by Larry Niven
Kchula opened his mouth to snarl in rage, closed it again. I cannot antagonize the Pride-Patriarchs. Instead he looked at Scrral-Rrit. “Patriarch, do you so order?” He fingered the medallion controlling his puppet’s zzrou.
“I do.” Scrral-Rrit looked more humiliated by having to issue the command than he did by having Kchula do it for him.
Kchula looked back to Zraa-Churrt. Let him argue that. “Will that suffice, honored brother?”
He expected agreement, but instead Zraa-Churrt turned to Kzin-Conserver. “Conserver, I request a ruling.”
Kchula whirled to face this new interruption as Kzin-Conserver replied. “On what point?”
“My brothers and I are here to defend the Patriarchy. In the circumstances we are also witnesses here to skalazaal. Does our obligation to protect Kzinhome require that we abandon our positions at the Patriarch’s command, and so abandon our obligation to bear witness?”
“Hrrr.” Rrit-Conserver turned a paw over, considering carefully. “Yes, with exceptions.”
“And these exceptions are?”
“It is the role of the Patriarch to ensure that skalazaal is declared and open, and to ensure that the traditions are followed.” Kzin-Conserver spoke carefully. I am treading a narrow path of honor here. I must be impartial regardless of my personal preferences. “In this case it is the Patriarch himself who is challenged, and further he is challenged by his brother, whose claim supersedes his own despite the accession of the High Priests. The Patriarch cannot be considered to be able to give fair judgment in this case. Responsibility as witness then falls on the Great Pride Circle.”
On the other side of the table Mtell-Mtell twitched his whiskers from side to side. “Who we Pride-Patriarchs represent here.”
“Yes.” Conserver made the gesture-of-peer-acknowledgment. “The claims of fealty and responsibility are now of equal weight. Compromise is demanded.”
“Another judgment, Conserver?” asked Zraa-Churrt.
“Of course.”
“Is a defense mounted close in-system compromise enough?”
Kzin-Conserver turned a paw over. “It is.”
Kchula controlled the urge to scream and leap in frustration. “But…”
Kzin-Conserver held up a paw. “I have ruled, Kchula-Tzaatz.”
Kchula lapsed into silence, fuming. But I have lost little here, in failing to get the Great Pride fleets out of sight of the ground battle. Ftzaal would be unlikely to use a free hand even if I won it for him, nor will it change the outcome. It is the kz’zeerkti who are the danger. He looked to the ceiling and contemplated the heavy chandeliers as though they held some clue as to how the battleground far above was developing. A close-in defense backed by the orbital fortresses made sense, but it ran the risk of allowing the enemy to launch their fighters and bombers into Kzinhome’s atmosphere. Once they were in and low they would be almost impossible to intercept, and the Citadel of the Patriarch was a primary target, although he might survive the attack in the well protected Command Lair. His lips twitched away from his fangs. I should have scourged their world the moment I had the power to command it. Now he could only wait to see if the monkeys would raze Kzinhome first.
I have known the glory of the universe, and all its horrors.
—Patriarch’s Telepath
The universe was black and empty and expanding and at the edge of it there was an awareness. Without body or senses Pouncer reached for it, stretching himself and found himself looking back at a body collapsed on the floor of the pitching tsvasztet, a kzintosh, powerfully muscled but limp and motionless. He is dying. Unimaginable grief swept over him, the pang of loss, and then the tuskvor balked and he turned back to the tiller bar, steering the beast with savage intent, flooded now with the desire to revenge a lost mate, and he realized that the body was his own and the awareness he had found was C’mell’s, and she had thought that she’d lost him. He tried to speak to her and could not, but she felt him respond to his own awareness, first with surprise, then with relief and understanding, and he knew her in a way that he had not before, even in the close intimacy of mating, and he could have stayed there with her forever but he could not. The universe was expanding and there were other awarenesses, Battle Captain, Night-Prowler, the strangely different mind of Tskombe-kz’zeerkti and the Trina manrette, the faint, unforthcoming glow of their tuskvor, other kzinti, other creatures, jamming into his mind in a growing torrent of hope and fear, desire and rage, hunger and thirst and satiation. He tried to shut them out but found he could not, the torrent expanded beyond his ability to control, and he felt his own awareness eroding, torn away in the onrushing flow like a sapling in a storm.
