Across The Great Barrier Part 5

"Could be," Wash said. He hesitated, then went on, "Would you mind taking over the traveling spells for a few minutes, Professor?"

"Not at all, Mr. Morris," the professor replied. Her eyes narrowed in concentration and she stretched out a hand. After a moment, her arm dipped as if she had caught a thrown ball or a falling plate, and I knew that Wash had handed off the protection spells to her.

As soon as the spell hand-off was done, Wash turned in his saddle to face due south and went still as a stone. His horse s.h.i.+fted once, then stood quietly. I thought he must be doing Aphrikan world-sensing, and without thinking about it much, I took a deep breath and did the same.

It was like stepping out the door on a dead calm day in mid-January when it's so cold it hurts to breathe and it feels like everything is frozen so solid that nothing will ever move again. It was so unexpected that it threw me right back into my own head, which hadn't happened to me when I was world-sensing since my first year in upper school.

Wash was still sitting motionless on his horse. I tried again, slowly, like poking your nose out the door just a little to see how cold it is. I could feel our horses, and Wash and Professor Torgeson, and they all felt normal. But the plants and the ground underfoot felt a empty and cold. I poked a little further, trying to sense things that were farther away, but nothing changed. I could barely tell the difference between the top of the hill and the bottom. I wondered what it felt like to Wash.

As I pulled back, Wash s.h.i.+vered all over and took a deep breath.

"What is it?" Professor Torgeson said in a low voice.

"Trouble," Wash replied in a grim tone. He reached for his rifle. "The sort that needs looking into. If I'm not back in an hour a""

"No," the professor interrupted firmly. "Splitting up in the wildlands is asking for trouble. More trouble. Either we head for the nearest settlement for more a.s.sistance a""

"That's a good ten miles," Wash said, shaking his head.

"a" or we all investigate now. If you are confident of handling things alone, the three of us together should manage quite a""

The air at the foot of the hill rippled, and even though I wasn't the one holding the protection spells, I felt them give. A tan-colored streak bounded up the slope toward us. Wash had his rifle to his shoulder, and the professor started muttering a spell. My horse s.h.i.+ed and tried to bolt, and so did the packhorse. I heard the first shot while I was trying to get the two of them under control again. At the same time, I felt a spell sweep past me.

Something snarled. I looked up, and the tan streak resolved into a saber cat. It had a large head, with fangs curving down past its lower jaw and chin. It would have been as high as my chest if I'd been standing on the ground instead of up on a horse. From there, its back sloped down to rear legs that were short but powerful enough to send the whole big cat hurtling through the air, even though it was jumping up the hill.

Wash fired again. The bullet caught the charging saber cat in mid-leap, slamming it back and sideways to roll down the hill. As my eyes followed it, I saw something dark moving off to one side. I couldn't seem to get a clear look at it, but I thought it was maybe half the size of the saber cat, and it was moving at least twice as fast.

I raised my hand and, as hard as I knew how, cast the spell we used at the menagerie to push the mammoth back from the walls. It knocked the second creature all the way back to the foot of the hill. A moment later, another spell hit it. It howled in pain, and the air around it rippled. A third shot rang out. The creature jerked and stopped moving.

I was panting, one hand clenched tight around the reins, the other raised in case I needed another spell. Professor Torgeson was still muttering, though neither of the animals looked to be moving any. The only other sounds were the whisper of the wind, the creak of the harness leather as the horses s.h.i.+fted, and the click of the cartridges as Wash reloaded his rifle.

Professor Torgeson finished her spell. A moment later, she relaxed slightly in her saddle. "That's all of them," she said. "At least, that's all that are nearby."

Wash shook his head, but not like he was contradicting her. "How nearby?"

"Half-mile radius," the professor replied. "And yes, I compensated for the sphinx effect."

"Saber cats and Columbian sphinxes travel in prides," Wash said, frowning. "Meaning, more than three."

"Three?" I said before I could stop myself.

