Mark of the Cat and Year of the Rat

  Murri’s pack was exhausted first, though he was clever enough to take no pleasure in that loss, knowing how much we needed every algae cake, every scrap of rat flesh which each day we divided into smaller and smaller rations.

  I was losing my confidence in him as a guide. After all, though the cats did roam outward from the isles each pair claimed, yet I could see no sign of any heights ahead, or any break in the baking enormity of the Plain. Our journeying was by night. Always Murri seemed certain of the way. The parched white stretch of land about us had the starkness of bone, and, while there was no night-awakened glimmer of sand, yet we were not altogether without a ghostly light which sprang here from the pebbly ground.

  We were five days out from the isle when there showed a promising break on the skyline ahead. Within an hour after we started on the fifth night, we came to traces of some who had dared this path before us. Bones of both beasts and men had been dragged apart and splintered by teeth. Three wagons still stood roped to the shattered remains of yaksen carcasses. Some traders’ party had come to an end here. I moved among the dead unable to tell one set of remains from another, so hardly had all been used.

  Without very much hope I dragged open packs from the wagons. These had been near torn to tatters. I could guess food supplies had been in some. But two were intact and when I unrolled them there were inner pockets full of rough gemstones, unpolished and showing little color. Still I had been schooled well enough by Kura to recognize the worth of what I had found. There was a bundle of notes of sales and that I took. Were I ever to escape this deathway, what I had discovered might be returned to the heirs of those who lay here.

  There were in addition two knives and a sword—trade goods of high value—and those I gathered up eagerly. What small training I had in sword play had given me far less skill than that of my father or brother, but a good blade in the hand was in a way heartening and I was more than pleased with my find.

  Murri had been prowling around the scene of the disaster and now he came to me.

  “Cat—smoothskin—other—”

  “Other?”

  I let him lead me to a place where there were five of the skeletons huddled together. The glint of jewelry showed among splintered bone. However, that was not all—two skulls lay with their empty eye pits pointing up to the sky. And the very center of each was blackened and turned to crumbling ashes as if they had been in a fire.

  I squatted down on my heels to view them but I did not put forth my hand, even my staff, to touch them. The bones were clean, the death about us one I could understand.

  Sand Cats could well strike so, even though there were no traces of any of their dead—

  “Here one!” Murri had taken two long strides and there lay another skeleton, plainly one of his own species. The massive skull of that was charred from behind as if the animal had been brought down as it fled the scene of the other deaths.

  Who killed with fire? We could tame that into lamps and torches to carry with us, lanterns even, to set up for night guards along the trade roads—though those signals are carefully imprisoned in cavities in the heads of the carven cats, the light to shine through their eyeholes.

  I could imagine some desperate traveler of my own blood using a torch as a last weapon. A cat could have been so felled. Yet here, too, were the fallen of my species showing the same traces of grisly wounds.

  “Other cats?” I asked of Murri.

  “We honor dead,” he returned shortly.

  “Why then—?” I nodded to the skeleton he had found.

  My night sight was good enough to see the rising of hair along his spine. He growled.

  “This is of evil.” He turned aside and picked up in his mouth a long tatter of one of the supply bags. With a flick of his head he sent that flying so that it fluttered down across the bared bones. One tip of the torn hide fell across that blackened hole.

  Flame is red, yellow, many shades of those colors, as anyone who has watched the dance of fire tongues can tell you.

  The hide drew something else—it was grey, as if this country had even bleached the life from fire itself. But that strange flame leaped into being as the hide curled, giving forth the stench of its burning. When the last of it was ashed there was only the blackened hole and no sign of anything which might still lie in wait there. I had seen that happen. Such was totally beyond any traveler’s tale I had ever listened to with the greed of one who wished to know yet hesitated to venture forth to learn for himself.

  Now I went back to those other two skulls which bore the brand of the strange burning. This time I impaled a tatter on the end of my staff and gingerly shook it free so that the stained ribbon might fall upon the human skull.

