Man-Kzin Wars 25th Anniversary Edition

by Larry Niven

  He guessed that this weapon would shoot low as well, and opened up at a distance of sixty paces. Good guess; Brickshitter turned toward him and at the same instant was slapped by an invisible fist that flung the heavy rifle from his grasp. Locklear dodged to the lip of the ravine to spot the weapons, saw them twenty paces away, and dropped the sidearm so that he could hang onto brush as he vaulted over, now in full view of Brickshitter.

  Whose stuttering fire with his good arm reminded Locklear, nearly too late, that Brickshitter had other weapons beside that beam rifle. Spurts of dirt flew into Locklear’s eyes as he flung himself back to safety. He crawled back for the sidearm, watching the navigator fumble for his rifle, and opened up again just as Brickshitter dropped from sight. More wasted ammo.

  Behind him, the fire was raging downslope toward their mutual dead. Across the ravine, Brickshitters enraged voice: “Small caliber flesh wound in the right shoulder but I have started brush fires to flush him. I can see beam rifles, close-combat weapons and other things almost below him in the ravine. —Yessir, he is almost out of ammunition and wants that cache. Yessir, a few more bolts. An easy shot.”

  Locklear had once seen an expedition bundle burn with a beam rifle in it. He began to run hard, skirting still-smoldering brush and grass, and had already passed the inert bodies of their unprotesting dead when the ground bucked beneath him. He fell to one knee, seeing a cloud of debris fan above the ravine, echoes of the explosion shouldering each other down the slopes, and he knew that Brickshitter’s left-armed aim had been as good as necessary. Good enough, maybe, to get himself killed in that cloud of turf and stone and metal fragments, yes, and good wooden arrows that had made a warrior of Locklear. Yet any sensible warrior knows how to retreat.

  The ravine widened now, the creek dropping in a series of lower falls, and Locklear knew that further headlong flight would send him far into the open, so far that the zzrou would kill him if Brickshitter didn’t. And Brickshitter could track his spoor—but not in water. Locklear raced to the creek, heedless of the misstep that could smash a knee or ankle, and began to negotiate the little falls.

  The last one faced the lake. He turned, recognizing that he had cached his pathetic store of provisions behind that waterfall soon after his arrival. It was flanked by thick fronds and ferns, and Locklear ducked into the hideyhole behind that sheet of water streaming wet, gasping for breath.

  A soft inquiry from somewhere behind him. He whirled in sudden recognition. It’s REALLY a small world, he thought idiotically. “Boots?” No answer. Well, of course not, to his voice, but he could see the dim outline of a deep horizontal tunnel, turning left inside its entrance, with dry grasses lining the floor. “Boots, don’t be afraid of me. Did you know the kzin males have returned?”

  Guarded, grudging it: “Yes. They have wounded my mate.”

  “Worse, Boots. But she killed one,”—it was her doing as surely as if her fangs had torn out Yellowbelly’s throat—”and I killed another. She told me to—to retrieve the things she took from me.” It seemed his heart must burst with this cowardly lie. He was cold, exhausted, and on the run, and with the transmitter he could escape to win another day, and, and— And he wanted to slash his wrists with his wtsai.

  “I will bring them. Do not come nearer,” said the soft voice, made deeper by echoes. He squatted under the overhang, the splash of water now dwindling, and he realized that the blast up the ravine had made a momentary check dam. He distinctly heard the mewing of tiny kzin twins as Boots removed the security of her warm, soft fur. A moment later, he saw her head and arms. Both hands, even the one bearing a screwdriver and the transmitter, had their claws fully extended and her ears lay so flat on her skull that they might have been caps of skin. Still, she shoved the articles forward.

  Pocketing the transmitter with a thrill of undeserved success, he bade her keep the other items. He showed her the sidearm. “Boots, one of these killed Puss. Do you see that it could kill you just as easily?”

  The growl in her throat was an illustrated manual of counterthreat.

  “But I began as your protector. I would never harm you or your kittens. Do you see that now?”

  “My head sees it. My heart says to fight you. Go.”

