Hunters Unlucky Part 48

Teek arched his back, his thin coat bristling. He turned sideways to Shaw in an effort to look bigger. What came out his mouth was more of a squeak than a hiss, but Storm still had to admire his courage. Shaw could chew once and swallow, and there'd be nothing left of Teek but a little red on her whiskers. But does he run away? No. He stands there and hisses.

Of course, answered a mocking voice in Storm's head. He's a creasia-the fiercest land predator this island has ever known. His instincts are telling him that one day he'll be big enough to rip out Shaw's throat. He's practicing.

"Stop it," snarled Storm. "There's no need for that."

"Oh, there obviously is," said Shaw without taking her eyes off the cub. "You don't seem able to control him. How do you know he's not a spy?"

"Because he isn't. Because he's hardly a season old. Just...come here for a moment."

Storm moved away among the rocks. Shaw followed with an angry snort. "Storm, I am disappointed in you."

"I know." I am, too.

"After everything we've told you about the creasia, after the way they've treated your herd, after all that we've suffered-"

Storm turned abruptly. "I think I killed his mother," he said in a miserable whisper.

Shaw looked unimpressed. "I fail to see how that-"

"On the trail up to the bridge over the Garu Vell, during the Volontaro...I killed a cat. She even asked me for help, and I-"

Shaw shook her head. "You don't owe them anything, Storm."

"I hear her ghost in my dreams." His voice came out smaller than he'd intended.

There was a moment of silence. Shaw's ruff settled a little. "Storm," she said gently, "female creasia go on raids, too. Think about that. Think about the last raid you watched and ask yourself whether those creatures deserve your pity. That cub-if he survives countless fights with other cats-will grow up to become one of those predators. Before the war, ferryshaft hunted creasia cubs every spring, because that is the one time in their lives when creasia are easy to kill. If you don't kill them then, you have to deal with them later."

Storm looked at the ground. "Teek probably won't survive. Everyone says so. He's a runt, and he wasn't even weaned. He trusts me. I don't know why, but he does. Can't you let him die comfortably instead of ripping him to pieces? Then maybe the ghost of his mother will be appeased."

There was another long silence. Storm could feel Shaw's eyes on him, but he did not raise his head. At last, she sighed. "Die comfortably? Alright. Provided he remains in the curbs' den cave, and he promises to be dead by spring."

"Shaw!"

"If he comes any farther into Syriot, you'll need to speak to Syra-lay. Do you really want to have this conversation with him?"

Storm considered. Keesha hates Arcove, but I'm not sure he'd care about some random cub...not anymore. He didn't say anything, though. Shaw will be the next Syra-lay. She feels responsible for what could happen. He wondered whether Coden and Keesha had had a conversation like this about Roup.

Shaw broke into his thoughts, "Why don't you go talk to your old mentor, Pathar, about this? I'd wager he'd have a few things to say about ferryshaft raising creasia."

Storm was surprised. "Pathar?"

"Yes..." Shaw's eyes had a nasty gleam. "Yes, talk to Pathar about it. He might even be able to give you some useful tips."

Chapter 12. Friendly.

Storm and Shaw emerged from the rocks to the unlikely sounds of giggling. Storm caught sight of Teek on the edge of the stream in the act of executing a half-flip. He came down with all four paws spread, tail fluffed, glancing about wildly. He began to lift one paw at a time, looking cautiously under each as though expecting to find something sinister. Valla and Sauny were standing to either side, along with a couple of the curbs.

"What on earth-?" began Storm.

Shaw did not volunteer a comment.

Storm trotted towards the stream. The giggling appeared to be coming from Valla and Sauny. Teek jumped straight up in the air, and Storm saw that he'd caught a small fish-hardly larger than a minnow. He danced around it as the fish flipped this way and that. He tried to follow it under his belly and did a somersault. Then he got distracted by his own tail and chased that instead for a moment. It was the most absurd "hunting" that Storm had ever seen.

Valla was laughing openly. Sauny looked like she was trying not to, but couldn't help herself. Storm sat down beside them. "You could just eat it," he said to Teek.

Teek looked up, eyes dilated, ears flat. "But it's not dead!" He leapt up again as the fish wriggled underneath him.

"So kill it," snickered Valla.

"How?"

She blinked. "You mean, you've never...?"

"He wasn't weaned," said Storm in a tired voice. "I think he'd eaten exactly one pre-killed mouse when I found him."

Teek caught the flipping fish under one paw. Storm saw that he didn't even have his claws extended. He took a deep breath, as though working up his nerve. "Do I have to?"

"A creasia who's never killed anything," said Valla in wonder. "Not even a minnow."

