'Claws or jaws, brother.'
'What?'
'Do you want to be disciplined for your insolence with a bite or swipe?'
Mewling sullenly, Hoaru bared his throat submissively. Yowlar nipped his brother's cheek, purposely drawing only a token amount of blood to remind him that punishment was solely at Yowlar's discretion.
Leading off, Yowlar steered his rebuked sibling across the shrubby expanse of his domain, approaching the forested fastness of Hideaway Thicket from the southwest. Bald cypresses favoured the swampland muddying the western soil of the wood, graduating into scrub oaks farther eastward as the earth dried out. Behind the padding Sabretooths a flock of miniature Honkers splashed down noisily on the reed-lined pond separating the local marsh from the tar pits. From his perch in the branches of a sycamore an eagle-eyed Raptor observed the waterfowl alight, patiently watching for the weak and unwary. Hunters were not confined to the ground.
Overcast as the morning sky was, the unfolding day broke stiflingly muggy, an indication of the sultry summer just around the corner. Yowlar looked forward to the shady coolness of the forest. Detecting a mob of Lumpbacks browsing unafraid on bushes in the distance, the cat's hungry growl of interest emanated from his stomach, not his mouth. His afternoon would pass that much more pleasantly with a satisfied belly full of warming meat. But camel was not on the menu and Yowlar did not deviate from his course.
Feeling unusually chatty, Hoaru struck up an odd conversation with his younger brother. ‘Do you ever tire of group life?’ he asked, brazenly pacing alongside the higher ranked male. A hissy snarl from Yowlar persuaded him to drop respectfully behind.
'Pride and Sabretooths go paw in paw. They are indivisible,’ remarked Yowlar. ‘What makes you ask such a daft question?'
'Other cats hunt alone.'
'And look how they struggle to survive. There is security in numbers, Hoaru. Disgusted as it makes me to admit it, even the Howlers appreciate that fact. Whether you're running with a pack or a pride, having others around you lessens the hardships. The odds are more in your favour when you aren't on your own.'
Precisely at that moment, as if to emphasise Yowlar's point, a black-winged spectre swooped from out of the murky skies, cruelly taloned feet extended not in landing but attack. Startled by the descending shadow of doom, a grazing jackrabbit bolted away down the grassy flat, instinctively zigzagging as it fled. But it was not the impetus for the bird strike.
The plummeting Deathwing dived feet first into a straggly shrub where a juvenile lynx had been intently marking the hare for its next meal, heedless of the danger to itself. Instead the eater would ironically become the eaten. Thirty pounds of ravening teratorn slammed into the smaller feline, scattering leaves and fur as those wicked talons closed about the cat, crushing the life from it. Beating its immense wings in a rancid rush of air, the huge predatory condor look-alike lifted its twitching prey out of the feeble cover and settled on the grass to feed.
Standing tall at two and a half feet, the Deathwing had the unsavoury appearance of an enormous vulture painted glossy black, the shade of death. Its wrinkly, pink-skinned neck was glaringly featherless for reaching into the bowels of its larger victims unimpeded. Not simply a weak-footed scavenger of carrion, this aggressive bird possessed the ferocious equipment and temperament of an eagle housed in a frighteningly larger package. An indiscriminate killer, it preyed even upon the cubs of fellow hunters.
Perched upon its meal, the Deathwing started tearing strips of flesh from the pathetic carcass, expertly using its viciously hooked beak to carve up the unlucky lynx. A grotesque, fleshy caruncle crowned its naked head, looking like a displaced brain that wobbled uglily each time the feeding bird jerked its rendering bill. Every so often the avian devourer paused to regard the pair of stopped Sabretooths with a detached look, registering their presence in its inexpressive eyes, unperturbed by the nearness of the big cats. It would promptly take flight, carrying the slain lynx aloft, if the Sabretooths took exception to its meal making.
Sickened by the show, Hoaru commented first. ‘A bird eating cat isn't natural, Yowlar. It's not right.'
His brother agreed, growling menacingly at the teratorn. Superficially similar to its bigger kin, the flaccid lynx had the unsettling look of a junior Sabretooth corpse undergoing dissection.
Swallowing another morsel of cat food into its distending crop, the Deathwing deigned to acknowledge the disgusted Sabretooths. ‘Kitty wondering why I no went for running rabbit?’ Cackling chillingly, it croaked, ‘Skip entrée, go for main course.'