The professor pointed past me, to the north. I turned and saw another heap of tan fur partway up the hillside. "Saber cats are clever, cooperative hunters," she said. "When they're stalking, the pride will try to encircle their prey, so that as few as possible will escape."

I'd just barely begun feeling easy, but that made me tense again. "So where are the rest of them?"

"That is a right good question," Wash said. He looked at the professor. "Are you as handy with a rifle as you are with a spell?"

"I can manage, at need."

"Good." He swung down from his horse and handed her the rifle and me the reins. Then he went down the hill to examine the dead saber cats and the sphinx. After a few minutes, he circled the hill farther out, pausing occasionally to study the ground.

"Scouts," he said shortly as he reclaimed his rifle and horse. "The rest of the pride will be back that way." He pointed south. "All three look to be three-quarters starved a but they've fed well recently. That'll be why they aren't all traveling together a" the pride has killed something large enough to last them a few days." He looked from the professor to me and added, "Maybe a couple of bison, or a mammoth."

I couldn't help frowning a little at that. We hadn't seen any bison or mammoths or even deer since we crossed into the area that the grubs had devastated the year before.

"Starving," Professor Torgeson said thoughtfully. "That explains why they pushed through the protective spells, then."

Wash snorted. "Wildlife comes through the protective spells for all sorts of reasons, and we only know about half of them. If that."

"I take your point, Mr. Morris." The professor hesitated, as if she wanted to say more, then shook her head slightly and waited.

"We need to warn the nearest settlements," Wash said after a moment. "Let's go."

I noticed he didn't say anything more about investigating trouble, but he didn't seem too happy about going on, either. I wondered about that. Wash wasn't the sort to go courting trouble, and searching out a mixed pride of saber cats and Columbian sphinxes looked to me like being more trouble than even a trouble-seeker would ever want.

The horses were still skittish, so we gave the dead cats a wide berth. As we rode away, Professor Torgeson looked over her shoulder and said, "You did well, Eff." Then she went back to concentrating on the travel protection spells.

It made me feel good to hear that, but I didn't feel like I deserved it. I hadn't been much help when the saber cats attacked. Oh, I'd kept my seat and hung on to the packhorse, which at least kept me from causing extra problems, but I hadn't been good for much else, and I didn't like it. I'd grown up on the edge of the West; I ought to have been more use than simply hanging on to a horse and throwing one measly spell.

I stewed over that all the way to the next settlement, a place called Bejmar. They weren't too pleased to see us at first. Like the other settlements that had managed to survive the grubs and mirror bugs, they were hanging on by the skin of their teeth, and they didn't have much of anything to be hospitable with. As soon as the words "saber cat pride" were out of Wash's mouth, though, the man on gate duty hurried off to ring the alarm bell. All the folks who'd been out in the fields dropped what they were doing and came running. By the time we'd finished telling our story to the settlement magician, everyone was inside the walls, and within half an hour of our arrival, the settlement had sent out message riders to the two nearest settlements and started collecting all the people and guns they could spare.

Wash and Professor Torgeson a.s.sumed that they'd be going out with the settlers to hunt saber cats. The professor offered to let me stay in Bejmar with our packhorse and supplies, and I even thought about it for a minute or two. Part of me wanted nothing to do with hunting because I was still shaking from the suddenness of the attack and the way I hadn't seen that third cat coming up behind me until after it was shot dead, but another part of me wanted a chance to prove I could do better. There was something else, too a" a big, foggy feeling that included the grubs and the dead countryside and the settlements and most of the people we'd met west of the Great Barrier, all in a jumble. I couldn't put a name to it, but it was pus.h.i.+ng me to go along and do whatever I could. So I swallowed my worries and told the professor that I thought the hunters needed as many folks as they could get and it wouldn't seem right to stay safe in the settlement.

The settlers were extra careful that none of the livestock got left outside the palisade walls after dark, and the settlers who weren't heading out next morning stood watch all night long. Saber cats have been known to claw their way right over a wall to get at the horses and cows, so everyone was tense.

