Closer. Closer still. The rank Liskash scent filled Rantan Taggah’s nostrils. It made him want to be stupid, to charge too soon so he could rend and tear and kill. By himself, he might have done just that. So might Ramm Passk’t, by himself. Stalking together forced hunt discipline on both of them.
“You’re almost there. So close!” Enni Chennitats said. Rantan Taggah froze the beginnings of a start. He was briefly surprised the Liskash couldn’t hear her, then remembered he wasn’t really hearing her himself.
Sassin was saying something. Rantan Taggah understood only bits and pieces of it: as much of the Scaly Ones’ language as any Mrem bothered-or had the stomach-to learn. Something about victory. Something about killing. Something about eating. What else would a Liskash go on about? One of the lesser Liskash turned his head. Rantan Taggah and Ramm Passk’t froze. After a few heartbeats that lasted an eternity, the Scaly One looked away.
Rantan Taggah breathed…just barely. One of Ramm Passk’t’s ears twitched…just barely. The two Mrem glanced towards each other. Ramm Passk’t moved first. It was silently understood that Sassin belonged to Rantan Taggah, and keeping the rest of the Liskash from thwarting him was the other warrior’s task. Only if something went wrong-as something might very well do-would Ramm Passk’t turn his fearsome attention on the chief Liskash noble. When none of Sassin’s hangers-on hissed an alarm, Rantan Taggah wormed closer, too.
He didn’t know how he decided to stop worming and charge. It seemed more beastlike instinct than reasoned choice. One instant, he was calculating talonmaster; the next, with seemingly no time passing between them, he was raging somo.
One of the lesser Liskash had the presence of mind to throw something at him. He never found out what it was; he only knew it missed. Sassin half-turned toward him. Even across lines of race and hatred, Rantan Taggah read the Liskash noble’s horrified astonishment.
The talonmaster felt a tug at his own spirit: magic, hurled his way. But, like the javelin or dagger or whatever it was, the magic missed. Or maybe it hit, but too late. For Rantan Taggah smashed into Sassin, knocked him to the ground, and tore at his belly with hind claws and at his throat with fangs and front talons.
Sassin had claws of his own, and tried to fight back. But one Mrem was commonly worth more than one Liskash in a claw-to-claw fight, and Rantan Taggah was a trained and practiced warrior while Sassin was not. The Liskash noble also tried throwing more magic at his unexpected assailant. Some other Scaly One might possibly have been able to form and hurl a spell in time to keep from getting his throat torn out. Again, Sassin was not. Rantan Taggah felt the charm try to bite him. Then Sassin lost consciousness and died, and the threat died with him.
Rantan Taggah sprang to his feet, ready to help Ramm Passk’t against the Liskash noble’s henchmales. But Ramm Passk’t needed help from no one. He’d already slaughtered two of them, and the rest were running every which way, as fast as they could go. They might not have been eager to stand and die for Sassin even if he still lived. With him down, all they cared about was getting away.
And, with his will no longer driving them, the ordinary Liskash javelineers and archers and slingers up ahead were suddenly much less eager to mix it up with the Mrem. Clouds of dust hid most of what was going on up there from Rantan Taggah’s eyes, but his ears were quick to catch the changed note from the fighting. The talonmaster hadn’t been sure that would happen, but he’d hoped.
Ramm Passk’t lifted his arm and licked at a bite one of the Liskash had given him. Then he said, “I don’t think we ought to stick around here-know what I mean? The Scaly Ones’ll be heading back from the fight up there pretty cursed quick, and they won’t be glad to see us.”
That would do for an understatement till a bigger one-say, one about the size of a frillhorn-came along. “Right,” Rantan Taggah said, not about to admit out loud that the formidable warrior could also be dangerous with words.
They trotted away. As they had before, they could circle around the Liskash army’s flank. Please, Assirra, Rantan Taggah thought. The prayer couldn’t hurt. He’d made this attack not expecting to come back from it. He hadn’t resigned himself to death, but he’d come close. Now that he’d succeeded against the odds, all at once he overwhelmingly wanted to go on living.
