Farther along the trail, Ratha halted to rake her claws down a tree trunk and chase her thoughts together before continuing with her morning prowl. The stretch felt good in her shoulders and the sun was warm on her back. Her tail high and quivering, she backed up to the tree, sprayed it, and scraped with her rear paws.
Ratharee wasn’t with her today. Ratha had asked Bira to take the treeling while she patrolled.
As she went on, setting one paw silently in front of another, she wondered what the day would bring. She hadn’t seen the herder Bundi or his friend Mishanti recently. Her tail wagged sideways in annoyance. Those two strange animals that Bundi had found were already huge and showed no sign of slowing their growth.
How he and Mishanti had gotten the pair, she wasn’t sure, and why she had allowed the two herders to keep them she didn’t know either. At the time, the creatures were pitiful—orphaned and starved, barely larger than a dappleback. Now they exceeded the size of an adult face-tail and might well double it.
Well, actually, she admitted, she did know why she had let Bundi and Mishanti keep the beasts. To be honest, the two weren’t much good at anything else. Bundi, although Thakur had tried hard with him, was too clumsy and easily distracted for the classic herding techniques of the Named. Mishanti, having been raised by Thistle-chaser at the seacoast, was still too young and still settling into the clan.
Perhaps it was their similarities that attracted them to one another. Bundi now treated Mishanti as a younger brother. Bundi, once injured by fire and left with burn scars down his neck and shoulder, used to be withdrawn and sullen. Mishanti’s arrival drew him out and made him forget his own troubles. Chasing the lively Mishanti about the meadow and up and down trees had also given Bundi more strength and speed.
Mishanti also benefited, becoming less rebellious and disobedient. He also could speak better, although his speech still had remnants of Thistle-chaser’s odd phrasing.
When the pair of friends had found the two motherless creatures near clan land, Ratha realized that their affection for the orphans would keep them too busy to get into mischief.
She rationalized her decision by including it as part of a larger scheme to increase and diversify clan herds. She planned originally to cull the creatures when they got older, but Bundi and Mishanti’s pleading made her delay.
With care and good feeding, the orphaned animals grew so fast that, before Ratha realized it, they were too big to cull. To take them now would require all the Named, and Ratha doubted that even that number could make a clean kill. It would be messy and upsetting. She also didn’t relish the idea of Bundi and Mishanti squalling in her ears for days after.
Letting the creatures live under the youngsters’ care wouldn’t harm anything, and the Named had plenty of other herdbeasts. Perhaps the things would even breed.
As Ratha came to a grassy clearing, the sound of splintering branches made her look up. The hair lifted on her neck and her eyes widened. The alert hunter within made Ratha take a quick step back before she caught herself.
Slightly embarrassed to be so startled, Ratha bent her head and gave her foreleg a quick swipe with her tongue. Then she looked again.
There was almost no word in the Named tongue to describe the two gray-brown beasts browsing in the treetops. They were mountainous. They even looked a bit like mountains, with backs sloping slightly up from rump to shoulders, extended necks increasing the slope and carrying the ascending line to huge, blocky, horselike heads.
She had no idea what these beasts were. Once she had seen a rhino, a low-slung leathery-skinned animal with a head that resembled those moving among the branches far above her. That animal had a horn on its nose. These didn’t, just a bulbous swelling above the upper lip.
Her ears swiveled to the sound of drawn-out grinding and crashing. She narrowed her eyes. The beasts were not just eating leaves or twigs; they were crunching up whole branches. A substantial part of the tree’s canopy was already gone. Ratha promptly changed her mind about the creatures doing no harm. If they kept this up, they might just eat the top off every tree in the forest.
“Don’t be afraid, clan leader,” came a yowl from above. “The rumblers are gentle.”
Inwardly Ratha bristled at the slightly mocking tone but didn’t let her tail even twitch.
One rumble-beast lowered its head to gaze at Ratha. It was still chewing. The mushy slurping sound made her put back her ears. It was as disgusting as any other herdbeast’s chomping, and much louder.
The rumbler’s eyes, however, were mild, unlike the rhino’s red-rimmed, irritable stare.
“They may be gentle, but I still don’t want to be sat on.” Ratha reared up on her hind legs, squinting to find Bundi in the treetop. “Where are you, Bundi, you little son of a three-horn?”
She spied a familiar faintly spotted dun-colored form lying along a tree limb, licking a paw. Nearby she caught sight of another, smaller and more distinctly spotted shape resting on the same branch.
With a grunt, the rumbler that had been staring at Ratha began munching on the branch where the two friends sat, oblivious now to anything but food. As Ratha watched, the creature chewed its way toward Mishanti and Bundi. The bough swayed and shook as the animal tore at it. The beast used its long upper lip almost like a treeling finger to rip off twigs. Mishanti looked alarmed, his fur rising and his paws spreading as his claws dug into the bark.
Bundi, however, looked relaxed, lazing along the branch with his tail looping down. With its eyes blissfully closed and massive jaw working slowly, the rumbler ate up Bundi’s branch. Ratha half wondered if Bundi would move before it ate him as well, or if the jostling would dump him off the tree limb.
When the rumbler’s jaws were less than a cub’s tail-length from Bundi and the branch was swaying as if caught in a windstorm, Bundi lifted his head, yawned, and batted the huge nose with his paw. “Get away, Belch,” he said as the huge horselike ears flapped amiably and the snout withdrew.
“Belch?” asked Ratha, balancing on her hind legs again. The beast paused in its careless eating, lowered its head, and gave a resonant burp. Looking vaguely satisfied, the creature flipped its absurdly small tail, waggled its horselike ears and began destroying another branch.
“Belch is the female,” Bundi called down. “The other is a male. I call him Grunt.”
Ratha skittered to the side as a large mass of Grunt’s manure plopped down, just missing her.
“Our first choice was ‘Dung-Dumper’ but that lacked something.” Bundi’s eyes were half-closed, his whiskers fanning out from his nose. His facial markings enhanced the slight cat-grin on his face. The scent wafting from him had a trace of smugness.
That wretched half-grown runt is enjoying this, Ratha thought indignantly. She lifted a hind foot and shook it as if she had stepped in the stuff, although she hadn’t.
“Come down,” she yowled. “I need to talk to both of you.”
Mishanti started to scramble down the tree. Bundi, however, climbed onto the branch that Belch was munching, sauntered fearlessly to the huge nose, and hopped up on it. Tail waving, he strolled along the top of the rumbler’s muzzle above the eyes, then made his way between the ears. He padded down the back of the neck while Belch kept browsing as if this was nothing strange at all. When he came down the back and reached the base of the tail, Belch spoiled his show by sitting abruptly, making the ground under Ratha’s paws shake. Bundi plunged nose-down into Grunt’s deposit. As he got himself out and shook off, Ratha lolled her tongue at him. Mishanti arrived tail-first down the trunk, looking and smelling pleased with himself.
“You both can go wash off in the creek, but first listen to me,” Ratha said.
“Yes, clan leader,” they both answered together.
“You know that I want the herding meet for True-of-voice to go well. Are you two ready?”