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Wistala held her breath.
The dog trotted along her trail, nose pointed down but eyes watching the way ahead, passed her little bank upwind. The dog, like most fur-bearers, smelled like a dungheap. A faint smell of blood came from it, too.
Leap on it leap on it leap on it!
But she couldn’t. All her body seemed capable of was shivering beneath the white-yellow flowers of the milkweed.
The dog turned, obscenely bulging eyes with their evil round pupils fixing on her location. It gave one querulous bark and looked right and left, as though searching for allies among the tree trunks.
Wistala shot forth to the edge of the bank and planted her feet, extended her griff and hissed at the beast:
“Go away!”
If it understood her, it gave no sign. Instead it let loose with a deep-throated snarl and came straight at her.
Fast, so fast, it was on her in an eyeblink. They came down the bank, rolling together, the dog’s long limbs tangled with her own, teeth clattering against teeth. It yelped as she landed on its hindquarters but still sunk its teeth into her sii-shoulder joint. The upper teeth had no luck against her scales, but the lower went home.
Wistala raked it with her rear claws and felt blood and sinew. The dying dog hung on, closing its eyes to the pain. . . .
She resisted the urge to tear it free from her skin; that would do more damage. She waited until its heart stopped and then gently pried its jaws open.
Distant dog barks from the ridge told her at least one of the canine’s yelps had been heard. She nosed into the dog’s claw-torn belly and found the liver. Mother always said, if you could just eat one piece of an animal, it should always be the liver.
The body twitched as she chewed and lapped at dripping blood. It was an old dog. There were white circles about its eyes, ears, and nose. Perhaps it had become confused and broken away from the rest of the pack—
Then she licked the bite wound clean and pressed on.
Despite the meal, she’d come off worse from the engagement. Her front limb was horribly sore; she could hardly stand to move it, so she hobbled along as best as she could using the other three, now heading up into the foothills of the mountains.
She found a dry gully full of thick thorny brush and plunged into it, snaking along with half-closed eyes. The thorns rattled and snapped on her scales, red flowers above like wounds in the sky—those wretched dogs with their thin-furred muzzles would be miserable following her through it.
A tear—one of the bags had ripped open, caught on a thorny branch that had the tenacity of an iron hook. She turned and sniffed at the coins already falling from the sack.
Nothing to do but eat them.
When she came out of the thornbushes she found that her load was unbalanced, the remaining bag kept sliding over sideways—her makeshift contraption didn’t have much in the way of stabilizing straps. She ate mouthful after mouthful of coin from the other bag as she rested, greedy for each deliciously metallic swallow.
She staggered on, sick with fatigue, the coins in her gut clattering. Step after wretched step after wretched step uphill, until she thrust herself forward using only her hind legs, the front ones folded flat against her side.
The bags were too heavy; that was why her limbs gave out. She abandoned them, ate a few more coins so that they wouldn’t go to waste—maybe her last pleasure in life would be that of silver and gold rolling around in her mouth. Besides, the men would just have them anyway, and go buy themselves new mates or flocks or boots or whatever it was that men did with coin.
But, Father! She tore off one tiny pocket of canvas and spat two remaining coins into it, gripped it in her teeth as she pushed on, keeping three of her four limbs moving on into darkness.
Roaring in her ears now. She felt wet on the interior of her nostrils.
The river!
She could see the prominence ahead. The battered columns, the rocks where Father would perch and fish, the jagged spur he always used to help himself back to the sleeping spot at the old meeting place or whatever it was.
She gave a glad, trumpeting cry and staggered on—at least she wasn’t leaving a blood trail anymore. She’d failed this time, but she knew where to get more coin now, she’d be trebly-careful, cross the man-road by tree limbs above, there wouldn’t be rat bites next time . . .
Wistala limped out onto the peninsula, climbed up to Father’s prominence.
He looked dispirited and sleepy; blood seeped from a reopened wound. Perhaps he’d tried to fly again. “Father!”
“Tala! Back so soon? Bartleghaff’s only just left to see how you were doing in the ruins. But perhaps he marked you—here he comes.”
“I . . . ,” Wistala managed to gasp. Her throat felt too dry for words.