He had a purpose, to direct the battle. How to find a stranger you’ve never met in a crowd? This is the burden Patriarch’s Telepath bore. Time seemed to have no meaning as he jumped from awareness to awareness. Familiar emotion keyed recognition, here a commander, here a Pride-Patriarch, here a telepath, and he had half the battle won. He gave images to the telepath, a map of the battle unfolding as he saw it and then he moved on, secure in the knowledge that the information would be given to the telepath’s commander. A harder task now, finding the minds of his enemies, waiting farther out in ambush. He found them too, surrounded by the small, vicious points of consciousness that could only be rapsari. Again he leapt from mind to mind, slower this time, taking the time to search out plans and tactics. He saw the battlefield through eight-to-the-fourth pairs of enemy eyes, saw how they had shaped it, prepared positions and traps for his force, and again he reached for the czrav telepath and gave him a revision of his initial plan, launching spoiling attacks to protect his own flank as he ordered his vast, living armada around in a sweeping turn to take the enemy where they were weakest. His force responded, and as the situation changed he sent more orders to respond ahead of the enemy. How much time has this taken? He had no way of knowing until he thought to tap the time sense of one of his Pride-Patriarchs, and realized that it was taking a long time indeed, and they were closing hard on the Citadel gates. The Tzaatz were in confusion, trying to move forces already being overrun by tuskvor. He sensed their fear, and the exultation of the czrav who sliced out their lives. He sensed their pain and confusion as death overtook them, and sorrow at their loss swept over him. This is the strength and weakness of the Telepath’s Gift, the needle balance between the power to kill with ease and the cost of the pain of death. In knowing his enemy as he was, he was becoming them, and that intimacy made the immediacy of their death a terrible thing. Am I this strong? It was within his power to call off the attack. Not every necessary thing is easy. He steeled himself and went on, resolving to end it as soon as possible.
His advance guard were engaging more Tzaatz now, pinning their units in place, denying them the ability to respond to his main assault as it swept closer to the citadel. It was going well, so far, and he again revised his instructions to his commanders. But we have yet to meet the heavy rapsari. The raiders and harriers the Tzaatz outposts used were easy game for tuskvor-mounted Heroes, but the true test would come before the citadel gate, where the beasts clustered close and heavy siege weapons waited. He stretched his mind there, to gauge the defenses and the readiness of the defenders, and there he found not a mind but a place where a mind should be, a black hole in the universe.
It took him a long time to recognize it for what it was. The Black Priest! Ftzaal-Tzaatz was insulated from the world of observer quantum wave collapse by the Black Fur gene, which made his awareness unavailable to Pouncer, but he was there, waiting for him, he could sense that much at least. He is alive, he is aware, there must be a way to reach him. He concentrated, directed all his energy at it, felt his own awareness burning away with the effort of the attempt, but nothing he could do would penetrate the barrier. The Black Fur gene is powerful. More sthondat extract would let him know Ftzaal’s mind. But I cannot lose myself in the mind-trance. If only I could touch him…Physical contact would strengthen the bond, let h
im break through the Black Priests’ barriers, but that was impossible. Already he could feel the drug’s effects fading, and the desire for more, to rekindle the vision, was strong, strong within him. The Citadel gates were coming up. How much time has passed? He fought the craving, fought as well to return himself to awareness, to open his eyes so he could lead his assaulters to the walls of his father’s fortress, as he must. He entered a twilight zone then, between the two universes and then found another awareness, in terrible pain. It was different somehow, a kz’zeerkti. Cherenkova-Captain! She suffers the Hot Needle! Her pain swept over him, consuming him like a swarm of v’pren and from far, far away he heard himself howling in response.
And the world returned like a sudden bath of ice water, and he found himself lying on the floor of the tsvasztet, Swift-Claw kneeling over him with concern. Sounds of battle rose, kzinti kill screams mixed with the deep, booming bellows of enraged tuskvor and the keening cries of rapsari.
