by Robert Adams
Another cat cub wandered out, blinking in the splash of bright sunlight after the dimness of the cave’s interior, and the “sleeping” cub in Hari’s lap suddenly came to life and full watchfulness. He gathered his legs beneath his tense little body, his ears laid flat back against his neck and his foot-long tall twitching. When his unsuspecting littermate ambled within easy range, the sometime sleepers hindquarters swayed rapidly from side to side once, twice, thrice; and then he launched himself onto and full-tilt into his sister, and the two cubs commenced to roll over and over on the sun-warmed ledge — snarling and spitting, growling and clawing and biting with their small, sharp teeth. The enraged growls the two emitted seemed far deeper and more menacing than such small animals could possibly produce.
At last, the attacked female wrenched herself free of the tangle and stood for a moment — stiff-legged broadside to her attacker, her own small ears laid back and the soft fur fluffed up high along the line of her spine, her tail swishing and her white fangs bared at the crouching male cub — before flinging herself back into the fray.
Hearing the joyful sounds of the combat, first one, then another of the prairiecat litter trotted bouncing out onto the ledge to lend their own weight, teeth, claws and abundant vitality to the ongoing fracas, Hari sat and watched grinning and chuckling, until at last all four cubs lay panting or preening their ruffled fur in the sun.
The dark shadow of a gliding eagle swept over the ledge, its wide-spreading pinions momentarily blotting out the sunlight, and all tour cubs crouched instinctively in alarm, snarling in sudden fear, their eyes staring up toward this danger. Hari too looked aloft at the avian predator, his sinewy old hand closing about a jagged lump of rock fallen from the mountain above, but the bird wheeled to the right and soared out of sight behind a peak, obviously searching for smaller, more vulnerable prey than prairiecat cubs large as adult bobcats.
Then, from out of the cave, came the Eldest, having to stoop almost double to negotiate the six-foot-high opening. The Eldest greeted Hari telepathically, as neither had been able to twist his tongue around the other’s oral language to any great extent.
The Eldest numbered half again as many years as did Hari of Krooguh, yet be was neither stooped nor withered of body. Only a generous stippling of white among the coarse dark-brown hairs that covered all his huge body, saving only face. palms and the soles of his feet, announced him any whit different or more ancient than his sons and grandsons and their get.
As the Eldest came from beneath the rock overhang and out into the full sunlight, the cubs rushed up to gambol and cavort over and about his huge feet. Stooping again, be gathered up two of the playful young beastlets and cradled them in his massive arms, gently ruffling their fur with his long, black-nailed fingers, while rumbling smoothing contra-basso sounds of endearment to them.
Feeling once more safe and secure with this big twolegs they had known for all of their young lives, one cub began to lick down the chest hair of the Eldest, while the other commenced to worry at the loose skin between the thumb and the forefinger of one gigantic hand with a set of sharp, sparkling-white teeth.
When his dark-green irises had contracted enough to give him optimum vision in the bright glare, the Eldest crossed the outer ledge to sink onto the rock beside Hari, the thick black callosities protecting his almost-fleshless buttocks and the bone beneath from the hard surface that his mighty weight pressed them against. When he had drawn up and crossed his short legs, the other two cubs clambered up to reexplore the familiar lap.
“You are unhappy, Hari of Krooguh,” the Eldest beamed silently. “Why is this so?”
Hari’s sigh was audible, but he replied just as silently. “Because the winter has fled and the spring marches closer with every passing day, dear friend. Because I have found here, with you and yours, great happiness and more peace than I have ever before known in a very long life. Because I long to live out the rest of my days here, but cannot.”
The Eldest nodded sagely. “You feel responsibility to see the great cats back to the place of high grasses and no hills, them and the horses. But why can they not go on toward the setting sun along with each other, without you, friend Hari? Big as I am, I still would hate to have to fight even a single prairiecat, nor are any of your horses exactly gentle and defenseless. Remember those two wolves the stallion killed in the snow?”