Enni Chennitats’s voice exulting in his mind gave him part of the reason why: “He’s dead! He’s dead! Grumm felt him die!”
“Now that you mention it, so did I,” Rantan Taggah answered. Nobody was going to be dryer than he was, not today.
Enni Chennitats eyed Grumm with a priestess’s curiosity. She sometimes thought that wasn’t so far removed from the curiosity of a kit poking a bug with a stick to see what it would do. Sometimes nothing happened. Sometimes you learned something interesting. Every once in a while, you picked the wrong bug and got stung- which was interesting, too, but not in a way any kit enjoyed.
She’d thought that, since Sassin held Grumm’s surname, it would be released when the Liskash noble perished. That would make Grumm his old self again…wouldn’t it?
Evidently not. The escaped slave had let out a fierce, triumphant yowl when Sassin died, almost as if he’d killed the Scaly One himself. But then he shrank in on himself again. He wasn’t quite so distressed as he had been before, but he wasn’t anything like a normal male Mrem, either.
She almost asked him why he wasn’t. Unlike a poked bug, he could answer. But, no matter how curious she was, she didn’t want to be cruel. She might not worry about a bug’s suffering, or a Liskash’s, but she did when it came to one of her own kind.
And so, instead, she told Demm Etter what she thought. The senior priestess inclined her head. “The name may not lie under Sassin’s tongue any more, but it is not in Grumm’s heart, either, where it belongs.”
“Where is it? Can we get it back?” Enni Chennitats asked.
“I cannot say,” Demm Etter answered. “Now and then, time shows us what we did not know before. It may here. Or”-she lowered her voice so Grumm couldn’t hear-“it may not. I think he has gained something by Sassin’s death. Now his surname is free to wander, free to find him again if it will, not trapped the way it was before. And I know-I am as certain as I have ever been about anything-how much the Clan of the Claw has gained from Sassin’s fall.”
“Aedonniss, yes!” Enni Chennitats exclaimed. “Did you see the Liskash run away after he died? What could be finer than that?”
“Their not attacking us to begin with,” Demm Etter said, which, once Enni Chennitats thought about it, was plainly true. Sighing, the senior priestess went on, “Too much to hope for, I suppose.”
“How many Liskash nobles’ lands will we have to pass through before we find our own kind again?” Enni Chennitats asked, disquieted.
“I don’t know. I don’t believe anyone knows, unless the Scaly Ones should,” Demm Etter said. “I do know this, though: if we win through, when we win through, Mremkind will sing our names and our deeds forevermore.”
Enni Chennitats wished she hadn’t put that if in there, even if she’d amended it right away. The consequences of failure…Well, were they any worse than the consequences of staying on the old grazing grounds? Rantan Taggah didn’t think so, and Enni Chennitats wasn’t inclined to doubt the talonmaster. On the contrary.
“Well, well,” Demm Etter said quietly. Enni Chennitats followed her gaze. Here came Zhanns Bostofa. He was limping. He had a bandage on his right leg and another on his left arm. But he carried himself with pride of a sort different from his usual arrogance.
He bowed, first to Demm Etter and then to Enni Chennitats. “My males and I, we did what was required of us,” he announced, as if he were summarizing a battle for the talonmaster. Rantan Taggah wasn’t here, though. The mental link between him and Enni Chennitats had broken when the Dance ended. She hoped he hadn’t come to grief after his great triumph.
Demm Etter received the report as gravely as he might have. “You did well,” she told Zhanns Bostofa. “You did well-this time-and you were seen to do well. If you and yours had failed, Rantan Taggah’s success would mean far less.”
Zhanns Bostofa took her qualification with more humility than he was in the habit of showing. “I thank you,” he answered. “What is best for the clan is what I want. I have said this again and again.”
