by Robert Adams
The young man’s gaze dropped and his pale face reddened again. “I . . . I should not have . . . I insulted you, Capitán, and you . . . no man has control of his birth. I should be . . . Should I consider myself under arrest for my insubordination?”
De las Torres stepped forward and threw his left arm about the young officer’s shoulders in a bone-cracking hug. “Lord love you, no, lad! We’ll likely have to fight our way up to La Fortaleza and I’ll need every sword, lance and bow. You go back there to the well and draw up a bucket or two of water and wash yourself. We don’t want the men to think we’ve been fighting among ourselves, do we? Bad, very bad, for their morale, you know.”
When the two tenientes had left, the one to help the other, de las Torres mopped his own slightly damp brow, whuuffed a couple of times, then downed the rest of his cup of mescal, before addressing the foreign Conde and Don Angel.
“It’s an old story, señores. These lads come into my command thinking that because they are born to the hidalguía their dung doesn’t stink the same as any other man’s. One session of sabers brought this one down to size. Sometimes it takes two or even three. Occasionally, God help me, I have to kill one.”
Don Angel’s brow wrinkled. “Is there not danger in killing the sons of hombres ricos, Don Jorge? Even for one of your rank?”
“Not really, Don Angel, no,” answered the captain, soberly. “Both army and Empire value my services. Mine is basically a seasoning command, both for troopers and officers, and I turn out a good product, a fact well-known to those in authority.”
* * *
Don Esteban Fernandez was, as his captain’s children would be, half-hidalgo, son of an hidalga mother and a commoner father who had been knighted thirty years before.
He was a senior lieutenant, in his early twenties, de las Torres’s executive officer and his only officer with combat experience. During most of the march up from the south, he had commanded the scouts and, at de las Torres’s order, had headed the patrols of the hills surrounding Fuerte Media.
The broad-shouldered young man strode into the temporary headquarters, covered with dust and stinking of man-sweat and horse-sweat After sketching the briefest of salutes, he sank into one of the chairs and, ignoring the cups, drank long and deeply from one of the bottles, before commencing his report in a tired voice.
“Capitan, there are no bandidos within two miles on any flank of the fuerte. . . . Not now, but they have been damned recently. There were two camps, one to the east and one to the west, a total for both of eighty to one hundred mounted men, plus twenty or thirty head of spare horses, possibly a small remuda, possibly pack animals.”
“Or possibly,” put in the captain, “those horses of Don Vicente’s command not killed in the massacre.”
The dusty officer nodded once, brusquely, then went on. “They camped there at least a week, living mostly on wild game from the looks of it, but they must’ve brought their own water, because we could find no springs or wells up there. They moved out, north, either last night or early this morning, merging into a single column just out of sight of the fuerte.”
De las Torres nodded. “Then they’ll be waiting for us, up ahead, somewhere. There were no tracks leading back south, Esteban?”
Lowering the bottle from his lips, the officer sighed. “No, Capitán, I checked carefully. All the malditos rode north.”
The captain nodded again. “A clear message, then. If we turn about, we’ll be allowed to go in peace. If we march on toward La Fortaleza, we’ll have to fight All right, Esteban, choose four men who know the country, put them up on the best and freshest horses you can find. Give them both written and oral messages to the Duque-Grande, telling his grace what has occurred with our column, what Capitan Juan told of and what I intend. Send them out in twos; if they are attacked, one is to stay and fight, one is to ride on. Comprendes?”
* * *
Teniente Gregorio had been right about one thing. The addition of the dependents and other civilians to the column slowed the march to a snail’s pace, and keeping the heterogeneous elements closed up to a defensible unit was a constant and nerve-fraying task for the officers and noncoms. But it was done. The scouts often reported fresh sign and occasional sightings of distant riders, but they were allowed to proceed for more than a week without interference from the enemy.
It was during an unofficial conference in his tent, the ninth night out of Fuerte Media, that Capitán Don Jorge told his assembled staff and guests, “Senores, Don Esteban and I discussed a matter this afternoon with several of the lancers from the command of Capitán Alvarez and we now think we know what these bastardos are up to, where they likely intend to hit us. If you gentlemen will help to anchor this.”
