It was all part of the natural cycle of the planet, and the SFS was scarcely likely to fog the area with insecticides, but the Rangers did like to keep track of data like this. And the flat case borers, especially, were some of the worst tree-killers in Sphinx’s entire ecosystem.

  I wonder if that’s what those two ’cats were out here checking on? This is a fairly important part of their range in fall and winter. It’d make sense for them to keep an eye on it in a year like this one. I hope they’re not going to end up short of food this winter!

  She knew that happened sometimes, and it was always hard for anyone who cared about the ’cats. Treecats who turned up at one of the Forestry Service’s stations in a distressed state could count on being fed and offered emergency medical care, but the SFS had decided centuries ago not to intervene in the wild except in cases of disaster relief. Hard winters didn’t constitute “disaster” by the Forestry Service’s definition unless they produced acute starvation, and intellectually, Honor understood why that was. Offering assistance too readily was likely to encourage both ’cat dependency on humans and the sort of overpopulation which led to genuine catastrophe. Not that understanding the policy would prevent her or her parents from providing meals to any ‘cats who turned up at their front door. In fact, they could usually count on at least one treecat visitor every week or so during the winter. It was painfully obvious that word had gotten around long ago that the Harringtons were an easy touch who always had celery stashed away somewhere.

  The creek broadened and deepened as she approached the near-beaver dam. The meter-long critters could top sixty kilos in weight, and the stumps of red spruce, near-pine, and mountain hickory gave clear evidence of just how efficient they were as loggers. Like the merely four-limbed Old Earth species for which they had been named, near-beavers tended to cut the timber for their dams and lodges in spring or summer and let it season until they needed it for building purposes in fall and winter. They could take down trees as much as thirty-six centimeters in diameter, although they usually settled for smaller prey, and—also like Old Earth beavers—they constructed “canals” to float bigger trunks and branches to where they needed them. In many ways, they were among Sphinx’s most destructive life forms, given what even a small population of them could do to woodland. On the other hand, the water they impounded behind their dams played a critical part in maintaining healthy wetlands and watersheds. And they also helped the spread of picketwood.

  For some reason, they never touched picketwood. It wasn’t because of any sort of toxicity issue—the SFS had determined that long ago—but picketwood was a clever survivor which had worked out resistance modes for many of the diseases and parasites (including near-beavers) which attacked other Sphinxian flora. Apparently, it just plain didn’t taste good as far as near-beavers were concerned, and their habit of eating everything else along the banks of their streams and ponds cleared space for it, which had to make treecats happy.

  Pity it doesn’t work the same way for the flat case borers, Honor thought now, picking her way through the near-beavers’ lumberyard. On the other hand, of course, if they were willing to bring down the picketwood, too, it would probably mean I could get in here with a hang glider, which would’ve saved me quite a hike!

  She spent a couple of minutes trying to convince herself that she really would have preferred to fly, rather than hiking. The effort didn’t work out very well, though, and she snorted in amusement at herself.

  She reached the upstream end of the near-beaver pond proper and smiled appreciatively as a leopard trout broke the surface, leaping half out of the water to take one of the insects buzzing above the pond’s surface. It wasn’t the biggest leopard trout she’d ever seen—they could go was much as eighty or ninety centimeters in length—but it was certainly well grown. There was going to be some excellent fishing up this way this fall.

  She looked around, getting her bearings, and saw a distant flash of purple through the tree trunks. At least the bugs hadn’t eaten the mountain tulip she’d come after! Now all she had to do was hike halfway around the lake, cut the blossoms she’d come for, and then hike back home again.

  * * *

  Sharp Nose froze suddenly, his head coming up in alarm.

  he exclaimed, and tasted Laughs Brightly’s surprise echoing his own. His brother’s concern wasn’t as deep as his, though, and he found Laughs Brightly’s calmness reassuring.

  Sharp Nose added after a moment, and Laughs Brightly flicked his ears in agreement, accepting the younger treecat’s explanation for his surprise.

  he agreed.

  The two treecats moved cautiously closer. Snow hunters, like death fangs, were far too big and heavy to follow a Person up into the trees, and they were normally less territorial than death fangs. That did not mean that they would not happily eat any Person they could catch, though, and only death fangs were bigger than they were. At the moment, two of them stood shoulder-deep in the lake builders’ pond, and as the brothers watched, one of them pounced, snatching a striped swimmer from the water and flipping its head to fling it ashore.

  Laughs Brightly said, and Sharp Nose tasted the suddenly stronger edge of caution in his brother’s mind-glow.

  Sharp Nose nodded as he watched the pair of snow hunter cubs scuffling through the brush to where the wildly flopping striped swimmer had landed. They were very young, although already several times a Person’s size, and their clumsiness was obvious, but there was nothing wrong with their jaws. The still-squirming swimmer came apart into two unequal-sized pieces as the cubs squabbled over it, and the one with the smaller piece squalled unhappily as it realized its sibling had done better than it had.

