By Tooth and Claw

by S. M. Stirling

  Exasperating, that had been. The traps, pitfalls and rockslides set off by the Kororo had taken a toll on Zilikazi’s equanimity as well as his army’s numbers. Many more of his soldiers had been injured than killed, it was true. But Zilikazi wasn’t sure if that was a blessing or a curse. While on campaign, one wounded warrior required two or three to tend to him. Injury depleted an army’s strength faster than death did.

  But the wounded could not be left behind, or dispatched, unless they clearly couldn’t survive their wounds. There were limits to any noble’s power, even one as mighty as Zilikazi. His control over his warriors depended more on their acquiescence than his sheer force of mind. If nothing else, he had to sleep—and who would protect him from his protectors then?

  In the end, as in any society of intelligent and social animals, the power of the masters depended on a great lattice of custom, ritual and accepted practice. Brute force was needed to maintain that lattice, for there were always those who sought to unleash chaos. But force could not substitute for it.

  So, the wounded were tended to—and well; better than they would have been in most Liskash armies. And the army’s lord and master accepted the need for patience.

  But he was glad now that he had made the decision to bring his whole realm on the march. He had left no one behind except those too ill or infirm or old to march, and the few needed to take care of them. Doing so had run the risk of allowing one of his neighbors to overrun his lands, but he had deemed it a risk worth taking. If need be, he could retake the lands when he was done with the Kororo and he thought all his neighbors understood that quite well. He’d already beaten the most powerful of them, had he not?

  The greater danger had been rebellion. He could not predict how long the campaign against the Kororo would take, for some of the terrain would be new to him—most of it, if the Kororo chose to flee. (As, indeed, they had chosen to do.)

  If Zilikazi’s absence from his lands was prolonged, and if he’d left a large force behind, one of his lieutenants was likely to grow ambitious. After the successful wars he’d waged against his neighboring nobles, the strongest enemy he could face would come from within his own ranks, if he let slip his grip.

  No, best to bring everyone with him. Under his direct and watchful eye, none of his subordinates would even think of rising against him.

  Meshwe

  “You’re certain?” Meshwe asked.

  The scout nodded firmly. His fellow added: “There’s just no way, Tekkutu. It’s not a deep ravine the same as it is trying to the north. But the river that runs into the sea on the south is very wide, and there are marshlands on both sides. We could certainly cross it, given time—”

  “A lot of time,” the first scout said.

  “—but I don’t think we’ll have much time. Not enough.”

  Meshwe looked away and pondered the matter. “But you say the area is wooded?”

  “It’s something of a forest, even down close to the shore,” said one. “But it isn’t dense enough for us to hide from Zilikazi in it. Not the whole Krek.”

  Meshwe shook his head. “I understand that. But is there enough wood to build rafts that would allow us to cross over to the island?”

  Now, the scouts looked confused.

  “Well . . . Yes, certainly. But . . .”

  “But . . .” his companion chimed in.

  Meshwe grimaced. “I know the strait is full of monsters. But surely some of the rafts would make it across. And what other option do we have?”

  Sebetwe

  The trap was almost ready. Sebetwe just had to hold Zilikazi’s mind at bay for another five minutes. By then, the lead elements of his army would be too far into the gully to make their escape when the dam was ruptured.

  The flood that followed wouldn’t be enough to hurt most of that great army. They’d only had two days to let the water pile up behind the dam, and it wasn’t a great river to begin with. More in the way of a large creek, really. Still, there’d be enough of a flood to kill dozens of Zilikazi’s troops; maybe as many as a hundred, if luck went their way.

  Looked at from one angle, that wouldn’t be much more than a pinprick. Sebetwe had now gotten close enough to have a good idea of the size of Zilikazi’s army. There had to be at least six thousand warriors down there. More, if you added those still too injured to walk but recuperating.

  There were other factors involved than simple numbers, however. Sebetwe was pretty sure the morale of Zilikazi’s army wasn’t too good right now. Better than it had been two or three days ago, yes, due to the greater ease of traveling across the plateau. But if they suffered a sudden and sharp blow just as they entered the next range of mountains . . .

