The cat had not moved, its head still pointed towards the door. While that feeling that she awaited some portentous happening fed her uneasiness. To steady her thoughts, her shaking hands, Thra dug the last of her trail rations from her pack. Two journey cakes, now near stone hard, were there. She hammered a piece from the larger with the pommel of her belt knife. Her other provision was a short stick of hard dried meat, that she cut into thin slivers.
One of the clay pots from the shelf gave her a chance to crumble the cake and meat into some water, forming a mess she hoped to find more palatable than it looked. Thra spun out these preparations as long as she could, the cat paying no attention to her actions.
The storm continued to loose its fury. Thra heard a distant sound which must have marked the fall of another-of the giant trees. She crowded closer to the fire, holding her sun-browned hands to the flames, though she shivered more from what she guessed might happen than from any cold.
At last she drew both sword and knife and laid them close to hand, for the cat’s doorwise stare added to her disquiet. Also she edged farther around that she, too, might watch that portal. Once she arose and strove to move the armorie itself for a barrier, but its weight was beyond her shifting.
She ate the unappetizing mush with her fingers, found it no worse than much of the food she had eaten in the immediate past. Putting the bowl to one side she sat waiting, her hands loosely clasped about her knees. Unable to stand her own imaginings any longer she asked aloud:
“Who comes?”
For the first time the cat turned its eyes toward hers. “Long waited, perhaps come at last. Take you that sword, two-legs?” Distinctly it nodded towards the weapon hanging in the armorie.
“I hold by my own steel.” She dropped hand to her blade. “What or who comes? Tell me, four-legs!”
The cat had turned its full attention to the armorie.
“There hangs power—”
“Still I hold by what I know!” Thra repeated. To be sitting thus, exchanging thoughts with a cat—had some fell fever fallen on her when she entered this misbegotten woodland, or was she indeed ensorceled? Patience she had learned in a hard school during the past years and patience only might serve her now, until she discovered more.
That feeling of otherness which had been with her since she had come beneath these trees was growing sharper even though the storm seemed to be retreating. The cat showed no fear—perhaps that curiosity which men said was a strong trait in these beasts kept it here to watch her blunder into some web unknown to her.
Thra might not be forest wise but she had stood sentry too many nights, every sense alert, to be mistaken now. Something was outside. There came a snuffling, faint but unmistakeable, as if the nose of some creature swept close along the bottom crack of the door.
She arose, sword in hand, her dark brows ascowl as she edged over to set her back to the armorie, ready to front whatever might force a way in. The lips in her gaunt face flattened against her teeth as if she could snarl like her furred companion. However the cat, itself, faced the door with no sign of anger or fear.
That snuffling ceased, but, as surely as if she could see through the door, Thra believed the other still crouched there. As the cat, it waited.
“You speak of power,” she said, “Is it of claw and fang now out there?”
“Perhaps.” To her astonishment the cat leaped straight for the armorie, brushing past her. Its teeth fastened upon the belt of fur, but all its energy could not pull that free from the peg on which it hung.
Hardly knowing whether she was reckless and foolhardy, or doing what was only right Thra braved the warning prickle in her hand and reached inside to slip free the strip. It seemed to her that the fur arched upwards to meet her touch as might an animal seeking a caress.
The belt fell, still tight-held by the cat, and that animal backed away from the cupboard dragging it towards the door. Did it seek to deliver that prize to the lurker? With a stride Thra gained the door, her sword pointed at the cat.
“I do not know what game you would play,” she said. “But here I am master—”
“You are but one sent.” Words near as sharp as her own blade cut into her mind. “There is but one master!”
She could have easily spitted the animal, or kicked it aside. There was no good reason to let it outside to what waited. Save within her brute force still did not entirely rule. So she slipped along the wall to be shelted from the door as it opened and then pushed to let in a burst of rain-sweet wind.
From without sounded a strange cry, one which sent a chill along her half-crouched back. Thra wanted badly to see what stood there in the storm dark but she did not move, only gripped her sword the more fiercely.
As if that sound was a summons, trailing still the belt from its jaws, the cat sprang into the dark. Thra waited tensely. The light from the fire was small help and the edge of the door a screen.
Someone stepped within. She could strike now and make sure. Even as that thought came to her the cat flashed once more into the full warmth of the fire, shaking itself vigorously.
Wet leather, her nose wrinkled at that acrid scent, also a strange musky odor as if he who wore such garments had lived unclean for a long time. For this was a man, not topping her in height more than an inch or so. He might be facing the cat and the fire, but Thra was sure he was well aware of just where she stood.
Aware but not alarmed. That realization awoke in her a spark of anger. Woman she might be, and wanderer without a following, but she was still a force to be reckoned with—as he would discover!
His arms hung loosely by his sides, there was no sword, not even the gleam of a knife hilt at his belt. As her own, his clothing was leather but worse worn. On the shoulders tatters had peeled away, as they had also about his legs and thighs. His feet were bare, splotched with mud which he tracked on the floor.
Around his slender waist was the belt—its length of silky fur in contrast to the rest of him. For his hair was a tangle of greasy strings knotted with dried leaves and small twigs—he might have rooted in a thicket for weeks on end.
Thra fought to bring up her sword, aiming its point between those rack-thin shoulders. She had seen before men sunk to this extremity of neglect—many in the south. They could not be trusted, nor could one call them beasts, for beasts were far more cleanly and merciful than such.
Still, though Thra was sure he knew she menaced him, he did not turn his head, rather dropped to his bony knees before the fire, raising both palms to the heat. She had a confused memory of how men had once knelt so in places of worship. Did this refuse then worship fire—or only what it signified—shelter, food, warmth—plunder?
That he continued to ignore her meant one of two things—that he was not alone, but the forerunner of a party of like outcasts—or he possessed some means of defense which did not depend upon weapons.
Those outstretched hands, was there something odd about the nails—were they not unusually long and sharp? Thra wanted him to turn his head so that she might clearly see his features—human—or strange?
The cat settled on the hearth, its back to the fire, tail curled over forepaws. Thra could wait no longer, her voice was unnaturally loud in the room.
“Who are you?” She was not sure of her question until she had voiced that demand.
He glanced back over his shoulder at last, showing her three-quarters of his face. She had expected to see a tangle of beard as wild as the crop on his head but his cheeks were smooth as a boy’s, though weather-browned to a dark shade. There was an oddity about his features. Perhaps it lay in the slantwise set of his brows, the narrow, forward thrust of his chin. His frowsy hair grew downward in a peak between his eyes to nearly meet the brows.
Those eyes—green or yellow—or a mixture of both? Thra had never seen their like in the face of any man of Greer. While his mouth looked too wide, his lips very dark red and glistening. Small points of teeth showed against those, almost as if he had fangs sprouting from his jaws.