Riding a sha’um during battle might be an advantage, if it could be done. It can’t—and there’s a much bigger advantage if the sha’um is free to use all its claws without worrying about dumping his riders.
Not that Keeshah was worried about it.
Tarani and I picked ourselves up off the packed dirt of the roadbed. Keeshah had met the group head-on; the fight was tumbling and snarling around him, doing absolutely no good to the edges of the grain fields.
Tarani and I were left to ourselves for a moment.
“Why?” she gasped. “Why are they doing this?”
I just shook my head as we ran to help Keeshah. They learned from the last battle, I thought. They’re concentrating on Keeshah this time.
They had learned more than I expected. Tarani and I were already on the run toward the melee when the edges of the attack group around Keeshah swept around the core of noise and cut us off. Had there been fewer vineh, this might have been a repeat of the pincer victory we had scored in the desert. But still bleeding survivors from the desert battle and fresh “troops” were mixed here, and the vineh had the initiative. A few had picked up farm tools, but the number of vineh was more effective than the occasional swing of a hoe. The beasts pressed Tarani and me back, separating us further from Keeshah.
One of the vineh got past my guard, grabbed for my throat. I flinched back and he caught a big pinchful of flesh and tunic on the left side of my chest. I had my dagger in my left hand; I brought it up under his arm and into his rib cage. Instead of releasing me and going off to sulk, he howled with the pain but held on and jerked me forward. I pulled the dagger out for another stab, feeling the warm blood soak out of his side. We were eye to eye, the vineh and I, at that moment. And I swear that in the bestial eyes, nearly hidden under the prominent supraorbital ridge of his skull, I saw a glimmer of intelligence and a conscious choice as he threw himself on the point of my dagger. I staggered back under the sudden weight, struggling desperately to keep my feet, but failing.
I heard Tarani cry out my name as I went down and the vineh piled on. There were so many of them trying to get a chunk of me that there was no way I could get out from under the dead one, and I used his body as a shield. I was getting bruised pretty badly, but no one vineh could get a solid hold on me. I was reasonably safe but I couldn’t breathe. I rocked my lower body until I got my knees under the hips of the vineh, braced my elbows on the ground, and spent what seemed like three years of strain, lifting the vineh’s torso a half-inch up, to relieve the pressure on my chest, and gulped in air that reeked of blood.
In that literal breathing space, I felt chilled by what I had seen in the vineh’s eyes. An animal throwing itself into danger because it is too enraged to care about its safety is a far different thing from a creature sacrificing itself for the sake of the group’s objective. Assuming that I had not merely imagined that glimmer of intelligence, the character of this battle had changed.
The downward pressure lightened suddenly. Buried in vineh, I had been unable to hear anything but their snarling and the pounding of my own heart. The bodies around me were shifting; fresh air penetrated, and with it came sound: Tarani’s voice screaming my name, and the coughing roar of the sha’um. Two sha’um.
I heaved upward, and the pile of vineh shifted and scattered. Bloody hands helped me shove the dead beast’s body over, then helped me to my feet. Distracted by the arrival of the female sha’um from Raithskar, the vineh had left us alone momentarily.
“Are you well?” Tarani asked anxiously.
“I’m fine. Most of this blood isn’t mine. What about you?”
“Whole, at least,” she said, and her voice cracked. “Rikardon, I feared for you so.”
I caught her in a quick, one-armed hug, and looked northward at the battle. The pincer movement was being worked again—this time with two sha’um.
“The cubs?” I asked.
“Well hidden,” Tarani said.
Yayshah had circled around and come in from the south, driving the vineh toward Keeshah. Keeshah was holding his own, I was relieved to see. The apes had to climb over their own dead to get close to him. But the long journey, the lack of food, and the strain of this and the recent battle with vineh were telling on him. He was slowing, and the circle of dead vineh restrained him as well as protected him.
Yayshah was fresher and seemed to fight as fiercely as Keeshah, but she was a little slower to begin with because her strength had not fully returned since delivery of her cubs. She was already trampling the dead, pressing toward Keeshah.
