Norton, Andre - Anthology (38 page)

 
          
 
I jammed my hands into my mouth. I was to be
entered by a demon. Eaten alive from within, used and discarded as no more than
a shell. I felt all the food and wine rise up inside to spill from my mouth. I
lay on a pile of rags, turning my head so that Tromar might not see how I
feared. Pasht knew I had nothing left but pride. Bright Lady, let me cling to
that while I can. Across the cellar the cage door clanged open and my friend
was hauled out. Her great body limp and boneless as with much puffing she was
dragged over to where the chalk marks opened a gap in the circle now about me.

 
          
 
I let them tug and heave. I must not make my
move too soon. Not that I could do much. But one thing I could do. I could slay
the cub quick and clean. She would house no demon, nor would the Dark One make
free of my World. It must have been for this that I had sensed a part to play.
I grieved that I must kill one who had become dear, but better that than what
they would do with her. They closed the circle markings about us and I lay
still. The chant was opening the doorway; soon they must kill me, my blood
adding the final thrust to the Dark One's entry. Once in, the cub was there to
house it until it could hatch into what it truly was.

 
          
 
The opening grew—as did the scent, fierce in
my nostrils. This, this was a Dark One? Behind those who chanted, I rose to my
paws. The scent drove me on, wild, mad with its stench. The scent of kio, of
the small carrion-eating cannibals that I had always detested. This was nothing
to fear, this was a thing to hate, to fight. I roared, unable to resist
uttering Jhe challenge. With the sound, I felt the Bright Lady. It was as if
she had turned to watch, to approve the battle. Strength filled me, light and
life, and love warned my heart. I howled my death-song as I stood. Seldom is
that heard in the High Hills. Not even once in each of our generations. It is
that final song where one of us proclaims that we seek death to deal death.
That if we die in this fight, it shall be with our jaws locked tight upon the
enemy's throat.

 
          
 
Beside me the cub had risen also. She would be
of little use, but it warmed me again that she should stand beside me. I lifted
my head toward the shape that thickened and cried out the deathsong. Let this
one know and beware. This was MY world. I would fight for it, nor would I shirk
death to save it. The stench of kio grew. The thing did not care. Then let it
learn.

 
          
 
I could see little. Beside me Lady Dravencat
was howling defiance. In front of me the darkness that hung before the cellar
Wall -was growing. I could see outlines and I turned my eyes away. I would die
before I allowed THAT to inhabit my body. I could sense that the Dravencat and
the being were locked in struggle. Somehow she was managing to keep it from
entering further. But she had been weakened by the long time with insufficient
food. She faltered and the thing grew larger and clearer. Blood began to appear
on her thin flanks, claw lines on her shoulders.

 
          
 
Below the demon Tromar acted. His knife
slashed out and the other who had aided fell. The splashing blood flicked
toward the demon. It snarled, the first sound I had heard it make. I stepped
back in fear, then glanced down as my foot seemed to touch something—one of the
encircling lines. My foot had crossed it where the Dravencat’s blood had
dripped and erased a line. I was free. I could escape. Leave them all lighting
and run to the luck the demon would kill Tromar and the Dravencat would escape,
too.

 
          
 
But what if she could not, what if the demon
was too strong. It wouldn't help if we both died. I stood poised, hesitating.
Before us, Tromar still chanted. His chant c eemed to strengthen the Dark One
and weaken my Dravencat as I watched. I remembered how Lais had died. I
remembered that because of this man I had no family anymore. No Father to spoil
me. no Mother to love me. No pair of brothers to tease me. And I remembered my
people above this room. I was their Lady.

 
          
 
Out of a compound of hatred and fear so great
I no longer knew which was which, I stepped over the lines. Under my hair the
pin was there. I took it in one hand, moved silently forward. Then drove it
with all my strength into Tromar's side. He screamed. My father had always said
that a blow which pierces the kidneys is exquisite pain and so it seemed. As he
half-turned, I struck again. This time the pin gashed Tromar's throat, opening
a rent as he spun. His voice failed and the demon began to fade.

 
          
 
I knew well there was little hope I could hold
off the Dark One forever. But I fought with all that was in me. How had I ever
believed I cared for little. As I fought, I recalled the love of my cubs, my
kin. The bright day and the warm dark of a Spring night. The High Hills,
snow-crested, the leap of swift prey. Before I allowed all that to die, I would
pay any price. But my power was failing. I was dimly aware that the cub had
left my side. So be it. Let her escape for a little. But I wronged her in that.
I heard the chant which had strengthened the Dark One die as she struck. The
doorway began to swing shut as the demon faded. With it went the still writhing
body of the two-legs who had called it. That kind does not like to depart
wholly empty-handed.

 
          
 
We left the cellars with their smell of death.
My Dravencat raged through our Keep before me. Somehow she always knew which
were our people and which the enemy. When all was done I ordered a sheep killed
for her. She ate, washed wearily, then turned to stand by close-shut gates. I
opened them with my own hands. I wished she could stay, but she was daughter to
the High Hills. I owned her a debt never to be repaid by keeping her. She
paused to touch my forehead with her tongue before padding off along the trail.
One day I may see her again and if not I shall always remember her. I have
given orders that a bolt of the silk-wool weave is to be taken from the
storerooms. From that my women shall make a Keep Banner. It shall bear the face
of my Dravencat below a broach pin crossed by a broken sword. I may never see
her again, but my House shall remember.

