Robert Adams - Champion of the Last Battle

Eschewing his normal wall rounds, Bili went directly to the scene of this fresh outrage, and this time he took the big prairiecat Whitetip along at the start, for all that the feline was sleepy and lethargic after a night of prowling the environs of the Skohshun camp, spooking their livestock into near hysteria and otherwise making himself useful.

In the loose, damp loam of the garden patch were two clear paw prints—one of the near forepaw, one of the near hindpaw. Bili squatted and held his broad palm over the forepaw print, with one edge at the heel of that print. He whistled softly; an arc of toe print and three of the claw marks were visible beyond the other edge of his palm.

Moreover, the prints went deep, perhaps some half-inch, and these prints were headed toward the house, not returning with a belly load of human flesh. Nor had they been imprinted after a jump from some height—these were the even tracks of a walking beast. So that meant that the skulking killer was larger still than Bili had thought from the first killing—two hundred pounds at the very least, probably more—and the questioning of the man who had caught brief sight of the departing creature confirmed this estimate.

The off-duty pikeman had arisen early, principally to determine why his goats were so restless and noisy. As he had closed the house door and strode toward the pen where the two nannies, the young buck goat and the nursing kid milled and loudly bleated, he had seen a huge shape come sidling out of the doorway of the house next door to him.

“M’lord duke,” he said to Bili, “I thought t’first ’twas one them ponies t’ countryfolk brought into t’ city; thet’s how big ’twas. ’Twas shaggy, too, like a mountain pony, but when it cumminceted to trot up t’ street, ’twas for sure ’twas no pony. I thought me then of y’r worship’s cat, yonder, but no cat never moved like t’ beast did, none what I ever seed.”

“Could it have been a bear, soldier?” queried Sir Yoo Folsom, who stood at Bili’s side. “True, they’re somewhat rare down on the plain, but I’ve hunted and slain more than a few in the mountains. A couple of them were even reddish-brown, too.”

The commoner just shook his close-cropped head. “No, m’ lord, not lessen bears is starting for to grow curved, bushy tails, of late, and t’ trot like t’ big dawgs.”

Bili nodded. “No, Sir Yoo, it’s a wolf, right enough. No bear ever left prints like those in that garden mold. I too have hunted both species of beast.”

Then, to the pikeman, “You’re the only living man, so far, who’s set eyes to that wolf, soldier. You’ve stated that such was its size that at first you took it for a small pony. Well what would you estimate was its actual height at the withers? As tall as this prairiecat, eh?”

“Aye, m’lord duke.” The man’s head bobbed, “Likely a tad more’n t’ cat. But not so thick in t’ body or laigs. T’ wolf, it ain’t been eating over-good, ’twould seem. I could see near ever rib and t’ humps of t’ backbone, too, in places.”

Once again, Whitetip was set to the scent of the strange, huge, deadly beast. The trail ran straight up the street along which the pikeman had seen the creature. The street debouched into one of the fountain squares, and the beast had apparently paused todrink at the circular stone splash basin, like any other thirsty animal. But the watches had but recently been changed, this fountain square was commonly used to form up the guard reliefs, and, because the clean-swept stone pavement did not hold scent very well to start, the coming and going and tramping about of so many men had obliterated the trail at that point, much to the chagrin of the frustrated feline.

That afternoon, at the conclusion of their dinner, Bili discussed the matter with Rahksahnah and his officers at the high table, asking, in preface, “Sir Yoo, I saw one or two wolves when we marched through the southern range, last spring, but there were none on the plain, as I recall. How common are they hereabouts?”

The Kuhmbuhluhn nobleman shrugged and gave over cracking nuts in his powerful hands to answer, “They’re seldom seen in even the foothills. Each time I’ve hunted them, or bears, either, we had to ride up into the true mountains to find them. Now,. true, my old pappy used to tell often of certain severe winters when packs come down onto the plain, even howled under and round about the walls of this very city, but Mama alius told us younguns that he’d heard them same stories from his pappy and just tailored them to fit, sort of, to make him some good tales to tell us of nights.

“No, Duke Bili, wild critters is smart. Us Kuhmbuhluhners has been killing off wolves and bears and treecats since first we come to this here New Kuhmbuhluhnburk. They knows it and they sure ain’t going to come close enough to get a arrow or a dart or spear run into them unless they is flat starving to death ... like that pikeman said this great big wolf looked to be.”

“Precisely.” Bili nodded. “But why is this one huge wolf a rack of skin and bones? Think you on that, Sir Yoo, and you other gentlemen and officers. The mountains are aswarm with deer and small game; this is not a bad winter, hereabouts, it’s a fine summer—a little dry, but no real drought. And even if there is little game on the plain, the Skohshuns are grazing a goodly-sized herd of beef cattle outside their camp, and, lacking any herd dogs, there’s simply no way that they could keep a smart wolf from taking a steer or a heifer or two almost at his leisure. For that matter, there are ill-guarded or utterly unguarded pens and stables of animals within these very walls, so why does a starving wolf take the time to seek out humans for his meals, eh? Riddle me that, please.”

“Duke Bili?” It was Freefighter Captain Fil Tyluh who now spoke. At Bili’s nod, he went on, asking, “Does my lord recall the tales of those long-ago wars that wrenched the old Middle Kingdom into the present three? How it was said that wolves fed so well and so often on battlefields and in slighted towns that they took to following armies on the march, even cutting out and pulling down stragglers or wounded soldiers? I’ve heard that they would completely ignore a side of fresh, bloody beef and the mule that carried it to attack and kill and eat the peasant who led that mule.

“Now there’ve been a spate of battles hereabouts, last year, as well as this latest one where the old king died. Mayhap some corpse-fed wolf followed us back here?”

“It’s possible, Fil,” Bili nodded slowly, adding, “but if such were the case, why did he wait so long to strike us?”

“Perhaps,” put in Rahksahnah, “this wolf followed not our army but the enemy army, these Skohshuns, my Bili.”

He shook his shaven head. “No, love, that makes no sense, either. If he followed their march, fed off them the length of it, then why does he not now do so still? After all, it were far easier for a cunning animal, such as him or Whitetip, to enter their camp of nights than this city, to reach which he must negotiate cliffs and walls.

“And, speaking of Whitetip, he knows well the proper scents of wild creatures, men and Kleesahks, and he avers that this thing that has twice now killed and eaten New Kuhmbuhluhnburk townsfolk smells unlike any beast he ever before has encountered. We called it a wolf, at the first, from the very wolflike paw prints; now a sighting has assured us that the creature does indeed resemble a wolf, albeit a very monster of a wolf.”

“But who ever before saw a roan wolf, Duke Bili?” asked Sir Yoo Folsom. “Every one I ever saw or hunted or killed was mouse-brown or some shade of gray.”

“That may be true of the local race of wolves, Sir Yoo,” replied Bili, “but off-color sports seem to abound among most wolf packs I’ve encountered in the Middle Kingdoms and the western marches of the Confederation. I’ve been in at the kills of at least two reddish wolves in Harzburk’s royal wilds, and I saw the pelt of a fine black wolf killed in the Duchy of Vawn, whilst we were besieging Vawnpolis. No, I find it far easier to credit a wolf of a roan color than I do a wolf of a size of two hundred to three hundred pounds weight and near on to ten hands height at the shoulders.