By Tooth and Claw - eARC

by Mercedes Lackey

  If you knew how to do it, which she didn’t.

  And why hadn’t Zilikazi detected her, for that matter? He’d seemed to have no trouble finding the minds of the dancers and the warriors in the battle and crushing them like so many eggs.

  Everything was a mystery, everywhere she looked.

  She would have to learn the Liskash language, as fast as she could.

  This Liskash language, she reminded herself. Unlike the Mrem, the Liskash had a vast array of tongues and speech.

  Nurat Merav had always been adept at learning different Mrem dialects. Hopefully, that skill would apply here as well.

  Zilikazi

  Something was stirring up the females. Zilikazi could sense their unease—and what seemed to be unrest, perhaps even a small amount of resistance. But his mental powers did not enable him to understand the actual thoughts of others, only their emotions—and those, only blurrily.

  The ability of a Liskash noble to force others to do his (and very occasionally her) bidding rested, ultimately, on the noble being able to grasp the emotions of those he would subordinate. But the grasp was that of a hand—and a gloved hand at that—upon a crudely-felt object, not that of delicate fingers probing the subtle texture of a surface. A noble could crush an egg, so to speak, but he could not really feel it or even give it a slight crack.

  Besides, Zilikazi was pre-occupied with the campaign against the Kororo, which was proving to be considerably harder than he’d anticipated. So he gave little thought to whatever might be happening with the females. Why bother? There would be plenty of time after the campaign to deal with any problems that might exist. As long as he controlled his army, what difference did it make what got females agitated? Like eggs, they too could be crushed.

  Another rock slide came crashing down the slope of the mountainside. Once again, Zilikazi’s mind tried to find and destroy the will of those who opposed him, but he could not find them. It was as if his gloved hand groped at slippery fish wriggling down a fast-moving stream. He could sense them but not their precise locations.

  This, he now realized, was what the Krek meant by their concept of “tekku.” He had thought it to be nothing much more than twaddle, but he’d been mistaken. Somehow the Kororo were using an attunement to certain animals—predators, he thought, with clear and simple purposes—to provide them with a shield against him.

  Tekku was a real mental ability, then, albeit subtle and certainly nothing compared to his own in terms of sheer force. Eventually he would pin them down and force them to submit.

  Sebetwe

  “They’ve reached Nesudi Pass,” reported the runner from the Krek warriors trying to resist Zilikazi’s advancing army. “We can probably fend them off for two more days, but no longer.”

  Despite the distance he’d traveled as fast as he could, Khuze was not breathing hard. He’d had to rest for the night before reaching the Krek, and had taken the time in the morning to warm up before resuming his run. That last stretch had taken only a short time, as runners measured such things.

  Watching Khuze as he spoke, Sebetwe found himself—as he did quite often of late—envying the ability of the Mrem to handle cold temperatures as well as they did. There were major disadvantages to being a mammal, to be sure. The amount of food the creatures needed to consume was astounding! How did they get anything done besides eating? But he still envied them, every time he or the Krek had to wrestle with the drawbacks of living in the mountains.

  Khuze’s statement had been greeted with silence. A bit belatedly, because he’d gotten distracted by his musings, Sebetwe realized the Krek guiding council was waiting for him to respond.

  Why? He was the most skilled of the younger tekkutu—more skilled than any of the older ones except Meshwe, for that matter—but he was not a war leader. Like any adult Kororo he was proficient in the use of weapons and knew the basic principles of tactics. That was as far as it went, however. There were three or four people squatting in the command yurt who would have a far better notion than he did of how to handle the current situation.

  Once Zilikazi’s army forced its way through Nesudi Pass, there would be no obstacle to their further progress until they reached the next range of mountains, where the Krek eyrie was located. They’d be passing across a broad and fairly flat plateau which provided little opportunity for the sort of long-distance ambush that had been the Krek’s most successful tactic thus far.

