now. “—and I’ll cut those sorry ears off and stuff them down your flea-bitten thr—”
With a curse of his own, Heyoka vaulted up the ladder, frantic with worry, the pole rocking back and forth and his weak leg slipping on every other rung. He should have known Mitsu had too little experience of alien cultures to really understand the risk she took by coming here like this. She was so young, she thought just because she was a skilled soldier, she owned the universe, and he knew that. He should have been paying more attention! He had a sudden intense memory of being small and helpless amidst a savage onslaught of teeth and claws, blood soaking the ground, the rocks, his fur.
His arms burned with the strain of Anktan’s higher gravity as he climbed. Just when he thought his lungs would burst, his head surfaced. He pulled himself onto the still-warm ground, collapsing like a dying sea creature. The cool night air began to clear his head. Dark hrinnti shapes poured from a hole in the cliff behind him, spreading out to quarter the area. Heyoka forced himself onto his feet, then joined the search, limping. He could feel the blood seeping into his fur and robes, and the deeper slashes along his ribs burned. Mitsu’s familiar scent was scattered about the barren circle of earth, as well as that of innumerable other hrinn. “Where is she?” he demanded of the nearest. “Where would they take her?”
The dark-brown male sampled the wind, then wrinkled his nose. “Bah! It was one of those Dead-smelling Outsiders, not even good eating.” He shook himself, then, ears up, trotted off toward the dark, rolling river.
A murmur of surprise rose from several other nearby hrinn. “First it wants to know its Line, by the Voice,” one said, “and now it is chasing after Outsiders! Name that pattern, if you can.”
The pain of his numerous claw marks and slashes fueled his anger as he started the spiral of a standard search pattern, orienting on the ladder hole as his center. As he searched, the other males drifted away. His bad leg slowed him, making the spiral take much longer than it should have, and by the time his circle finally widened enough to take him back to the s