Harry Turtledove - Clan of the Claw

Yes, I was right all along, Sassin thought: the only conclusion a self-worshiping god could possibly reach.

The weak male and his followers still protected the wagons that housed the hairy females and kits. If the Mrem wanted to hand Sassin the game, he would take it. He made very sure they were not setting a trap. Spying axeheads-he’d got them flying for him again-and his own magic convinced him they weren’t.

Lorssett was still limping from his wound. Sassin thought about sorcerously boosting the pain the lesser Liskash felt once more. Not without regret, he decided against it. He needed the things Lorssett could do.

“We are well supplied?” Sassin asked. “Plenty of meat? Plenty of water? We have enough arrows and javelins?”

“Yes, lord,” Lorssett said. “All is in readiness, just as you have commanded.”

Idly, Sassin flicked a mental probe at his aide. Lorssett was not altogether without magic; he would have been much less useful if he were. But he couldn’t hope to shield himself from Sassin’s far greater power. And Sassin saw he wasn’t lying to please his lord, as aides had been known to do. Things were as ready as anyone could want.

“Come tomorrow, then, we will finish the Mrem,” Sassin said. “And, after that, the New Water will wall us off from them for a long time.” He wanted to say forever, but he didn’t. He knew better. Still, the new sea should keep the hairy pests away till after he was dead. That was as close to forever as would make no difference…not to him, anyhow.

“And we will take all that is theirs.” Lorssett understood what victory meant. “And we will have more slaves.” With a master set above him, he wanted as many slaves below him as he could get. They reminded him he wasn’t so futile a creature as he seemed when viewed from Sassin’s perspective. They did, at any rate, when he wasn’t face-to-face or mind-to-mind with his overlord.

“Just so. And I will eat their names.” Sassin looked forward to that. It was a strange sort of sorcerous pleasure he could not take from his own kind. For whatever reason, Liskash were less intimately connected to their names than were the Mrem. Sassin shrugged. He cared nothing for the whys and wherefores. He only recognized and took advantage of weakness. “When the sun grows hot, when the furry beasts start to sweat ”-he packed the word with all the loathing it roused in him-“we will put an end to them.”

“As you say, lord, so shall it be,” Lorssett replied.

“Well, of course,” Sassin said complacently.

Mrem in chariots were faster than Liskash afoot. Scouts could keep an eye on Sassin’s army and bring word back to the Clan of the Claw with enough time left over for the clan to do something about it. When Enni Chennitats heard shouts of “They’re coming!” she knew what she had to do herself.

Had she forgotten, Demm Etter would have set her straight. “Take your places!” the senior priestess called to the Dancers. “All of you, take your places. Hurry, now! No time to waste-and we have to do it right.”

Enni Chennitats’s place was at the center of one ring of Dancers. She wouldn’t be doing much moving herself, not this time. That felt odd: more than a little unnatural. She would serve as the focus of the other Dancers’ exertions.

Grumm loped over from Zhanns Bostofa’s detachment to stand at the center of another circle, not far from her own. He still had the unhappy, hunched-over stance that had characterized him ever since he made his way back to the Clan of the Claw. Even better than the Dancers, he understood what a desperate gamble they were undertaking. But he did stand there, no matter how miserable he seemed. He too was a focus. From him, though, the Dancers in his circle would take. In a way, that seemed dreadfully unfair to Enni Chennitats. Sassin had already robbed him of so much.

They hoped a little more taking would redeem it all. They hoped, yes, but no one could be sure ahead of time. The only way to find out was to try. And so Grumm…stood there.

A male-one of the warriors who followed Zhanns Bostofa-came hotfooting it back to the Dancers. “You’d better start, if you’re going to do it,” he panted. “Looks like all the Scaly Ones in the world coming down on us.”

“I thank you, Mm Kafftee,” Demm Etter answered calmly. She stood between the two circles. At her gesture, the Dancers surrounding Grumm began to spin sunwise. Those around Enni Chennitats Danced deasil. Demm Etter moved in a rhythm of her own, somehow linking the opposed Dances.

In most Dances, Enni Chennitats would have been so busy concentrating, letting energy flow through her, that she would have paid only scant attention to what was going on around the priestesses. But now she heard the yowls and hisses and crashes and clatters of battle not nearly far enough away. Zhanns Bostofa and his warriors were fighting like males possessed, eager above all else to make up for their earlier failure. The Liskash cared nothing for their eagerness. All the Scaly Ones wanted was to kill.

Enni Chennitats formed Rantan Taggah’s image in her mind, as she’d done when the last battle unexpectedly fell to pieces. “Are you there?” she called. “Can you hear me?”

“I hear you, Enni Chennitats.” The priestess was assuredly hearing the talonmaster with her mind, not her ears. Even so, it was his voice, without the tiniest fragment of doubt. Its very familiarity warmed her. So did his usual directness: “Now-where is the stinking lizard’s get?”

“I don’t know yet. I haven’t heard anything from Grumm.” Heard, again, wasn’t quite the right word, but it was the best one she had. The other circle was trying to get knowledge, direction, out of the escaped slave and give it to her so she could pass it on to Rantan Taggah. Whether they could…

Grumm was what he was-lost and damned, in essence-because Sassin had eaten his surname. But what kept him what he was was the Liskash’s possession and retention of that surname. The link between them remained. Up till now, that had worked altogether to Sassin’s advantage. Still, a rope was a rope. You could tug on it from either end.

So the Dancers hoped. So they prayed. If Assirra was kind, she would hearken to them. Otherwise, the only Mrem left on this side of the New Water would be a few scattered halfname slaves like Grumm. Better to die cleanly.

Enni Chennitats cocked her ears toward Grumm. That couldn’t possibly help, but she did it anyway. She didn’t see how it could hurt. Where was Sassin?

Her ears stayed aimed at Grumm, but her body shifted. She hardly realized she was doing it till she finished the move. “ That way!” she exclaimed, as if Rantan Taggah stood beside her.

“ Which way?” he asked irritably, because he didn’t.

She explained. The mind-to-mind link held more than words alone; she made him feel the direction in which she was facing now. And she could gauge how far away Rantan Taggah was, and also, through Grumm, how far away Sassin was. Little by little, directions and distances converged.

Rantan Taggah and Ramm Passk’t stole from one bush, one scrubby tree, to the next. “You’d better know where we’re going,” Ramm Passk’t growled.

“Don’t worry about it,” Rantan Taggah answered. “If I don’t, we’ll both end up too dead to care.”

“You know how to make a fellow feel better, all right,” the other warrior said. Rantan Taggah held up a hand: Enni Chennitats was speaking inside his head, and he had trouble paying attention to her voice and to the one from the outside world-the real world? no, one seemed as real as the other-at the same time.

They’d sneaked around the left wing of the Liskash army. Sassin hadn’t set out so many flank guards this time-he realized he’d hurt the Mrem chariotry in the last fight. That a couple of warriors might come on foot? It was such a mad, smerp-brained scheme, it had never occurred to him.