He staggered to the front of the tsvasztet where C’mell still had the tiller bar. They were surging past Hero’s Square, entering the forest of broadleaf trees that separated it from the Citadel, and the rapsar assaulters were waiting for them there. As he watched, a pair of them appeared and attacked a tuskvor immediately in front of him. They were half its size, but vicious, with pincer tentacles that slashed and stabbed, seeking the vulnerable flesh beneath the tuskvor’s armor. The tuskvor bellowed in pain and the Ztrak Pride warriors on its back leapt with grav belts and variable swords to attack the Tzaatz infantry who rode the rapsari. The rapsar keened and tore at the tuskvor’s neck. Blood began to fountain to the ground as the tuskvor struggled, thrashing its huge tail and trying to bring its tusks to bear on its antagonist. The other beast snatched a czrav Hero in midleap, crushing his life out and casting him aside. The tuskvor went down with a crash that shook the ground and snapped ancient broadleaf trunks to the ground. A volley of steel balls from a Tzaatz launcher rapsar deeper in the woods came over, one of them tearing the canopy and half the tsvasztet railing off of Pouncer’s tuskvor, coming so close to him that he felt the wind of its passage. He toggled the vocom on his beltcomp and spoke into it, the battle picture he’d gained in the mind-trance still fresh in his memory. “Ztrak Pride, close and attack. Dziit Pride, right flank from reserve, take the north walls, clear the way for the assault prides.” The need for stealth is gone now, and the Tzaatz won’t have time to break the crypting. “Support prides into position. Ccarri Pride, lead the others to secure the perimeter.”
The mind-trance was still strong enough on him that he felt his warriors responding to his commands, even as the confirmations crackled over the vocom channel. The battle had broken up into swirling knots of violence, the cohesion of both attack and defense broken by the close country. A pair of resin-spraying assaulters lumbered out of the trees, gouting noxious goo from their forehead nozzles. C’mell hauled on the tiller and their tuskvor bellowed and balked. She yanked the releases, letting the control lines run free, and the angered tuskvor swung its horns at the nearer assaulter, ripping its side open. It collapsed in a stew of its own ichor, twitching. The tuskvor lurched and jabbed at the second one, missing. The assaulter came closer, under the tuskvor’s long, powerful neck, spraying wildly. A gobbet of the sticky poison hit Pouncer on the arm, burning where it touched, and drying to a thick resin almost at once, but there wasn’t enough there to incapacitate him. The rapsar keened and their tuskvor ran over it, crushing it underfoot without slowing down, but the attack had already taken its toll. The tuskvor’s neck and forebody were covered in the goo, and it bellowed in rage and pain. C’mell struggled hard to reel in the lines she’d let loose to regain control over the beast, but the resin had hopelessly snarled them. The tuskvor spotted another rapsar, this one a catapulter, and it bellowed and charged. The damaged tsvasztet lurched and slid backward as the catapulter cut loose a salvo of steel balls.
Pouncer grabbed for support. “Grav belts!”
The balls flew past and several smacked the tuskvor in the chest hard enough that Pouncer heard the bones break even over the din of the battle. The tuskvor bellowed again but kept moving. One of the balls tore away the mazourk’s station, and panic filled him for an instant when he didn’t see C’mell there. He looked wildly around, saw her behind him, closing the last buckle on her grav belt. She tossed him his own and he quickly snapped it around his waist even as the tsvasztet lurched again, its forward securing lines torn loose. He leapt for the still-stable back section as the tuskvor reached the fleeing catapulter, goring it and throwing its handlers to the ground to scramble out of the way before their now lifeless creation toppled on top of them. The violent motion parted the last restraining rope, and the front half of the travel platform slid off its back and splintered on the ground as the tuskvor stabbed at the corpse again and again. Another tuskvor blundered past with its tsvasztet on fire, this one crushing the rapsar handlers who’d managed to escape. Ferlitz-Telepath’s travelpack was there, and he reached inside for the remaining two vials of sthondat extract. Already he was craving the power of the mind-trance. I am not addicted, I will only use them if I need them. Even as he thought it the impulse seized him to throw them away, to remove even the temptation to start down the path of Patriarch’s Telepath. Their injured tuskvor staggered forward and the tsvasztet lurched dangerously. Reflexively he slid the vials into his hunt pouch and drew his variable sword as a two-sword of rapsar raiders appeared before them, their riders firing crystal iron crossbow bolts. Pouncer saw Battle Captain go down, a bolt through his neck. He looked around, counting his small band. Night-Prowler was nowhere to be seen. But C’mell is still here. That fact was more important than he ever could have imagined. Pray the Fanged God she is still here at the end of this.
The raiders circled, waiting for their prey to go down, and then a fresh shower of arrows rained down from nowhere. Pouncer looked up and saw the walls of the Citadel looming over them, mirror bright with mag armor engaged, with Tzaatz archers firing from the battlements. Here and there other tuskvor had made it to the walls, standing to their broad chests in the Quickwater. Their mazourk had hauled their necks high to act as assault ladders for the Heroes swarming up them. Further back, siege engines mounted on the backs of other tuskvor pumped ballista shafts and showers of catapult stone at the enemy to clear the way for the attackers.
