Silver Sky gestured for Pitt to wait in an indicated spot. He didn't want the man to come inside the main village building. That was a reasonable amount of caution.

Pitt considered the prints that he had found while he waited. The distance between indicated two things to him. Either the thing was bigger than the print suggested, or it covered ground in a series of bounds instead of the usual cat walk.

Either would make the problem difficult to handle.

If it was bigger than the print suggested, then most of it would be out of his reach. He would need to arm himself with arrows, spears, or long axes to chop it down to size so he could reach it.

If it leaped everywhere it went, he would expend a lot of effort to chase it, or use the orcs to try to lead it into some kind of trap.

He didn't want to put that much effort into anything.

He wondered what the shaman would think about things. He doubted the orcs wants to chase their enemy into its home ground. That would leave some of them open to being hunted by the big cat.

Maybe they could gather some of the more expendable members of the tribe together to help him chase after the thing. He couldn't gaurantee anyone's safety when they got close to the cat.

He doubted the shaman would allow that. He had lost members of his tribe already. He might not want to throw more at a futile chase of a miniature monster.

Pitt decided to leave the thinking alone for a moment. There was nothing he could do about the orcs. And he wasn't sure he could help them. It was better to wait for the shaman to suggest something.

Once they had hashed something out, he could proceed with whatever plan they had decided to try. Finding the cat would be the first part of the plan.

The rest would take care of itself once he got in motion. Either he took the animal down, or he didn't. He didn't have enough doubt in his system to think he wouldn't beat any challengers that happened to get in his way while he was working.

This wouldn't be the first time he had dealt with something that preferred to strike from the shadows. He had done it enough to not feel jealousy if someone else was able to take care of the thing before he could.

He just didn't think any of the orcs he had met could do it.

They needed some of Avrii Noll's masked men and women to descend on the area and display their chopping skills and colorful clothes.

That would liven things up for the orcs.

The shaman stepped out of the gate. Silver Sky stayed at his side as he limped over to talk to Pitt. He leaned on his staff as he regarded the man in front of him.

“What do you think?,” asked the shaman.

“Your cat is real, and headed up into the mountains after taking your people,” said Pitt. “The prints that I could find were far apart almost as if it was gigantic, or leaped across the space instead of walking. I'm still trying to think of a way to track it over hard ground. Once it started up, I didn't find that many prints to indicate direction of travel.”

“What would you consider doing next?,” asked the shaman.

“I don't know to be honest,” said Pitt. “I could sit out there and see if it attacks me, but there's no telling how long that would take. If it found your people easy prey, it will definitely come back to see whom else it can take. Cats don't change their hunting grounds unless the prey moves on.”

“You think it will come back if it thought it had easy prey?,” said the shaman.

“I don't know if it's watching the trails around where it went up,” said Pitt. He shrugged in his coat. “If it is, it might come down to try to catch that next orc unaware.”

“So you want one of us to be bait,” said the shaman. He tapped the butt of his staff against the ground.

“No,” said Pitt. He started rolling a cigarette from his tobacco and paper. “I couldn't guarantee the bait's safety. This thing could kill whomever we set out for it as easily as I walk across this space. It's a unreasonable risk.”

“If our positions were reversed, what would you do?,” asked the elder.

“I would move out of the valley,” said Pitt. He put his fixings away and lit the cigarette with a snap of his fingers. “Let someone else be hunted by the thing.”

“Barring that,” said the elder. His clear eye demanded truth instead of a comforting lie.

“I would use myself as bait,” said Pitt. He puffed on his cigarette. “I've done it before. I don't know if your cat will come after me.”

“Why wouldn't you use one of the people as bait?,” said the shaman.

“There is a real danger that I would miss,” said Pitt. “I can't expect anyone else to sit in place with a dangerous animal and hope that I hit a lethal spot the first time. That would be asking much.”

“I don't understand,” said the elder.

“Which part?,” asked Pitt.

“All of it,” said the elder. He pointed at Pitt with his staff. “Risking one of the people would be in line with being a man.”

“I suppose other hunters would see it as the expedient way of doing things,” said Pitt. “Your people haven't done anything to me so I am trying to be reasonable about asking for a dangerous thing that I wouldn't do myself.”

“You wouldn't?,” said the orc.

“You couldn't pay me enough to do something like that,” said Pitt.

“I would like to walk this path myself,” said the elder. “Show me these prints if you don't mind.”

“I suppose that will be all right,” said Pitt. He finished his cigarette and destroyed it with his fingers as he led the way up into the hills, toward the cat's mountain.

He felt the elder had reached some decision that he didn't want to tell an outsider. He didn't ask any questions. All he had to do was show the orc the prints and then head back to the village. The cat had been nowhere close when he walked the mountain earlier. It was probably wandering some other hunting ground.

If it did show up, some excitement was bound to happen.

He made sure to keep the elder within his defensive zone. He didn't want to go back to the orc village buildings and tell the residents one of their guys was dead. It would look like he had killed the old guy.

He would rather get into trouble for actually killing someone than letting it look like he had done the deed.

He supposed that was a personality flaw, but it was an old one. And it was harmless as a rule.

“Our own trackers tried to follow the beast to its lair,” said the elder. He used the staff for balance as they walked along. “The prints vanished.”

“I tried to do the same thing,” said Pitt. “I lost the trail when it headed up the mountain. I think it can leap long distances as easily as we take steps.”

“How big a distance?,” asked the elder.

“Two of the prints were ten-fifteen bodies apart,” said Pitt. The orcs measured man strides in bodies. A body should be four strides according to his calculations, but he wasn't quite sure he had made the conversion correctly.

“You think that was its normal stride?,” asked the elder.

“I don't know,” said Pitt. “That was how far apart I found the prints. The prints are big too, but not big enough to say this animal was the giant its stride indicates. It might have taken a lot of smaller steps that I missed, or it's jumping across the space for some reason. I like the jumping speculation better because it means you don't have a bigger than normal cat. It just walks bigger.”

“I understand,” said the elder.

Pitt paused to look around. Something was different about the area than before when he had inspected the trail with Silver Sky. He held up his hand to stop the elder from moving forward.

“What's wrong?,” said the elder.

Pitt held up his hand for silence. He listened to the air moving through the small gulley heading up out of the deeper valley behind them. Something was with them.

“Something is watching us,” said Pitt. “I'm going to say it's your cat until we have proof otherwise. I think it's circling around so it can charge us from behind.”

“How do you want to handle this?,” asked the elder. He gripped his staff tight with three of his four hands.

“I think we need to get you to where it can't attack you, and it can attack me,” said Pitt. “Then we can worry about what to do after that.”

“If it kills you, it will kill me too,” said the elder.

“Don't worry, grandpa,” said Pitt. “I'll protect you. We just need some place you can hold it off in case it gets by me.”

“I think those stand of trees would limit it,” said the shaman. He pointed at the trees Pitt had checked earlier to get to the ledge.

Pitt looked around. He realized those trees were the only cover around. He thought of something he should have asked Silver Sky earlier.

“Which way was the body found?,” asked Pitt. He kept his body between the senior citizen and the small stand. “Do you remember where the head was?”

“I think it was facing home,” said the shaman. He pointed down toward the village of round buildings. “I'm sure it was facing that way.”

“Then we might have a problem,” said Pitt.