Perhaps oddly, what Chefer Kolkin found most unsettling about them was how little they ate. More precisely, how little they ate most of the time—and how much they gorged when they did finally sit down for what they considered a real meal.
There hadn’t been any of that on this expedition, though. The similarity between Liskash and true reptiles was most evident after they’d gorged themselves. The next day, they were almost as torpid as a snake who’d swallowed whole prey. They weren’t very active the following day, either.
In the safety and comfort of the Krek’s eyrie, that hadn’t been a problem. But it was clear to Chefer Kolkin that Nabliz had ordered his warriors to refrain from any heavy eating on this expedition. They couldn’t afford to waste a day or two just digesting a big meal. So, they made do on what the Liskash seemed to consider light rations—which, from Chefer Kolkin’s point of view, barely qualified as snacks.
For the first time in his life, the Mrem warrior was contemplating the idea that perhaps there were some advantages to being a Liskash instead of a Mrem. The notion was unsettling, of course. But he was an experienced warrior and a proficient scout, and it was a simple fact that for all their grumpiness in the morning, the Liskash were covering at least as much ground as a party of Mrem were—in part, because they weren’t laden down with the heavy packs that a Mrem needed to carry his food in these barren highlands.
As Chefer Kolkin did. And the pack chafed. Especially in the morning.
True be told, he was feeling pretty peevish himself.
Lavi Tur
As it happened, a Mrem still too young to be a warrior was contemplating the same idea. In his case, though, without the irritation of a heavy pack weighting him down since he was walking alongside the litter carrying what few possessions his Mrem band had retained when they joined the Kororo and—never let it be said that diplomacy didn’t have its uses—Achia Pazik had persuaded the Kororo to give them two beasts of burden to do the work of hauling those possessions.
True, the beasts had their full share of reptilian sullenness at this high altitude. You had to be careful not to place your feet when they could step on them or the rest of your body where they could nip you. Surly brutes.
But they didn’t smell bad—they hardly seemed to defecate, either—and a bit of wariness was far less tiring than hard labor, when you got right down to it.
Lavi Tur also had the benefit of his age. He’d often been irritated by the limits that age placed upon him. But he also lacked the much deeper irritation of a full life spent being limited by experience. His mind could range freely; more than those of most Mrem.
So, he was contemplating the possibility that the very nature of the Liskash could, at least in some circumstances, give them a mental advantage over Mrem. Less able to deal with reality by the use of sheer vigor, perhaps they compensated to a degree with reflection and meditation. A Mrem had to remind himself to look before he leapt; to measure before he cut; to think twice before he acted. To a Liskash, those things came rather naturally.
This much he had concluded so far, in the manner that brash youth sniff disdainfully at the stolid certainties of their elders: even from what little Achia Pazik had translated for him, it was clear to Lavi Tur that the Kororo creed was far more sophisticated than the one he’d been raised within.
When you got right down to it, Mrem tribal beliefs—he thought they barely qualified as religion—were child-like. Downright silly, in many cases.
From what little he knew of them, he thought traditional Liskash creeds were no more sophisticated, and probably even less.
The teachings and beliefs of the Kororo, on the other hand…
The day before, Achia Pazik had explained to him that the old Kororo priest (or was he a shaman? possibly even a sorcerer?) named Meshwe did not believe any gods were real. Not, at least, in the way that the Mrem envisioned Aedonnis and Assirra—as real beings, who could not be seen simply because they were so gigantic and powerful that their forms fell beyond mortal vision.
Meshwe didn’t believe in any of the Liskash gods, either—even though the Liskash had far more of them than did the Mrem. They had gods or goddesses for everything, it seemed. Achia Pazik had told him of some of them:
Huwute, the sun goddess.
Ishtala, the moon god.
Ghammid, the god of good fortune.
Yasinta, the goddess of the evening.
Morushken, the goddess of thrift. She also seemed to be a deity given to pity and compassion, but those aspects were less prominent. The Liskash had a thrifty sense of mercy, apparently. As an almost-warrior, Lavi Tur didn’t really disapprove.
