by Robert Adams
"But that is not all on which I want your help, your voice, Hwaltuh," Milo went on after a brief pause. "After the hunt is done and Gy is married to his two wives, I mean to take him with me and Tribe-Bard Herbuht Bain of Muhnroh for a few years. The Linsee may object to it, the boy's sire is almost certain to do so, and a few words in favor of the idea from you would be at least helpful."
"Why in the world would you want to take a fledgling warrior with two young wives who are both certain to be rendered gravid in a very short time with you and the Tribe Bard, Uncle Milo? If it's bows and swords behind you you want, I can think of a goodly number of Linsee men who could and would ride with you for a couple of years for a reasonable figure, just as warriors hire out as guards for the trader wagons now and then."
"No," beamed Milo, "you misunderstand me. Bard Herbuht and I and our party carry very little of value with us, we both are ourselves proven warriors and our women too, so we need no hired guards. Look you, Hwaltuh, Gy has a rare gift of a voice and of a memory and of improvisation; he should rightly be a bard, he longs to be a bard, yet you know as does he that he never will be allowed by his sire to become the Clan Linsee bard, in favor of his elder brother. Not so?"
"Well, I hate to see natural talent of any sort or description wasted needlessly, and Bard Herbuht is of like mind. I want Gy to wend with us for long enough for Herbuht and me to fully test him and make a determination as to whether or not he will be suitable material for the next Tribal Bard."
"A Tribal Bard? A boy of Clan Linsee to be Tribal Bard?" Hwaltuh Linsee was so shocked that he spoke aloud, in a hushed tone. "That is so great an honor for the clan that I feel safe in saying that you'll get no single objection from the chief, and any that the clan bard might voice will be overridden by the chief and the Linsee Council. The Song of Linsee tells of right many mighty warriors, brave and wise chiefs, skillful hunters and the like, but nowhere of a Tribal Bard of our blood."
"You tell the Linsee your plans for our Gy… or better yet, let me have the time to tell him before you come to the chiefs yurt. I feel free to promise that there will be no slightest objection or condition to Gy going off with you and Bard Herbuht."
When, the next morning, half the horses were mind-called down from the prairie above to be saddled for the hunting and foraging parties, Hwaltuh Linsee came down astride the bare back of one of them, not looking as if he had slept well, if at all.
"There's some something nosing around up there, right enough, Uncle Milo," he reported. "It's never gotten really close to the herd, and it's canny enough to stay downwind so that neither the horses nor the cats can scent it properly, but it's there, anyway."
"You take half of my hunt with you, today. I'm going to keep the other half of them and both of the prairiecats with me here, and I mean to find out just what is up there and whether or not it represents a danger to the horses."
Milo shook his head. "Hwaltuh, recall if you will, these aren't grown warriors we're dealing with, this hunt. If whatever is up there is at all dangerous or very big or there's more than just one of them, you're going to be hard pressed with only a handful of boys and girls to back you, with or without the cats and a few stallions. Keep your entire hunt here today. I know exactly where I'm taking mine, for a change, and immediately we've harvested those pigs, I'll bring them back with the meat. We've done a lot of butchering down here in the last week, and who knows what sorts of predators or scavengers we might have attracted."
Once up on the prairie level, Milo rode close enough to the now-reduced horse herd to mindspeak the two prairiecats, Snowbelly and Crooktail.
"Uncle Milo," Snowbelly informed him, "I have never smelled this scent before. It is a little like a big weasel or a skunk, but also it is a little like an average-sized wild cat or a tree cat or even one of the cats of the high plains."
"Does it smell at all like one of your kind?" queried Milo, thinking that they still occasionally came across a wild prairiecat, though such occurrences were getting rarer and rarer.
"No, Uncle Milo, not one of our kind," the cat's beaming assured him. "Whatever it is is as big as a full-grown wolf, but it is no wolf—no wolf ever smelled like that."
"Well," Milo beamed, "Subchief Hwaltuh is staying behind with all of his hunt today, and he means to find it, whatever it is."
