The cat circled, yawning. The lizard-lion, implacable, turned and raised its tail again, opened its jaws, lunged forward. The cobalcat avoided both teeth and whip. Again the tail cracked, and again, the cat was too quick. Someone in the audience began to moan the killing chant, others picked it up; Tuf turned his binoculars, and saw swaying in the Norn seats. The lizard-lion gnashed its long jaws in a frenzy, smashed its whip across the nearest entry door, and began to thrash.
The cobalcat, sensing an opening, moved behind its enemy with a graceful leap, pinned the struggling lizard with one great blue paw, and clawed the soft greenish flanks and belly to ribbons. After a time and a few futile snaps of its whip that only distracted the cat, the lizard-lion lay still.
The Norns were cheering very loudly. Haviland Tuf—huge and full-bearded and gaudily dressed—rose and left.
Weeks passed; The Ark remained in orbit around Lyronica. Haviland Tuf listened to results from the Bronze Arena on his ship’s comm, and noted that the Norn cobalcats were winning match after match after match. Herold Norn still lost a contest on occasion—usually when he used an ironfang to fill up his Arena obligations—but those defeats were easily outweighed by his victories.
Tuf sat with Dax curled in his lap, drank tankards of brown ale from The Ark brewery, and waited.
About a month after the debut of the cobalcats, a ship rose to meet him; a slim, needle-bowed shuttlecraft of green and gold. It docked, after comm contact, and Tuf met the visitors in the reception room with Dax in his arms. The cat read them as friendly enough, so he activated no defenses.
There were four, all dressed in metallic armor of scaled gold metal and green enamel. Three stood stiffly at attention. The fourth, a florid and corpulent man who wore a golden helmet with a bright green plume to conceal his baldness, stepped forward and offered a meaty hand.
“Your intent is appreciated,” Tuf told him, keeping both of his own hands firmly on Dax, “but I do not care to touch. I do require your name and business, sir.”
“Morho y Varcour Otheni,” the leader began.
Tuf raised one palm. “So. And you are the Senior Beast-Master of the House of Varcour, come to buy a monster. Enough. I knew it all the while, I must confess. I merely wished—on impulse, as it were—to determine if you would tell the truth.”
The fat Beast-Master’s mouth puckered in an “o.”
“Your housemen should remain here,” Tuf said, turning. “Follow me.”
Haviland Tuf let Morho y Varcour Otheni utter scarcely a word until they were alone in the computer room, sitting diagonally opposite. “You heard of me from the Norns,” Tuf said then. “Is that not correct?”
Morho smiled toothily. “Indeed we did. A Norn houseman was persuaded to reveal the source of their cobalcats. To our delight, your Ark was still in orbit. You seem to have found Lyronica diverting?”
“Problems exist. I hope to help. Your problem, for example. Varcour is, in all probability, now the last and least of the Twelve Great Houses. Your lizard-lions fail to awe me, and I understand your realms are chiefly swampland. Choice of combatants being therefore limited. Have I divined the essence of your complaint?”
“Hmpf. Yes, indeed. You do anticipate me, sir. But you do it well. We were holding our own well enough until you interfered; then, well, we have not taken a match from Norn since, and they were previously our chiefest victims. A few paltry wins over Wrai Hill and Amar Island, a lucky score against Feridian, a pair of death-draws with Arneth and Sin Doon—that has been our lot this past month. Pfui. We cannot survive. They will make me a Brood-Tender and ship me back to the estates unless I act.”
Tuf quieted Morho with an upraised hand. “No need to speak further. Your distress is noted. In the time since I have helped Herold Norn, I have been fortunate enough to be gifted with a great deal of leisure. Accordingly, as an exercise of the mind, I have been able to devote myself to the problems of the Great Houses, each in its turn. We need not waste time. I can solve your present difficulties. There will be cost, however.”
Morho grinned. “I come prepared. I heard about your price. It’s high, there is no arguing, but we are prepared to pay, if you can …”
“Sir,” Tuf said. “I am a man of charity. Norn was a poor House, Herold almost a beggar. In mercy, I gave him a low price. The domains of Varcour are richer, its standards brighter, its victories more wildly sung. For you, I must charge three hundred thousand standards, to make up for the losses I suffered in dealing with Norn.”