“Leap!” Pouncer roared and leapt himself, just as their tuskvor collapsed half on the bank, half into the Quickwater, and the back half of the tsvasztet tore off to sink in the current. His grav belt surged as he arced for the parapet. A Tzaatz was waiting for him there, but he parried the first attack with his variable sword, then cut the attacker in half with a well timed counterswing. Pain flared in his mind as his opponent died, the echoes of the mind-trance spiking his death agony into Pouncer’s awareness. The distraction nearly cost him his life, but he saw, in a single brilliant flash, the second Tzaatz, felt his developing attack and the rage in his killscream. He pivoted, slicewire blurring, and the other was dead and falling over the edge.
Shapes landed beside him. The two kz’zeerkti. Where are the others? There was no time to worry about that. “Tskombe-kz’zeerkti! Your mate! Go to that tower!” He pointed to Forgotten Tower, overshadowing the Puzzle Garden, where he could sense the dulled awareness of the tortured Cherenkova-Captain. “Go down the stairs, all the way. At the bottom there is a corridor with cells. At the end there is a chamber. She is there!”
Tskombe nodded in acknowledgment. Pouncer had changed since his recovery from the sthondat drug. He was more distant, more commanding, and the depth in his eyes was frightening. What does he see there? He followed the pointing talon to the distant tower, locking it into his memory. All along the wall czrav warriors were gaining the battlements, and a storm of arrows came up from the courtyards and the inner curtain wall. He looked to Trina and swallowed hard. It wasn’t the first time he’d faced death in combat; it was the first time he’d brought a teenage girl with
him. But I couldn’t leave her, and she’s lucky…He would need luck himself, and lots of it. He grabbed her hand and they leapt for the tower, grav belts whining as they arced toward it.
Pouncer watched them go, and more shapes landed beside him, C’mell and Z’slee, he knew without looking. In the courtyard below them the Tzaatz were bringing up another siege rapsar with powerful secondary legs meant to cock and fire the heavy ballista mounted on its back. Behind him Ztrak Pride had secured the outer north wall and Dziit Pride were leaping in to reinforce them. The attackers had taken heavy losses, and their hold on the battlements was precarious. If the rapsar below came into action it could cost them that tentative victory. He reached out with his mind, felt again the presence-of-absence that was the Black Priest. He is close. He found another mind, nearby, Ftz’yeer Leader waiting in ambush in the Citadel’s central courtyard, ready to lead his elite force out on his master’s command, to crush any czrav penetration of the inner sanctuary. He knew beyond doubt that Ftzaal-Tzaatz was directing the defenders now. Behind him he sensed his own forces, the vast array now embroiled in lethal combat with the rapsari. We need reinforcement or we will lose the battle here and now.
He keyed his beltcomp. “Assault prides, leap to the north wall. Support prides, saturation fire from the east across the Quickwater.” Below him the Tzaatz were bringing their launcher creature to bear. He screamed and leapt, and the two kzinretti screamed and leapt with him. As he touched down a sword of Tzaatz leapt at them. I will earn victory here, or a death of honor.
Seize what your enemy desires and he will conform to your wishes.
—Sun Tzu
There was little arrow fire as Tskombe jumped for the tower, and he and Trina touched down unmolested. The tower was old, its stones worn smooth by the ages, and a tightly coiled spiral stairway ran down it. He led the way down. It coiled down to the left, as tower stairs did on Earth. And on Earth that’s done so that right-handed attackers fighting up the stairs have their sword arm hampered against the inner wall. It occurred to him to wonder if kzinti had a preferred hand, and then he had an answer as a warrior screamed and leapt in front of him, variable sword held in the left hand with maximum freedom of motion. He parried the blow awkwardly with his right hand, then thumbed the retractor until his slice wire was dagger short. He ducked the next attack and stabbed it down, getting the tip into the shoulder articulation. The hit wasn’t crippling, but his opponent fell back, bleeding, and dropped his weapon. Tskombe reextended the slice wire and swung, this time getting the edge inside the Tzaatz’s belly articulation and gutting him. So the spiral is no help, but being on the high ground is always an advantage. He leapt over the body, nearly slipping in fresh spilled blood and continued down.