Aided by the exceptionally keen-nosed Snowbelly, Subchief Hwaltuh Linsee with a half-dozen members of his hunting party had backtracked one of the creatures that had been prowling around the vulnerable horse herd. Now he and the youngsters were squatting on the muddy bank of a small stream, some mile or more from the campsite. Strange tracks, big tracks, were all about them, and the odor which had so bothered the cats was here strong enough for even the humans to catch its powerful, musky reek.
Wrinkling up his nose in clear distaste, the big prairie-cat beamed, "There are nine of the beasts, at least in this pack, and they made a kill in this spot last night. The smell of deer blood still is strong in this mud, despite the other stench overlying it. They killed it here and ate it here."
"Then where are the bones?" beamed Hwaltuh puzzledly. "What became of the hooves, the skull, the antlers, if any? Foxes?"
"No, Subchief," Snowbelly's powerful telepathy replied. "No recent smell of foxes or any other kind of small scavenger is here. Those strange beasts must have eaten the entire carcass—meat, guts, hide, bones, hooves and all. And I find this most odd, for this was no small deer they killed, Subchief Hwaltuh, and they did not lie up here and gnaw away at those bones like normal beasts, but seem to have eaten them as quickly and as easily as they ate the softer parts. No wolf could do such —or would so do in a country so full of game—yet you can see by the size and the depth of the spoor, these smelly beasts are none of them larger than an average prairie wolf."
The Linsee subchief frowned. "It is something beyond my ken or experience, Snowbelly. Can you range the hunt chief? Or Uncle Milo?"
"This cat will try," beamed Snowbelly, then, after a moment, "No, Subchief, both of them are out of my distance."
The warrior stood up then, saying, "All right. Let's see if we can trail them from this place to wherever they went next. Strung bows, everyone, with one shaft nocked and two more ready. Any beast that can carelessly munch the bones of a big deer could just as easily shear through the leg of a horse or any part of one of us. Only a fool would trail such a beast all unready."
The trail of the smelly beasts wound on down the stream bank for a quarter mile or so, then struck out across the prairie, angling back more or less in the direction of the horse herd and the campsite. This bothered Hwaltuh, and he ordered the pace increased accordingly, for in his absence, there now were no adult humans in the camp, only some bare dozen youngsters— one of them lying burned and helpless—and Crooktail, the other prairiecat.
Nearer to the herd and campsite, Crooktail had perceived the emanations of a large feline, not one of his own kind, but in many ways similar, and, even as Subchief Hwaltuh and his band rode for the camp, the prairiecat was in silent converse with the spotted, short-fanged cat (Milo would have called her a jaguar, while the far-southern clans would have used the Mekikahn word, teegrai, to describe her).
A young cat, without a clearly defined personal territory as yet, she had followed the migrating herds north in the spring, and she now was headed south again as the weather became colder. She was roughly of a size with Crooktail, though finer-boned and less beefy of body. She seemed fascinated to learn that twolegs and a variety of cat not only lived together in harmony but even shared the hunt and the protection of grass-eaters from other beasts.
When Crooktail "described" the scent of the strange prowlers, the spotted cat replied, "Yes, the skunk-wolves. There are not many of them anywhere, though they are more common farther south than here. They will eat anything living or dead, and although they often kill their own food, they will still take a kill from any other they can find or catch. They themselves are inedible, even the young ones. B
ut tell this cat more of these strange twolegs you claim as brothers and sisters and who keep you fed even when you cannot hunt, in the times of the cold-white."
Far from Crooktail and his wild feline companion-of-the-moment, away over on the other side of the horse herd, near to the edge of the bluffs, a mare had just dropped a foal. Her dark-bay flanks still trembling with strain, she was licking the infant horseling clean when her heightened senses told her of the imminence of deadly danger to her and her foal.
Two brownish, striped meat-eaters were stalking her in the open in a series of short, sidling rushes. They both stood as tall as or taller than a prairiecat—as much as six hands at the withers, though their bodies sloped sharply back toward the crupper. An erect crest of stiff hair stood up along their withers and thick necks, and their opened mouths were all big, gleaming teeth.
