Catching a ride
Set in the world of 'Blackfur's Legacy'. Here we see the trials and tribulations of humans who try to join the elite Rider corps, (mostly) human soldiers who ride intelligent smilodons into battle.
Catching a ride
By Strega
Pyro c. his player
There were three of them that met that day at the entrance to the Place of Choosing. Jorgen, white-skinned thanks to a Northern father; Anja, copper-skinned and tracing her ancestry back twenty generations in these valleys; and most uncommonly Pyro, a black-furred two-legs. Two-legs, the upright anthro-cats resulting from one or more generations of mating between the clan-cats and humans, were rarely selected as Rider trainees. He must have done well in the preliminary tests to get this far.
Humans were smaller and lighter, burdening the cat less. Pyro stood a head taller and close to a hundred pounds heavier than even six-foot-tall Jorgen, much less Anja. A really big four-legs could carry him, though. All three of them wore loincloths and sandals, with the addition of a tunic for Anja.
The two humans, who'd grown up in the same village, nodded to each other briefly. Each bowed to the black two-legs, whose status was obviously much higher than their own, and he politely bobbed his head back. Saberfangs four inches long hung down on either side of his chin, banded with gold.
Their guide left them to their own devices, and each looked around curiously. Little information escaped the training grounds. The penalty for revealing their smallest secrets, whether you were a clancat or human, was a dozen lashes. Serious or repeated violations could call for a term of hard labor or perhaps even a trip through some lucky sabertooth's digestive system.
There was not much to see. A pair of rock cairns stood to either side of the entrance, and past that scrub trees, piles of scree at the foot of steep cliffs, and birdsong. No buildings were visible other than the stone-and-wood ones that surrounded the clearing they stood in. They were at the edge of the Rider camp, with the barracks behind them. The military owned two dozen square miles of hill and forest around the camp, and there was no telling how much was used for the test.
There was a guard, a six-legs. He possessed the lower body of a four-legs clan-cat and the upper of a two-legs. The traders from the human-dominated Eastern continent called his kind 'saber-taurs.' He weighed as much as the three of them together and wore armor of overlapping steel plates. He did not need or carry weapons other than the iron claws on his gauntlets, the natural ones on his paws, and his fangs, twice as long as Pyro's and tipped with sharpened steel.
Off to one side was another cat, a dust-colored female four-legs. She was stretched out asleep in a shady spot, belly swollen. It might have been pregnancy or a goat or two swallowed whole, but it was not. There was a certain shape to a human head that showed even when it bulged out from inside a cat's stomach. The three noted this without comment. Perhaps it had been a failed Rider trainee, or a spy, or a criminal. No doubt the cat slept here to remind them how serious the occasion was.
Not all Rider trainees came back from the test. No one knew the details, but some came back as failures, some as successes, and some existed after the test only as belly-bulges. Maybe the rumor was true: It was said that even if you failed, you could insist on at least one ride from the cat you sought to master. The sort of ride the person in her belly was enjoying even now.
Her prey must have been recently swallowed, from the firmness to the shape. It had not digested much at all yet.
"Greetings," said someone behind them. It was an elderly two-legs of an unusual sort: so close to human that in dim light he might be mistaken for such. Flat of foot, sharp-nailed rather than clawed, so shortfurred the skin showed, and though his ears were pointed they were on either side of his head instead of on top. Amber eyes and small fangs remained, but in a manlike face. It was extremely unusual for the clan-cats' blood to be so diluted; when successive generations of cat-human breeding began to approach this result, usually the cat-humans began to breed back with clancats to reverse the strangeness in their bloodline. This one had not even affected the stripe or spot tattoos some such used.
It was even more unusual for someone so close to human to hold his obvious high station. The silver and gold rings in his ears, and the gold-banded staff he leaned on showed his rank to be higher even than Pyro's.
"Today you will attempt to become Riders. If you fail, and survive," his eyes briefly touched on the sleeping, fattened four-legs, "You will not be allowed to try again for three years. If you succeed, you will earn a noble calling - and the Empire needs every Rider it can muster."
He gestured to the cairns, and they entered the testing ground, each taking a different path through the rock and scrub.
