Trying not to damage the fragile creature further, he worked its chest in and out, hoping human and kzin lungs were similar.
“Truce! Truce!” The female gasped. Sergeant was irritated. He, a Hero, did not need to be reminded of such things. Then he saw the male human beside him.
“I do that,” said the male human. “Heroes better at fighting.”
The female's torn costume was stained with spreading blood. She had some deep lacerations. The male tore it open and sprayed her with something that stopped the bleeding, though it seemed nearly exhausted. Sergeant thought the male would have done at least as well to use it on itself.
“Can you walk?” it asked the female.
“Yes, I think so.”
“Go. 14-K. The third north tunnel. You'll come to a marker. Tell them to use plan Marigold. Go. Hurry. I will delay them.”
“No. You have no chance. If the morlocks don't get you, the kzin will.”
“Go, Leonie. Those are my orders.”
The female put her arms around the male for a moment, made a peculiar sound, and staggered away in the characteristic shuffling run of an injured thing that screamed to every one of Sergeant's hunting instincts for a pouncing strike. He fought them down. He heard her for a minute in the tunnel, and then the rustle of morlocks among the complications of the roof again, as well as a chinking noise which he now recognized as meaning they were carrying the heavy calcite crystal missiles. There was no more fighting at the amphitheater, only the morlock rustling, and no lights but their own. Well, it had simply been a place to die in, not much better or worse than any other in these caves. He could just make out the human.
“Can you see me?” he asked.
“A little,” said the human. “A thing in the dark. I see your eyes. A little while ago I would have feared the sight of kzin eyes in the dark more than all fears. Now…”
“Others dead.” said Sergeant.
“Does kitten still live?”
“If morlocks not kill it, kitten alive.”
“Now it is just us,” said the human. “If the truce between us holds, I intend to buy time.”
“Time? For what?”
“For Leonie to escape. There is another thing. When we found the kzinrett kitten—I will not lie to you—I would have killed it. Leonie stopped me.”
“Why?”
“Partly she hates all killing, though she is a good fighter. Yes, she hates killing even kzin. Partly, she had seen young kzin and human ferals sharing a cave. She hoped… well, she hoped for something I think impossible. But for her sake I will say that I fight to defend the kitten as well. And if you live, Kzin, tell your kind that monkeys have Honor too.”
“You tell them.” Try to keep the creature's spirit up, he thought. “Live for your Leonie Manrret.”
“I am wounded. Getting old if my treatments stop. Weak now. Lucky to have lived so long. Lucky not to have died in these caves long ago. Lucky to have a few geriatric drugs. Lucky see many sunrises. Lucky Leonie may live. Many friends dead. Not ask for too much.”
A cloud of morlocks struck them, burying them under a heap of bodies, biting jaws, striking stones. Sergeant ripped and slashed his way out of the heap, turned, and dragged the human free. He turned and swam into the morlocks with a scream, and scattered them. There was his beam rifle, its stock-lights glowing yellow, but still with some heat left in it. He fired it at point-blank range, heedless of the exploding stone. They fought together till the human collapsed and the bodies were piled high.
Sergeant leaped to the top of the heap of bodies. His beam rifle was exhausted now, but he had his w'tsai and his teeth and claws. At his feet the blood-soaked human had partially revived and was still using its knife.
The morlocks were gathering again, and there was movement among the formations of the cave roof above. For the moment they were holding back, but plainly their numbers were gathering. The situation, he realized, was hopeless. He would go to the Fanged God this day. Well, thanks to the Leonie human it was a far better death than it might have been pinned under the rock. No Hero should ask for more than to die in battle. He began to chant Lord Chmee's Last Battle Hymn as he slashed. The morlocks drew back a moment, and the human spoke.
“So we die together, cat and monkey.”
True, and no point in raising false hopes of life now. “Have you a human 'name'?” One should know who or what one died with.
“Rykermann. Nils Rykermann. A 'Professor' went in front of it once. And you?”
“Sergeant.”