  That army had its own scouts, who’d been ranging ahead off to the sides. By now, at least some of them would have returned and given their reports. The gist of which would be that this next mountain range was wider than the first had been, and if the terrain was no worse—might not be quite as bad, in fact—the roads were ancient memories and the trails were mostly figments of the imagination.

  Zilikazi would order the scouts to remain silent, but they were bound to talk to their mates nonetheless. As word spread through the noble’s army that they still had many days of slogging ahead of them, their morale would sag again. The flood would damage their spirits far more than it would their bodies.

  There came another unseen blow from Zilikazi’s mind. The noble was now just trying to batter his way past Sebetwe’s shield. He’d apparently given up trying to penetrate the psychic fog that Sebetwe had created.

  The force of that blow was well-nigh astonishing. It was almost like being struck by a physical blow delivered by an ogre. But, again, Sebetwe was able to shed the force. The pure focus—you could even call it indifference—that the gantrak’s narrow fierce mind gave to Sebetwe was in its own way also well-nigh astonishing.

  Whether he was real or not, Sebetwe whispered a murmur of thanks to Ghammid, the god of good fortune. The day the god’s blessing—or fate, or destiny, or sheer blind chance, it didn’t really matter—brought Achia Pazik to them, had been a most fortunate day indeed. Without her, Sebetwe could never have hoped to keep the gantrak under any control, much less the tight reign he needed to withstand Zilikazi.

  Just three minutes, now.

  Achia Pazik

  Achia Pazik was tiring, but neither she nor Gadi Elkin faltered in their steps. The two Dancers had been trained in a harsh school that prized endurance and they came from a breed of folk who were contemptuous of self-pity. They’d drop unconscious before they began fouling the Dance.

  Which . . . they might, if Sebetwe kept this up much longer. With experience, Achia Pazik and Gadi Elkin had learned how to modify the Dance in ways that suited this purpose better. The initial effect was to make the strain of the Dance less harsh. They were working with a Liskash tekkutu and his predator partner, not directly against a noble. Still, the force of Zilikazi’s mind, even when it came secondhand and filtered through Sebetwe, was wearying. As he got closer, it felt more and more like they were Dancing in a sea of spiritual mud.

  Finally, she saw Sebetwe give the signal. A moment later, grinding noises from above were followed by what sounded like a thunderclap in the distance.

  Sebetwe rose and moved toward the gantrak. The beast was perched on a nearby rock, seemingly oblivious to her surroundings.

  “Let’s go,” he said. “You can stop the Dance in two minutes, Achia Pazik. By then, the turmoil in the minds of Zilikazi’s troops will require his full concentration.”

  Two minutes. Not so bad.

  She and Gadi Elkin even finished with a flourish.

  CHAPTER 10

  Zilikazi

  In the event, it took Zilikazi quite a while to calm down his troops after the dam burst. The water rushing down the ravine carried not only rocks and logs with it, but specially designed spears as well. The Kororo, exhibiting a fiendish imagination that fit poorly with their philosophical claims,
had tied crude blades to both ends of many bundles of reeds. The buoyant reed bundles raced down atop the surging flood, spinning and whirling. The blades added their share of carnage to the damage done by the force of the water and the other debris.

  It was a fairly small flood, and brief in duration. But the ravine was steep and because of the difficulty of the terrain the soldiers had been packed too tightly. Their officers had become complacent, certain that the Kororo wouldn’t have had time to prepare any more elaborate traps—or, if they had, wouldn’t be able to stay close enough to set them off at the right time. By now, the troops had gotten adept at spotting and disarming inert triggers left in place. So the deaths and injuries produced were much worse than they should have been.

  Zilikazi was quietly furious with those officers, and made a silent vow to punish those most responsible. But he had more pressing concerns at the moment—and, being honest, was at least as angry at himself. He’d consistently underestimated the powers of the Krek’s so-called “tekku.” To make things worse, the Kororo shamans were either getting stronger or he had finally started encountering those among them who were most powerful and adept at their peculiar mind skill.