*****
A hundred years ago, during the reign of Forty-Fourth Father Redclaw, fishercats made contact with other sailors, representatives of nations on a heretofore unknown chain of islands to the south. To the astonishment of the Empire, the islands were inhabited by and governed entirely by humans. Nothing like the clan-cats had existed there in living memory. After a few unfortunate incidents between various crews, peace and trade was established.
The peace lasted exactly as long as it took the leaders of the Empire to judge the strength of these new adversaries. Ten years after that first contact the invasion began. Conquest was swift, but the new subjects of the Empire foolishly resisted the efforts of the clancat soldiers to bring them under the benevolent rule of the Clans. Successive waves of soldiers were dispatched south. They fed well on misguided rebels until at last a lasting peace was established.
From the records of the island nations were gleaned the location of not one but two other continents. One of Redclaw's last acts before disappearing down the gullet of his successor was the order to attack these new, potential subjects.
It was a grand time for the Empire. Peace had been had by dint of blood and conquest for many, many years. No one alive could remember a conflict more serious than the suppression of a minor slave revolt. Even those were, some said, intentionally engineered by the rulers of the Clans. Take away enough privileges from a previously prosperous district or village of human subjects, and eventually they would rise in revolt. It kept the warriors happy, the thinking went. Even non-military cats might earn the right, by lottery, to dispatch a criminal, human rebel, or even a rogue Clancat down their throat.
Peace and prosperity were not everything, though. While the human slaves and freeman farmed and ranched happily enough, the cats found less to occupy their time. They'd long since explored all there was to explore. Oh, there were dangerous occupations, but they weren't the same as the blood-and-thunder adventures the earlier generation of cats had enjoyed. Only five hundred years ago, give or take, First Father Blackfur began the conquest of the humans. Twenty generations later the cats ruled the world - all the world they knew, anyway. For another twenty generations they'd had stability, peace, and boredom.
Then had come the contact with the new Human countries, and beautiful war had followed beautiful war. The Empire expanded. The population of clancats, always limited by available food - for a Clancat ate much more than a human, and only meat - expanded as well. New fiefdoms were established as the new islands were conquered, new subjects were educated as to the benefits of joining the Empire, and would-be rebels learned that while a clancat very much enjoyed having you inside him, a cat's belly was not a pleasant place to visit.
It took a generation to conquer the first continent learnt of through the records of the islanders. Thousands of clancats died as they fought progressively more desperate human kingdoms. The invasion stalled until, as had happened in the ancestral Clanlands, some human kingdoms sided with the cats. They remained freemen while the conquered ones became slaves.
When, finally, the last resistant duchy was crushed and the last rebellious man digested, every eye turned with hungry anticipation to the second continent.
And here the Empire met its first serious check. Well-trained and deadly clancats in their lovingly crafted armor made short work of a human kingdom on the coast, and were expanding north and south when they encountered a form of war they had never anticipated. As they killed and ate their way through the armies that opposed them they learned that many of those they fought were more frightened of something behind them than the cats in front of them.
They were called 'horses', the animals the new humans rode. Lightly outfitted, barely armored, and in vast numbers, the riders met the clancats in a swirling melee. Horses were pulled down and men eaten, but then the archers appeared.
The clancats knew all about bows, atlatls, javelins, chakrams, darts, and all manner of deadly missiles. The six-legs and two-legs used them when the need arose, and some spent many years perfecting their craft. The usual way to deal with archers was to send in heavily armored clancats, avoid or break down the inevitable barriers of thorns or spikes, and feast on the thinly armored flesh beyond. No human could outrun a clancat over a short distance - long distances were another matter - and once a clancat got within reach of an archer the man was simply a meal.
But the horse changed everything. These humans were so adept at riding that they were nearly as one with their mount as the humanoid half of a six-legs was with his feral half. The horse gave the men unparalleled mobility, and from horseback they fired their small but powerful bows. Unless a clancat ambushed the rider, the horse kept him away from fangs and claws and let him live to fire his bow again.
The Empire had finally encountered a tactic for which they had no answer. The two-leg and six-leg archers gave a good account of themselves, but there were never enough of them to offset the numbers of horse-borne archers. This new continent was large, larger perhaps than the whole Clanlands, and humans could inhabit a land far more densely than the cats. There were just too many horse-archers, and they were too ably employed by their commanders. An arrow might skip off the polished steel of a cat's armor, but if they could not catch the archer, eventually they would be wounded or killed. Casualties mounted as the cats fought ineffectually against this new threat.
