Grumm to perceive, and how much of it was real, was true. Some, yes. She had hoped none would be, but that was a faint hope, and she knew as much. Sassin was a Liskash noble, and had no small store of strength in his domain. As much as he pretended? As much as he wanted the Clan of the Claw to believe? No.
Little by little, guided by Demm Etter, the Dance slowed. Enni Chennitats realized she was panting as hard as she could. Sweat dampened her nose, the palms of her hands, and the soles of her feet. Part of her wished she could sweat all over her body, though wet fur would have left her chilled more often than not.
As things chanced, she came to a stop facing Grumm. The escaped slave gravely nodded to her. “He lied to me,” he said. He sounded more…certain than he had before the Dance. He was still broken-he would always be broken-but perhaps not so badly now.
“He did,” Enni Chennitats agreed gravely.
“I will take vengeance,” Grumm declared. “I know not how, but I will.”
“May it be so,” the priestess replied. Maybe the male without a surname was bragging a little, as if to deny as much as he could of what Sassin had done to him. Maybe, though, the Dance had also given him a moment of the extraordinary clarity the two dozen and one used to pierce the mists darkening his spirit. Enni Chennitats did not know which. The power of the Dance no longer held her. She knew only what she hoped.
Sassin stopped awkwardly, in the middle of a stride. Lorssett almost ran into him from behind, which would have been a fatal breach of etiquette: literally, odds were. But the lesser Liskash was able-just barely-to check himself without touching his god and master.
“What is it?” he asked, doing his best not to sound surprised. He had to assume Sassin had some good reason for stopping. He assumed the noble had some good reason for everything he did. The alternative to assuming that was turning Mrem. Lorssett might not have been the tallest hill in the range, but he was no abomination, either.
As for Sassin, he knew exactly why he’d halted. A sudden pain transfixed him, as if someone had driven a spear through his head. He knew what that meant: knew what it had to mean. One of his spells had just spectacularly fallen into ruin.
His first thought was to wonder which of his enemies-which is to say, his neighbors-had dared to thwart his will. He wouldn’t have believe Fykahtin had the nerve. And Pergossett was hardly stronger than Sassin’s own aide: so it seemed from the Liskash noble’s jaundiced point of view, anyhow.
But the way his magic had failed didn’t feel as it should have if another of his own kind had suppressed it. Which left…For a moment, the pounding ache behind his eyes made him doubt it left anything. But if the Liskash hadn’t defeated a sorcery of his, only the Mrem could have.
His hiss made Lorssett cringe. The idea that those hairy screechers could do anything that seriously impeded his own kind disgusted him. Everything about the Mrem disgusted him, in fact. If only the coming of the New Water had left them all as prey for the scavengers of the deep!
It hadn’t. All he could do about that was deplore it. He’d tried his best to make them think twice about invading his lands. Too much to hope for, no doubt: the Mrem commonly had trouble thinking even once. But if they thought they could despoil what was his, they needed to think again.
And, if he couldn’t frighten them out of coming this way, he would have to beat them. He wished he truly were as mighty as he’d made that slave believe. That made him hiss once more, although this time only in ordinary annoyance. He’d lost a slave and got nothing in exchange-one more reason to despise the Clan of the Claw. Well, he wished them joy of the escapee. Mrem subjected to the will of a Liskash noble were never the same again afterwards.
The sound that came out of him next was more sigh than hiss. It was also an invitation for his aide to speak, and Lorssett did: “What do you require, lord?” The lesser Liskash assumed Sassin would require something, and he was right to do so.
“I think it is likely the Mrem will attack us soon-attack us with all their strength.” Sassin thought it as likely as the sun’s rise tomorrow morning, but he did not say that. It might lead Lorssett to ask embarrassing questions. Sassin did not care to admit to his underling-much less to himself-that his wizardry had gone awry.
As things were, Lorssett let out a small hiss himself: one of admiration for the noble’s sagacity. “You will fight them?” he asked.
“I will fight them,” Sassin agreed. “Am I a smerp, to run under the bushes when hunters fly overhead?” He hated smerps, partly because he hated everything hairy and partly because they really were pests. They gnawed through wood, they gnawed through bones, and sometimes they even gnawed through solid stone. Whenever they weren’t mating, they were eating. They squeezed into cracks you would have thought too narrow to hide even a mite. Their beady black eyes were remarkably ugly. And, while you could eat them, they didn’t taste good.
“You are no smerp. You are the lord here. You are the power here. You are the god here,” Lorssett declared. Pleasure trickled through Sassin; he couldn’t have put that better himself. His aide went on, “When you go to war against the furry beasts, victory is assured.”
That also pleased Sassin. But he remembered that victory was assured only after it was won. “We will need to summon all our strength to beat them,” he said. “Set that in motion at once. See to it. Use my name in all you do.”
“As you say, lord, so shall it be.” Lorssett hesitated. “So it shall be from me, I should say. But what if… certain others…do not care to follow my commands given in your name?”
He was not the only Liskash near-noble through whom Sassin ruled his domain. Very often, it suited Sassin’s purposes to leave his subordinates in doubt about which of them held the greatest part of his favor. Very often-but not today.
“Use my name,” Sassin repeated. “Tell them that, if they doubt, I will visit them mind to mind. After that, they will doubt no more, but they will not be the happier for it.” He would put the fear of their god-of himself-in them.
Lorssett recoiled half a step in fear. “As you say, so shall it be. Our archers, our spearers, our fierce beasts-all shall be in readiness before the accursed Mrem commence to move.”
“See that it is,” Sassin said. “When those hairy creatures move, they move. We cannot act like frogs and turtles and sleep through the cold season at the bottom of a pond. See to it that no one misunderstands or goes slack.”
“In your name, lord, all will be done,” Lorssett said. It was, once more, the right answer. Which meant… how much? Sassin studied his underling. Did Lorssett dream of snapping with Sassin’s teeth one day, despite his sorry lack of sorcery? If he did, he would pay for his presumption.
Again, though, not today. Today, Sassin had to arrange things so the Mrem did the paying.
The wind blew hot and dry out of the south. Rantan Taggah smelled the dust it carried. The transparent third eyelids flicked across his eyes again and again, clearing them of grit.
Get used to it, he told himself. How much dust would there be when the whole Clan of the Claw got moving? Herdbeasts, chariots, wagons, males, females? The folk at the back would be lucky if they could see the folk at the front when the whole long column started west.
And the folk at the front would be lucky if they could see the folk at the back. “Have to keep the rear guard strong,” Rantan Taggah muttered. So many things for a talonmaster to think about! The Liskash might try to build a wall so the trekking clan couldn’t enter Sassin’s lands at all.
They might, yes-but Rantan Taggah didn’t think they would. Brothers to serpents as they were, the Scaly Ones were more likely to strike where they reckoned the Mrem weakest, and to hit the column from the flank or from behind. Rantan Taggah did more muttering: “We have to be strong everywhere, then.” He growled, down deep in his throat. How was he supposed to manage that? Too much space, and not enough males to cover all of it.
A voice from behind him: “What did you say, Rantan Taggah?”
He spun on his toes. “Oh! Enni Chennitats! I didn’t hear you come up.” Not surprising, that, not when the
