But Bireena, far from being nervous at the plant life, seemed to have been set free from her reticence. She beckoned to Petru to show him this or that flower, that or this reed. Petru nodded, as though taking an inventory. The footing became more and more spongy. Scaro disliked the feeling of water seeping between his toes. He clenched them to test the solidity of the ground below. His warriors followed, picking their way uncomfortably. He sniffed. The heavy smells of rotting plants and mud masked the Liskash stink, but it was still there.
Petru, as usual, managed to find the driest possible jumps. With grace surprising in one so large, he leaped from hummock to tussock to clump, all without soaking the fur on his legs. Sherril Rangawo, just behind him, was not so lucky. He had already fallen in once, and his fluffy tail, the gray male’s pride and joy, was a stringy mess. Scaro grinned. It was because the councilor didn’t trust the valet’s instincts. And he ought to. That one had a knack for self-preservation.
The land upon which they had been walking was once headlands, according to Bireena, parted by a delta of a slow-moving, shallow river that poured its brown waters into the once-distant Great Salt. They made their way downslope to the marshland beside the river. Birds hooted their protests as the Mrem walked among their nests and the roots of the trees whose heavy crowns nodded over the flowing river. Bireena and Nolda lifted the leaves covering the nests and peered at each one in turn, marking them for the return journey. No sense in taking eggs yet. The fragile burdens weren’t going anywhere. If they happened to hatch, well, tender chicks were good eating for the sick.
“Do you smell that?” Nolda asked, suddenly.
“What, mistress?” Petru inquired, hurrying to her side. The Dancer lifted large, worried golden eyes to him.
“Evil magic is near, Petru. I am uncomfortable. The gods have forsaken this land. Even the birdsong sounds wrong.”
Petru raised his nose to sniff. The Dancers had said that Liskash magic had a terrible smell like rotting flesh, detectable at hundreds of Mrem-lengths’ distance. Alas, he had not the enhanced senses blessed by the gods. All that he detected was the smell of ordinary Liskash, quickly being overwhelmed by the odors of brackish water and oil-rich plants. Petru’s heart sank. This expedition was so important, he felt that others might die if he did not succeed. If they failed, it would be no worse than if they did not try, but he would feel that he let his precious Dancers down.
“Should we turn back, mistress?” he asked.
For answer, Nolda held out her arms and bent her back in a graceful arc. Petru signed to the others to stop. Scaro held up his fist. The warriors halted immediately. The Dancer was about to commune with the gods and her sisters of the foot, to ask divine intention and to beg for protection from what may lie ahead.
The Dancer began to move from foot to foot. Because of the long march, she had foregone all her jewelry, leaving behind bracelets, anklets and tail rings, but her movements were so graceful that it seemed as though she was arrayed in all of those plus translucent veils of every color. Nolda’s arms waved like leaves on a playful breeze. She swayed her head from side to side, almost touching her ears to her shoulders. A tiny smile lifted the corners of her mouth as though she felt the goddess rub against her in affection. Petru loved her wholeheartedly at that moment. She was the one of the clan’s sacred connections to the gods and all of nature. He was proud of what little he could do to see to her comfort and aid her so she was free to commune with that he could not see and did not pretend to understand. Unlike Sherril, who nodded approvingly at the Dancer’s every move.
In the deep green light that preceded the coming dawn, Nolda’s graceful leaps and turns seemed to draw upon the marshy land beneath a pattern. It was open on one side in the direction of the way forward, as though asking a question about what lay there. Petru watched her in wonder, hoping that gentle Assirra was paying attention.
Though he was impatient to begin their gathering and get back to the rest of the clan, it was a special treat to see a Dancer undertaking a sacred rite. Not all of the Dances were performed in the open for all the Lailah to see, let alone outsiders. Bireena was rapt at the grace and power. Nolda seemed to be several beings at once: child beseeching mother, mother giving gentle caress, father administering a kind but stern admonition to the eager kitten, then prey fleeing from predator. Nolda’s movements became clumsy during that passage. Petru guessed that she was performing as though she was a Liskash, who moved much more slowly and awkwardly than the Mrem. Next, she would surely be the Mrem who successfully hunted and slew her quarry.
