Robert Adams - A Man Called Milo Morai

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 arid 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.

A MAIN

“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, but 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.”