Demontech: Onslaught by David Sherman Page B

them.
    “Maybe the imps aren’t at home,” Haft said, gasping. “Maybe they’ve been released. Maybe it’s a dummy and there never were imps on this fence.”
    Spinner realized he wasn’t the only one who could come up with maybes. He looked along the ground at the bottom of the fence. “I think they’re at home,” he said, and pointed. A squirrel’s tail, something that might once have been a badger, a hare’s foot, and several clumps of feathers lay on the ground a foot or so away from the fence.
    Somewhere, much closer than before, the cat cried again.
    Spinner readied his crossbow. They might have to fight the Jokapcul, or the cat might be on them before they could get to the other side of the fence. In either case, a few bolts from the crossbow would even the odds. Haft noticed and also readied his crossbow.
    Sweat beaded Spinner’s brow. He looked at the fence. It was too high to jump over without touching the top strand. Spinner looked up at the trees.
    “No good,” Haft said. “I already looked. None of the branches go over the fence, we can’t cross it that way.” His eyes searched the trees. “But we can climb one high enough to be out of reach of the cat and wait for it to go away.”
    “Maybe,” Spinner said. “But maybe not. Cats can climb trees too. Only the very biggest can’t.”
    Haft swore. “Maybe this cat is too big to climb trees.”
    “The biggest ones wait for you to come back down.”
    The cat cried again. Its voice was clear and they could tell exactly where it was. They turned back to the forest and Spinner paled. It was a kind of cat he knew from Apianghia. “It’s a gray tabur,” he said. They weren’t the biggest of the big cats, but they were probably the toughest. They were forest dwellers who had to deal with thornbushes and other sharp things, so their hides were thicker than those of other big cats. And they could all climb trees. Nearly as big as the two men together, the cat crouched only ten paces away. Iron-hard muscles rippled beneath the black-striped gray coat that rendered it almost invisible in the depths of a forest. It was staring at them. Its jaw worked and its tongue lapped between its teeth, as though it could already taste the men. Bunched shoulders twitched as its forepaws edged forward, bringing it closer to them, close enough for it to pounce.
    “A couple of bolts to the chest ought to discourage it,” Haft said. “Maybe we’ll even kill it.” He raised his crossbow to his shoulder.
    “No good; skin’s too tough. Shooting will just make it mad.”
    “Right,” Haft said. “I forgot that about gray taburs.” But the look he darted at Spinner asked: Are you sure of that?
    Spinner dropped his crossbow. Haft did the same.
    The two concentrated their attention on the cat, tried to think of what to do once it made its move. Only a remote part of their minds noticed a change in the tenor of the voices at the border gate.
    The cat continued to inch. Its jaw stretched wide in a yawn, but there was nothing sleepy about it.
    “He’s about to jump,” Spinner said quietly. “As soon as he leaves the ground, we jump to the side. They can’t change their direction in midair. When he lands, he’s going to have to look at both of us and decide who to go after. That’ll give us a little time.”
    “Right. Time,” Haft muttered. “A split second.” He had seen big cats in a circus once and knew how fast they could move.
    The gray tabur sprang.
    Spinner and Haft shoved at each other as they dove apart.
    Spinner was right, the cat couldn’t change the direction of its leap. But it was very agile; it could and did change its orientation. By the time it reached where they had been, it wasn’t pointed straight ahead anymore. It was flying sideways through the air. The cat lashed out with all four claw-extended paws. One hind claw raked across Spinner’s lower leg and made a deep, three-inch-long gash in the calf muscle. A forepaw snagged Haft’s