"Easy, there, Vixie," Reynard whispers.
Why you and he are whispering is unclear. Over the rushing of the wind and the thick powder that has been coming down, it is unlikely that the travelers would hear either of you. The two of you are also crouched-down behind a snow-drift, your heads raised just enough above it to keep the travelers in view. You realize that it's a good thing you have Reynard's training to guide you, though, since he has figured out things you never would have thought about. For instance, one is less likely to be noticed visible but lying still than only being seen occasionally or in different places, so you and he keeping your eyes raised above the snowdrift is safer than trying to duck down to remain hidden.
Your body has changed considerably over the past month. First, your sexual anatomy is more compact and dense, which is a relief, and your figure has become wiry and taut, which you find more to your liking. A mostly gray winter pelt has grown out over your form, and from a distance, you could pass for a gray sedimentary rock with streaks of iron running through it, even out in the open. Your cheek-muscles have grown firmer, giving you a broader face than before, from chewing on leather-hard jerky, although Reynard's strict dental and periodontal hygiene regimen has kept your teeth sharp and clean. From snout-to-tail-tip, crown-to-toe, and fingertip to fingertip, you have become a creature of these deadly highlands.
Your mind also has transformed. You have grown far from being the little gay-boy-turned-girl that had cried for your daddy. Your mind is that of a well-adjusted adult vixen, with sharp and perceptive senses trained carefully for survival out in this wilderness. No longer are you a victim, but your trained, astute mind has begun to come to grips with the harsh world into which you have been plunged. You have come to accept your body's limitations but also to understand its strengths. This invisible transformation has, perhaps, done the most to redefine for you what it means to be female.
Now, Reynard is no raider, but on the other hand, he does like to keep his eyes open for traveling merchants that he might sell his precious whiskey to. The favored currency of the land is whiskey, and he has a recipe that he brews from the grasses that grow in the warmer months on the high plateau, aging it in high-altitude birch. A rational person hardly ever drinks whiskey except on occasions of rare celebration or in the midst of critical negotiations, for consuming it trivially is a little bit like throwing gold-dust on one's food trivially: it is an outcome of one's wealth greatly exceeding one's sensibility, and it is a most treacherous insult to lagom.
That brings you back to why you've been crouching with him in the snow, in the midst of a blizzard: you and he had actually been monitoring the movements of this caravan for several days, ever since spying the smoke from their encapments in the far distance. It is strange that such a large caravan would be moving through at this time of year. Not just one but several dozen wagons, pulled by teams of sturdy, tough mountain-ponies, are moving through the area. Traveling in such a large, visible band would be insanity under ideal conditions. For people to move in such numbers in the winter, during a blizzard, suggests that something weird is afoot.
All of a sudden, though, a horn sounds, and you see a band of what must be raiders surging down from ambush positions, and a battle begins.
"They must have been planning this ambush for days," Reynard mutters.
"Is there anything we can do?" you whisper.
"Let's wait," Reynard says.
And you do. It's hard to watch what's going on, though. You see people on both sides falling to the ground bleeding. You can tell the raiders from the people in the caravan by the fact that the bodies of the caravan travelers are whelmed in robes made from some wool-like textile, whereas the raiders are covered in untreated skins or occasionally carrying what looks like battle-gear, and you guess quickly that the ones in the better kept gear must be ranking officers or some sort, since they are the ones hanging back and calling out commands.
Some of the raiders leap behind obstructions and begin firing missiles of some kind at the caravans. One is shooting flaming arrows, which forces some of the caravan travelers to turn their attention to fighting the flames and occasionally rescuing hapless occupants where the flames have spread too far.
Meanwhile, the caravan travelers quickly organize a shield-phalanx, using shields that look like they might also be serviceable as cookware, and they begin herding the melee fighters closer to them into such tangled knots as to render most of them unable to strike out. As the defenders fall, they close ranks, but the raiders, although more numerous to begin with, fall faster.
"Let's get some of those snipers," Reynard hisses.
You nod curtly, and you both make haste to circle around to where the raiders holding the ranged weapons are stationed. Some friendly fire gets hurled at you by the caravan travelers, but luckily, the whiteout has you and Reynard sufficiently concealed and enough full of crosswinds as to make targeting a moving body relatively difficult.
Fortuitously, the whiteout has made for close quarters, so getting to the first sniper doesn't take long. Without hesitation, Reynard pulls his dagger from his hip-strap and slits the attacker's throat, and he doesn't have time to cry out. You move ahead to the second one you managed to spot, but as an arrow strikes the ground at your feet, you jump quickly to the side.
Reynard comes up beside you and urges you to continue on to the next archer, and he veers off, apparently to try to circle around to to get at whoever plunked that arrow at your feet.
