Hunters Unlucky Part 23

Storm made a decision. If I go farther up the cliffs, I will be able to see more of the boulder mazes. Once I know where they're lurking, I can figure out how to find food while staying away from them.

So he returned to the main path and proceeded up the cliff, keeping a careful eye on the visible portions of the trail, both above and below him. No one seemed to be following. He stopped frequently to look out over the boulder mazes. He didn't see how anything the size of a creasia raiding party-a clutter, Roup had called it-could hide from an aerial view. They could be in a cave... But most of the ground-level caves were in use as birthing chambers, and Storm was sure that the appearance of a creasia in a birthing chamber would cause a visible ruckus. He began to relax. They're not here.

Storm was three-quarters of the way up now, and the light was waning. He felt very hungry, and he'd not encountered so much as a lizard on the trail. On an impulse, he decided to go all the way to the top, rather than risk descending in the dark on an empty stomach. He could find something to eat, then perhaps return to the cliff cave for the night.

The light was still strong when Storm reached the top of the cliff. Indeed, it was much better than it had been on the eastern side of the cliff face. He was now too high to see details below. A cat could look much like a ferryshaft from this height, but he could tell that the herd was behaving normally.

Storm went straight into the trees and began to browse, hungrily ripping up mouthfuls of spring clover. He realized in that moment that he'd never traveled to the top of the cliffs by himself. It would mean a night alone, away from the herd. Still, perhaps I should explore here more often...and along the higher cliff trails. A watcher on one of those trails could alert the herd to the approach of a creasia clutter long before a raid. A shout might not carry, but I think a howl would. Why don't we do things like that? Storm snorted. It's probably forbidden.

It was twilight now beneath the trees, and Storm realized suddenly that it was also very quiet. It's just that the daytime animals are going to sleep, he told himself, but his fur bristled. Then, in the stillness, he heard a bird call. It was not like any bird Storm had heard before-a sort of chattering sound.

Storm turned in a slow circle. The chattering came again; he couldn't tell from which direction. A question occurred to him that he should have asked much earlier. Would Roup expect me to go up the cliffs or down? With mounting dread, Storm raised his eyes into the branches of the tree behind him.

A cat crouched amid the leaves. It chattered at him.

Storm ran. He wasn't sure whether it was the shadowy wood or the strange behavior of the creasia, but he'd never felt more frightened. He heard several m.u.f.fled thuds as creasia hit the ground all around him. He wondered why the first cat hadn't tried to drop on him, then realized that he was now running in the direction of the Sea Cliffs, with their steeper, infrequent, and unfamiliar trails.

Stupid, stupid! You're letting him drive you. He has antic.i.p.ated your every move; you're just reacting!

Storm zigzagged around a cat as he emerged from the wood. Putting on speed that he hadn't known he possessed, he pounded along the edge of the Sea Cliffs. Below and to his right, the ocean stretched endlessly, throwing back the faint light of the first stars. The rim of the sky glowed where the sun had set.

Storm remembered, vaguely, that Kelsy had mentioned a trail in this direction. He gritted his teeth, determined to hold his lead until he reached it. Pain started in his side and chest, but he forced himself to run faster.

Storm barely saw the trailhead in time. He darted sideways, nearly flipped over, and half skidded, half galloped down the path. Almost immediately he wondered whether he had made a mistake. The path was steep and narrow with loose shale that rattled under his hooves. Worse, the creasia dislodged stones in their descent, showering Storm on the back and flanks. Soon he was sliding more than running, and all the time the path grew narrower.

Storm realized that he was about to fall. He drove his hooves into the loose rocks and forced his body sideways. By the time he halted, he had spun completely around so that he was looking up the cliff. He saw that the creasia had stopped some distance above him. Storm thought that he should have found this rea.s.suring, but he did not. Apparently the creasia deemed the descent too precarious. And they're right. But Storm had no choice.

He glanced down. He had perhaps half the distance yet to go. I did something like this when Treace chased me. However, this drop looked steeper and higher. The stones slipped and shifted around his hooves as he stood and continued. Soon he was coasting more than walking.

Roup did say that he didn't want to kill me. Is this what he decided to do instead?