'We'll not stay around for dessert,’ Yowlar spat, resuming his jaunt to the forest. ‘Our turn to hunt, Hoaru. Maybe we'll catch ourselves a turkey. All birds are meant to taste like prairie chicken.'
Squawking after its departing audience, the Deathwing taunted, ‘Hatching season soon for kitties. Look forward to I feasting on chicks.'
Once out of earshot, Yowlar explained to Hoaru in a grieved mutter, ‘That's why we cats must stick together. There's definite safety to be had in numbers. Alone we are weak. Together we're unstoppable.'
Thinking otherwise, Hoaru smartly kept to himself his contrary feeling that strength alone belonged to an individual.
Entering the thicketed woodland, the brotherly cats pushed through groundcover of elder shrubs and raspberry bushes, detouring around pricklier thistle patches. The staccato hammering of a drilling woodpecker echoed eerily in the vanguard silence clearing the games trails ahead of the prowling Sabretooths. Sensing the felines hunger, the denizens of Hideaway Thicket intuitively fled. Spying a plump and tasty tapir hurriedly worming deeper into the underbrush of white-flowered elders, Hoaru licked his chops wistfully. Yowlar dictated whatever leftovers his brother ate.
The forest floor steepened as Yowlar headed them upstream along the banks of a gurgling creek, the quietly panting cats wending their way through aromatic cedar groves. Progressing into a stand of sycamore, airborne seeds twirled away from the parent trees, whirring like woody insects on the wings of leafy vanes before spiralling to the ground to take root. Bird song filtered down from the treetops as twittering robins and sweetly melodic scrub jays gaily proclaimed they were in no danger from the earthbound cats.
The ground grew steeper, the brushwood thicker, and the going tougher before the break in the outlying Sentry Hills visible from the gradually thinning trees showed the Sabretooths their destination was near. Glancing sternly back at Hoaru, his fiery, amber-eyed gaze calling for silence, Yowlar crept belly down to the brink of a grassy clearing dotted with boulders, and salivated. A cleft in the line of foothills hemming in the northern extreme of the wooded expanse of the Sabretooth range opened on to the vast prairie, granting the plains dwellers access to Hideaway Thicket. Notably the horses.
A typically small herd comprising the resident stallion and his harem of seven mares with five accompanying foals cropped the luxuriant grasses greening the glade. The homeland of the ancestral equines, North America would continue parenting horses for a further two millennium before natural biological forces selected the species for extinction. Elsewhere in the world wild horses would survive and be domesticated on the steppes of Asiatic Russia. But today the fate of one individual in this particular group rested entirely in Sabretooth paws.
Instructing Hoaru to make the kill, Yowlar said in a low hiss, ‘I'll stand watch for Takers.'
Skulking away to the right, for once Hoaru gladly enacted his brother's will. Visiting this region of Hideaway Thicket outside the winter months was risky. Sabretooths feared no animal alive, but there prowled one creature to which they assigned a healthy dose of respect. And the foothills was its favourite haunt.
Pushing that concern to the back of his mind, Hoaru concentrated on the task before him and crouched watchfully, sifting through his choice of targets. The stallion was immediately discounted due to his viciousness, as were the overprotective mares shepherding colts and fillies: a defensive Fleetfoot rearing with front legs
flailing or delivering a well-aimed back kick could inflict bruising internal injuries, while a non-lethal horse bite was no less painful. Hoaru ruled out the yearlings for being too fleet of foot and not providing an adequate amount of meat for both him and Yowlar. That left a choice between the two mares that had not foaled grazing in the lee of a slanting rock outcrop. Making his selection, Hoaru resumed crawling downwind of the unsuspecting horses, soundlessly circling east of them.
Yowlar approved his older brother's strategy, silently egging him on to complete the hunt successfully and quickly. His craving for horsemeat was consuming his senses.
Horses in this day and age were wilder and more zebra in appearance than their modern, domestically bred counterparts. Coloured an unimaginative brown, ebony stripes boldly patterned the mulish head, neck and forequarters, receding into pale mottlings on the back and hindquarters, ending in vestigial striping on the slender legs. Bodily comparable in size and weight to wild donkeys, the Fleetfoot bore a mane equally erect and brushy. Uncommonly nervous animals, the stallions particularly were subject to incomprehensible temper tantrums, galloping madly about and biting willy-nilly at friend or foe.
