Robert Adams - A Woman of the Horseclans

The door straight ahead was unmarked, and though it bore no padlock in the hasp and staple provided for such hardware, it was held firmly shut by an iron bar at least two inches thick which bisected it horizontally and was supported by two U-shaped brackets firmly bolted to the masonry.

Since it opened inward, Milo thought that it might well be a portal to the outside. He put an ear to the steel-sheathed door, but could hear nothing. Removing the bar. he swung it open a nick, keeping shoulder and foot braced hard against it, just in case a wolf or three should try to come calling.

But stygian darkness lay beyond this door, too, a damp darkness and an overpowering odor of cat. He closed the door again for long enough to draw his saber, then opened it wide, held the lantern aloft and quickly descended the two steps to the next level, his eyes rapidly scanning the large, high-ceilinged room as far as the lanternlight would extend.

The Hunter tried to raise herself when the two-leg holding in one forepaw a small, very bright sun opened somehow a part of one wall of the den and came in, but she was now become too weak to do any more than growl.

Milo let his saber sag down from the guard position, for the big female cat was clearly as helpless as the cubs bunched behind her supine body. One of her forelegs was grotesquely swollen, obviously infected or deeply abscessed, while the other was torn and bleeding and looked to be broken as well.

There was a flicker of movement to his right, and he spun about just in time to see the slavering jaws and smoldering eyes of a wolf’s head emerge from a hole just a little above the floor. In two leaping strides, he crossed the width of the room and his well-honed saber blade swept up, then down, severing the wolf’s neck cleanly.

But the headless, blood-spouting body still issued forth from the hole, and as it tumbled to kick and twitch beside its still-grinning head, another, similar head came into view, this one living and snarling fiercely at the man who faced him.

Milo thrust his point between the gaping jaws and through the soft palate. White teeth snapped and splintered on the fine steel and the point grated briefly on bone before he freed it in a death-dealing drawcut, but as the steel came out, the dying wolf came with it, and behind crouched another of the beasts.

The saber spilt the skull of the third wolf, but even as its blood and brains gushed out, another was pushing the quivering body out of the tunnel and into the den.

“This,” thought Milo, “could conceivably go on for hours, as many wolves as there are out there.”

But as the fifth wolf was being slowly pushed toward him, Milo suddenly became cognizant of the rectangular regularity of the opening. Man-made. And the men who fashioned it would surely have also fashioned a means of closing it … ?

And there that means was! Half-hidden by a camouflage of dust and dirt and the ever-present cobwebs, a sliding door, set between metal runners on the wall above the opening. But did it still function properly? Or at all?

In the precious moments between butchering wolves, he pulled and tugged and pushed at the door, Setting the lantern down, he drew his dirk with his left hand and used its point to dig bits of debris from around and beneath the door, to dislodge other bits from the grooves of the runners, Clenching the blade of the dirk between his teeth. he hung his full weight from the doorhandle … and it moved !

Then there was another wolf, this one a huge, coal-black beast. He killed it, chuckling to himself and thinking, “The Chinese used to say that you should never be cruel to a black dog that appeared at your door. Well, hell, I wasn’t cruel to that bastard; I gave him a cleaner, quicker death than he and his pack would have given me.”

The black wolf had been both bigger and in far better flesh than most of his packmates, so it took the wolf behind a few seconds longer than usual to push the jerking body out of the tunnel, and that few seconds’ respite made all the difference.

With all of Milo’s one hundred and eighty pounds of weight suspended from it, the ancient steel door inched downward, then, screeching like a banshee, picked up speed. Finally, impelled by a last, powerful thrust of Milo’s arms, it slammed shut and latched itself in the very face of the next wolf, which yelped its startled surprise.

Stepping back and carefully wiping off the blood-slimed blade of his saber on the pelt of a dead wolf, Milo mindcalled, “Dik, Djim, the rest of you, take up the lantern and carry it as you saw me carry this one. Be very careful that you don’t drop it or strike it against something. Come down the metal steps one by one—they’re too old and rusty to bear too much weight at once. Proceed through the opened door and down a flight of stone stairs, but be careful where you step at the bottom of those, for rattlesnakes are denned there.

“Those who have a taste for snakemeat can kill them, but any who’d rather have fresh wolf chops need only join me here and skin and gut and butcher their choice of ten or twelve of the bastards, all fresh-killed.

“Oh, and there’s water here too, somewhere; I can smell it.”

Then, suddenly, an intensely powerful mindspeak blanked out any reply the Horseclansmen might have beamed. “What are you, two-legs? You bear a small sun in your paws, you slay many, many wolves to protect cubs not your own, you can somehow open den walls and close them, and you can speak the language of cats, which is a something other two-legs cannot do. Who are you? What are you?”

The Hunter felt that she no longer could trust the witness of her own eyes. At times they seemed to be clouded with a dark, almost opaque mist; at other times she seemed to be seeing the images of three of four or even more identical two-legs and as many of the little, intensely bright suns. But none of these images stayed constant, they shifted about changing not only in numbers but in consistency as well.

Therefore, when first she sensed the two-leg, sun-bearing wolfkiller’s mind projecting that silent means of communication used only by cats and a few other of the more intelligent four-legs, she thought that others of her perceptions had suddenly gone as skewed as her visual perception. But at length she beamed a question … and he answered her! ”

Milo just stood and stared at the injured cat for a long moment, deeply shaken by the experience of having an animal actually communicate with him telepathically. Then, moving deliberately and slowly, he laid down his saber beside the lantern and took a few steps in the cat’s direction, extending an empty hand in the ages-old, instinctual gesture of promised friendship.

“You are badly hurt sister,” he beamed. “Will you bite me if I try to help you?”

The sight of him abruptly faded again into the dark mist, but still his message came clearly into her mind and she said, “Help this mother? Why would you want to help this mother? This Hunter killed one of your pack last sun, Two-legs do not ever help cats, they slay cats, just as you slew those wolves there.”

He replied, “Wolves are the enemies of us both, sister, foes of both cats and men. Besides, the other men and I are hungry.

“You would eat wolf flesh ?” The repugnance in her thoughtbeam was crystal-clear.

He moved his head up and down twice for some unknown reason and beamed, “Hunger can make any meat taste good, sister.”

All of the Hunters life had been hard, and she could grasp the universal truth stated by this remarkable two-leg. Perhaps, then, he was truthful about wishing to aid her. “If the mother allows you to come close, what will you do, two-leg?”

“The bleeding of your torn paw must be stopped, sister, the wounds cleaned out and packed with healing herbs, then wrapped up in cloth … uhh. something like very soft skins … then the broken bones must be pulled straight and tied in place to heal. All of this will hurt sister, and you must promise not to bite us in your pain.”