The Iron Breed

by Andre Norton

  Thai Shan

  Sabina

  Samantha

  who were with us for far too short a time.

  Man is old enough to see himself as he really is—a mammal among mammals. . . . He is old enough to know that in the years to come he may be crowded out like the prehistoric monsters of the past, while life breaks out in some ascendant form that is better suited to survive. . . .

  —Homer W. Smith, Kamongo

  What monstrous folly, think you, ever led nature to create her one great enemy—man!

  —John Charles Van Dyke

  1

  There was a light breeze, just enough to whisper through the leaves. Furtig lay belly down on the broad limb of the tree, hunter-fashion, but his claws were still in his belt loop, not strapped on. No sniff of that breeze brought any useful scent to his expanded nostrils. He had climbed the tree not for a base from which to make a good capture-leap, but to see what lay beyond. However, now he knew that he must climb higher still. The leaves were too thick a screen here.

  He moved with sinuous grace. Though his ancestors had hunted on four legs, Furtig now went on two, save when time pressed and he had to take to a fast run. And he was very much at home in the treetops. For those ancestors had also been climbers, just as their active curiosity had led them into exploration. Now he drew up from his perch into smaller branches, on which he balanced with inborn skill.

  At last he gained a crotch, and there he faced through an opening what he had come to see. He had chosen a tree on a small hill, and the expanse before him was clear.

  The first nips of frost had struck the country, though by day a gentle warmth returned. Tall grass rippled between him and those distant, monstrous shadows. The grass was brown, and it would not be long before the cold season. But first came the Trials of Skill.

  Furtig's black lips pulled tight, and he opened his mouth on a soundless battle snarl. The white curve of tearing fangs showed their pointed tips. His ears flattened in folds against his rounded skull, the furred ridge along his back lifted, and the hair on his tail puffed.

  To those who had known his ancestors, he would be a grotesque sight; for a body once well fitted to the needs of its owner had altered in ways strange to nature. Rounded forepaws had split into stubby fingers, awkward enough but able to accomplish much more in the way of handling. His body was still largely furred, but there were places where the fur had thinned to a light down. There was more dome to his skull, just as the brain beneath was different, dealing with thoughts and conceptions earlier unknown. In fact it was that brain which had altered most of all. Feline, Furtig's ancestors had been. But Furtig was something which those who had known those felines could not have accurately named.

  His people did not measure time more than by certain rites of their own, such as the bi-yearly Trials of Skill when a warrior gave the best evidence of his prowess so that the females could pick a mate. One noted the coming of winter cold, and the return of spring, summer's heat when one drowsed through the days and hunted by night. But the People did not try to count one year apart from the rest.

  Though it was said that Gammage did things none other of the People thought of doing. Gammage—

  Furtig studied the bulk of buildings on the other side of the fields, lairs of the Demons. Yet Gammage feared no Demon. If all the stories were true, Gammage lived yonder in the heart of the lost Demon world. It was the custom for first-rite warriors to speak of “going to Gammage.” And once in a long while one would. Not that any returned—which argued that the Demons still had their traps at work, even though no Demon had been seen for generations.

  Furtig had seen pictures of them. It was part of the regular scout training to be taught to recognize the enemy. And, while a youngling could be shown one of the Barkers, a Tusked One, or even a vile Ratton in the flesh, he had to depend solely upon such representations of Demons for identification.

  Long ago the Demons had gone from their lairs, though they had left foul traces of their existence behind them. The stinking sickness, the coughing death, the eaten-skin ills—these had fallen on the People too in the past, for once they had been imprisoned in the Demons' lairs. Only a small handful of them had escaped.

  The memory of such deaths had kept them away from the lairs for many lifetimes. Gammage had been the first to dare to return to live in the Demons' forsaken shells. And that was because his thirst for knowledge had taken him there. Gammage came of a strange line differing yet again from many of the People.