One of his hooves caught on a stationary rock. Storm stumbled and thrust his back hooves into the ground, trying to regain his balance. Then a wave of sliding stones caught up with him, and Storm flipped sideways in a cloud of choking dust. He felt himself slithering over the cliff face. Then his head struck something hard, and he spiraled into blackness.

Chapter 17. Seaside.

Storm dreamed of singing-strange voices crooning in a wordless, melodic hum. It seemed to him that he fell into the song and drowned-floating sightless in a place without light or air, only a song that was as thick as honey and twice as sweet. Then the singing faded, and he heard the familiar beat of the sea.

Storm opened his eyes. It was night, without even a moon to light the sky. He lay with his hindquarters in a tide pool and his head on the sand...staring at a patch of white fur.

Storm froze as a familiar scent filled his nostrils-like brine and deep earth. He could not remember where he was or how he'd gotten here, but he remembered the smell of a telshee. Storm leapt to his feet and stumbled backward into flank-deep water. Almost immediately, he began to cough, gagging as he brought up sea water and a mouthful of grit.

When he managed to open his watering eyes, Storm saw that the telshee had not moved. It was watching him from the edge of the tide pool with large, blue eyes, gleaming in the starlight. The creature had a dark, leathery nose, framed in dense whiskers, and a face somewhere between an otter's and a seal's.

"Storm Ela-ferry." The telshee's disturbingly rich voice resonated against the rocks-probably female, though it was difficult to be sure.

Storm said nothing.

The telshee smiled-a horrible sight, full of teeth that belied its sweet voice. "You've come to us at last."

Storm swallowed. "No," he croaked. He remembered-Roup, the cave, the cliff. "I fell." This is stupid. I should run. But he didn't think he could get away. At least my legs aren't broken.

"We've been watching you," crooned the telshee, "for a long time. We'd like to talk. We could tell you things...so many things." The creature moved a little nearer, and Storm swallowed. What he'd taken for rocks was actually part of its coils. The animal was impossibly long.

Storm took a step back. "You should have thought of that before you tried to kill me in the cave last season."

The telshee c.o.c.ked her head. "Kill you? My dear, we rescued you. You would have known that if you'd stayed to talk, but you ran away. I saved you again tonight; you would have drowned if I hadn't pulled you out of that tide pool."

Storm took another step back. "Or maybe you just now saw me."

The telshee gave a sorrowful shake of its head. "The creasia have done a masterful job with your herd. You don't even know who your friends are."

Storm thought of the strange tunnel that had opened at his back when Ariand trapped him in the cave. It had been the work of telshees, and it had saved his life. "If you're my friend, why didn't you talk to me in the tunnel?" demanded Storm. "You trapped me and attacked me!"

The telshee looked uncomfortable. "Is that how it seemed to you? I didn't have authority to speak to you. I wasn't sure my king would approve. But I and my drove would never have attacked you, Storm. We're on your side and always have been."

Somewhere in the distance, a cat's call sounded. The telshee's head swung towards the noise, and she growled. "I must go. The tide is rising, and at its height, our tunnels are not accessible. Come with me, Storm, and hear the answers to all your questions."

She moved back a little, and Storm discerned a low cave among the tumble of smooth sea stones, its mouth a darker shadow among the others. He was already shaking his head. "You must be insane if you think I'm going in there with you."

She smiled again, and her teeth flashed. "As you will. My name is Shaw. You'll come to us eventually, I think." Her voice faded as she melted back into the shadows around the mouth of the cave.

Storm waited until he was sure she was gone. Then he turned his back on the cave and hurried away. He wanted to run, but he didn't know where he was. The sculpted sea stone rocks were an alien landscape that he'd explored only briefly with friends. The changing tides added an additional level of complexity. Nothing looked familiar. But surely, the cats think I'm dead. Surely that call I heard was only a rally cry as they started for home.

Moments later, however, another quavering cry a.s.sured him that Roup had not given up. The cats were definitely somewhere at the bottom of the cliffs. Storm growled his annoyance. He stopped briefly to devour something crunchy from a rock pool, then headed south. The only safe trails that he knew up the Sea Cliffs lay in that direction. I've got to get back to familiar territory.

