Robert Adams - The Clan of the Cats

The wolf’s first jump missed, but then so did the swing of Milo’s saber. On the second jump, the slavering jaws brushed Milo’s bootsole, but his keen-edged saber took off most of one furry ear, and with the surprised yelp of a kicked dog, the wolf fell back. The determined animal essayed one more leap, but by then Milo’s legs were disappearing over the top edge of the ruin.

They were safe for the moment, but as more and more grey shapes debouched onto the mesa, it became more and ever more clear that their situation was distinctly unenviable.

The wall up which they had come was the lowest side of the tower, so they were at least safe from wolves, so long as they stayed on high. However, although the tower top was slightly concave, the floor was only bare inches below the jagged rim, offering no trace of protection from wind, which, judging from the rime of ice and lack of snow, must be vicious and biting here, so high.

Nor was there anything burnable. While each man carried a few ounces of fatty pemmican in his belt pouch, none had more than enough for one full day. Moreover, none of them had brought water bottles, knowing that they could slake their thirst with snow, but this eyrie was bare of snow.

Husbanding their bare dozen arrows against greater need, the Horseclansmen used their heavy-bladed dirks to work loose jagged chunks of granite and weather-worn bricks, then they and Milo spent the rest of the waning daylight teaching the wolves to keep a respectable distance from the tower.

Horseclansmen were ever prone to gambling, they would wager on anything, and Uncle Milo was asked to bear witness to numerous bets while the supply of missiles lasted—cattle, weapons, old bits of gaudy loot, even women and horses. At least a dozen wolves were either killed outright or so badly crippled that they could not flee or fight off the packmates that savaged them and devoured their sometimes living flesh.

The night was terrible. Rolling pebbles in their mouths to allay their thirst, the nomads laced their hoods tightly and drew the woolen blizzard masks up over lips and vulnerable noses. In the very center of the concavity, they huddled together for warmth, frequently changing position that all might have equal time in the warmer, centermost position.

Not that sleep was easy, for the wolves paced and howled snuffled and barked and yelped throughout the long, dark night. Wolf after wolf set himself at the sheer walls, jumping and falling back to jump again until exhaustion claimed him. The pack seemed driven mad by the smell of so much manflesh and blood, so near, yet so unattainable to them.

Light came at last, but there was no visible sun and no cessation of the biting wind. The signs were unmistakable that a blizzard was building up. Milo knew that were he and his men to survive the coming weather, they must get off this exposed pinnacle and into shelter of some kind. But how?

The wolves paced the length and breadth of the little mesa. They numbered at least threescore, possibly more—grey wolves and those of a dirty brown color, with here and there a black one. Milo could almost feel pity for the canines, for they were obviously starving, with ribracks clearly visible beneath the dull, matted coats.

The pack had lost their fear of hurled stones in the night and once more were ranging close about the tower. But the men discovered that there were few loose rocks remaining on the rims; only in the center, where their combined body heat had thawed the rubble to a degree, could they ply up broken bricks and shards of grey granite.

With the supply of rocks decreasing, Milo awarded such as were available to the four most accurate hunters—Dik, Djim, and the tracker’s two younger brothers, fiery-haired twins called Bili and Bahb. Milo and the other Horseclansmen set themselves and their dirks to worrying loose more of the bits and pieces of old masonry littering the center of the tower.

Milo thrust his dirk blade under a brick that looked to be almost whole … and felt his blade ring on metal! He set the other men to working upon the same area, and slowly a pitted, red-brown iron ring was exposed. Shortly, they had cleared the two-foot-square trapdoor in which the ring was set.

One of the Horseclansmen took a grip upon the ring and heaved, then grasped it afresh with both hands, gritted his teeth and strained until the throbbing veins bulged in his forehead, but the rust-streaked door never budged.

“Wait,” counseled Milo. “There may be a catch of some kind holding it shut.” His dirk blade proved too wide for the crack at the edge closest to the ring; so too was the blade of his skinning knife. But the blade of the small dagger he habitually carried in his boot top slipped easily in. Even with the center of the ring, the blade encountered an obstruction; while pushing the knife against the unseen object. Milo noted that the ring turned a millimeter or so. Maintaining knife pressure, he gripped the ring in his other hand and twisted it right, then left, then right again. At the last twist, the obstruction was gone, and the blade slid easily from corner to corner of the door.

“Try it now.”

The Horseclansman heaved. There was momentary resistance, then, with an unearthly squeal and a shower of rust, the door rose jerkily upward to disclose the first treads of what looked to Milo like a steel stairway, covered with dust and cobwebs.

When the nomad’s belts were once more formed into a makeshift belt and knotted to the back of his own belt, Milo gingerly set foot to the ancient stairs, saber slung on his back and big dirk ready in his hand. As the Horseclansmen watched, all huddled about the opening into the unknown, Milo disappeared into the darkness, only the ring of his bootsoles on the metal telling them that he was still descending.

A sudden intensification of the hot lancing pain in her left foreleg awakened the Hunter, that and a thirst that was raging. Arising, she hobbled across the high-ceilinged, airy den to lap avidly at the pool in one corner—a pool that never froze even in the worst of winters and that never had been dry even in the most arid of summers.

Her thirst quenched in the crackling-cold water, the Hunter hobbled back to her guard post by the mouth of the tunnel. Lying down once more, for she seemed utterly devoid of energy, she licked at her swollen, throbbing left foreleg. Even the gentle touch of her tongue sent bolts of burning agony through every fiber of her being … and, of course, that was when she heard the first wolf enter the tunnel.

The Hunter had been aware that the two-legs were upon the high, flat place, where birds nested in warmer times, and where she and her now-dead mate had right often sunned themselves. But because she did know the place so well, she knew that there was no danger of the two-legs getting from there to the den. And if the wolves could find a way to get to the two-legs and wanted to eat them, they were more than welcome. As for her, she had nearly gagged at the foul stench of that two-leg she had so easily killed on the preceding day.

When the clawclicks and shufflings told her that the lupine invader was past the first turn of the passage, she entered it herself, puffing as little weight as possible upon her strangely huge and very tender left foreleg.

They met between the first turn and the second, in a section too low-ceilinged for either to stand fully erect. The Hunter knew that she possessed the deadly advantage here, for with only toothy jaws for weapons, the wolf could only lunge for her throat, whereas a single blow of her claw studded forepaw could smash the life from him as quickly as she had killed that two-leg. But she reckoned without her disability.

Sensing more than seeing the location of the wolf head, she lashed out with her sound paw … but this suddenly transferred the full weight of her head and fore-quarters onto the hot, swollen left foreleg. Squalling with pain, she stumbled, and her buffet failed to strike home; the bared claws only raked the wolf s head and mask, and before she could recover, his crushing jaws had closed upon her one good foreleg, eyeteeth stabbing, carnassials scissoring flesh and cracking bone.