  Absently Furtig brought his hand to his mouth, licked the fur on it clean of an itch-causing leaf smear. He was of Gammage's own clan line, and they were noted for their boldness of curiosity and their differences in body. In fact they were not too well regarded. Once more his lips wrinkled, his tail twitched a little. Warriors of his family did not find it easy to take a mate, not even when they won in the Trials. Their restlessness of spirit, their habit of questioning old ways, of exploring, was not favored by any prudent cave mother who wished security for future younglings.

  Such would look in the opposite direction when Gammage's kin padded by. And Gammage himself, awesome as he was, had little repute nowadays. Though the clans were willing enough to accept the infrequent, but always surprising, gifts which he had sent from the lairs in times past.

  The hunting claws, which clicked softly as Furtig shifted his weight, were one of Gammage's first gifts to his people. They were made of a shining metal which did not dull, break, or flake with the passing of years as did the shards of metal found elsewhere. Set in a band which slipped over the hand, they snapped snugly just above the wrist, projecting well beyond the stubby fingers with tearing, curved hooks, like the claws one grew, but far more formidable and dangerous. And they were used just as one used one's natural defenses. A single well-placed blow could kill one of the deer or wild cows Furtig's people hunted for their staple food.

  In war with one's kind they were forbidden. But they could be worn to face the Barkers, as those knew only too well. And with the Rattons—one used all and any weapons against those evil things. While with the Tusked Ones there were no quarrels, because of a truce.

  Yes, the claws were from Gammage. And from time to time other things came from him, all designed to lighten the task of living in the Five Caves. So that the clans were respected and feared. There were rumors that another tribe of the People had settled lately to the north of the lairs, but so far none of Furtig's people had seen them.

  The lairs—Furtig studied those blots on the landscape. They formed a long range of mountains. Was Gammage still there? It had been—he began to count seasons, tapping them off with a finger—it had been as many as fingers on his one hand since any word or gift had come from Gammage. Perhaps the Ancestor was dead.

  Only that was hard to believe. Gammage had already lived far past the proper span of any ordinary warrior. Why, it had been Furtig's great-great-grandfather who had been Gammage's youngling in the last of the families born before the death of his mate and his departure for the lairs. It was also true that Gammage's blood lived longer than most. Fuffor, Furtig's father, had died in a battle with the Barkers, and he was then the only one of his years left at the Five Caves.

  Nor had he seemed old; his mate had had another pair of younglings that very season, and she was the fourth mate he had won during the passing of seasons!

  If it was not that so much of Gammage's blood now ran in the tribe there might be trouble. Once more Furtig snarled silently. Tales grew, and dark tales always grow the faster and stronger. Gammage was in league with Demons, he used evil learning to prolong his life. Yet for all such mewling of stories in the dark, his people were eager enough to welcome one of Gammage's messengers—take what he had to offer.

  Only, now that those messengers came no more, and one heard nothing from those who had gone to seek Gammage, the stories grew in force. At the last Trials Furtig's older brother of another birth time had won. Yet he had not been chosen by any mate. And so he
had joined the far scouts and taken a western trail-of-seeking from which he had never returned. Would it be any better for Furtig? Perhaps less—for he was not the warrior-in-strength that Fughan had been, being smaller and less powerful, even though his rivals granted him speed and agility.

  He supposed he should be in practice now, using all those skills for the Trials, not wasting time staring at the lairs. Yet he found it hard to turn away. And his mind built strange pictures of what must lie within those walls. Great had been the knowledge of the Demons, though they had used it ill and in a manner which later brought them to defeat and death.

  Furtig remembered hearing his father discuss the dim history of those days. He had been talking with one of Gammage's messengers about some discovery the Ancestor had made. That had been when Gammage had sent his picture of a Demon; they were to beware any creature who resembled it.

  Before they had died, the Demons had gone mad, even as sometimes the Barkers did. They had fallen upon one another in rage, and were not able to mate or produce younglings. So without younglings and with their terrible hatred for one another, they had come to an end, and the world was the better for their going.