He wondered how long it would take the creasia to figure out that he'd survived the fall. He wondered if the scent of the telshee would detour them. Probably not. Nothing seems to detour Roup.

Storm shivered when he thought of the way the cats had chattered at him from the trees. It's a clever way to communicate near prey-no yowling, no creasia sounds, just an imitation-bird call. I wonder how many times I heard it before I realized that it was unnatural.

Storm wondered, uncomfortably, whether the creasia would call to each other in the usual way as they ran along his trail. Probably not. He ran faster.

Lyndi Ela-creasia moved like liquid shadow through the boulder mazes beneath the Sea Cliffs. She kept her part of the clutter together and did not call-not even in the chattering bird voices that Roup liked to use while hunting. Her cats were nervous. They'd all caught the scent of telshee near the place where they'd traced the ferryshaft's fall. It had shaken them. Most had believed the ferryshaft dead, but the desire to retrieve proof had driven them, slowly and carefully, to make the descent to the beach.

Roup never thought Storm was dead, though. He hadn't said it, but Lyndi could tell. He was already planning his next move.

But the scent of the telshee had shaken even Roup. He'd actually ventured a short distance into the sea cave-an action that horrified his clutter-in order to confirm that Storm's scent could not be traced within. "The telshee may have dragged him out of the water," he said at last. "Storm woke up and ran away from it. That's all."

Liar, thought Lyndi without malice. You think it talked to him. You're worried about what it might have said.

But it couldn't have said much, she reasoned. We didn't take that long to come down the cliff.

The rest of the clutter was more worried about where the telshee might be lurking, whether it had friends, and what they might do. No cat would willingly spend a night on the beach. But Roup's clutter was Roup's clutter for a reason. They were smart, and they did not spook easily.

Roup had split the group of sixteen animals-sending Lyndi with five others south along the foot of the cliffs, and going with the rest in pursuit of Storm. Lyndi listened for cries of alarm or aggression-some hint that Roup had either caught his prey or the telshees had attacked. But she heard only the sigh of the sea.

The waxing moon rose and improved visibility. It was halfway to setting when the clutter found what they were looking for-the foot of a cliff trail.

This one looked more navigable than the last. A quick inspection verified that Storm had not pa.s.sed this way yet. Lyndi allowed the others to relax and catch their breaths. She remembered what Roup had said before they split. "This will be an endurance race in the end, so take rest and food where you can."

She turned to the others. "We watch in shifts-two at a time. The rest can either sleep or hunt for food. If you hunt, travel in pairs." They grunted their a.s.sent.

Soon, Lyndi was lying across the foot of the trail a few paces from one of her subordinates. Everyone felt better with an escape route from the beach at their backs, and she allowed herself to relax a little. Roup knows what he's doing.

But she wished he hadn't split the clutter-not with telshees about. Lyndi wondered, not for the first time, why they were really here. Roup doesn't want to chase ferryshaft. He's never wanted to chase ferryshaft. In the fifteen years since the war ended, Roup's clutter had not gone on a single raid. When asked about it, Roup would respond, "Peace means peace." They had been active during the war, though, often solving problems other clutters couldn't solve.

Arcove would rather take care of this foal himself, thought Lyndi. We're out here because of Halvery. Lyndi ground her teeth. She dearly wished that Roup would just fight him. "Beat him once. Soundly," she'd told Roup long ago. "Halvery will respect that."

"Why put anyone's life in danger for the sake of my pride?" Roup asked.

Lyndi didn't have an answer, except that the situation caused dissent. Roup had been Arcove's beta before Arcove won the leadership of Leeshwood. Arcove took it as a matter of course that Roup came with him. Unlike every other member of the council, Roup had not fought anyone for his position. Halvery had come along early in Arcove's administration, and he made it clear that, while he had every faith in Arcove's ability to rule the creasia, he did not feel the same way about Roup. Arcove sometimes spoke as though he had two equally ranking lieutenants but everybody knew who truly had his ear. It made Halvery furious.

Roup's unconventional behavior did not help. Arcove's other officers ruled over hundreds of cats, from whom they selected clutters when they went on a war hunt or other extended expedition. Roup only maintained about thirty, along with an array of mates and cubs. His core clutter had varied little over the years. They knew each other well, and they worked together like a single organism.