 
          
 
I padded up the trail toward my clan lairs.
Below, my cub was free again. It was well although the wounds the demon had
made still pained me. I would sing this tale before the kin caves. But I would
refuse to take another name from the story. I refused to allow the demon even
that much foothold here. I am Many Kills. It is enough.

            
Andre Norton has
written and collaborated on over 100 novels in her sixty years as a writer,
working with such authors as Robert Bloch, Marion Zimmer Bradley, Mercedes
Lackey, and Julian May. Her best known creation is the Witch World, which has
been the subject of a number of novels and anthologies. She has received the
Nebula Grand Master award, the Fritz Leiber award, and the Daedalus award, and
lives in
Winter
Park
,
Florida
.

            
Noble Warrior's
whiskers twitched as he sulked down the narrow alley. Under his fastidious
feet, though he went with all the care he could, the filth on the pavement spattered
his paws. He had learned early. in this journey that there were plenty of
enemies on the prowl. A dog, its coat spotted with mange, had not been quick enough—Noble
Warrior had reached the top of a barrel with just a hair's breadth between his
tail and those fangs.

            
He had been driven by
pangs of hunger to forage in a pail set beside a door. But he still ran his
tongue around his teeth, trying to rid his mouth from the taste of rancid meat
scraps.

 
          
 
This was no place for the guard of a princess,
and the sooner he was out of it the better. Follow that instinctive direction
within him, the ghost cat had advised. At the time—once he realized that he did
have just such a direction—it had seemed an easy enough thing. But Thra-gun
Neklop had never before had to cross a city of the barbarians, and barbarians
certainly these close dwelling creatures seemed to be.

 
          
 
He leaped to the top of a rotting box to rest
and try to put in order the events of the past few days. There had been the
bamboo cage which was his own private palanquin, and he had meant to ride in it
with Emmy, his personal charge, not far away.

 
          
 
Then had come the place of the dragon where
people were swallowed up—Emmy among them—into its fat belly and his own cage
seized and then carried off. Sold he had been like any slave to that stupid
meddler in magic—set up to be a familiar, as the ghost cat Simpson had informed
him. Only the dolt of a would-be magician had certainly NOT been a match for
two cats. Yes, he was certainly willing to give Simpson a full share in that
bit of action.

 
          
 
Now he was well away from the house where
Marcus had tried to handle what he did not understand, and, with another goal
to concentrate on, starting back home.

 
          
 
He was hungry again, but as his head swung
toward the other end of the alley, he picked up traces of a scent which made
his whiskers twitch—this time in hopeful promise.

 
          
 
He had left Marcus' shell of a house in the
very early hours of the day. Dartvn had come, and he could hear the stir in the
larger streets. Ahead, at the other end of the alley to which his empty stomach
urged him, there was a great deal of noise. He picked up the scent of horses,
yes, and some of those woolly creatures called sheep which Emmy found so
pettable.

 
          
 
Now he shook each paw vigorously, having no
wish at that time to lick pad and fur clean, and made for that end of his path.

 
          
 
The noise grew louder. He could easily pick up
the snorting and whinnying of horses mixed with hoarse shouts of men. Reaching
the end of the alley, he crouched down behind a pile of baskets to spy out the
land ahead.

 
          
 
There was certainly a lot of coming and going.
Carts laden high were being maneuvered to where they could be unloaded. There
were so many smells now that he could not sort out the one which had promise.
He wanted none of bold journeying across a place where one was apt to come
under a horse's hard hoofs without warning. And certainly he had no intention
of being sighted by any of the men and the few aproned and beshawled women
there.

 
          
 
With the skill of his guard training, Noble Warrior
selected a path to the right. Where the whole of this cart-filled place seemed
busy, there was an eddy there of less confusion.

 
          
 
This appeared to center around a cart which
was unlike the others. Noble Warrior blinked and blinked again. Yes, this cart
was certainly NOT of the breed of the others. In fact—yes, it looked almost
like a farm hut such as he had often seen in his homeland, mounted on wheels.
And it was painted in bright colors. There hung a string of bells suspended
across a curtained doorway in the back.

 
          
 
Noble Warrior relaxed a small fraction. They
had the proper ideas, those of the strange cart. All knew that bells above a
door were powerful charms to keep Khons in their dark places. Could it be that
here, so very far from the palace of the Princess Suphron, he had indeed found
people of the proper heritage who would recognize him—Thragun Neklop—for what
he was—a palace guard of high rank? Yet one never forgot proper caution—not if
one wanted to make the most of one's allotted nine lives.

 
          
 
He watched with all the patience of his kind.
Set a little to one side on the pavement was a fire small and carefully tended
by a woman wearing the familiar clinking coin jewelry he knew. Dancing girls
dressed so. Over the fire on a tripod was a small kettle, and from that wafted
the scent which had first reached Noble Warrior. He uttered a small sound deep
in his throat without meaning to.