  There came fire again—only this burned with a sickening greenish hue—and was as quick to finish off what I had fed into it. Two kinds of fire? Or only one which answered in different ways because the prey differed?

  What had happened—

  I started back, tripped over the bones of a yaksen, and fell on my back, as helpless for a moment as one of those brilliantly colored beetles the traders from Vapala offer from time to time.

  Again—

  Sound, a moan of sound—then pattern of notes—as if someone lost in this desolation was singing his own death melody.

  Murri snapped around but with care for his footing. He was facing outward, away from the ill-omened battlefield.

  Again—now there was a continuous background hum from which came notes, or even sounds like a much repeated refrain aroused. And since the first shock was over I realized what it was—that there was one playing a Kifongg harp and with it singing a dirge which was only rightful for this country.

  “Life!” Murri’s whole body stiffened into a point.

  Had someone escaped massacre? The law of the trail was plain: it was my duty to hunt for that survivor.

  Or—I glanced once more at the blackened skulls—was this a trap?

  Murri picked up that thought. Perhaps it had already occurred to him.

  “No trap—life, cave, food—” He was impatient.

  I had stored my finds into my pack. Now more than ever were I to reach some authority I must report our discovery. Leaning on my staff a little as the ever-crunching and moving gravel cut at my boots, I moved on into the night after Murri.

  As suddenly as it had sounded out of the night, so that dirge ended. We had passed out of the treacherous footing that lay on the edge of the Plain and once more faced the rise and fall of the glimmering sand dunes. Here the wide, furred feet of Murri made better time than mine and I had dropped a length or so behind when I sighted a spark of light ahead. It seemed so high in the sky that first I thought it was a star, yet it seemed too bright for one of those dim beacons which had so far not served me at all.

  We came upon our first-seen spur of rock. And a moment or so later, I was sure that this was not altogether the work of nature. Rather it was a part statue of a way cat, the head and shoulders of which had been snapped off to lie as a partly shattered mass to one side.

  Not far beyond that a second way marker reared, and this one was not only intact but within its head a small fire had been kindled, for there were yellow beams to mark the eyes. It was a work of cunning art and it wore also a necklet of dullish jewels, certainly so eroded by the sandstorms, as well as rings at the tips of its well-shaped ears. Yet there was that in its outline which suggested the Sand Cat rather than the harmless kottis with which we were always so glad to share our shelters.

  The statue was faced partly away from me so that I saw only the one eye clearly. As we passed it the land began to slope downward and we had to fight our way through shifting sands, which in places were like to swallow Murri to his belly fur and me to my knees. It was the sloping of this way which had hidden, by the aid of the night, the fact that we had entered a great basin. Nor was the cat with the burning eyes the only one who was set there on guard. There were three others, and a second of these also showed the burni
ng night eyes.

  We won through the slopes of the dunes and came out upon a more level space. Here there had been erected a whole clan of cats, some showing signs of wear, and others standing as straight and tall as if they had just been set in place. Not too far away was a line of darkness blotting out some of the sand glitter—surely the outermost shore of one of the isles!

  Murri held high his head, his ears pointed a little forward, his nostrils expanded. My senses were so much the less than his but I knew that scent too well to be deceived—there were yaksen ahead! Though that did not mean that we had come upon some outpost of a holding here—for the thick-coated beasts of burden roamed free in many places.

  We came to where rock sprouted upward from the sand. Murri uttered a small sound. Water! Somewhere not too far beyond us now was an algae bed and there lay what we needed the most.

  Still we were not utterly disarmed by our need. Murri yet took the lead with a spring which carried him up into a shelf extension of the rock and I followed with greater effort.

  I heard the snorting of a herd bull that must have picked up our scent. Murri was inching along an ascending ledge, his claws unleashed to make sure of every small advantage to come from hooking them into the seams and crevices.

