Friends (2013) - Adams, Robert

Again the cat growled, and it pulled back under the willow boughs until she feared it was going. Why she should cling to this one animal which might mean her no good, she could not have said. But she felt that she could not bear to let it go.

“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. 1 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 earth 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 bom out of the wildest fear at the riverbank. In that camp there would be other weapons than 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 thought 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.