Hari sighed again and shook his head of braided white hair. “Were wolves and treecats and bears, storms and rivers and rockslides the only dangers, I would not fear for any of them. But such is not the case, honored Eldest. These four-legged beasts all must get close enough for the cats and the horses to have at least a chance to give as much as or more than they receive. The most dangerous predator, however, moves upon two legs and can maim or slay at a distance.
“Since most men cannot communicate as can you and yours, I, and the folk of the Horseclans, they would look upon the cats as large, dangerous beasts and slay them to protect their livestock or hunt them down to death for their beautiful fur. The horses they would ride down and rope for a life of servitude, killing those that their cruelties could not bend to their will. The horses and the cats are my friends as you and your family are my friends, and I will not rest easy if I think that any of my friends are being hunted like wild beasts.”
“No, it is not good to be hunted,” the Eldest agreed. “My kind were so hunted by men, until we learned to so cloud the minds of those hunters that they saw us not. For hundreds of our generations has this skill served to protect us from your smaller but more vicious kind. It is not a difficult talent to develop; you have learned it and so have most of the adult cats, too, but I fear the horses never will learn it, their minds are just too . . . different.”
Had nodded again, resignedly. “So, you see, I must go.”
“You will leave us soon?” questioned the Eldest sadly.
“Within eight more suns, at the most,” Hari replied just as sadly. “Still ahead of me are many miles of mountains. I cannot move fast or far in any one day because the cats have not the endurance of the horses and so must either go slowly or rest often, and when again winter comes upon the land, I wish to be in milder surroundings than mountains.”
“That would be most wise,” stated the Eldest. “Such deep caves as this one are rare, and even if you found another and let the cats hunt for you, without a fire you would die, and who would there be to find and cut and fetch back wood for you? Perhaps I should send along a son or two to see to your welfare until . . . ?”
“No, honored Eldest, no. You and yours have already done far more for me than I ever can repay. Your brave sons saved my life at great risk to their own lives, then you sheltered and fed me for long months — me, an alien creature whose race has ever dealt yours only savagery and death, who long ago drove your kind to the wildest and most inaccessible portions of the lands. And yet you did still more for me, honored Eldest — you gave me back that which I had thought forever lost — my sight.”
“I could not have helped your body to repair its eyes had not you shown my mind how to so heal the infirmities and injuries of others, friend Hari. Untold future generations of Teenéhdjook will bless you for that great gift, so speak you not of debts owed me and mine, for it is assuredly we who owe you. Therefore, it is settled, this matter; two of my sons will journey on with you as far as the foothills to the west. You will not need to push the cats too hard, for if you must winter once more in mountains, my sons will provide all needs for you and the horses.”
Using wood and bone bound with sinew for the frames, the Teenéhdjook fashioned crude but effective saddles on which adult cats could crouch on the backs of the horses, with the hooked claws sunk into several thicknesses of rawhide coverings to steady them. With his own huge, skillful hands, the Eldest made a pair of hide panniers, that the cubs might relax and snooze in safety while journeying.
On the last night he was to abide with the Eldest in the now-familiar mountain cave, Hari of Kroo
guh imparted to his host what, with his rare and amazing abilities, he bad seen of the future of these Teenéhdjook.
“Honored Eldest, before ten more winters have passed, you and yours will find it needful to leave this fine cave and move on. You will move south and west and into mountains in which dwell true-men of two differing races. Some few of your kind dwell with them already, and they have long since interbred with a subrace of true-men who are much larger than most true men, although still not so large as Teenéhdjook.
“The one of these southern races will respect you and will deal honorably and fairly with you and you will find that they can be trusted; the other race will fear you and they cannot ever be trusted by even those of their own blood.
“After long years, when both you and your Sons are but old bones, one of your grandsons not yet born will be the eldest of the Teenéhdjook. His kind and the folk of the good true-men will be hard-pressed by the bad true-men and by another folk as well. For awhile, it will seem that all will be lost, that it will be only a matter of time until evil will triumph totally over good and that to further combat the many minions of that evil would be but to postpone the inevitable.
