Robert Adams - A Woman of the Horseclans

Many winters ago. she and her mother and her littermates—they then being something over a year old—had whiled away a snowy afternoon by taking turns killing wolves as the lupines reached the first turn in the entry tunnel. One by One, they had slain or seriously maimed the marauders, who then were dragged out backward by their packmates, torn apart and eaten. Finally, as darkness approached, the huge pack—their bellies by then partially filled with wolfmeat from their cannibalistic feast—departed the high place to seek easier prey in the forests below.

Aware that among other natural advantages, her sight was far superior to that of the wolves in the almost total darkness prevailing in the tunnel, the great cat anticipated no difficulty in doing the amount of killing necessary to discourage this pack, if matters came to that.

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 unsteadily across the high-ceilinged, airy den to lap avidly at the pool in one corner.

Her thirst sated for the nonce with the water, which, though always crackling-cold, never froze over in even the most bitter of winters, she did not return to the spot whereon the cubs were sleeping, but rather hobbled over to take a sentry post at the inner mouth of the tunnel, for her senses cold her that a large number of wolves now were on the high place and were, some of them, milling about and sniffing at the track she had made while dragging the dead doe’s carcass.

Lying down there, for she seemed strangely devoid of energy, the big cat instinctively licked at her swollen, throbbing left foreleg, at the inflamed spot where the horn had pierced her, but even the gentle touch of her tongue sent bolts of burning, near-intolerable agony coursing through her body. And, of course, that moment was when she heard the first wolf enter the tunnel.

Even while sleeping, an unsleeping portion of the Hunter’s consciousness had been made aware by the feline’s senses that the two-leg pack, hotly pursued by the wolf pack, had taken refuge upon the high, smooth-sided, flat-topped place. whereon in better weather full many a cat had sunned itself.

But because she did know that eyrie so well, she knew that there was no danger of the two-legs getting from there to her den. She did not think that the wolves could jump high enough to gain to the top of that place, but if they could and they really wanted to eat the two-legs. they were more than welcome to the smelly creatures. As for her, she had nearly gagged at the foul stench of that two-leg she had killed so easily on the preceding day.

When the claw clicks and shufflings and snufflings told her that the lupine invader was past the first turn of the passage, she entered it herself, pulling as little weight as possible upon her strangely huge and very tender left foreleg. They two met at a point between the first turn and the second, in a section too low-ceilinged for either to stand fully erect.

The Hunter was supremely confident, for she knew well that she possessed the deadly advantage, here; for with only toothy jaws for weapons, the wolf could but lunge for her throat, whereas, completely discounting her own more than adequate dentition, a single blow from her claw-studded forepaw could smash the life out of that wolf as it had of so many before him. But she reckoned without her disability.

Sensing more than seeing the exact location of the intruder’s head, the Hunter lashed out with her sound paw. But this suddenly threw the full and not inconsiderable weight of her head and her forequarters onto the fevered, immensely swollen left foreleg. Squalling with the hideous pain, she stumbled, and so her buffet failed to strike home, the bared claws only raking the wolf’s head and mask. Before she could recover, the crushing lupine jaws had closed upon her one good foreleg, the canines stabbing, while the carnassials scissored skin and flesh and muscle, going on to crack bone.

But the wolf did not have time to raise his bloody, tattered head, for the Hunter closed, sank her own long fangs into the sinewy neck and crushed the spine of the would-be invader.

Even as the wolfs jaws relaxed in death, the Hunter slowly backed down the tunnel, dragging her two useless forepaws, growling deep in her throat as the waves of agony washed over her. Weak and growing weaker each moment, she tumbled the two-foot drop from tunnel mouth to den floor.

Two of the cubs, trailed closely by the third, bounced merrily over to her, but a snarled command sent them all scurrying back into a far, dark corner. The Hunter knew that all four of them now were doomed. She might have enough strength remaining to kill with her fangs the very next wolf that emerged from the yawning mouth of that tunnel, perhaps even the second and the third. But there would be another and another and yet another, and at last she would be too weak to deal with the next in the succession of invaders, and that wolf would kill her. And then the pack would be through the undefended tunnel and at the helpless cubs, ripping the soft little bodies to bloody shreds, eating her orphaned young alive.

Deciding to guard the cubs as long as possible, the great maimed cat painfully dragged herself across the den and took her death stand before them.

Milo again opened his own personal memories to the folk and the cat who sat with him in Chief Dik Krooguh’s yurt.

The door Milo had finally forced led into a room that was really just an extra-wide stair landing. These stairs were of concrete; one led down and the other had once led upward. but it now was solidly choked with assorted masonry debris and lengths of rusted iron pipe from about halfway up its course. The high-held lantern showed Milo that although there were bits and pieces of the debris on many of the descending stairs, they were mostly clear enough for easy passage.

Along the wall facing the stairs was a bank of metal cabinets, each about five feet high and some foot wide. They looked to him like army wall lockers. His exploration of the cabinets proved them bare of very much that was still in any way usable—a few small brass buckles, a handful of metal buttons, otherwise just rotted cloth and leather, flaking rubber and plastic, one pair of metal-framed sunglasses.

When he opened the last cabinet, he jumped back and cursed at unexpected movement, his hand going to the worn hilt of his big dirk. The hefty brown rat struck the floor running and scuttled down the steps, only to return up them running at least twice as fast and shrieking rodent tenor. The little beast streaked over Milo’s booted feet, jumped back into the cabinet and crouched petrified until the man reclosed the door.

Thus warned, Milo descended the stain slowly and carefully. holding the lantern high for maximum visibility. It was well that he did so, for the bare concrete floor of the roorn at the foot of those stairs was littered with nearly two dozen sluggishly writhing rattlesnakes!

“Well,” thought Milo, relieved, “that answers the food problem for a couple of days, anyway, and when these are gone, there’s always that nice fat rat and maybe some of his family, like as not.”

But as none of the vipers lay between the foot of the stairs and still another closed door across the room, he left them alone for the moment. This door proved the hardest to open of any he had as yet encountered, but at last he did so, to find himself facing a short stretch of corridor and three more doors—one each to his right and his left, one more straight ahead of him.

The room to both left and right were secured by massive padlocks. Stenciled in big block letters on the face of the right-hand door was FALLOUT SHELTER—KEEP OUT—THIS MEANS YOU!: the left-hand door bore the message PRIVATE SANCTUM OF STATION DIRECTOR—TRESPASSERS WILL BE BRUTALLY VIOLATED!