  Gammage had learned this in the lairs, but he also feared that someday the Demons might return. From death? Furtig wondered. Great learning they had had, but could any living creature die and then live again? Perhaps the Demons were not rightly living creatures such as the People, even the Rattons. Someday—someday he would go to Gammage to learn more.

  But not today, not until he had proven himself, shown all the Five Caves that the blood of Gammage was not to be ill-considered. And he would waste no more time in spying on the dead lairs of Demons either!

  Furtig swung out of the tree, dropping lightly. This was the outpost of a small grove which angled back to become an arm of the forest country, the hunting territory of the Five Caves. Furtig was as at home in its shade as he was in the caves.

  He stopped to tuck his hunting claws more tightly into his belt so that no small jangle would betray his passing, and then flitted on, his feet making no sound on the ground. Since he wanted to make speed he went to all fours, moving in graceful bounds. The People stood proudly upright when it was a time of ceremony, thus proving that the Demons who always walked so were no greater, but in times of need they fell back upon ancestral ways.

  He planned to approach the caves from the north, but at first his course was west. That would take him by a small lake, a favorite feeding place of plump ducks. To return with an addition to the cave food supplies was always the duty of a warrior.

  Suddenly a whiff of rank scent brought Furtig to a halt, crouching in the bushes. His hand whipped to his belt, reached for the claws, and he worked his hands into them with practiced speed.

  Barkers! And more than one by the smell. They were not lone hunters like his own people, but moved in packs, centering in upon the kill. And one of the People would be a kill they would enjoy.

  Courage was one thing, stupidity another. And Furtig's people were never stupid. He could remain where he was and do battle, for he did not doubt that the Barkers would speedily scent him (in fact he wondered fleetingly why they had not already done so). Or he could seek safety in the only flight left—aloft.

  The hunting claws gave him a firm grip as they bit into tree bark, and he pulled himself up with haste. He found a branch from which he could view the ground below. Deep in his throat rumbled a growl he would not give full voice to, and with flattened ears and fur lifted on his spine, he watched, eyes aslit in a fighting face.

  There were five of them, and they trotted four-footed. They had no one such as Gammage to supply them with any additions to the natural weapons of fangs. But those were danger enough. The Barkers were a third again as large as Furtig in size, their strong muscles moving smoothly under hides which were some as gray as his own, others blotched with black or lightened on belly and chest with cream.

  They wore belts not unlike his, and from three of these dangled the limp bodies of rabbits. A hunting party. But so far they had found only small prey. If they kept on along that way though (Furtig's soundless growl held a suggestion of anticipation), they were going to cross the regular ranging ground of the Tusked Ones. And if they were foolish enough to hunt them—Furtig's green eyes glistened. He would back the Tusked Ones against any foe—perhaps even against Demons. Their warriors were not only fierce fighters but very wily brained.

  He hoped that the Barkers would run into Broken Nose. In his mind Furtig gave that name to the great boar leader. The People could not echo the speech of the Tusked Ones, any more than they could the sharp yelps of the Barkers—though no reasonable creature could deem those speech. At the rare times of truce communication, one depended on signs, and the learning of them was the first lesson of any youngling's education.

  Furtig watched the Barkers out of sight and then worked his way around the tree, found a place where he could leap onto the next, and made that crossing skillfully.

  He was still growling. To see Barkers invading the hunting territory of the Five Caves was a shock. He would waste no time duck-stalking. On the other hand he must make sure that those he had seen were not outscouts for a larger pack. There were times when packs changed hunting territories, driven out by larger packs or by lack of game.

  If such a pack were coming into the woods, then Furtig's warning would carry a double impact. He must back trail on those he had seen for a space.

  For a time he kept to the trees, where he left no trail to be sniffed out even though, unlike the Barkers and the Tusked Ones, his people had no strong body odor. They hunted by sight and hearing and not by scent as did their enemies.

