By Tooth and Claw

by S. M. Stirling

  * * *

  Unfortunately, two good meals also seemed to have recovered the rest of Unwal’s arrogance and authority.

  “Foolish Mrem!” Unwal scoffed when Sherril made fulsome farewells, almost bowing himself into the dirt with his deep bows. “Of course you can’t leave!”

  “We must go, Great General” Sherril said. “We have a long journey ahead of us.”

  “That is of no importance to me.”

  “We’ve shown your soldiers where to gather wholesome food,” Sherril said, keeping his tone polite but firm. “We have demonstrated how to prepare and cook everything we gathered. They now have the skills they need to make your lives more comfortable until your new home is ready. You don’t need us any longer.”

  Unwal narrowed his beady eyes.

  “I need my soldiers to defend me and my people,” he said. “You are Mrem, and therefore of a lower order than Liskash. You will gather more food for us tomorrow, and the day after, and the day after that! I order you to build up our stores in preparation for my brother’s return. He will be very pleased with me that I have obtained for him such a gift.”

  “General, we must go. Thank you for your . . . hospitality. Farewell.”

  “No!” Unwal glared at him. He clenched his fist and turned it fingers-upward. Sherril felt as though that fist had taken hold of his throat. He clutched at his neck. The invisible fingers squeezed tighter.

  “No more argument. Now, we sleep. Guards!”

  “But, General!” Sherril gasped out.

  Unwal gestured outward with his fist. Sherril fell backward into the arms of the soldiers. They dragged him to his feet and herded him back at spear point to where the others were waiting. More guards, still well-decorated with scraps from their feasting, converged upon them and tied tough, braided quirts around their ankles, hobbling them so they couldn’t walk normally. The Mrem fought against the binding, but the Liskash had them well outnumbered. As many as eight of them sat on Petru at once to keep him still until he was bound.

  Once the Mrem had been secured, a fist of the lizards pulled back to a safe distance where they could keep an eye on them. The Mrem glared at their captors.

  “So, the dagger emerges from the scabbard,” Taadar whispered.

  “This is how it begins,” Bireena said, her voice dead and hopeless. “They will keep us until we are useless. Then they will kill us or send us to another Liskash stronghold.”

  “We won’t be captive for long,” Petru said. A flame of indignation burned deep in his belly. It was bad enough the general had destroyed his precious glitters, but to presume to keep them captive was outrageous. “You have my word on that!”

  “This is your fault,” Sherril chided Petru. “If you had not made palatable food, we could have been on your way by now.”

  “I would not shame myself by cooking swill.”

  “At least we are alive,” Scaro said. “If he means to keep us as a workforce, we will find another means of escape. They are slow of wit as well as of foot. They can’t keep us long.”

  “Assirra is with us,” Nolda assured them. “Keep your wits about you.”

  Bireena shot a look of sympathy at Scaro, whose respiration was by then so labored that every breath was audible. Petru knew what she was thinking. The drillmaster was ill. Who knew which others among them would fall prey to the disease?

  Toward night, they were given river water and what scraps remained of the feast that Petru had prepared. They were not allowed privacy for personal hygiene. Instead, they took turns going behind the tree to which their ankles were bound and burying their excrement in piles of leaves. Scaro went last. They could smell what he had squatted out for a long time afterward.

  When darkness arose, Petru waited. The Liskash could not see in the dark as well as they could. From the thick fur around his neck, he removed the small package of herbs. With flat stones he had taken from the hearth, he ground the leaves together. There was no time for niceties such as precise measurements. His granddam’s combination would have to do as it was. He soaked the green mash in a cup of murky water and waited for it to steep. Scaro slept noisily on the ground beside him. Petru sniffed the mixture from time to time. At last it was ready to drink.

  He nudged Scaro gently awake.

  The drillmaster was instantly on guard. His muscles tautened. Petru held him down to the ground with one meaty arm. Scaro sniffed through his stuffy nose, then relaxed when he recognized the scent of the valet’s perfumed fur.

