You’ll change your mind quick enough. Not that Marcus can do it, you understand—make you his slave. But it’ll be a rare fight and Simpson here will have plenty to watch while it’s in the doing.”
Noble Warrior edged closer to the door of the cage. He had neat, slender paws and he knew how to use them. The opening of cupboards and doors was no mystery—though the latch on the carrier had been out of his reach. Now he could wriggle past one bar and lay a paw to the fastening here, but in spite of his prying it would not give.
The ghost cat watched him. “Good try,” he commented. “Only it is not going to work. You will have to think of some other way—and there isn’t any.”
Noble Warrior settled back once more. He was thinking again over all that had happened since he had arrived in this dire place.
“That thing—the one the Khon Master used—the one which puffed at me—” He was thinking aloud more than addressing Simpson.
“Got it on the first try, haven’t you? Yes, a puff of that and you’re as limp as a dead rat. He’ll use it, too.”
In all his life Thragun Neklop had never asked for help, but he realized that perhaps such a surrender of Warrior pride might serve him best now.
“If the Khon Master did not have that—”
For a long moment Simpson stared back. His eyes changed; deep in their centers that spark of red grew and began to glow.
“You want help, is that it?”
Noble Warrior met those flaming eyes squarely. This visitor from the shades had not helped that other cat prisoner. Would he be moved any quicker to give aid to him?
“She is no fighter.” Somehow Noble Warrior was not surprised that this other read his thought. “She could not have defended herself as such a fine young fellow as you might do. So, Marcus has done little save twitter over books he cannot understand and brew stinks enough to take one’s breath away.”
“Not like those others,” Noble Warrior inserted slyly, “the ones who knew your value.”
Simpson nodded. “True, very true. I think—” He arose and stretched luxuriously, “that it is time old Marcus be shown his proper place in one world or another.”
He was gone, although Thragun Neklop, blinking twice, did not see him leap away. He extended his claws and rasped them across the splintered flooring of the cage.
Properly sharp, yes. If he could only get a chance to use them. Then he looked once more to the other cat. She was huddled in upon herself like a round black mat. If he got out—if he could fight free—what of her?
Then the door beside her cage scraped open and Marcus shuffled back in, a lamp in one hand and a small basket in the other. He set both on the table and, muttering to himself in a voice too low for Noble Warrior to hear, set about assembling a number of other things to join the light and basket he had brought with him.
Once more Noble Warrior blinked. Simpson was in plain sight, sitting on the edge of that table now watching Marcus’ actions, disdain to be read in every tilt of whisker. It was plain to Noble Warrior that the old man was completely unaware of the big feline almost within touching distance of the bowls and boxes and small bottles Marcus brought from other shelves and set ready to hand.
At length, having combined a pinch of that, a drop of this from one container or another, the man nodded almost briskly and swept all the clutter away from the major portion of the table top. He then proceeded to draw on the cleared space with thick crayon markings and curlicues in red. In the end he surveyed critically a star between the points of which were scrawled convoluted shapings which made Noble Warrior spit in rage. This was truly demon dealing.
Having surveyed his handiwork with apparent approval, Marcus reached for something Noble Warrior had seen before—that noxious puffer. But Simpson’s paw touched that strange weapon first, sending it rolling from the table.
With an exclamation the old man went down on his knees to retrieve what Simpson had rolled under the table. Noble Warrior could not really understand why this would-be demon commander was not aware of the ghost cat.
Beyond Marcus’ groping fingers Simpson made a pounce and brought both forefeet down on the rounded end of the weapon. Noble Warrior could not see any puff of dust at this distance, but Simpson withdrew instantly as Marcus’ hand closed upon the bulb. With a grunt of satisfaction he got creakingly to his feet, and weapon in hand, came toward Noble Warrior’s prison. Steel muscles moved under the shields of fine fur. The training of kittenhood days was very much a part of him now. One human hand fumbled at the latching of the cage and the other advanced with the puffer.
Noble Warrior saw the fingers squeeze on it, but this time there was no dust to clog his nostrils and turn him into a limp fur string. As the cage door swung wide enough, with a battle cry, he leaped straight at that great round head, claws raking deep and true.
Marcus screeched in turn and stumbled back, striving to tear the cat’s body from him. There was a rake across his eyes and then Noble Warrior dropped to the floor. The man blundered blindly along the table, sweeping off the contents to shatter on the floor.
Noble Warrior was across the room in two bounds and had gained the table where the other cage was standing. The latch, which had been placed outside the reach of the captive, was easy enough to get at now. He caught it in his teeth, gave a twist, and the door opened.
“Out!” he yowled.
She squeezed by him, moving so slowly he wanted to hurry her along with a nip on the quarters.
“Neatly done,” Simpson stood on the floor below. “Come along now. You’ve given old dog face something to think about—marked him good, you did. But we’d better be out of here before he gets some of those scattered wits back into his head.”