“But then, from out of the eastern lands, will come riding a champion. He and his forces will help in driving the brutal, untrustworthy men from out your land, and because of him and those who love him, the Good will be victorious in the Last Battle with Evil.
“You will have passed all this knowledge on to your sons, and they to theirs. You also will have passed the signs by which this champion may be known. He will be big for a true-man, this champion, a proven warrior and leader of warriors; he will be a hereditary chief in his own lands and the eldest of either nine or eleven Sons; he and his followers will ride through a wall of fire to reach you, and the champion will shed Teenéhdjook blood ere he mindspeaks your grandson and that grandson plumbs his mind to learn that the long-awaited champion is at last arrived.”
* * *
“And so,” said old Elmuh, speaking slowly and obviously having difficulty in voicing certain consonants, “this Eyeless Wise One, this Hari of Krooguh, rode on westward with the next dawning. My father and one of his brothers journeyed with their guest, the cats and the horses until, with the first snows, the western foothills were reached. Then did my father and my uncle begin their trek back into the high mountains. No Teenéhdjook ever saw him again, this Eyeless Wise true-man.”
“So, you see, Cousin Bili,” said Prince Byruhn, “this is why our Elmuh hailed you, back in that little vale where you all had camped, as the champion. After all, it might be said that you and your force rode through a wall of fire to reach my lands, and you did shed a measure of Teenéhdjook blood, when the haft of your thrown axe broke our Djehree’s big nose. You are a proven warrior and a leader of warriors, as well as a duke and a chief, in your own holdings. Are you the eldest of nine or eleven brothers?”
“Both, really,” answered Bili wonderingly. “My mothers bore my father eleven boy babes, but two died in or near infancy. There were nine of us until last year, then the next eldest to me, Djef Morguhn, was killed leading a sortie against the Ehleen rebels who were besieging my hall. Two others of my brothers were with me back on that plateau before the earthquake and the fires, but they are not with me now and I know not if they made it down safely or if they escaped the flaming forests.”
“Steel grant that your brothers be safe,” the prince said feelingly, then went on, “but back to the Prophecy, cousin. You see, everything about you was foretold long years ago, so how can you be aught else but this champion who will bring us victory over our foes?”
Bili was beginning to feel the jaws of some nebulous trap closing inexorably about him, so he demanded, “Just how much of the rest of these prophecies have really come to pass. Master Elmuh? “When did your ancestors leave their cave home, and why did they leave? Simply because of the Prophecy?”
Elmuh mindspoke Bili, beaming in preface. “Please, Lord Champion. let us two converse silently; I am more than half Teenéhdjook, and our mouths and throats were never truly made to speak the words of true-men.
“But, in answer to your question, a little more than seven years after Hari of Krooguh left it, the thunder and lightning of a summer storm precipitated a rockfall from above which partially buried the entrance of the cave and seriously weakened the ledge outside it. No sooner had the Teenéhdjook cleared enough of the blockage to get out onto the ledge than did the most of that ledge slide crashing down into the abyss, taking with it to their untimely deaths an adult male, a female of breeding age and two adolescents.
“Without the ledge and the path below it, access to the cave was made so difficult that the Eldest decided that he and his must leave and seek another dwelling place. Any direction would perhaps have been as good, but be and his Sons recalled the predictions of Hari of Krooguh, so they set out to the southwest. Before the last of the leaves had fallen, they came into New Kuhmbuhluhn, wherein they found living a few pureblooded Teenéhdjook, some Kleesahk, a small group of very large true-men and many Kuhmbuhluhners, all ruled over by the grandfather of Prince Byruhn.”
* * *
The Eldest and his family had heard and scented the men and horses and squeaking wagons of the approaching column long before it came into sight along the winding forest way. They had journeyed far since leaving the cave, now ruined, which had been their home for so many years, and they had been camped and resting near a bubbling little spring for a week — hunting, foraging and building weathertight shelters, since they intended to winter in the sheltered spot, for they had found hereabouts no recent traces of mankind, the ancient and pitiless enemy.