Next morning, we rode out to take care of the pride: five settlers, Wash, Professor Torgeson, and me. After what we'd seen with only three animals, I wasn't sure that we had enough people, but Professor Torgeson said we'd be meeting up with folks from the other settlements around. A full pride of saber cats and sphinxes was too dangerous to let alone, especially if they were mostly starving, and all the settlements in the area would cooperate to get rid of it.

I had the repeating rifle that Robbie had given me, and most of the settlement folk had something similar, though their weapons all looked well used. The folks from the other settlements caught up with us around mid-morning a" five men from Neues Hamburg and three men and a woman from Jorgen. That made seventeen of us. I still wasn't sure it was enough, since we didn't know how many cats there were, but Wash and the settlers seemed to think it was reasonable.

After a quick discussion, they decided on a man named Meyer to be leader of the whole group. He was a bluff blond man with sharp eyes that never smiled even when his mouth did. I didn't care for him, but all the settlers knew him and plainly trusted him to do a good job.

We went on slowly. It took all morning and a bit of the afternoon to go back over the distance that had taken two and a half hours with just Wash and the professor and me. Wash and Professor Torgeson stayed in front, working a variation on the travel protection spells. This time, we didn't want to drive the wildlife off; we wanted them to come out where we could see and shoot them. In order to do that, we had to know when they were coming, and from what direction.

Long about mid-afternoon, we got to the hill where we'd faced the saber cats the day before. As soon as we came in sight of the dead animals, Mr. Meyer signaled everyone to stop. "Mr. Morris says we're getting close," he told us. "We'll leave the horses here. Any volunteers for guard duty?"

After a minute, two of the settlers nodded. They didn't look too happy about staying behind, but someone had to. The horses would panic if they smelled cat, and we'd never get close to them.

We picketed the horses, and Wash and the professor set up a protection spell around them. Protection spells are usually meant to go out as far as they can, to keep the wildlife as far away as possible, but this time they had to keep it as close in as they could. The men who were staying looked uneasy about it, and I didn't blame them. They wouldn't have much in the way of warning if the saber cats decided to come through the protection spell, the way they had the day before. n.o.body made a fuss, though. We all knew that we were hunting for a mixed pride, saber cats and Columbian sphinxes both, and the sphinxes were particularly sensitive to magic. If they noticed any spells, there was no telling what they'd do; they might run off before we could kill them all, or they might charge, the way the three scouts had charged us the day before. So the spell couldn't go much past where the horses were picketed.

As soon as the spell was set around the horses, the rest of us went on, as slow and silent as we could. It hadn't rained overnight, so the tracks were easy to follow, and a good thing, too, because we couldn't use magic to find the pride. Columbian sphinxes aren't just extra sensitive to magic; they also put out magic of their own that hides where they are. It also messes up any magic that their prey might use to tell where they are, and that unfortunately includes most Avrupan detection spells. Even Wash hadn't sensed the cats that had attacked us until they were almost to us.

Mr. Meyer had us fan out in a line, so that if the cats charged, we wouldn't all be likely targets. It was a scary feeling, trying to walk real quiet through the empty, open land. There weren't even any dead trees to hide behind on this part, and the prairie plants were only a little more than ankle high.

Wash and two of the settlement men were a little ahead of us, doing the tracking. The air was warm, just at the point where it's comfortable for sitting in the shade, but not for digging over the garden in the sun. There was no wind, which was good because it wouldn't carry our scent to the cats, but it was also bad because it just made everything seem even hotter and there was no breeze to carry away the bugs. No matter how good you are at sneaking, you can't ever sneak well enough so that mosquitoes won't find you, and no matter how worried and tense you are, or how hard you are trying to pay attention, you just can't help noticing when a cloud of mosquitoes comes for you like you're their first good meal since last fall.

After about ten minutes, one of the trackers pointed off to the left. There was a little cl.u.s.ter of dead trees with some equally dead bushes around and between them. Through the bare twigs, I could just make out a covered wagon, still and silent. My stomach went hollow. As we crept closer, I told myself that the settlers from the wagon must have run across the pride, the same as we had, and left the wagon behind so as to get to a settlement faster. I didn't really believe it, though.