  “Saaaaaaaaaa!” It was almost the snarl of a cat and there bounded downslope, only inches away from my defenseless head, a rock, full double-fist large. I flattened myself until my cheek ground into the stone.

  The musky smell of the yaksen was strong. I could almost hear the click of their hooves.

  “Saaaaaa!” Again the rising cry of a guardian herdsman. How many times I myself had uttered such when on duty?

  “We mean no harm.” I had to moisten my lips twice with my tongue before I could shape those words. “Traveler’s rights, herdsman. These we claim!”

  Traveler’s rights for a Sand Cat? To any there would be folly in such a suggestion.

  “Saaaaaaaa!” Undoubtedly the voice was farther away. The watchman was true enough to his service to urge what beasts he could out of range.

  My hand flailed upward, caught at the stone, and I had a firm enough grip to hold, to pull myself up on a flat surface. I got to one knee and then made it to my feet which were shaking a little as I forced myself away from the stone to look around.

  Five yaksen, two of which were hardly more than calves, had moved away. I could see no more of them than blots which stirred uneasily.

  “Traveler’s greeting.” I tried again. And to prove the rightness of my claim for such consideration I added:

  “I am Hynkkel of the House of Klaverel. I am faring forth on my solo.”

  “You bear weapons.” The voice was thin, wavery, almost as if it had been but little used lately.

  “Only such—” I was beginning when I remembered the arms we had taken from the massacre camp, “only such as a man may need hereabouts.”

  “You company with that which brings death—” There was accusation in the voice which had now taken on something of a whine.

  “I company with a friend.” I returned firmly. “This one is blood brother to me. Murri.” I called to the Sand Cat. “This is a friend—”

  “A Sand Cat has no friends among smoothskins,” he spat.

  “Then what am I?” I countered. That this stranger so well hidden in the shadows could make anything of our exchange I did not know. But having reconstructed a course of life after such a near acceptance of death, I was not going to surrender.

  “By the blood which unites us,” I spoke only to Murri now, “swear that we come in truce, as is the way of the land.”

  There was only silence and my frustration grew strong. If Murri was ready to separate me from my own kind after this first smile of fortune—

  “Murri, I wait!”

  “And die?” there came the cat’s answer.

  “Death! There has been too much of death!” My voice rose ever louder.

  Once more there skimmed by my head a weight of hand-thrown stone.

  “I come in trust,” growled Murri. “But this one surely could not understand cat talk.”

  There was silence, broken only by the click of yaksen hooves. The small herd was moving.

  “Stay then.” The words were now lost in a heavy coughing and I heard a scrambling sound as if he who had spoken was now gone. All the taut readiness went out of my body and I fell rather than seated myself on the rock surface, depending upon the few small sounds my ears could pick up to assure me that, for the moment, there was to be no other attack.

  12

  The first streaks of pre-dawn were washing out the stars. Twice I had called upon Murri but the cat had not answered. That he was on the hunt I could be sure and a yaksen was no easy prey, especially if more than one were to be found. Their thick fur gave them some protection, and the heavy horns with which they met any assault, head down, were danger, for they fought in head fashion, the males and barren females surrounding the calves and any nursing mothers. Murri, as large as he seemed when one compared him to a kotti, was not nearly the size, nor had the brutal strength, of his sire and dam.

  There had been no sound since that scrambling which had marked the retreat of whoever had challenged us, he and the beasts whose scent had so surely drawn Murri. Somewhere and not too far away was an algae pool, that I could smell, inferior as my senses were compared to Murri’s. My body’s need for what that offered grew so strong I could no longer withstand it.

  It was my turn to thread a way among tall spikes of rock. As the light grew stronger I could see that many of these had been worked upon by chisel and hammer. More than half of them were fashioned into cat guardians, their faces turned towards the death plain from which I had come.