None of the shelters were at all visible from the track, even to the keen eyes of the Teenéhdjook. Nonetheless, the chary beings, all adult males and females, fanned out in a rough circle about the site and began to range out their beams, seeking the minds of true-men in order to cloud from them any notice of the huge nonhumans.
At last, after perhaps a quarter-hour, the head of the column came into sight and began to toil past the place where the Eldest stood partially concealed. Some of the true-men rode horses — about half of those horses bigger and beefier than had been the horses of Hari of Krooguh, the rest being domesticated mountain ponies — some were afoot and goading on spans of lowing oxen, the broad backs of these supporting coils of heavy iron chain and thick ropes, while yet another span drew a rough wain filled with axes, adzes, saws, and more ropes and chains.
But the men and various animals were not what suddenly drew and held the fascinated attention of the Eldest, what attracted his eyes was the three who walked behind the lumber-log, creaking wain. Although clothed like the full-men in cloth and leather, the keen vision and keener nose of the Eldest assured him that the two smaller, less hirsute of them were at least related to his kind and that the third, who was almost as tall and as massive as he, could be nothing but an adult male Teenéhdjook!
“Correct, Old One,” this strange Teenéhdjook who wore the coverings of a true-man beamed into the Eldest’s wondering mind. “I am known as the Fowler, from my skin at downing birds in flight with my slingstones. These two runts here are my get by a true-woman, a Ganik — it’s their dam’s blood makes their pelts so thin and ratty. But they’re good sons, all the same.”
“You live with true-men, breed with them, and they do not seek to do you harm, Fowler?” Despite the worth of the long-ago prophecy, avoidance of savage cruel true-men was ingrained and made the Eldest dubious. “How can this be so? True-men have always hated and hunted Teenéhdjook.”
“And most of them do still,” the stranger agreed blandly. “But not these who call themselves Kuhmbuhluhners. We have lived in safety and peace among them since first they came to these mountains, fleeing enemies who bad robbed them of their former homes and lands, somewhere to the north and east. They respect us for our great size and strength and our skills at hunting, and they protect us and the big Ganiks from the sm
all Ganiks, most of whom hate and fear us.
“It is tiresome to bold the mind-cloud for long, Old One. Why do you not drop yours and I will introduce you to Duke Fillip, the short, thick man up there on the dark-red horse. He is a full brother of the king, Byruhn III of Kuhmbuhluhn, and both he and his royal brother are firm friends to all Teenéhdjook and Kleesahks. There have never been enough of us — of your kind and mine — here in the kingdom, and you will be made most welcome.”
“No!” the Eldest stated firmly and unequivocally, his innate caution prevailing. “My family depend upon me, I cannot place them in jeopardy. Were you alone, Fowler, or with only a few true-men, it might be different, but . . .”
The Fowler became visibly — visibly to another Teenéhdjook — excited. “Your family, Old One? There are then more than the three males — you and two more — I can sense?”
“There are more,” admitted the Eldest grudgingly, “but they are far away and well hidden, and my sons and I will slay many men before they can get near to the females and the young. How many of those men are willing to die this day?”
“No one of them, I would imagine,” the Fowler replied dryly. “True-men value their own lives as highly as we do ours. But there is no need for threats and still less for a battle; so far, my two sons and I are the only beings who even know the nearness of you and the other two males . . . except for the horses and oxen, of course, but they can sense that you are not hunting them.
“I respect your caution, Old One, the wisdom of distrusting that with which you are unfamiliar, and so I will not tell the duke — and then, him only — of you and yours and this conversation until the party reach the place of big trees, where we all are bound this day. Then I will come back along this trail with one of my Sons and the duke, for we must converse more upon these matters. The Kingdom of New Kuhmbuhluhn lies in dire need of the strength of you and your family, and —”
