I thought that I had screamed. Then I knew that the furious challenge had not burst from my throat, but another’s. A furred shape flowed fluidly into my very limited range of vision, leaped, not at the hole into which the arms had whipped back at the sound, but to the top of the jumble of blocks that formed my enemy’s den.
A snow cat! And a larger one than I had ever seen. The creature was in a snarling rage, its yellow eyes afire, its tail whipping from side to side. The gaze of the eyes fixed upon me and now it growled.
Well did I know the reputation of the giant hill cats. They were highly protective of their hunting territories, fighting to the death often to resist any invasion of the stretches of hill and forest that they considered their own. Save during the mating season, they held no contact with their fellows, walking alone and arrogant in their jealous pride.
That a pard was invading the snow cat’s territory was indeed a challenge. However, I was already helplessly the prey of the lurker in the hole, no threat to this newcomer. Why did he then wish to attack?
The cat was a male, at the height of his strength and might, I believed. Under other circumstances, I would have thought him a magnificent sight. But—perhaps death under his swift attack would be easier than that which the lurker had planned for me. Only no one welcomes death gladly.
Then—
I squalled again. Not from the pain of any wound, but from fear that struck me more severely than any rippling of claws. There was a voice in my mind!
That the Wise Ones could communicate so among their kind was well known. But they did it only when well trained and provided with certain safeguard barriers, so that such an invasion could be controlled and tempered. No ordinary human possessed such a talent, nor would welcome even the thought of it.
“Do not move!”
Did the lurker so warn me? Or the snow cat? Were the great felines thus able to communicate with their kind, unknown to men?
“Do not move.” Again that command was impressed upon my mind.
The call. Certainly it was the cat!
He was now pressed belly flat on the stone, inching forward to another block, a little lower, that rested directly above the hole. As he extended a paw to place on it, I saw the stone move a fraction. Quickly, the snow cat drew back. He bent his head, sniffed along the inner edge of the block. Or was he examining closely the way it rested upon its fellows?
Whatever he had discovered, made him crouch down and back. I could see muscles ripple under his hide, the telltale twitch of the dark tip of his silver-white tail. He did not advance now with exploratory stealth, rather he leaped, landing full force upon the suspect block.
It gave under him, crashing down. But so quick was the cat that he was again arching his body into the air in my direction even while the block he had loosened by the weight of his body smashed to earth, sealing the hole, perhaps for good.
One of his forepaws, as he landed, had caught in the sticky cords of the web. He did not fight as I had done so disastrously. Rather he moved with infinite caution, drawing back his paw so the broken portion of web was stretched out. Then, lowering it to earth, he sawed the thread back and forth across a drift of grit that formed the soil around the ruin.
Where my most frenzied struggles had produced nothing but a tighter prison, his delicate handling of his bonds broke the cord, loosed him. I would have followed his action if I could, but I was too tightly caught,
“Be still!” He varied his command, padding back and forth just beyond the tangle of the broken web, studying me and my bonds. Then he turned, was gone like a flash of silver.
I was left to my entrapment. The snow cat had bettered my fate by so much—the hole was sealed and no claws now reached for me. The quick death that had been before me could well now become a slow one of thirst and starvation, or of horror, if scavengers chanced upon me so helpless. I had to face that prospect bleakly.
My forepaws were thickly entangled. The pain where the web strands had fallen upon my scratched back and flanks was gone, but my hindquarters were numbed. I had—
Back into view moved the snow cat. He mouthed the end of a branch splintered and gnawed as if he had freed it from the parent tree by the action of his fangs. The leaves, crushed by being dragged along the ground, gave off a strong, nose-wrinkling odor, acrid enough to make me cough and my eyes tear as the cat approached.
He laid his burden down with care that none of the mangled leaves touch his own hide. Approaching, he eyed me and the tangled cord with an absorbed examination.
“Danger—” His thought reached me strongly. “Only way—do not move!”
Once more he grasped the branch in his jaws. Making a visible effort, he swung it clear of the ground, brought it around by the strain of his neck muscles, and dropped the length so that it lay with sap-oozing leaves directly across the strands of the web, but not touching me. There followed a puff that looked like steam rising from the cord.
Where the leaves touched the remnants of the web, it withered, blackened, gave off a nasty stench. Now the withering ran out from the actual contact, along the portions in which I was enwrapped. I felt as if my bonds were being burned away. Perhaps that was what was happening, for they fell from my body in tattered, blackened strands.
That I was free, was all that mattered. I lunged away from the pillar. Only I found it hard to move. The numbness in my hindquarters did not lessen. I staggered, would have fallen had the snow cat not moved up so that his shoulder touched mine, his strength kept me on my feet.
That he was no true cat, I had already begun to believe. Yet there was about him, as we moved slowly away from that pocket of evil, no taint such as had hung about the dweller in the ruin and its trap-web. Another Were? Dared I believe that I had found such?
As my companion shouldered and urged me back into the ground across which the wild hunt had pounded, I no longer sensed the compulsion to flee. That the lurker in the ruins had been the primary cause of that panic, driving the forest creatures, I did not believe. I was certain that what had sent such force to snap at one’s heels was a harrowing hound of the Shadow.
The snow cat guided and supported me back toward the river. Slowly my hindquarters began to lose their numbness, but that was no favor from Fortune, for the wounds on my back began again to trouble me. The mounting pain of each step became a kind of red torment in my mind, and, at last, I moved in a haze of agony hardly aware of aught that lay around me.
Why I did not drop to the ground in my suffering I did not know. Save that just as I had been driven by some Shadow will earlier, so now I was kept moving by the determination of the snow cat. He did not again speak to me, mind to mind. However, there was a force radiating from him that acted as a goad of sorts.
In sight of the river he halted, his head up to sniff the air. About us were rocks and crevices. Toward one of those he nudged me. I crawled within, so spent that I thought each effort of raising a paw and putting it down once again was the last I could so endure.
There I crouched, my mouth dry, longing for the water of the stream I could hear from my hiding place, yet could not reach. The snow cat stood between me and the outer world, his stance one of he who waits. Through the ground under me I could feel, even as my pain-dulled ears could hear, the thud of trotting hooves. Men—? Hunters from the Keep?
If they saw the snow cat they would be after two trophies instead of one! He must be warned—Only I had not his trick of mind-speech, I could but utter a low growl.
“Not those you fear.” He did not turn his head to look at me, but his message was clear. “Be silent—”