  He nodded, turned away, and eased himself into the deep pool that was now fed by a mere trickle of water. Ahead was the lake, smoke floating toward it, and he knew that he could run safely in the shallows hidden by smoke without leaving prints. And fight another day. And, he realized, staring back at the once-talkative little falls, leave Boots with her kittens where the cautious Brickshitter would almost certainly find them because now the mouth of her birthing bower was clearly visible.

  No, I’m damned if you will!

  “So check into it, Brickshitter,” he muttered softly, backing deep into the cool cover of yellow ferns. “I’ve still got a few rounds here, if you’re still alive.”

  He was alive, all right. Locklear knew it in his guts when a stone trickled its way down near the pool, he knew it for certain when he felt soft footfalls, the almost silent track of a big hunting cat, vibrate the damp grassy embankment against his back. He eased forward in water that was no deeper than his armpits, still hidden, but when the towering kzin warrior sprang to the verge of the water he made no sound at all. He carried only his sidearm and knife, and Locklear fired at a distance of only ten paces, actually a trifling space.

  But a tremendous trifle, for Brickshitter was well-trained and did not pause after his leap before hopping aside in a squat. He was looking straight at Locklear and the horizontal spray of slugs ceased before it reached him. Brickshitter’s arm was a blur. Foliage shredded where Locklear had hidden as the little man dropped below the surface, feeling two hot slugs trickle down his back after their velocity was spent underwater.

  Locklear could not see clearly, but propelled himself forward as he broke the surface in a desperate attempt to reach the other side. He knew his sidearm was empty. He did not know that his opponent’s was, until the kzin navigator threw the weapon at him, screamed, and leaped.

  Locklear pulled himself to the bank with fronds as the big kzin strode toward him in water up to his belly. Too late to run, and Brickshitter had a look of cool confidence about him. I like him better when he’s not so cool. “Come on, you kshat, you vatach’s ass,” he chanted, backing toward the only place where he might have safety at his back—the stone shelf before Boots’s bower, where great height was a disadvantage. “Come on, you fur-licking, brickshitting hairball, do it! Leaping and screaming, screaming and leaping; you stupid no-name,” he finished, wondering if the last was an insult.

  Evidently it was. With a howling scream of savagery, the big kzin tried to leap clear of the water, falling headlong as Locklear reached the stone shelf. Dagger now in hand, Brickshitter floundered to the bank spitting, emitting a string of words that doubled Locklear’s command of kzinti curses. Then, almost as if reading Locklear’s mind, the navigator paused a few paces away and held up his knife. And his voice, though quivering, was exceedingly mild. “Do you know what I am going to do with this, monkey?”

  To break through this facade, Locklear made it off-handed. “Cut your ch’rowling throat by accident, most likely,” he said.

  The effect was startling. Stiffening, then baring his fangs in a howl of frustration, the warrior sprang for the shelf, seeing in mid-leap that Locklear was waiting for exactly that with his wtsai thrust forward, its tip made needle-sharp by the same female who had once dulled it. But a kzin warrior’s training went deep. Pivoting as he landed, rolling to one side, the navigator avoided Locklear’s thrust, his long tail lashing to catch the little man’s legs.

  Locklear had seen that one before. His blade cut deeply into the kzin’s tail and Brickshitter vented a yelp, whirling to spring. He feinted as if to hurl the knife and Locklear threw both arms before his face, seeing too late the beginning of the kzin’s squatting leap in close quarters, like a swordsman’s balestra. Locklear slammed hi
s back painfully against the side of the cave, his own blade slashing blindly, and felt a horrendous fiery trail of pain down the length of his knife arm before the graceful kzin moved out of range. He switched hands with the wtsai.

  “I am going to carve off your maleness while you watch, monkey,” said Brickshitter, seeing the blood begin to course from the open gash on Locklear’s arm.

  “One word before you do,” Locklear said, and pulled out all the stops. “Ch’rowl your grandmother. Ch’rowl your patriarch, and ch’rowl yourself.”

  With each repetition, Brickshitter seemed to coil into himself a bit farther, his eyes not slitted but saucer-round, and with his last phrase Locklear saw something from the edge of his vision that the big kzin saw clearly. Ropelike, temptingly bushy, it was the flick of Boots’s tail at the mouth of her bower.

