Power Play - Anne McCaffrey [37]
“Damn what?” Clotworthy asked, shaking the water out of his ears.
“The Great White Huntress and her native bearers have deserted us and taken the transportation!”
“Oh dear,” Minkus said, “I’m afraid he’s correct. I do hope she left our clothing. My winter togs came from Herod’s on Nilus Two and they were hideously expensive.” He flung this last bit back over his bony white shoulder while wading to shore. “Ah!” he said, once there. “It’s all right, chaps! Our kit is all accounted for.”
“Great,” Ersol said. “So it’ll take us much longer to freeze to death this way.” A fat black cloud chose that moment to cross the path of the low-hanging sun, and a teasing wind chased wavelets up to wet the back of his legs as he danced around on the sharp stones scattered along the shore.
The first one to finish dressing was Mooney, who, looking to the far side of the lake, pointed and said, “She didn’t take all the horses with her! Look, there’s one of them over there!”
“First one to catch it gets to ride!” Clotworthy said, and started running. Unfortunately, he hadn’t quite finished putting on his boots, and tripped and fell facedown in the shallows, wetting his water-resistant parka and muddying and scratching his face.
Ersol, a more experienced hunter, proceeded calmly into the lumpy undergrowth sprouting beneath the sparse, skinny trees.
“I see it,” he hissed back to the others, and stalked it. Meanwhile, Clotworthy stood and picked up a bow and arrow; he was followed by Minkus, brandishing a spear, and Mooney, who held the dagger in his teeth so he would have both hands free to grab the curly’s mane if necessary. De Peugh took the time to hoist the quiver of arrows onto his shoulder and test the bowstring before following his fellows. He also, prudently, stuck a rabbit in one of the forty-seven capacious pockets of his hunting vest.
The curly looked as if it was amenable to being caught, standing quietly, drinking from the lake, until Ersol was almost within touching distance of it. Then it lifted its head and looked at him.
“Holy horseshit, will you look at that!” he said.
The curly-coat shook its shaggy head at him, its newly sharpened single horn glinting, and trotted off a safe distance. It blinked at him, once.
“It’s a fraggin’ unicorn!” Ersol called back to the others.
“Well, don’t just stare at it, shoot it!” de Peugh growled, coming up behind him and drawing his own bow. “You can bet your retirement fund those things don’t get depressed and go lay in holes waiting to die.”
“No one,” Minkus said, “will ever believe this.”
“Not unless we take the head back with us.” De Peugh let his arrow fly.
The arrow was just a bit behind the animal, which galloped off, not in fear, it seemed to Minkus but as if it had suddenly thought of a previous appointment.
“Missed!” Ersol said, and sent his arrow flying, too.
They were not stupid men, on the whole, and it didn’t take them too long to decide that they hadn’t a prayer of catching the heretofore mythical creature, so they stopped chasing it.
Thoroughly winded and disgusted, they turned back to where they had left the rest of their winter gear and the rabbits Sinead had left behind for them.
Something new had been added. What looked like an enormous calico housecat, the base of its tail thin, the tip bushy, was licking the last of the last rabbit from its mouth. Behind it lurked the curly-corn, quite as if, Minkus thought, the two beasts were conspiring against the hunting party.
Minkus was inclined to remonstrate with the beasts, but de Peugh had worked his way into a leadership position and hushed the lot of them with a finger to his lips.
The cat sauntered toward the curly-corn, and the two of them ambled off into the woods. With a stealthy wiggle of his fingers, de Peugh motioned the others to follow.
Together they crept after the elusive beasts as quietly as five men unaccustomed to Petaybean ground cover could creep. The animals managed to stay just out of range, but