One large male launched himself from the dam of bodies around the male sha’um and landed on Keeshah’s back. Keeshah screamed as the vineh’s teeth dug into the side of his neck; I saw the bloody scoring left by the ape’s hands on the sha’um’s throat. Keeshah twisted and tucked his head down in almost a bucking motion, but the vineh was fastened on for good. The cat knew better than to try to roll to dislodge the ape; once down, he could never recover the advantage.
*Help,* he said.
I had pushed Tarani aside and was already running. I circled to the right and climbed the slippery, unsteady pile of bodies and used myself as a battering ram to knock the vineh loose from Keeshah. We fell into the live vineh, but Keeshah turned our way and kept the others off me until I could finish the one I had grabbed. I scrambled up and joined battle beside him.
Even the vineh are getting tired, I thought. What’s keeping them going?
Over the noise of the fighting, I heard a sound that startled me—a high, wailing cry of pain and fear that ended too suddenly. I staggered from an onslaught of feeling from Keeshah, but I hadn’t needed that to identify the sound.
One of the cubs had been hurt.
The fighting paused a moment in reaction to the sound, and I hauled myself up to Keeshah’s back to see over the heads of the vineh. Tarani was beside Yayshah; both of them facing south. Along the way we had come, five or six vineh had surrounded two terrified and angry sha’um cubs, who had clearly just emerged from the edge of the grain field. The smaller cats were supple and strong. Their teeth weren’t fully usable yet, but there was not a thing wrong with their claws, and the two kittens, hip-high to the vineh, were staying free and attacking their captors.
One whitefurred male lay, very still, on the packed dirt of the roadway.
Yayshah screamed, and Tarani jumped with the shock of what Yayshah must have been feeling. But before either of them could take a single step to help, three vineh attacked Yayshah’s hindquarters.
Tarani slashed at one of them, but she was getting no help from Yayshah. Concerned more for her cubs than herself, she was dragging the group of them down the roadway, calling frantically to the kittens.
At the sound of their mother’s voice, the cubs turned north and tried to run to her. The vineh jumped them, two to a kitten, and pinned them to the ground.
Some of the vineh between Keeshah and Yayshah, free of the trap, streamed out and around the adult sha’um, facing Yayshah from the south and coming in for the attack from Keeshah’s rear.
Keeshah’s reaction to the danger facing the cubs was so intense that I couldn’t think. I pushed at his mind, reached for his reason through the tide of rage and grief and protectiveness. It was made less easy by the fact that I felt much the same as he did; I was sickly afraid for the cubs. We had gone from a solid attack force to three isolated, surrounded, and vulnerable defense positions. We had to regroup; it was our only hope.
I was still on Keeshah’s back, just hanging on while he did all the fighting. He was distracted, worried about the cubs but occupied, moment to moment, with whichever vineh was attacking. They always came in from the rear, of course, so that Keeshah was whirling and turning constantly, tiring even more quickly. He was less disabled by the cubs’ danger than Yayshah, but his fighting was less efficient because he was trying to find a way out—to get to the cubs.
The cubs were continuing to take care of themselves pretty well.
One—the female, I thought—had crawled forward until her shoulders were free. She twisted with the elasticity of only the very young, and dug her small but sharp teeth into the throat of the vineh. The ape flinched back, and before he could reclaim his grip or hurt the cub, she kicked back, claws out, and got her hind feet free. She backed off from them, her white-tipped kitten fur standing on end, snarling a challenge to the vineh. Her muzzle was bloodied from the vineh’s throat.
The male fared less well, but was squirming to the point that the vineh couldn’t spare a hand to hurt him and still hold on.
Their fighting instincts are taking over, I thought desperately. But all that’s going to do is get them killed. We need to be together.
I caught a glimpse of Tarani, bracing herself on Yayshah’s back and kicking the face of the vineh clinging to the other side of the sha’um. The scene whirled and danced as Keeshah turned under me, but I saw it when more vineh closed in.
