By Tooth and Claw - eARC

by Mercedes Lackey

  It was a fairly small flood, and brief in duration. But the ravine was steep and because of the difficulty of the terrain the soldiers had been packed too tightly. Their officers had become complacent, certain that the Kororo wouldn’t have had time to prepare any more elaborate traps—or, if they had, wouldn’t be able to stay close enough to set them off at the right time. By now, the troops had gotten adept at spotting and disarming inert triggers left in place. So the deaths and injuries produced were much worse that they should have been.

  Zilikazi was quietly furious with those officers, and made a silent vow to punish those most responsible. But he had more pressing concerns at the moment—and, being honest, was at least as angry at himself. He’d consistently underestimated the powers of the Krek’s so-called “tekku.” To make things worse, the Kororo shamans were either getting stronger or he had finally started encountering those among them who were most powerful and adept at their peculiar mind skill.

  He still didn’t really understand the nature of that skill. How could harnessing the pitiful brains of animals be of any real use?

  In the distance, he heard the screech of a gantrak, but paid it little attention. The mountain predators were ferocious, certainly, but they would never dare attack such a large group of Liskash. The creature was just angry that its hunting territory was being encroached upon.

  Sebetwe

  Zilikazi was wrong about that. The gantrak’s screech had been one of triumph, not fury. The predator was not an intelligent animal, but she was far smarter than most dumb beasts. She understood, in some way, that the creature she and her mate had mysteriously become partnered with had just scored a great victory—and she shared in that victory herself.

  For his part, Sebetwe winced. Whether it derived from anger or elation, the screech of a gantrak up close was hard on the ears and unsettling on the nerves.

  He managed not to jump, though.

  Achia Pazik

  Achia Pazik didn’t jump either. But that was only because Gadi Elkin, tired by the dance, had stumbled over a root and Achia Pazik had barely managed to catch her before she fell. The gantrak’s screech jolted her nerves, but her grip on her fellow dancer kept her steady on her feet.

  “I’m starting to hate that thing,” hissed Gadi Elkin, once she regained her balance. “Aren’t you?”

  Achia Pazik let go of her grip and shrugged. “Not as much—not nearly as much—as I hate that Liskash noble down there. The worst the gantrak will do is bite your head off, but at least your mind will still be yours right through to the end.”

  “That’s a low standard!” the other dancer said, grimacing. “Lose your head or lose your mind.”

  “Our choices are pretty limited right now.” Achia Pazik started up the slope, following Sebetwe along what might be called a “trail” if you were in an expansive frame of mind. “Let’s try to keep both.”

  Nabliz

  The first little group of Mrem they found were of no practical use. There were two females in the group, but it turned out neither of them were dancers. The two warriors also in the group wouldn’t be any help, either. One had suffered injuries which, even if he recovered from them—a process which would take months—would still leave him lame. And the other was really too old to still be serving as an active warrior.

  The young male in the group might be of use, eventually. But the Krek’s current circumstances made concepts like “eventually” lame as well.

  Still, Nabliz took it as a good omen. If two groups had survived from the catastrophe the Mrem tribe had suffered at the hands of Zilikazi and his army, surely there had to be others.

  Two warriors were detached to escort the Mrem to the Krek. The rest, including Nabliz and Chefer Kolkin, continued their search.

  Chefer Kolkin

  Chefer Kolkin was pretty sure the Liskash would have simply left the small Mrem party they’d found where they were, once they discovered there were no dancers among them, if Chefer Kolkin hadn’t insisted otherwise. The reptiles were sometimes astonishingly callous. Not cruel, no, at least not in the way Mrem understood cruelty. Even at their worst, there was always something a little cold-blooded about Liskash. The sort of hot rage which sometimes led Mrem to commit acts of utter barbarity was just not something that seemed to afflict Liskash. On the other hand, they had much less in the way of simple compassion, either.

