House of Reeds

of incessant pacing and lifted his long, cream-colored snout. Nervous, he turned an Imperial-made comm over and over in his claws. Rubbing the hard plastic case against his scales distracted his thoughts from veering into bleak despair.

'What was that?' The prince rasped, glaring at the commander of his guard.

'A bomb,' the Jehanan soldier replied, holding a bulky set of headphones to one ear-hole. Insulated wires trailed off under wooden tables covered with papers and boxes of ammunition. One entire wall of the subterranean room was covered with an immensely detailed, hand-drawn map of the city and the surrounding countryside. Three thin little females were busy chattering into speaking tubes and moving back and forth, updating a forest of pins, flags and stickers adorning the chart. 'There is fighting in the western portico. Looters are trying to break into the palace.'

'With what? A tank? A battering ram?' Bhrigu wrinkled his snout in disbelief. His lower stomach felt pinched and the sensation did not improve a habitually nervous disposition. 'Are we being bombed? Didn't I order our aircraft to stay hidden?'

The guard-captain shook his head. 'No bombs, sire. A runner-cart filled with cheap explosives was used to break down the gate. Sirkar Khanus and his company are holding them off.' The soldier flashed his teeth in amusement. 'They do not like machine-gun fire, this rabble.'

'Huh! I hope not…' Bhrigu turned back to the map wall, hopping nervously from foot to foot as he studied the latest reports. Once, long ago, and well before the kujen's ancestors had hared down from the hill-country of Agen to pillage and then seize the ruined metropolis of Parus from the degenerate, cannibalistic tribes scratching out a living amid the decaying grandeur of old Jagan, the series of chambers under the palace had been equipped with comps and display panels and all matter of technological wonders.

Now there were only gaping cavities in the walls, filled with stacks of leather-bound pypil booklets and boxes of dried meat and fish. The ancient gipu-lights had been replaced by portable oil lamps and strings of imported camping lanterns. Bhrigu's technicians and craftsmen told him there were kilometers of tunnels beneath the city, filled with an intricate network of old cable, but the equipment required to use the decaying telecom network was beyond their ability to manufacture.

The prince had spent every coin he could scrape together on guns and parts to repair the ancient tanks and aircraft his grandfather had collected in secret depots. Weren't the Imperials going to build us a shiny new communications system, he thought, rather bitterly, staring at the comm in his hand. And they did, and it worked wonderfully for a year. And now? So much expensive trash littering the rooftops…

Bhrigu picked at his teeth with the edge of a small-claw. His lesser stomach continued to clench intermittently, making his entire lower body queasy with pain. 'How stands the battle?' he demanded, rather querulously, of the females updating the huge map. 'Has Humara taken the Legation yet?'

'No, sire.' The seniormost of the scribes shook her head. 'The asuchau defenders received reinforcements by air during the initial assault. The kurbardar is preparing to attack from several directions at once, as soon as his reinforcements are in position.'

'Huh! Well then, we will see if old Scar can prove his reputation against a real foe.'

Bhrigu rolled from foot to foot, trying not to feel queasy. His relationship with Humara had never been entirely cordial. The general had been hatched with the kujen's father and they had always been close. Shell of shell, they were. The prince started to gnaw at his claw. He possessed an abiding suspicion the kurbardar intended to ride any victory over the Imperials straight to the high seat of the kujenate itself. 'What about the attack on the Imperial cantonment?'

The scribes put their heads together, huddled near the section of map showing the sprawling Imperial encampment on the southern edge of the city. Bhrigu had a too-clear memory of the tricky negotiations which had led to his 'leasing' an entire district to the soft-skinned humans for fifty-two solar orbits. At least it was marsh-land and refuse dumps, he thought sourly. And their primary presence is here, rather than in Takshila or Patala. Denying his northern and southern rivals direct access to Imperial goods was some leavening to the bitterness of watching their aerocars come and go in his sky. Counting the duties his tax collectors imposed on imports from Sobipurй did bring a sweet taste to his mouth, even if he was reviled as a traitor throughout Jagan.

'There is heavy fighting there,' the scribe reported. 'The lance-commanders are pressing the attack, but casualties are rising very rapidly. Several detachments of the enemy have fought their way in from the countryside. Initial gains have been reversed.' One of her subordinates removed several flags from the map and plucked a set of pins out of the diagrams showing the cantonment buildings.

'Hrrr…' Bhrigu felt his upper stomach clench as well. His nostrils wrinkled. 'Have any of the Imperial detachments been destroyed? Even one?'

The kujen had received the news of the asuchau regiment dispersing to 'protect Imperial interests' with cautious optimism. His generals had been ecstatic, believing the enemy had played directly into their claws by reducing his concentration of forces to a 'manageable level.' Bhrigu was notoriously cautious, however, and had taken the human Timonen's offhand remark about the power of Imperial weapons to heart.

If a squad of their troops can match a brigade of ours, he remembered thinking, then scattering their maneuver elements gives them a free field of fire…and the reach to come to grips with more of us than would otherwise be the case.

'We have reports from various commanders,' the scribe said, nostrils wrinkling in obvious disbelief, 'indicating thousands of the enemy have fallen. Entire regiments,' she continued, 'have been destroyed, their bodies scattered, vehicles and weapons captured, females taken as prizes and young crushed alive in their shells.'

'Ha!' Bhrigu hooted with laughter, appreciating the female's bone-dry delivery of the news. 'What do you see, eye-of-knowing-all-things?'

'They have been hurt,' she replied, moving to the chart. A thin claw indicated the rail-line south to Sobipurй. 'Where forces loyal to the moktar managed to surprise the asuchau soldiers in exposed positions, such as along the elevated highways in the farm country, many enemy vehicles have actually been destroyed. Several groups of the enemy have been wiped out.'

'And here in Parus?'

The scribe shrugged, tilting her head to one side. 'There are too many places to hide in the city. One Imperial in the rubble can kill a hundred times his number before being chased to ground.' A delicate claw tapped the diagram of the Cantonment. 'The defenders of their main base are grinding up our men as quickly as fresh brigades can be shoveled into their maw. Zhern and Kuvalan will not be able to take this place, not without massing all our forces there.'

Bhrigu ground his teeth together in dismay. In the twenty hours of battle which had passed, the kujen had been very careful to hold his best troops out of the fray. Humara had taken the field with his own household guards, various brigades of rural levies and the not-so-secret armies of the religious brotherhoods. Thousands of common Jehanan had joined the rising, venting blind fury at the Imperials. Their pride ran deep – even now, after so many disasters and catastrophes – even the lowest beggar knew Jagan had once been ruled by a glorious civilization.

All my enemies are dying, he realized. Humara is truly too reckless to ever be kujen. Should I take a hand? There are hundreds of tanks and dozens of aircraft ready to strike, artillery by the battery…all of the newly trained troops with modern equipment…

Bhrigu's grandfather had been a far-sighted old snake. When Jehanan industry had recovered to the point where scrap iron and hoarded steel could be worked again, and the chemical processes described by the old books could be followed, he had invested decades in scrounging up all of the detritus of the cataclysm which had swallowed the Arthavan civilization. Old Vazur had known the day would come when the cities of the Five Rivers would contest for supremacy with more than bow and shield and lohaja-bladed spears.

On that day, the old kujen had sworn his dynasty would prevail over their many