The mare screamed a terrified warning, then moved herself to take a stand between the threatening predators and her helpless foal. Warned by her hearing more than her sight, she lashed out with a two-hoofed kick to the rear and received the brief satisfaction of feeling her hooves make contact with a hairy something that gasped a whining scream and then thudded to the ground some distance away and made no other sounds of any sort. But even as she fought so well, so victoriously, against one of her stalkers, she realized that at least one other had gotten to, and sunk its fearsome fangs into and was dragging off her newborn foal. And even as a snarling prairiecat arrived on the scene at a dead run, the valiant mare felt rending fangs tear through her near hind leg as, simultaneously, still another set of crushing toothshod jaws clamped down on her throat and windpipe.
One glance at the huge jaws and bulging forequarter muscles of these beasts the spotted cat had called skunk-wolves and Crooktail recognized that this fight must be one of movement, rapid movement, slash and withdraw to slash and withdraw again, for to try to close would mean being held and eaten alive by the dog-shaped things. Beaming out a wide-spreading call for aid from the clansfolk and the herd stallions, the cat dashed in to claw open the flank of an attacker that had just messily hamstrung the doomed mare.
The creature turned its head on its misproportioned neck to snap bloody jaws at its own claw-torn flesh once, before returning to its attack on the mare, hunger and bloodthirst driving it harder than pain.
Crooktail drove in yet again, this time at one of the brown, striped beasts that was wrenching loose great bloody mouthfuls of flesh and entrails from the body of the feebly thrashing, piteously screaming foal. As the cat turned to leap away after laying open the back and off ham of the skunk-wolf, he collided full on with another that had been charging down on him; the impact sent both cat and beast rolling to sprawl on the hard ground, winded. Even as Crooktail fought to breathe and regain enough control of his battered body to arise and keep moving, he saw his nemesis bearing down fast upon him in the form of one of the largest of the huge-jawed skunk-wolves.
At fourteen summers, Daiv Kripin of Linsee was big for his age and race, accurately drew a bow of adult weight, possessed a rare eye for casting darts and was developing rapidly into one of the best hands with saber and lance in the clan. He was sure of himself, as a good leader must always be (or, at least, project the appearance of being). All of his clansfolk recognized that if he lived to adulthood, Daiv would one day be a sub-chief, and Subchief Hwaltuh had felt no qualms at placing the boy in charge of the camp and the herd in the absence of adults.
Daiv had the ability to think ahead, to foresee possible dangers and prepare for them, and he had therefore ordered that a fast and veteran hunter be saddled and accoutered and kept on a picketline in camp for each of the half-dozen boys and girls left to him. Therefore, when the mare's scream alerted him, he and the rest were already tightening cinches and mounting even as Crooktail's mindcall reached them.
"Wait!" he cautioned those who would have immediately turned their mounts and essayed the steep trail up to the bluff top. "First string your bows and nock an arrow—there may be no time to do so above in whatever is going on up there."
As the little party leaned well forward in their saddles to aid their mounts in balancing on the steep, narrow ascent, they all could feel the vibration of the milling, stamping herd, could hear the whickerings and snortings, and could sense the plethora of mindspeaking and mind-callings among the restive, disturbed equines. Horses, even the rare breed of Horseclans stock, possessed nowhere near the intelligence of cats or twolegs, of course; Daiv was of the private opinion that even cattle and sheep were smarter, and he prayed Sun and Wind that this herd would not take it into their empty heads to panic and stampede out into the vast prairie. Not only would that mean many long, wasted hunting days of running the brainless creatures down, as many as had not by then fallen prey to predators, or broken legs caused by their headlong flight, but it would reflect ill on him, since the camp and the herd had been in his keeping this day.
Daiv's hunter crested the bluff almost atop the spot where a badly clawed doglike beast was gorging itself on chunks of flesh and bone torn from the flopping, twitching carcass of what had recently been a new-dropped foal. Without pause or even thought, the boy drove a stone-tipped arrow fletchings-deep in the side of the singular glutton, just behind the hunched shoulder. And the well-aimed shaft had but barely left the powerful hornbow when another had been nocked and readied for use.
Some dozen yards or so away from the riders, they could see a fast and furious and bloody running fight being waged between six more of the big, ugly beasts, Crooktail and, surprisingly enough, a short-fanged cat about of a size with the prairiecat but of a very odd color —a base coat of golden yellow thickly interspersed with large black near-circular blotches.
