'If we use modern science in the hunt-real body armor, overly enhanced heat and other sensors, beam- weapons-where is the sport in that, Trader?' Hunt Master replied, disposing of the bourbon in a single, gracious swig. 'Where the training of kits? We might as well simply missile them from the air or from space. Besides, we have come to realize that exterminating a cunning and warlike species would deprive us permanently of both a valuable training asset and a rewarding game. The world would be duller with no kz’eerkti.'
'I have heard some of our ancestors regarded the Sol monkeys so. Until they deployed relativistic weapons and acquired the hyperdrive.'
'These aren't like that. I have studied them. Indeed to conserve the species, I have often allowed young ones and pregnant females to live when, hunting alone, I came across them.'
'Do they ever cross this valley?'
'They go as far as the river, but they never cross it in force. If they did, I suppose it would become a matter of exterminating them. They would be a menace to other game. Rogues or single scouts do cross though. I've found monkey droppings this side of the river a few times. I also found individuals, including that one.' He pointed to a weathered skeleton scattered in the grass nearby. 'Old villain! He got careless. But when they cross they don't usually attack or draw attention to themselves. I think they spy out the land, with a little thieving. As it is, they occupy only some fringe wooded country here and roam south into the hot savannah and deserts beyond.
'I do have some supplies of special body armor,' Hunt Master continued. He could not ask Trader if he wished to avail himself of this without implying an insult to his courage. Kzinti had dueled to the death for saying less.
Trader replied with a casually polite ear twitch, as if Hunt Master's words had been a mildly interesting pleasantry about his collecting hobby, rather than a potentially dire test. Now that they were ready to move, Hunt Master glanced quickly over the kits' armor and weapons.
These were sprigs of landowners and various, mainly minor, nobility and he was tasked not only to train them but also to protect them to an elementary extent. However, any young kzintosh, once weaned, was expected basically to look after himself, and even the games and competitions of young kits were often and deliberately lethal. Apart from the sheer enjoyment, a large part of the purpose of hunting dangerous game on all kzinti worlds was to teach youngsters by experience the difference between the quick and the dead. It was never expected that all would survive their teaching, and a Hunt Master who trained kits without casualties would not be doing his job. Those who survived would be fit for proper warrior training.
'I leave the bones here on purpose,' Hunt Master remarked to Trader. 'They serve as a valuable reminder.'
Weapons at the ready, the kzinti spread out and descended into the valley. Silent as they were, a few small animals scuttled away at their approach and some flying creatures burst noisily into the air out of the low ground cover. The kits, and one or two of the older hunters, leaped at these tantalizing things. They splashed through the wide, shallow river at the valley bottom. All kzinti hated getting wet, and across the deeper channel in the center there were crude fords and weirs of stones that they might have used for stepping, had not Hunt Master stopped them. He had a small rocket gun that fired lines tipped with articulated-tentacle grapnels.
'Fools!' he snarled. 'Do you not think the monkeys know the paths? Did they not place the stones? May they not have fixed weapons sighted on each one?' He cuffed a kit marked with four white stripes on its side, who had been first to the river. Some of the kits looked thoughtful as he hurried them, clutching the lines he'd fired across, at points which he selected apparently at random. Once across the deeper channels he kept them on all fours until, wet and foul-tempered, they assembled in a concave bay of dead ground on the other side.
'There,' said Hunt Master, 'is a sign of kz’eerkti territory. They scratch it on trees and rocks sometimes.' He pointed.
'They seem to think in terms of a frontier,' Trader remarked. He memorized a copy of the sign.
'Yes, very much so. As I have said, it is as well for them that they don't make excursions in force beyond it.'
One kit, falling back with a flying creature clutched triumphantly in his claws, disappeared into the ground with a scream, abruptly cut off. Hunt Master strode to the spot with grim deliberation. The kit lay bleeding in a pitfall, already dying, the wooden spikes at the bottom driven through his body. The spikes were triangular in cross section, with what looked like grooves down each face: a wound couldn't clamp shut, but blood could get out freely. One could be lethal in the right spot. The pit held more than sixteen.