The fiefdoms established by the Clans on the new continent fell one by one. It took only two years for the invasion force to be beaten back to its beachhead. For a few grim months it appeared they might be ejected entirely from their new lands, despite all the reinforcement the Empire could send. Once again it was the cooperation of the native humans that kept things from growing even more desperate. The horse-riders too were conquerors, and the Empire had invaded the new continent just as the rider forces came in from the unknown wilds beyond the coastal mountains. They were cruel, the clancats learned. Remarkably, some of the natives preferred to be ruled by the clans than to fall under the dominion of their fellow man. The cats might be hungry, but they were not cruel or sadistic.
And so the expeditionary force settled down on a few dozen miles of coast, ringed by the highest walls they could build, and made peace with what human refugees joined them in their stronghold. The riders turned their attention to easier prey, though the generals of the Clans knew this would not last, and the great minds of the Empire sought a way around their dilemma.
There were two obvious solutions. One was to arm and equip humans and mount them on captured and bred horses. This was done with the local men and a few freemen imported from the Clanlands. The second solution was to use loyal human riders, but put them on a mount that could think and give orders.
So the Riders were born. Lightly or heavily armored, depending on the size of the cat and mount, and armed appropriately, they were a deadly weapon against even horse-borne humans. Horses still had more endurance, but over a short distance a Rider could catch and pull down even a fast horse. With the Rider armed with a bow or crossbow, they could keep up with fleeing horsemen long enough to get an arrow or two into the horse. All that was needed was to remove the horse from the equation, really. The enemy was clever, though. Counter tactics were evolved, and then counter-countertactics.
Ten years later the war raged still, and every Rider was a valuable commodity. That did not mean that just anyone could be a Rider, though.
*****
Pyro was crossing a sandy stream bed when he saw the first Clancat. A slender, spotted four-legs, probably a female, stared down at him from a rocky spire. It was obvious to Pyro that while she could carry a small human, he was just too big. She watched him for a moment, then gave a disdainful flick of her tail and disappeared behind the rocks.
Anja encountered that same cat not ten minutes later. She was climbing down a scree slope, remnants of some landslide, when she lifted her gaze and found green round-pupilled eyes staring back.
The nature of the test was obvious from the harness and light saddle the cat wore. Anja was in that saddle even as the spotted cat leapt forward. Up over a ridge and down the far side the cat went, then it sprang twenty feet across a steep-sided dry wash. The impact on landing was brutal, at least for her. The cat's springy, muscular legs absorbed enough that it did not pause in its run.
Already Anja was bruised, but of all the ways she might be tested this was the one for which she was best prepared. All her youth she had longed to ride, and had developed close friendships with several local cats. When mere friendship did not convince a cat to let her ride, she traded sex for the privilege. Male clancats were not particularly good lovers for humans, being quick, rough and endowed with a painfully barbed penis. Some of her feline lovers would make things more pleasant with their raspy tongues, but ultimately Anja accepted her time beneath a cat's belly, and the risk of bearing a clancat child who might kill her in childbirth, to get what she wanted: time on a cat's back.
After her years of practice there was little the spotted cat could do that Anja couldn't counter. Her mount-to-be darted from side to side, leaping and sliding through scree - all things they might need to do in battle, Anja would realize later. Nothing unseated Anja, until finally at a full run the cat darted beneath an overhanging limb. There was barely room for the cat to pass, and none for Anja even if she leaned to the side. Though she flattened herself tight to the spotted cat's back she was swept away and flung back the way she came by the recoil of the springy branch.
But though she landed hard, one arm numb and her head ringing, Anja was back on her feet in an instant. The cat's head had grazed the branch on the way by and it too shook itself to recover. Before it could spring away, Anja was once more in the saddle.
"Very good," the cat said as it bounded forward. Anja was sure her arm was broken, and was equally sure the cat knew it. It moved less violently now, lest it dislodge her weakened grip. "You will do."
Though blood dripped down her face from the fall, Anja grinned.