  As a final precaution Furtig opened a small skin pouch made fast to his belt. Within was a wad of greasy stuff; its musky smell made his nose wrinkle in disgust. But he resolutely rubbed it on his feet and hands. Let a Barker sniff that and he would get a noseful as would send him off again, for it was the fat of the deadly snake.

  Down again on the ground, Furtig sped along. As he went he listened, tested the air, watched for any sign that the home woods had been invaded in force. But he could not find anything save traces of the small party he had seen.

  Then—His head jerked around, his nose pointed to a tree at his left. Warily he moved toward it. Barker sign left there as a guide, but under it—

  In spite of his disgust at the rankness of the canine scent, Furtig made himself hold his head close, sniff deeper. Yes, beneath that road sign of the enemy was another, a boundary scent—of the People, but not of his own clan.

  He straightened to his full height, held his arms overhead as far as he could reach. Scratches, patterned scratches, and higher than those he could make with his own claws. So the stranger who had so arrogantly left his hunting mark there had been larger, taller!

  Furtig snarled aloud this time. Leaping, he slashed with his claws, managing to reach and dig into the other's sign, scouring out that marking, leaving the deeper grooves he had made. Let the stranger see that! Those deep marks crossing the first ought to be a warn-off to be heeded.

  But the forest was getting far too crowded. First a hunting party of the Barkers, now a territory marking left by a stranger, as if Fives Caves and its clans did not exist at all! Furtig abandoned his back trailing. The sooner the People learned of these two happenings, the better.

  However, he did not throw away caution but muddled his trail as he went. If any scout tried to sniff out the reptile scent, he would be disheartened by these further precautions. But this took time, and Furtig had to make a wider circle to approach the caves from a different direction.

  It was dusk and then night. Furtig was hungry. He rasped his rough-surfaced tongue in and out of his mouth when he thought of food. But he did not allow himself to hurry.

  A sudden hiss out of the night did not startle him. He gave a low recognition note in return. Had he not sounded that he might well have had his throat clawed open by the guard. The Peop
le did not survive through lack of caution.

  Twice he swung off the open trail to avoid the hidden traps. Not that the People were as dependent on traps as the Rattons, who were commonly known to have raised that defense to a high art in the lairs. For, unlike the People, who distrusted and mainly kept away from the Demon places, the Rattons had chosen always to lurk there.

  The Five Caves were ably defended by nature as well as by their inhabitants. None of them opened at ground level. High up, they cut back from two ledges with a straight drop below. There were tree-trunk ladders rigged to give access to the ledges. But these could be hauled up, to lie along ledge edge, another barrier to attack. Twice the caves had been besieged by packs of Barkers. Both times their defenses had been unbreakable, and the attackers had lost more pack members then they had slain in return. It was during the last such attack that Furtig's father had fallen.

  Within, the caves cut deeply, and one of them had a way down to where water flowed in the ever-dark. Thus the besieged did not suffer from thirst, and they kept always a store of dried meat handy.

  Furtig's people were not naturally gregarious. Younglings and their mothers made close family units, of course. But the males, except in the Months of Mating, were not very welcome in the innermost caves. Unmated males roved widely and made up the scouts and the outer defenses. They had, through the years, increased in numbers. But seldom, save at the Trials of Skill, were they ever assembled together.

  They had a truce with another tribe-clan to the west, and met for trials with them that they might exchange bloodlines by intermating. But normally they had no contact with any but their own five families, one based in each of the caves.

  Furtig's cave was at the top and north, and he swung up to it quickly, his nose already sorting and classifying odors. Fresh meat—ribs of wild cow. Also duck. His hunger increased with every sniff.

  But as he entered the cave, he did not hurry to where the females were portioning out the food but slipped along the wall to that niche where the senior member of the clan sat sharpening his hunting claws with the satisfaction of one who had recently put them to good use. So apparent was that satisfaction, Furtig knew Fal-Kan had been responsible for the cow ribs.