David Drake - The Mirror of Worlds

She clucked to the horse and twitched the reins; he clopped forward immediately. It looked simple. Cashel was pretty sure ifhe tried it, the horse would either look at him or run off in some other direction.

"Well, I'll help however I can, Tenoctris," Cashel said. He'd have said the same thing regardless, but maybe listening to the girl made him put a little more force into the words. *** The catmen had been sheltering from daylight in a ravine between two knobs of limestone that'd been a little harder than the surrounding rock. They'd built a low dome of boughs broken from the neighboring pines. "There's caves all over here," Asion said in a tone of mild reproach. "Why d'they want to take the trouble to build a hut, d'ye suppose?" "Maybe they don't like rock," Ilna said, speaking more harshly than the question required. She looked down at the shelter while lying on a slab of cracked, gray stone. Sun and frost had broken the surface into rough pebbles that anybody'd find uncomfortable, but no Corl couldpossibly dislike rock more than Ilna herself did. "How many are inside, do you know?" Karpos looked at Asion. The smaller man shrugged. "There's one," he said, "but I don't think more than that.

And he's got to be hurt or he would've gone after you with the others, right?" He and Karpos exchanged glances over Ilna's head. "I figure," said Karpos carefully, "that with just one there and laid up, we don't need to be fancy. Besides, it's broad daylight and they don't like that. I'll go down and finish him off, right?" "No," said Ilna. "I'll stand in front of the entrance. Asion, start a fire and get a torch going. When I'm in place, throw it onto the hut and I'll stop the beast when it tries to get out." While they waited, Ilna'd knotted a pattern. It seemed right to use yarn from the disemboweled woman's tunic to dispose of the beasts who'd killed her. It shouldn't have mattered, but there are more patterns than those woven in cloth. She looked past Asion to Temple. "Do you have an opinion?" she demanded.

"It's a good plan, Ilna," the big man said. He stretched. His sword was sheathed, but she'd seen how quickly he could draw it. "I'll stand with you in case the Corl is feverish and doesn't see as he ought to."

Ilna grimaced, but Temple hadn't said anything she could object to.

There was no excuse for her mood. The rock bothered her, she supposed, and being awake all night; but there was something irritating in Temple's attitude. He seemed to be judging her as dispassionately as she'd eye a hen while planning dinner. Ilna stood and walked half a furlong to the right so that she was at the head of the ravine, facing the hut's entrance. The door was merely a juniper bush pulled into the opening, but it was where the catman would come out. It was important to stop him in his tracks. If he headed up the far slope instead of attacking directly, there was no certain safety. Even injured, a Corl was dangerous if you let him pick his time. Temple paced her, keeping to the right so that he didn't block her view of the shelter. His sword was out and he'd released the strap so that the buckler was free in his left hand. His expression was one of mild interest, as though he was contemplating an attractive landscape. Karpos stood beside Asion with an arrow nocked. Ordinarily that would've been pointless: the catmen reacted so quickly that arrows were no more likely to hit them than a human soldier'd be knocked down by a flung bale of hay.

Sick or wounded, the beast might be more vulnerable, though. Besides, it gave the hunter a way to feel useful. Smoke trailed up between Asion's hands; he rose and whipped his torch to full life. He'd bound branches to a limb wind'd broken from a scrub chestnut a year or more before. Ilna met the hunter's eyes but started down the ravine instead of giving the signal immediately. She held the knotted pattern before her, where the Corl couldn't avoid seeing it if he looked at her at all. Only when she'd covered half the distance did she call, "All right, now!" She expected the catman to charge out of the dome when she spoke. Indeed, it should've been aware of the humans even earlier, from the sounds they'd made if not their scent as well. The beasts' hearing and sense of smell were sharper than those of any human being.

The shelter remained silent. Asion sent his torch spinning end over end into the woven branches. They'd been drying in the sun for several days, long enough to become tinder. The torch bounced off the dome, but the sparks sprayed from the contact. Pitchy needles started burning. Still nothing from inside. Ilna walked forward, her face set in angry puzzlement. Brush threatened to trip her at every step, but she kept her eyes fixed on the opening. Her feet could take care of themselves. Had the beast died, or was Asion wrong about one of the pack staying behind? Or-and this was a real concern-had the catman tricked them? It could've left the bush in place over the entrance but hidden in the hills above, waiting to strike from behind when the humans were concentrating on the empty shelter. As fire crowned the dome, the bush flew back from the entrance. "It's coming!" Ilna cried, but for the hunters-and Temple as well, she was sure-that was like someone telling her a warp thread was broken. A catman came out of the shelter in a crouch, rose with a snarl, and froze in its tracks as Ilna'd intended that it should. It was two double-paces away. A part of Ilna's mind that was never completely absent considered the cat's russet fur and rejected it as too coarse for most weaving. As well use the long strands of aloe leaves. The beast was female. A kit, probably less than a week old, nestled against her chest. Karpos' arrow entered through the beast's right collarbone; the flared bronze point punched out below the ribs on the left side. The beast sprang wildly into the air. The shock had broken the pattern's effect, but that didn't matter now. It thrashed, spraying blood from its mouth onto the clumps of wormwood and broom, but it'd been dead from the instant the arrow hit.

Karpos came down the side of the ravine with the quick ease of a chamois. He stepped from one outcrop to another his own height below, instead of skidding and scrabbling the way most people would've done.

Ilna smiled coldly: she certainly would've skidded and scrabbled. "The kit is still alive," Temple said. "I see that," Ilna said. She put the yarn she'd picked out of the pattern in her left sleeve. The female gave a convulsive shudder and now lay as still as a pricked bladder.

The infant continued to suckle, its forepaws-its hands, they really were hands; gripping the long hair of its mother's chest. Ilna bent forward. The burning shelter was too close for comfort, but she wouldn't be here long. She caught the infant by the ankles. It mewled angrily and twisted to bite her. Even so young that its eyes were still closed, it had the instincts of its breed. Ilna couldn't grab it by the head the way she would've done a chicken. She rose, jerking the infant away from its mother, and dashed its brains out on a rock. She dropped the little body, backed a step, and scrubbed her hands with grit from the floor of the ravine. Karpos dragged the female's body back from the fire, then knelt to cut from the base of the neck up to the top of the skull, then back down in a single motion. He slid the point of his knife under the strip and trimmed the scalp lock free of the flesh while he pulled up on it. Temple was looking at Ilna. She glared at him and snarled, "Do you have anything to say?" Temple sheathed his sword. "No, Ilna," he said. "The kit was too young to live without its mother." Karpos set the scalp down and began working his arrow out point first. He'd have to refletch it, Ilna supposed, but that was the easy part of making an arrow. There was no lack of birds to provide feathers. This far from towns a metal point couldn't be replaced and a straight, properly seasoned shaft was the work of more than a year. "Do you think that mattered to me?" she said. "I'm going to kill all the beasts if I can. I don't care how old or young they are, all of them!" "It's possible for humans and Coerli to coexist," Temple said, strapping his buckler over his shoulder again.