Suddenly, one of the settlers shouted, "On your left!"

Everyone turned to see two saber cats charging up out of nowhere.

CHAPTER.

9.

PEOPLE STARTED FIRING. I WAS IN THE MIDDLE OF THE LINE AND I didn't have a clear shot at either cat. Remembering the day before, I turned, and sure enough, there was another saber cat charging from the right, and two more directly behind us. Without thinking, I raised my rifle and shot, pumped the lever to reload, and fired again. I heard a man scream, and a cat snarl. There were more shots and shouts.

Professor Torgeson cast an area spell, revealing the sphinxes. There were three: smaller than the saber cats, black as night. They had bodies like a lynx, but their heads were set higher above their shoulders, and they had a long, thick mane of black hair. If you didn't pay too much attention to the faces, they really did look a lot like the drawings of the Egyptian Sphinx in my history books.

They were fast, too a" even faster than the saber cats. I heard one of the settlers later telling folks back in Bejmar that he'd seen one of the sphinxes actually dodge a bullet. He was exaggerating, I think, but I can't deny they were almighty hard to hit.

I shot twice more, backing up in between shots. All of the saber cats that hadn't fallen were in among us by then, and so were the sphinxes. The animals had each been hit at least once, but they were all mad as blazes and wouldn't go down. It was hard to get a clear shot without maybe hitting someone else. I lowered my rifle and knocked one of the animals back with the spell I'd used before. Someone else shot it.

And then, as quick as it had started, it was over. We'd killed five saber cats and three sphinxes, and three men had been mauled. "Don't let your guard down," Mr. Meyer cautioned as everyone took a breath and started toward the three who'd been injured. "This may not be all of them."

"A full pride is usually seven to ten cats and four to eight sphinxes," Wash said, nodding. "With the ones from yesterday, we've killed seven cats and four sphinxes. We might have gotten lucky and got them all, but best not to take chances."

"I can't believe they got the drop on us," a settler said. "We knew they were there!"

"Quit jawing," his companion advised, "or whatever's left of the pride will catch us with our pants down all over again. *Scuse me, ladies."

Everyone reloaded, even the ones who were going to look after the injured. All of the injured men were bleeding pretty heavily from bites and claw marks, and one of them had a shattered arm bone where a saber cat had bitten down hard. One of the men from Neues Hamburg had brought a bag of remedies that their doctor had put together for them; he and the woman from Jorgen split up the poultices and bandages and started wrapping up the bites, but there wasn't much they could do about the arm.

After a long argument, Mr. Meyer sent Wash and half the able-bodied through the dead trees to check on the wagon. We drew straws for it; saber cats aside, everyone had a fair notion what they'd find and n.o.body was any too keen on going to look. I was relieved to get a long straw, which meant I'd stay to help guard the injured.

A few minutes later, we heard another round of shots. A while after that, Wash's group came back, grim-faced. "Two more saber cats, a sphinx, and five cubs," Wash reported. "We got them all."

"They had cubs to protect?" Mr. Meyer said. "No wonder they came at us like that!" He paused for a minute. "What about a""

"The settlers?" Wash shook his head. "No survivors."

"We were lucky," another man said, and spat. "These cats were still half starved. It can't have been more than a day or two since they got the wagon; if they'd had more time to feed on the greenhorn's oxen, they'd have had a lot more of their strength back."

We stayed on guard until the trackers had circled the camp, looking for signs of any more cats. Once they were sure we'd gotten them all, we had to decide what to do next. With three men hurt (two of them badly enough that they couldn't ride), we wouldn't make it to a settlement by nightfall. Half the men wanted to get as far as we could; the rest wanted to stay put and ride out in the morning. They'd all pretty much decided that since the saber cats were dead, they didn't have to follow Mr. Meyer's orders without giving their own opinions first. They had a lot of opinions. Then the three who were most set on having things their own way got to arguing with each other, and even when someone pointed out that the longer they argued, the more likely it was that we'd have to stay put, it only made them argue harder.

