Bili of Morguhn handled the dusty, dirty device of wood and metal gingerly, so recently having seen the evidence of its deadly capabilities. Carefully, he laid it on the floor beside his armchair and regarded the enemy captive—now weighed down with heavy fetters—before him.
At last, after a searching appraisal, he said, “You’re a Ganik, aren’t you? What’s your name?”
Counter spat on the floor at the feet of the seated man and sneered. “Go fuck yersef, yew skinhaidid cocksuckuh, yew!”
Bili sighed. “I would have preferred to keep this simple and civil, but obviously you Ganiks have no concept of civility.
“Master Oodehn,” he bespoke the Kleesahk who had captured and brought back the prisoner, “put me a rope over that beam up there, then fetter this man’s wrists behind him, tie one end of the rope to the center of the connecting chain and hoist him up by it. I want his feet about my height off the floor. I learned long ago, at the court of Harzburk, how to obtain cooperation from recalcitrant prisoners.”
Counter, who had over the years taken such savage delight in sadistically torturing hundreds of men, women and children, proved, however, to have a very low personal pain threshold. His feet were not a foot off the floor when he began to scream, as his own body weight began to strain the muscles and ligaments of his shoulder joints to the tearing point.
Bili mindspoke the Kleesahk to lower the captive, but only to just where his toes could take a part of his weight. Then he said grimly, “Now you know that I mean business, Ganik, and that I have no intention of enduring either stubborn silence or insult from you.
“Now, once again, what is your name? Where did you get this weapon and how does it work? How many of them do the Skohshuns have?”
When, by dint of alternate demands and threats, plus a bit of reading of the contents of the prisoner’s completely nonshielded mind, Bili felt that he had all of the information that Counter Tremain could give him, he mindspoke the Kleesahk, Oodehn.
“Can you wipe any memory of all this, from capture on, from this Ganik’s mind, Master Oodehn?”
The huge hominid wrinkled his hairless brows in a very human way, beaming back, “No, Lord Champion, I doubt that I can. But I am certain that Pah-Elmuh could.”
Pah-Elmuh had but just withdrawn the tube from the throat of the comatose King Byruhn, after having forced a small measure of a milk—and-brandy mixture into his stomach, when Bili’s mindcall reached him. After beaming an affirmative response, he carefully cleansed the unconscious monarch’s beard and mustaches, drew up the sheet and blanket and the silken coverlet over the nude body against a possible night chill, then made his way toward the chamber from which Bili had called him. As the entire chamber was bathed in the soft, silver radiance of the moonlight, the Kleesahk blew out the flame of the lamp as he exited the sickroom.
X
Counter Tremain started and looked warily about him, but he could discern nothing anywhere near to the rifle pit that was to be feared. Shaking his head, he muttered under his breath.
“Dadgummit! Thet climbin’ musta plumb wore this ole boy out fer to put me to sleep lahk thet. Gonna hev to be some carefuler awn the way back down, too, cawse both my dang ole shoulders is sorer ’n a dang boil. Hell, I’m sore awl ovuh!”
He checked his rifle once again, made certain that a round was chambered, that the magazine was full, the safety engaged and the calibrated rear sight set properly—all the things that Erica had taught him and the other rifle-armed bullies last year, far to the southeast when they had dug the weapons out from among the clean-picked bones beneath the rockslide.
That done, Counter rolled back onto his back, took a long pull at his waterskin, then settled himself to sleep the rest of the night away. His mission did not start until sunup.
At breakfast on the morning after the capture, mindwiping and release of the Ganik, Counter Tremain, Thoheeks Bili was apprised by the commander of the night watch that the huge killer wolf had once more penetrated the lower city and, this time, made its way into a house to seize, kill and partially devour its human victim. There were firm paw prints in a tiny garden plot near to the house, and, moreover, a neighbor had gotten a fleeting glimpse of the beast in the bright moonlight, his testimony confirming that it was indeed a rusty-roan wolf, though by size the grandsire of all wolves—past, present and future.
Eschewing his normal wall rounds, Bili went directly to the scene of this fresh outrage, and this time he took the big prairiecat Whitetip along at the start, for all that the feline was sleepy and lethargic after a night of prowling the environs of the Skohshun camp, spooking their livestock into near hysteria and otherwise making himself useful.
In the loose, damp loam of the garden patch were two clear paw prints—one of the near forepaw, one of the near hindpaw. Bili squatted and held his broad palm over the forepaw print, with one edge at the heel of that print. He whistled softly; an arc of toe print and three of the claw marks were visible beyond the other edge of his palm.
Moreover, the prints went deep, perhaps some half-inch, and these prints were headed toward the house, not returning with a belly load of human flesh. Nor had they been imprinted after a jump from some height—these were the even tracks of a walking beast. So that meant that the skulking killer was larger still than Bili had thought from the first killing—two hundred pounds at the very least, probably more—and the questioning of the man who had caught brief sight of the departing creature confirmed this estimate.
The off-duty pikeman had arisen early, principally to determine why his goats were so restless and noisy. As he had closed the house door and strode toward the pen where the two nannies, the young buck goat and the nursing kid milled and loudly bleated, he had seen a huge shape come sidling out of the doorway of the house next door to him.
“M’lord duke,” he said to Bili, “I thought t’first ’twas one them ponies t’ countryfolk brought into t’ city; thet’s how big ’twas. ’Twas shaggy, too, like a mountain pony, but when it cumminceted to trot up t’ street, ’twas for sure ’twas no pony. I thought me then of y’r worship’s cat, yonder, but no cat never moved like t’ beast did, none what I ever seed.”
“Could it have been a bear, soldier?” queried Sir Yoo Folsom, who stood at Bili’s side. “True, they’re somewhat rare down on the plain, but I’ve hunted and slain more than a few in the mountains. A couple of them were even reddish-brown, too.”
The commoner just shook his close-cropped head. “No, m’ lord, not lessen bears is starting for to grow curved, bushy tails, of late, and t’ trot like t’ big dawgs.”
Bili nodded. “No, Sir Yoo, it’s a wolf, right enough. No bear ever left prints like those in that garden mold. I too have hunted both species of beast.”
Then, to the pikeman, “You’re the only living man, so far, who’s set eyes to that wolf, soldier. You’ve stated that such was its size that at first you took it for a small pony. Well what would you estimate was its actual height at the withers? As tall as this prairiecat, eh?”
“Aye, m’lord duke.” The man’s head bobbed, “Likely a tad more’n t’ cat. But not so thick in t’ body or laigs. T’ wolf, it ain’t been eating over-good, ’twould seem. I could see near ever rib and t’ humps of t’ backbone, too, in places.”
Once again, Whitetip was set to the scent of the strange, huge, deadly beast. The trail ran straight up the street along which the pikeman had seen the creature. The street debouched into one of the fountain squares, and the beast had apparently paused todrink at the circular stone splash basin, like any other thirsty animal. But the watches had but recently been changed, this fountain square was commonly used to form up the guard reliefs, and, because the clean-swept stone pavement did not hold scent very well to start, the coming and going and tramping about of so many men had obliterated the trail at that point, much to the chagrin of the frustrated feline.