Harry Turtledove - Clan of the Claw

The Mrem had a core territory where they and their herds roamed unchallenged. Beyond that, on all sides (save only the north, lost now and forever to the New Water), was a debatable land. They could hold it and use it if they came forth in strength. Then again, so could the Liskash nobles against whose domains theirs abutted. Beyond the debatable lands lay terrain unquestionably belonging to the Scaly Ones. The Mrem had entered those lands only as raiders…or as slaves.

Now, proudly, Rantan Taggah led the whole of his folk into the lands Sassin had ruled since he overthrew the Liskash noble whose seat they’d been before. At first glance, Sassin’s territory seemed little different from that in which the Clan of the Claw had dwelt since coming up out of the Hollow Lands.

Only at first glance, though. Yes, the grass beginning to yellow under the warm sun was the same here as it had been there. Yes, the same kinds of low, scrubby trees grew in the lowlands and along the banks of the streams cutting across the plain. And yes, the same kinds of birds and leatherwings perched in those trees.

But off in the distance grazed a herd of frillhorns. They were unmistakably Liskash, their bare hides irregularly striped in shades of gold and brown and green. Those stripes broke up their outlines and made them much harder to recognize at any distance than they would have been otherwise.

The wind swung round, bringing their scent to Rantan Taggah. His driver’s nose wrinkled. “Faugh!” exclaimed the junior male, whose name was Munkus Drap. Mrem could eat Liskash flesh if they got hungry enough. They didn’t care for it enough to want to herd frillhorns-which was putting it mildly.

Not only that: Liskash herders directed their beasts by mental command. Mrem lacked that power. Maybe a group of Dancers could make a magic that would reach a frillhorn’s mind, if it was not too alien for such a reaching. But, once more, to what point?

Something ran toward the advancing Mrem from the direction of the herd: not a frillhorn, even a young one, but something that came on two legs rather than four. For a moment, Rantan Taggah thought the Scaly One watching the frillhorns had gone mad and was attacking the Clan of the Claw all by himself.

But no. As the creature got closer, the talonmaster saw it was only a zargan. The Liskash tamed them and used them to help guide the herds and to fight off predators that might harm their meat animals. Zargan were smaller than thinking Liskash, and ran with their bodies more nearly parallel to the ground than did their masters. A long, stiff tail counterbalanced the weight of head and torso.

This zargan hissed out a challenge as it charged. It threw its mouth open, displaying row on row of sharp teeth. Absently, Rantan Taggah wondered whether the Liskash nobles had bred them for great jaws or they’d had them before being tamed.

The krelprep pulling Rantan Taggah’s chariot bugled forth challenges of their own. They would have reared if they weren’t harnessed. A Mrem in another car whirled a sling above his head. The stone hissed through the air. It caught the zargan in the side of the head. The beast swayed, then toppled. Creatures of the Liskash kind had uncommonly thick skulls, and often uncommonly small brains inside them. All the same…The zargan kicked feebly. Rantan Taggah didn’t think it would get up again.

“Well shot!” he called to the slinger.

“I thank you, Talonmaster,” the other male answered.

The standard-bearer’s chariot passed right next to the zargan. In fact, the krelprep would have trampled it if the driver hadn’t steered them to one side. The standard-bearer leaned over the rail and shoved a javelin into the zargan’s belly. It went on thrashing even after that; Scaly Ones were notoriously tenacious of life.

“One more beast we won’t have to kill later,” Munkus Drap remarked.

“True enough, and killing it now cost us nothing,” Rantan Taggah said. “That’s all to the good. We haven’t got the time or the males to go hunting Liskash if they don’t hunt us.”

“We ought to kill them all,” the driver said.

“That would be fine, if only we could. Right now, we can’t.” Rantan Taggah’s head swung toward the right. There was the New Water, holding them away from their own kind. How far west past where they were now did it stretch? Many, many days’ travel. The talonmaster was only too sure of that. Many, many days’ unhindered travel. If they had to stop and fight whenever they entered some new Liskash noble’s domain…

He almost repented of his choice. Maybe it would have been better after all to do as Zhanns Bostofa said, to stay where they were as long as they could. How long would they take to find the place where the Hollow Lands ended, where there was a free way north to others of their own kind? How many of them would be left when they did?

Any?

But if they stayed on their old grazing grounds, the Liskash would converge on them from west and east and south. Even with the survivors who’d come up out of the flooded lowlands, there weren’t enough Mrem to hold them off. That had seemed obvious to Rantan Taggah. It still did. What suddenly seemed less clear, as he set out on this great trek, was whether there were enough Mrem to complete it.

His hand closed on the hilt of his sword. If you were going to fail regardless, better to fail doing something, trying your hardest. Waiting in glum resignation for death to come to you was more the Liskash way, not that of his own folk.

And they might win through in spite of everything.

He’d made a face when he caught the frillhorns’ scent. The shifting breeze also took the smells from the Clan of the Claw to the grazing Liskash. They cared for the odors of the Mrem no more than he’d liked theirs. One by one, their heads came up in alarm. They had big, horny beaks and bony crests edged with the spikes that gave them their name. One of the biggest creatures lumbered off toward the south. The rest ambled after it, showing the Mrem their tails.

That did not necessarily mean fear. A swipe from a tail like that could knock a male off his feet and leave him broken and bloody on the ground. Even the biggest hunting Liskash-which dwarfed both their own more clever cousins and the Mrem-approached frillhorns with as much respect as their tiny minds would hold.

“Well, if the Scaly Ones didn’t already know we were on the move, that herd heading off for no reason would give them the news,” Munkus Drap said.

“Don’t worry,” Rantan Taggah said. “They knew.”

As far as Sassin was concerned, all Mrem looked alike. To him, all hairy creatures seemed pretty much the same. They differed mainly in size. In stink, and in nuisance value, they were all variations on a single nasty theme.

His own kind, by contrast, were individuals to him. They varied in size, in pattern, in color, in length of snout and shape of eye, in whether they had a scaly crest over each eye socket, in how tall the crest was if it was there at all, in the shape and thickness of their throat wattles, in…in all the details that made them individuals rather than hairy-things.

Here and now, they also varied in weaponry and protection. Some had bows, some javelins, some slings. Their leather shields were mostly small. A few wore caps with the fur still on them. Those Liskash had spirit: if the Mrem caught them, they would die right away-or maybe slowly, if the miserable mammals were sufficiently provoked. Others had helmets and breastplates of leather like that of most fighters’ shields. Still others, the captains and commanders, wore bronze in place of leather. Some of the officers decorated their armor with little spikes on helmets and shoulderpieces, so they looked a bit like frillhorns.