Suddenly, Nolda dropped to the ground, shielding her head with both of her hands. She held that pose for so long that the spell of the Dance was broken. Petru rushed to her side.
“Lady, may I help you?” he asked.
“You interrupt the Dance!” Sherril said, horrified.
“No, Sherril Rangawo,” Nolda said, with a kind look at the valet. Petru noticed that the nictitating membrane half-covered her eyes. Her limbs were shaking. “The good goddess gives me a warning. It is one we must heed.”
Sherril looked around him in alarm as though the gods themselves were nearby.
“What is it, good lady?” he asked. “Are we in danger?”
“We are always in danger on this path,” Nolda said, with a sigh. Petru pulled the large pack around from his shoulders to one arm so he could rummage through its contents. He came out with a stoppered ceramic bottle containing the herb-scented restorative liquid he gave the Dancers after major festivals and rituals. He peeled back the wax covering the mouth and offered a drink to Nolda. She sipped.
“Is the peril close by?” Scaro asked. He offered her an arm to help her up.
“Not so close, but we cannot avoid it, drillmaster. We must be vigilant and clever. Assirra gives us her word that her husband will lend us the will to escape the trap set for us, but not the strength.”
“A riddle, Dancer. What is the answer?”
Nolda shook her head. “We must be as swift as possible. There is a chance to avoid the trap, but it is a small one. Most likely we have a fight ahead of us.”
Scaro tilted his head toward the awestruck warriors at his back. “We’ll take that fight, lady.” He turned to Petru. “You heard the Dancer’s words, valet. Let’s move faster.”
Petru inclined his head.
“I am only too happy to follow the will of the gods,” he said.
Now with every sense honed as finely as the tip of a claw, they marched on over the steadily softening earth. The day creatures were rousing. Birds chattered their alarm that the Mrem were among them. Petru stepped carefully to avoid roots that arced up out of the mire with an obvious intent to trip them. Lianas draped over outflung tree limbs brushed their heads and ears. Huge pink and white blossoms that only opened to daylight began to spread their petals, exuding their heady, sweet fragrance upon the already scent-laden air.
Petru stopped just short of the broad cluster of trees on the near side of the sluggish river. With a gleaming, polished claw, colored green for the occasion, he pointed at the bright, yellow-green shoots poking up among the darker, more mature reeds.
“Those are what we need,” he said. “Be careful also to take the thin vines clinging to them. The reeds will dry up the bowels. From the creepers, I can distil a powerful medicine against the underlying ailment.”
“How do you know it will work?” Sherril asked, his face a skeptical mask.
“My granddam seldom lost a patient,” Petru said, firmly. “I have used dried plants myself of the same kind. Now, hurry before the sun rises too high! I want the roots as moist as possible. You, cut some of those big, ribbed leaves to wrap them in. Make haste! If we gather enough, we can turn back today, before the threat that the fates send!”
Scaro signed to his soldiers. They crouched among the reeds, plucking the shoots as Petru directed. Bireena showed them how to pull the plants up whole, using a twist of her wrist to avoid tearing off the little white tendrils at their ba
se.
“You are very deft,” Scaro said. “Not a wasted motion. I admire that.” She lowered her head shyly at the compliment, her ears swiveling shyly. Behind them, Sherril made a harsh noise in his throat. Bireena jumped away from the drillmaster. Scaro shot Sherril an angry look. Just when he had been making progress, too!
“Hasten!” Petru said, clapping his hands. “When you have all of these, I see another patch growing just over there.”
Fat, green, goggle-eyed amphibians sitting on broad, floating lily leaves jumped away as the Mrem splashed toward them. Taadar, a young Mrem whose accuracy with a lance made even Scaro envious, speared a plump one in mid-air.
“Breakfast,” he said, with satisfaction, packing the twitching body away in his pack.
Rustling in the trees alerted Scaro. He glanced up, but saw nothing unusual. Still, the smell of Liskash was stronger than before.
“Was there a lizard village upriver?” he asked Bireena.
“Yes, there was, but far,” the golden Mrem said, her large eyes wide. “They came downriver once in a moon or so to try and trap some of us.” She stopped suddenly and looked away from Scaro. That was what had happened to her, he was certain. Her people had been herded together and driven to Ckotliss to be slaves. “But we are not far any longer, are we? The sea has come closer, driving us south.”