A sharp bray of warning from the guardian steed abruptly ruined the element of surprise for Hoaru. Responding to the alarm call, the mares neighed shrilly and trotted for the defile, the bouncy foals scrabbling to keep up. Hoaru erupted from cover, launching himself at the mare he had been targeting. Heavily pregnant and due to foal any day, she was critically slower off the mark than her sisters. But horses were born runners, moreso when panicked, and she outdistanced the charging cat by a hair's breadth, beating hoofs churning up the turf and hurling clods of earth into the charging Sabretooth's slobbering muzzle.
Undaunted by his initial failure, Hoaru tenaciously gave chase, abandoning the grass and bounding over the scattering of rocks that quickly proved the mare's undoing. Weaving through the hindering maze of boulders meant she was unable to reach a full gallop, crucially allowing the striving Sabretooth time to catch her up and draw level. Poised to spring on to her back, Hoaru again altered his fluid game plan accordingly when her foreleg knocked sharply against a rock, causing the cantering mare to break gait and falter. Capitalising on her stumble Hoaru rushed in, hooking her about the neck with his clawed paws. He violently twisted the squealing mare to the ground, slashing at her throat with his canines. Pinning her squirming mass beneath his own panting body, Hoaru waited for the stricken horse to bleed out from her severed neck arteries. Each geyser of redness that spurted airwards marked another measure of the mare's ebbing life-spirit evaporating until nothing but her fleshy vessel remained.
Not shy about coming forward, Yowlar emerged from the forest and claimed first dibs on Hoaru's butchery, planting his forepaws on the mare's flank to stake his ownership of the kill. ‘You were lucky not to miss your chance at bringing down this Fleetfoot,’ he gallingly censured his brother, glancing away at the galloping herd escaping dustily through the defile.
Snarling ingratiatingly, Hoaru relinquished his hold on the carcass and backed away, defending his hunt. ‘Wasn't my fault. Something spooked them at the last moment. Maybe they caught our scents.’ Wind eddies swirled unpredictably in the rockbound clearing, making stalking downwind a game of chance and not a sure bet.
Hunkering down, Yowlar licked the mare's belly prior to gutting her when movement distracted him from his preparations. Hoaru simultaneously pricked his ratty ears at the dense foliage bushing the base of the hills rustling with a life all its own. Yowlar sat bolt upright when a shaggy bulk emerged, exuding a pungent aura of menace.
'You were meant to be on the lookout for Takers,’ Hoaru growled condemningly at him.
'Oh look, Hoaru. One's right there,’ Yowlar snarled waspishly back.
The quadrupedal intruder reared up and hulked over the vexed cats, eleven feet of swaying hostility, its silver-tipped russet pelt distractingly glitzy. There was no mistaking its bearishness, even on two legs. Dwarfing the grizzlies of later times by a wide margin, this longer limbed bruin was a 1,900 lb eating machine and certainly no teddy bear!
Sniffing the blood-tainted air, she rumbled, ‘I'm just in time for brunch,’ thudding back to all fours and lumbering assertively toward the Sabretooths.
Hoaru heard nothing that the bear growled, his attention drawn to her short, broad muzzle capable of delivering a bone crushing, sharklike bite.
'Sabretooths don't share,’ Yowlar hissed at the approaching monster.
'I didn't say anything about sharing,’ said the ursine Taker.
Takers were aptly named. Capable of bringing down a fully-grown bison if inclined, these mammoth bears favoured scavenging over hunting, browbeating Howlers and Sabretooths out of their hard won kills. Unglamorous as a thieving and carrion eating lifestyle was, it proved a safe and dependable means of garnering food: minimal risk of injury for maximum gain. Bears of this magnitude took whatever they desired, free of recrimination and objectors.
Somebody ought to have reminded Yowlar of that.
Flashing his stabbing teeth imposingly at the bear, he growled, ‘Don't bother me, freeloader. There's a Deathwing out on the flat you can go rob instead.'
'That's not how it works, whiskers. Whenever I want something, I take it. I get to choose when and what that is. Right now, Fleetfoot looks tempting ... supplemented maybe by Sabretooth, if you get my drift.'
Yowlar stood, or rather sat, his ground. Hissing at his crazily stubborn brother, Hoaru urged him to back down. The boss Sabretooth ignored that sagacity. Forced recently to kowtow to wolves, he would not demean himself further by retreating before a blundering bear.