  It took some getting used to. But so, Chefer Kolkin reminded himself, did many things that turned out in the end to be beneficial. Spices took some getting used to also, when you were a youngling. Yet for an adult, food without them would be horribly bland.

  Njekwa

  When the priestess came into the yurt, followed closely by the shaman Litunga, she glanced around and then headed unerringly toward the one pile of hides and thrushes which was large enough to conceal a big animal. As she went, she gave Zuluku and her two companions a peremptory summoning gesture.

  “Get up,” she said. “We haven’t much time.”

  Once she reached the pile, Njekwa crouched and flipped back the two hides on top. Now visible below were a Mrem female and, pressed closely to her side and staring up at the priestess also, two of the mammal younglings. “Kits,” she thought they were called.

  There was no expression on the adult Mrem’s face. None that Njekwa could discern, at any rate, but she was not very familiar with the creatures. One of the kits seemed frightened; the other, either less anxious or less intelligent, simply looked curious.

  “Can she move at all?” Njekwa asked, turning her head toward Zuluku but not taking her eyes from the subject of her scrutiny.

  To her surprise, the Mrem answered. “I can move a bit. Not far, not quick. But I can move.”

  “You speak our language?”

  “A bit.” An odd little twist came to her mouth. “Not far. Not quick. But I can speak a bit.”

  By then, Zuluku was squatting next to the priestess. “What’s wrong?”

  Njekwa issued the little whistling noise from her nostrils that served Liskash as the equivalent of a snort of derision. “What do you think is wrong? Everything is wrong. It is wrong that you sheltered this creature. It is wrong that the Old Faith is ignored. It is wrong that nobles such as Zilikazi lord it over all others. For the moment, though, what is most wrong is that Zilikazi led his army into another trap, the soldiers are angry and upset, he is trying to quell them, and naturally he is resorting to ancient ruses which always seem to work even if they require everyone to be stupid.”

  Zuluku stared at her, uncomprehending.

  “Zilikazi says treason must have been the cause,” Litunga explained. The old shaman’s jaws snapped twice wide with sarcasm. “Would you believe, it seems some of us are harboring Mrem spies in our midst?”

  Now wide-eyed, Zuluku stared down at Nurat Merav. The notion that the badly injured Mrem female was a spy—and what would she have spied upon, anyway?—was ludicrous. But…

  They were indeed harboring a Mrem in their midst.

  “What do we do?” she asked Njekwa. Her voice didn’t…quite…squeak with fear.

  Say what you would about the priestess, she had steady nerves. In times of crisis like this, whatever doubts about her the young females might have, they instinctively looked to Njekwa for guidance and leadership.

  The priestess studied Nurat Merav for a moment. “If she can move at all, you need to take her out of the camp. Her and her younglings, all of them.”

  “Take them where?” That question came from Raish, who was now squatting by the pile also, along with Selani, the third of the young Liskash females who’d been tending to Nurat Merav.

  Litunga jerked her head toward the wall of the yurt facing north. “There is a grove not too far away, and a small gully that leads most of the way to it. Once night falls, you can move them through the gully and hide them in the woods.”

  Raish glanced at the entrance flap, as if to reassure herself that it was still closed and no one could see inside the yurt. “
Can we wait that long?”

  “I think so,” said Njekwa. “The search for supposed spies is starting at the other end of the camp, among the warriors and their yurts. It will take the inspectors half the night before they come this far. They may not even try to search this side of the camp until tomorrow.”

  “They might search the grove too, then,” said Zuluku.

  “They will almost certainly search the grove,” said Litunga. “We were told they were searching anywhere in the army’s vicinity where spies might be hiding.”

  Zuluku looked down at the Mrem. “She might—probably can—make it as far as the grove. But then…”

  Njekwa gave her a sidelong look. “And so now you finally realize that recklessness has its own reward? Stupid child. The ‘but then’ is obvious. Once you get to the grove—all of you, not just the mammals—you and Raish and Selani will have to carry her away on a litter.”

  The three young females looked at each other. “Carry her away, where?” asked Raish.

