If that happened, everything was ruined.
Then again, everything might well be ruined anyhow.
So much for the gold leaf on the horns of Rantan Taggah’s krelprep. It was splashed-splattered-with blood, and parts of it were peeling loose. As swank so often did, it had proved more expensive than it was worth.
Rantan Taggah’s spear was gone, too. A Liskash had clutched it as it went into his scaly belly, and his dying grasp pulled it out of the talonmaster’s hands as the chariot went past. And he’d broken his axe’s handle. He’d shattered a Scaly One’s shield with the blow, but he still wished he could have it back. A sword was a weapon you used when you had nothing with a longer reach. Rantan Taggah didn’t, not any more. And so-the sword.
He slashed, forehand and backhand, at the Liskash crowding around him. So did the rest of the males in the chariots he’d ordered to stay behind and hold up the swarm of enemies. The Liskash were brave. Though the Mrem had better weapons and better armor for close combat, the Scaly Ones pressed forward as if they didn’t care whether they lived or died. For all Rantan Taggah knew, they didn’t.
Whether or not they valued their own lives, they wanted the Mrem dead. They slew the krelprep, which were not armored, so their foes couldn’t move so fast. That helped them, but perhaps less than they’d hoped. What mattered to Rantan Taggah was keeping the Scaly Ones here from advancing on his vulnerable females and animals. If he had to sell his own life and those of the rest of this rear guard to accomplish that, he would, and he wouldn’t count the cost afterwards. That he might not be in any position to count the cost after the fighting ended was something upon which he carefully did not dwell.
After his krelprep went down, he nodded to Munkus Drap. “It won’t be pretty from here on out, but it’s what we’ve got to do.”
“Oh, yes.” The driver sounded ready. Why not? He carried the big shield. Its leather facing was dented from slingstones. Arrows and the broken shafts of javelins pincushioned it. Munkus Drap had broken the javelins off himself-they made the shield too clumsy to handle.
He had a sword, too. He and Rantan Taggah leaped down from the stalled chariot together. A Liskash ran at Rantan Taggah from the left. The foe was on him before he could slash with his sword. He slashed with his free hand instead. Hissing in anguish, the Scaly One reeled away, clutching at his face. A brief yielding softness under Rantan Taggah’s talons told him he’d torn out an eye.
“Claws!” he roared. “Claws for the Clan of the Claw!”
The other Mrem raised a cheer. As long as the Liskash couldn’t drag them off their feet, their armor and weapons let them take on numbers far greater than their own. Despite courage, the Liskash began to realize they were feeding themselves into a grinder. Their push forward faltered. Even missile attacks flagged. Rantan Taggah wondered why till he realized the Liskash had to be running short of javelins and arrows.
The ferocious warrior called Ramm Passk’t leaped on a Scaly One who thought he could fight like a Mrem. The Liskash had a spear, Ramm Passk’t only the weapons Aedonniss gave him at birth. That turned out not to matter for long-only until the Scaly One hesitantly thrust the first time. Ramm Passk’t knocked the shaft aside and sprang on him. He tore out the Liskash’s throat with his fangs, then sprang to his feet with his muzzle all bloody. He roared out something in the Scaly Ones’ language.
“What does that mean?” Munkus Drap asked.
Rantan Taggah translated for him: “ ‘Who’s next?’ ”
Ramm Passk’t, gore dripping from his chin, made a spectacle to give pause to the hardiest of the Scaly Ones. All at once, they stopped coming forward against the Mrem. Standing in their place, Rantan Taggah would have been none too eager himself. Ramm Passk’t made the very embodiment of ferocity.
“Let’s draw back,” Rantan Taggah called to his surviving warriors. “If they come after us, we’ll charge them and make them stop. But I think they may let us go.”
“Bring them on!” Ramm Passk’t shouted. He gave the Liskash his challenge once more. No one stepped out of their line to answer it.
Step by weary, painful step, Rantan Taggah and his comrades fell back. He was amazed how far across the sky the sun had traveled. Hadn’t the battle started just a few breaths ago? His exhaustion argued against it. So did the clan’s losses. They’d be a long time replacing chariots. Too many warriors they could never replace.
But they were intact, or near enough. They could fight again. They could go on. And maybe they would be able to serve Sassin as he’d served them, only worse.
Sassin was not literally a cold-blooded creature, even if the Mrem sometimes called the Liskash sons of serpents. All the same, he was, and could afford to be, a more cold-blooded talonmaster than any Mrem. His fighters were not friends and comrades; by the nature of things, they were only subjects. And, by the nature of things, expending subjects was easier than sending friends and comrades out to die on your behalf.
All the same, the dunes and drifts of dead and dying Liskash around the chariots the hairy vermin had abandoned left him dismayed. As he could stop up his earholes and block most sound but not all of it, so his mind could deflect most but not all the agony the wounded projected.
He glanced toward the west. Maybe it was just as well the sun was setting. Were the day longer, the monstrous Mrem might have murdered most of his males. He’d hoped to crush them absolutely, but not everything worked the way you hoped it would. Everyone, even Liskash nobles, got too many unpleasant tastes of that lesson as the years spun by.
Lorssett came up to him. The lesser male would have done better putting on greaves; he had a wounded leg, and clutched a javelin to steady his step. “I did not think you would be rash enough to go where there was fighting,” Sassin remarked acidly.
“I did not go to it. It came to me,” his aide answered. “I hope this heals. I would not care to limp for the rest of my days.”
“I believe you.” Sassin could feel his pain, too, however much he wished he couldn’t.
Lorssett pointed toward the northeast, away from the sinking sun. “Will you send our fighters after them, to finish them off once and for all while they are weak and off balance?” He swayed in spite of his makeshift staff; he was more than a little off balance himself.
That was certainly how Sassin thought of him at this moment. “If I throw any more fighters at them now, I may have none left by this time tomorrow.”
“You will still have some, lord,” Lorssett said. “And the Mrem will be gone-gone! Is that not what you want?”
It was, of course-but, then again, it wasn’t. “If I have no fighters, what will ward me and my domain from the rest of the Liskash nobles?” Sassin said. “Not all my enemies are hairy beasts. Some are scaly beasts instead.”
“You have the magic to make them keep their distance,” Lorssett declared.
“They also have magic-and they would have more fighters than I do,” Sassin said. “Far more fighters, in fact. I have done enough here, I tell you.” Lorssett only let out a weary, resigned sigh. Angrily, Sassin snapped, “Speak. Come on-out with your worthless thought.”
Lorssett did not want to release it, but Sassin’s power pulled it from him: “You may know how to win a victory, lord, but, having won it, you do not know what to do with it.”
“No? One of the things I can do is make those who doubt me sorry,” Sassin replied in a deadly voice. Lorssett’s sigh turned to a tormented hiss. Sassin could make pain worse, much worse. And if the Liskash noble felt a little of that himself, he paid the price without complaint.
Night. Defeat. Disappointment. Anger. Anguish. Rantan Taggah had all he could do to make sure the Mrem posted enough sentries out far enough to give some sort of warning if the Scaly Ones tried to attack under cover of darkness.