A momentary contact with Crooktail's mind assured him of the verity of his original surmise, and he both shouted and mindspoke the other boys and girls, "Don't shoot that spotted cat. She's fighting for us against these smelly things." Then he felt it wise to broadbeam the same instructions to the scattered herd guards who were frantically galloping around the herd or trying to force a way through it.
Fearsome as were the skunk-wolves as predators and fighters against other beasts, the pack proved no match for seven mounted, bow-armed boys and girls of the Horseclans, and shortly they were become only seven arrow-quilled lumps of bleeding flesh and bone covered over with matted, stinking hair. That was when Subchief Hwaltuh Linsee and his six riders arrived with Snow-belly.
Dismounting, the warrior examined each of the dead creatures at some length and detail, wrinkling his nose against their hideous reek. "Hmmph. The skunk part of their name is apt enough, but I don't think they're really wolves. For one thing, no wolf has ever had ears like that, and, look you all closely here, the creatures all completely lack dewclaws, and their toe pads are of a very different arrangement than a wolfs are. They—"
A high, wavering scream bore up to them from the camp below the bluffs. There was a cackle of inhuman-sounding laughter and a second scream… or rather half of one, chopped off into sudden silence.
"Sun and Wind!" exclaimed Hwaltuh. "What… who was that?"
Daiv Kripin of Linsee paled under his weather-darkened tan. "The burned Skaht boy, Subchief… he's lying down there alone, no one to tend him or defend him. Could there be… do you think there may be more of these… these things?"
Hwaltuh flung himself into his saddle. "Yes, Daiv, there're more. We've been tracking at least nine of them across the prairie, and you lot only killed seven up here. Come on. Half of us down the center path, half down the upstream route. Snowbelly, you cats go ahead and try to hold them until we get down. You herd guards, stay up here on your posts. Mindspeak the stallions and any other horses you know well—try to get this herd calmed down."
Milo Morai needed but a glance at the nine holed, bloody and stiffening carcasses laid out at the edge of the stream to make positive identification of the late marauders. "Hyenas, Hwaltuh, beasts that look like dogs and behave a great deal like them, too, b
ut are more closely related to cats or weasels, actually. They aren't native to this continent any more than are a number of other beasts now living here, but some must have been imported before the Great Dyings. Probably the many-times-great-grandparents of these lived in a zoo or a theme park and must have lived well on all the cadavers lying everywhere during that long-ago time. I'd never before come across any of them, never even heard tell of them on the prairies, before this. I hope we never again come across any of them, either. In Africa, I've seen packs of them literally eat animals alive."
"Uncle Milo," said Hwaltuh earnestly and solemnly, "I am very sorry about the death of that boy, Rahjuh Vawn of Skaht, and poor young Daiv Kripin of Linsee, conscientious as he is, goes absolutely crushed that he did not think in the excitement of the moment to see that at least one boy or girl remained down here to see to the helpless lad. He feels that he has failed in discharge of his assigned responsibilities this day, fears that the losses of a Skaht boy, a Skaht mare and her foal may recommence the feud and that that too will be his fault. What can I say to him?"
Milo looked at the other warrior, who now stood beside him and Hwaltuh. "What would you say to such a lad in such a case, Hunt Chief Tchuk?"
Tchuk Skaht shook his head sadly. "It's not that poor, brave lad's fault, not any of it, not the deaths of mare or foal or… or Rahjuh. Part of the fault for his death rests squarely upon my shoulders, for I flung him into that firepit and burned him. But the larger part of that fault lay upon Rahjuh himself, for had he not been dangerously insubordinate, there would have been no reason for me to so harshly discipline him. Nor do any of my younger Skahts seem to hold this Daiv Kripin of Linsee culpable—they only seem to regret that they were not here to share in the battle against these whatever-you-called-thems."
"Then," said Milo, "I think that you and Hwaltuh and a couple of your young Skahts should seek Daiv out and tell him what you just told me. Make certain that one of the young Skahts you take along is a pretty, unattached girl, eh?"