Scowling, I peered at the sword. “What in hoolies are you?”
In my mind was a word: jivatma.
Oh, hoolies, bascha … what do I do now?
What I did was get up. Everything appeared to be in working order, if a trifle stiff. Through wool I massaged the sore scar below my short ribs, then forgot it immediately; the cat was worth more attention. The cat—and the sword.
I went over to both. I’d stuck the cat pretty good: through his open mouth and on through the back of his skull. He lay sprawled on his side, but the hilt, thrust into dirt, propped up his head so it was level with the ground.
Two sockets stared up at me. The eyes in them had melted.
For longer than I care to remember, I couldn’t look away. Couldn’t even move. All I could do was stare, remembering the heat of the hilt. I’d begun to believe it imagined; now I knew better.
Swords don’t melt eyes. Nor do they singe whiskers or char lips into a rictus. Swords slice, thrust, cut open; on occasion they will hack, if the swordsman has no skill. But never do they melt things.
Something inside me whispered: Maybe jivatmas do.
I looked again at my hands. Still whole. Grimy and callused, but whole.
Only the cat had burned.
Well, parts of him. The parts the sword had touched.
Empty eyesockets were black. I realized there was no blood; the sword had swallowed it all.
Oh, hoolies, bascha, I’ve done what I swore I wouldn’t.
In the distance, beasts bayed. Like a pack of hounds, they belled. As they had for Boreal whenever Del had keyed.
And in answer, the stud snorted.
Stud—
I left the cat and the sword and went at once to the stud. He hadn’t gone far, just far enough to put distance between himself and the cat, and now he waited quietly, sweat running down flanks and shoulders.
Sweat mixed with blood.
“Oh, hoolies,” I said aloud, “he got you good, didn’t he?”
The stud nosed me as I came up to him. Grimly I peeled ragged dark mane off his withers—down South, we crop manes short; up North, they leave them long—and saw the cat had dug in pretty deep across brown withers, though the saddle had helped protect the stud a little. I found teeth and claw marks, carving gouges in his hide. There were more claw marks low on the stud’s right shoulder from the cat’s hind legs, and a few others here and there. All in all, the stud was lucky; the cat had been distracted, by me or the sword. I’ve seen half-grown sandtigers, in the Punja, take down larger horses much as this cat had done. But they finished the job more quickly by tearing open the jugular.
Then again, I—or the sword—hadn’t given the cat the chance to finish the job properly.
Something like fear pinched deep in my belly. But I ignored it with effort, purposefully turning my attention to the stud. “Well, old man,” I consoled him, “looks like we’ll make a pair. You match my cheek, now—maybe I should name you Snowcat. To go with the Sandtiger.”
The stud snorted messily.
“Maybe not,” I agreed.
The death-stink of the cat—and the smell of burned flesh—made the stud uneasy, so I tied him to the nearest tree and unsaddled him there, taking weight off his sore hide. I knew I’d do no more riding for a day or two, so I set up camp.
When a horse is the only thing between you and a long walk—or death—a man learns to value his mount, and the stud’s health and safety came first. If it slowed us down, too bad; the hounds, I knew, would wait, and the South wasn’t going anywhere. So I picked up the remaining bota of amnit. I didn’t dare risk infection; liquor leaches well enough.
I paused to pat the stud gently, and to check the strength of rope and knot. “Easy, old man. I won’t lie—this’ll hurt. Just don’t take it out on me.”
I aimed carefully and squirted, hitting every stripe and bite I could see. Ruthless, maybe, but sponging each wound gently would clean out only one, because the stud wouldn’t let me near enough to do any more once he’d felt the bite of the amnit. At least this way I got almost all of them at once.
Squealing, he bunched himself and kicked. A horse—especially a stallion—cutting loose with both hind hooves is a dangerous, deadly creature capable of murder. Prudently I moved another pace away, just to be sure, and grinned as he slewed an angry eye around to find me. Once found, he tried a scooping sideways kick with a single hind hoof, hoping to catch me on the sly. When that one missed, he pawed testily, digging craters in the turf.
“You dig a hole, you stand in it,” I told him. “I know you’re mad—I’d be, too—but it’s better than dying, you know. So just stand there like a quiet old ladies’ mare and think about what you’d be facing if I didn’t have this stuff.” I paused, checking the contents. “Good waste of liquor, if you ask me. Might as well drink the rest.”