'I have already said the kz’eerkti came as far as the river,' Hunt Master told the other kits. 'You see now that you hunt real game.'
Krrar Landowner, the sire of the dead kit, furious and ashamed, dashed forward, then fell. A dozen arrows whistled at them. Kzinti reflexes preserved all except one Hero, younger brother of Krrar Landowner, who was struck in the forearm. Rifles blazed into the bushes from which the arrows had been fired. Hunt Master, crouching, ran to the fallen kzin and kicked the vegetation away from around him. A stout rope had been stretched a little way above the ground.
'Stop wasting ammunition,' Hunt Master said. 'There are no kz’eerkti here. Remember the Fanged God gave you ziirgrah and be proud to use it!' Ziirgrah was the rudimentary telepathic sense all kzinti possessed which, properly used, allowed them to sense the presence and emotions of game-the terror of Zianya at table was an instance-and which in the case of certain rare kzinti could be developed with drugs and training into full telepathy. Since telepaths were not warriors but among the most despised and downtrodden of the kzinti castes-the condition had unpleasant side effects-many kzinti now felt ziirgrah was something very impolite to mention. Hunt- Master plainly had no such inhibitions.
'It was another trap, long-set,' he told the kits, who were now standing round-eyed and silent, their earlier exuberance greatly modified. 'There are many such. This place is well defended.'
The arrow had been double-barbed, and was securely lodged in the forearm of the wounded kzintosh, who was dripping orange and purple blood copiously from severed veins and arteries-competent weaponcrafting again, as an ordinary wound would have squeezed down to a trickle. Hunt Master inspected the damage.
'I advise you solemnly to return to the cars for treatment,' he said. 'I cannot remove this. Tendons have already been cut. Further, I smell poison.'
The wounded kzintosh snarled curses at his elder brother. Krrar Landowner, already furious, drew his w'tsai and the two flew at each other. They rolled down the slope, slashing and screaming.
'We are doing well, as you see,' said Hunt Master quietly to Trader. 'Two or three casualties already and not a sniff of a kz’eerkti yet, though that noise will certainly have alerted every monkey for miles around. See there!' He pointed to a hole in a jumble of rocks ahead.
'A cave. Should we investigate it, esteemed Hunt Master?'
'That cave, Trader, is one of the openings of a tunnel system the kz’eerkti dug. We entered it when first we became aware of it.
'The main passages were quite spacious. Big enough for a warrior to pass through easily, even with weapons. We soon realized it was a labyrinth of tunnels below tunnels. What we did not realize was that it was threaded with other tunnels, too small for a Hero to crawl into but quite big enough for a monkey. Many Heroes died in that system.'
The shiver of loathing Trader gave was completely genuine. The ends of his whiskers and the muscles of his flanks tingled at the thought of unyielding rock and earth pressing against them so on either side. Like most felinoids, kzinti loved exploring likely holes and caves but hated spaces which held and confined on any terms other than their own.
'Finally we mapped it, more or less, with ground-penetrating radar, then sealed up all the exits and pumped in nerve gas. There were some, I may tell you, including Noble Trrask-Rarr, who wished to simply turn the whole hill over with a nuclear strike. However the lands of Honored Warrgh-Churrg and others would have been in the path of the fallout… There was talk of building ground-piercing conventional bombs but it was felt that it was not worth tooling up factories for such a one-off use. We turn multifrequency masers on it at irregular intervals and, we hope, cook any monkeys inside. Now and then they come running out, which can be amusing. We wait for them, but on occasion they have ambushed the waiting party… What do you think of your monkeys now?'
'I thought they were tree-swingers.'
'Only among other things. The kz’eerkti have unblocked that entrance again recently. No, I do not think we will enter it on this occasion. I was in the tunnels before, and from now on I will allow some other Hunt Master the glory of discovering what surprises they may have installed in there, and how deep they may have dug. Further,