Jorgen had his own encounter at much the same time. He was making his way along a juniper-lined trail when a dull red cat, neither the largest nor the smallest he had seen, appeared out of the undergrowth. It made no effort to surprise or attack him, merely stepping out to speak.
"I am Bloodfur," the big cat said, but Jorgen already knew that. The rare color, the deep scars across both shoulders, the old sword-cut that had nearly taken out an eye and left it perpetually half-winking. He knew who the cat was, and he was honored just to meet him. To be the rider of any smilodon was a rare privilege, but to ride one so famous and high-ranking! Another year or two and Bloodfur would likely succeed Notchear as the commander of the whole Rider corps.
But he wasn't a Rider just yet. Jorgen calmed himself. "It is an honor, Lord," he said and bowed.
"It is important for a Rider to trust his mount, and for a mount to be able to trust his Rider," Bloodfur said without preamble. The big smilodon's amber eyes studied him, then it continued. "Sit down and take off your loincloth."
Confused, Jorgen did as ordered. Now he had to look up at the cat, who was past his waist in height and well more than five times his weight.
"Trust me," Bloodfur said, and began to lick him. Jorgen shivered as the great sandpaper-rough tongue scraped his shoulder. With time and a modicum of effort Bloodfur could lick him until he bled, for that tongue was covered with tiny hooks used to remove the last scraps of meat from bones. It was used to groom the cat's fur too, but a cat's hide was tough. On a man's skin it rasped painfully.
The broad tongue slid across his scalp and Jorgen realized that it did not rasp as roughly as it should. Bloodfur's tongue was laying down a thick coating of saliva. Special glands produced that slippery drool, and it had only one use. Bloodfur was slicking him down so he could be more easily swallowed.
It was a test, Jorgen knew...or was almost sure he knew. Like all smilodons, Bloodfur had a taste for humans. There was only one method of execution in the Clan lands, and as a high-ranking soldier many a man and woman - and even a few Clancat criminals - had vanished down the red cat's gullet. They would scream their last in his roomy stomach, Bloodfur would belch, and that would be that. What's more, Bloodfur had three previous Riders, and all three had been wounded in battle and chosen with their last breath to feed their mount. So the stories went, in any case.
Yet surely it was a test, he told himself, and he did not flinch as Bloodfur's jaws creaked open above him. It would be too forward to thrust himself into the waiting maw, so he sat straight and fearless as the cat turned its head so its lower fangs scraped over one shoulder and its saberfangs across the other. Jorgen's face slid across an expanse of drool-covered inner cheek until the crown of his head squelched into the waiting gullet. A pause as the great cat sucked in a breath, then the jaws pushed downward and Jorgen's head slipped into slick feline throat.
It is a test, he told himself as Bloodfur effortlessly took in his shoulders. The great cat's head descended, and with his spine firmly straight the wide-open jaws slid over his upper arms to the elbows. It was not until the smilodon's nose reached his waist that it swallowed.
Jorgen had seen men eaten before and had some idea of the strength of a big cat's gullet. It came as no surprise when a great contraction of the muscle surrounding him lifted his naked rump off the rough stones. He found himself much closer now to where so many had met their fates. Already his rump had been pulled into the cat's maw, his belly and hips sucked in and scraping over the fangs. From the sacrum up he was enclosed in a slick coating of muscle, starting at the cat's cheeks and then on into the stretched muscles of its throat. A thick layer of mucus on the gullet walls rendered them almost frictionless, allowing contractions of the surrounding muscles to slide him deeper. He felt hardness beneath the flesh at various points, but the bony structure of the cat was well adapted to consuming large prey. Nothing obstructed his trip down Bloodfur's throat.
It was already too late to resist, Jorgen knew. The cat's fangs were scraping over his thighs near his knees. Oh, perhaps he could hook his heels up and knock Bloodfur on the skull, as he'd seen men and women do with other cats. Maybe he could wrap his feet around the big cat's head and delay the inevitable. He'd seen that done, too, but in every case the cat had pawed the annoying feet loose and ended the encounter with one last gulp.
Surrounded by wet flesh and the thunder of the great cat's pulse all Jorgen could do was trust Bloodfur. He lay limp and compliant even as his face emerged into the choking fumes of the big cat's stomach and its swallowing muscles pulled his feet into its jaws. This was the last real chance the red cat had to show mercy; once a final pulsation of the throat muscles sent him down to curl up in the belly, getting him back up would be harder. Surely Bloodfur would cough him up now.