  Again, Njekwa issued a derisive whistle. “How should I know? The camp is too dangerous. I suggest you try to find her own people, wherever they might be, and hand her back into their care.”

  “But—”

  Zuluku looked down at Nurat Merav. The Mrem was obviously trying to follow the discussion but having a hard time of it.

  “Where your people are,” Zuluku said to her. Then, remembering the lilt at the end of a phrase that the Mrem used to indicate a question, she rephrased the intonation: “Where your people are?”

  Nurat Merav’s face got scrunched up the way Zuluku had come to recognize was the Mrem way of indicating puzzlement and uncertainty. “Don’t know. Most were captured. Killed. The rest…”

  The mammalian face-scrunch got more pronounced. “Don’t know your word.” She raised her hands and made little fluttering gestures with her fingers. “Like straw in wind.”

  “Scattered,” provided Litunga. “You’ll likely never find any of them. Better you try to reach the Kororo. Even carrying a litter through these mountains you’ll be able to move faster than the whole army.”

  For the first time, Selani spoke up. “Why would the Kororo take her in?”

  “They probably wouldn’t,” replied Litunga. “But they’ll take you in. It’ll be up to you to persuade them to take the Mrem also.”

  She shrugged. “Whether they would or not, I have no idea.”

  “There’s a fair chance, actually,” said Njekwa. She gave Zuluku an intent gaze. “But you have to do it right. Talk a lot about Morushken—no, don’t do that; you’ll just get a tedious philosophical lecture about the unreality of deities. Just talk about your adherence and devotion to the principle of thrift.”

  Yet again, her jaws snapped sarcastically. “You shouldn’t have any trouble with that, since it’s true. You idiots.”

  The priestess rose. “Litunga and I will come up with a story to explain your absence—if the inspectors even ask, which I doubt. And now, you’d better get ready to leave. You only have a few hours until nightfall.”

  She turned and left the yurt, Litunga following behind.

  The three young Liskash females stared at each other. Then, stared at Nurat Merav. Then, went back to staring at each other.

  Finally, Zuluku said: “We can make a litter easily enough. Can’t we?”

  Having a practical problem at hand steadied them all. “Oh, yes,” said Raish. “We can make the poles out of—”

  Chapter 11

  Meshwe

  The situation at the coast was just as bad as Meshwe had feared. If anything, the river was even wider than the scouts had made it seemed—and, what was worse, the marshlands bordering it were extensive. He’d half-hoped that they could cross the river on rafts, but now that he saw the terrain for himself he could see how impractical that would be.

  The delta was so clogged with debris—logs from upstream mixed in with brush and decaying pieces of who-knew-what—that only small rafts could hope to wend their way through it. More like big coracles, really. And they’d make slow going of it. Too slow, with Zilikazi’s army not more than four days behind them.

  In any event, the monsters might be just as dangerous in the river as they were in the strait. The very biggest did not seem to enter the delta, neither the huge tentacled shell-creatures nor the things that looked like seagoing versions of gigantic lizards. But other hunters were found there. Just in the short time he’d been studying the area he’d already seen three of them. Strange beasts, that looked like a turtle crossed with a snake.

  None of the turtlesnakes he’d seen was big enough to capsize a large raft. But they could probably tip over a coracle, and even if they couldn’t they could easily pluck Kororo right out of their vessels. Those sinuous snakeheads looked like they could reach quite a distance.

  Warriors could fight off some of them, but how many were out there? And even if they could fight off all the turtlesnakes, the effort would slow them down still further. Zilikazi’s army would probably arrive long before most of the Krek could cross over the river.

  And even if they arrived later than Meshwe expected, they could cross the river much faster than the Kororo. Zilikazi’s army was so large that they could simply build pontoon bridges across the river and cross all at once. Then the pursuit would begin again—and where would the Krek flee? No scout had yet crossed that huge, marshy river. No one knew what lay in the lands to the south. They could very well just find themselves trapped against an obstacle that was still worse than the ones they faced here.