But however many deities the Liskash professed to believe in, the creed of the Kororo was that none of them were truly real. They were simply manifestations of what they called “the Godhead,” produced by the inherent limits of mortal minds. In the very nature of things, neither Liskash nor Mrem could grasp divinity in its full and complete splendor. So, mortals essentially invented “gods and goddesses” as a means of comprehending at least some of the aspects of divinity—and those, only poorly and in part.
Meshwe had told Achia Pazik that mortals were like insects trying to grasp the nature of a Liskash. (Or a Mrem, he had added, perhaps out of politeness.) With their poor vision, able to see only a portion of a Liskash at a time, they would come up with the idea that there was “a toe goddess” and a “claw god.” And they would imagine those toes and claws in their own insectile manner.
Lavi Tur had no idea if Meshwe and the other Liskash priests were right in their beliefs. What he did know was that those beliefs were far more interesting than the tales of Aedonnis and Assirra.
What a marvelous adventure this was turning out to be!
Chapter 9
Nurat Merav
“Are we finished with the mountains?” Nurat Merav asked weakly. The past few days had been very hard on her. Despite the best efforts of the young Liskash females who’d been sheltering her and her kits, the rigors of travel through rough terrain had almost killed her. So it felt, anyway.
Twice, they’d had to dismantle the yurt completely, since the trail was too steep for the big draft animals that normally carried it perched on a great litter. Too narrow, rather—the beasts were immensely strong and surefooted, but they had to be able to march two abreast to carry the litter. During those periods, Zuluku and the other females had concealed Nurat Merav within a great rolled bundle carried by one of the animals.
They’d been warm, at least. But the constant jolting had been stressful, and the lack of food even worse. It seemed that during times like this, Liskash simply went without eating for two days or even more. They’d made up for it when they reached the plateau by preparing a great feast.
While that sort of regimen might have suited the reptiles well enough, it was not good for Mrem, even healthy ones. For someone trying to recover from injuries like Nurat Merav’s, it was far worse.
She hadn’t complained, though. She knew the reason the female Liskash hadn’t fed her during those periods was because they couldn’t. At Zilikazi’s order, all foodstuffs and cooking equipment and implements had been stored away. They’d most likely have been spotted if they’d tried to feed Nurat Merav and her kits.
Thankfully, her kits were not much given to squalling. It was a good thing, too. While the Liskash beasts of burden made quite a racket themselves, there was precious little resemblance between their basso grunts and bellows and the high-pitched squeals of unhappy Mrem kits.
“Yes,” Zuluku replied. “For at least four
“And after that?” she asked.
Zuluku looked unhappy. From experience, the Mrem dancer was coming to recognize the facial expressions used by Liskash. She’d found they substituted subtleties in the way they moved their jaws for the lack of mobility in other parts of their faces. This particular hal
f-open, lower-jaw-skewed-to-the-left grimace indicated a mixture of distress and apprehension, but one which fell short of extreme anxiety. That would have been indicated by jaws held wide open.
“Not sure,” was the answer. “If the Kororo fight
The lower jaw closed further and shifted to the right. That seemed to indicate something along the lines of dawning-hope, or maybe anticipation-of-improvement. A Mrem would assume an exaggerated upside-down smile and a wag of the head.
“But the warriors I talked to
That seemed…fairly clear. If she was interpreting Zuluku correctly, the Kororo would not be able to put up enough resistance in the next range of mountains to require Zilikazi and his army to move off the road into the narrow trails. The yurt would remain intact, which would make it easier for them to keep Nurat Merav and her kits hidden—and fed.
Moved by a sudden impulse, she said: “You have been a good friend. I thank you for it.”
The expression that now came to Zuluku’s face was not one Nurat Merav had seen before. It seemed to have traces of uncertainty and…chagrin? No, more like doubt.
But all the Liskash said was: “We are
Zilikazi
After the frustrations of the passage through the mountains, Zilikazi was almost enjoying the march across the plateau.
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<
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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 second-hand 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.
By Tooth and Claw - eARC Page 18