Morho made a shocked blubbering sound, and his scales gave metallic clinks as he shifted in his seat. “Too much, too much,” he protested. “I implore you. Truly, we are more glorious than Norn, but not so great as you suppose. To pay this price of yours, we must need starve. Lizard-lions would run over our battlements. Our towns would sink on their stilts, until the swamp mud covered them over and the children drowned.”
Tuf was looking at Dax. “Quite so,” he said, when his glance went back to Morho. “You touch me deeply. Two hundred thousand standards.”
Morho y Varcour Otheni began to protest and implore again, but this time Tuf merely sat silently, arms on their armrests, until the Beast-Master, red-faced and sweating, finally ran down and agreed to pay his price.
Tuf punched his control arm. The image of a great lizard materialized between him and Morho; it stood three meters tall, covered in grey-green plate scales and standing on two thick clawed legs. Its head, atop a short neck, was disproportionately large, with jaws great enough to take off a man’s head and shoulders in a single chomp. But the creature’s most remarkable features were its forelegs; short thick ropes of muscle ornamented by meter-long spurs of discolored bone.
“The tris neryei of Cable’s Landing,” Tuf said, “or so it was named by the Fyndii, whose colonists preceded men on that world by a millennium. The term translates, literally, as ‘living knife.’ Also called the bladed tyrant, a name of human origin referring to the beast’s resemblance to the tyrannosaur, or tyrant lizard, a long-extinct reptile of Old Earth. A superficial resemblance only, to be sure. The tris neryei is a far more efficient carnivore than the tyrannosaur ever was, due to its terrible forelegs, swords of bone that it uses with a frightful instinctive ferocity.”
Morho was leaning forward until his seat creaked beneath him, and Dax filled Tuf’s head with hot enthusiasm. “Excellent!” the Beast-Master said, “though the names are a bit long-winded. We shall call them tyrannoswords, eh?”
“Call them what you will, it matters not to me. The animals have many obvious advantages for the House of Varcour,” Tuf said. “Should you take them, I will throw in—without any additional charge—a breeding stock of Cathadayn tree-slugs. You will find that.…”
When he could, Tuf followed the news from the Bronze Arena, although he never again ventured forth to the soil of Lyronica. The cobalcats continued to sweep all before them in the latest featured encounter; one of the Norn beasts had destroyed a prime Arneth strangling-ape and an Amar Island fleshfrog during a special triple match.
But Varcour fortunes were also on the upswing; the newly introduced tyrannoswords had proved a Bronze Arena sensation, with their booming cries and their heavy tread, and the relentless death of their bone-swords. In three matches so far, a huge feridian, a water-scorpion, and a Gnethin spidercat had all proved impossibly unequal to the Varcour lizards. Morho y Varcour Otheni was reportedly ecstatic. Next week, tyrannosword would face cobalcat in a struggle for supremacy, and a packed arena was being predicted. Herold Norn called up once, shortly after the tyrannoswords had scored their first victory. “Tuf,” he said sternly, “you were not to sell to the other Houses.”
Haviland Tuf sat calmly, regarding Norn’s twisted frown, petting Dax. “No such matter was ever included in the discussion. Your own monsters perform as expected. Do you complain because another now shares your good fortune?”
“Yes. No. That is—well, never mind. I suppose I can’t stop you. If the other Houses get a
nimals that can beat our cats, however, you will be expected to provide us with something that can beat whatever you sell them. You understand?”
“Sir. Of course.” He looked down at Dax. “Herold Norn now questions my comprehension.” Then up again. “I will always sell, if you have the price.”
Norn scowled on the comm screen. “Yesyes. Well, by then our victories should have mounted high enough to afford whatever outlandish price you intend to charge.”
“I trust that all goes well otherwise?” Tuf said.
“Well, yes and no. In the Arena, yesyes, definitely. But otherwise, well, that was what I called about. The four young cats don’t seem interested in breeding, for some reason. And our Brood-tender keeps complaining that they are getting thin. He doesn’t think they’re healthy. Now, I can’t say personally, as I’m here in the City and the animals are back on the plains around Norn House. But some worry does exist. The cats run free, of course, but we have tracers on them, so we can …”
Tuf raised a hand. “It is no doubt not mating season for the cobalcats. Did you not consider this?”