“Sergeant. I see. So that is how important we are? They sent a Sergeant to flush us out.”
“Platoon Officer died on the wire. Many Heroes dead. Many monkeys will pay. Urrr.”
“But you saved Leonie?”
“The female? She spared young one. Helped me. Is debt, even to female. I do not know if she lives but she has chance. Urrr.”
“I will remember that.”
“You will not have long life to remember, I think. But maybe you go to your monkey-god.”
The human staggered to its feet. It leaned heavily on a stalagmite column. It was deeply bitten and lacerated, bone showing near both its shoulders. Cloth bound some of its wounds but not all. It could have little blood left.
“I was going to end truce and kill us both with this,” said the human, producing a nitrate bomb. “But I will spend it to buy her more time. She may get away.” It armed and threw the bomb in a single movement.
Sergeant went down in his explosion reflex. The human went down more slowly. Sergeant had a moment to screw his ears tightly shut before the pressure waves in that confined space burst them. He thought for a moment that the blast would bring down the whole cave roof. Even with his ears closed, he was deafened, and he thought the deafness was permanent until he strained his ears and one by one he heard sounds return: the stream, the human's panting breath, distant feet far up tunnels, rustling and slithering. It was right for a kzin at the point of death to reflect upon his life. His had been short and nameless, but, he hoped, not shameful. The human's head was sinking down onto its chest. It was still bleeding copiously from its many wounds. Perhaps as soon as it died he should eat it to give himself strength for his last stand, though it would have little blood left. Fumes clearing. He knew exhaustion had nearly finished him. No sound of the enemy for a time, only the breathing of the two of them.
A rustling, repeated like an echo.
“Morlocks return,” he said.
The human raised its head.
“Come then. Let us show them what cat and monkey can do.”
They came again against the two screaming, blood-soaked sapients. The human fought until it went down and Sergeant glimpsed morlocks ripping at its flesh again. Then they were upon him. His w'tsai was gone. His claws were so clogged with morlock flesh and tissue now that his swipes at them were almost ineffectual. Blows on the head and shoulders, heavy blows of rocks. He leaped forward but his knees gave way at last and he fell. They smothered him, biting, tearing, hammering.
Modern lamps blazed out. Sergeant closed his eyes in time not to lose his night vision. He contracted his pupils to slits and when he opened them again saw morlocks blundering about, burning and falling, as half a Company of kzin infantry, Hroarh-Officer at their head, fired into them with short, professional bursts of dialed-down plasma guns, backed up with beam rifles. There were no morlocks left to attack them from above. The multitude of kzinti's lights flooded the cave.
He leaped forward to join the battle, but stumbled again and fell in a pool of blood. It was, he could tell, kzin blood, mingled with human and much morlock. Further, he could tell that the kzin component was his own. His circulatory system was banging emptily. His wounds must have nearly bled him out. He tried to rise and could not. He groped for the Caller on his belt which would alert any medical personnel, perhaps before he died.
“Most of the morlocks died here,” said Hroarh-Officer. “Your Heroes accounted for many eights-squ
ared. You held the biggest morlock force. And I see you accounted for many personally. Urrr.” He pulled some of the clotted tissue from Sergeant's claws. For an officer to do that was a compliment worth having.
He was in considerable pain, including the monstrous headache of a telepath's probing. He knew the reason for that: as the sole survivor of his platoon there must be no possibility that he had been cowardly in battle. He had evidently passed the test. Had cowardice been found in him he would be either dead or in much worse pain: It was one of the things that destroyed even the most decorous kzin's inhibitions against torture.
“Humans too, Honored Hroarh-Officer,” said Sergeant. He meant both that the humans had accounted for morlocks and that his Heroes had accounted for many humans. Hroarh-Officer surveyed the carnage with some satisfaction. He sprayed a little urine over Sergeant in a gesture of pleasure and approval.
