Fas-Tan would certainly have first choice, and with her pride, her selection of mate would be he who proved himself best. Furtig had not the least chance of catching her golden eyes. But a warrior could dream, and he had dreamed.
Now another thought plagued him. Fal-Kan’s revelations concerning the folly, almost the treachery of Gammage, hung in his mind. He found himself looking not at the females of the westerners, but at the fringe of warriors. Most had hunting claws swinging at their belts. However, Furtig’s eyes marked at least three who did not wear those emblems of manhood, yet marched with the defenders. A warrior could gain his claws in two ways, since they no longer came from Gammage. He could put on those which had been his father’s if his sire had gone into the Last Dark, or he could challenge a claw wearer and strive for a victory that would make them his.
Furtig’s claws had been his father’s. He had had to work patiently and long to hammer their fastenings to fit his own hands. If he were challenged tomorrow by one of the clawless and lost— He dropped his hand protectingly over the weapons at his belt. To lose those—
However, when he thought of Fas-Tan there was a heat in him, a need to yowl a challenge straight into the whiskered face of the nearest warrior. And he knew that no male could resist the Trials when the Choosers walked provocatively, tails switching, seeming to see no one, yet well aware of all who watched.
And he was the only contender from the cave of Gammage this year. Also, since his brother Fughan had brought home no mate, he was doubly held to challenge. He wriggled back into the brush and head-ed for the caves.
As he pulled up into his own place, he gave a small sigh. Trials were never to the death; the People were too few to risk the loss of even one warrior. But a contender could be badly mauled, even maimed, if the Ancestors turned their power from him.
Only Gammage, Furtig’s most notable Ancestor, was not here, even in spirit. And it seemed, after he had listened to Fal-Kan, that Gammage had fallen from favor with his own kind. Furtig squatted by the lamp box and lapped a mouthful or two of water from his bowl as he thought about Gammage.
Why did the Ancestor fear the return of the Demons? It had been so long since the last one had been seen. Unless—Furtig’s spine hair raised at the thought—deep in the lairs they still existed. And Gammage, creeping secret ways there, had learned more of their devilish evil than he had shared. But if that were true—no, he was certain Gammage would have sent a plain message, one which might even have won some of the People to join in his wild plans.
Elders sometimes took to living in the past. They spoke to those who had gone into the Last Dark as if such still stood at their sides. It came to them, this other sight, when they were very old. Though few lived so long, for when a warrior grew less swift of thought, less supple of body, he often died suddenly and bloodily by the horns and hoofs of hunted prey, from the coughing sickness which came with the cold, of a hundred other perils which always ringed the caves.
Only such perils might not haunt the lairs. And Gammage, very old, saw Demons stalking him in the shadows of their own stronghold. Yes, that could be the answer. But you could not argue with one who saw those gone before. And Gammage, moved by such shadows and master of the lair wonders—why, he could even be a menace to his own People if he continued in his folly of spreading his discoveries among strangers! And even—as Fal-Kan had said—among his enemies! Someone ought to go to Gammage in truth, not just in the sayings of young warriors, and discover what he was doing now. For the good of the People that should be done.
Going to Gammage—it had been four trials ago that the last one who said that had gone, never to return. Foskatt of Fava’s cave. He had been bested in the contests. Furtig tried to recall Foskatt and then wished he had not. For the image in his mind was too like the one he had seen of himself the last time he had looked down at the other-Furtig in the smooth water of the Pool of Trees.
Foskatt, too, had been thin, narrow of shoulder and loin. And his fur was the same deep gray, almost blue in the sun. He also had been fond of roving on his own and had once shown Furtig something he had found in a small lair, one of those apart from the great ones in which Gammage lived. It was a strange thing, like a square box of metal, and in its top was a square of other material, very smooth. When Foskatt pressed a place on the side of the box, there appeared a picture on the top square. It was Demon-made, and when the cave Elders saw it they took it from Foskatt and smashed it with rocks.
Foskatt had been very quiet after that. And when he was beaten at the Trials, he had gone to Gammage. What had he found in the lairs?
Furtig fingered his fighting claws and thought about what might happen tomorrow; he must forget Gammage and consider rather his own future. The closer it came to the hour when he would have to front an opponent chosen by lot, the less good that seemed. Though he knew that once a challenge was uttered, he would be caught up in a frenzy of battle he would neither want to avoid nor be able to control. The very life force of their kind would spur him on.
Since it was not the custom that one tribe should stare at another in their home place, those of the caves went to their own shelters as the van of the visitors settled in the campgrounds, so Furtig was not alone for long. In the cave the life of his family bubbled about him.
“There is no proper way of influencing the drawing of lots.” Fal-Kari and two of the lesser Elders drew Furtig aside to give him council, though he would far rather have them leave him alone. Or would he? Which was worse, foreseeing in his own mind what might happen to him, or listening to advice delivered with an undercurrent of dubious belief in their champion? Fal-Kan sounded now as if he did wish there was some way to control the selection of warrior against warrior.
“True.” Fujor licked absentmindedly at his hand, his tongue rasping ever against the place where one finger was missing, as if by his gesture he could regrow the lacking member. Fujor was hairier of body than most of the cave and ran four-footed more often.
“There are three without claws,” Fal-Kan continued. “Your weapons, warrior, will be an added inducement for any struggle with those. Some will fight sooner for good weapons than a mate.”
Furtig wished he could pull those jingling treasures from his belt and hide them. But custom forbade it. There was no escape from laying them on the challenge rock when he was summoned. However, he dared speak up out of a kind of desperation. After all, Fal-Kan and Fujor had been successful in their own Trials. Perhaps, just perhaps, they could give him some manner of advice.
“Do you think, Elders, that I am already defeated, that you see the claws of my father on the hands of a stranger? For if this is so, can you not then tell me how the worst is to be avoided?” Fal-Kan eyed him critically. “It is the will of the Ancestors who will win. But you are quick, Furtig. You know all we can teach you. We have done our best. See that you do also.”
Furtig was silenced. There was no more to be got-ten out of these two. They were both Elders (though Fujor only by right of years, not by any wisdom). Fe-San, the other Elder, was noted for never raising his voice in Fal-Kan’s presence.
The other males were younglings, too young to do more than tread the teaching trails by day. Lately they had had more females than males within the cave of Gammage. And after every Trial the females went to the victors’ caves. The family was dwindling. Perhaps it would be with them as it had been with the cave of Rantia on the lower level, a clan finally reduced only to Elders and to Choosers too old to give birth. Yet Gammage had founded a proud line!
Now Furtig ate sparingly of the meat in his bowl, scrambled onto his own ledge, and curled up to sleep. He wished that the morning was already passed and the outcome of his uncertain championship decided. Through the dark he could hear the purring whispers of two of his sisters. Tomorrow would be a day of pride for them, with no doubts to cloud their excitement. They would be among the Choosers, not among the fighters.