  The first were roughly made, with very little skill to give them life, but, as I worked myself inward, that skill improved, as if the artist learned by his mistakes. Yet there was a sameness in position and raise of head which argued that the one carver had wrought them all.

  Finally I was confronted by a line of such, fast-wedged into an opening before two towering walls. The guardian cats were not so well based here and it was apparent that some had been fashioned elsewhere and brought to this place, packed into a wall one against the other.

  I shed my pack, attaching one end of my rope to it, and set myself to a climb. The rough rock was scorching my skin, still not yet completely recovered from the torments of the journey. However, I doggedly fought my way to the head of the largest cat and looked down.

  There was an algae pond right enough, but an ill-tended one. Here had been no careful pruning to discourage growth which forced out that more edible kind which was meat and drink for my species, while in other places the nourishing kinds had been too close-cropped, as if a herd had not been properly moved.

  There were yaksen here and, in the morning light growing ever stronger, it was plain that they had been neglected for some time although they were not the smaller species which roamed free. Their heavy coats were matted and, with some animals, dragged on the ground, adding crushed algae and even small stones to a burden from which they could not clear themselves. Now and then one of the beasts would utter a small cry of complaint and strive to reach some weighty mat, biting fruitlessly at the foul caking of hair.

  Of men there were no signs, save on the opposite of the pool there was a hut of sorts—certainly no house such as any man of respect would claim, its walls a crazy patchwork of stones of all sizes, each fitting at rude angles into any space where it might be forced. On its crown was a reasonably smooth place and there was a patch of green-blue color, showing vividly against the red-yellow of the veined rocks.

  Such a woven rug could have come only from Vapala, where, it was said, there were growing things not rooted in pools, which put forth tall stems to delight the eyes with new colors.

  From Murri there was no signal which concerned me, but the yaksen were bunched together. Now and then a young bull would toss head and give voice to a bellow which was more
an expression of uneasiness than any challenge.

  By the door of that patch-upon-patch hut there was movement as a man came into the open, an algae-gathering basket in hand. His body was thin and old and I could see the most of it for he wore a kilt of fringed bits of rags, as if that garment was the last of a hard-used wardrobe.

  His hair was an upstanding ragged mop, strands of which fell to his sharp-boned shoulders, giving him the look of those sand devils of childish tales. In one hand he held a staff much shorter than the one which served me, lacking metal tipping and edges. That he needed it for support was apparent as he tottered down to the pool.

  “Ancient One—” His accent, in spite of the grating notes of his voice, had been that of the son of some House, no common trader. I did not know what title to give him. “Ancient One, I am no enemy of yours.”

  His head was cocked a little to one side as if so he could hear me the better.

  “Not Vapalan then. Kahulawen to be sure. Traders? Have you wandered from those who now follow you? This is a forgotten place, you will find no succor here. There was—” He paused, frowning. His eyebrows were very bushy and beneath this overhang I could sight that one eye carried a fog-film. “There was a Sand Cat—”

  “There is—my almost brother. It was his people who gave me aid when I needed it. They have accepted me as friend.”

  “Sooooo—” He drew the word out until it was near a hiss—such as Murri might give. “And I suppose now you will say that you are Emperor-to-be? If it is difficult to be a man, how much more difficult it must be to be a ruler. It has been a long time. The ancient ones—Karsawka—and by all rumors Zacan—should now also be waking. But there is nothing for you here, even though you carry the mask. Leave me in peace. I have nothing for the aiding of heroes, no matter how powerful they once were.”

  “You have what any can offer, Ancient One. I am no hero but I need food and drink—”

  “If you are truly son of the Essence, that Karsawka who will be once more, as testify the very ancient songs—” he frowned again and his expression was of one trying to remember, “then what man can deny you? Many songs have grown from your deed.” Then he did what I never could imagine such an elder doing. He flung back his head and sang. There was no rusty coarseness in that singing—no break or difficulty. To close my eyes was to listen to some bard fit to eat at the Emperor’s table.