Friends (2013) - Adams, Robert

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 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 which she imagined was gone with its owner when she had been taken captive 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 Idast 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 shatp. “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 halfformed as it was, mind to mind, there came a squall as nerve-racking as any sound she had ever heard, and the horses, including Boldhoof, went into 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 were 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 Boldhoofs 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.

Nancee was half-conscious—the pain in her shoulder where the great teeth gripped her and the bruising of her body dragged along the ground made her sick—but she held on to the small portion of awareness she had. Surely one of the men back there would use an arrow to better purpose soon—

For the third time the battle cry of a cat rang out, and this time from 1close to her, from the air, as if some furred warrior had grown wings.

“Two-legs, let the good horse free you and then join me here!”

Somehow that reached her in spite of the pain of her body and the near blankness of her mind brought about by Dik’s blow. She was freed suddenly from that crushing of her shoulder, and she slumped, unable to move. Then she could have screamed, perhaps she did, as something tangled fiercely in her hair and pulled up her head. There was a furred body behind her; she caught only a glimpse or two of it as it endeavored to keep its hold in her hair.

Somehow she got to her knees, and that torturing grasp on her hair loosened. She flailed out with one arm, and her hand struck against a stone-firm pillar seemingly covered with damp hide. Grasping at that, she strove to come erect, though she had to lean against the foreleg of the Northhorse to do that.

“Two-legs, there is no time for resting. Get you up!”

Nancee wavered along Boldhoof’s side, and her hand hit against one of the panniers which had still beladen the horse. Apparently the raiders had not stripped their prize. That voice in her head provided the energy she must have. As it impressed “Climb” on her, Nancee strove to fight her way up over the pannier onto the broad back. There was a flash of gray-brown and the young prairiecat was there also, crowding against her.

Boldhoof went into a rocking trot and then such a gallop as Nancee would never have expected the heavy animal could produce. She lay on that back, her fingers laced in the belts which held the panniers, while the cat flattened itself beside her.

“The voiceless horses of those have run,” it cast into her mind. “This good mountain stepped on two of the bad two-legs—perhaps neither will rise again. This is better than the wagon—but we shall find that, two-legs, and Frog Hunter shall be among the bold ones—with another name—you shall see. I am Rider of the Mountain that runs—”

She managed to raise her head a fraction. There was the flow of air about them; truly Boldhoof was running now. Nancee listened for a sound of pursuit; she was not able as yet to look back. Surely Dik would not let them go so easily!

“Dik—” she said aloud, forgetting the difference now between mindspeech and that from the lips. “He will follow.”

There was an odd feeling in her mind. If perhaps the cub laughed so among his peers, that was what she sensed now.

“The loud two-legs was stepped upon by this great mountain.”

To be stepped upon by Boldhoof—could she wish a more successful fate for Dik Romlee? Her mind still seemed hazy, but she held on to the fact that they did seem to be free and moving at a wind-raising rate of speed. But how had Boldhoof had the luck to break loose just at that right moment?