Taking a tightly rolled parchment map from its case of oiled leather, he spread it out on the camp table. “We are here.” He used his long dirk for a pointer. “Tomorrow morning we should pass through the ruins of a small village that dates to the time before the Plagues of God. It has not been inhabited since then — for one thing, the campesinos all swear that it is haunted, for another and more practical reason, there is no longer any reliable source of water thereabouts. But some of the walls are still standing and it would make a marvelous site for an ambush.
“But if we are not struck there” — his dirk point moved on — “there is this deep, narrow arroyo, a kilometer northwest, you see.”
“The Capitán has a plan to deal with these murderous scum?” asked Teniente Gregorio, respectfully.
When the column formed and rode out the next morning, an observer would have had to have been extremely close to note that quite a few of the “lancers” and “dragoons” were actually civilians, some of them women, mounted on spare horses and mules, decked out in uniforms and armor from the wagons and spare lances brought from Fuerte Media.
Guided by men from Capitán Juan Alvarez’s lancer squad and by amateur copies of Don Jorge’s map, forty picked men, commanded by Don Esteban and Gregorio, had quit the camp in the dead of night and now were resting in hiding places just outside the ancient ruins of the abandoned village. With them were Dons Maylo and Angel, their arming-men and six lancers.
Widely scattered in arcs on both sides of the road, the watchers could clearly pick out the knots of men squatting in the concealment offered by the half-tumbled walls. As no horses were in evidence, it was apparent that there must be more men somewhere nearby keeping the animals out of sight.
The rocks which hid Don Maylo were still cool from the frigid night, but the rising sun already was giving promise of the ovenlike atmosphere that presently would envelop the desert and all it contained. Most of the inhabitants of this sun-blasted terrain were, perforce, creatures of the night, and were either already in their cool burrows and dens or would soon be there.
Don Maylo’s keen peripheral vision detected a movement far to his left, and as he watched, a small desert cat — his companions would have called it a jaguarundi — crossed the space between the line of soldiers and the ruins in a series of swift rushes from one bit of concealment to the next, aided by the color of her coat — a brownish-tannish-gray, almost the same shade and texture as the rocks and pebbly clay.
Knowing from times long past that many felines were telepathic, Don Maylo sent his powerful mind ranging out “Was the hunting good last night, cat-sister?”
But it clearly was not the small cat that answered him. The answer came on a beam of thought as powerful as his own, if not more so. It shocked him to the very core of his being, for he knew of old that power, knew that the mindspeaker could be nothing other than one of the prairie cats of the Horseclans far to the north, beyond the still-distant river called Rio Grande.
“The hunting never is really good in this place Sacred Sun seeks to destroy, as any Cat well knows. But . . . your mind, it is not of Cat, it . . . You are a two-leg! How do you speak the speech of Cats, Two-leg? Two-legs in this place do not speak to us, they only kill us, as they killed our mother a
nd our brothers. Unless . . . ?”
Another, equally powerful mind entered the “conversation.” “Unless, sister mine, this be one of the good two-legs, of whom our mother spoke so often. Do you ride from the north, from the lands of tall grasses and good hunting, Two-leg? Are cats and horses your kindred, then?”
“Yes, cat-sisters, my stallion is my dear brother,” replied Don Maylo. “Cats, too, once were my kindred, but in the many years since I left the lands of tall grasses, all those cat-kindred with whom I hunted plump deer and swift saber-horns and the fierce rams of the high plains have surely gone to Wind. But I would gladly be brother to two cat-sisters.”
“If truly you be who and what you say,” said the first cat, suspiciously, “then promise us The Promise.”
Don Maylo did not need to ask what promise, for he had framed the words of that ancient pledge himself, to the first clans-born generation of prairiecats.
“I will care for you when you are nursing and for your kittens, should you be slain. I will send you quickly to Wind when age has dimmed your eyes and dulled your teeth.”
