House of Reeds

'They're not the real thing, of course, just an unusual Jehanan analogue. True mammals, too. Quite rare on this world. A biologist I consulted in Parus thinks they might actually be native. Now, you had carefully packed baggage to bring down, didn't you?'

The corporal nodded, tore his eyes from the hrak settling onto the lawn, and hurried back down the hall. Old Nuskere was wringing his hands, watching the near-legendary hrak and their drivers with wide eyes, when Johann turned from the door himself.

'Master? Are you…are you going to the Cold Lands? Truly?'

Gemmilsky nodded, a faint sparkle in his eyes. 'I am. Too many Imperials here for my taste. I hear many wild tales of the lands beyond Capsia. I would like to see the cities in the ice for myself, if they truly exist.'

The Jehanan shuddered and pushed the door closed with both hands. 'Horrible fates await those who pass the White Teeth, master. Horrible…you should stay here – I am sure the brown-faced men will leave soon. This is your home!'

Johann looked around the hallway with a pensive, sad expression. 'It was, for a little while. Now, I want you all out of here before the sun is high. No one is to stay! Let these Mйxica and their minging lapdogs feed themselves.' He paused, a grin starting to twist his lips. 'Tell cook to give all the food and drink in the house to the poor. My gift to the city. And I give you and the other servants all the bed linens, towels, everything but the furniture and the manse itself.'

Nuskere stared at him for a moment, then began to trill helplessly in laughter, sides shaking, hiding his snout in stiff old hands.

Tezozуmac waved cheerily at a Gandarian nobleman moving quietly through the scrub higher on the slope and looked down quizzically at Colmuir. The master sergeant was down on one knee, the long-barreled rifle at the ready.

'What was the name of that one?' The prince pointed over his shoulder. 'The one with the particularly long snout and the green and black felting on his jacket?'

'Lord Pardane Fes,' the Skawtsman whispered, tensely scanning the plane trees rising above the high grass. 'Cousin of the kujen I believe and an avid hunter… Mi'lord, you really should lower your profile. The xixixit – -'

'What exactly is this fearsome creature?' Tezozуmac interrupted. He was feeling rather good – the aerocar ride had cleared his head a little, the day was pleasantly cool, and there had been a fine selection of beverages laid on by the kujen. While the natives had not made their way into the hills by air, they still managed to put on a very respectable luncheon in a pavilion under spreading trees. 'Dawd tried to show me a picture, but I was busy throwing up at the time.'

Colmuir did not look up, keeping his attention focused on the upper branches of the nearest copse. The Ghuhore district lay in the rain shadow of jagged mountains on the southern side of the Kophen. The vegetation ran to grassy hillsides spotted with clusters of dry-leaf trees and thickets of a spiny bramble. Steep ravines filled with thick brush split the slopes. The tu grass varied in height from two to four meters, which made visibility difficult for men on foot and excellent hunting territory for the triply-winged, uncannily silent xixixit.

'A native wasp, mi'lord, of uncommon size and ferocity. Hangs in the trees like a three-meter-long bat. Carries a bifurcated stinger – the poison dissolves the innards of the victim – very grisly, you understand.'

Tezozуmac frowned, checking his teeth for bits of grilled meat. He had found the roast zizunaga fillets very savory. 'Are they colored like a wasp? I'd think yellow and black would stand out in this country…Or are they sort of a mixed brown and green with tan legs?'

'Sir, I don't rightly – what did you say?'

The prince pointed, Colmuir snapped his head around and an enormous, mottled insect burst up from the high grass between Tezozуmac and Lord Pardane Fes and his loaders. The master sergeant hurled himself between his charge and the xixixit, swinging the rifle around. Shoved off balance, the prince fell backwards into the grass, broke through a screen of immature tu stalks and tumbled down the hillside.