  Laughs Brightly continued more glumly, and Sharp Nose could only agree once more. A single snow hunter could eat many times a Person’s weight in swimmers in a single day; a pair of them, hunting to feed their young, could easily strip even a pond this size of its swimmers in short order.

  And even if they did, their young were unlikely to survive through ice time, for they would not be able to sleep through the long cold.

  Sharp Nose sat very still on the net-wood branch, looking down on the snow hunters, and felt a surge of sympathy for them. Snow hunters were but little brighter than death fangs, yet these two parents realized, at least dimly, how unlikely their cubs were to survive. He could taste it in the muddiness of their mind-glows. There were no thoughts to share as there would have been among the People, or to taste without sharing like the two-legs, but even snow hunters had feelings, and the fishing adults below him were angry at the approach of that dimly sensed loss to come.

  he said quietly.

  his brother replied.

 

  Laughs Brightly acknowledged.

  Sharp Nose’s ears flattened at that thought. If anyone had ever been inclined to think of snow hunters as remotely like People, their willingness to eat the young of other snow hunters would quickly have changed his mind. And death fangs, of course, were prepared to eat anything they could catch. None of which even considered how quickly a pair of hunting snow hunters with young to feed could strip a clan’s range of almost all its prey animals at a time of year when less and less of those prey animals were being born.

  he observed.

  Laughs Brightly said dryly.

  Sharp Nose retorted.

  Laughs Brightly agreed.

 

 

  Laughs Brightly’s mind-voice was very dry, and Sharp Nose sensed him turning his attention elsewhere. For a moment, Sharp Nose could not understand what his brother was doing, but then he realized, and his tail kinked in surprise. Laughs Brightly was questing for Dances on Clouds’ mind-glow.

  That was ridiculous at such a range, even for a scout . . . but not as ridiculous as the fact that Laughs Brightly had found what he sought.

  he said, one true-hand pointing upstream.

  Sharp Nose said, and leapt lightly from his net-wood branch to the next bridge over.

  * * *

  Honor waded across one of the canals the near-beavers had constructed in seasons past. It was well into the process of collapsing upon itself, but it was still too wide for her to simply jump over and it behooved her to be careful. The water came no higher than mid-calf, well below the tops of her boots, but the bottom’s thick layer of mud was slippery and she held her S&W balanced across her shoulder to keep it out of the way while she concentrated on not losing her balance. Falling flat on her face would be as humiliating as it would unpleasant.

  Not that anyone would be here to see it, she reminded herself. And if I manage to get home before Mom, I could probably be changed and clean by the time she—

  Her head snapped up as a sound ripped through the whisper of breeze and rustle of leaves like a bandsaw through plyboard. It came like ripping canvas, and she’d never heard anything like it in her life. Yet somehow, she knew what it was. She felt what it was, and she hurled herself up the canal’s sloping bank towards it.

  * * *

 

  Laughs Brightly’s mind voice was a scream of warning that came too late. His brother sprang onto the solid-looking net-wood branch . . . and half the branch collapsed into powder as he landed. The bark borers had eaten deep into it, riddling it with tunnels, and Sharp Nose’s weight pulverized the surface under him. The claws which should have caught in the net-wood’s bark found no purchase as the weakened, spongy wood disintegrated, and the younger treecat went tumbling into space.

  His tail caught frantically at another branch as he plummeted past it, and for a moment Laughs Brightly thought he had saved himself. But it might have been better if he had simply let himself fall, for the bark borers had weakened that branch, as well. Sharp Nose’s weight was just enough to break it loose from the main trunk, and it followed him down. He landed barely two People’s lengths from the closer of the two snow hunter cubs, and the cub reared up in shock, squealing to its parents in alarm. And then the broken branch landed on top of him, and Laughs Brightly heard his own high-pitched squeal of pain as the impact fractured his mid-pelvis.

  The adult snow hunters wheeled from their fishing as they heard their infant’s panicked cry. The cub tumbled backward, away from Sharp Nose, but its parents were already lumbering out of the pond, headed for Laughs Brightly’s brother. The instinct to defend their young would have been enough for that, but they were unlikely to pass up the opportunity to feed their cubs.

  Laughs Brightly swarmed down the net-wood trunk, taking the time even in his frantic haste to be sure each branch would bear his weight. If he could reach Sharp Nose first, perhaps he could help him to safety in the net-wood. Perhaps—

  Sharp Nose cried.

  Laughs Brightly’s mind-glow cried out in formless protest, but Sharp Nose was already moving, dragging his crippled body across the ground. He managed to reach a fallen gray-bark, downed by the lake builders and left to dry. It was more than half a Person’s length in diameter, and he squirmed into the tangle of dry, dead branches and somehow found a space under the trunk just big enough to wedge himself into. Laughs Brightly could taste the lightning-like stabs of pain ripping through him as those broken bones shifted, but even through his anguish, Sharp Nose’s voice came clearly.

  he said as the first adult snow hunter began ripping a way through the gray bark’s branches.