  Like most feline hunters from the creche onward, the kzin warrior reacted to this stimulus with rapt fascination, at least for an instant, already goaded to insane heights of frustration by the sexual triggerword. His eyes rolled upward for a flicker of time, and in that flicker Locklear acted. His headlong rush carried him in a full body slam against the navigator’s injured shoulder, the wtsai going in just below the ribcage, torn from Locklear’s grasp as his opponent flipped backward in agony to the water. Locklear cartwheeled into the pool, weaponless, choosing to swim because it was the fastest way out of reach.

  He flailed up the embankment searching wildly for a loose stone, then tossed a glance over his shoulder. The navigator lay on his side, half out of the water, blood pumping from his belly, and in his good arm he held Locklear’s wtsai by its handle. As if his arm were the only part of him still alive, he flipped the knife, caught it by the tip, forced himself erect.

  Locklear did the first thing he could remember from dealing with vicious animals: reached down, grasped a handful of thin air, and mimicked hurling a stone. It did not deter the navigator’s convulsive move in the slightest, the wtsai a silvery whirr before it thunked into a tree one pace from Locklear’s breast. The kzin’s motion carried him forward into water, face down. He did not entirely submerge, but slid forward inert, arms at his sides. Locklear wrestled his blade from the tree and waited, his chest heaving. The navigator did not move again.

  Locklear held the knife aloft, eyes shut, for long moments, tears of exultation and vengeance coursing down his cheeks, mixing with dirty water from his hair and clean blood from his cheek. His eyes snapped open at the voice.

  “May I name my son after you, Rockear?” Boots, just inside the overhang, held two tiny spotted kittens protectively where they could suckle. It was, he felt, meant to be an honor merely for him to see them.

  “I would be honored, Boots. But the modern kzin custom is to make sons earn their names, I think.”

  “What do I care what they do? We are starting over here.”

  Locklear stuffed the blade into his belt, wiping wet stuff from his face again. “Not unless I can put away that scarfaced commander. He’s got Kit at the manor unless she has him. I’m going to try and bias the results,” he said grimly, and scanned the heights above the ravine.

  To his back, Boots said, “It is not traditional, but—if you come for us, we would return to the manor’s protection.”

  He turned, glancing up the ravine. “An honor. But right now, you’d better come out and wait for the waterfall to resume. When it does, it might flood your bower for a few minutes.” He waved, and she waved back. When next he glanced downslope, from the upper lip of the ravine, he could see the brushfire dwindling at the jungle’s edge, and water just beginning to carve its way through a jumble of debris in the throat of the ravine, and a small lithe orange-yellow figure holding two tiny spotted dots, patiently waiting in the sunlight for everything he said to come true.

  “Lady,” he said softly to the waiting Boots, “I sure hope you picked a winner.”

  He could have disappeared into the wilds of Kzersatz for months but Scarface, with vast advantages, might call for more searchers. Besides, running would be reactive, the act of mindless prey. Locklear opted to be proactive—a hunter’s mindset.

  Recalling the violence of that exploding rifle, he almost ignored the area because nothing useful could remain in the crater. But curiosity made him pause, squinting down from the heights, and excellent vision gave him an edge when he saw the dull gleam of Brickshitter’s beam rifle across the ravine. It was probably fully discharged, else the navigator would not have abandoned it. But Scarface wouldn’t know that.

  Locklear doubled back and retrieved the heavy weapon, chuckling at the sharp stones that lay atop the turf. Brickshitter must have expended a few curses as those stones rained down. The faint orange light near the scope was next to a legend in Kzinti that translated as “insufficient charge.” He thought about that a moment, then smeared his own blood over the light until its gleam was hidden. Shouldering the rifle, he set off again, circling high above the ravine so that he could come in from its upper end. Somehow the weapon seemed lighter now, or perhaps it was just his second wind. Locklear did not pause to reflect that his decision for immediate action brought optimism, and that optimism is another word for accumulated energy.

