Robert Adams - The Death of a Legend

The dark shadow of a gliding eagle swept over the ledge, its wide-spreading pinions momentarily blotting out the sunlight, and all four cubs crouched instinctively in alarm, snarling in sudden fear, their eyes staring up toward this danger. Hari too looked aloft at the avian predator, his sinewy old hand closing about a jagged lump of rock fallen from the mountain above, but the bird wheeled to the right and soared out of sight behind a peak, obviously searching for smaller, more vulnerable prey than prairiecat cubs large as adult bobcats. Then, from out of the cave, came the Eldest, having to stoop almost double to negotiate the six-foot-high opening. The Eldest greeted Hari telepathically, as neither had been able to twist his tongue around the other’s oral language to any great extent.

The Eldest numbered half again as many years as did Hari of Krooguh, yet he was neither stooped nor withered of body. Only a generous stippling of white among the coarse dark-brown hairs that covered all his huge body, saving only face, palms and the soles of his feet, announced him any whit different or more ancient than his sons and grandsons and their get.

As the Eldest came from beneath the rock overhang and out into the full sunlight, the cubs rushed up to gambol and cavort over and about his huge feet. Stooping again, he gathered up two of the playful young beastlets and cradled them in his massive arms, gently ruffling their fur with his long, black-nailed fingers, while rumbling smoothing contra-basso sounds of endearment to them. Feeling once more safe and secure with this big twolegs they had known for all of their young lives, one cub began to lick down the chest hair of the Eldest, while the other commenced to worry at the loose skin between the thumb and the forefinger of one gigantic hand with a set of sharp, sparkling-white teeth. When his dark-green irises had contracted enough to give him optimum vision in the bright glare, the Eldest crossed the outer ledge to sink onto the rock beside Hari, the thick black callosities protecting his almost-fleshless buttocks and the bone beneath from the hard surface that his mighty weight pressed them against. When he had drawn up and crossed his short legs, the other two cubs clambered up to reexplore the familiar lap.

“You are unhappy, Hari of Krooguh,” the Eldest beamed silently. “Why is this so?”

Hari’s sigh was audible, but he replied just as silently. “Because the winter has fled and the spring marches closer with every passing day, dear friend. Because I have found here, with you and yours, great happiness and more peace than I have ever before known in a very long life. Because I long to live out the rest of my days here, but cannot.”

The Eldest nodded sagely. “You feel responsibility to see the great cats back to the place of high grasses and no hills, them and the horses. But why can they not go on toward the setting sun along with each other, without you, friend Hari? Big as I am, I still would hate to have to fight even a single prairiecat, nor are any of your horses exactly gentle and defenseless. Remember those two wolves the stallion killed in the snow?”

Hari sighed again and shook his head of braided white hair. “Were wolves and treecats and bears, storms and rivers and rockslides the only dangers, I would not fear for any of them. But such is not the case, honored Eldest. These four-legged beasts all must get close enough for the cats and the horses to have at least a chance to give as much as or more than they receive. The most dangerous predator, however, moves upon two legs and can maim or slay at a distance.

“Since most men cannot communicate as can you and yours, I, and the folk of the Horseclans, they would look upon the cats as large, dangerous beasts and slay them to protect their livestock or hunt them down to death for their beautiful fur. The horses they would ride down and rope for a life of servitude, killing those that their cruelties could not bend to their will. The horses and the cats are my friends as you and your family are my friends, and I will not rest easy if I think that any of my friends are being hunted like wild beasts.”

“No, it is not good to be hunted,” the Eldest agreed. “My kind were so hunted by men, until we learned to so cloud the minds of those hunters that they saw us not. For hundreds of our generations has this skill served to protect us from your smaller but more vicious kind. It is not a difficult talent to develop; you have learned it and so have most of the adult cats, too, but I fear the horses never will learn it, their minds are just too… different.”

Hari nodded again, resignedly. “So, you see, I must go.”

“You will leave us soon?” questioned the Eldest sadly.

“Within eight more suns, at the most,” Hari replied just as sadly. “Still ahead of me are many miles of mountains. I cannot move fast or far in any one day because the cats have not the endurance of the horses and so must either go slowly or rest often, and when again winter comes upon the land, I wish to be in milder surroundings than mountains.”

“That would be most wise,” stated the Eldest. “Such deep caves as this one are rare, and even if you found another and let the cats hunt for you, without a fire you would die, and who would there be to find and cut and fetch back wood for you? Perhaps I should send along a son or two to see to your welfare until… I”

“No, honored Eldest, no. You and yours have already done far more for me than I ever can repay. Your brave sons saved my life at great risk to their own lives, then you sheltered and fed me for long months—me, an alien creature whose race has ever dealt yours only savagery and death, who long ago drove your kind to the wildest and most inaccessible portions of the lands. And yet you did still more for me, honored Eldest—you gave me back that which I had thought forever lost—my sight.”

“I could not have helped your body to repair its eyes had not you shown my mind how to so heal the infirmities and injuries of others, friend Hari. Untold future generations of Teenéhdjook will bless you for that great gift, so speak you not of debts owed me and mine, for it is assuredly we who owe you.

Therefore, it is settled, this matter; two of my sons will journey on with you as far as the foothills to the west. You will not need to push the cats too hard, for if you must winter once more in mountains, my sons will provide all needs for you and the horses.”

Using wood and bone bound with sinew for the frames, the Teenéhdjook fashioned crude but effective saddles on which adult cats could crouch on the backs of the horses, with the hooked claws sunk into several thicknesses of rawhide coverings to steady them. With his own huge, skillful hands, the Eldest made a pair of hide panniers, that the cubs might relax and snooze in safety while journeying. On the last night he was to abide with the Eldest in the now-familiar mountain cave, Hari of Krooguh imparted to his host what, with his rare and amazing abilities, he had seen of the future of these Teenéhdjook.

“Honored Eldest, before ten more winters have passed, you and yours will find it needful to leave this fine cave and move on. You will move south and west and into mountains in which dwell true-men of two differing races. Some few of your kind dwell with them already, and they have long since interbred with a subrace of true-men who are much larger than most true men, although still not so large as Teenéhdjook.

“The one of these southern races will respect you and will deal honorably and fairly with you and you will find that they can be trusted; the other race will fear you and they cannot ever be trusted by even those of their own blood.

“After long years, when both you and your sons are but old bones, one of your grandsons not yet born will be the eldest of the Teenéhdjook. His kind and the folk of the good true-men will be hard-pressed by the bad true-men and by another folk as well. For a while, it will seem that all will be lost, that it will be only a matter of time until evil will triumph totally over good and that to further combat the many minions of that evil would be but to postpone the inevitable.