The decrepit ranger house alongside the trail had the front edge of its roof broken by rot, and a four-hundred fifty pound tiger leaving its gaping mouth of a door, and heading my way.  My pulse pounding, I dropped into gorilla stance with my arms wide low, and flexed.  My only bit of fully functioning cyberware were my "Lee Slash-em Nails" which I extended by a mental command and a twitch of my fingers.

My Lekostian Empire cyberware was out of juice, and so my only other bit of cybernetics which I had gotten in another universer were quarter inch, extendible fingernails made of a titanium alloy, and razor sharp.  And I’m a big guy with excellent muscles from my travels.  Add to that, I’m an expert in a number of forms of unarmed combat, and trained in a bunch more.  So, I figured I might last three minutes against this beast unless I could shove my fingers in a spear strike into its brain or heart on the first or second blow.  Even then, it might kill me with a dying blow.  At the very least, this was going to open a new chapter in the Book of Pain.

"Hey." I heard to my right, and jerked as did the tiger.  We both looked out into the grass as forty feet away a man raised himself to his knees.  He wore a primitive ghillie suit, and carried what looked to be at least a sixty pound longbow.  "Stay to the left.  Out of my line of fire. We’ll get you out of this, buddy."

I recognized the voice, but not quite.  The blonde hair and blue eyes touched memory.  This archer who held a sixty pound pull without trembling looked like a cousin of the fellow who had ‘rescued’ me and tossed me into a cryofreeze.  Or more likely, I realized, this was a descendant.  After all, it was three-hundred fifty years or so since the nukes rolled in.

Yelling in agreement, I circled to the left to help the archer by forcing the tiger to turn broadside to present a better target.  But the tiger did not cooperate.  Instead, it sat down on its haunches, panted, and then scratched on the ground with its two inch long talons.

We all waited, and then it got up and padded slowly back into the cabin.  I looked over at the archer, and he shrugged in bafflement.  Both of us were glad because if the tiger didn’t want to open the ball, that was good.  I had estimated there was a one-in-five chance the tiger would have killed us both, and those are not betting odds.

Nothing happened for the space of a minute, and then I slow-stepped up to the scratches on the ground.  They were haphazzard, but they clearly spelled out.

"TALK. COME IN."

I waved the archer over, and the resemblance to his long-gone I guess, ancestor was even stronger.  However, he did not recognize me. 

We exchanged names.  His was Steelshaft, and mine Tadeusz.  And yes, his arrows were made of metal with wickedly sharp heads, and barbed to make taking them out difficult.  He was more than a head shorter than me, but his arms bulged out of his loose leather tunic as he studied the words with narrowed eyes on his sun-darkened face.

"I’ll go in. You…"

"I’ll stand on the roof with my arrows ready if thats how you want to do this."

I had been meaning to offer him a place much further away, but in truth there was little out here where he could defend himself against a tiger.  The cliffs were a ways back, and too far to be useful as a shooting battlement.  And the field he had risen out of was low, flat, and went on for a quarter of a mile.  In other words, a perfect place for a tiger to kill a man.

With sweat dampening my forehead, I stepped into the dimly lit room.  My eyes adjusted rapidly under my direction, and so I was only half-blind for a few seconds.  But that would have been enough if the tiger was to attack right then.

In the wrecked place with a shattered and rusted pile of ruins that centuries gone was a desk, I saw a lovely young woman with dark hair, and vivid, willful eyes.  Her hands were tied together, and across from her lay the tiger panting in the mild heat.

I stepped closer, and he raised a paw to her.  I stopped. That was clear enough.

My problem was tigers don’t kidnap and tie up young women.  They eat them as a light snack before moving on to chomp on a warrior sent to stop them.  I studied the creature, and saw it stand up.

It walked over to a saddlebag hanging on the wall, and pulled out with its teeth, a board with oversized letters attached via way of metal rods which the letters could slip up and down in a fashion reminiscent of an abacus.  The letter board was plopped on the ground, and the tiger began to point out a letter by dragging the other twenty-five away from the sought letter.

When it found the one it wanted, it slapped the floor with one foot that shook the room.  Something to remember for exploring old houses–you can always fall through into the basement, and impale yourself on a rusty yard tool.  And so, I noted the letter, and encouraged the beast to be more subtle next time with his affirmation.

It took a while, but he spelled out a word. 

"Y-O-U."

And then another.

"P-R-I-S-O-N-E-R".

I laughed in sheer startlement.  Granted, I had seen the girl tied up, which should have been a clue, but the audacity of this creature stunned me. 

"No. I’ll fight you."  I braced myself for the lunge and the death struggle.  Instead, the tiger spelled out more words.

"K-I-L-L."

"G-I-R-L."

"He’s threatening to kill me again, isn’t he?" The dark-haired girl said from the corner with a quavering tremble in her voice.  I nodded slowly.  The tiger waited with confidence writ across its broad face.