With some trepidation, you move into position behind the next archer's position, your heart pounding in your throat. You've never killed a thinking creature with your own hands before, but you know in your gut that, with every moment you hesitate, the archer has a chance to reload and launch another missile at the hapless travelers below. There is no sense of moral dilemma, here: you can stop the attacker or let innocents die. You quickly swallow your trepidation, and you move in.
Before you can get to him, he startles, and he cries out, pulling out a melee weapon and attempting to stab into your pelt. The weapon connects with your midsection, but Reynard was right about the protective quality of your fur. As you try to dodge out of the way, the point gets caught in a snarl of fur, and it only manages to leave a small puncture wound and a relatively laceration, which is quickly staunched by your own thick fur as it mats up with blood, turning almost instantly into a bandage that leaks only slowly.
In a surge of adrenaline, you flail wildly at the raider, but as Reynard has instructed you, you remember to fight with your natural weapons as well, using your feet to try to kick his legs out from under him or make an attempt to disarm him. "You never know when you'll lose hold of your weapon," Reynard had said, "and if you've become too dependent on it, you tend to freeze once it's gone." Indeed, with one lucky strike of your foot, you connect with the raider's torso in such a way that he double's over in pain, out of breath, and as you continue surging forward, you manage to grab him by his headfur and pull his throat down against your knife. As you get a close look, you realize he looks like something akin to an African wild dog.
However, your tussle with this raider has alerted the next one down the line, and an arrow connects with your shoulder, piercing through your flesh and disabling your right-arm. In a panic, you dive behind the same cover used by the dead raider, and you quickly start attempting to break off the arrow. You know better than to attempt to remove it too abruptly, since the missile itself temporarily staunches the blood-flow and the head is likely to come loose inside, making it virtually impossible for anyone but a trained surgeon or more talented healer than he to remove in less than a week.
To your horror, though, one of the caravan ponies has charged up to you, and he begins bucking at you. "How dare you murder our friends!" his young-sounding voice wails "Those were my friends!" One of his kicks finally connects solidly with your other shoulder and sends you flying, throwing you perhaps fatefully out into the view of the raider that had wounded you earlier.
And sure enough, two arrows at once fly into the snow at your feet, one grazing your toe, and you yelp as you dive back to your cover, although within range of another kick from the strangely talkative beast. To your fortune and to the pony's great misfortune, another arrow plants itself in his flank, and he lets out a scream as he tumbles and falls, breaking off the arrow under the level of his flesh. Damn.
With a mighty effort, you manage to haul the young pony under the cover of the snow-covered tree-stump that has been your cover, and in an act of maternal instinct, you start treating the foal without having much thought for your own wounds. He's just a child! What are these people thinking? What are these idiots thinking, bringing a child into such danger? Is it desperation, thoughtlessness, or just stupidity? Damn it!
You sob in pain as your work, but you finally manage to get to the shaft of the arrow. You reach into your medical supplies in your thigh-strapped utility belt, and you manage to attach a line to it that will make its removal later easier, and you start applying a poultice to the wound containing some precious millefolium, among other things. You finally manage to get the bleeding to stop.
You look up just in time to see one of the raiders charging at you, and you can see why this one is an archer. He is an anthropomorphic greyhound, rail-thin and long of limb, and he's moving fast as a rocket toward you. You're lucky enough, though, that one of the healing supplies you have out, while it soothes muscle soreness, is a powerful irritant when applied to other tissues, including the eyes, and you have just enough presence of mind to use your good arm to throw a quantity of it into his eyes, temporarily blinding him.
Suddenly, an arrow sprouts from the greyhound's neck, and he falls to the ground. Reynard quickly moves down to you, and he screams as he realizes you're still losing blood from untreated wounds. "You're going to pass out!" He cries.
Come to think of it, you have been having trouble keeping your vision from darkening, and you realize you might actually end up dying for your momentary act of goodwill. "Oh," you say weakly.
Fortunately, the fox-man is quick to apply every technique he has to getting your wounds taken care of, calling upon healing magic that is far more advanced than your own budding skills. Before too long, he has managed to maneuver the arrowhead out of your shoulder, and he has restored some of your mobility in that limb. "Do you have anything stuck there in that mess?" he says, pointing at your earlier wound in your side, which has stopped bleeding with any significance.
You shake your head numbly.
With a curt nod, he gets out a bandage roll and ties it around you. There is no need for any herbal poultice for him. Reynard's healing fetishes quickly start closing up the relatively minor wound. Soon enough, he has done all he can for you, and he lies panting in the snow as the battle starts to slow down. Looking over at your patient, he nods with approval. "Hey, good job on the pony," he gasps.
You nod back at him. "Thanks."
"I'll work on him some...later...like...after some sleep," he gasps.
As the last of the raiders falls to the ground after putting up quite a lot of a fight in spite of some severe wounds, the caravan leaders immediately start tending to their wounded. A robe-ensconced cat-woman runs up to where she sees the young pony lying. "Spelt!" she cries out. "Spelt!" She falls to the ground sobbing over her injured friend. "You're hurt!" she moans.
