Chapter 5
I HAD GOOD REASON to be glad that I had chosen ammunition for my sling and had that within reaching distance as a growl from the cat—one which heightened to a roar of defiance and rage— brought me sharply out of uneasy slumber. The stink of rats was strong. In spite of the fact that the sun was still high enough to light fire heat on the rocks, the creatures were on the hunt.
That they ventured out into the full day to do this was surprising. It must have been that they had picked up not only my scent but that of the cat so altered by his wound as to make them think that he would be easy prey.
I brought down two and sent a third howling and stumbling back, one foreleg dangling. As was usual their pack mates closed in upon the injured as well as upon the dead. But there was something else which surprised me above the natural heat of battle.
The pack milled about the foot of a taller spur of rock and on the top of that there was a black spot which in spite of the sun’s glare I at length made out to be another rat. But this one was different from the others. The shape of its head, as I made it out against the red of the rock, was too large and almost misshapen.
Even as I was able to see that much, the creature raised its head and howled, a sound different also from the squealing of its fellows. It was on its feet and I could see that the thing was at least twice the size of the pack members below, formidable as those were.
As if it had voiced some order the pack surged forward towards us. Still that brief pause had given me a chance to use my sling to good advantage. Two more of those attackers went down, one snapping at its own side where my rock had thudded home, as if to bite at the thing which had hurt it. This time those who fell were not set upon by the rest. So that small advantage was lost.
I had already moved so that my back was to the cave wherein the roaring cat was fighting to get to its feet. I had jerked with me the cloak I had set up to use as a sunshield and this I swirled out with one hand, to engulf the first of the rats coming within reach.
A moment later I had thrown my knife, taking a desperate chance upon something which was just a suspicion. It struck deep, not into one of those upon whom I was now using my staff in the sweep which was the best answer to their charge, but into the neck of that thing on the rock point above.
Its peculiar cry was cut off, as I was busy with the rest. One of them would have taken me from the side, but the cat, as handicapped as it was, smacked that down with a single blow of its good paw.
The whirlwind of their attack was finished as quickly as it had begun. Dark forms, their skin patched with the green muck from the pools, drew back. They once more waited at the foot of that spur where the larger creature had taken its stand. Only, the body of their leader (and when had any rat pack known a leader?) was flopping until it rolled from its perch to fall among them.
Then the remainder of the attackers acted in the true style of their kind, throwing themselves upon the larger form, tearing and fighting among their kin for a chance to devour the swiftly dead. However, then I saw a strange thing indeed. Those who were nearest to and even had their jaws in the flesh of the dead suddenly flinched back from the body, fighting each other to get away. Moments later they all turned and slithered off, quickly concealed among the spurs and tumbles of rock.
There were left the bodies of the two killed nearest to the cave, a third dragging itself away uttering cries of pain, apparently its spine broken, and the partly tattered bundle of skin and bones of the one that had watched from above.
For moments I crouched where I was, unable to believe that the rats had given up so easily. I surveyed every blotch of shadow, sure that at least some of them lurked there ready to jump again if I relaxed my vigilance.
However, such a maneuver was foreign to them. Though they might indeed have swept men and animals from many of the islands by sheer might of numbers, they had never been known to show any such signs of intelligence, only the blind rage and hunger which brought them out in rush attacks. I looked to the cat. His senses were more acute than mine. I longed to be able to communicate with him, to discover what he thought of this strange withdrawal.
He still growled, but his battle cry was stilled. Then he reached out his uninjured paw and drew towards him the body of the rat he had slain and began to eat avidly. That he would do so in the face of the enemy was something I did not believe. So to the sound of crunching bones I made my way across the sun-heated stone to look down upon that one which I had knifed.
To the eye its torn body seemed no different from the others I had seen all my life, save that it was so much larger—almost equaling the size of the sandcat. It was the head which showed the greatest difference, as I saw when I used the end of my staff to roll what was left of the body over so that it lay more straightly stretched upon the bloody rock.
The skull was domed to a high level, and, though that had been crushed in its fall, there was something else, a glint which flashed from the shreds of torn skin. I had no desire to touch it, yet I needed to get my knife which, I saw, to my satisfaction, was buried in the neck where it joined the shoulder.
It was not the knife which had glittered. I knelt and now used the tip of that knife as a probe, lifting forth a thing which was certainly not native to any rat.
It was well smeared with blood. I tipped it onto the rock. What I saw was an oval of what could only be worked metal and in the center of that a stone or perhaps another bit of metal which was a dead black in color.
From where I had lifted it there came the knowledge that it had been embedded in the fore of that oddly shaped skull. Surely the creature had not so encumbered itself. I fumbled in my belt pouch and sacrificed a piece of dried algae to clean it, handling the thing very gingerly.
There was that about it which made me wary of touching it, even when it was clear of blood and spattered brain stuff. Nor did I want it to be with me even to the extent of being bundled into my pouch. Instead I hooked it up with my knife point and returned to the cave, turning it out on a stretch of rock under the sun which was now well towards the other horizon and so less of a menace.
The cat stopped his meal to look from me to the stone I had laid in sight. Once more he growled.
“We have here a mystery. Great One,” I said. Though he might not understand me, still it seemed good to express my thoughts and perhaps fears aloud. “That one which fell to my knife had this embedded in its skull. Yet this is of the making of another and not any badge of true rat.”
I thought of my father’s Leader banner which stood proudly beside his house. It is true that my species were given to such badges and sign posts of position and honor. Yet it was also true that for generations there had been no story of any leader rat that would impress its will on the remainder of the pack. Each was an enemy to the others and always had been. That they traveled together might also be their way of life but it meant no cooperation among them.
“Great One, why should a rat one wear such? Do they now change their way of life? If so this is an ill thing for all of us who dwell in this land. It—
I stopped almost in mid-word. For I had been watching that thing I had taken from the dead. The center stone which had been shiny black, its setting which had glinted like red gold, had lost color as if the heat had leached it. And under that touch, light as it was, the piece crumbled as might a bit of sand which had been temporarily shaped but could never hold for long. Powder it became, with a twist of thin metal also crumbling into nothing.