Yayshah went down, and Tarani with her.
*We need to be together NOW!*
It was a cry of desperation, and the fear and need it carried broke through Keeshah’s preoccupation. The sha’um’s mind opened and blended with mine, and we, man and cat, became a single unit, reasoning with my mind, fighting with a sha’um’s strength. Keeshah stopped his frantic whirling and aimed himself toward Yayshah. He kept three feet on the ground at all times, because I was crouched on his back, using the advantage of height to slash down at any vineh who came close enough to Keeshah’s flanks.
Keeshah pushed the vineh back, closing the distance between Yayshah and us. I was relieved to see Tarani’s head and shoulders, stable amid the roiling pile of vineh. She still held the steel sword; I watched her lift it high in both hands and bring it down hilt-first on the head of a vineh. Then she was up, slashing and stabbing, fighting to get Yayshah free.
The quality of the battle experience always changed when Keeshah was with me. Odors reached me with head-spinning intensity; sounds were distinct and easily identified as to nature and location; and I always felt imbued with a fierce physical power.
On the other side of the battleground, the cubs had been active. The male was free now, and both were challenging their captors. It was a separate, miniature battle the cubs were fighting, brave and daring, but dangerous to us all. The effectiveness of the adult sha’um depended on the safety of the kittens. Tarani and I would certainly not survive any fight that could beat the sha’um—but I wasn’t thinking of that.
I was remembering a furry throat against my thigh, and the rapid, shallow breathing of a young sha’um sleeping.
I was remembering Keeshah lying on the roof of his stone house, his daughter leaning against the wall and batting at the dangling tail.
I was remembering how motionless the third cub seemed, lying white against the dun of the roadbed.
*Here!* I called, unconsciously projecting the thought as if I were talking to Keeshah.
To my amazement, the cubs paused and looked around, confused. They recovered in time to snarl caution into one of the vineh, who had advanced a bit.
I didn’t have to speak to Keeshah; we were blended and he knew what I knew, and what I wanted.
*Come to your father, fight with us!* I shouted, with my mind and Keeshah‘s. *Come here!*
The cubs flattened their ears and fur, whirled and made a run for it.
It took the vineh totally by surprise, and they reacted too slowly; they didn’t have a chance to catch the kittens. I jumped down from Keeshah’s back and cleared out an arc of the circle of beasts around us. The cubs barreled through it the instant it was open.
There was no time for reunions.
*Help Keeshah.* I directed the cubs, and protected their backs while the three sha’um, buoyed by being together again, steamrollered their way through the vineh that separated them from Yayshah. I felt their surge of joy when the breakthrough came, and their relief that, as soon as the pressure of bodies was gone, Yayshah was able to stand and join them.
Tarani was beside me suddenly, and we turned to face the enemy at the rear together… .
The vineh were gone.
4
The vineh were scattering in all directions, half-visible above the waist-high grain in the damaged fields. Once they accepted defeat, they lost no time in abandoning the fight.
The sha’um knew the fight was over, too. As the close link between Keeshah and me faded, I felt both relief and a sense of loss—relief because the blending was an intense experience, and we had held it this time longer than ever before; and loss because I was again limited to my own body and less keen senses. When blended with Keeshah, I felt powerful, invulnerable. I was well aware that the effect was not physical but psychological. When the feeling left, there was nothing to hold off the weariness, and my tired muscles let my body collapse to the ground. I struggled back to a sitting position.
Tarani knelt beside me, her own movements showing the lack of control brought on by great fatigue. She stank with the blood and dust that covered her, and I knew I must look and smell as bad.
“I’m all right,” I assured her, patting her hand as it rested on my shoulder. “Just terribly tired.”
“Then I will see about the cub,” she said, and used my shoulder as a brace to stand up again. I twisted my neck around to look; all the sha’um had moved down the road to gather around the third cub. Tarani walked unsteadily to the group, pushed a cub aside gently, and knelt. I couldn’t see the grounded kitten because of all the furry bodies between, but I could see Tarani’s face, and I knew the cub was dead.