Feigning submissiveness by flattening his ears, Yowlar began slinking away, lulling the colossal scavenger forward. Quick as a flash his bunched muscles uncoiled and he sprang, claws unsheathing. The bear was astonishingly quicker, swatting aside the springing cat with a casual flick of a half-foot wide forepaw. Swept out of the air, the tumbling pride leader struck an immovable boulder and bounced off, falling winded to the trodden grass.
Unworried eyes imperiously took in the partnering Sabretooth and the Taker curled her muzzle, leering at Hoaru. ‘You want to try your luck, cat? Bear in mind you are not my equal.'
Looking over at his prostrate sibling, Hoaru was in complete agreement. ‘Take the Fleetfoot and I'll be taking my idiotic brother,’ he bargained with the bear.
The Taker assented with a headshake. ‘Cat meat is too stringy for my liking anyway.'
Hoaru shuddered at that implication. Sabretooths topped the food chain and were not meant to be fodder themselves!
Sparing the cats no further thought, the gigantic she-bear effortlessly ripped apart the horse carcass with her non-retractile claws, cheek teeth grinding bone and pulping meat with equal ease as she broke through the ribcage to nuzzle aside the gristly heart and feast on the succulent liver.
Yowlar mewed, drawing Hoaru's attention. Standing over his dazed fool of a brother, he sniffed at the five ragged scratches where the Taker's fearsomely curved claws had raked Yowlar's forequarters. Ragged strips of bloody flesh hung from the flayed shoulder muscle. Doctoring his littermate, Hoaru nipped off and spat out the ribbons of tattered skin, licking clean the underlying wounds. Mewling from the increased pain, Yowlar endured Hoaru's corresponding chastisement between slurps, stung by his brother's daring frankness.
'I warned you it was dangerous to venture here outside wintertime, but as usual you don't listen to me and I'm left cleaning up your mess again. Takers sleep all winter long. We can hunt here without risk better in the cold season.'
'When game is scarcer,’ Yowlar contradicted.
'But it's safer. And you keep telling me you're the smart one,’ Hoaru sniped, roughly dragging his coarse tongue over the scratches in a final cleansing lick.
Yowlar grimaced. ‘Believe me, brother, I'm smarting.'
Casting a nervous glance the munching bear's way, Hoaru suggested, ‘We should vamoose. T
akers aren't picky eaters and I'm not convinced your playmate isn't averse to sampling cat.'
Making a half-hearted attempt to rise, Yowlar flopped back down. ‘I'm in no fit state to pad anywhere,’ he simpered. ‘You'll have to carry me.'
'I've been doing that your whole adult life,’ Hoaru muttered regretfully, dragging Yowlar by the scruff back into the concealing underbrush, ensuring his slothful brother's ride over the stony grassland was a painfully bumpy one.
Dejectedly plopping onto his belly, his paws pillowing his head, Hoaru enviously listened to the chewing bear making short work of his triumph. ‘I might be able to sneak off with her leavings later on,’ he pined.
Lying prone alongside, Yowlar griped, ‘I don't do seconds.'
'Leftovers have always been good enough for me,’ growled Hoaru, affronted by his brother's snobbery. The glower his remark elicited from Yowlar cuttingly reminded him that the pride leader ranked as his better, customarily deserving the finest cuts of meat.
The forest sheltered the hassled Sabretooths as morning crawled into afternoon. Showery rain misted Scrubland Domain, the clammy wetness furthering the cats’ misery arising from empty bellies and bruised egos. Grisly as his injury seemed, Yowlar could expect a speedy recovery. Notoriously fast healers, Sabretooths pelts were a canvas of scars testifying to gorier encounters with adversarial males. Bear scratchings was just one more etching added to that gallery.
Wounded as his body was, Yowlar's pained mind cleared back to its regular cunningness. ‘This is as good a place to stay until I'm healed enough to pad back to the pride,’ he resolved, contemplating his return on the morrow. ‘Hoaru, you'll tell the girls that I sustained my injuries protecting you from a Taker attack.’ His older brother's sidelong glance betrayed scorn. ‘I have a reputation to preserve,’ Yowlar mitigated in his defence, ‘while yours is already as tatty as your fur. Another blemish won't besmear you. Anyway, it's partly true. I was mauled.'
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