  Let Zilikazi get close enough…as was bound to happen if Kororo warriors had to fight the noble’s army at close range…

  There would be no way to resist him. Not even with the help of the gantrak. Sebetwe could only control one of the creatures, and then only with the assistance of the two Mrem dancers. He could not be certain, of course, without making the attempt. But he didn’t think he could withstand Zilikazi’s power at close range.

  If they had more dancers, the situation might be different. Although even with the help of two gantraks, Zilikazi couldn’t be held off indefinitely.

  If they had more gantrak…which would require still more dancers…

  He came to his reluctant conclusion.

  “We must leave the eyrie and retreat through the mountains,” he said. “In the ranges, we can slow down Zilikazi. Even without rock falls prepared ahead of time, we can improvise traps and barriers. On the plateau, we can’t. It’s as simple as that.”

  He looked around the circle. “And we need to find more Mrem. Without more dancers, we can’t control enough gantrak to make a big enough difference.”

  One of the Krek’s two main war leaders grunted. Logula, that was. “If we can find enough gantrak in the first place. The beasts are not plentiful, and not easy to catch.”

  There was that, too. But Sebetwe still didn’t think they had any choice.

  “Perhaps Zilikazi will turn back…” That tentative musing came from Nokom, the oldest of the females on the council. There is really nothing here worth his while.”

  Meshwe make a sharp gesture of negation. “That’s an idle fancy. If Zilikazi were going to turn back he would have done so already. And there is something here worth his while to destroy—the Krek itself. So long as we exist, he will consider us a threat to his rule.”

  He swiveled his head and gazed at the wall on the southeast side of the yurt beyond which, still a considerable distance away, was the Dzundu Sea. There were rumored to be lands on the other side of that sea, but its far shores had never been observed by any of the Kororo scouts who had ventured that far. Their reports only spoke of a large island a fairly short distance from the mainland.

  “Fairly short” was an abstract measurement, however. The span of water between the mainland and the island was quite large enough for the huge monsters who swam in the seas. The scouts had them coming to the surface.

  Needless to say, no scouts had ever made the attempt to cross over to the island. Swimming would be simple suicide, even if anyone were strong enough to get all the way across, and using a boat wouldn’t be much safer. It might be possible to build a raft big enough to withstand the assault of a sea monster. But no one knew for sure.

  With the exception of a few clans, neither Liskash nor Mrem were skilled at sea travel. Whenever they did venture onto the sea—even very large lakes—they generally used simple skiffs and coracles and stayed very close to shore. Marine and aquatic predators were much bigger and more powerful than even the largest land carnivores.

  “We will have to hope that one of two things is true,” Meshwe continued. “First, that once we retreat far enough Zilikazi will be satisfied that we no longer constitute a danger to him and will turn back.”

  Logula issued another grunt. “Not likely. There is no more persistent noble in the world.”

  Meshwe nodded. “Still, he can’t pursue us forever. We can travel faster than he can, with that huge force he has. Which brings me to our second hope, which is that we can continue retreating once we reach the sea.”

  Nokom looked up with
alarm. “We don’t know?”

  “I am afraid not. Our scouts never followed the shore for any distance to the south. We have no idea what might lie in that direction.”

  “What about following the shore toward the north?” asked Logula.

  “Not possible,” said Meshwe. “Not for the whole Krek, at any rate. A few particularly hardy individuals might manage to do it. There is a very deep canyon with a swiftly moving river at the bottom. Almost sheer cliffs, according to the scout who discovered the canyon some years ago.”

  “Canyons can be crossed, even ones with swift rivers,” said Logula.

  “Yes, certainly. But not without building bridges and laying guide ropes—and how long would that take? We can’t move that much faster than Zilikazi. Long before we finished constructing what we’d need to get through the canyon, his army would have arrived—and we’d be completely trapped.”

  Again, Logula grunted. The sound, this time, conveyed agreement, if not satisfaction.

  Meshwe now turned back to Sebetwe. “And that brings us to the next and perhaps most difficult questions. Can we find more Mrem? And would they agree to help us?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Find out.”