And Bloodfur did. For a moment Jorgen's toes lay on the rough, salivating tongue and his heels caressed the big cat's palate. His ankles were wrapped in gullet and he was one gulp from a gurgling digestive fate. Instead Bloodfur gagged, and the powerful swallowing impulse went into reverse. The cat's stomach inverted into Jorgen's face and it was his turn to gag and complain as stinging acids singed his face. A mass of half-digested flesh and softening bones squelched against him; the cat had eaten recently. Thankfully the pain was brief as the great cat regurgitated him; he came back up much faster than he'd gone down, and the slick throat that spit him back up wiped most of the caustic belly slime from his skin. Somehow the blood-colored cat coughed him up without also disgorging the remains of whatever his other meal was.
Jorgen slid from Bloodfur's jaws, coated head to foot with saliva so slippery he could not get purchase to sit up. It wasn't until grit stuck to his wet flesh that he was able to get his hands beneath him, roll over and face the cat. "Sir," Jorgen began, but then he saw Bloodfur's expression.
"I need a Rider who trusts me," said the great cat brusquely. "I do not need one who trusts too much." With that he turned and stalked away.
Speechless, Jorgen could only stare as his hopes and dreams departed on four padded feet.
Pyro felt the eyes on him as he crossed another sandy wash. This one was wider, a spot where water pooled only to evaporate in desert heat. He looked down and saw four-toed prints far larger than his own. It wasn't the spotted cat after all.
He realized two things instantly. First, a cat this large could carry him easily. Second, the tracks faced backward compared to his, which meant it was behind him. He leapt aside just as a massive, tiger-striped cat pounced.
It was enormous, the largest smilodon he'd seen, easily four times his own mass. Nevertheless it was quick, and he sprang back as a huge paw swiped at his feet. An instant later he tumbled to the side to evade a pounce, and just as fast he regained his feet to prepare for the next attack.
He could fight back and perhaps even wound the great cat, but if he planted himself to strike a serious blow he might stand still an instant too long. Big and strong as he was he'd be helpless if the massive cat once got his paws on him. If it was so inclined, even he would be unable to save himself should he be pulled close to suddenly hungry jaws. He would fit down that throat as readily as a human.
All this flashed through his head as he leapt and dodged. Only later would he realize that when presented with a large, strong Rider candidate, the cat would want to make sure he was not slow and clumsy. It would test him in battle.
There was one advantage to being a two-legs. Four- and six-legs were bigger, stronger, faster by far in the short run. A two-legs, though, by virtue of his upright stance, moved more by falling forward and catching himself than by muscular effort. More, a two-legs could sweat, a talent inherited from human forebears. A two-legs simply had more endurance when it came to running.
So it was that while he was panting and sweating several minutes later, the huge cat was even more fatigued. When a last leap failed to pin him beneath the smilodon, it turned and looked over its shoulder at him.
"You will do," the cat said, and Pyro smiled. "Too bad," it continued. "You would have fit nicely in my stomach."
Pyro kept smiling. Whether the smilodon was joking or not, he was a Rider now.
Later, Broadstripe slept in the brush near the testing ground entrance while Pyro signed the required documents. By custom he used a claw dipped in ink and impressions of his own handpads as his signature. He was no longer just Pyro, of the house of Chiptooth, minor noble. Now he was Pyro, rider of Broadstripe. Now he was formally a soldier of the Empire. He had a week to get his affairs in order before reporting for training.
As he sat on a log, signing the last few documents, Anja appeared from the testing ground. She rode the same spotted cat who'd looked him over earlier. Though her face was bloody and she held one arm stiffly across her belly, both Anja and her mount gave him a smile. Pyro saluted them with a grin. The two would be perfect as a scout Rider team, clearing the way for heavy troops like himself and Broadstripe.
The two went straight to the medical tent, and he was about to follow Jorgen too appeared on the trail. He was coated in dust, but not obviously wounded. Nor was he Riding, which told its own tale.
The man saw the new Rider pair on one side of the clearing and Pyro by himself on the other. His expression lightened as he realized he was not the only one to fail today, then scrunched back up as he spied the bulky striped cat curled up in the juniper brush behind Pyro. With a sigh he sat down next to the black two-legs.