“That is so,” Scaro said, encouragingly. “But we have seen none of them yet, so it is well.”
“How many remain?” asked Taadar.
Scaro shot him a deadly look.
“How could she know that?” he said. “Take Imrun and go spy out that position. Golcha and I will remain with the gatherers. I hate surprises.”
The two young Mrem gathered up their packs and moved silently through the marsh toward the gap.
Petru watched them go with dismay. Two sets of hands that were not gathering plants and food meant more delay before he could return to his Dancers. As much as young Ysella promised that she would see to Cleotra’s well-being, he was certain she would neglect small details he would never miss.
Peevishly, he returned to the workers he still had. Sherril was picking through the golden reeds as slowly as a kit trying to keep from eating a distasteful dish. Petru surveyed the pile of shoots on the big leaf beside him.
“Hurry up there,” Petru snapped. “Bireena has gathered three times the plants you have.”
“I am not a field worker,” Sherril replied, in annoyance. He raised dripping hands from the muck and flicked a clump of earth at Petru. The valet sidestepped to avoid being splattered. “And as you keep saying to me, I don’t work for you.”
Petru smirked. “In this case, you do. Move faster. I want to harvest that second clump of plants before the sun is fully up. More! No, not that purple-tipped one! That is gripeweed. It will twist your belly in knots.”
Sherril grunted, but moved his hands to a patch of the correct herbs. Not satisfied but resigned, Petru went on to supervise the others. Bireena was the best worker. She showed Nolda and Scaro which plants to choose, picking the most mature of the reeds which would contain the greatest concentration of the healing sap. The threadvines she stored in a separate leaf. Petru praised her lavishly, which made her lower her head in modest protest and Scaro growl under his breath.
Petru shook his head. Silly fighter! Scaro should know by now that he had no interest in the drillmaster’s conquests. He was contented with his own love.
The wind began to rush onshore from the sea, bringing with it scents of fish, salt, and an indefinable bitterness that made Petru lift his upper lip to taste it. Definitely Liskash. Scaro rose to his feet. He dropped handfuls of weed and reached over his shoulder for his spear.
“Do you smell that?” Petru asked.
“Been smelling it all night,” the drillmaster said, rolling his own upper lip to smell more accurately. “It’s getting strong. We ought to get to cover.”
“I want to finish gathering these herbs,” Petru protested. “The lives of the others may depend upon them!”
“Valet, that’s your job,” the lean Mrem said, frowning at Petru. “Mine is to make sure you get home to deliver them. Come on. You others, too! Leave the plants. We’ll come back when we’re safe.”
Sherril looked pleased to leave the marshy clumps. He cast away the leaves he was holding and stood up.
“I agree,” the gray councilor said. He brushed himself off. It was a futile gesture, since the mud clung to his fur. “Hurry. I don’t wish to be left out in the open when the Liskash arrive. Such a prize as I would make would cause a breakdown in morale in the camp.”
Petru shook his head.
“I very much doubt that,” he said. He turned to Nolda and Bireena. “Come on, then, my ladies! Let’s move to safety.”
“We’ve got to cover our tracks first,” Scaro said. “Drown everything you’re not carrying with you. Try and leave it as natural-looking as you can. Good thing we didn’t light a fire.”
The first faint hues of orange peeped over the jungle to the south. Petru fretted as he oversaw the burial of one parcel of leaves after another, but he was wary of attack. The drillmaster kept looking at the sky, then scanning the jungle. Now that Petru thought of it, it had been a long while since the two fighters had gone to scout out the riverbank. Why had they not returned?
He took Nolda’s burdens and escorted the Dancer carefully over the steadiest footing. Bireena crept along close behind, picking her way with the ease of a native. Sherril, resentfully, brought up the rear with Scaro, who kept the spear at his shoulder in case he needed it.
Mrem could move silently when they needed to. Petru prided himself that not a single blade of grass whispered at his passage. He could do nothing about the frogs that leaped across his path, nor the birds that dived at them, calling out. The increasingly unpleasant smell of Liskash seemed to come from all directions at once.
