Queen's Play - Dorothy Dunnett [77]
It was a fight well remembered for years afterwards by the company who gathered there to watch it that day. No weapon existed which could now separate cheetah and dog, and no man could hope to pull them apart. As the child, sobbing, was swept to safety, the rest in terrible fascination stood and looked.
There was never a doubt as to its end. As O’LiamRoe had known, as Lymond had known, the dog had no chance. Hound and cheetah rolled over and over, compacted silk hair and rough, mean, triangular head and long-nosed Byzantine; then Luadhas, lips bared, would seek a grip on the spotted spine and the sinuous snakelike fur would unroll and untwine; the heavy soft paw would flash, and on the skull of the dog the brindled hair sank, wet and dark, as the deep lifeblood welled.
She was a brave dog. As she bled she bit, her strong teeth sunk again and again in the dirty yellow-white plush. She shook her head and the cat, blood-spotted and scarred, wrenched free and staggered a pace: a dancer tripped, inelegant and baleful. There was a pause. Then, his haunches tightened, the cheetah called on the great muscles of thigh and hock and with all his power sprang quiet, curved and deadly into the sunlit air. The soft body fell and its great paws, needle-sharp and fatal, sank into the great cords and vessels of Luadhas’s neck and spine. The bitch screamed, rolling over; and on the squeaking, flattened grass her great body opened and shut, the soft fur like a woman’s twined about it, the cat’s claws deep in her back. She threshed for a long while, panting in her blood and whining softly, but the cheetah’s grip never relaxed; and after a while the whimpering stopped and the pointed muzzle opened, and the cheetah withdrew its claws.
Its keeper, white with the premonition of royal doom, leaped down, chain in hand and, cajoling, approached the cat. The flat brainpan, the haughty lyre, the chestnut eyes turned, and he stopped. Delicately, in a high remote ecstasy of some icy bloodlust, the cheetah stalked by. Fastidiously he stepped over the heaving thing of torn fur, bloody on the crushed ground, and his topaz eyes, roving, saw the wide circle of faces and of horses which, unbroken, encompassed him. One horse was nearer than the others and there, forgotten, was his true prey. Evilly, without warning, like some eerie familiar, he sprang at Robin Stewart where he sat, the leveret gripped in his cold hands.
The Archer’s elderly mare could suffer no more. As the hot fur brushed by, she neighed shrilly, reared, and throwing Stewart hard to the ground, galloped wildly downhill. On the trampled grass the cat crouched, watching Robin Stewart as he lay, the forgotten leveret tight in his arms, the mature amusement, the detached contempt quite disappeared.
Urgent and quiet, a voice said, ‘Throw it.’ But that would be professional ruin. In a kind of petulant stupor born of fright, Stewart lay and watched as the cat gathered its limbs for a jump. Then it was airborne. In the same kind of trance, he saw its belly above him, smelled the blood, saw the sun spark on the claws. And saw, torn from his dream, sick and fiery with hope, something hit and enfold the scarred, arching body, swaddling the spare head, muffling the peaty eyes, twisting and trapping the powerful limbs.
It was Thady Boy’s saddlecloth. As the cheetah, hurtling threshing against them, began to fight its way free, the ollave’s strong hands jerked Stewart, staggering, to his feet and, one steadying hand under his elbow, made him run.
With stones, with rods, pulling the horses as near as they dared to separate victim from cat, the others did what they could; but they were not quick enough. Insane for its baulked blood, the cheetah drove through them, wet with fresh wounds, and settled into its stride in the tracks of the two running men.
It reached them as, sprinting, jumping, twisting over uneven ground, Thady brought the Archer to the edge of the meadow where turf gave way to scrub and rank grass and the pitted limestone banks of the Loire. A wisp of smoke, the dying breath