Their efficiency had impressed others during the war, but that was long pa.s.sed. Now, it was only seen as eccentric, and it certainly did not garner the respect of cats like Halvery.

Likewise, Roup's choice to have only one mate. Arcove had five. Halvery, it was rumored, had nine. Roup's devotion to a single female smacked of weakness to a cat like Halvery, who regularly tested himself against other males in fights over mates. Lyndi suspected that Roup's choice to keep a female as his beta must also be viewed as peculiar, though no one had spoken to her openly about it in years.

Females normally came and went from a male's clutter as their fertility cycles permitted. It was a respected fact that female creasia made formidable fighters. However, once they reached breeding age, most females either established a den or joined an existing den as a lower-ranking member. They defended their den's hunting territory from other creasia and reared cubs. They did not concern themselves with the world beyond the wood or even beyond their territory when the cubs were young.

Creasia cubs typically needed their mothers for about three years. Depending on the availability of game and water, females might even nurse a second litter while the first were learning to hunt. However, mortality rates for cubs were high. Female creasia often found themselves unexpectedly between litters. When this happened, they might be included in a male clutter.

However, females did not become ranking officers in a male's clutter. Their presence was too undependable. Lyndi was an exception, because she was sterile. She did not know why. She had felt the mating instinct like all females at about six years of age and had joined the den of a male she fancied. However, she did not quicken.

After three seasons and no cubs, the females there made it clear that she should leave. In vain, she pointed out that she helped to hunt and that she cared for their cubs. Her investment was thought insufficient to guarantee her loyalty. She was suspected of poaching game for a nearby den. The females whispered that she mated with every male she could find in hopes that one would quicken her, and any cubs that she produced would not be of the den's blood. In spite of the three years she'd spent with them, Lyndi's lack of cubs made her an outsider, not part of their family. At last, she left.

For a time, she drifted aimlessly, poaching game from various hunting territories, risking reprisals, feeling lost and broken. She was in danger of becoming a rogue-the lowest ranking of creasia, usually short-lived-when Roup found her and offered her a place in his clutter. In truth, he had no real clutter-just a few hangers-on who were trying to impress Arcove. Roup was young, and he did not attract other creasia because of his odd behavior. Arcove, however, was a popular leader, rising quickly through the ranks of the council, and Roup was never far behind him. Lyndi watched and listened and kept her mouth shut. She performed so well that Roup soon made her his second.

It didn't take her long to learn to love him-her infuriating, inscrutable, soft-spoken leader. Because Roup's clutter was so small, they operated almost like a single family-denning in one area and rarely fighting over resources. Lyndi helped hunt for any den that was struggling, and they accepted her, treating her like one of the unmated males.

Lyndi fancied sometimes that Caraca-Roup's mate-was jealous of her. She wasn't sure why. Her relationship with Roup was purely in the role of officer. Caraca should be jealous of Arcove, thought Lyndi in rare moments of pique. But, of course, no one is ever jealous of Arcove...except perhaps me.

Storm felt comfortable with his lead as he started south below the sea cliffs. He wished the moon would rise so that he could see better. Nevertheless, he could see the cliff face well enough, even by starlight, to watch for a trail. The ragged scar of a good, safe trail would be visible from the beach.

Storm was not so vain of his lead that he felt comfortable running at the foot of the cliff. If he ran in a straight line, they could ambush him. Storm felt that the rocks and tide pools should have offered endless opportunity for subterfuge, if he'd only known what to expect around the next corner. However, he did not. He was reasonably confident that Roup and his clutter were equally ignorant of the terrain, so they could not capitalize on his mistakes.

The moon rose. Storm was beginning to feel the effects of a prolonged chase at a time when he would have normally been asleep. He told himself that if he could only reach the top of the cliffs with a comfortable lead, he would lay a false trail and catch a few moments of sleep in a tree.

At last, he saw what he was looking for-an irregularity in the cliff face that showed a trail. Gratefully, Storm turned his steps in that direction. He was so intent upon his goal that he almost didn't check himself in time when he saw the cats lying across the foot of the trail.