  Achia Pazik

  “I don’t know the answer to either question,” Achia Pazik said to Sebetwe. “But since the answer to the second question depends upon answering the first, we should make plans to that end.”

  “Yes, that makes sense,” said Sebetwe. “Where are more Mrem from your tribe most likely to be found?”

  Achia Pazik had to restrain herself from throwing up her hands in a gesture of futility. “I don’t know the answer to that question either,” she admitted.

  Sebetwe got an expression on his face that resembled a yawn. Achia Pazik thought was the Liskash equivalent of a smile. It was hard to tell. The features of the reptiles were stiffer and less mobile than those of her people.

  “So it seems we need to address that one first,” he said. “How many of your people can you send out to accompany our scouts? I think without you to talk to anyone we encounter, they will not be willing to listen to us.”

  Achia Pazik chuckled. There wasn’t much humor in the sound. “They’d be much more likely to try to kill you.”

  Chapter 8

  Meshwe

  The Krek began its march two days later. By then, Zilikazi’s army had made its way entirely through Nesudi Pass and had come onto the plateau. Had that army been made up only of warriors, it would have been able to move more quickly. But it was not. For every warrior there were three or four camp followers, most of them females and younglings.

  The Krek was not moving much faster. The Kororo also had younglings, elderly and infirm members, some of whom had to be transported if they could not move on their own. In addition, as was true of Zilikazi’s army, they had to bring supplies with them. They could not count on foraging—not enough, certainly—while on the march.

  If anything, their burdens were even heavier. Beyond supplies, the invaders were bringing nothing with them except simple yurts. The Kororo, on the other hand, were trying to salvage as much as they could of all their belongings. Even if they were able to return to the eyrie someday, Zilikazi’s warriors and camp followers would plunder everything left behind and burn whatever they could not carry away.

  But the Kororo had a greater incentive to move quickly, of course. The situation was another illustration of the old saw that, in a chase, the hunter runs for his lunch and the hunted runs for his life. Every member of the Krek knew full well that if they couldn’t stay far enough ahead of Zilikazi’s army, the noble would shackle their minds. The powers of the tekkutu could shield them to a degree, but that degree depended largely on distance.

  Calling tekku a “shield” was misleading, actually. The main effect for a tekkutu of drawing upon the consciousness of a predator was to withdraw, in a sense, from the psychic realm in which the nobles held sway. A predator’s fierce and narrow mind ignored the faculties of the nobles altogether. They simply did not exist for them, any more than such a predator would be swayed or influenced by logical reasoning or argumentation or peroration—or poetry, for that matter.

  That made the mind of the tekkutu partnered with the predator something slippery, its presence sensed but its location uncertain, undetected—hidden in a fog, mentally speaking.

  But even the thickest fog can be penetrated, if the observer gets close enough. So it was here. Most of the Kororo tekkutu trailed behind the main body of the Krek, using their powers to veil them from Zilikazi’s mindsight. But they could only do so successfully if enough distance was maintained from the oncoming army.

  Initially, Meshwe had hopes that Sebetwe’s control of the gantraks might enable them to hold off Zilikazi indefinitely. But that proved not to be true.

  For one thing, they could only use one gantrak at a time. They’d found that if they tried to harness both of the adult predators simultaneously and make them leave their younglings behind, the creatures resisted fiercely. The risk of losing control of them entirely became too great.

  So, the tekkutu could only use one of them if they left the Krek’s current immediate vicinity. And the strength of just one of the great predator’s spirits was simply not enough to enable Sebetwe—or any tekkutu including Meshwe himself—to withstand Zilikazi’s mind control if the noble got close enough.

  That said, by coupling with a gantrak Sebetwe could accomplish two things. First, he could get much closer to Zilikazi than would have been heretofore possible. Not close enough to assassinate him, but still close enough to bring back much more precise information than they could have obtained by spying on the noble’s army from a great distance.