Then, Don Maylo felt his very skin prickle under the great wash of long-bottled emotion that swept into his mind from those two feline minds. “They are the proper words, the Promise that binds cat and two-leg, one to the other. Since the time when the Undying Uncle rode among His children, the clans. Leave your mind open, Brother, and we shall come to you.”
“NO!” Don Maylo beamed forcefully. “No, cat-sisters. I am with two-legs who are not as am I. They cannot speak with you and would consider you dangerous animals and kill you.
“I am near to the ruined Dirtmen-place. There will soon be a battle here. Is your den near to this place?”
“Yes, cat-brother, a short run, no more,” was the reply.
“Then den up until Sacred Sun goes to rest, sisters. I shall try to come to you tonight.”
“You could never find our den, brother,” one of the cats projected, assuredly.
“No,” agreed Don Maylo, “probably not. So one of you must keep your mind open and ranging in this direction from . . . say moonrise to moonset. That way, we can make contact and you two can come to me. But be sure to broadbeam soothingly, as you come, for my stallion is not Horseclans-bred.”
* * *
The dark-yellow moon rose clear and full over the still, chill desert landscape. From horizon to horizon, the black velvet of the night sky was bespangled with an untold myriad of twinkling stars. Within a small arroyo half a mile from the camp of the caravan Don Maylo’s golden stallion, still saddled but bridleless, lazily wandered, browsing halfheartedly on the few rough plants, stamping and whuffling now and again at the tiny, scuttling creatures of the night.
On a ledge six feet up one wall sat Don Maylo, himself. Pressed close to either side, and reveling in the carresses of his strong, gentle hands as much as in the rapport of their three joined minds, sat the cat-sisters — big as jaguars of the far south they were in body, but with longer legs, legs made for the run rather than the short charge; their heads were as large as his own-larger, the cuspids of the upper jaws equipped with yellow-white fangs a good four inches long, their big, amber eyes glinting with intelligence.
They had opened their minds, their memories, to this new and so-satisfying brother, so that he now knew the story of how two three-year-old female prairiecats found themselves immured in this all but waterless place so far from their natural habitat. It was a tale of a raid-in-force by the warriors and cats of three southerly-ranging Horseclans, of a great and bloody battle somewhere in this desert and of a wounded cat crawling off from a stricken field to recover in a den found among the rocks. She bore the litter she had been carrying there, weaned the two males and two females and taught them to hunt the small, elusive game. She also filled them with tales of the Horseclans — of men who could speak with, were the very brothers of, prairiecats.
Finally, when the kittens were large enough to travel long distances, the little family set out northward, toward the lands of the mother’s birth. But disaster had struck at the wide, shallow river. Yelling men on horses had fought and slain and skinned the mother and both the brothers, who had bravely held the foe that the two sisters might win free. In the years since, the two cats had roamed, becoming creatures of the desert nights, avoiding men, their places and the river that barred their way north to the fabled lands of tall grasses and plentiful game and men who were brothers not foes.
They still went by the kitten-names which their long-dead mother had given them, Mousesqueak and Skinkkiller. Though neither was fat — their diet and life did not allow for the accumulation of adipose tissue — Mousesqueak had grown to be slightly larger than her sister, perhaps one hundred and fifteen kilos. But the smaller cat did most of the speaking for the two and seemed to have the better memory, as well.
Skinkkiller asked, “Brother, how went your battle? I see that neither claw nor fang gashed your hide.”
“It was no real battle, sisters,” Maylo replied. “It was a slaughter. The ambushers were themselves ambushed, caught in the meshes of their own trap and either arrowed or ridden down before they could reach their horses.”
“And so, now that your battle is done, brother, will you not lead us — my sister and me — back to the lands favored by Sacred Sun and Wind?” asked Mousesqueak, plaintively.