  He still didn’t really understand the nature of that skill. How could harnessing the pitiful brains of animals be of any real use?

  In the distance, he heard the screech of a gantrak, but paid it little attention. The mountain predators were ferocious, certainly, but they would never dare attack such a large group of Liskash. The creature was just angry that its hunting territory was being encroached upon.

  Sebetwe

  Zilikazi was wrong about that. The gantrak’s screech had been one of triumph, not fury. The predator was not an intelligent animal, but she was far smarter than most dumb beasts. She understood, in some way, that the creature she and her mate had mysteriously become partnered with had just scored a great victory—and she shared in that victory herself.

  For his part, Sebetwe winced. Whether it derived from anger or elation, the screech of a gantrak up close was hard on the ears and unsettling on the nerves.

  He managed not to jump, though.

  Achia Pazik

  Achia Pazik didn’t jump either. But that was only because Gadi Elkin, tired by the Dance, had stumbled over a root and Achia Pazik had barely managed to catch her before she fell. The gantrak’s screech jolted her nerves, but her grip on her fellow Dancer kept her steady on her feet.

  “I’m starting to hate that thing,” hissed Gadi Elkin, once she regained her balance. “Aren’t you?”

  Achia Pazik let go of her grip and shrugged. “Not as much—not nearly as much—as I hate that Liskash noble down there. The worst the gantrak will do is bite your head off, but at least your mind will still be yours right through to the end.”

  “That’s a low standard!” the other Dancer said, grimacing. “Lose your head or lose your mind.”

  “Our choices are pretty limited right now.” Achia Pazik started up the slope, following Sebetwe along what might be called a “trail” if you were in an expansive frame of mind. “Let’s try to keep both.”

  Nabliz

  The first little group of Mrem they found were of no practical use. There were two females in the group, but it turned out neither of them were Dancers. The two warriors also in the group wouldn’t be any help, either. One had suffered injuries which, even if he recovered from them—a process that would take months—would still leave him lame. And the other was really too old to still be serving as an active warrior.

  The young male in the group might be of use, eventually. But the Krek’s current circumstances made concepts like “eventually” lame as well.

  Still, Nabliz took it as a good omen. If two groups had survived from the catastrophe the Mrem tribe had suffered at the hands of Zilikazi and his army, surely there had to be others.

  Two warriors were detached to escort the Mrem to the Krek. The rest, including Nabliz and Chefer Kolkin, continued their search.

  Chefer Kolkin

  Chefer Kolkin was pretty sure the Liskash would have simply left the small Mrem party they’d found where they were, once they discovered there were no dancers among them, if Chefer Kolkin hadn’t insisted otherwise. The reptiles were sometimes astonishingly callous. Not cruel, no, at least not in the way Mrem understood cruelty. Even at their worst, there was always something a little cold-blooded about Liskash. The sort of hot rage which sometimes led Mrem to commit acts of utter barbarity was just not something that seemed to afflict Liskash. On the other hand, they had much less in the way of simple compassion, either.

  It took some getting used to. But so, Chefer Kolkin reminded himself, did many things that turned out in the end to be beneficial. Spices took some getting used to also, when you were a youngling. Yet for an adult, food without them would be horribly bland.

  Njekwa

  When the priestess came into the yurt, followed closely by the shaman Litunga, she glanced around and then headed unerringly toward the one pile of hides and thrushes which was large enough to conceal a big animal. As she went, she gave Zuluku and her two companions a peremptory summoning gesture.

  “Get up,” she said. “We haven’t much time.”

  Once she reached the pile, Njekwa crouched and flipped back the two hides on top. Now visible below were a Mrem female and, pressed closely to her side and staring up at the priestess also, two of the mammal younglings. “Kits,” she thought they were called.

  There was no expression on the adult Mrem’s face. None that Njekwa could discern, at any rate, but she was not very familiar with the creatures. One of the kits seemed frightened; the other, either less anxious or less intelligent, simply looked curious.