  More useful, though, was the second ability Sebetwe gained. He could shield a number of the Krek’s warriors for much longer than he could have without the gantrak. Long enough to enable them to create bigger rockfall traps in Zilikazi’s path than they’d expected to be able to, and traps which could be set off with better accuracy and timing because Sebetwe could stay behind for much longer. They wouldn’t have to rely on mechanical triggers, which were imprecise and susceptible to being discovered by scouts and disarmed.

  None of this allowed the Kororo to do anything other than retreat, true enough. But they could retreat in reasonably good order and at a pace that the entire Krek could manage.

  What was perhaps most important was that the additional time Sebetwe could provide them would help their own scouting parties, both those ranging ahead seeking the best routes as well as those which were spreading through the mountains in search of other Mrem bands who had also managed to escape Zilikazi’s crushing of their tribe.

  Nabliz

  The leader of one of those scouting parties was feeling disgruntled, and for a variety of reasons.

  First, because the terrain they’d been passing through for the past three days was rough, with little even in the way of animal trails. Secondly, because at this altitude and at this time of year, he and his fellow Liskash warriors were very sluggish in the morning.

  Thirdly, because the Mrem accompanying them, a warrior named Chefer Kolkin, seemed to have no trouble at all getting started at daybreak.

  Fourthly, because it was obvious the miserable furball managed that annoying feat by eating twice as much as anyone else in the party!

  Being fair about it, the Mrem was carrying his own food.

  Being petty and ill-humored about it, his food smelled bad.

  Being really petty and ill-humored about it, the food didn’t taste very good either—which Nabliz knew because the miserable furball had offered him some, thereby upsetting his well-constructed view of the inherent selfishness of furballs.

  (They ate too much. It followed that they had to squabble over food, didn’t it? And didn’t it thereby also follow that they were by nature a squabbling and quarrelsome breed?)

  (Apparently not—which just gave Nabliz yet another source of vexation. He d
isliked it when reality did not match his preconceptions. Especially in the morning.)

  On a more positive side, Nabliz knew from experience that his foul temper would fade away within two hours after sunrise. A wiser and more charitable soul than himself—Meshwe, and probably Sebetwe as well—would have accepted all along that the disagreeable nature of the Mrem at dawn was really a function of the Liskash’s own metabolism, and that the furball was quite innocent in the matter.

  The knowledge did him no good at all at the moment, though. It just gave him a sixth reason to be grouchy. Early in the morning, Nabliz disliked wise and charitable souls.

  Being fair about it, early in the morning, Nabliz disliked pretty much anything and everyone. At home, back in the comfort of the Krek, he’d still be asleep at this wretched time of day, as would any sensible Liskash.

  So, he spent the next hour or so detesting Zilikazi, who was, after all, ultimately responsible for Nabliz’s foul state of mind that morning.

  And every morning, for that matter.

  And every afternoon and evening too, now that he thought about it. The vile noble had a lot to answer for.

  Chefer Kolkin

  Now that he’d had a bit of experience dealing with the Liskash at close quarters, Chefer Kolkin had learned to keep his distance from them in the morning. The reptiles tended to be surly in the first hour or two, especially if they arose as early as they had been since they began this expedition. Even though he was the grouchiest of the small group at that time of day, the one named Nabliz who was in charge insisted that they all be ready to resume the expedition by dawn.

  Chefer Kolkin understood the reason for their peculiar behavior—or thought he did, at any rate. The Liskash were not exactly reptiles, although Chefer Kolkin routinely used the word to refer to them, as did all Mrem. They seemed to be somewhere between mammals and reptiles, in terms of their energy and activity levels. Unlike true reptiles, they had a certain—fairly large, in fact—reserve of energy which they could draw upon even when they were cold. They benefited from basking in the sun, especially at daybreak, before they tried to engage in any activity that was more energetic than eating. But they weren’t as dependent on using sunlight to raise their energy levels as true reptiles were.