With Simpson in the lead, the Princess pattering along behind, and Noble Warrior playing rear guard, they threaded through a hall upstairs and were shown a broken window in a nasty smelling, cupboardlike hole.
For the first time Noble Warrior had to think of what would come next. There was no Emmy to hand—she had been swallowed by the dragon—and her father, the Captain, was also already far away. He was alone—no, the Princess was with him, and in a strange country he did not understand at all.
“Simpson—” he began uncertainly.
“You’re on your own now, fighter. Now the Princess—” In this strange light of day they stood in a mean little strip of sour, bare earth. “There’s a place for her. There’s a little girl down the street and across the square who will welcome her. But that’s no place for you. I don’t know what they teach kittens in those foreign parts of yours, beside how to be good fighters. But you should have that which will take you home even if you have to make it on your four feet. Look inside yourself, youngster, and find it.”
Thragun Neklop looked. And he found. He knew the way—he need only go in that direction and keep on until he got there. Why, that was no problem at all.
“Simpson?”
The cat ghost was fast fading only to a shadow of a shadow.
“Get going, youngster. You’ve given me a good day. Old Marcus won’t be trying to make himself a wizard—at least
not for some time—not insulting the shades of Sir Justin and Parson Loomis with his messes. Seems like he met with his match and that was one of us—very fitting. Good journey to you, my young friend, may the mice be many and the road a straight one. Now I’m to see this young lady to her proper place in life. As a good familiar ought.”
The Princess hesitated and then wobbled to Noble Warrior and touched noses, before wavering along behind a fast disappearing shred of darkness. Thragun Neklop drew a deep breath and started to seek his own way.
Noble Warrior, Teller of Fortunes
Catfantastic IV (1996) DAW
Noble Warrior’s whiskers twitched as he sulked down the narrow alley. Under his fastidious feet, though he went with all the care he could, the filth on the pavement spattered his paws. He had learned early in this journey that there were plenty of enemies on the prowl. A dog, its coat spotted with mange, had not been quick enough—Noble Warrior had reached the top of a barrel with just a hair’s breadth between his tail and those fangs.
He had been driven by pangs of hunger to forage in a pail set beside a door. But he still ran his tongue around his teeth, trying to rid his mouth from the taste of rancid meat scraps.
This was no place for the guard of a princess, and the sooner he was out of it the better. Follow that instinctive direction within him, the ghost cat had advised. At the time—once he realized that he did have just such a direction—it had seemed an easy enough thing. But Thragun Neklop had never before had to cross a city of the barbarians, and barbarians certainly these close dwelling creatures seemed to be.
He leaped to the top of a rotting box to rest and try to put in order the events of the past few days. There had been the bamboo cage which was his own private palanquin, and he had meant to ride in it with Emmy, his personal charge, not far away.
Then had come to the place of the dragon where people were swallowed up—Emmy among them—into its fat belly, and his own cage seized and then carried off. Sold he had been like any slave to that stupid meddler in magic—set up to be a familiar, as the ghost cat Simpson had informed him. Only the dolt of a would-be magician had certainly NOT been a match for two cats. Yes, he was certainly willing to give Simpson a full share in that bit of action.
Now he was well away from the house where Marcus had tried to handle what he did not understand, and, with another goal to concentrate on, starting back home.
He was hungry again, but as his head swung toward the other end of the alley, he picked up traces of a scent which made his whiskers twitch—this time in hopeful promise.
He had left Marcus’ shell of a house in the very early hours of the day. Dawn had come, and he could hear the stir in the larger streets. Ahead, at the other end of the alley to which his empty stomach urged him, there was a great deal of noise. He picked up the scent of horses, yes, and some of those woolly creatures called sheep which Emmy found so pettable.
Now he shook each paw vigorously, having no wish at that time to lick pad and fur clean, and made for that end of his path.
The noise grew louder. He could easily pick up the snorting and whinnying of horses mixed with hoarse shouts of men. Reaching the end of the alley, he crouched behind a pile of baskets to spy out the land ahead.
There was certainly a lot of coming and going. Carts laden high were being maneuvered to where they could be unloaded. There were so many smells now that he could not sort out the one which had promise. He wanted none of bold journeying across a place where one was apt to come under a horse’s hard hoofs without warning. And certainly he had no intention of being sighted by any of the men and the few aproned and beshawled women there.
With the skill of his guard training, Noble Warrior selected a path to the right. Where the whole of this cart-filled place seemed busy, there was an eddy there of less confusion.
This appeared to center around a cart which was unlike the others. Noble Warrior blinked and blinked again. Yes, this cart was certainly NOT of the breed of the others. In fact—yes, it looked almost like a farm hut such as he had often seen in his homeland, mounted on wheels. And it was painted in bright colors. There hung a string of bells suspended across a curtained doorway in the back.
Noble Warrior relaxed a small fraction. They had the proper ideas, those of the strange cart. All knew that bells above a door were powerful charms to keep Khons in their dark places. Could it be that here, so very far from the palace of the Princess Suphron, he had indeed found people of the proper heritage who would recognize him—Thragun Neklop—for what he was—a palace guard of high rank? Yet one never forgot proper caution—not if one wanted to make the most of one’s allotted nine lives.
