Hunters Unlucky Part 62

"You've acquired more ferryshaft," said Roup. His eyes slid over Valla and then flicked back. He blinked. "And the Shable."

"Yes," said Arcove. "They were just leaving."

Sauny sputtered. "You need our help."

Arcove glanced at her. "I was under the impression that you needed mine." He'd slowed his pace a little, and in that moment of divided attention, he stumbled on a root. It was a tiny mistake, instantly corrected, but Roup noticed. Storm could tell by his look of surprise.

"Keesha-" began Storm, but Arcove talked over him.

"Roup, this is Sauny Ela-ferry, Storm's sister. Coden was their great grand-sire. That other one is her beta."

"My name is Valla," piped up Valla.

Roup looked at Sauny with an expression that Storm could not read.

"They are hoping to hide their herd on Kuwee Island while we all kill each other," continued Arcove.

"Not an unreasonable plan," said Roup mildly.

"However, they are sufficiently worried about Treace that they would like him dead by this evening, which is where I come in...I think. Did I get that all right, Storm?"

Storm let out an exasperated breath. "Well, you're mixing up things I said with things Shaw said, but-"

"But that's the gist of it," said Arcove. "Now, we have to run if we're going to reach the Great Clearing before this fight. I a.s.sume Halvery is going to fight him if I don't turn up?"

"Yes," said Roup. "He and Sharmel went to your den to see what kind of support we've got. They'll meet us at the clearing." He was watching Arcove minutely. "Are you alright?"

"I'm fine."

"You don't look fine."

"I look wet," said Arcove. "I'll dry."

Sauny trotted up beside Storm. "What are you going to do?" she whispered.

"Stay and see how the fight turns out," muttered Storm. "Decide after that. Are you going after the herd right now?"

Sauny thought for a moment. "No. I'll stay, too. See how the fight turns out. How did you end up with the creasia, anyway?"

Storm sighed. He dropped back a bit and watched Teek to make sure he was keeping up. Arcove was moving quickly, but, in spite of his words, he wasn't running with the speed that Storm remembered. Because he's conserving his strength? Or because of whatever Keesha did to him?

Storm looked at Sauny and Valla. "Here's what happened," he began. He talked quickly, trying to tell them only the parts of the story that really mattered. However, as the tale unfolded, he had to keep going back to fill in details that he'd left out. In the end, nearly everything seemed important. By the time he'd finished, they'd reached the Great Clearing.

Chapter 11. Cheat.

Storm understood instantly why the creasia called the clearing "Great." This had to be the largest open gra.s.sland in the forest, and it was presently surrounded by cats. They were lying or sitting in the shadows just under the trees, their eyes winking in the dusk like eerie fireflies, tails twitching, waiting.

Halvery came to meet Arcove within moments of his arrival. Storm gathered that all the cats on the eastern end of the clearing were Arcove's supporters.

"Well, at least we're not alone," Storm heard Roup mutter.

Storm couldn't tell whether Halvery was relieved or disappointed not to be fighting Treace himself. He greeted Arcove warmly, although, like Roup, he got a puzzled expression after they sniffed noses. We probably all smell like telshees, thought Storm.

Arcove barely stopped for long enough to exchange a few words with Halvery. Then he moved beyond the last of the waiting creasia, into the open clearing. Arcove stopped there in the last rays of the setting sun. His fur had dried completely, and he looked formidable. The sunset painted the fall gra.s.s red around him, and his shadow stretched out towards his enemies, dark and immense. "Treace Ela-creasia!" he bellowed. "You have challenged me, and I am here."

A murmur went up from the waiting cats. On the far side of the clearing, a fawn-colored shape detached itself from the rest and moved across the gra.s.s towards Arcove, head and tail held high. Storm remembered the way Treace's clutter had mauled the herd when Treace had come to hunt him. He remembered the way Treace had tried to trick him with lies when he'd cornered Storm on the trail. I've done the right thing, Storm a.s.sured himself. Arcove is dangerous, and we'll have to deal with him after Treace is gone, but at least we can trust what he says.

"Storm, come here." Storm looked to his right and saw Roup standing beside Halvery on the very edge of the clearing. Roup jerked his head and tail impatiently. "Come."

Storm looked uncertainly at Sauny, Valla, and Teek. All three of them were glancing nervously at the cats. However, Arcove's creasia seemed wholly focused on what was happening in the clearing. Roup's beta spoke up. "They'll be fine," she said. "Go talk to Roup."

Storm walked past the last rows of cats to the very front of the group. No one so much as glanced at him. "What happened?" hissed Roup when Storm stopped beside him.

In the clearing, Arcove and Treace were circling each other. Arcove made several swift lunges, but Treace dodged nimbly out of the way. "Well, he learned from the last fight," muttered Halvery. "This one won't be over so quickly."

"Storm..." repeated Roup.

