“Fight them-what else?” the talonmaster answered. “They aren’t on their way over to play catch-the-string with us. Or if they are, I’ll be surprised.”
“Are we ready?” Enni Chennitats asked.
“We’d better be. One way or the other, we’ll find out pretty soon, won’t we?” Rantan Taggah sounded infuriatingly cheerful. Enni Chennitats realized he wanted a fight with the Liskash. If anything would get the whole clan behind him, a battle against the ancient enemy ought to do it. After a moment, he added, “Are the priestesses ready to Dance away whatever magic Sassin hurls at us?”
“I hope so.” Enni Chennitats spread her hands, palms up. “You never know beforehand. What we can do, we will.”
“Well, you’d better go back and do it, then.” Rantan Taggah pointed in the same direction. The sky was lighter and brighter than it had been even a little while before. Enni Chennitats could see the smudge of dust low on the horizon there. “You’re right-we don’t have long to wait.”
She dipped her head and hurried away. She hadn’t gone far before bugles blared behind her. Warriors yowled and grabbed for their weapons and armor. Not all the krelprep were harnessed to the clan’s chariots. Males rushed to tend to that. Females not burdened with kits went off to tend to the herds. It wasn’t their proper trade, but they could do it for a little while. The more males they freed for fighting, the better.
“Another battle,” Demm Etter said when Enni Chennitats came back to the rest of the priestesses. It wasn’t another question.
“Another battle,” Enni Chennitats agreed. “The talonmaster wants us to stifle the Liskash sorcery-but you’ll already know that.”
“I’ve had news that surprised me less,” the senior priestess replied, which left Enni Chennitats nothing to say. Demm Etter gestured to her. “Go on-take your place in the Dance. If you think we face less danger than the males, you’re liable to be badly mistaken.”
“I serve the clan,” Enni Chennitats said. Whatever happened to her would happen to the other priestesses as well. Remembering that made the fight ahead seem a little less lonely. She wondered whether warriors felt the same way. They fought side by side, but one could be horribly maimed while the male next to him stayed safe.
Then Demm Etter raised her hand. They began to Dance, and Enni Chennitats’s worries fell away in the task at hand.
“Something tricky,” Grumm said. “Sassin will try something tricky. He won’t come straight at us. He can’t come straight at us. It’s not in him. He has to twist things, the way a snake has to coil to move.”
“Yes, yes.” Rantan Taggah heard the escaped slave with only half an ear. He was concentrating on his own dispositions, not Sassin’s. He dipped his head, satisfied he had things the way he wanted. Most important, he’d posted Zhanns Bostofa and the plump male’s retainers as far out of the way as he could. He didn’t want them holding any vital position against the Liskash.
He might have been doing Zhanns Bostofa an injustice. He knew that. But he couldn’t get Enni Chennitats’s image out of his mind. If there was a dark god, a god responsible for the Liskash, and if that god tried to reach out and get his foul fingers on a Mrem…Yes, the result would be much too much like Zhanns Bostofa, wouldn’t it?
If Zhanns Bostofa was looking at this same question, wouldn’t he think the imaginary dark god’s meddling would produce a Mrem too much like Rantan Taggah? The talonmaster bared his fangs. If Zhanns Bostofa thought anything like that, he proved himself no proper Mrem.
Didn’t he?
“What is it?” Grumm asked.
Rantan Taggah made his lips come down over his teeth once more. “Nothing,” he said, lying without hesitation. He set a hand on Grumm’s shoulder. “Aedonniss give you strength, friend. Your hour of revenge is here.”
“Revenge.” The other male tasted the word. “Well, Talonmaster, it would be better than nothing, but not enough. Nothing is enough. Nothing will give me back my other name.”
“I’m sorry,” Rantan Taggah said, which was true, and which did neither him nor Grumm the least bit of good. Weighted down with weapons, the scales of his bronze armor clattering on their leather backing, he hurried to his chariot.
His driver bounded with excitement. “We’ll kill them all!” Munkus Drap exclaimed. “We’ll kill them, and we’ll tan their hides, and we’ll dig up their eggs and have ourselves the biggest fry the world has ever seen!” Not a whisker’s width of doubt clouded his eager mind.
“That would be good,” Rantan Taggah said. And so it would, if it happened. But how long had Mrem and Liskash hated one another? Forever, or maybe a couple of days longer. Had either ever managed to destroy the other despite that perfect hatred? Rantan Taggah knew too well what the answer was.
Let me win, Aedonniss. Let me drive them back, he thought. Let them not hurt my clan too badly. We have far to go, and many more fights to make. We can’t be crippled right at the start…Please. The sky god might hearken to him. Then again, Aedonniss might not. The god had his own purposes, and put them ahead of his creatures’.
Looking across the arid plain, Rantan Taggah watched the Liskash deploying from marching column to line of battle. The Scaly Ones all looked alike to him. That was almost as alien as their odor. People-people who really were people-had their differences. The only difference he’d ever been able to find among the Liskash was that some of them were stronger than others, and so caused more trouble.
If Sassin was like the other scaly nobles Rantan Taggah had had the displeasure of meeting, there would be no talonmasters’ duel, as there might well have been when two bands of Mrem collided. The Liskash were too cowardly to lead from the front.
He knew how the fight would go if it went the way Sassin wanted it. The Liskash would get within missile range and then pelt the Mrem with arrows and javelins and slingstones. Once they’d thrown their foes into disorder, they would swarm forward and dispose of the warriors their darts hadn’t disabled.
It could work. Plenty of Mrem forces had gone down to defeat at the Scaly Ones’ hands. But Rantan Taggah didn’t plan to play the game Sassin’s way. He’d told Enni Chennitats the Liskash hadn’t come up to play chase-the- string. He aimed to make them play regardless of whether that was what they had in mind.
“Let’s go,” he told his driver. He waved to the cars behind them. Other leaders would be signaling their groups at the same time. The chariot bounced forward, slowly at first but then faster as the krelprep leaned into their work. Rantan Taggah’s body automatically adjusted to every bump and jolt. Was this like travel on the sea? He didn’t know. Truth to tell, he didn’t really want to find out.
The Liskash went on forming their line. They didn’t advance any father, though, not with several squadrons of chariotry bearing down on them. Mrem seized the initiative whether they should have or not. The Liskash were more inclined to yield it and see what happened after that.
They were closer now, much closer. Their archers and slingers went to work to keep the chariots away from their line. They might do a little harm that way, but they wouldn’t do much. Rantan Taggah didn’t intend to slam into them head-on, anyhow. Just because they made war that way didn’t mean he had to.
He tapped Munkus Drap’s right shoulder, hard enough for the other male to feel it through his armor. The driver steered the chariot off to the right, around the Scaly Ones’ left flank. As often as not, a talonmaster worried only about what was in front of him. What would Sassin do with Mrem chariots rampaging in his rear?
What he would do was make it hard for them to get there. Not all of his fighters were on the front line. He had a good force of flank guards. A slung stone hissed malevolently past Rantan Taggah’s right ear. Another one hit a krelprep pulling a different chariot in the head. The beast crumpled, dead, perhaps, before it hit the ground. The chariot slewed sideways and almost turned turtle.
“Nothing’s going to be as easy as we wish it would be, is it?” Munkus Drap asked.
“When is it ever? Wishes are only dreams-they don’t stand up to the light of day,” Rantan Taggah said. He wished Sassin didn’t have the makings of a talonmaster who knew what he was doing. He’d known the Liskash noble was a strong sorcerer. But the two didn’t always go together. Not always, no, but they did here.
Sometimes Mrem, once they got into a position they fancied, would leap down from their cars and fight the