  Laughs Brightly knew his brother was right, but it didn’t matter.

  he shot back.

  Sharp Nose screamed.

  But it was too late. Laughs Brightly plummeted from the net-wood, snarling in desperate, hopeless fury, and landed squarely on the back of the snow hunter’s neck.

  * * *

  Honor was still seventy-five meters away when the treecat hurled himself out of the picketwood. Even in the aftermath of the near-beavers’ lumber harvesting there was more than enough underbrush to keep her from seeing clearly, but she didn’t have to see. She knew what was happening. Somehow, some way, she knew.

  Her heart leapt into her throat as the small cream-and-gray defender landed squarely on the peak bear’s neck. The huge creature was almost three meters long. It must weigh over five hundred kilos, and it howled its fury as the ’cat’s razor-sharp claws slashed at it. But peak bears’ hides were thick, their skins loose, riding on deep layers of fat no treecat’s claws were long enough to penetrate. The ’cat could hurt and enrage the monstrous omnivore, but he couldn’t possibly defeat it, and he knew it. Honor knew he knew it, because in that moment she shared that knowledge with him . . . just as she shared the knowledge that he would die trying.

  The peak bear raged around in a circle, temporarily abandoning its quest to dig the other treecat—the injured treecat Honor knew was under the fallen red spruce—out of its futile burrow while it tried to reach the six-limbed fury ripping and tearing at its heavily furred pelt. Its mate galloped towards it with its species’ clumsy-looking but deceptively fast gait, and Honor saw the gray flash of the attacking treecat as it somehow evaded the massive paws trying to rend it apart.

  The peak bear squalled in as much frustration as pain and hurled itself down. It landed on its side, rolling, and Honor’s heart tried to stop as she realized it was trying to crush the treecat under its enormous weight.

  * * *

  Laughs Brightly heard Sharp Nose’s despairing protest, but it scarcely registered. His world had narrowed to a boil of blood-red fury as he tore into his enormous foe. There was no room or space for anything else, and he twisted and dodged even as he ripped at the snow hunter’s hide. Somehow he slithered through the deadly net of the snow hunter’s claws, using his own claws as if the enormous creature were a tree he was scaling. He was too close to it for it to reach, and he heard it squalling in pain and rage as he swarmed from the back of its neck, under its chin, down between the its forelegs, then back up around its shoulder as if he were scaling a fur-barked tree.

  There was no time to think about what he was doing. It was all react, improvise, move or die. Yet even through the madness and the confusion, it was as if he were somewhere else, watching. He could actually see the snow hunter, recognize the moment it decided to roll and crush him, and somehow he flung himself clear in the instant before the creature crashed to earth.

  * * *

  Honor suddenly discovered her rifle was in her hands.

  She couldn’t remember how it had gotten there. Didn’t remember snapping off the safety. Didn’t remember bringing it to her shoulder. But somehow, there it was, and in that instant she discovered something about herself. Something she had never suspected.

  She was calm. A sense of panic, of horror, hovered about her, frantic with concern for the treecats, but it couldn’t touch her. It was a part of her, but it was apart from her, as well. Her hands were steady, her breathing almost normal, and her flashing thoughts were clear, clean, and icy cold.

  She didn’t see the treecat break clear before the peak bear landed, but somehow she knew—knew with that same certainty, that same absolute assurance—that he’d done it. And the icy precision of her brain moved her aim point from the peak bear he’d attacked. Her rifle tracked with machine-like precision, finding the other peak bear, the one who’d seen where the treecat landed and lunged towards him.

  * * *

  Laughs Brightly cried out in pain as he landed.

  He might have avoided the snow hunter’s plunging weight, but he hadn’t gotten away unscathed. One of the snow hunter’s paws struck him a grazing blow, and he tasted anguish of his own as even that glancing blow broke ribs. It batted him out of the air, like a kitten playing with a green-needle pod, and he squalled again as he bounced off of an exposed boulder. He was badly hurt, his left forelimb numbed and useless—probably broken—but he clawed his way back to his feet and bared his fangs in a snarl of defiance . . . just in time to see the first snow hunter’s mate open its jaws wide and lunge toward him.

  * * *

  CRAACKKKKK!

  The S&W surged against Honor’s shoulder. She had an ideal, broadside target, she knew exactly what a peak bear’s anatomy looked like, the glowing dot of the Brownfield Holographics sight had settled midway between the creature’s shoulders and mid-pelvis, and she knew even before she squeezed the trigger that the shot was flawlessly placed. The 19.5-gram slug exploded through the hurtling peak bear’s lungs and heart in a perfect kill shot, and suddenly the charging monster spun halfway around. It went to the ground in a boneless, slithering slide that slammed into the boulder the flying treecat had already encountered.