He watched with all the patience of his kind. Set a little to one side on the pavement was a small fire carefully tended by a woman wearing the familiar clinking coin jewelry he knew. Dancing girls dressed so. Over the fire on a tripod was a kettle, and from that wafted the scent which had first reached Noble Warrior. He uttered a small sound deep in his throat without meaning to.
Resolutely he made himself forget about the pot to eye the rest of the company. There were a line of horses a little beyond and men wearing bright headcloths were there, plainly bargaining with the drab-coated people of the city.
The warning bells rang, and a boy about the vanished Emmy’s size swung down the two caravan steps to hand something to the woman by the cookpot. He turned away as if to join the company by the horses and then instead—
Instinctively, Noble Warrior crouched small, tensed his body for a spring. He was sure, as if the boy had cried the news aloud, he had been sighted.
He could slide back into the shadow of the baskets, but somehow he did not want to. Things far back in his memory were moving, oddly disturbing his need to remain alert.
There had been a handmaid of the Princess, a slave taken in war. But she had a gift which brought her into the palace and high into favor with the Princess—she could call to her birds and animals, and they came because something within her was akin to them.
Noble Warrior uttered a small protest of sound. There was no hiding from this boy. Nor did a large part of him wish to do so.
The boy had gone down on one knee a short distance away and Noble Warrior knew he was in full sight of the child. Yet the boy made no effort to approach closer, no gesture which suggested any threat.
“Gatto—?” He spoke the word with rising inflection, and Noble Warrior recognized it as a question.
He arose from his crouch, and sat up proudly, the tip of his tail curled across his fore feet, his large blue eyes meeting the brown ones of the boy.
“Jankos?” the woman by the fire called.
Swiftly the boy made a gesture to be left alone. Now he dared move forward until he could reach out and touch Noble Warrior, while the cat allowed such a liberty.
Noble Warrior sniffed delicately at the knuckles of the turned-over fist held out to him. He did not move as the fingers slowly opened and touched the top of his head between his ears in the knowledgeable way of one used to dealing with cat people.
“Jankos!” The woman had come away from her fire tending to approach. But she suddenly stopped as Noble Warrior stood up, took two steps forward, and uttered the cry he used for a friendly greeting.
“It is a cat, Mammam, but such a cat! Look, he has eyes like the sky!”
The woman joined Jankos, and Noble Warrior sniffed at her full skirt. No, she was not an under-skin friend like the boy, but she offered no harm either. Now she got down on her knees to inspect the cat more closely.
“You are right, Jankos. This is no cat such as one sees hereabouts.” She was half frowning as she studied Noble Warrior. “He is of great worth by guess, there will be those seeking him—perhaps even a reward.”
“Are you hungry, Gatto?” she added, and crooked a finger which brought Noble Warrior willingly into the open and closer to that kettle with the intriguing smells.
Jankos disappeared quickly once more into the wagon and then wa
s back with a bowl into which the woman ladled a portion of the stew she had been tending.
Noble Warrior settled himself on guard by that, waiting for the contents to cool enough for him to investigate them more closely.
The woman sat down on the steps leading up to the curtained, bell-hung doorway, and continued to study the cat. Cats there were in plenty in this land, as well as overseas from which her family had come some years ago. However, never one such as this one. It was as if this find were a blooded horse turned out by mistake with a farmer’s draft horse. She raised her voice:
“Pettros, come you here.”
One of the men by the horses turned his head with an impatient look on his face but, as she made a vigorous gesture, he came.
“Look you what Jankos has found.”
It was the man’s turn to squat on his heels and view Noble Warrior who had at last decided that the stew was ready to be tongue tasted.
“From where did you take him,” the man turned a thunderous frown on the boy.
“From no place. He came by himself. See, he is very hungry—he has been lost—”
The man rubbed his broad hand across his jaw. The woman broke in:
“By the looks of him he has not been on his own too long, Pettros. Perhaps there will be a reward.”
The man shrugged. “He is strange, yes, but there are cats a-many and who offers a reward for such? A horse now, even a donkey, or a good hound—but a cat—I think not. If you wish him, Jankos, bring him along. We have near finished the trading and it is time to hit the road.” He got up and went back to the horses and those about them.
Noble Warrior finished the bowl and even was reduced to giving it several last licks. He did not object when Jankos settled down beside him and stroked his sable brown head, scratching in just the right places behind the ears.
This was not his Princess, nor his Emmy, but the boy was suitable as a companion, and Noble Warrior climbed up into the wagon as horses were hitched to it. He sat just before the curtain and watched the man finish off the contents of the kettle and stamp out the small fire. The woman had already edged past him into the interior of the wagon, but Jankos joined him on the top step, his hand still smoothing in well-trained fashion, which brought a rumble of purr from Noble Warrior.