  “What is wrong?” he asked in a scratchy whisper. If Petru hadn’t had a Mrem’s hearing, far more keen than the Liskash with holes in the sides of their heads instead of proper ears, they might have heard him.

  “Drink this,” Petru murmured, pushing the clay cup into Scaro’s hand and closing his fingers around it.

  Scaro nodded. He curled himself around the cup to conceal his action from the pair of Liskash that walked around and around them in opposite directions.

  Petru waited until the second dino’s legs flashed past him in the moonlight.

  “Pah!” An explosion of breath came from the drillmaster. “It tastes terrible!”

  “It’s powerful medicine,” Petru whispered. “It will make you better, but you need this twice or more a day over the next four days at least.”

  Scaro moaned softly, his arms wrapped around his gut.

  “If I live.”

  “You must,” a small voice said to them in the darkness. “You must live to lead us home. The goddess sent me a dream. You were at the head of a march of triumph.”

  Both of them looked toward Nolda, curled up in exhaustion with her back against a tree trunk. Her eyes were open and gleaming in the moonlight. Scaro swallowed audibly.

  “I will, Your Sinuousness. I promise. But if I start to show the madness, kill me quickly. I do not wish to put you in peril.”

  “You have my word,” Nolda said seriously. “The gods will welcome you into their arms. But I hope we are free before anything so terrible must happen.”

  * * *

  “This is absurd,” Petru said. General Unwal stared at him from his backless camp seat which he treated like a throne. They had been rousted at dawn the next morning and dragged before the Liskash commander. “We are only eight. How can we possibly gather enough food to satisfy your entire group day after day? Let some of your women and children assist us. We will teach them how to find ripe fruit and catch birds.”

  Unwal lifted a finger. Petru braced himself for the strangulation. Instead, a heavy blow struck Petru from behind. He staggered, but managed to catch himself. The second, however, knocked him to his knees.

  “What are . . . ?” he began.

  The blows rained down endlessly upon his back and legs. He threw his arms over his head to protect it. From the crook of his elbow, he saw Captain Horisi wielding a knobby branch. Petru rolled to avoid the next strike. He sprang to his feet and darted behind the general’s chair.

  The pair of bodyguards grabbed for him. They were so slow he could have run rings around them, but he feared for the safety of his fellows.

  “What are you doing?” he demanded, dodging to and fro. “You may not mistreat me. I am Lord Petru!”

  “Slaves that question orders are beaten,” the general said, in his flat voice. “Your so-called lordship means nothing here.”

  “I claim my right from the gods themselves!” Petru said, hoping that Aedonniss wouldn’t strike him dead for his presumption. “They will smite you for daring to harm me.”

  The guards made for him. He dodged them a pass or two longer, but one hooked his hobble-strap with a spear. Petru fell flat on the ground. The dinos surrounded him, beating him with the ends of their polearms. Petru bore the blows with gritted teeth. Ignoring the pain of his bruises, he picked himself up and glared into their faces.

  “I will remember every blow,” he hissed. “And I will have my revenge.”

  “Your threats are empty,” Unwal said, not bothering to
turn around. “Take them!”

  * * *

  “Your revenge,” Sherril spat, as they were herded downstream toward the marshes and thrust into the shallows where the racano plants lay. “We’re trapped! All we can do is protect the Dancer and hope for rescue.”

  “I prefer to believe in Nolda’s dream,” Petru said, with a slight bow to the Dancer herself. “I am keeping my eyes open for our chance.”

  Sherril threw up his hands in disgust. Two guards, the grayface from the previous day and a yellow-faced dino in a patched uniform, nudged him from behind with their spears. He made his way gingerly into the shallows and began to feel underneath the leaves for the round green fruit. Bireena waded in without being urged. She wouldn’t risk getting a beating. With immense dignity, Nolda followed her and began to pick fruit.

  Petru’s attention was not on his angry companion or the females, but on the guards behind them. They had rheumy eyes. A green discharge dripped from their ugly nostrils. Their voices, when they shouted orders, were muted, and they coughed incessantly. One kept retreating behind a tree to squat.

  When they were herded together to return to the camp, Petru whispered his news to the others.