“Ah. No, no, don’t suppose so. That makes sense. Just a question of time then, I suppose. The other question I wanted to go over concerned these hoppers of yours. We set them loose, you know, and they have demonstrated no difficulty whatever in breeding. The ancestral Norn grasslands have been chewed bare. It is very annoying. They hop about everywhere. What are we to do?”
“Breed the cobalcats,” Tuf suggested. “They are excellent predators, and will check the hopper plague.”
Herold Norn looked puzzled, and mildly distressed. “Yesyes,” he said.
He started to say something else, but Tuf rose. “I fear I must end our conversation,” he said. “A shuttleship has entered into docking orbit with The Ark. Perhaps you would recognize it. It is blue-steel, with large triangular grey wings.”
“The House of Wrai Hill!” Norn said.
“Fascinating,” said Tuf. “Good day.”
Beast-Master Denis Lon Wrai paid three hundred thousand standards for his monster, an immensely powerful red-furred ursoid from the hills of Vagabond. Haviland Tuf sealed the transaction with a brace of scampersloth eggs.
The week following, four men in orange silk and flame red capes visited The Ark. They returned to the House of Feridian four hundred fifty thousand standards poorer, with a contract for the delivery of six great poison-elk, plus a gift herd of Hrangan grass pigs.
The Beast-Master of Sin Boon received a giant serpent; the emissary from Amar Island was pleased by his godzilla. A committee of a dozen Dant seniors in milk white robes and silver buckles delighted in the slavering garghoul that Haviland Tuf offered them, with a trifling gift. And so, one by one, each of the Twelve Great Houses of Lyronica sought him out, each received its monster, each paid the ever-increasing price.
By that time, both of Norn’s fighting cobalcats were dead, the first sliced easily in two by the bone-sword of a Varcour tyrannosword, the second crushed between the massive clawed paws of a Wrai Hill ursoid (though in the latter case, the ursoid too had died)—if the great cats had escaped their fate, they nonetheless had proved unable to avoid it. Herold Norn had been calling The Ark daily, but Tuf had instructed his computer to refuse the calls.
Finally, with eleven Houses as past customers, Haviland Tuf sat across the computer room from Danel Leigh Arneth, Senior Beast-Master of Arneth-in-the-Gilded-Wood, once the greatest and proudest of the Twelve Great Houses of Lyronica, now the last and least. Arneth was an immensely tall man, standing even with Tuf himself, but he had none of Tuf’s fat; his skin was hard ebony, all muscle, his face a hawk-nosed axe, his hair short and iron grey. The Beast-Master came to the conference in cloth-of-gold, with crimson belt and boots and a tiny crimson beret aslant upon his head. He carried a trainer’s pain-prod like a walking stick.
Dax read immense hostility in the man, and treachery, and a barely suppressed rage. Accordingly, Haviland Tuf carried a small laser strapped to his stomach just beneath his greatcoat.
“The strength of Arneth-in-the-Gilded-Wood has always been in variety,” Danel Leigh Arneth said early on. “When the other Houses of Lyronica threw all their fortunes on the backs of a single beast, our fathers and grandfathers worked with dozens. Against any animal of theirs, we had an optimal choice, a strategy. That has been our greatness and our pride. But we can have no strategy against these demon-beasts of yours, trader. No matter which of our hundred fighters we send onto the sand, it comes back dead. We are forced to deal with you.”
“Not so,” said Haviland Tuf. “I force no one. Still, look at my stock. Perhaps fortune will see fit to give you back your strategic options.” He touched the buttons on his chair, and a parade of monsters came and went before the eyes of the Arneth Beast-Master; creatures furred and scaled and feathered and covered by armor plate, beasts of hill and forest and lake and plain, predators and scavengers and deadly herbivores of sizes great and small. And Danel Leigh Arneth, his lips pressed tightly together, finally ordered four each of the dozen largest and deadliest species, at a cost of some two million standards.
The conclusion of the transaction—complete, as with all the other Houses, with a gift of some small harmless animal—did nothing to soothe Arneth’s foul temper. “Tuf,” he said when the dealing was over, “you are a clever and devious man, but you do not fool me.”
Haviland Tuf said nothing.
