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juices from the hide, which was steel gray; one of Nils’s animals had been steel gray. The head was obscured by leaves and dirt, and gingerly he brushed them away with a stick.
A cloud of flies rose up. The mouth and nostrils crawled with maggots, but the skin was white. Nils’s gray had had white lips and nose.
Then his mount reared screaming, jerking the reins from his hand, and both horses fled wildly. Hans’s head jerked up and around, to look in the opposite direction.
There, stalking toward him some fifty meters away, was an animal of a land he’d never seen before, large and slab-sided. Its gaze was fixed on him, and he saw the face of death. Dropping his bow, he darted for the nearest tree, a pine with dead branches within leaping distance, and was there in an instant, leaping, scrambling, breaking branches in his haste, and didn’t pause till he was eight meters up. He’d shed his quiver with his bow.
The animal was right below, looking up at him. It had made no attempt to climb, or even jump after him. Perhaps the dead branch stubs had daunted it. It was longer than a bear, long and rangy with a long tail. Its fur was pale orange-tan, with black stripes across shoulders and back. A cat, he thought, a giant cat. Their eyes met, the cat’s golden and full of hate. Hans shivered. It seemed to him he knew what the cat’s last previous kill had been: the bear.
After a minute it hissed at him, a throaty hiss, then turned and started toward its kill. It paused to sniff the bow, took it in its jaws and shook it. One end caught in the carcass, irritating the cat. It put a big paw on the bow, and twisting with its neck, snapped the weapon. Then it lowered its face to the carcass and began another meal.
It fed, rested briefly, and fed again. Twice it remembered Hans and snarled up at him, showing yellowed knife-like teeth. Finally it left, sauntering slowly up the slope above the saddle. To sleep, Hans thought, and di-
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gest its meal. Presumably it could watch its kill from where it bedded, if it was awake, but he couldn’t see it. For half an hour he waited, giving it plenty of time to fall asleep.
Meanwhile he made certain decisions. The first and hardest was to salvage his quiver and arrows, which lay near the carcass. And his bowstring, while he was at it. He would need them to eat. He could make a bow of sorts from material at hand, but arrows and string were more difficult. He also plotted his course, down the saddle and away, the same direction his horses had fled, deciding in advance which trees to run to if the cat came charging down at him.
It didn’t. He wasn’t surprised. Even awake, it wouldn’t be interested in him as prey just now; it had a kill. Its enmity was over his trespass. He remembered the story Achikh had told, of Nils in the arena, fighting a lion. And what Nils had said of it. Perhaps Nils could kill this cat too, with his sword, but Hans had no illusions as to what would happen if the cat attacked him.
The horses had run farther than he’d expected, but eventually their tracks were the tracks of a trot, and finally a walk. He found where they’d paused to browse on maple leaves, and not much farther on he saw them. They let him approach, and he patted them, talking to them for a bit, then swung into the saddle and rode off. He kept to the same general direction, for the sole reason that it put the cat farther behind him.
It was late afternoon when Hans came to a valley of farms. People wearing broad, somewhat bowl-shaped hats, bent at their work beneath the sun. Not far away was a sizeable village. He examined the situation for a minute, then rode out of the forest, keeping to a path between fields. As he approached, a nearby farmer looked up and called. Hans s lips thinned in disappointment; the language wasn’t Mongol. Others within hearing looked up too. He ignored them and rode on. Perhaps someone in the village would be able to speak with him.