Robert Adams - A Woman of the Horseclans

There was one other find. Set in the concrete floor at the fool of the spiral staircase was another trapdoor, this one a bit larger than the one above—about three feet by two feet.

Milo filled and lit the larger lantern, then set it on the shelf and opened the second trapdoor with no difficulty to disclose more steel stairs, but these looking to be in better condition for all that they still beckoned down into darkness.

He turned to the others saying, “Dik, Djim, you men all stay up here. I’ll mindcall if I need you or when I find food or water. Help yourselves to any of those rusty tools as take your fancy, but leave that thing in the corner behind the can alone—it was once a very deadly weapon, and it still might hurt or kill one of you if anyone tinkers with it.”

The floor at the bottom of the second flight of stairs was concrete also, but it once had been covered with asphalt tiles. which crunched and powdered under Milo’s bootsoles. To his left a few yards was a jumble of tumbled and broken brick and granite blocks all covered with plant roots. Milo guessed that he was now within the main building of the ruin, whereon the tower sat perched.

Behind and to his right, the remnants of rotted wood paneling partially covered what looked like still-sound brick walls. More of the rotted, ruined wood sheets framed the door ahead of him, its brass knob green with verdigris. Although the knob wined stiffly, it did turn. Nonetheless, the door remained firmly closed. Setting the lantern on the stairs, Milo put both hands and his full strength to the tasks of turning and shoving; at last, something popped tinnily and the door gave under his weight.

The air that wafted out of this new darkness bore a hint of dankness and another ghost of a smell that set the hairs on Milo’s nape a-prickle. Loosening the dirk in its sheath, he raised the lantern and cautiously stepped through the doorway.

There was a scratching at the door of the yurt. Mairee arose and padded over to open the carved wooden door, then push aside the layers of felt and allow an elderly prairiecat and retired cat chief, Bullbane, to enter.

“May Sacred Sun shine good fortune upon all within this yurt.” The newcomer mindspoke the ritual greeting.

“And may Wind blow to you all which you desire, Brothel Chief,” Dik Krooguh beamed in reply, adding. “Will you not join our circle? Uncle Milo had admitted us all into his memories and was enriching us with the tale of how, long ago, the brave race of the prairiecats first allied themselves with us Kindred.”

“Wolfkiller? The mother of our race?” said the old cat.

“Yes, it was Uncle Milo found her and her kittens in much danger and … But I am certain that Uncle Milo, who actually was there, so long ago, can recall it far better than I could simply repeat things I have had mindspoken to me over my comparatively short lifetime.”

Again Milo opened his mindful of memories, and again those gathered with him in the yurt entered that mind to share of those memories. But these memories now were those things he had learned from a nonhuman source, from that great cat who thought of herself then as the Hunter or the Mother and who only later was known to her many descendants as the Wolfkiller.

The Hunter’s memories of that first, fateful day were of icy-toothed wind soughing through the snow-laden branches of the overhanging trees, increasing the chill of an already frigid day. Somewhere within the forest, a branch exploded with the sharp crack of a pistol shot.

But the Hunter had then yet to hear a shot of any kind, and so she ignored that sound as she ignored the other natural sounds which neither threatened her nor heralded possible prey. She was just then concentrating her every sense and ability to get as close as she could creep to her browsing quarry before beginning that swift and silent and deadly rush and pounce that would, if done properly, result in her acquisition of nearly her own weight of hot, bloody, nourishing meat.

And she needed meat desperately. Meal to fill the gnawing emptiness of her shrunken belly, meal enough. maybe, to be borne back to her den for the three waiting little cubs to worry, lick at and chew upon.

But the Hunter also knew that she must be very, very close, far closer than usual for a cat of her size and experience, for she now had but three sound legs. Her left foreleg, deep-gored by the same shaggy-bull cow whose widespreading horns and stamping hooves had snuffed out the life of her mate and hunting partner, was healing but slowly in these short days and long, cold nights of deep snows and scant food.

As the manyhorn browser ambled to another young tree and began to strip the bark from its trunk the Hunter carefully wriggled a few feet closer, her big amber eyes fixed unwaveringly upon her prey, her twitching nostrils seeking for the first, faint scent of alarm or fear. Then suddenly, she stopped, froze into place, even as the heads of all four of the browsers came up and swiveled to face a spot just a few yards to the Hunter’s right.

The Hunter saw the muscles of the largest manyhorn browser contract under the skin of his haunches, but before he could essay even his first wild leap away from proximity of the danger he sensed, four thin little black sticks came hissing from the thick concealment of a stand of mountain laurel and all four of the manyhorn browsers collapsed, kicking their razor-edged hooves at empty air, one of them coughing up quantities of frothy pink blood which sank, steaming, into the deep white snow.

A vagrant puff of wind wafted to the Hunter the rare but still-hated scent of two-legs, and her lip curled into a soundless snarl. They were trying to rob her of her manyhorn browser, trying to steal life itself from her and her helpless cubs; for if she did not have food now, she knew that soon enough she would lack the strength to get food in this frozen world, and her cubs were still too young and immature to hunt for themselves. Outside the den and lacking the protection of her claws and fearsome fangs, those three furry little felines would be the hunted rather than the hunters.

One of the lung-shot manyhorn browsers, this one a horn-less doe, struggled to her feet and crossed the deer yard at a stumbling, staggering run. Another of the hissing black sticks sped from out the laurels to thunnk solidly into her other side, just behind the shoulder. The stricken doe managed two more steps, then fell again this time almost under the Hunter’s forepaws. The heady scent of the dying deer’s hot blood filled the cats nostrils and set her empty stomach to growling while her tongue unconsciously sought her thin lips.

The Hunter flattened her long-furred body onto the snow-covered ground and moved not a whisker, for she wanted none of those little black sticks flying in her direction; but neither was she willing to make a quick and silent withdrawal, leaving behind so much of the meat she had stalked so long and so laboriously.

She watched four of the two-legs, coveted in animal hides and furs, rise up from out the mountain laurel clump that had hidden them. Pulling long, shiny things from someplace at a point just above their hind legs, they went from one to another of the manyhorn browsers, opening the big throat veins and holding hollow, pointless horns to catch the hot red blood, which they then drank off with broad smiles and obvious relish.

The Hunters keen ears could hear other two-legs and a number of the rather stupid, hornless four-leg grazers that often carried two-legs on their backs proceeding from a short distance downwind. She knew then that if she was to have any half-decent chance of getting clear with one of these dead manyhorn browsers that meant so much to her and her most recent litter, it must assuredly be done immediately.