The wasp, crystalline wings blurring into near-invisibility, darted to the right. Colmuir's rifle bellowed, spitting a long tongue of flame and sending the crack! of a gunshot echoing across the hillside. Lord Pardane's servants bolted, the noble Jehanan flung himself flat on the ground and the slender tree above him burst into flames as the self-fusing high-explosive bullet smashed into the trunk and blew apart.

Colmuir cursed, jacked back the ejector lever on the side of the rifle and groped for a fresh round. The Jehanan lord bounced back up, shrilling lurid insults at the clumsy human and caught sight of the xixixit blurring downslope, weaving between the isolated trees with fluid grace. Burning branches falling around him, Pardane Fes braced his rifle, took aim and squeezed the trigger.

The master sergeant felt the air over his head snap with the passage of a bullet, and rolled up himself, shouting in alarm. 'Mi'lord! Mi'lord Prince, where are you?'

Downslope, the Jehanan bullet narrowly missed the fleeing xixixit and blew apart in a stand of red-barked brush. Flames licked up from the wounded trunk, caught among dry leaves and began to smoke furiously. The insect dodged into the unexpected cover and daintily wiped its feeding mandibles clean of fresh blood. Having only whetted its appetite, the xixixit then noticed a bipedal figure stumbling through the brush at the bottom of the slope and took flight, pleased at the prospect of a second meal so soon in the day.

Pardane's servants, meanwhile, followed their lord headlong down the slope. The long legs of a Jehanan were well suited for bounding between the tufts of high grass, but one of the loaders stumbled almost immediately and when he'd picked himself up, stared in horror at the eviscerated carcass of a young molk, entrails scattered by the xixixit's cutting mandibles. The servant had only an instant to wonder why a calf had wandered this far up from the valley before the hooting bellow of his master summoned him to the chase.

Tezozуmoc, half-blinded by dirt and clouds of tu pollen, crashed through a wall of thorny brush and stumbled into a stream. An algae-slick rock immediately turned under his foot, pitching him into the water with a splash. For a moment, he lay stunned in the current, shivering as snowmelt rushed over him, and then the prince heaved himself up and crawled onto a muddy bank.

Exhausted and in shock, Tezozуmoc rolled onto his back in a drift of fallen leaves and tried to clear his eyes. The first thing he saw was the blurring, jerky flight of the xixixit as it darted through the stand of trees hanging over the stream. Bluish plates of fresh chitin gleamed under older sections of brown scale. The long, pendant legs and cutting mandibles tucked against the bipartite body gleamed jewel-green.

The prince groped for something to use as a weapon. In the incongruous silence, the sound of an aerocar turbine idling was jarringly loud. Tezozуmoc tipped his head back and caught sight of a woman – a human woman – in a silk blouse, field trousers and a sensible sun-hat.

The xixixit blurred forward, glossy black stingers flaring down for the paralyzing strike.

There was a deafening crack-crack-crack directly over the prince's head. The smell of propellant and atomized metal choked Tezozуmoc and he flinched into a tight ball, hands over his ears. Three armor-piercing rounds smashed into the thorax and head of the xixixit as it lunged across the stream. The fluoropolymer-coated bullets tore through the armored chitin and splintered into dozens of razor- sharp sub-munitions, which tore through the soft inner organ sac.

A hand seized the prince, dragging him to his feet, and Tezozуmoc opened his eyes in time to see the xixixit blow apart in a cloud of shattered chitin, lubricating fluid and gossamer wing fragments.

'Christ on the Stone,' he gasped, 'that was an excellent shot!'

'Thank you,' a rich alto voice purred in his ear. The prince turned in time for the unexpected woman to wrap his fingers around a still-smoking Webley AfriqaExpress hunting pistol and then swoon gracefully into his arms.

'Ooof!' Tezozуmoc staggered, taken by surprise, and managed to hug the woman to his side before he dropped her. The hot barrel of the Webley burned his arm, but – juggling both unexpected objects for a moment – he managed to seize the pistol grip. He looked down at himself in dismay. He was soaked and coated with mud. 'Ah…curst wilderness! Another good shirt ruined! I hate hunting -'