Harry Turtledove - Clan of the Claw

Rantan Taggah deployed his remaining chariots to the south of the wagons and herds. He might have been telling Sassin, Well, if you want to go on with the fight, we’re ready for you. He might have been, but he wasn’t. Another battle right then would have torn the Clan of the Claw to pieces.

The only consolation was that Sassin didn’t seem ready to start fighting again right away, either. The males who’d got back from the main battle bragged about how many Liskash they’d slain. For once, their brags must have held some truth.

Yawning again, Enni Chennitats climbed into a wagon and curled up into a ball. What if they need magic? What if they need us to Dance? she wondered. Sleep smote her before she found an answer.

Sassin was coldly furious. By any standards, he’d won a smashing victory over the furry vermin. They should have run back to their old grazing grounds or stayed where they were to try to recover from the thrashing he’d given them. Instead, they headed west, across his lands, as if they’d triumphed in the fighting.

Lorssett had been rude enough to suggest Sassin didn’t know what to do with a victory. Sassin hissed softly; he’d given his aide what he deserved for his presumption. But the Mrem, plainly, didn’t know what to do after a defeat.

Because they didn’t, Sassin would have to beat them all over again. He wondered whether Lorssett had been right even if rude. Doing it when the hairy, yowling pests were all topsy-turvy might have been easier than taking them on now that they’d pulled themselves together.

But, whether Lorssett had been right or not, Sassin knew he had been, too: even in triumph, his fighters had taken a fearful drubbing. His magic might have made them advance against the Mrem in spite of that. It might have, yes, but he’d also wearied himself yesterday. He needed time to recover his strength. And he always needed to look at his fellow Liskash nobles. As he’d told Lorssett, if they sensed weakness in him they would be quick to take advantage of it. Mercy was a Mrem notion, and, to a Liskash, an extraordinarily stupid one.

Getting axeheads up into the air to shadow the hairy vermin wasn’t easy. Self-centered as any Liskash, the flyers thought only of stuffing themselves with freshly dead meat. They weren’t interested in doing Sassin’s bidding.

He reached out toward the Mrem with a cautious mental probe. More often than not, that would have been blunted. Mrem didn’t have much magic, and needed cumbersome swarms of females to work what they did have, but he wasn’t up to using much himself at the moment. Nothing blocked his spying, though. The magic of the hairy pests was in as much disarray as the rest of their establishment after the battle.

Liskash faces were not made to show expressions. Sassin looked the same whether happy or furious. But if he could have smiled, he would have. There was the escaped slave, and there with him the male whose weakness his fighters had exploited. They were in an even more important place now than the one they’d held before.

What was wrong with the Mrem who led that band? Didn’t he understand how he’d come to grief yesterday? Did he think it was only happenstance that the Liskash fighters went in where the weak male was in charge? He’d fought the main battle well enough. More than well enough, Sassin thought. Had the main battle been the only string in his bow, it would have been a disaster.

Well, what did the Liskash say about the Mrem? That they had no sense of the larger struggle, that they could not see farther than the end of their snouts. Cliches became cliches because they boiled truths down to a handful of words. This one certainly seemed to.

Sassin paused. It seemed to, yes. But what if this Mrem commander was playing a deeper game, trying to lure him into a mistake? That was unlikely, but Sassin supposed it was possible.

He would watch. He would wait. When the time came, he would strike. And, this time, his strike would be altogether deadly. If he sensed trickery, he would change his plans to foil it. But he really didn’t think he would need to. These furry nuisances were fierce, yes. They wouldn’t have caused the Liskash so much trouble if they weren’t. But fierceness and cleverness were far removed from each other. A clever Mrem? The mere idea filled Sassin with cold amusement.

West. Rantan Taggah had known the Clan of the Claw would have a long journey. Till he began it, though, he hadn’t truly understood what that meant. How many more battles would they have to fight? Would anything be left of them by the time they got to where they were going?

If he was going to ask such questions, he should have asked them of Demm Etter. If she wasn’t the wisest of the Mrem in the Clan of the Claw, he had no idea who was. But the idea never crossed his mind. Instead, he waited for Enni Chennitats to come out of the wagon where she’d rested.

Her fur was rumpled, ungroomed. She yawned enormously, showing off her fangs. Her tongue and the roof of her mouth had dark gray patches on them. Rantan Taggah had never noticed that before. He thought they were charming.

He poured out his troubles to her. When he finished, she yawned again-not boredom but exhaustion. “We could go back,” she said. “We were doing…well enough where we were. We could go on…for a while.”

Her hesitations matched the ones that had made him set the Clan of the Claw in motion. “No,” he said. “They’d crush us in the end. It might not happen till after we were dead and gone, but it would happen.”

“I think so, too,” Enni Chennitats said. “That makes the trek our best chance.”

“But it isn’t very good, either,” Rantan Taggah said mournfully.

“Not very good, but still the best,” Enni Chennitats said. Hearing her say the same thing he believed made him feel better. There was no rational reason it should, but it did. She went on, “And if we give Sassin everything he deserves, some of the other Liskash nobles may think three times before they try to block our path. News travels fast among the Scaly Ones. They’ll know they can’t cross us without paying the price.”

“If,” the talonmaster echoed. “Everything we’re doing now, we’re building on a tower of ifs.”

“Not everything,” Enni Chennitats said. “Sassin will hit us again. Chances are, his fighters will strike at Zhanns Bostofa again. That’s why you’ve got Grumm traveling with Zhanns Bostofa’s warriors for now-just to make it more tempting. And I can touch your mind in the Dance. I’ve already proved that.”

“Well, yes.” Rantan Taggah remembered the intimacy of that touch, even if it had brought bad news. His blood heated. He willed himself to relax-no time for that now. No time for anything but the fight ahead. He forced a laugh. “You’re right. What else could we need?”

“Luck,” Enni Chennitats said seriously. “All the luck we can find, and a little more besides.”

“That’s what I said,” Rantan Taggah replied. “A tower of ifs.”

“It sounds better my way,” Enni Chennitats told him, and he didn’t feel like arguing with her.

Sassin methodically readied his new attack. This one must not fall short. If he’d pressed the last one…That would have been the same as admitting Lorssett was right. No self-respecting god could have done any such thing. Sassin was more than self-respecting: he was self-worshiping. That being so, he didn’t worry about what might have gone wrong. He did his best to make sure everything would go right this time.

He made sure his borders were protected, too. The other Liskash nobles wouldn’t thank him for delivering them from the trouble these Mrem could cause. As he’d told his steward, they would look at him with grim golden eyes, wondering whether he’d cost himself too dear in the deliverance. And, if they decided he had, they would fall on him and destroy him. Then, no doubt, they would quarrel among themselves over how to divide the spoil.