They backed away from one another, turning their heads, bowing their necks, the wicked neck barbs bristling to one side like a fan of sabers as they moved back, back, the distance widening between them. Then they charged one another, each array of barbs passing through the other, to gouge long wounds along the other’s ribs and flanks. Long streaks of blood appeared on their sides, and they pawed the ground with razorlike hooves, hammering at it before they turned to charge again. Again the flashing barbs and the streaks of blood. Marjorie cowered, mentally, as they thrust at one another, rearing high, hooves flashing.
Until, at last, one of the Hippae fell to his knees and was slow to rise to all four feet again.
The other animal backed away to the front of the cave and rummaged there. It turned its back on its enemy, kicked backward, sending black missiles flying. What was it kicking at its defeated opponent? Black things. Powdery black things that broke when they landed. Like puffballs, bursting into clouds of black dust when they struck. Kicking dead bats at one another. The thing Sylvan had said….
Silent. A game. The game. In silence.
The victorious Hippae tossed its head, sought with its teeth for new missiles from around the entrances to the cavern, laid them out in the open, then turned to kick back once more. One of the missiles struck the head of the kneeling beast, covering it in black dust. The defeated one bowed low, struggled to its feet, and departed, walking up the bank of the hollow and away.
It had had the pace and finish of ritual. A ritual battle. Now over.
And then sound. The wind was blowing from behind her. One of the swollen peepers ripped open. Protruding from the torn skin of the peeper was the triangular, fanged head of a hound. The peeper skin ripped further. Two hound forelegs emerged, and then, very gradually, the entire beast.
It looked small and ridiculously fragile as it staggered to its feet and stumbled through one of the vertical openings into the cavern, carefully avoiding the heaped eggs. Marjorie heard the sound of lapping from within. After a long pause, the creature emerged once more with dripping jaws, already more sure upon its feet, already sleek, its body distended with moisture. The Hippae stood upon the edge of the hollow, whistling. The young hound climbed to meet it, nibbling, as it went, at the low, blue grasses which grew there. Even as Marjorie watched, the beast seemed to enlarge in size, gaining both stature and bulk. After a time it went away, slowly though purposefully. The wind was blowing harder.
Another ripping sound drew her eyes across the hollow. As a hound had emerged from the torn skin of a peeper, so now a Hippae was emerging from the torn skin of a hound. Metamorphosis. Through the sundered skin of one of the huge hounds a row of barbs protruded, tiny blades which slit the skin, allowing the Hippae head to emerge. The process stopped when the head was out, its eyes closed and unseeing. All was silent.
What was she doing? The wind was strong now, blowing the smell away. What was she doing? Lying there? Flat? Only her eyes had dimension. Only her eyes.
They hurt. She blinked, noticing that they were dry, aching. She hadn’t blinked, Not for a long, long time. The skin on the back of her neck itched, as though something were watching her. She turned, trying to see through the curtaining grasses. Something was out there. She couldn’t see it or hear it, but she knew it was there. She wriggled back down the slope, stumbled through the grasses to find Quixote where he lay as she had left him but with his head up, ears erect and swiveling, nostrils twitching. The sun was falling toward the horizon. Tall grasses feathered the hollows with long, ominous shadows. She urged him up and mounted, letting him have his head, trusting in his ability to bring them both home if they were ever to come there again.
The stallion moved by a route more direct than the one they had taken in the morning, though still moving as though someone called his name. He was as aware as she that darkness was not far off, more aware than she of the threat abroad in the grasses. Quixote could smell what she could not, Hippae, many of them, not far away but upwind from them. They had been coming closer for the past hour, moving this way and that, as though searching. Quixote leaned into his stride, eating the prairie with his feet, returning to Opal Hill in a long curve which took him as far from the approaching Hippae as he could get, gradually lengthening the distance between them. Out there, somewhere, something approved of him. Something told him he was a good horse.