The Elvenbane. Andre Norton

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      He had to rest in the sun, spreading his wings to catch the heat and restore his strength. He basked for quite some time before he felt up to grasping the thing in his rear claws and launching himself into labored flight.

      It was a good thing the Lair wasn’t far; with all the work he’d done so far, and short on sleep as he was, he was ready to drop with exhaustion.

      He’d better get everybody fed before he fell over, he thought ruefully, as he tried to maneuver for a landing.

      The landing was a bad one anyway, despite his care. He spilled too much air at the last minute and hit the ground too hard, falling over his kill and crashing face-first into the hard-baked adobe clay. Dust flew everywhere.

      He picked himself up and winced as he felt yet another bruise on his chin.

      He wondered if he was ever going to learn how to land as gracefully as his mother. Right now, it didn’t seem likely.

      Turning his attention back to his kill, he tore the carcass apart and distributed it among the carnivores in his menagerie. There were only the lizards, the loupers, and the spotted cats, and of the three, only the loupers were captive. The loupers came to the front of their enclosure at his call, pointed ears up, tongues lolling out of toothy muzzles, tails wagging. They took the horse shoulder from him directly and dragged it off to the back of the alcove. Loupers couldn’t jump well, though they could run like streaks of gray lightning, and another of the ubiquitous stone fences kept them penned. One of the pack was blind; one, like Hoppy, lacked a leg; and the remaining two were too old to hunt for themselves. They were friendly little scavengers, and were perfectly willing to look to him for pack leadership.

      The spotted cats came to no one, but he knew he could leave the haunch just inside the exit to the lair and they’d find it; they always did. The rest, scraps mostly, he scattered among the lizards, also kept in a common pen, who would eat when they felt like it. All except for the ones who lived in the lair itself, who were very happily eating the insects there.

      He went to the little spring that watered the canyon, and washed himself off thoroughly. He didn’t want to approach the one-horns or Hoppy with the smell of blood on him. He wasn’t sure what Hoppy would do, but he knew what the one-horns would do; they’d charge him, and mean it. Anything that smelled of blood brought an immediate reaction from them. And they knew very well how to use those long, wicked, spiral horns; that seemed to come inborn with them, even the fawns would charge a perceived enemy with head down, nubby little horn aimed correctly.

      Father Dragon said the elves had tried to breed the one-horns for fighting, but that most of them had proven impossible to tame, much less break to saddle, and so they had turned loose the beasts in disgust. Many of those had proven so aggressive, charging even creatures like dragons, that were more than a match for them, that the breed attacked itself into near extinction.

      He wouldn’t have bothered with them either, Keman thought, as he edged his way into the corral. They really were more trouble than they were worth, except as herd-guards. They were good at that, and they’d leave the two-horns alone, too. Maybe they figured killing two-horns was just too easy.

      The one-horns seemed disposed to accept him today, perhaps because he’d fed them earlier; they just gave him a warning glare and went back to keeping a wary eye on the ground beyond the fence. Two-horns posted guards, but one-horns were always on guard.

      It was a real pity that they were such nasty beasts, he thought a little wistfully, as he watched them posing against the red rock of the canyon. They really were pretty …

      The single horn, a long shaft that seemed to be made of mother-of-pearl, spiraled up to a needle-sharp point from a base as thick as Keman’s talon. The base rose from the beast’s forehead, at a point directly between the eyes. Those eyes were the first clue that this was not a creature that could be commonly regarded as sane. The eyes, a strange, burnt-orange color, were huge, and the pupils were in a constant state of dilation, as if the beast were forever in a condition of extreme agitation. The head was shaped like that of a horse, graceful, even dainty, but the eyes took up so much space that it was obvious even to Keman that there couldn’t be much room for brains there. The long, snake-supple neck led to powerful shoulders; the forelegs ended in feet that were a cross between cloven hooves and claws. The hindquarters were as powerful as the shoulders, though the feet there were more hooflike than clawlike. The beast had a long, flowing mane, tufted tail, a little chin-tuft much like a beard, and tufts on all four feet. The whole beast was a pure white that shone like pristine snow.

      Father Dragon said the things came in black, too, but he’d never seen one. As with everything the elven lords did, the one-horn had been bred first for looks and second for function, and they evidently thought that pure white and black were more impressive than the natural colors of the two-horns and three-horns.

      At least if they were pure white or black, that let more harmless creatures see them coming.

      The crowning touch to this contradictory beast came when it opened its mouth, as one of them was doing now, in a bored yawn. Those dainty lips concealed inch-long fangs. One-horns were omnivorous, and Father Dragon had warned Keman about ever letting his get used to eating meat – because if he did, before long they’d start hunting it themselves.

      Keman had kept them on a strictly vegetarian diet.

      They made effective guards, though. Nothing much was going to get past them, that was certain.

      Keman had more than a year of experience in handling himself around the one-horns. He moved very quietly, and very slowly, in the direction of Hoppy and the enclosure at the rear of the paddock, being very careful never to look directly at the one-horns or to present them with his full profile. The first action they regarded as preparatory to attack, and would attack first; the second they would consider a challenge, and would attack first.

      He succeeded in getting across the paddock without incident.

      In the enclosure, he found a perfectly contented Hoppy with her two ‘offspring.’ She had evidently learned how helpless the human cub was, and was keeping her body between her own rambunctious kid and the baby cradled in the straw. With only one hind leg, she was forced to nurse her own kid lying down, but she repeated her actions of the previous night while Keman watched, nosing the human cub into position so it, too, could suckle.

      Keman was overjoyed. He’d already learned that the two-horns were as clever as the one-horns were stupid, but he really hadn’t known whether Hoppy would be able to adapt her own behavior to this strange orphan.

      While the baby nursed, he crouched down and watched Hoppy cleaning it vigorously with her tongue. That was another worry out of the way until his mother could deal with it. He had figured the baby would need special sanitary provisions, but he hadn’t the foggiest how to take care of them. For now, at least, Hoppy seemed on top of the problem.

      So there was only one thing that needed taking care of.

      ‘You need a name,’ he told the mite, which paid no attention to him. ‘I can’t go on calling you “the cub.” It doesn’t seem right. Even the one-horns have names. They don’t answer to them, but they do have names.’

      He gave the matter careful consideration, choosing, then discarding, at least a dozen while he pondered. Draconic names seemed somehow inappropriate, but the kind of names he’d given his pets seemed even worse. He knew a little of the elven tongue, not too many names. Still, the elven language seemed fitter than the language of the Kin as the vehicle of СКАЧАТЬ