“You have some human ears to collect for your trophy belt,” Hroarh-Officer said. “And there will be heads for the NCOs' Mess. You have behaved with guile, but Telepath reports that you were by no means backward in the fighting. In using humans and morlocks against each other, you displayed a knowledge of human behavior and the ability to turn it to our advantage. Chuut-Riit will be pleased. It will vindicate him on the value of Thinking Soldiers. And of humans, for that matter. Some day we may use humans to do more fighting for us… Kfrashaka-Admiral and his pride may…” He bit off his words. Even in post-battle relaxation, there was only so much fit to say before a Sergeant.
“At least that will be something for Chuut-Riit to be pleased about,” he went on. “There is not much else. Not many others have done well. We lost a lot to their stinking wires, and those dung-bombs and other things, screaming and charging straight into traps. Nor did the Staff expect morlocks to be so feral and numerous. Urrr, they have paid for that mistake! Morlocks got to Battalion Forward Headquarters after humans lured the guards away! Then humans used dung bombs on the lot of them. There will be many promotions. Urrr.”
Despite his words, Hroarh-Officer did not seem enraged. Rather, the emotions Sergeant detected were those of a kzintosh assessing a new and by no means disagreeable situation. After any serious fight there tended to be vacancies for promotions, and this one had evidently been more serious than anticipated. Sergeant realized he himself had seen only a little of it. Hroarh-Officer appeared to have acceded to battalion command. No doubt that and the satisfaction of wading into recent slaughter contributed to his benign mood. He too had new ears on his belt. “When we return here we will be better prepared,” said Hroarh-Officer.
Chuut-Riit will approve of that, thought Sergeant. He will approve of Hroarh-Officer, too.
“It will take a long campaign to clear out these caves thoroughly,” said Hroarh-Officer, lashing his tail. “Beyond the pictures of our radar we have found new tunnels and galleries we did not know of. The morlocks have taken a fierce and praiseworthy slashing here, but they breed fast, and we have not got all the humans by any means. It will be good training for the new Troopers, and it would be good if there were Heroes whose valor and blood-lust we could point to especially… There has been hard fighting here.”
“Yes, Honored Hroarh-Officer.”
“Hard fighting… Urrr… a campaign like this needs special Heroes. Exemplars… You have done well. You may dry the new ears for your belt at the battalion Kzirzarrgh,” he added solemnly.
Hroarh-Officer turned to the dying human. There was another important formality to be settled, which the scattered swaths of dead had raised. Hroarh-Officer asked Sergeant: “Is this monkey entitled to Fighter's Privileges?”
“Yes, Dominant One.” Hroarh-Officer must have known this from Telepath's report, since the human was still uneaten and possessed its ears, but Sergeant's voluntary confirmation was necessary. Fighter's Privileges entitled a worthy enemy not only to dignified consumption or other disposal or display of his remains after death, but, in the case of a dying enemy, the granting of any reasonable last request. Hroarh-Officer bent over the human, putting this to him in his own mixture of Wunderlander vocabulary and Heroes' grammar.
Sergeant watched him, wondering vaguely what request a human in such circumstances might make that a kzin officer could satisfy. He could not move closer, being held in a medical web. A box on his chest stimulated his muscles as military circulatory fluid was pumped into him. He had been wounded before and knew better than to attempt great movement. Indeed, at that moment he could hardly turn his head. The bone-baring wounds on his neck and shoulders had been sewn up and salved and would make admirable scars.
When the human replied its voice was too weak for Sergeant to catch what it said. But Hroarh-Officer seemed to understand. His tail stiffened as if in anger for a moment, and he raised a claw as if for a slash. Then he relaxed. “Iss bekomess rreasssonibble. Urrr,” he grated out, as much as he could not in the slaves' patois but the difficult human tongue. Then he waved to Medical Orderly, who had finished attending to the kzinrett and the other wounded and injured, to come forward. Perhaps the human would respond to kzin medical treatment, and if in the circumstances it lived it would be spared this time. So be it. Lying in the bracing smell of Hroarh-Officer's urine Sergeant was almost content. He would mourn his comrades later. But they had died acceptably.