  “They have caught the fever!” he exclaimed. Sherril hushed him.

  “Nonsense!” Sherril said. “How could they catch our disease? We are not the same species. The raw bird they ate yesterday must have disagreed with them. Or your terrible cooking has twisted their guts. The sickness is just catching up with them now.”

  “It is the fever, I say,” Petru insisted. “My granddam would tell you. The symptoms are in her diary! There are illnesses she wrote about that affect all creatures that come into contact with them, although they are affected in different ways. It looks as though this spreads to Liskash and Mrem alike. But it seems to come on with them much faster than it does in us. Hmm.” He couldn’t keep himself from smiling.

  “How can that possibly help us?” Taadar asked. He, too, had begun sniffling.

  “It will help us to stay alive,” Petru said. “Perhaps long enough.”

  “Long enough for what?” Bireena asked, her expression one of bemusement.

  “Long enough to outlive them,” Petru said.

  * * *

  But waiting was not easy or safe. Petru fought as he was dragged forward and thrown to the ground before General Unwal. He pulled himself upright and brushed at his beautiful coat with irritated strokes. The scrawny dino pointed at the sagging nets on the back of the carrier beast.

  “Eight birds? That is not enough food for all my people! You have failed to follow my orders!”

  “We gathered all we could in the time we were given,” Petru said. “My Mrem held nothing back. Do you accuse us of theft?”

  As if a wall fell upon him, a mighty force struck him to his knees. Petru struggled to get free from those holding him down. He realized in horror that no living creature was touching him. The general stood above him. He held nothing in his hands but power. Madness caused his flat eyes to gleam.

  “Tomorrow, if you fail to bring us enough to eat, you will be the roast on the spit.”

  * * *

  “It’s been four days, Talonmaster,” Fistmaster Emoro Awr said. “The foraging party ought to have come back yesterday.”

  The grizzled fistmaster crouched before the senior officer in his tent. Bau Dibsea looked poorly, in Emoro’s eyes. He must have been sickening up, too.

  “One day’s delay is not enough to worry me,” Bau said. “Why are you concerned?”

  “You know Petru. He fears for the Dancers’ lives. He knew what he needed to make them better. He would hurry back as quickly as he could move and prepare his medicine. I am sure that something has happened to him. Them.”

  “There’s nothing we can do about it, Fistmaster,” Bau said peevishly. “We can’t send out searchers. There are barely enough of us still standing to protect us against a Liskash incursion.”

  Emoro lowered his gaze slightly.

  “It isn’t just me. Young Ysella came to me. She is still well and fit. She’s put together a group of her apprentice Dancers. They are supple and strong, and it wouldn’t hurt to have those favored by the gods with me. They are prepared to go in search of Petru. He has always been kind to them.”

  “Spoiled them within a pad’s width of her life, you mean,” Bau said, but his tone was indulgent. “I can’t risk the lives of our only healthy Dancers.”

  “Young Gilas wants to come as well. He would do anything for Ysella. I know it’s not much, Talonmaster, but I have a feeling something went wrong. We must bring them back. Lady Cleotra is fading away, Talonmaster. We need Petru’s cure.”

  Bau sighed. His breathing sounded labored. He needed the cure himself. Emoro had found his own throat was getting a little scratchy over the last few days. How long until he was raving and lying in his own muck? He feared that finding Petru was the clan’s only hope of surviving. At last, Bau nodded.

  “Very well, Emoro. Go, but return safely, and soon!”

  * * *

  Petru woke on the fourth morning, annoyed. He had had a terrifying dream in which he ran from the sickbed of one Dancer to another, watching each of them die of the fever. The labored breathing and coughing was getting no better. He rolled over and poked Scaro in the side. The drillmaster flipped over suddenly, glaring at Petru.

  “Isn’t the potion helping?” Petru asked in a low voice.

  “A little, valet,” the drillmaster whispered. “I can breathe a bit. And I’m not so weak as I’ve been.”

  “Then why are you still coughing and sneezing?”

  “It’s not me,” Scaro said in surprise.