They made back toward the eastern desert. With sunrise, dew that had settled overnight began to rise in a shimmering haze that obscured the ground. Petru squinted at the rippled landscape.
“Head for the ravine where we slept yesterday,” Scaro ordered, pointing to the dark slit between the dunes far ahead. “We’ll find a defensible hole inland.”
Petru picked up the pace, keeping his arm around the slim Dancer. Nolda protested that she was steady, but he could feel the weakness in her. It was still a good, long walk to the walls of stone. They had worked hard after a long night’s march. He could do with a good rest once he had the Dancer bedded down safely.
He was weary, but was his eyesight playing tricks on him? The shadows near the entrance to the craggy pass seemed to move by themselves. Were they animals?
The stink rolled toward them like an oncoming storm. Petru jerked to a stop.
“Liskash! Back! Back!” Scaro shouted.
The shadows jerked into motion. Dozens of bodies rose up out of the sands. Liskash, ranging in size from the behemoth beasts of burden to the small and very dangerous magician race, let out a roar and rushed toward the Mrem.
Where had they come from? Petru threw himself between Nolda and the oncoming horde. He pushed her and Bireena before him and headed back the way they had come. Sherril let out a squawk. He shot past them, regardless of the sodden footing and sloshed his way downstream. Urged on by Scaro and Golcha, Petru followed. They were not far from the advancing Great Salt. He did not wish to have himself or his Dancer trapped between the wide sea and an army of dinos. He looked for a bolthole they could hide in, but the sloping land offered no openings.
“Keep going!” Scaro shouted. “We’ll hold them off!”
He unsheathed his sword from the back scabbard and brandished it. He and Taadar ran backwards, trying to keep close to the sound of the threshing as the Mrem fled through the heavy undergrowth. He scanned the rising bodies. Thank Aedonnis that the lizards moved more slowly than Mrem, especially in the cool of dawn. Come the day’s rising warmth their natural torpor would wear off, but Sc
aro hoped they would be safely out of reach by then. There had to be fifty or sixty of them!
The swift-moving ones recovered from the cool of the night before the others. They began to outdistance their fellows. Golcha loosened the throwing knives that he wore in a bandolier across his chest.
As the ravine narrowed, the water increased in velocity. Scaro feared being thrown off the slender path into the rushing stream. None of them knew how to swim. If they were washed out to sea, they were lost, as would be the cure for those back at the camp. All he could do was to try and hold off the pursuers until Petru led the Dancer and the others to a place where they could hide. He believed in the valet’s knack for self-preservation.
The first dinos, fine scales of a light gray-pink under their short fabric tunics and loose trews, loped toward them on long, thin legs with huge feet. Their skinny snouts opened to show rows of thin, sharp teeth. They hissed greedily, their long pink tongues darting in and out of their mouths.
“They’re going to eat us, drillmaster,” Golcha shouted. “Hope I make them choke!”
“They’ll choke on their own blood,” Scaro vowed. He glanced back over his shoulder at the increasing slope. The vines crowding the sheer stone faces were so thick he couldn’t see the others. The water roared as it poured over a cataract. Stones larger than a house stuck up between the rapids. Scaro scanned them with an eye to try and guess if he could jump to the nearest one and make his way across.
No. They didn’t have a chance of escape that way. Better to die fighting.
The lightly boned Liskash were almost upon them. Golcha let loose with one of his deadly missiles. It hit the first loper in the eye. It let out a high-pitched squeal and fell backwards, writhing. The four behind it leaped effortlessly over the body. Two of them bounced off the slope and landed just Mrem-lengths away from Scaro, brandishing spears tipped with gleaming bronze. The drillmaster gathered himself and bounded at them.
In spite of their nimbleness, they were as slow to react as the rest of their kind. They missed Scaro with their initial blows. Instead, the drillmaster managed to plunge his spear down into the chest of the nearest one, then turned to rake his rear claws down the throat of the next one. The one with the blade in its eye tried to grab for him with long, skinny paws. Scaro freed his spear with a jerk, then jabbed it downward through the blinded Liskash’s other eye. It fell limp.
By Tooth and Claw - eARC Page 27