Yayshah must have taken the message from Tarani’s mind at that moment, for she lifted her head and shrieked. The sound began at a painfully high pitch and climbed from there. She held the tone, and Keeshah echoed it at a slightly lower pitch. The children joined in, their voices more raw, with a hissing undertone. The sha’um cried out their grief to the sky while Tarani stood among them, her head bowed.
I thought I would explode with sadness. The sound itself would have been enough. My own grief would have been enough. But I was assaulted and buffeted by the powerful feelings that produced part of that mournful, angry protest from the throats of the sha’um.
What hurt the most was that Keeshah’s grief was so like a man’s, fraught with guilt. He had lost a child of his body, a creature he was bound, as a father, to protect. He had failed. And there was honestly no blame in him for me. He had left his family to take us into the desert, at my request; had we not gone, he could still be playing contentedly with the children in Thanasset’s back yard. With all the children.
Through his own grief, Keeshah felt mine, and spared a moment to comfort me. *I chose desert.* His mindvoice was faint and small, as if most of his energy was consumed in his cry, but it came clearly and with unquestionable sincerity. *You saved others,* he said. *Thank you.*
It was only then that I realized I was still in contact with the two living cubs. They had joined the cry in imitation of their parents, and did not understand what they were feeling. Some of it was grief, though they had not truly accepted that their brother was gone. Some of it was fear, born of the intense reaction of their parents. Some excitement and pride over the battle just fought still lingered in the cry too.
They were curious about the voice in their minds.
The wailing reached an almost inaudible pitch, and ceased. A hand touched my shoulder; my mind jumped, but my body was too tired to cooperate.
It was Zaddorn, the Peace and Security Officer from Raithskar, Markasset’s friend and rival. He extended his arm and helped me to my feet. Behind him were a troop of men—I would have guessed at least thirty—who were standing as if transfixed, staring at the group of sha’um.
“I am sorry we are too late to help,” Zaddorn said, his face grim. “It took a few moments to gather a large enough force.”
“You helped,” I told him. “They must have seen or smelled you coming, because they gave up suddenly.”
; He turned to the group of men and gestured forward. “Get started cleaning up this mess,” he said. The two columns split around us and went to work dragging the vineh carcasses into piles.
I grabbed one man’s arm as he passed. “Don’t touch the sha’um,” I said. “We’ll take care of him.”
The man nodded, looking scared, and pried my hand from his arm. It left a bloody mark on the sleeve of his tunic.
“I have never seen so many of them attack at once,” Zaddorn said. “And it has been very quiet lately. Rikardon, believe me, if I had even suspected this would happen …”
I realized Zaddorn was feeling his own kind of guilt, and I passed along Keeshah’s generosity. “There’s no way you could nave known, Zaddorn. It’s the sha’um—vineh hate them.” Something about that statement sounded wrong, but I was too tired to figure it out. “Would you mind if we didn’t talk just now?”
“Of course not,” he said. His gaze shifted behind me.
Zaddorn wasn’t wearing the gray hat that marked him in the city. Indeed, now that I looked closely, he was not as carefully groomed as usual. But his manners were intact, and he bowed slightly as Tarani approached us. He said nothing, but transferred my arm, which he had been supporting, into Tarani’s grasp.
“We have lost him,” she said, the words seemed to release her control. I held her and let my own grief flow out to mingle with hers. We didn’t notice when Zaddorn stepped quietly away.
We walked back into Raithskar between two streams of vlek carts, which had begun hauling the vineh bodies out of the fields. Gandalara was a world that had learned to allow very little to go to waste; the steel forge was not particular about what it used for fuel.
Tarani and I had agreed on a different sort of conservation for the lost cub. We planned to bury him in the ground of Thanasset’s garden, where his body would find another kind of life in the beautiful plants it nourished. Keeshah and Yayshah had no objection. Had the cub died in the wild, Yayshah would have buried him where he had fallen.
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