  No, better to make the attempt to cross over the strait to the great island he could see in the distance. They could do that in big rafts, which wouldn’t take much longer to build than small ones.

  Would they be safe from the monsters, in big rafts? There was no way to know until they tried. The giant lizards could probably capsize any raft—or simply smash them to pieces. And those hideous tentacled things might be able to seize a raft and pull it apart, or even pull it under entirely.

  Could, yes—but would they? It was possible the huge creatures simply wouldn’t see the rafts as prey to begin with, and would leave them alone.

  Of course, should that prove to be true, then Zilikazi could cross the strait on rafts also. But that was a problem for a later time.

  Besides…

  The thought taking shape in Meshwe’s mind came to the fore. Insane thought, he would have said, not so long ago. But who could say? Not so long ago he would have thought the idea of taming a gantrak was insane also. Yet Sebetwe had managed to do it, with the help of two Mrem dancers.

  If they could find more dancers…

  That assumed the dancers would be willing to help, but why would they not? The position of that shattered Mrem tribe was even more desperate than that of the Kororo.

  He turned to his small cluster of aides. “Send runners to find Sebetwe and bring him here. I have a better use for him than setting more traps for Zilikazi.”

  “And the gantrak?”

  Meshwe considered the matter. “Yes. I need the dancers here also. Without Sebetwe and those two the gantrak will run wild if we don’t bring her back.”

  Her mate and their two younglings were getting restless anyway. By now, they’d found that even without the dancers any group of three tekku could keep the gantrak under control, so long as they were fed and left alone each night. But there was no telling how long that might last if they grew still more restless at the prolonged absence of the mother.

  Two of his aides left to find runners. To the remaining four, he said:

  “Start building rafts.”

  “Small ones, for the river?”

  “No. Big ones. As big as we can make them and still be able to cross the strait with oars and sails.”

  He pointed to the island on the horizon. “We’re going there.”

  Was it an island at all? he wondered. They didn’t know the answer to that question either. They’d been assuming it was because it lo
oked like an island, but it might just be a promontory extending from another continent.

  He could remember a time—vaguely—when he’d thought uncertainty was rather pleasant.

  Zilikazi

  The army was now far enough into the second mountain range that the danger of traps and rockfalls had receded considerably. The terrain was not exactly a plateau but it had fewer of the steep slopes and narrow gullies that enabled the Kororo to make best use of their ambush techniques. Better still, none of the remaining streams and creeks were large enough, even when dammed, to produce devastating floods like the one that had struck the army when they first entered the range.

  There was something else, too. Zilikazi was almost sure that the extraordinarily skilled tekkutu he’d faced earlier had withdrawn. He still didn’t know the Kororo’s identity, but over the course of their contest he’d come to recognize his presence—his psychic taste, as it were.

  That taste had been missing for more than a day now. Halfway through the morning yesterday it had disappeared.

  Where? Zilikazi had no idea. It would be nice to think the tekkutu was dead, but he was almost certain that the two of them were not done yet with their struggle. Of whose final and end result there was no doubt, of course, but it was still aggravating.

  Zilikazi had little experience with long and protracted conflict. This was the first time in his life since attaining his full adult strength that he’d been unable to just overwhelm his opponent in short order.

  He could remember—vaguely—a time when he’d thought easy victories had grown a bit boring.

  Nabliz

  The next encounter with a party of Mrem almost erupted in a fight. This was a large party—twenty-eight of the mammals, in all, including four dancers. Unfortunately, there were also six warriors in the group and their leader was pugnacious His name was Jora Ashag, and it seemed that Chefer Kolkin knew him quite well. That was a very mixed blessing, however, since it also turned out that the two warriors detested each other and had almost come to blows on several previous occasions.

  As they might have this time, given the added tension of the unusual situation. Luckily one of the dancers, an older female named Yaffa Barak, had more authority than Jora Ashag in whatever manner authority was reckoned by Mrem, something which was still unclear to Nabliz.