  The sun was at his back when he stretched prone behind low cover and paused for breath. The zoom scope of the rifle showed that someone had ripped the thatches from the manor’s window bulges, no doubt to give Scarface a better view. Works both ways, hotshot, he mused; but though he could see through the windows, he saw nothing move. Presently he began to crawl forward and down, holding the heavy rifle in the crooks of his arms, abrading his elbows as he went from brush to outcrop to declivity. His shadow stretched before him. Good; the sun would be in a watcher’s eyes and he was dry-mouthed with awareness that Scarface must carry his own arsenal.

  The vines they had planted already hid the shaft of their escape tunnel but Locklear paused for long moments at its mouth, listening, waiting until his breath was quiet and regular. What if Scarface were waiting in the tunnel? He ducked into the rifle sling, put his wtsai in his teeth, and eased down feet-first using remembered hand and footholds, his heart hammering his ribs. Then he scuffed earth with his knee and knew that his entry would no longer be a surprise if Scarface was waiting. He dropped the final two meters to soft dirt, squatting, hopping aside as he’d seen Brickshitter do.

  Nothing but darkness. He waited for his panting to subside and then moved forward with great caution. It took him five minutes to stalk twenty meters of curving tunnel, feeling his way until he saw faint light filtering from above. By then, he could hear the fitz-rowr of kzin voices. He eased himself up to the opening and peered through long slits of shamboo matting that Boots had woven to cover the rough walls.

  “. . . Am learning, milady, that even the most potent Word loses its strength when used too often,” a male voice was saying. Scarface, in tones Locklear had never expected to hear. “As soon as this operation is complete, rest assured I shall be the most gallant of suitors.”

  Locklear’s view showed only their legs as modern warrior and ancient courtesan faced each other, seated on benches at the rough-hewn dining table. Kit, with a sulk in her voice, said, “I begin to wonder if your truthfulness extends to my attractions, milord.”

  Scarface, fervently: “The truth is that you are a warrior’s wildest fantasies in fur. I cannot say how often I have wished for a mate I could actually talk to! Yet I am first Grraf-Commander, and second a kzintosh. Excuse me,” he added, stood up, and strode to the main doorway, now in full view of Locklear. His belt held ceremonial wtsai, a sidearm and God knew what else in those pockets. His beam rifle lay propped beside the doorway. Taking a brick-sized device from his broad belt, he muttered, “I wonder if this rude hut is interfering with our signals.”

  A click and then, in gruff tones of frustrated command, he said, “Hunt leader to all units: report! If you cannot report, use a signal bomb from your beltpacs, dammit! If you cannot do that, return to the hut at triple time or
I will hang your hides from a pennant pole.”

  Locklear grinned as Scarface moved back to the table with an almost human sigh. Too bad I didn’t know about those signal bombs. Warm this place up a little. Maybe I should go back for those beltpacs. But he abandoned the notion as Scarface resumed his courtship.

  “I have hinted, and you have evaded, milady. I must ask you now, bluntly: will you return with me when this operation is over?”

  “I shall do as the commander wishes,” she said demurely, and Locklear grinned again. She hadn’t said “Grraf-Commander”; and even if Locklear didn’t survive, she might very well wind up in command. Oh sure, she’d do whatever the commander liked.

  “Another point on which you have been evasive,” Scarface went on; “your assessment of the monkey, and what relationship he had to either of you.” Locklear did not miss this nuance; Scarface knew of two kzinrret, presumably an initial report from one of the pair who’d found Puss. He did not know of Boots, then.

  “The manbeast ruled us with strange magic forces, milord. He made us fearful at times. At any time he might be anywhere. Even now.” Enough of that crap, Locklear thought at her, even though he felt she was only trying to put the wind up Scarface’s backside. Fat chance! Lull the bastard, put him to sleep.

  Scarface went to the heart of his question. “Did he act honorably toward you both?”

  After a long pause: “I suppose he did, as a manbeast saw honor. He did not ch’rowl me, if that is—”

  “Milady! You will rob the Word of its meaning, or drive me mad.”

  “I have an idea. Let me dance for you while you lie at your ease. I will avoid the term and drive you only a little crazy.”

  “For the eighth-squared time, I do not need to lie down. I need to complete this hunt; duty first, pleasure after. I—what?”