Hroarh-Officer asked Sergeant: 'Is this monkey entitled to Fighter's Privileges?'
'Yes, Dominant One.' Hroarh-Officer must have known this from Telepath's report, since the human was still uneaten and possessed its ears, but Sergeant's voluntary confirmation was necessary. Fighter's Privileges entitled a worthy enemy not only to dignified consumption or other disposal or display of his remains after death, but, in the case of a dying enemy, the granting of any reasonable last request. Hroarh-Officer bent over the human, putting this to him in his own mixture of Wunderlander vocabulary and Heroes' grammar.
Sergeant watched him, wondering vaguely what request a human in such circumstances might make that a kzin officer could satisfy. He could not move closer, being held in a medical web. A box on his chest stimulated his muscles as military circulatory fluid was pumped into him. He had been wounded before and knew better than to attempt great movement. Indeed, at that moment he could hardly turn his head. The bone-baring wounds on his neck and shoulders had been sewn up and salved and would make admirable scars.
When the human replied its voice was too weak for Sergeant to catch what it said. But Hroarh-Officer seemed to understand. His tail stiffened as if in anger for a moment, and he raised a claw as if for a slash. Then he relaxed. 'Iss bekomess rreasssonibble. Urrr,' he grated out, as much as he could not in the slaves' patois but the difficult human tongue. Then he waved to Medical Orderly, who had finished attending to the kzinrett and the other wounded and injured, to come forward. Perhaps the human would respond to kzin medical treatment, and if in the circumstances it lived it would be spared this time. So be it. Lying in the bracing smell of Hroarh-Officer's urine Sergeant was almost content. He would mourn his comrades later. But they had died acceptably.
Hroarh-Officer squatted beside Sergeant as the human was carried away. 'It is suitable that he asked for treatment,' Sergeant said. 'That one should not die before his time. Not at the hands of morlocks. I will have his head for the Mess one day.'
'It did not ask for treatment. That is an ordinary part of Fighter's Privileges,' said Hroarh-Officer. 'It asked for another thing.
'It is a little irregular and will need to come officially from me, but seeing what has transpired here I believe it will be considered fitting to grant it, Raargh-Sergeant.'
Music Box
'I do not know whether you are my friend or my foe, but I should count it my honour to have you as either. Has not one of the poets said that a noble friend is the best gift and a noble enemy the next best?'
'A promise made under duress doesn't count, that's the law.'
But this is East and South of Suez, where there is no law.'
'Is it not joyful to have friends come from a far land?'
Chapter 1
2425 a.d.
The kzin screamed and leaped. The gagrumpher was a young one, lagging a little behind the herd, half-asleep on its feet in the warm forenoon. The kzin landed on its back, above its middle pair of legs. The centauroid reared up, shrieking. The gagrumpher herd wheeled, the males charging back.
But the gagrumphers rearing had brought its throat in range of the feline's razor fangs. The kzin swung its jaws, slashing. There was time for one crushing bite at the neck bones, and it was down, racing for the trees like an orange shadow a second before the gagrumpher bull-males arrived.
The wounded gagrumpher stood for a moment, blood jetting, then it collapsed, its oxygen-starved brain already dying, though its rear legs kicked for some time under the instinctual commands of the dorsal ganglia knot.
The males could not pursue the predator into the trees, and as they stood in a bellowing group, the snarl of another kzin tore the air on the opposite side of the clearing, between them and the rest of the herd. They could not leave the females and the other juveniles unguarded. They hastened back, and the herd moved on.
The body of the adolescent became still in its pool of blood as the dorsal ganglia died. A colony of leather- flappers that had risen shrieking into the sky returned to their trees, and the forest settled down again to its own affairs.
Warily, two kzin approached the kill. The killer, like its prey, was a youngster, showing a mixture of kitten spots and adolescent stripes against its bright orange fur. The other was older-much older. There was gray at its muzzle, one eye and one arm were artificial, its ears were torn shreds and the fur at its neck and shoulders grew raggedly over a complex of scar tissue. The youngster kept watch as the elder kzin lowered its great head and lapped the blood, then crouched and lapped in turn.
The forest was quiet again. They ate undisturbed.
'That was a good kill, Vaemar,' the elder kzin said. He gave the youngster a grooming lick. 'Thank you, Raargh-Hero. But I doubt I could handle an adult yet. And it was a stupid one to lag behind the herd in this close country.'
'Then you have seen the fate of the stupid. You feel nothing in the ground?'
'Feet. Distant enough.'
'Gagrumpher feet?'
'Yes. I think so.' The pattern of the gagrumpher's centauroid footfalls could never be mistaken for those of a quadruped, but many of Wunderland's native life-forms were centauroid.
'Are they approaching or receding?
'I think… I think they are still receding.'
'Be sure, be very sure. The males could be returning quietly through the cover.'
'They do not sound heavy.'
'Nor would they, to your senses yet, if they put their feet down slowly. They are very different things, leaping on the back of a dreaming youngster, and looking up to see a dozen charging adult males. You do not want to be under those forelegs when they rear up. I have heard some humans made the skins of our kind into what they call rrrugz. Adult gagrumphers can do the same more quickly.'
They are moving away, Raargh-Hero, I am sure of it now.'
'Indeed. Do you know why they move away?'
'No.'
'The males know we are here. Their usual response would be-I will not say of such clumsy and noisy herbivores to 'stalk' us-but to attempt to take us by surprise. If they are moving away, it is for a reason. Perhaps some other enemy approaches.
'Never feel shame like the foolish ones at using ziirgah. It is a gift of the Fanged God,' the old kzin went on. Ziirgah was the rudimentary ability of all kzinti to detect emotions of other hunters or prey. Most used it quite unthinkingly, but because it was developed in a few into the despised talent of the telepaths, many felt unease at using it consciously. It had saved Raargh's life on more than one occasion. 'Always danger, Raargh-Hero.'
'Vaemar, when you look at me, see always two things: I am old, and I am alive. I notice danger. Not all who