In the end, we sent five people to get the horses and the guards we'd left with them, and started hacking down the dead brush for firewood. Wash and Professor Torgeson set up the strongest protection spells they could do at short notice, though as Wash said, it wasn't really necessary.

"A pride of saber cats has been living here for at least three days," he pointed out. "With cubs. Most of the wildlife has sense enough to stay far away from saber cat territory, if they can."

"Most of the wildlife?" someone asked.

"Well, I doubt that a steam dragon would be bothered," Wash said, "but it's been seven years since one of them got blown out of the Far West into settlement territory."

That got a nervous laugh from some of the settlers, but I s.h.i.+vered. I remembered that steam dragon. It was the first time I'd ever heard the alarm bell in Mill City ring the wildlife warning. The dragon had flown right over the Great Barrier Spell, and it had taken most of the magicians in town to bring it down.

Once the protection spell was up, Mr. Meyer asked for volunteers to bury the dead and salvage what they could from the wagon. I wasn't too keen on helping with the burying, but I could see that someone should at least try to find out who they'd been and where their people were, so that their family could be notified. I said I'd help with the wagon.

I was sorry almost as soon as I got near. The wagon had had four oxen pulling it, and they and the settlers had been dead in the hot sun for two days. On top of that, the saber cats had been marking the area as theirs. The whole area stank of death and decay and cat urine. I hauled out my handkerchief and tied it over my nose and mouth. It helped, but I still had to breathe shallowly.

Four of the men gathered up the bodies of the settler and his family, while some of the others started in digging the graves. As soon as they said the wagon was cleared out, I climbed up on the driver's seat and started looking around. There was an old sawed-off shotgun lying crosswise right where the driver would have been sitting. Both barrels had been fired. Under the seat, I found a metal box, the sort most settlers used to carry money and family papers. It wasn't locked, and when I opened it I got a shock. The dead settlers were Giles Carpenter, the man we'd met at Puerta del Oeste who'd been in too much hurry to get to his allotment to wait for a travel guide, and his family.

That rattled me more than a little, and I was still shaky from the fight with the saber cats. I'd always known that the settlements were dangerous, and I'd met a few folks who'd been injured by wildlife, but Mr. Carpenter was the first person I'd met who'd actually gotten killed in the West. That I knew of, anyway; about half of my cla.s.s from the day school had gone out to settlements and I hadn't kept in touch with any of them. That thought was even more unsettling. I closed up the box and set it aside, then crawled back into the wagon to see what Mr. Carpenter had brought along with him.

Mr. Carpenter may not have been too smart about traveling with a guide, but he'd done a bang-up job at picking his supplies. There were two more guns packed away, an old smoothbore rifle and a revolver, and plenty of ammunition for all of them. He had a small keg of nails, two barrels of flour and another of sugar, a lot of beef jerky, a large crate of tools for building and mending things, seed for both a field of soybeans and one of Scandian wheat, and a lot of other things. All of it seemed like it would be real useful, even to a well-established settlement like Neues Hamburg, so rather than deciding anything myself, I made a list for Mr. Meyer. I was glad when I finished and got back to the camp, even if it was only a little way from the wagon.

Over dinner that night, the settlers had a solemn talk on what to do with Mr. Carpenter's wagon and supplies. There was too much to just abandon, but n.o.body wanted to come back a second time. Luckily, one of the men said he could jury-rig a harness for horses from what was left of the straps and the yoke for the oxen. It wouldn't be as good as a proper horse collar, but if they went slowly and some of the men helped push the wagon, it would do. What clinched the argument was that we could put the three injured men in the back. They'd be jolted around a" there was no helping that a" but there was no way they could ride, and the wagon was better than having to ride double.

As soon as she heard we were taking the wagon, Professor Torgeson asked if there'd be room for one of the dead saber cats. The settlers gave her funny looks. One of them offered to skin one for her right there, if she wanted it that bad, but she said she wanted the whole cat for the college to dissect. Mr. Meyer said that as long as she took care of preserving it herself, and knew what she wanted done with it, he didn't see a problem. So the professor spent the rest of the evening looking at the dead cats to find the one that had been shot up the least. She picked out two, a female saber cat and a male Columbian sphinx, and stayed up through the first watch putting layers of preservation spells on them so they'd get back to the college in good condition.