  A fit of sneezing erupted. Both of them turned their heads toward the noise. One of the guards sat on a stump a few Mrem-lengths away. His flat black eyes were filmy. He brushed slime from his nostrils with the sleeve of his coat.

  “Well, that’s a pleasant sight,” Petru whispered. “A pity we can’t do anything to make it worse.”

  “Yes, we can,” Sherril said with a feral grin. “We will take vengeance for our own entrapment and the many Mrem they enslaved over the centuries.”

  Bireena’s eyes gleamed at that last.

  “How, Councilor?”

  “With the tool we have at hand,” Sherril said. He turned to Scaro. “Drillmaster, I have a special assignment for you today.”

  While they hunted in the marshland, Scaro pushed his meager strength to the uttermost. He made certain to touch or breathe on every Liskash in the company at least once during the day. When he felt a sneeze coming on, he ensured that one or more of the soldiers was in range of his explosion of mucus. If he wasn’t coughing or sneezing, he made certain to touch or fall on them, making them touch him. Petru watched Scaro’s antics with growing pleasure. Within hours, nearly every Liskash displayed one or more symptoms of the fever. It seemed that every one of the dinos, including the beasts of burden were coughing or sneezing. The ones watching the Mrem hunt were almost tottering with weakness. Where the Mrem had a certain immunity garnered over the years, the Liskash had none. And the fever took hold with tight talons. By midmorning, several of them were wheezing. Captain Horisi was dehydrated and shitting himself behind every tree. The Mrem pretended to see nothing as they worked.

  “Hold there!” cried the grayface guard, pointing a trembling finger at Taadar. “That one is armed. Take him! Tie him up!”

  The young warrior struggled in the grasp of three sniffling soldiers.

  “I have nothing but kivor leaves,” Taadar insisted, holding them out. “Take them. I mean no harm.”

  “A knife! He intends to slit our bellies!” the grayface shrieked. Petru came over to investigate the fuss. He took the leaves from Taadar and sprinkled them on the ground.

  “Look here, Captain. Nothing. Calm yourself.”

  The guard bounded away from Petru and disappeared among the trees.

  “They will kill us!”

  On the way bac
k to the camp, they saw the body of the grayface. He had collapsed in a heap on the path and died, a look of terror on his face. Petru kicked the body as they passed it.

  General Unwal marched over to Petru and struck him across the muzzle with the back of his hand.

  “What happened to my soldier?” he demanded. “Have you bewitched us all? How did you kill my man? Was it some kind of Mrem magic?”

  “I have no power,” Petru said. He ignored the blow, holding himself tall and looking the officer straight in his eyes. “Perhaps the privations of the last weeks left him vulnerable to illness.”

  “That skinny one has been sick since we took you all,” Unwal said, pointing at Scaro. “He must have infected my soldiers!”

  “How could it be the same illness?” Petru asked. “We are Mrem and you are Liskash. Scaro has not gone mad, and he still lives. Your soldier must have been suffering before our arrival.”

  “My men are coughing and sneezing as he was. Only my power keeps me from having the same symptoms!”

  “And have you no doctors? Hmph!” He shook his head in scorn. “I should have known Liskash were too far removed from nature to know anything of value! I am a herbalist of some repute among my people. Let me go out later to gather plants to make medicine.”

  “See that you do!” Unwal thundered. His skinny purple body juddered as a sneeze took him. He clutched his sides with his thin hands. “I will be watching you! Now, bring me food!” Petru turned to hide his smile. The general’s symptoms were coming on rapidly. He pointed at his volunteer workforce.

  “You, you and you! Begin to gut those frogs and thread them on the spit!”

  Nolda sidled up to Petru as he went to oversee the females plucking the handful of geese that Taadar and Imrun had captured. The rest of the Liskash were so lethargic that they weren’t crowding up to steal fruit or meat.

  “You won’t give them the cure, will you?” the Dancer asked. Petru was devastated to see that her eyes were becoming filmy. Because of the beatings and hard work, they were all susceptible to the fever.

  “Never, Priestess,” Petru vowed. “Not if they kill me. But I must cook and not be cooked. A pity that a nourishing meal might help them to stave off the fever.”