Robert Adams: The Clan of the Cats

“Don’t ask me how, Uncle Milo, but I know her den is in there, in those rocks!”

But when Milo stood up, he nearly fell again. Seeing him so unsteady, Dik and Djim half-led, half-carried him up to the bank of the little stream. With his charge seated against the thick bole of an elderly oak, Dik mindspoke his clansmen to gather squaw-wood, brought steel and stone and tinder from out his beltpouch and soon had the dry stuff smoking quickly.

For some time, they had been hearing, now and again, the howling of wolves, but such was not an unusual sound either upon high plains or mountains. In the dead of a hard winter such as this, the packs often joined into superpacks and hunted almost constantly, day and night, small game or big, resting only on those rare occasions that their bellies had a modest quantity of food to work upon.

However, the howls of this pack were becoming louder, and that meant nearer ! Now and again, gusts of wind bore the excited yelping of wolves on a flesh trail … and no man in the party had the slightest doubt about just whose trail those gaunt grey demons were on.

Once, long ago, Milo had faced a big wolfpack, while afoot, in open country. He had come out of it alive and whole, but more than half the score or so of warriors he had started with had not been so lucky, and even those who lived had carried scars of that fearsome battle to their graves.

Milo forced himself erect and set himself to control the shakiness of his legs. “Dik, Djim, the rest of you, this is no fit place to try to fight off Wind knows how many wolves. And we number too few, even were the conditions ideal.

“Now, true, we could each climb a tree and rope ourselves into it, but we could very easily freeze to death, so exposed this coming night, or die of hunger or thirst before those stubborn devils left.

“Djim, you say that the hill ahead is steep. How steep?” The intuitive tracker sensed his embryonic plan and shook his shaggy blond head. “Not that steep, Uncle Milo. We won’t be able to go up as easily as a cat, and the wolves will have even more trouble, but they and we will be able to climb it.”

“Then how about the rocks on the summit, Djim?”

The tracker closed his eyes and wrinkled his brow in concentration, then opened them with an incisive nod of his head. “Yes, Uncle Milo, the rocks are all overgrown with vines, but there are places that are almost sheer for seven or eight feet or more near the very top. And the top looks to have a depression in the center, so it may offer some protection from the winds.”

The way was steep, very steep, and might have been deadly treacherous in better, warmer weather, but now, at least, the jumbled blackish rocks were frozen into place and only a few shifted under the weights of the climbing men. The sounds from behind spurred their straining muscles to further efforts. The wolves had reached the stream now, and were fanning out to find the place where the men had come out of the swift-flowing water.

Milo alone recognized the rocks up which they frantically scrambled for what they were—much-weathered shards of old asphalt. A hundred years ago this had no doubt been part of a road leading to the hilltop, but fivescore freezing winters and as many scorching summers had buckled and cracked it. Then, undercut by erosion, the easy, manmade gradient had given way, the fill had washed down to the base of the hillock and left behind the heavier chunks of paving.

Milo led the way, knowing that any rock that would bear his weight would certainly not give under the lighter men who followed him. As he pulled himself over the rim, he heard the triumphant signaling howl of a wolf, a wolf that had sniffed out their trail. Now bare seconds were precious as rubies.

Djim Linsee was the next to clamber onto the level ground, and he and Milo grasped the arms of each of the others as they came into reach and pulled them up by main strength, bidding them run for the stone ruin—for such Milo could see it to be—some eighty yards across the tiny mesa. But even as they raised the last man, Dik Esmith, the first of the wolves ran snarling to the foot of the incline, there to rear on his hind legs and voice his savage view-halloo.

Djim snatched up a piece of loose stone as big as his two fists and hurled it with all his wiry strength and with deadly accuracy. His narrow skull shattered, the big dog-wolf fell without even a whimper, to lie twitching below them. But his last howl had been heard and understood. An increasing chorus of wolf-sounds told Milo and Djim of the grey death coming on as fast as the hunger-driven beasts could run.

In her den, full of deer meat and languidly laving her kittens with her wide red tongue, having to hold the squirming bundles of soft fur down with her good forepaw, the Hunter had heard the wolves afar off, long before the less sensitive ears of the two-legs could have been aware of the huge pack.

But the Hunter knew herself to be safe, even should the pack ascend the hill. Even with an injured forepaw, the big cat realized that she was more than a match for any one wolf, and no more then one wolf at a time could crawl into the narrow, winding passage that led to this den. Too, her eyes were better adapted to the near-total darkness that prevailed beyond the first couple of turns of the passage.

Three winters ago, she and her now-dead mate had lazily taken turns at killing wolves starved or crazed enough to enter the confines of that passage. As many had they killed as she had claws on her forepaws, and as fast as the cats’ mighty buffets crushed skulls or snapped necks, as fast as their long fangs tore out throats, so last did others of the pack drag out their dead or dying fellows to tear them apart in an orgy of lupine cannibalism.

At last, though, the edges of their hunger slightly dulled by their grisly repast, the pack had trotted off to seek out less dangerous prey. And the Hunter, gently swishing her long, thick tail and watching the kittens’ wobbling stalks and bumbling leaps at the tailtip with a critical maternal eye, knew that she was still capable of defending herself and her young from any number of wolves.

The building that was now become but ruin had been fashioned of bricks and rough-hewn blocks of granite. Milo could see no clues as to what had caused the collapse of the structure, but he was not really looking. Djim and another extraordinarily agile man had somehow gotten atop the almost smooth, almost vertical eight-foot-plus wall and Milo was now using his prodigious strength to lift the other four, one by one, holding them at arm’s length over his head, that those above might drag them up.

The wolfpack was howling and yelping below the hill. A few had already scrabbled up the difficult ascent and were even now racing flat out toward the ruin, howling back the message that the quarry were in sight. The last Horseclansman raised and safe on high. Milo stepped back a couple of paces and leaped upward, his arms stretched upward toward the hands that reached for him. But his legs failed to deliver their usual power and even collapsed under him as he fell back, sending him tumbling down to the very foot of the ruin.

Only fifty feet distant was the nearest wolf—its red tongue lolling over its cruel white fangs, short spurts of mist jetting from its nostrils, and pure murder shining from yellow eyes.

Milo fought back onto his feet and retraced his way to the foot of the sheer wall. Even as he reached it and grasped the joined belts the Horseclansmen had lowered, he could hear the claws of the big wolf clicking on exposed surfaces of the ruin. The animal’s panting sounded unbelievably loud and Milo even imagined that he could feel the hot, dank breath on the back of his neck.

As the Horseclansmen drew him up, he freed his right hand and drew his saber, for he sensed himself rising very slowly, too slowly. His head and shoulders already were above the upper edge of the ruin when the wolf arrived where he had been. Without any discernible pause, the ravenous beast jumped high, jaws agape.