"You can try again in three years," Pyro said.
"It was Bloodfur," Jorgen said. "I was almost the Rider for Bloodfur!"
This close, the odor of feline saliva was strong. Jorgen was coated in it. Pyro couldn't fathom a scenario in which a man would be slicked head to foot like this and yet not end up as a meal. By all rights he should be on his way through Bloodfur's digestive system now.
"And he didn't eat you when you offered yourself?" Failed Rider trainees sometimes did that, he'd heard.
"I didn't," Jorgen said. "That was the test. He said to trust him, then started to swallow me. I lay quiet and let him do it, trusting he would not finish. When my face was in his belly he spat me back up, then said I trusted him too much."
"You did not know him," Pyro reasoned. "If you trusted a strange cat that much he might find his treasured Rider as a bulge in someone's gut."
"I can't go back," the man said. "People will hear, and I'd be a laughing-stock. Better Bloodfur had swallowed that last time. Then at least I would have a purpose in life, as food."
"Well, in three years--"
"This was my last chance," Jorgen said. "I am twenty-eight." Only Riders who had lost their mount could try for a new one past the age of thirty.
Pyro found himself in the odd position of commiserating with a freeman. Jorgen was whole strata of society below him, yet he could understand what the man was going through.
"There are many ways one can contribute," he said. "You are from a village that serves the Rider camp. Almost everyone there raises food for the camp, or makes harness leather, or--"
"Yes," said Jorgen, and stuck his head in Pyro's mouth.
Anja saw it happen from the medical tent. Jorgen was talking to the black two-legs who'd become a Rider. He'd seemed nice enough in a distant way. Surely not the sort to devour a man without provocation...but a man who offered himself as a meal was another matter.
Pyro was astonished. Astonished and suddenly very, very hungry. He'd been too excited to realize how long it'd been since breakfast. Even if he weren't famished, human was a rare treat. One could not just eat them when one wanted, lest one end up a shaved, claw-clipped criminal waiting to be made a meal of by a lucky lottery winner. But willing prey? Perfectly legal, and no clancat would turn it down. As his arms went around Jorgen and he yawned wide for his meal, he shot one quick glance at the six-legs guard who'd stood there silently the whole morning.
The guard nodded, and Pyro pushed his wide-gaped jaws over Jorgen's shoulders. With an enthusiastic gulp he began his meal.
It was the second time in one day for Jorgen, whose head was gripped by powerful contractions of Pyro's gullet. The cat this time was smaller and more manlike, but he felt the black two-legs' collarbones move up and out of the way as his face slipped down the chute of throat. A tightness around his skull as the cat's ribcage expanded to let him in, and a powerful grip at his hips as Pyro's padded hands lifted him and shoved him in.
The two-legs lifted Jorgen until the man stood on his head, nose-down into the cat's gullet. Anja watched the black fur stretch and ripple as powerful swallowing muscles sucked Jorgen in deeper. Gravity helped each gulp. Anja touched the nurse to get her to stop splinting her arm. She'd known Jorgen her whole life and if he was going down a cat's throat she had to watch.
The black cat's jaws were around Jorgen's waist when the half-swallowed man began to kick and struggle. Jorgen, it seemed, had changed his mind.
With his head in Pyro's stomach and digestive juices burning his skin, Jorgen wondered what stupidity had possessed him. It had seemed the perfect solution to his troubles at the time; he should have fed himself to Bloodfur after his failure, so the next best thing was to disappear down the throat of the next cat he met. Pyro was simply the lucky recipient of this meal.
But now he had second thoughts and squirmed and struggled with all his might. Ironically, had he done that with Bloodfur, he'd be the proud new Rider of the clancat general. Pyro, though, wasn't after a Rider and barely knew him. When Jorgen started to kick the black cat just gripped down harder. He could hardly be blamed for accepting a meal freely offered; you don't stick your face in a clancat's maw if you don't mean it.
Jorgen blamed him anyway. "So unfair," the man thought as the cat worked its jaws over his hips. His thighs were consumed in great heaving gulps that pushed his head against the bottom of Pyro's stomach. Soon he had to bend his neck or have it broken. He was being forced to curl up as he was swallowed. Pyro was only half again his mass and would end the meal with a comically distended belly, but not for a second did Jorgen doubt that the cat could and would swallow him whole.