Fury and frustration rose inside my head, and I started to seriously consider a sudden death strike.  The tiger rose to its feet, and paced in front of me as if aware of my inclinations.  I stared back at it, noting possible hit locations for a hamstringing strike if my first hit missed.

My problem was if I agreed to be a prisoner, the next thing to come would be ropes.  And if I bent now, I’d bend then would be the logic of the tiger.

"I’ll go with you for now." I tried to negotiate.  It repeated its threat, and as it paced, I sidestepped so that I was between the girl and the tiger.  This startled it.

The tiger growled at me, and behind it, I could see my archer friend leaning over the roof edge to set up a shot.  I showed no sign of his existence, and indeed, stamped my foot to kick some dust up into the air, and foul the tiger’s sense of smell.

A step over the the saddlebag with its pre-arranged ropes, each a ready little bit suited for tying up a human, and I had the four ropes in my hand.  The tiger nodded beneficiently at me, and I cut the ropes into tiny chunks with a flash of my titanium nails.  The bits and pieces of ropes drifted to the floor.

It roared, and I tensed to leap. One more move, and I was ready to go on a death or glory strike.  And that was what decided it.  The tiger saw  I was not bluffing.

It spelled out a bit more.

"G-O W-I-T-H M-E."

So, it accepted my compromise.  Good.

And thus the girl and I began a long hike through brambles, and past oddly mutated cacti which tilted at all angles, and had fifteen and even twenty arms, although most of the arms were dying.  We clambered up shale slopes; leapt small streams which caused my geiger counter to chatter; and slept in tiny caves with the tiger keeping watch at night to make sure we had no inclination to go wandering.

In the trip, I found the girl’s name.

Rachel Summerstars.

She said it had been five years since she had met Baron Coranado and She-Who-Is-Gold.  I asked her what she did, and where she lived, and what is was like.  She gave me vague answers while assuring me that it was wonderful.

I didn’t trust her.

But it was just me and her since I had long since signalled the archer to leave us be.  There was no way he was going to be able to stalk a tiger for days on end without it realizing someone followed it.  So I tried to get more details, and just earned an outburst.

"Will you stop being so nosy? Can’t a girl have any secrets?!?"

Which since all I’d been asking was what her job was in her village seemed well….off.

That night, the tiger took me aside, and spelled out some words on its alphabet board.

"R-A-C-H-E-L."

"S-L-A-V-E-T-A-K-E-R."

"You mean she goes out and kidnaps people to bring back to her village as slaves?" I asked after I closed my mouth which had drooped open in shock.

The tiger nodded.

"Just like you do, right?" I guessed, but it felt right.

The tiger paused, and then nodded in agreement.

"The first time you try to enslave me, you’ve just signed your death warrant." I said calmly and pleasantly.  The tiger roared at me, and I rather deliberately yawned.

"I’m being nice here.  More nice than I’m used to being.  But you’re used up most of my patience."

The tiger stared at me as if baffled, and then chivvied me back to bed in a cozy little stone cave with enough leg room for a chihuahua for sure, but not nearly enough for me.

The next day, which I think was the fourth since I had been ‘kidnapped’ brought us to a palisade gate into a village.  Next to it was a pyramid of cut stone that reached fifty feet skyward, and was only half complete.  I saw no sign of sand ramps, rollers, or cranes.

The tiger led us up to a chaise lounge which was being carried by four men.  Each one was at the end of one of the two poles which supported the feather and flower bedecked seat. 

The man inside had no nose except for a small flap of useless tissue, and his right eye was black, although his left was green.  But his right eye had truths in it, stuff that quite literally shook my view of the world.

His skin was yellowing, and black spots and minor growths dotted its surface.  Breathing sterotorously, he waved us closer.  The tiger came and sat down beside him, although on the ground.  It began to purr.

*So, Tadeusz, you think you won’t be a slave, eh?* I heard in my mind, but his right eye, and the potentials in it had warned me, and his attempt at mind control in much the same manner that he mind controlled the tiger shattered on the well-trained mental defenses I had learned.

And that told me something.

I looked at the tiger.

"Sleep." I said, and it fell into a deep slumber, the rest that it had been denied for many days, as it guarded the two of us as we trekked onward.

"Step aside." I ordered, and the fearful slaves did so for fear of my wrath.  While it is possible, it is extremely rare for slave societies to have slaves that will fight to defend them.

 I stepped in, and grabbed the mutant about the neck of his mylar vest, and jerked him level with my face.  He looked disgusting, and his breath was worse.

"You have managed to annoy me. Congratulations. Very few people succeed in annoying me, since most of them are dead by the time they have seriously irritated me."  I spoke low, and soft, but with great penetrative power.

He collapsed weeping in my arms.

I sat him back down, and considered what to do.  It is true that I can if need be, kill a man who begs for his life, but it is harder.  As an afterthought, I sliced Rachel free of her rope bond, and she picked up a stone to brain the mutant with.

As I stopped her, I began to get the glimmers of a plan.