Just before dark, Mr. Meyer set watches, and the rest of us settled down under the stars to try to sleep. I was restless for a long time, and when I finally did fall asleep, I had the first of the dreams. Even then, I knew it was different. It was sharper and clearer than my other dreams, and I never had any fear that I'd forget the smallest part of it.

I dreamed I was standing in the old well house back in Helvan Sh.o.r.es, where I'd lived until I was five. It was dark and damp and too warm. Someone had left the cover off the well, and a bucket on a rope beside it. I was desperately thirsty, but I was afraid to go near the well to try to draw up any water for myself. Mama had drilled into us all that we weren't to be in the well house without an adult, and if that hadn't been enough, the older childings told all us youngers all sorts of tales about childings who'd fallen in and drowned.

After a while, I crept to the bucket and pulled it back to the wall, where I could look at it without getting too close to the well. There was a little stale water in the bottom, barely a palmful, but I drank it down as fast as I could. It only made me thirstier, but at the same time, I was more afraid than ever.

I decided that it would be best to leave. I peered into the dark well room, but I couldn't see the door. I edged around the wall, peering, and feeling the cool stone with my fingers. After a long time, I tripped over the bucket. I'd gone all the way around, and there was no door. I pressed back against the wall, sure that something would come out of the well and get me. And then I heard rain on the roof.

I woke up feeling terrified and chilled. As soon as I recollected where I was, I went straight to the fire. It had burned to embers, but it still gave off heat enough to warm me a little. When I was finally warm, I laid myself back down, but it was a long time before I slept again.

The next morning, we finished burying Mr. Carpenter and his family. Mr. Meyer read a psalm out of the little Bible he carried with him, and Wash said a few words about people brave enough to come across the Great Barrier into the West. He didn't mention people who weren't smart enough to follow good advice when they got it, but that would have been unkind. Then we got to work loading up the professor's dead cats and the three injured men, and started back toward the settlements.

With four horses pulling and five men across the back pus.h.i.+ng, we kept the wagon rolling pretty well until we had to part company. We sent the wagon on to Neues Hamburg, because the settlement was old enough and large enough to have its own doctor and two of the injured men were from there. One of the men from Jorgen went with, on account of the other injured man being from Jorgen. Before they left, the settlers from Jorgen and Neues Hamburg both thanked Wash and the professor and me for letting them know about the saber cats. Mr. Meyer even tried to offer a reward, but Wash said helping out like that was a circuit magician's job, even if he was only half on duty, and the professor said that as long as they saw to it that her large samples got back to the university, she'd be more than happy to call it square.

When we got back to Bejmar, we had to go over the whole business one more time for the settlement magician. "Thank you," he said when we finished. "Both for the warning and the help." He shook his head tiredly. "I'd hoped that with so much forage and cover gone, we'd have a year or two before the big predators came back, but it seems not. Though the smaller wildlife aren't much better."

"Those cats shouldn't have been there at all," one of the men who'd come with us burst out. "They were starving, all of them; since when does a starving animal come to a place where there's no food?"

"They found food, right enough," one of the others muttered, and the first man turned on him.

"There are herds of deer and bison and silverhooves to the west, out past the land the mirror bugs destroyed," he snarled. "h.e.l.l, a full pride can bring down a mammoth, and there are plenty of mammoths out past settlement country! Why didn't the blasted cats just stay there?"

No one had an answer.

We stayed in Bejmar just long enough for the professor to find some people to observe the plants and animals for the college, and then we went on our way. The settlement magician and a couple of the other settlers made a halfhearted try at persuading us to stay the night, but Wash and the professor thanked them kindly and said no. We'd already lost nearly two days; if this kept up, we'd be all summer just getting out to the western edge of the settlements, let alone heading north and back around to Mill City.

CHAPTER.