P. Hodgell - Bound in Blood

“Oh, good,” said the cadet, helping her up and dusting her off with the air of having regained a treasured if elusive possession. “You have your scarf back. Now you can take over again.”

“Where is everyone? Not squabbling in the square, I hope.”

“The Edirr started it. You know how they like to prance around taunting people. Well, the Coman took the bait. Their master-ten stomped one of the Edirr mice flat, which upset its mistress, and your friend Gari let loose all the mice’s fleas, which upset everyone. The next thing we know, both sides are screaming for their allies.”

“To battle fleas?”

“Oh, Gari pulled ’em off again, but not before he’d help to start a general melee.”

“So besides the Edirr and Coman, that’s the Caineron, Randir, Ardeth, and Jaran playing in the mud.”

“Most of ’em, anyway. Now Timmon has gone missing.”

“Huh. What about our people?”

“Brier sent the Brandan back to guard their own barracks—honestly, that Berrimint can’t think of anything for herself—and left a token garrison below to hold our quarters. She’s using the confusion to raid the Randir to search for their flag, assuming it isn’t with master-ten Reef.”

“And where is she ?” Jame was beginning to feel dizzy. None of their plans for the war had encompassed anything like the chaos that had in fact ensued. Maybe that in itself was a good lesson to learn about the whole experience.

“Reef is in the Caineron barracks, I think. They say that she’s pretty much taken over the campaign.”

“Don’t tell me that Gorbel is locked in his room too.”

Rue blinked. “Why should he be?”

“Precedent.”

“Well, I hear that he is feeling poorly—too long without dwar sleep after having a bear fall on him, y’know.”

“All right. Follow Brier and tell her that I’ve gone to the Caineron . . . ”

“The Caineron!”

“ . . . to get back my cat, assuming that’s where he is, before Fash turns him into a hearth rug. Now run!”

Reaching Gorbel’s room without encountering her own people downstairs or the mob in the square involved climbing out the attic smoke hole, crossing the roofs to the towering Caineron barracks, and then climbing up to one of Gorbel’s shuttered windows.

No one below noticed. From the uproar, it sounded as if all were too busy having a good time wrestling in the mud, with the occasional flash of a thrown icicle.

Jame hooked her claws in the window frame, swung back, and crashed feet first through the slats.

“Well, that was a grand entrance,” remarked Gorbel, without turning around.

The Caineron Lordan huddled alone like a toad by the fire wearing a sumptuous dressing gown, this time with clothes on underneath. His house flag was wrapped around his legs. Sprawling across his knees, Twizzle whuffled a greeting.

Jame regarded the dog thoughtfully. “When this is over,” she said, “you might want to talk to the Falconer about your pook. Are you all right?”

In truth, Gorbel looked awful. Sweat plastered thin strands of black hair to his bulging forehead and his eyes were feverish.

“Never dance with a cave bear.” His snort of laughter ended in a racking cough.

“Gorbel, you need a healer, or at least a few days of dwar sleep.”

He waved this away and paused to scratch an armpit. “Damn that Gari. When he reclaimed his flea circus, he was supposed to infest the Brandan with it, not us. A healer? Not until this farce of a war is over.”

“Listen, I need your help. Fash is about to skin my cat.”

This roused him. “A fine hunting ounce like that? He wouldn’t dare.”

“He dared to flay Merikit.”

“Huh. You’re right. No respect for skin, that man, nor hide, nor hair, except his own. Took me a long time to learn that.”

He rose, dislodging the pook, letting the flag slump to the floor, and shambled over to the door.

“Huh. Stuck.”

Jame scooped up the flag and stuffed it into her coat. She was starting to bulge like a bolster.

The door was locked.

“H’ist,” said a low, urgent voice through the keyhole from the outside.

“Dure? D’you have your friend in your pocket?”

“Yes. Stand back.”

Something scrabbled at the lock and then began to devour it. Black, articulated feelers probed through the wood, broke off acid-weakened fragments of metal, and shoved them back into the black hole that was the trock’s mouth. The whole mechanism fell out on the floor with the trock still clinging to it. Dure scooped up his pet and dropped it back into his pocket.

They followed Gorbel as the Caineron Lordan lumbered down the stairs, Jame dearly longing to increase his speed with a well-placed kick. Voices rose to meet them from the barracks’ common room.

“No bloody cat bloods me and gets away with it,” Fash was snarling.

“You did try to put his eyes out first.” That was Shade, sounding almost casual and quite bone-chillingly cold. “Even if he is already blind.”

“Get out of the way, you Shanir freak. Reef, tell her to move.”

The Randir master-ten’s voice answered, coolly amused. “Who am I to tell my lord’s daughter, however misbegotten, to do anything? You started this. You finish it.”

“Yes, Fash,” said Gorbel, rounding the stair. “Try.”

Jame could at last see the room below. Jorin crouched hissing in a corner. Shade stood between him and Fash, pointing at the latter with Addy wreathed about her arm, gaping jaws balanced on her fingertips. Arm and serpent seemed to twine together like one bifurcated creature, balance and counterbalance

Fash saw Jame and laughed. “See? I told you that a threat to her kitty-cat would bring her running. Need I remind you that her scarf is worth as much as her missing flag?”

Gorbel ignored this and Reef. “By whose orders was I locked in my room? Where are the others?”

Reef answered blandly. “Someone said they should join the squabble in the square. Supposedly, the order came from you. Who was I to stop them? Really, Lordan, you belong in bed. Why not take the little Knorth with you? Just leave us her scarf, and shut up that yapping hassock.”

Gorbel was shaking, with fever or with fury, Jame couldn’t tell. Whichever, he looked dangerous to himself and to others.

The pook was yipping at Gari, who faintly sizzled in a haze of tiny, leaping forms. The pook sat down abruptly and began frantically to scratch—at head or tail, it was unclear.

Gari’s eyes met hers.

In an instant, Jame saw the situation plainly: a Coman, a Randir, a Caineron, and a Knorth, nominally enemies but all members of the Falconer’s Shanir. She also saw what Gari was about to do.

“Up,” she said to Gorbel and Dure. “Out,” to Shade.

Grabbing Jorin, she joined Shade on the boardwalk and slammed the door behind them, just as Gari let loose his seething horde.

“Ambushes, insects, general mayhem—we seem to be repeating the night of the cull as farce,” said Shade, tucking Addy’s twitching tail inside her shirt to improve the serpent’s grip. Her own trembled slightly. “At least no one has put a hole in the Commandant yet.”

From the way that the Randir rubbed her arm, Jame knew that she had felt the bones shift in it. Such a thing had happened to her before, at least twice in the past season. Jame had witnessed similar phenomena elsewhere, under what she hoped were very different circumstances. On impulse, she touched the Randir’s shoulder.

“Shade. Don’t do anything rash. There’s got to be an explanation.”

The other turned stony eyes on her. “I’m sure there is. The question is, can I live with it? Meanwhile, your five-commander is trying to get your attention.”