Hroarh-Officer squatted beside Sergeant as the human was carried away. “It is suitable that he asked for treatment,” Sergeant said. “That one should not die before his time. Not at the hands of morlocks. I will have his head for the Mess one day.”
“It did not ask for treatment. That is an ordinary part of Fighter's Privileges,” said Hroarh-Officer. “It asked for another thing.
“It is a little irregular and will need to come officially from me, but seeing what has transpired here I believe it will be considered fitting to grant it, Raargh-Sergeant.”
Music Box
“I do not know whether you are my friend or my foe, but I should count it my honour to have you as either. Has not one of the poets said that a noble friend is the best gift and a noble enemy the next best?”
- C. S. Lewis
“A promise made under duress doesn't count, that's the law.
But this is East and South of Suez, where there is no law.”
- The Katzenjammer Kids
“Is it not joyful to have friends come from a far land?”
- Confucius
Chapter 1
2425 a.d.
The kzin screamed and leaped.
The gagrumpher was a young one, lagging a little behind the herd, half-asleep on its feet in the warm forenoon. The kzin landed on its back, above its middle pair of legs. The centauroid reared up, shrieking. The gagrumpher herd wheeled, the males charging back.
But the gagrumpher's rearing had brought its throat in range of the feline's razor fangs. The kzin swung its jaws, slashing. There was time for one crushing bite at the neck bones, and it was down, racing for the trees like an orange shadow a second before the gagrumpher bull-males arrived.
The wounded gagrumpher stood for a moment, blood jetting, then it collapsed, its oxygen-starved brain already dying, though its rear legs kicked for some time under the instinctual commands of the dorsal ganglial knot.
The males could not pursue the predator into the trees, and as they stood in a bellowing group, the snarl of another kzin tore the air on the opposite side of the clearing, between them and the rest of the herd. They could not leave the females and the other juveniles unguarded. They hastened back, and the herd moved on.
The body of the adolescent became still in its pool of blood as the dorsal ganglia died. A colony of leather-flappers that had risen shrieking into the sky returned to their trees, and the forest settled down again to its own affairs.
Warily, two kzin approached the kill. The killer, like its prey, was a youngster, showing a mixture of kitten spots and adolescent stripes against its bright orange fur. The other was older—much older. There was gray at its muzzle, one eye a
nd one arm were artificial, its ears were torn shreds and the fur at its neck and shoulders grew raggedly over a complex of scar tissue. The youngster kept watch as the elder kzin lowered its great head and lapped the blood, then crouched and lapped in turn.
The forest was quiet again. They ate undisturbed.
“That was a good kill, Vaemar,” the elder kzin said. He gave the youngster a grooming lick.
“Thank you, Raargh-Hero. But I doubt I could handle an adult yet. And it was a stupid one to lag behind the herd in this close country.”
“Then you have seen the fate of the stupid. You feel nothing in the ground?”
“Feet. Distant enough.”
“Gagrumpher feet?”
“Yes. I think so.” The pattern of the gagrumpher's centauroid footfalls could never be mistaken for those of a quadruped, but many of Wunderland's native life-forms were centauroid.
“Are they approaching or receding?
“I think… I think they are still receding.”
“Be sure, be very sure. The males could be returning quietly through the cover.”
“They do not sound heavy.”
“Nor would they, to your senses yet, if they put their feet down slowly. They are very different things, leaping on the back of a dreaming youngster, and looking up to see a dozen charging adult males. You do not want to be under those forelegs when they rear up. I have heard some humans made the skins of our kind into what they call rrrugz. Adult gagrumphers can do the same more quickly.”
“They are moving away, Raargh-Hero, I am sure of it now.”
“Indeed. Do you know why they move away?”
“No.”
“The males know we are here. Their usual response would be—I will not say of such clumsy and noisy herbivores to 'stalk' us—but to attempt to take us by surprise. If they are moving away, it is for a reason. Perhaps some other enemy approaches.
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