Sauny limped forward suddenly. She nosed under Teek's paw, lifted the little fish deftly, and tossed it back into the stream. "No, you don't have to."

Teek looked both relieved and disappointed.

"He has to learn to hunt sometime," said Storm.

"Not today," said Sauny. "He doesn't have to kill anything today." Storm watched her. He had been afraid that Sauny would see in Teek the source of her maiming, and maybe she had at first. But you only need to spend a few moments with him before...

Teek had become distracted by the twitching tip of his tail again. He flopped onto his side, swatting at it madly. Before he does something like that.

Storm said he would go and talk to Pathar, and he meant it. But, somehow, the days pa.s.sed, and he did not go. The winter storms came and then the snow. Storm hunted with the curbs in the deep drifts or, just as often, in the icy tide pools along the beach. This winter was not the gentle chill that had visited last season. This was a winter of ice storms, of freezing rain and fog. Some days, they were reduced to bringing back seaweed from the edge of the tide pools, though Eyal warned Storm that he must drink plenty of water when eating it. Too much salt was poison.

Maoli gave birth shortly after the winter began. The curb puppies grew into fuzzy appendages beneath the bellies of their mothers and finally dropped off. The female curbs-lean and sharp-eyed-were able to rejoin the hunt.

Valla joined the pack, as well. The water in the Cave of Histories had grown so icy that she could not tolerate it for long, and the search for food had become more important than the search for knowledge.

Storm learned, with some dismay, that most of the telshees went to sleep for the winter or left the island for warmer seas. "It is an uncomfortable time of year," Ulya told them with a yawn. "If you could sleep through it or go somewhere else, wouldn't you?"

Storm was not sure whether Shaw had entered torpor or left the island, but he did not see her after the onset of the snows. He knew that she felt betrayed in the matter of Teek and was, perhaps, regretting her renewed involvement with land animals. Storm himself stayed away from the telshee caves for fear that Teek would follow him. The cub tried, with his every fiber, to obey Storm's instructions, but he was young, and he sometimes forgot.

Storm considered speaking to Keesha about Teek. If he could convince Keesha of Teek's harmlessness, he felt sure that Shaw would come around. He suggested the idea to Sauny, who had spent more time with Keesha than had Storm.

"Leave it alone, Storm," she told him. "Shaw is right about Syra-lay, no matter what the other telshees say. He's not ready to sleep forever. He'll wake one day, and then everything will change. Until he wakes, though, he won't involve himself. Just leave it alone."

Sauny had been surprisingly even-tempered since the Volontaro. She was sleeping less, but that might have been because there was no one to feed her. After a short period when Valla attempted to feed both of them, Sauny stopped accepting food from anyone else and declared that she'd either starve or learn to hunt again.

Storm feared that she would starve in truth, but she established a circuit of the tide pools near telshee caves, and, though she grew very lean, she did seem to be surviving. "Starfish don't run very fast," she told Storm, as they lay in the rocks near the curbs' nest one evening.

"But they taste horrible," piped up Teek.

"The lame can't be choosy," said Sauny.

"Why are you lame?" he asked.

Sauny went quite still. Storm held his breath. "Because I picked a fight with someone bigger than me," she told Teek.

"Did you win?" he asked.

Valla barked a laugh.

Sauny looked annoyed. "How could you think-?"

"Well, he could be dead," Valla pointed out.

Sauny rolled her eyes. "No, I didn't win. Although...sometimes I think surviving is winning."

Yes, thought Storm. Sometimes surviving is the best kind of winning.

On a day in early winter, Roup meandered down through a tumble of roots and boulders to a gem of a pool all-but-underground, with a beam of light streaming in overhead. The water was just cool enough to drink, though it had a mineral taste that some found unpleasant.

Roup still remembered the first time he'd seen this cave. He'd been predisposed to hate it, as he'd just learned that he and Arcove would not share a den. But Nadine had walked him down here-a pleasant walk, closer to the king's den than Roup had any right to expect-and introduced him to her daughter, Caraca.

Caraca was the smallest adult creasia that Roup had ever met-barely larger than an adolescent cub, with brindled brown and gray fur and eyes so dark they looked almost black. She was nine years old, yet she had not taken a mate or chosen a den. Instead, she'd claimed this little cave on the edge of her mother's territory. It was rumored that she'd kept a warren of rabbits alive in the cave, bringing them food until they'd become impervious to creasia presence and would gamble about her on the floor. When a Volontaro took them one year, she replaced them with oory cats-a practice that other creasia found even more unsettling because the little animals were so creasia-like, and yet without speech.

Caraca had innumerable observations on the coloration patterns from generation to generation of her rabbits and oories. In her way, she had a body of knowledge as great as that of her mother. However, Nadine's knowledge covered the bloodlines of the dens of Leeshwood, while Caraca's covered the smaller and more controlled world of her willing captives.

