Robin McKinley - The Hero And The Crown

She looked down over her shoulder with dread, and the great cat thing, one of the wild folstza of the mountains, which could carry off a whole sheep or bring down a horse, began to purr. “Pleased to make your acquaintance,” Aerin said shakily. “I think.”

Her eyes had grown more accustomed to the darkness, and in the shadows now she could see more of the folstza, ten, a dozen, sixteen, twenty; they roved restlessly through the undergrowth as they approached, for, like cats of any size, they did not wish to admit that they approached; all but the one who warmed Aerin’s right thigh and shivered her with its purring. At last the folstza sat before her in a semicircle, blinking with green or gold or brown eyes, or looking off into space as if they couldn’t imagine how they found themselves there. Some sat neatly, tails curled around four paws; some sprawled like kittens. One or two had their backs to her. They were all sizes, from younglings who hadn’t grown into the length of their legs and the size of their feet, to some that were grey-muzzled with age.

“Well,” said Aerin. “I’m sure I am—er—grateful for your companionship. If Agsded troubles you too, I’m sure you could be of use in our—er—meeting.”

As if this were a signal, the cats stood up and wandered toward the small campfire, where Talat laid his ears back flat to his skull and rolled his eyes till the whites showed. “No,” said Aerin bemusedly; “I rather think these are our friends?’’ and she looked down at the thing that now twined itself between her legs (it had to scrunch down slightly to accomplish this) and rubbed its head affectionately against her hip.

It was the biggest of the lot of them. The rest were arranging themselves around the fire, some of them in heaps, some of them in individual curls and whorls. The one that now sat and stared up at Aerin was black, with yellow eyes, and short sharp ears with a fringe of fine long black hairs around each; and down his neck and back were cloudy grey splotches that dripped over his shoulders and haunches. She saw the flicker in his eyes and braced herself just in time as he sprang up on his hind legs and put his forepaws on her shoulders. His breath was soft against her face, and the ends of his whiskers tickled her cheeks. He looked faintly disappointed as she stood her ground and stared back at him; and he dropped to all fours again and padded silently over to her bedding, lying unrolled and ready near the fire. He batted it with a forepaw till he’d disarranged it to his liking, and then lay down full length upon it, and smiled at her.

Aerin looked at him. She looked around; the other cats were watching intently through slitted eyes, for all their languor; none of them had their backs to her now. She looked at Talat, who had backed up till his rump and flattened tail were pressed against a tree, and whose ears were still flat to his skull. She looked longingly at Gonturan, hanging from a tree on the far side of the fire, where she had set her when first making camp. Gonturan glittered in the firelight, but Aerin thought she mocked her even as the big cat did, and knew there was no help there.

“Even allies must know their place,” Aerin said aloud, and was again startled at how decisive her voice sounded. She stalked over to her blanket and the cat on it, seized the hem of the blanket, and yanked. The cat rolled a complete circumference and came up again looking startled, but Aerin did not stop to watch. She wrapped her blanket around her shoulders, picked up the bundle she used as a pillow, and rearranged herself to sleep at the foot of the tree on the far side of the fire, with Gonturan’s hilt in easy reach. She lay down with her back to the fire, and stared wide-eyed at the writhe of tree root before her.

Nothing happened.

The silence was broken only by the small snaps of the fire, and even these, at last, subsided, and real darkness fell. I should keep the fire going. Aerin thought; who knows what else is out there waiting? Who knows ... But her nightmares claimed her, and she fell asleep; and again she was suspended in nowhere, but nowhere was lit with a smoky red light, and a voice was calling her name; or she thought it was her name it called, but perhaps the word was “uncle.”

She awoke at dawn with a cramp in her side, for a heavy black-furred head was resting in the hollow between her last rib and her pelvis. As she stirred he began to purr. She sat up anyway, and glared at him. “You are horrible,” she said, and he gave her the same sleepy smile as when he had attempted to usurp her bedding.

Talat was dozing uneasily, still leaning against his tree, and was inclined to be cross when she went to put his saddle on; but perhaps that was because of the four-footed grey-edged shadow she brought with her. She rode off without looking behind her; but she felt, if she could not hear, the fluid motion following, and the black cat trotted along beside them as he could, occasionally leaping into the rocks above them as the trail narrowed. Once he jumped over them, from a rock face on one hand to an evergreen tree on the other, showering them with small sharp needles and seedpods; and when he rejoined them Talat whirled and snapped at him, but he only glided out of the way. He was smiling again. “Don’t let him tease you,” Aerin murmured. Talat’s ears stayed back all that day, and he was a little short on the weak leg, for he could not relax.

On the next day the yerigs joined them, the shaggy wild dogs with their great ruffs and silky feathery legs and long curling tails. They were a little less alarming than the folstza only because Aerin was accustomed to the king’s hounds, which were only half the size of the yerigs. The royal barn cats who caught the mice that tried to invade the grain bins were barely a tenth the size of the foltsza.

The yerig leader had only one eye, and a torn ear. She touched Aerin’s knee gently with her nose and then raised her head to stare fiercely into Aerin’s face. “I welcome you,” Aerin said to her; and the dogs with her ranged themselves on one side of the campfire while the cats, pretending that the dogs did not exist, still somehow all found themselves on the opposite side of the campfire; and that night Aerin slept very warm, for there was a cat to one side of her and a dog on the other.

Still they traveled north and east, and still the sun rose before them and sank behind them, but it seemed to Aerin, leading her quiet army, that it rose more sluggishly and sank sooner each day; and while the trees still shook out young leaves for her, there were fewer trees, and the solitary sound of Talat’s shod hoofs rang duller and duller. Occasionally she thought wistfully of the Lake of Dreams, and of a grey stone hall that stood near it; but she struck these thoughts from her mind as soon as she recognized them.

And then the day came when dawn was barely a lessening of shadow, and the clouds hung so low it took an effort of will to stand up straight and not bow beneath their weight. “Soon,” Aerin said to those that followed her; and soon came back to her in a rumble of many throats.

Talat stepped out that morning as if all his joints ached, and Aerin was willing enough to go slowly; she heard little gibbering voices snarling and sniveling at the edges of her mind, and there seemed to be a red fog over her eyes, as if the nothingness that haunted her nights would find her out in the days; and she murmured a word that Luthe had taught her, and the voices stopped, and the fog lifted. But she was not long allowed the pleasure of this small victory, for now a single voice murmured to her, and its murmurs reminded her of her Northern blood, her demon blood ... . “No!” she cried, and bent forward to press her face in Talat’s mane, and then she felt the pressure of a heavy paw on her shoulder, and whiskers tickled her cheek, and she opened her eyes to see two yellow eyes in a black face that did not smile; and Talat stood perfectly still, his head bowed, as the black cat’s other forepaw pressed into his crest.