Storm licked his lips. "Keesha caught him," he whispered. "Keesha...called him...somehow. And did something to him; I don't know what."

"Did something?" repeated Roup, his voice and eyes probing.

Storm looked away. "He held Arcove under the water. Arcove pa.s.sed out. I got there; I talked Keesha into letting him go." That's not all that happened, but that's all I know how to explain.

Now Halvery was listening, too. He shot Storm a dark look around Roup. "Did Keesha break ribs?" He looked back out at the field. "That would explain the way Arcove is moving."

"Maybe." Arcove hadn't complained of anything like that. But would Arcove complain to me? Probably not.

Arcove was trying and failing to close with Treace. The smaller cat kept striking and dancing away. He wasn't really causing any damage, but neither was Arcove. The creasia along the edge of the trees were beginning to murmur.

"He wasn't quite himself on the way here," whispered Roup to Halvery.

"He was running into walls right after it happened," muttered Storm.

Roup looked horrified. His eyes darted to the field and back to Storm. "Why did Keesha let him go?"

"Because Keesha promised me a favor," said Storm.

Roup looked as though he didn't believe it. Storm couldn't blame him. He hardly believed it himself. What really happened back there?

"Something's wrong," whispered Roup. "Something more than broken ribs. I should have made him tell me on the way here."

"Well, there's nothing you can do about it now," said Halvery.

Roup was on his feet, tail twitching.

Halvery looked alarmed. "Roup," he whispered in a near-snarl, "if you go out there, if you help him, it's cheating. You can't interfere in a king's fight with a challenger! The a.s.sembly will kill you and Arcove, too. Then we'll have a bloodbath. Sit-down."

But Roup did not sit down. The creasia were talking softly all around them now. Even Storm, who'd never seen Arcove fight with another cat, could tell that Arcove did not possess his usual devastating speed. Arcove was huge and powerful, but not as quick as Treace, who had begun to take real advantage of the fact. He dashed around Arcove and closed suddenly, hitting his opponent in the flank and knocking him over.

Roup was picking up his feet one at a time and setting them down again in a state of great agitation. "Treace will think Arcove was injured in the avalanche," he said, apparently to himself, "but would Treace take that kind of risk? He wouldn't know about the telshees. I don't think so. Treace is a planner, not a risk-taker. There's something else. Something we haven't seen."

"Shut up," muttered Halvery. "Just shut up and watch. It's all you can do."

Treace and Arcove were flipping over in a blur of black and tan. Arcove came up on top, and, for a moment, Storm thought he would rip out Treace's throat. However, he'd pinned Treace directly underneath him, and Treace kicked up with his back legs. Arcove jumped to the side to avoid being disemboweled, and Treace wriggled away.

Roup and Halvery were both pacing now. Many of the cats around Storm were doing the same. "Almost," muttered Halvery. "Arcove is definitely not himself, but if Treace will close with him one more time, I think it'll be over."

Arcove seemed to think so, too. He pursued Treace aggressively across the clearing, nearly catching him twice, while Treace dodged and danced away. Storm suspected that Arcove was nearing the end of the strength provided by his nap in Syriot. Whatever was wrong was getting worse, and Arcove needed to finish the fight quickly. "Did you want to fight me, or play hide-and-hunt?" snarled Arcove as Treace dipped and weaved almost into the trees on the southern end of the clearing.

Roup had stopped pacing. He was standing perfectly still, neck craning high to see. "The deer," he whispered. "Oh, ghosts and little fishes! It wasn't the pit we should have looked at. It was the deer."

Treace and Arcove were weaving in and out of the trees now. Roup set off at a dead run across the clearing towards them. Halvery's teeth snapped on empty air as he made a grab for Roup's tail. "Blood and gristle!" he bellowed. Then, to Storm's surprise, he tore off after Roup.

Shouting broke out on all sides. Some cats started forward. Others began backing away. Storm wondered, later, whether Halvery had intended to kill Roup to prevent him from interfering in the fight. Or perhaps Halvery just wanted a better look at what was about to happen.

At any rate, the two creasia were about halfway across the clearing, and the crowd hadn't yet decided how to respond, when Arcove disappeared in a shower of leaves and then shot straight into the air, thras.h.i.+ng. Something thick and green curled around his head and upper body. Storm gasped. "A curb trap?"

He heard a moan beside him, and looked down to see Teek, pressing against his flank. "The snakes," he whispered. "The snakes...the black cat..."

Sauny and Valla had come up beside him as well. All around them, cats were surging forward, snarling. "Storm," whispered Valla. "Storm, I think we should leave."

"Not yet," muttered Storm. He couldn't take his eyes off the field. Treace's cats had moved to surround the trap. It was difficult to see, properly, but Storm thought that a pit had opened beneath it, preventing Arcove from touching the ground in spite of his weight.

