Maggie Furey - Sword of Flames

Nevertheless, Hreeza had persevered. She had crossed and recrossed the areas on the outskirts of her people’s lands, hunting the elusive chuevah: the lonely outcasts who had been ejected from the clan because of age, or sickness, or unfitness to hunt. Since the brutal Gristheena had begun her rule, there were more than there had ever been. One by one she had found them: timid, hunted, broken-down creatures, some barely holding on to the thread of life. She had cajoled them, persuaded them, tempted, badgered, nagged, and browbeaten them. She had hunted for them, found them shelter, and at the last had gathered them together into the most unlikely army that had ever been. And now she had brought them back to the heart of Steelclaw—to challenge Gristheena’s might, or die in the attempt.

At the time of gathering and persuading her draggled forces to assert themselves, the old cat had thought that this must definitely be the hardest part of her task. Now, as she looked down into Steelclaw’s crater and saw the assembled masses of those who had once been her own people, she realized, with a chill of horror, just how wrong she had been.

“You old fool!” Hreeza muttered to herself. Whatever had possessed her? In the certain knowledge that she would not be able to hold her little band of chuevah together for long—either they would be discovered, so many of them together, or they would lose their courage one by one and slink ashamedly away—Hreeza had decided that she must strike as soon as possible. When she had heard from her spies that there would be a great meeting of cats in the crater, she had blessed her good fortune. But looking at her opponents now—all felines in their prime, well muscled and well fed—Hreeza’s heart misgave her, and she began to think that the trip through the air in that net must have addled her wits. If she did this thing, she would be leading her wretched band of followers, who had come to depend on her, to certain death.

Hreeza sighed. Maybe those whom she had called cowards had the right of it. Maybe it would be better to slink away, head bowed, and simply vanish into the night. Maybe she should take her followers and find them a new home, in another land. There was space in the mountains near Aerillia, and now that she could speak with the Winged Folk, perhaps an accommodation could be reached…

Then into the arena below, escorted by two great cats, came a two-legged shape, shuffling and bowed, and reeking of madness and evil. Hreeza twitched her whiskers forward in curiosity and opened her mouth to better scent the air. What in the world…? Then her sharp ears caught the sound of a high, thin whimper, piteous and faint. The whiff of a scent reached her, so distinctive and redolent of memory that Hreeza felt her heart turn over. In Aerillia, she had played with Aurian’s enchanted son—had even minded him, as she would the cub of another cat, when the Mage was otherwise occupied.

All thoughts of flight, of surrender, fled from Hreeza’s mind. Leaping to her feet, the ancient warrior let out such a roar of outrage and challenge that the very mountain trembled. As though she were young and fleet again, she leapt down from the heights of her lurking place. Like a great black river in spate, her chuevah followed: hair bristling on their bony spines, eyes glowing bright in heads held high and proud, and voices uplifted in their song of battle.

Anvar hurtled down through the darkness, clinging tightly with cold-numbed fingers to the rough meshes of the net, his skin tingling from the impact of the stinging rain. The keening of the storm grew louder in his ears—and suddenly became another sound. Anvar’s belly tightened into a knot of fear for poor Wolf as he heard a crescendo of yowls rising above the wail of the wind. Below him the great cats were fighting.

Then, to his astonishment, the Mage heard a familiar, rasping old cat-voice in his mind, shrieking venom and defiance. He was not the only one to have heard it.

“Hreeza!” Shia’s cry echoed in Anvar’s mind. “Don’t be a fool!” And then they were down, in the midst of a bloodbath. The Skyfolk, guided by Chiamh, had landed them near the tunnel mouth at the edge of the crater—both to cut off Meiriel’s retreat in that direction and to give them a chance of taking cover from the mass of fighting cats that swarmed across the floor of the crater. To Anvar’s fury, their winged escort took one startled look at the carnage around them and rocketed skyward again like a covey of startled birds. The Mage cursed savagely and then thrust the matter from his mind, to be dealt with later. One problem at a time—and it seemed that he had troubles enough.

The rain was beginning to slacken, allowing Anvar’s night-vision to function once more. He stared, aghast, at the bloody struggles taking place around him, trying to make sense of it all and, more important, to catch a glimpse of Meiriel. But if she was somewhere amid the fighting cats, there must be a glamor about her that defeated even his Mageborn sight.

Chiamh could see Anvar squinting his eyes to peer this way and that through the drifting curtains of rain. The Windeye, however, had an advantage over the Mage. With his Othersight he could perceive the glow of life energy rather than the physical form—and the corpse-gleam of Meiriel’s hideous, sickly aura was easy to pick out.

Shia, with her feline senses, had no difficulty picking out her own foe. “Gristheena!” Her yowl rose in a bloodcurdling crescendo, and she darted off into the mob of fighting cats, Khanu hot on her heels. Chiamh belatedly realized that her route was taking her in the same direction as he and Anvar wanted to go—toward the rearing obsidian spur for which Meiriel was determinedly heading, picking her way through the warring felines as though they did not exist. “Come on!” The Windeye tugged urgently at Anvar’s arm. “This way!”

Chiamh, his Othersight fixed firmly on his quarry, led the way, with Anvar close by him, guarding him with drawn sword from attack by the cats that packed the canyon floor. Shoulder to shoulder, Mage and Windeye forced a way forward together, taking advantage of the swath that Shia and her companion were clearing with fang and claw through the ranks of battling felines. Chiamh shuddered at the sight of so much mindless ferocity unleashed within the confines of Steelclaw’s crater. It was difficult, at this moment, to remember that these were intelligent creatures and not mere savage beasts. He could only pray to the Goddess that Shia’s fellow cats would remain absorbed in their own bitter struggles and continue to ignore the two frail humans that had invaded their realm.

Hreeza had already reached the spur. Ignoring the individual battles that raged all around her as her ragged band of chuevah closed with the astounded great cats, she had taken with her a vanguard of close companions—selected for being in a less pitiful condition than the rest—and had clawed and bit and slashed and fought her way in the straightest possible line toward the position of her deadly foe.

The bloodlust had taken possession of Hreeza. She was unaware of the many minor wounds that leaked blood into her tattered fur, and ignored the burning of the long gashes slashed by hostile claws into her flanks. The red fog of battle clouded her mind and glowed in her eyes, and her laboring old heart was swollen fit to burst with a fierce pride mixed with anger and grief for those of her poor valiant followers who had already fallen in the onslaught, their death cries ringing—as they would echo forever—in her mind.

Had the old cat been human and believed in such things, she would doubtless have said that the gods were with her that night. In fact, she owed her good fortune to her enemy. Brutal, swaggering, pitiless Gristheena may have been dominant, but she was not loved. Already, unknown to Hreeza, the tide of battle was turning in her favor. Many of the lesser cats, recognizing former companions and den mates in the returning chuevah, had greeted them with joy and abandoned the defense of their leader, whom they had obeyed only through fear of being cast out in their turn. On discovering that the much-respected Hreeza was First Female of the chuevah, the canyon cats were changing sides with startling speed. Hreeza met with little resistance as she barged her way from ledge to ledge up the side of the massive ridge. Had her mind been fixed less on her quarry and more on her surroundings, she would have noticed that many cats were falling back respectfully to let her pass.