Reynard coughs slightly, startling the poor creature. "It's okay," Reynard says as she draws a knife. "I'm just a local."
The cat-woman glares at him and you both with a look of distrust, but as she looks at the pony's carefully treated wounds, she realizes you must have saved the pony's life. After a few moments, she turns her head over her shoulder, keeping one eye on you both and keeping her weapon drawn, and she calls out to the caravan. "Dexter, come up here! We got someone here!"
Someone that looks very different from the cat-woman shouts something back.
"Stop arguing, and get your useless butt up here," she snaps.
As Dexter approaches, he reveals himself to be something like a squirrel-man. A...maybe a fox squirrel-man? "Some of you are rodents?" you say dumbly.
Dexter pants as he approaches, and in spite of the losses to the caravan, he seems to find some hilarity in the statement. "Another new arrival," he grumbles, seeming embarrassed on your behalf. "Most of our party are rodents, and so are most people in general. Mostly lapines, in our case."
Reynard nods. "Vixie," he says, launching into an explanation of what's going on, "you ought to think of it this way. While most of the predatory species often live a violent, territorial existence, rabbits tend to hide in underground warrens that can be as large and, although rarely, nearly as technologically advanced as some of the cities on the world we came from, thanks to some engineers and technicians being teleported over. Most hooved creatures end up being quadrupedal herd-animals, like this pony, here...while technically enslaved, these ponies are, in actual practice, usually free to come and go as they please with folks like these caravan travelers, and traveling with two-leggers usually just means added protection and, if they're lucky, someone to groom and care for them."
"Pets?"
The pony named Spelt snorts weakly. "D-don't....say that about my dad...good stallion...works...we're good folks. We earn our keep." He seems genuinely hurt, and you feel sorry. You start to realize that, besides being savage, this land is more complicated in its social structure than you ever would have figured.
Oy, gevalt.
~~~
After Dexter has run back to the caravan to explain the situation, you and Reynard are soon taken as guests, although whether you are guests or captives is unclear to most in the caravan. Either way, as they start to set up a fire and several tents and start applying what resources they have to treating their wounded, you are kept a close watch on.
It seems strange that the sense of hostility is slow to fade until the gray-furred cat-woman, whose name is Silvertree (a name she explains is traditional in her tribe, where "Silver" acts as a surname and "heart" indicates her as an individual), explains carefully what the reason is for the prejudice. "The problem is, a lot of the preds start off early down a dark path. First, they don't try to distinguish between intelligent quadrupeds and dumb animals, although the distinctions are usually plain to anyone who's been here for a while. Besides that, they often see most rodents as pestilential and invasive creatures, and they end up using poison and other means to murder entire warrens of rabbits. If preds move into an area, it usually means trouble for anyone else. Another issue is that, while the rest of us usually have to rely on our brains, preds are more likely to have powerful magic."
"So only predatory species have magic," you say, not phrasing it as a question. You nod.
Silvertree quickly corrects herself, shaking her head. "Excuse me," she apologizes. "There are various forms of magic. Among communal creatures like rabbits, it's a communal sort of magic, mostly centered around protecting their warrens. Pack animals like wolves often have telepathy, although dogs don't...it's more of an empathy talent that only works at close range, and they're often unmatchable healers if trained properly." She looks a little conflicted. "Dogs are a bit of a mix, though: if they're socialized early to other species, can be loyal friends, although with childlike and silly personalities. If they end up in a disorganized band like the ones that attacked us, they can be horrifically destructive."
She continues, "Anyhow, fox-people, like yourselves, are hit-or-miss, and so are housecat-people, racoons, and other felines. The trouble is that we are freethinkers, and we are usually atheists. While wolves have a pagan sort of spirituality, us small-to-medium size carnivores and opportunists bow to nobody. If we turn out alright, we can be good samaritans, and we can sometimes get work as technicians." She gets a look of annoyance. "And there are some that have a 'Robin Hood' sort of outlook, and they'll steal from people they deem as powerful to help others, but this can turn into them stealing from good, hard-working folk and sometimes lead to them keeping loot for themselves if they happen to be in-debt. Foxes are often like that, and while these folks come across as wealthy, they perceive themselves as pious folk, and I can vouch for them that what little they have is hard-earned."
"So people that are teleported here are put into bodies that match their personalities?" you ask.
Silvertree and Reynard nod, but Reynard adds, "Either that, or the bodies they are put into influence their personalities." Silvertree nods toward him in agreement.
"Anyhow," Silvertree continues, "These folks will be here a while recuperating, so you can feel free to leave if you wish. You could try your luck sticking around to discuss trade, though, or you could offer your services. Finally, you can ask if you may join up with them if you want to, but I do have to say you have to form a very strong positive impression to have a chance of them letting you join up with them, although saving young Spelt's life might be a good start."