If Roup had started running a moment later, he would never have been able to fight his way through. However, he reached the spot just a little ahead of all but a couple of Treace's cats. One of them jumped at him, but he dodged, and leapt over their heads. He scrambled up Arcove's body to tear desperately at the vines with his teeth, while the whole trap swayed wildly. Then Roup and Arcove both fell into the pit. Halvery barreled into one of Treace's cats an instant later, and they flipped over in a cloud of leaves. Storm saw a spray of blood, and then Halvery was up again, jaws crimson, lunging at the next cat.

Storm lost sight of them, then. The entire a.s.sembly of creasia had flung themselves at each other, and the dusky clearing was full of their struggling bodies. Cries of "treachery!" and "cheating!" filled the air, hurled from both sides. A cat rose up suddenly out of the dusk, wild-eyed, head covered in blood, and made a slap at Storm with splayed claws.

Storm leapt out of the way, but Teek was not so quick. The creasia's claws went over Teek's head, but then it lurched down to snap at him with its jaws. Teek screamed, and then Roup's beta slammed into the strange cat. She landed on its back and crunched down behind its skull.

She raised her head, b.l.o.o.d.y and bristling. "Go!" she snarled. "Arcove's den! Go!"

Teek ran and Storm followed. I don't know how to find Arcove's den. "Sauny!" he shouted. "Valla!"

"Here!" Storm spotted them running through the twilit trees ahead of him. Kelsy and Charder were with them. They slowed for long enough to let Storm and Teek catch up. "Follow me," said Charder.

Chapter 12. Exhaustion.

Tollee thought, when the stampede began, that some of the youngsters from last fall must have attacked the creasia. There'd been no violence for more than a year, and her first impulse was anger at whoever had started it now. However, as the panicked animals around her became thicker, and Myla started to mew in terror, Tollee realized that something else was happening.

The crowd was suddenly too packed to ignore, and she was forced to run with them. She shouted at those around her, demanding an explanation, but their fragmented responses were confused and made no sense. To her astonishment, Tollee tripped on the fallen body of a creasia. She got a brief glimpse of another, obviously wounded, struggling to rise, and then disappearing under frantic ferryshaft hooves.

She heard a hair-raising wail, followed by snarling-cat sounds, but she didn't know what they meant. The thunder and shouting of the ferryshaft herd made it difficult to pay attention to other noises, but she caught one noise that she knew-a noise from her childhood that still woke her from sound sleep sometimes at night-the tremolo of yipping curbs. Not one or two, but many curbs.

Tollee felt cold. "Myla!"

"Mother!" Myla was right there at her side, but Tollee dared not take her eyes off the animal in front of her.

"No matter what happens, you stay on your feet. If we get separated, you keep running. Do you understand?"

"Yes, mother," whimpered Myla.

As though to mock her words, there was a splash ahead of them, someone pushed Tollee so hard from behind that she stumbled and went head-over-heels into the river. She opened her eyes underwater, trying to find the surface, while hooves crashed down all around her. Someone kicked her in the belly, punching the last of the air from her lungs. The current caught her, and then...then someone had her by the back of the neck, and her head broke the surface. Tollee gagged in air, her legs kicking instinctively, swimming with tightly packed animals.

"Mother!" Myla's frantic voice trilled in her ear. "Are you alright?"

Tollee laughed in spite of herself. "And if you can't run, you should swim," she choked. "Did...did Storm teach you that?"

"No, Teek taught me," panted Myla. "When we were swimming alone one day, and I got scared and went under. He pulled me up like that."

Of course. Cats have a scruff.

"Do you think he's alright?" asked Myla.

"I think he's probably safer than we are right now," said Tollee, and she almost believed it. What is happening? Are the creasia fighting with each other? With the curbs? With us?

Whatever was happening, it seemed to involve the whole herd. On the far side of the river, they started east into the forest. Tollee finally got a glimpse of what was driving them-creasia, certainly, but also curbs, racing around the edges of the herd. She heard the screams of animals who fell behind-unmistakably ferryshaft sounds. Some of the elders tried to talk to the cats, but this only resulted in savage attacks. Tollee looked for an opportunity to disengage from the stampede, but there was none.

Soon, exhaustion overpowered curiosity. The herd slowed, but the cats and curbs kept nipping at their heels. The ferryshaft had completed their annual migration only the day before, and the whole herd was already tired. Now, they seemed to be headed roughly back towards the lake. Their tormentors allowed them to slow to a pace barely sustainable for the foals. They ran all day without stopping for water or food. Tollee was tremendously proud of Myla. The foal stayed on her feet, though many others fell.

The herd was allowed to rest at evening, and Myla was so limp with exhaustion that Tollee didn't even consider trying to sneak away. By this time, the elders had given up asking questions. The cats did not speak, not even to each other, within earshot of the ferryshaft.