Andre Norton - The Gate of the Cat

There was an answer to that last bay, a cry which was not a similar howl but rather more like a call in words she could not understand. Then out of the same knot of brush which had concealed the dog creature came a horse and rider. The girl drew a startled, shaken breath.

The horse, or whatever that beast was, showed as much a walking rack of bones as the hound. In its skull the eyes were pits of whirling greenish-yellow flame. While the rider was cloaked, so enveloped in a muffling covering that could not say what manner of thing it might really be. But it was plain that this newcomer had eyes for and interest in her. One begloved hand raised a rod and swung it in her direction with the same calm assurance which McAdams had shown toward shooting the cat.

Kelsie did not even have time to put the stone between her and that crooked dash of flame which sprang from the rod. Only it did not strike her. To her overwhelming surprise it was as if that meant-to-be flash of fire struck an impenetrable wall a little before the stone—sprayed out in a red burst and was gone, leaving a trail of oily smoke to rise in the clear sky.

The hound howled and began to run, not straight for the girl, but circling about the stones as if it sought some door or opening which would let it at its would-be victims. For a moment or two the rider was motionless. Then he used reins and swung the head of his mount to the left joining the hound in that circling of what might be a fortress the twain of them could not best.

Kelsie held tight with one hand to the stone beside her but also turned her head and then her body to watch the encirclement. She had had no trouble leaving the circle nor returning to it, but these two beyond now appeared totally walled away.

In her mind bewilderment fast became panic and fear. Where was she? She could not be anywhere but in some hospital racked with wild hallucinations because of the blow on her head. But this was so real—!

The hound gave tongue continually, almost querulously, as if it could not understand what kept it away from the two inside the circle.

However, the rider remained where he was, his mount now and then nervously pawing the earth but held firmly in check. That rod was handled negligently, its tip pointed earthward. It would seem that they were under siege, perhaps being held for the coming of some even greater menace. Yet when the next stroke arrived it was not Kelsie who was aroused to front the danger but the snarling wildcat.

Within the circle of the rock a moss covered patch of earth heaved upward and burst into separate sods as if from some explosion below. Out of the cascading earth pushed what looked like a bird’s beak, a sickly yellow-gray, and from beside Kelsie the wildcat sprang into action.

Her leap carried her farther on so that she was behind that questing beak and in spite of her injured foot she used both forepaws to land them together on a thing struggling up from the burrow it had made.

There was a whirl of furred body and a slapping length of what looked mostly like a land-going lobster. Then the cat’s teeth met with a crunch just behind the end of the beak, and, though the many-legged thing went on flopping, it was clearly out of the battle. The cat settled down over it, tearing loose clawed limbs and worrying at the thing’s underbelly until she passed its chitinous armor to the flesh beneath, which she ate as if famished. However, Kelsie, so warned by its appearance from the earth made the rounds of the circle, searching the ground intently for any other suspicious tumbling of the soil.

She came upon one such near across the circle from the still-feasting cat and made ready with her belt. The narrow tip of that beak or nose which quested for the upper world thrust through a clump of the flowers and she lashed her belt at it. More by luck than any skill the loop of the buckle did fall about that tip and she gave a vicious jerk, putting into that all her power of arm.

As a fish that had swallowed a hook the thing came out of the ground flopping over on its back, sharply clawed feet waving in the air. But the rising had also freed a long, jointed tail which ended in what could only be a sting. That snapped back and forth evilly while the creature’s head, flipping from side to side freed it from the buckle, it arose again, seeming to turn in midair to land on its feet. For a moment only it hesitated and then it leaped, springing at least three feet from the torn flowers to aim straight at Kelsie.

She swung the belt a second time, managing again to strike and so ward off attack. But, as she also retreated, she came sharply back against one of the blue pillars and was caught up in something else, a sharp tingling of her body such as one might receive from a minor electrical shock.

Her left hand clawed at the stone which was not cold, as she had expected, but rather held a warmth which appeared to be growing. In doing so she rasped her fingers upon a protrusion of the rock which broke away into her hand.

There was one chance now. She could not even have told from whence came that saving idea but she pulled in her belt and worked the stone into the buckle, wedging it so with all her might, her attention all for the many-legged creature out of the earth and her fingers working by touch alone.

It was the cat who gave her the few precious seconds out of time to do that. Having finished with the carcass of the first of their attackers it was now creeping up behind the other. Then Kelsie struck, this time with careful aim and intent purpose.

The weighted buckle met the creature in midair for it had sprung again even as she had swung. There was a flash of brilliant light and a puff of smoke, a nauseating odor which made her retch. The thing struck the ground charred and black. It might have been tossed through a blazing fire. Kelsie was so heartened by the success of her desperate hope that she turned to claw again at the pillar behind her, striving to free more such useful bits of rock. But it would seem that luck or chance had loosened only that one for her aid.

Snarling, the cat drew back from the charred curl of body and leaped now for Kelsie’s coat where it settled down, drawing close to its body, with a sweep of foreleg, the two squeaking kittens.

Neither the hound nor the rider had made any move during that odd battle and now they showed no dismay that it had not succeeded—if the earth dwellers were allies of theirs after all. It appeared that they were willing to wait—cither for their prey to be somehow shaken out as a nut is shaken out of a broken shell, or for more efficient reinforcements.

Time, Kelsie thought, did not favor her or the cat. There would be another attack of sorts—or she would wake from this dream which was so real that the fear of it nearly paralyzed her if she allowed herself to consider it.

She continued to absently rub one hand along the rough surface of the stone, her attention going from hound to rider and back again—waiting for what would happen next.

There came a clear trilling call out of the air overhead. The hound was on its feet, snarling, leaping now and then. Kelsie saw winging back and forth over the animal was one of those blue birds which had watched her eat by the berry bushes.

From her left there came a harsh grating sound which to her ears bore no resemblance to speech. The rider had brought around his skeleton mount and now he lifted his rod and tried to aim at the darting birds, but the shooting flames were ever far behind their swift turns, fast swoops, and soarings.

The cat’s head was up, it was staring south to another roll of hills. Now the rider, so hood muffled that Kelsie had never seen his face, turned halfway in the saddle to face the same direction. The birds uttered sharp high cries and began a flight pattern which encircled the stones. With a sharp jerk the rider pulled at the reins and his mount plunged forward as if to bring it and its rider down upon Kelsie. But it did not complete that charge. Instead the mount reared and the rider seemed for a moment to be fighting—his will against his mount’s. The hound crouched closer to the ground, near creeping on its belly back the way it had come. Though Kelsie watched carefully there was nothing else in sight save the wheeling birds.