Fear forced all thought from his head as Storm executed an abrupt pivot and pounded back into the boulders. Behind him, he heard two sharp cries. They were answered an instant later by the creasia behind him-not so far to the north of him as he would have liked. Those at the trailhead are telling those chasing that they've spotted me.

Will they try to block the next trailhead as well? Storm didn't see why not. The cats could cover ground faster along the foot of the cliff than he could out here in the boulders. Storm wanted to lie down and whimper. More, he wanted to lie down and sleep. Instead, he thought, and as he thought, he ran.

Chapter 18. Imitation.

By the time the moon set, Storm had confirmed the distressing truth. The creasia had run ahead of him to the next trailhead. He considered trying to loop back to the previous trail. However, he suspected that they'd left one or two cats to guard it, and such an attempt would cost him most of his lead.

Storm was beginning to understand how a coordinated group of hunters could harry a single animal to exhaustion. Roup did not need to unravel all of Storm's scent tricks at great speed. He just needed to unravel them methodically, and keep coming. Meanwhile, the cats traveling along the foot of the cliff reached the trailheads ahead of Storm and had time to rest. Storm had no doubt that they slept in turns. He also suspected that they had switched out with some of the pursuers, giving everyone a chance to rest-everyone except their quarry.

Storm remembered something else-Roup's bright-eyed alertness in the boulders the night before, the things the cats had said and done during other chases, the way they squinted in bright daylight. Cats sleep in the day, he surmised. The little oory cats do that, too. Night is their best time...and my worst.

The sun had risen by the time Storm reached the third trailhead. He came only near enough to glimpse the waiting creasia before retreating. However, they must have spotted him, because he heard the now-familiar sharp cry, echoed moments later by the animals farther behind him. That means they're sending more cats ahead of me to the next trail.

Storm was weaving with exhaustion. Bruises from his fall had become a constant, dull ache. To make matters worse, he felt certain that he was approaching the headwaters of the Chelby on the far side of the cliff. Even if I somehow get off this beach, I'll probably be in creasia territory.

Water was a more immediate problem. The salty little animals he ate from the tide pools only made him more thirsty. He was sure that freshwater streams ran down the cliffs to the beach, but, unfamiliar as he was with the area, he'd stumbled over only one in the course of the night. Storm knew enough not to drink sea water, but he was tempted.

Soon, I'll just collapse on the sand. Then they'll come and kill me. I should have followed that telshee into the cave.

Stop.

Storm stumbled to a halt, head drooping, tongue lolling. He was in the midst of running through a tide pool to hide his trail-a trick that would only slow Roup a little. What I'm doing is no different from running in a straight line in a blind panic. More complicated, but no different.

Storm knew in his bones that he would never reach the next cliff trail. I have to get up this one. I have to.

Carefully, he turned and doubled back along his own path. Storm wondered how many creasia were in the clutter. How thin are they stretched with cats left at three trailheads? How many are sleeping now that it's day?

Storm found a likely looking tumble of sea rock-sculpted by wind and tide-and wedged himself into a curve. His pale fur blended nicely with the grays and whites of stone and sand. He knew he was gambling, but he felt this was his best chance, so he shut his eyes and let himself drift into a light sleep.

Storm dreamed of muskrat dens, hidden beneath the overhang of a riverbank. Except they were not inhabited by muskrats, but by telshees. He dreamed of underwater singing. He dreamed of birds that were not birds, but cats with wings, who chattered at him.

Storm's eyes snapped open. He was sure he had not been asleep for more than a few moments. The scent of creasia had woken him. They were pa.s.sing barely two lengths away directly in front of him, flowing through the boulders along his trail. If even one of them looks my way...

But none did.

When they were gone, Storm rose on shaky legs. The brief nap had cleared his head. He thought he knew where he was. Something about the tide pools he'd pa.s.sed recently seemed familiar. He had an idea...if he could only reach the top of the cliff.

Moving quickly, Storm retraced his steps to the trailhead. He held his breath and peeked from behind a rock. As he had suspected, only a single creasia stood guard. Storm wished, bitterly, that he knew how to fight and kill cats. His options were limited when even a single creasia presented an insurmountable obstacle. However, he suspected that now-dehydrated, exhausted, and battered from a fall down the cliff-was not the time to try to learn how to fight.