"We'd fight." Then I sucked in my breath, for Cuinn had spoken Terran
Standard, and I, without thinking had answered in the same language. He
grinned, showing white teeth filed to a point.
"I thought so!"
I seized his shoulder and demanded roughly, "And what are you going to
do about it?"
"That depends on you," he answered, "and what you want in Shainsa. Tell
me the truth. What were you doing in the Terran Zone?" He gave me no
chance to answer. "You know who Kyral is, don't you?"
"A trader," I said, "who pays my wages and minds his own affairs." I
moved backward, hand on my skean, braced for a sudden rush. He made no
aggressive motion, however.
"Kyral told me you'd been asking questions about Rakhal Sensar," he
said. "Clever. Now I, for one, could have told you he'd never set eyes
on Rakhal. I--"
He broke off, hearing a noise in the forest, a long eerie howl. I
muttered, "If you've brought them down on us--"
He shook his head urgently. "I had to take that chance, to get word to
the others. It won't work. Where's the girl?"
I hardly heard him. I was hearing twigs snap, and silent sneaking feet.
I turned for a yell that would rouse the camp and Cuinn grabbed me hard,
saying insistently, "Quick! Where's the girl! Go back and tell her it
won't work! If Kyral suspected--"
He never finished the sentence. Just behind us came another of the long
eerie howls. I knocked Cuinn away, and suddenly the night was filled
with crouching forms that came down on us like a whirlwind.
I shouted madly as the camp came alive with men struggling out of
blankets, fighting for life itself. I ran hard, still shouting, for the
enclosure where we had tied the horses. A catman, slim and black-furred,
was crouched and cutting the hobble-strings of the nearest animal. I
hurled myself on him. He exploded, clawing, raking my shoulder with
talons that ripped the rough cloth like paper. I whipped out my skean
and slashed upward. The talons contracted in my shoulder and I gasped
with pain. Then the thing howled and fell away, clawing at the air. It
twitched and lay still.
Four shots in rapid succession cracked in the clearing. Kyral to the
contrary, someone must have had a pistol. I heard one of the cat-things
wail, a hoarse dying rattle. Something dark clawed my arm and I slashed
with the knife, going down as another set of talons fastened in my back,
rolling and clutching.
I managed to get the thing's forelimbs wedged under my elbow, my knee in
its spine. I heaved, bent it backward, backward till it screamed, a high
wail.
Then I felt the spine snap and the dead thing mewled once, just air
escaping from collapsing lungs, and slid limp from my thigh. Erect it
had not been over four feet tall and in the light of the dying fire it
might have been a dead lynx.
"Rascar...." I heard a gasp, a groan. I whirled and saw Kyral go down,
struggling, drowning in half a dozen or more of the fierce half-humans.
I leaped at the smother of bodies, ripped one away with a stranglehold,
slashed at its throat.
They were easy to kill.
I heard a high, urgent scream in their mewing tongue. Then the furred
black things seemed to melt into the forest as silently as they had
come. Kyral, dazed, his forehead running blood, his arm slashed to the
bone, was sitting on the ground, still stunned.
Somebody had to take charge. I bellowed, "Lights! Get lights. They won't
come back if we have enough light, they can only see well in the dark."
Someone stirred the fire. It blazed up as they piled on dead branches,
and I roughly commanded one of the kids to fill every lantern he could
find, and get them burning. Four of the dead things were lying in the
clearing. The youngster I'd helped loading horses, the first day, gazed
down at one of the catmen, half-disemboweled by somebody's skean, and
suddenly bolted for the bushes, where I heard him retching.
I set the others with stronger stomachs to dragging the bodies away from
the clearing, and went back to see how badly Kyral was hurt. He had the
rip in his arm and his face was covered with blood from a shallow scalp
wound, but he insisted on getting up to inspect the hurts of the others.
There was no one without a claw-wound in leg or back or shoulder, but
none were serious, and we were all feeling fairly cheerful when someone
demanded, "Where's Cuinn?"
He didn't seem to be anywhere. Kyral, staggering slightly, insisted on
searching, but I felt we wouldn't find him. "He probably went off with
his friends," I snorted, and told about the signaling. Kyral looked
grave.
"You should have told me," he began, but shouts from the far end of the
clearing sent us racing there. We nearly stumbled over a single,
solitary, motionless form, outstretched and lifeless, blind eyes staring
upward at the moons.
It was Cuinn. And his throat had been torn completely out.