 
          
 
Resolutely he made himself forget about the
pot to eye the rest of the company. There were a line of horses a little beyond
and men wearing bright headcloths were there, plainly bargaining with the
drab-coated people of the city.

 
          
 
The warning bells rang, and a boy about the
vanished Emmy's size swung down the two caravan steps to hand something to the
woman by the cookpot. He turned away as if to join the company by the horses
and then instead—

 
          
 
Instinctively, Noble Warrior crouched small,
tensed his body for a spring. He was sure, as if the boy had cried the news
aloud, he had been sighted.

 
          
 
He could slide back into the shadow of the
baskets, but somehow he did not want to. Things far back in his memory were
moving, oddly disturbing his need to remain alert.

 
          
 
There had been a handmaid of the Princess, a
slave taken in war. But she had a gift which brought her into the palace and
high into favor with the Princess—she could call to her birds and animals, and
they came because something within her was akin to them.

 
          
 
Noble Warrior uttered a small protest of
sound. There was no hiding from this boy. Nor did a large part of him wish to
do so.

 
          
 
The boy had gone down on one knee a short
distance away and Noble Warrior knew he was in full sight of the child. Yet the
boy made no effort to approach closer, no gesture which -suggested any threat.

 
          
 
"Gatto—?" He spoke the word with
rising inflection, and Noble Warrior recognized it as a question.

 
          
 
He arose from his crouch, and sat up proudly,
the tip of his tail curled across his fore feet, his large blue eyes meeting
the brown ones of the boy.

 
          
 
"Jankos?" the woman by the fire
called.

 
          
 
Swiftly the boy made a gesture to be left
alone. Now he dared move forward until he could reach out and touch Noble
Warrior, while the cat allowed such a liberty.

 
          
 
Noble Warrior sniffed delicately at the
knuckles of the turned-over fist held out to him. He did not move as the
fingers slowly opened and touched the top of his head between his ears in the
knowledgeable way of one used to dealing with cat people.

 
          
 
"Jankos!" The woman had come away
from her fire tending to approach. But she suddenly stopped as Noble Warrior
stood up, took two steps forward, and uttered the cry he used for a friendly
greeting.

 
          
 
"It is a cat, Mammam, but such a cat!
Look, he has eyes like the sky!"

 
          
 
The woman joined Jankos, and Noble Warrior
sniffed at her full skirt. No, she was not an under-skin friend like the boy,
but she offered no harm either. Now she got down on her knees to inspect the
cat more closely.

 
          
 
"You are right, Jankos. This is no cat
such as one sees hereabouts." She was half frowning as she studied Noble
Warrior. "He is of great worth by guess, there will be those seeking
him—perhaps even a reward."

 
          
 
"Are you hungry, Gatto?" she added,
and crooked a finger which brought Noble Warrior willingly into the open and
closer to that kettle with the intriguing smells.

 
          
 
Jankos disappeared quickly once more into the
wagon and then was back with a bowl into which the woman ladled a portion of
the stew she had been tending.

 
          
 
Noble Warrior settled himself on guard by
that, waiting for the contents to cool enough for him to investigate them more
closely.

 
          
 
The woman sat down on the steps leading up to
the curtained, bell-hung doorway, and continued to study the cat. Cats there
were in plenty in this land, as well as overseas from which her family had come
some years ago. However, never one such as this one. It was as if this find
were a blooded horse turned out by mistake with a farmer's draft horse. She
raised her voice:

 
          
 
"Pettros, come you here."

 
          
 
One of the men by the horses turned his head
with ao impatient look on his face but, as she made a vigorous gesture, he
came.

 
          
 
"Look you what Jankos has found."

 
          
 
It was the man's turn to squat on his heels
and view Noble Warrior who had at last decided that the stew was ready to be
tongue tasted.

 
          
 
"From where did you take him," the
man turned a thunderous frown on the boy.

 
          
 
"From no place. He came by himself. See,
he is very hungry—he has been lost—"

 
          
 
The man rubbed his broad hand across his jaw.
The woman broke in:

 
          
 
"By the looks of him he has not been on
his own too long, Pettros. Perhaps there will be a reward."

 
          
 
The man shrugged. "He is strange, yes,
but there are cats a-many and who offers a reward for such? A horse now, even a
donkey, or a good hound—but a cat—I think not. If you wish him, Jankos, bring
him along. We have near finished the trading and it is time to hit the
road." He got up and went back to the horses and those about them.

 
          
 
Noble Warrior finished the bowl and even was
reduced to giving it several last licks. He did not object when Jankos settled
down beside him and stroked his sable brown head, scratching in just the right
places behind the ears.

 
          
 
This was not his Princess, nor his Emmy, but
the boy was suitable as a companion and Noble Warrior climbed up into the wagon
as horses were hitched to it. He sat just before the curtain and watched the
man finish off the contents of the kettle and stamp out the small fire. The
woman had already edged past him into the interior of the wagon, but Jankos
joined him on the top step, his hand still smoothing in well-trained fashion,
which brought a rumble -ol purr -from Noble Warrior.