Anja watched as her old friend's legs vanished a gulp at a time. Still squirming, kicking and fighting, Jorgen disappeared down into the black cat's maw. Eventually all that was left was a set of twitching feet in hide sandals. The cat did not bother to remove these, as thick leather soles would merely take a bit longer to dissolve. Just as Jorgen's flesh and bone would feed him, so would the tanned hide. Only Jorgen's hair would survive the trip through the black cat intact, and there wasn't enough of that to even generate a hairball.
Pyro's jaws closed around the sandaled feet. For much of the meal he had leaned back like a sword-swallower to straighten his throat. Now his muzzle tilted down again, his throat muscles tensed--
Jorgen felt it happen. With a push of his tongue and a large great contraction of his throat Pyro swallowed him down. To the last he resisted, trying to keep his legs straight, but he lay upside down in the stomach, face pressed against the mucus-coated wall. As the force of the gulp pushed more of him into the cat's belly his face slid along the slick flesh and his mouth and nostrils filled with the caustic slime. He gagged and lost concentration, his knees bent, and that last gulp pushed his sandaled feet in to join him. He curled neatly up in the fleshy confines of the stomach, forced into a fetal position.
Jorgen felt the cat's padded hands stroking the huge bulge he made. He kicked and squirmed, and the hands gripped down. Now he could barely twitch. The cat's stomach was already awash with caustic fluids and more was pouring in as it reacted to the arrival of so much food in one lump.
"I could have been a rider," Jorgen thought. "I guess this is the only ride I get."
Over the thump of the black cat's heart he heard Pyro belch.
Anja sighed. She was not surprised. She'd known Jorgen when he went to his last Rider test. Though she'd been too young to go with him she knew how frustrated he'd been by repeated failures. She hadn't expected him to come back last time, and it was no surprise that the day ended with her friend curled up in a cat's stomach.
Pyro let out a long, rumbling burp, and the massive bulge in his middle twitched and went still. That was it, then. Jorgen was just a meal now.
The big striped cat stuck his head up from behind the black two-legs. "You could have saved some of that for me."
Pyro grinned and made to reply, then suddenly struggled to his feet. Or tried; the man in his stomach was two-thirds of his unfed weight. Around the clearing others, even the dust-colored cat sleeping off her own meal stood up.
"At ease," the blood-colored cat said as he padded in from the testing area. Pyro, never having made it to his feet, collapsed back onto the log as Bloodfur padded over. A human freeman ran up and pinned silver tooth-shaped earrings onto the cat's ears. Tenth Fang Bloodfur, tenth highest ranking soldier in the Empire, flicked his ears so they jangled.
It took only one sniff for Bloodfur to know what had happened. The smell of his own drool was all over Pyro's pelt. He nodded sagely.
"I am not surprised," he said. "Perhaps I am a bit, actually, that he did not ask me for this last ride, instead of you."
"I'm sorry, Fang," Pyro said. "If you want I could--" It was almost unheard of for a clancat to offer to retch up swallowed prey so another could eat it. The exception was food carried home for one's mate or children, and this put the black cat in an awkward position. If he offered to cough Jorgen up it could be viewed as an insult, but if he did not the blood-colored cat might take offense at the loss of his own prey. Bloodfur, knowing this, did not let him finish.
"If I had wanted him as a meal, he'd be in my stomach now." He flicked an ear, a jangling shrug. "And my last would-be Rider is not yet fully digested. Perhaps next time I will meet one with enough will to not be intimidated by rank." With a flick of his tail he paced off toward the barracks. "As you were."
With the departure of the Fang, smiles returned to the plaza. Alcohol, and fermented milk mixed with blood -- a favored clancat drink -- appeared as though by magic. Broadstripe stepped over Pyro to get to a bowl of the latter, for he had as much reason to celebrate as anyone.
As for the black-furred cat, he stretched out on the warm spot left by his mount. He needed no drink; he'd already had two wonderful things happen today, including only the second human he'd ever eaten.
Breathing deeply, Pyro settled down to sleep and to digest his meal.