Before Arcove's rise to power, Caraca had expressed no interest in establishing a den or joining one. Many said-though not in Nadine's hearing-that Caraca had been spoiled. She occasionally ate at her father and mother's kills. She produced no cubs, nor did she help care for the cubs of others. If she'd been anyone else's daughter, she would have become a rogue and probably met a swift end.

Knowing what he knew now, Roup suspected that Caraca had never been deeply averse to joining a den. However, she feared that a den would curtail the strange projects that were her chief joy in life. In this, she was probably correct.

Nadine had introduced Roup and Caraca shortly after Arcove killed Ketch, the previous King. Caraca's immediate interest in Roup had, he suspected, more to do with his unusual coat color than with anything else. However, Roup needed a mate to establish his legitimacy on Arcove's council, and Caraca could not go on forever being half a rogue. Nadine feared, naturally, that the new king would not be so indulgent of his dead rival's daughter.

Caraca would not have thrived in a large den, and Nadine a.s.sumed, correctly, that Roup would not want one. In the end, they got on well together. Caraca did not complain of Roup's frequent visits to Arcove's den. She seemed more puzzled by his strange partnership with the sterile female, Lyndi, who was his beta. Caraca and Lyndi were never quite sure who outranked whom. They had come near blows on more than one occasion. Mostly, they avoided each other.

However, on the whole, Roup was an ideal mate for Caraca. He took no other mates, allowing Caraca the unprecedented freedom of being a high-ranking female with no underlings to manage. Roup had a high tolerance for unconventional activities and was unperturbed by Caraca's oories, rabbits, and rock rats. Roup was so friendly with the rest of his small clutter that Caraca could easily share maintenance of her cubs with other females. When that failed, Caraca's cubs were always welcome in Arcove's den, and Roup would take them there himself if Caraca was too preoccupied to do so.

The bulk of Roup's clutter had moved long ago to a location beyond the edge of Arcove's territory just to preserve the look of the thing. However, Caraca still maintained a colony of rock rats in this cave. Roup found her among them on this particular day, lying quite still, and watching their activities along the edge of the wall.

The tamest of her oories-an unusual creature with white fur and pink eyes-had come with her. Caraca had nursed it along with her own cubs and tried in vain to teach it to talk. The oory could clearly understand some words, although its mind did not seem to function in the same way as a creasia's. Caraca called it Friendly. Creasia outside Roup's clutter quietly called it an abomination.

Caraca and Friendly both turned as Roup jumped down into the cave and padded towards them. Then Caraca turned back to the rock rats. Roup lay down beside her without saying anything.

After a moment, Caraca darted forward, startling even Friendly. She caught one of the rats in her teeth, and killed it with a single shake. Friendly came cautiously forward, and Caraca gave him the dead rat.

"What did that one do?" asked Roup.

Caraca yawned. The other rats had scattered. "It was afraid of me...more afraid than the others."

Roup c.o.c.ked his head. "It seems to have been justified."

Caraca snorted. "I've been working on this colony for a while. It's gotten more and more docile."

"You think docility is in the blood?" asked Roup.

"I don't know," said Caraca. "But if I kill the shy or aggressive rats, the whole group seems to become more...friendly."

Friendly turned at the sound of his name and gave a conversational little mew. He reminded Roup in some ways of a perpetually young cub.

"Hmm..." Roup stared, unseeing, into the pool.

Caraca came up beside him and b.u.t.ted her head against his chest. "What's wrong?"

Roup sighed. "I just came from breaking up that three-day fight on the edge of Ariand's territory."

"They were still at it?" asked Caraca in surprise. "I thought it was just a scuffle between some four-year-olds."

"Oh, they'd gotten Mardin and Paslo involved by the time I stuck my nose in. Five of my cats and six of Ariand's. I think they were prepared to hunker down and make a winter-long siege. Ariand called me in to help. We finally got it sorted, but..."

"But what?"

"I'm still not sure what it was about. I couldn't get a straight answer out of anyone, but it was my impression that some of Ariand's cats said something disparaging about me or my clutter and it escalated. Everyone was too kind to tell me what was said, but I can guess."

Caraca considered. "Were they really Ariand's cats?"

Roup flicked his tail. "Two of them used to belong to Treace." He scowled. "Sometimes I think that breaking up his clutter was like dispersing the flies on a carca.s.s. You get them off your food, but then the whole cave is full of them."

"What do you think they were saying?"

"Oh, the usual. My cubs are not my cubs. My clutter is Arcove's. My place on the council is unjustified."

"Those rumors have gone around before," said Caraca.