Don Maylo had given much thought to that very matter. To take the two cats among the folk of the caravan would be very sticky, to say the least. The destination of that caravan, Ciudad Juarez and the other city and the fortress, were really much farther west than he had intended going — he had originally intended crossing the Rio Grande somewhere near its confluence with the Rio San Francisco, then riding due north through the area which had been, hundreds of years ago, the State of Texas — but the friendships of first Conde Ramón and then Don Angel had kept him.
This was as good a time and place as any to part company with the column, and the loss of his one sword would not overly weaken the force. According to the information tortured out of the few survivors of the ambushers, the shaky alliance of bandido bands had already broken apart, and the couple of hundred annihilated by them yesterday morning had been the last large or really well-armed group. Nor had he aught to worry about in setting off alone, not with his advance scouted by, his flanks and rear guarded by the two formidable cats.
Back in camp, he took Don Angel aside and spoke in low tones. “Well, old friend, the time has come when our trails must part. No, allow me to finish.”
From under his hauberk, he drew his worn, sweatstained moneybelt and proffered it. “This will be of no use to me whence I am now bound, Angel. Give one onza to each of our men and two onzas to the families of the two who were slain. The rest is yours, about forty onzas, or so.”
The bandylegged sergeant-become-knight weighed the dark leather belt in one hand. “Con su permiso, Don Maylo, I am rich enough.” He flexed a leg so that his horny ringers might tap the gilt spurs on his bootheels, meaningfully. “I shall give two onzas to each of our muchachos and bear four to the wives of the dead, the rest I shall ‘lose’ to Don Jorge at the dicecup, one night soon. Then he can afford to purchase a higher rank and better life.
“But as for you, surely you will need escort across this dangerous land. One lone man cannot . . .”
Don Maylo shook his head, smiling. “I shall not be alone, not exactly. Which brings us to my last request of you. Have our men take three of the best of the captured horses and fit them with packsaddles. On one, pack water for three men and three horses for a week, jerked meat, cheese and dried figs, my sleeping robes and two cases of arrows. Oh, and see if you can find me a wolfspear. You may have my lance in trade for it. Take my shield, as well, it’s too heavy. Bring me a lancer’s target instead, and a light horseman’s axe.”
As dawn paled the eastern sky, Don Angel rode out of camp, leading the three captured horses to the agreed point of rendezvous. Don Maylo met him at the mouth of
the small arroyo on foot, but Angel could not greet him, for something was making the four horses fractious. After a few moments, however, they quieted as if by magic.
“All those things you asked are packed on the one horse, Don Maylo, as well as two fifty-kilo bags of grain, a pan, a stewpot, some clothing from your chest, some dried chilis, garlic and salt. The two bottles of mescal are from Don Jorge, who wishes you a safe journey, but respects your wish for an unannounced departure. Capitán Alvarez sends his best wishes and four dozen cigarros.
“But, please, Don Maylo, Don Humberto’s — my father’s — injunction was to see you safe to your journey’s end or to the border of Mexico, whichever came first. The muchachos stand ready, even now. Cannot we guard you as far as the border?”
The tall man shook his head. “Thank you, Angel, but no. And fear not for my safety. I shall have better guards than a full troop of lancers could be.”
“Then,” insisted the short man, “may I not at least meet these, your new companions?”
Don Maylo smiled. “Very well, Angel, but leave your sword and dirk here, please.”
Treading at Don Maylo’s heels, Angel first saw the golden-chestnut stallion, pulling at a bit of tough scrub. Then, he spotted the two cats, sitting erect on the ledge above.
His eyes never left the huge predators as he slowly laid a hand on his companion’s arm, saying in a low voice, “Don Maylo, there are a pair of monstrous cats crouched on a ledge just above your stallion. If we back up carefully, perhaps we can get my bow and . . .”
“No,” said Maylo. “They will do us no harm, Angel. They are my friends and will be my companions on the rest of my journey.”
“This two-leg you call ‘brother’ stinks of fear, fear and hate. He would slay both of us if he could,” stated Skinkkiller.
“He was unprepared,” Maylo mindspoke. “He had thought to see other two-legs, not you. Come down and greet him in friendship.”