  “Can she move at all?” Njekwa asked, turning her head toward Zuluku but not taking her eyes from the subject of her scrutiny.

  To her surprise, the Mrem answered. “I can move a bit. Not far, not quick. But I can move.”

  “You speak our language?”

  “A bit.” An odd little twist came to her mouth. “Not far. Not quick. But I can speak a bit.”

  By then, Zuluku was squatting next to the priestess. “What’s wrong?”

  Njekwa issued the little whistling noise from her nostrils that served Liskash as the equivalent of a snort of derision. “What do you think is wrong? Everything is wrong. It is wrong that you sheltered this creature. It is wrong that the Old Faith is ignored. It is wrong that nobles such as Zilikazi lord it over all others. For the moment, though, what is most wrong is that Zilikazi led his army into another trap, the soldiers are angry and upset, he is trying to quell them, and naturally he is resorting to ancient ruses which always seem to work even if they require everyone to be stupid.”

  Zuluku stared at her, uncomprehending.

  “Zilikazi says treason must have been the cause,” Litunga explained. The old shaman’s jaws snapped twice wide with sarcasm. “Would you believe, it seems some of us are harboring Mrem spies in our midst?”

  Now wide-eyed, Zuluku stared down at Nurat Merav. The notion that the badly injured Mrem female was a spy—and what would she have spied upon, anyway?—was ludicrous. But . . .

  They were indeed harboring a Mrem in their midst.

  “What do we do?” she asked Njekwa. Her voice didn’t . . . quite . . . squeak with fear.

  Say what you would about the priestess, she had steady nerves. In times of crisis like this, whatever doubts about her the young females might have, they instinctively looked to Njekwa for guidance and leadership.

  The priestess studied Nurat Merav for a moment. “If she can move at all, you need to take her out of the camp. Her and her younglings, all of them.”

  “Take them where?” That question came from Raish, who was now squatting by the pile also, along with Selani, the third of the young Liskash females who’d been tending to Nurat Merav.

  Litunga jerked her head toward the wall of the yurt facing north. “There is a grove not too far away, and a small gully that l
eads most of the way to it. Once night falls, you can move them through the gully and hide them in the woods.”

  Raish glanced at the entrance flap, as if to reassure herself that it was still closed and no one could see inside the yurt. “Can we wait that long?”

  “I think so,” said Njekwa. “The search for supposed spies is starting at the other end of the camp, among the warriors and their yurts. It will take the inspectors half the night before they come this far. They may not even try to search this side of the camp until tomorrow.”

  “They might search the grove too, then,” said Zuluku.

  “They will almost certainly search the grove,” said Litunga. “We were told they were searching anywhere in the army’s vicinity where spies might be hiding.”

  Zuluku looked down at the Mrem. “She might—probably can—make it as far as the grove. But then . . .”

  Njekwa gave her a sidelong look. “And so now you finally realize that recklessness has its own reward? Stupid child. The ‘but then’ is obvious. Once you get to the grove—all of you, not just the mammals—you and Raish and Selani will have to carry her away on a litter.”

  The three young females looked at each other. “Carry her away, where?” asked Raish.

  Again, Njekwa issued a derisive whistle. “How should I know? The camp is too dangerous. I suggest you try to find her own people, wherever they might be, and hand her back into their care.”

  “But—”

  Zuluku looked down at Nurat Merav. The Mrem was obviously trying to follow the discussion but having a hard time of it.

  “Where your people are,” Zuluku said to her. Then, remembering the lilt at the end of a phrase that the Mrem used to indicate a question, she rephrased the intonation: “Where your people are?”

  Nurat Merav’s face got scrunched up the way Zuluku had come to recognize was the Mrem way of indicating puzzlement and uncertainty. “Don’t know. Most were captured. Killed. The rest . . .”

  The mammalian face-scrunch got more pronounced. “Don’t know your word.” She raised her hands and made little fluttering gestures with her fingers. “Like straw in wind.”