“You have made yourself immensely wealthy, and you have cheated all who bought from you and thought to profit. The Norns, for example—their cobalcats are worthless.
“They were a poor House; your price brought them to the edge of bankruptcy, just as you have done to all of us. They thought to recoup through victories. Bah! There will be no Norn victories now! Each House that you have sold to gained the edge on those who purchased previously. Thus Arneth, the last to purchase, remains the greatest House of all. Our monsters will wreak devastation. The sands of the Bronze Arena will darken with the blood of the lesser beasts.”
Tuf’s hands locked on the bulge of his stomach. His face was placid.
“You have changed nothing! The Great Houses remain, Arneth the greatest and Norn the least. All you have done is bleed us, like the profiteer you are, until every lord must struggle and scrape to get by. The Houses now wait for victory, pray for victory, depend on victory, but all the victories will be Arneth’s. We alone have not been cheated, because I thought to buy last and thus best.”
“So,” said Haviland Tuf. “You are then a wise and sagacious Beast-Master, if this indeed is the case. Yet I deny that I have cheated anyone.”
“Don’t play with words!” Arneth roared. “Henceforth you will deal no longer with the Great Houses. Norn has no money to buy from you again, but if they did, you would not sell to them. Do you understand? We will not go round and round forever.”
“Of course,” Tuf said. He looked at Dax. “Now Danel Leigh Arneth imputes my understanding. I am always misunderstood.” His calm gaze returned to the angry Beast-Master in red-and-gold. “Your point, sir, is well-taken. Perhaps it is time for me to leave Lyronica. In any event, I shall not deal with Norn again, nor with any of the Great Houses. This is a foolish impulse—by thus acting I foreswear great profits—but I am a gentle man much given to following my whim. Obedient to the esteemed Danel Leigh Arneth, I bow to your demand.”
Dax reported wordlessly that Arneth was pleased and pacified; he had cowed Tuf, and won the day for his House. His rivals would get no new champions. Once again, the Bronze Arena would be predictable. He left satisfied.
Three weeks later, a fleet of twelve glittering gold-flecked shuttles and a dozen work squads of men in gold-and-crimson armor arrived to remove the purchases of Danel Leigh Arneth. Haviland Tuf, stroking a limp, lazy Dax, saw them off, then returned down the long corridors of The Ark to his control room, to take a call from Herold Norn.
The thin Beast-Master looked positively skeletal. “Tuf!” he exclaimed.
“Everything is going wrong. You must help.”
“Wrong? I solved your problem.”
Norn pressed his features together in a grimace, and scratched beneath his brass coronet. “Nono, listen. The cobalcats are all dead, or sick. Four of them dead in the Bronze Arena—we knew the second pair were too young, you understand, but when the first couple lost, there was nothing else to do. It was that or go back to ironfangs.
“Now we have only two left. They don’t eat much—catch a few hoppers, but nothing else. And we can’t train them, either. A trainer comes into the pen with a pain-prod, and the damn cats know what he intends. They’re always a move ahead, you understand? In the Arena, they won’t respond to the killing chant at all. It’s terrible. The worst thing is they don’t even breed. We need more of them. What are we supposed to enter in the gaming pits?”
“It is not cobalcat breeding season,” Tuf said.
“Yesyes. When is their breeding season?”
“A fascinating question. A pity you did not ask sooner. As I understand the matter, the female cobalt panther goes into heat each spring, when the snowtufts blossom on Celia’s World. Some type of biological trigger is involved.”
“I—Tuf. You planned this. Lyronica has no snowthings, whatever. Now I suppose you intend charging us a fortune for these flowers.”
“Sir. Of course not. Were the option mine, I would gladly give them to you. Your plight wounds me. I am concerned. However, as it happens, I have given my word to Danel Leigh Arneth to deal no more with the Great Houses of Lyronica.” He shrugged hopelessly.
“We won victories with your cats,” Norn said, with an edge of desperation in his voice. “Our treasury has been growing—we have something like forty thousand standards now. It is yours. Sell us these flowers. Or better, a new animal. Bigger. Fiercer. I saw the Dant garghouls. Sell us something like that. We have nothing to enter in the Bronze Arena!”
“No? What of your ironfangs? The pride of Norn, I was told.”
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