Friends (2013) - Adams, Robert

Even in the freezing cold, Ar’tor began to sweat.

He looked down, directly into a pair of narrowed yellow eyes.

RUN!

Old Cat just behind him, Artor ran so fast that his feet barely left an imprint on the ground. He dove the last few feet into the rocks, rolled losing skin, and lay there panting.

Well. There was a little speed left in you after all.

And this time, for the first time, there was a trace of amusement in Old Cat’s “voice.”

For some reason that Ar’tor couldn’t totally understand, he slept the rest of the night curled onto his side, smiling.

The days began to flow together in a pattern. Every morning, Ar’tor would rise and stretch his body. Then he would eat. And then run. In the afternoons, he would fight, and fight, and fight. And when he had no more strength, Old Cat made him stretch, and then run some more. Not the invigorating, healthy loping stride of the Hillpeople, but a sudden, start-stop movement that drained all of the strength in his body and made his limbs flame.

After the first week, he stopped thinking about the pain, because it was a constant, enveloping thing.

He accepted that this was his lot, and with that acceptance, the pain began to recede. Yes, his limbs hurt, but the agony was more a signal of growth than a warning, and he was able to push it from his mind.

Making' room for other things. First, and now most important, Old Cat himself.

On the ninth morning he left his fissure and found no meal sitting out on the edge. Old Cat sat at the lip of the plateau, gazing out over the valley. His tail moved slowly from side to side. He turned to see Ar’tor coming.

Ar’tor could have sworn that he heard a purr of welcome. Hello, little one.

“No food today?”

/ found nothing last night. I am sorry.

Ar’tor sat next to the creature, for the first time looking upon it as the beautiful animal it truly was. Beneath its black-brown coat, muscles rolled fluidly. Though the skin was loose now, it was easy to imagine Old Cat in his youth. What an unutterably magnificent creature it must have been.

“There is still goat from yesterday.”

It is not fresh. It is not good.

“I’ll survive.”

Old Cat said nothing.

At length, Ar’tor asked, “What are you?”

I am far from home, Old Cat said.

For long minutes Ar’tor thought Old Cat was going to speak again, but he didn’t. Come. It is time for our lessons.

Ar’tor warmed up, loosening his back, flicking the knife with controlled, whiplike motions. Speed is loose. Speed is like a hiss, Old Cat had told him once.

“You’ve known men before, haven’t you?”

Many, the cat replied. Once, long before you were born, I ran the plains with men. I loved them, and they loved me. I had a place in their society. Old Cat shook himelf. But come.

For once, Ar’tor stood his ground. “No. You bring me here, and run me until 1 cannot stand, and then make me fight until my arms are on fire. I want to know. I have a right to know!”

Perhaps you do, stripling. You will know. You will know someday. Eventually, a being wants a mate. A creature to sleep next to at night. To give cubs to. Something to love. I was a creature of the plains, but I found my mate in the mountains. It seems insane now. I could have stayed with my friends, and fought, and lived . . .

“But you didn’t.”

I didn’t. She would not come with me to the plains. And I loved her too much to leave her. So I came here, and I stayed. And we lived together. We had no cubs for many years. Men have a word for this. / don’t know it. Only last winter did I finally feel my seed burn within her. Come summer, she would bear my cubs. And so it came to be.

Then came the one you call Tluman. A renegade, a mumbling mindspeaker, one who came after my separation from the men of the Horseclans. He had done something terrible, and failed the Test of the Cat. He hated my kind, and when he found that I lived in the hills, he hunted me. By the Great Cat, how he hunted me. And at last he caught my mate, and my cubs, and he skinned them slowly, trying to bring me out. And I did not come, because I knew that my only chance to kill him would be to use stealth. I would kill him in my own time, in my own way.

Old Cat looked at Ar’tor. This is my time. You are my way.

“What did men call you when you walked among them?”

They called me Yelloweye.

Ar’tor crouched in the brush, watching. On the other side of the clearing, Old Cat was moving. He didn’t know where; the hunter had disappeared into the snow three minutes before, and Ar’tor had since seen no sign of it—of him—since. Yelloweye was a male, from his story.

Here the bushes were odd, twisted white lumps in an icy, flowing carpet. But between two of the lumps, nibbling through to a bit of twigs, a small doe was in sight. She stopped eating even as the thought doe crossed his mind. Her slender brown head quivered, the black rings of her nostrils quivering as she tested the air.

Ar’tor held his breath. A dozen trees separated him from the deer. Thirty yards behind her, trees broke from the snow, forming Yelloweye’s closest possible cover.

The deer turned back to the twig, stripping away a scrap of bark. Then her head snapped up again, and Yelloweye exploded from the snow. Somehow, in a manner that Ar’tor couldn’t quite understand, he had worked his way ten yards closer than the nearest tree. The doe panicked, bolting directly toward Ar’tor.

Ar’tor exhaled and leapt as he heard the hooves pounding against the snow. One part of his mind screamed, Too soon! Wait until \ou can see her! Another listened to the sound of the feet, working from some instinctive timing more precise than vision.

Ar’tor catapulted smack into the doe. Her hooves struck him in the face, but he managed to snake an arm around her neck and drag her to the ground. The terrified creature bit and kicked as Ar’tor found his grip on the knife, twisted so that he wouldn’t stab himself in the buttock, and drove the blade in.

The deer’s convulsions tore the blade from Ar’tor’s hands. The two of them lay on the ground, panting, as Old Cat padded up. A great victory. Will you live?

“Long enough to wish your worms a hearty appetite.” Ar’tor got to his knees and pulled out the knife, cutting the deer’s throat. He set to stripping away the meat.

/ liked that. You did well.

Despite his punctures and scrapes, Ar’tor smiled as he worked.

Ar’tor sat on the lips of the plateau and looked down over the valley. Distantly, he could make out the cookfires of the Hollow. The night was impossibly crisp and clear, and it seemed as if he could see to the edge of the world.

Karls would have liked the view. He would have made a joke about how far one could cast a spear from here, but it wouldn’t have fooled Ar’tor. Karls would have found great beauty, would have asked Ar’tor to write a poem for it. A poem Karls would later give to Eloi.