Transmigrated to Raise Panther Cubs novel · Chapter 2 of 24
Chapter 2: Winter Count
He cooks the cave's first real meal, and the Hold's storekeeper halves the ration and sets the cub's weigh-in for nine days away.
By morning Thad had decided the cave kitchen was a crime scene.
There was one clay pot with a crack in it, one flat stone for a cutting board, and no knife at all.
He had found a sack of coarse grain meal and a string of wild garlic.
There were also a few shriveled root bulbs and a lump of grey salt scraped off the cave wall.
That was everything the old Thad had left to feed a five-year-old cub.
"He kept the good stuff somewhere," Thad muttered, digging through a pile of furs.
The cub watched from the sleeping nest with his chin on his paws.
"There isn't a good stuff," Tuck said. "You said it's all for the Hold's winter."
"I said that?"
"You said it a lot."
Thad rubbed his face with both hands, felt the strange tufts of his own ears, and decided to stop being surprised.
Outside, on the line where the floor turned to snow, a frozen haunch of venison lay on a flat rock.
It had been placed there neatly, with the cut side down so the snow would not spoil it.
The great black panther was gone.
Only his tracks led away across the white, deep and wide, and filled in slowly with fresh flakes.
Thad dragged the haunch inside with a grunt.
Memory flickered, sharp and unwelcome: the old Thad dragging this same meat, every morning, without a glance at the tracks beside it.
He set his jaw.
"Okay," he told the cave. "We're making soup."
It took an hour.
He sliced the meat thin with a flint chip and rendered the fat in the cracked pot.
He browned the root bulbs in it and dropped in the garlic whole.
A pinch of the grey salt went in after the water, and he stirred with a stick he had washed twice.
By the time the smell filled the cave, the cub had left his nest and crept to the edge of the fire.
He was not looking at the pot.
He was looking at Thad's hands.
"It's ready," Thad said, and ladled a bowl.
Tuck did not touch it.
He put out one paw and pressed it flat against the side of the clay.
He waited a moment.
Then he lowered his nose and ate, slowly this time.
Thad sat on his heels and watched the small black body relax a little with each swallow.
He had cooked for a hundred covers on a Saturday night and never felt anything like it.
"Is it good?"
"It's hot," Tuck said, which in Thad's opinion was the best review he had ever had.
Boots crunched on the snow outside.
Thad looked up.
Three men stood at the cave mouth, with a sled behind them piled with sacks.
The one in front was thick in the neck, with a grey-ruffed beard and a notched tally-stick hanging from his belt.
His name came up out of the borrowed memory.
Dunstan Thorp.
The Hold's storekeeper.
He did not step across the line either.
He stood with one boot on the snow and sneered past Thad at the cub.
"Cave-keeper," he said. "I came to tell you the share is cut."
"Cut how?"
"By half. The cub's thin, but he's a black one, and the Hold's tired of feeding a bad-luck cub on good grain."
He lifted his chin toward the empty snow beyond the cave.
"Your mate won't even come inside. Funny, that. What does he know that the rest of us don't?"
A low growl rolled out from the trees.
It came from somewhere close and was gone again.
Dunstan's smile did not move, but his hand tightened on the tally-stick.
Thad stood up.
He was not a tall man in this body, but he was standing between the bear and the fire, and the cub was behind him.
"You can't cut a share because you don't like how a cub looks," he said.
"I can cut it for anyone who's hoarding."
"Hoarding what?"
Dunstan's smile spread.
"Weigh him," he said. "At the Stone, in front of the Hold, as the law says."
"When?"
"Nine days from now, at the winter count."
He smiled.
"If he weighs what a five-winter cub should, I'll take back my words and add a sack of meal."
"And if he doesn't?"
Thad kept his voice flat.
"Then it's the Ledge."
The words dropped into the cave like stones into a well.
Thad looked back at Tuck.
The cub had stopped eating.
He sat very straight with the bowl in front of him and his eyes on Thad's face, waiting to see what he would do.
"Fine," Thad said. "Nine days."
"You know what he weighs?"
"No."
Thad shook his head.
"About half of what he should."
Dunstan turned on his heel, and the sled creaked away through the snow.
Thad stood still until the sound faded.
Then he picked up the ladle, crouched down, and filled the bowl to the brim again.
"Eat," he told Tuck. "I've got nine days to make you the fattest cub in the forest."
The cub ate.
His thin tail thumped once against the stone.
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