dogs, streaks of light stabbing out at other lines of fire reaching down from the scrubby hillside. Magenta globes burst where the seeker missiles died, but more lived to smash their liquid-metal bolts into engines; then the guard truck took the avalanche broadside and went spinning down the slope to vanish in a searing actinic glare as its power core ruptured. Molecular distortion batteries could not explode, strictly speaking, but they contained a lot of energy.
By that time Jonah had already rolled off the flatbed and dived for the roadside bush; he had seen boarding actions during the war, and had trained hard in gravity. He landed belly-down and eeled his way into the thick reddish-brown native scrub, ignoring the thorns that ripped at his exposed hands and face. To his surprise, Hans was not far away and moving rather more quietly. The response of the two kzin was not surprising at all; they went over the heads of their human companions and up the hillside in a series of bounding leaps, then vanished into cover with an appalling suddenness.
Jonah licked at the sweat on his upper lip and took up the trigger slack on his magrifle. It was a cheap used model, and the holo sight that sprang into existence over the breech quivered slightly and never reached the promised x40 magnification. It was still much better than nothing, and he used it to scan the upper slope carefully, starting close and working back. The bandits were visible in short snatches, working their way cautiously toward the wrecked convoy. Fire still crackled overhead from passengers and guards; the bandits returned it with careful selectivity, not wanting to damage their loot more than was needful. One face showed through a gap between rocks for an instant, a heavy pug countenance with brown stubble and a gold tooth.
If they had seeker missiles, they’ve probably got a good jammer, Jonah thought. No help to be expected anytime soon.
“Here goes,” he whispered softly, laid the sighting-bead on a blurred shape screened by bush, and stroked at the trigger.
His rifle was set for high-subsonic; the slug gave a sharp pfut and the weapon bumped gently at his shoulder. The bandit folded and dropped backward, screaming loud enough to be heard over a thousand meters. One of the weaknesses of impact armor; when there was enough kinetic energy behind the projectile, the suddenly-rigid surface could pulp square meters of your body surface. Very painful, if not fatal.
Hans was firing too, accurate and slow. Jonah snapshot, raking the slope and clenching his teeth against the knowledge that they would be scanning for him, with better sensors than an overage rifle sight They had heavy weapons, too.
Another scream, this tine one of kzin triumph, inhumanly loud and fierce; instincts that remembered tiger and Sabertooth raised hairs under the sweat-wet fabric of his jacket. A human body soared out and tumbled down the hillside, limp in death. Seconds later, a globe of flame rose from nearby, the discharge of a tripod-mounted beamer’s power cell. Another heavy beamer cut loose, but this time directed back upslope at the bandits. Jonah’s sights showed Bigs holding it like a hand weapon, screaming with gape-jawed joy as he hosed down the hillside. Bush flamed, and men ran through it burning. Jonah shot, shifted aim point, shot again, as much in mercy as anything else. When he shifted to wide-angle view for a scan, he saw a swarthy-faced bandit in the remnants of military kit rallying the gang, then leading them in a swift retreat over the bill.
And the two kzin pursuing. “Come back!” he screamed incredulously. Hans looked at him; the humans shrugged, and began to follow.
Horses did not like kzin. That, it seemed, was an immutable fact of life. Hans watched the last of them go bucking off across the dusty square of Neu Friborg with a philosophical air.
“Waste of time, horses, anyway,” he said. “Die on you, like as not. Draw tigripards. Mules are what we need; mules for the gear, and we can walk. Kitties’d have to walk anyhow, too heavy for horses.”
“I eat herbivores, I do not perch upon them,” Bigs said, and stalked off to curl up on a rock and sulk.
“Will these.. mules be more sensible?” Spots asked dubiously.
The stock pens had been set up for the day, collapsible metal frames old enough to be rickety; most of the work animals being offered for sale had been stunned into docility by the heat. High summer in the southern Jotuns was no joke, with both suns up and this lowish altitude. Jonah fanned himself with his straw hat, wiped sweat from his face and looked dubiously at the collection of bony animals who turned their long ears towards him. It was probably imagination, the look of malicious anticipation… and planets have lousy climate control systems, he added to himself. His underwear was chafing, and he was raw under his gunbelt. The pens stank with a hot, dry smell and buzzed with flies, Terran and the six-winged Wunderlander equivalents.
“I haven’t had much to do with animals,” he said dubiously. Except to eat them sometimes, and he preferred his meat prepared so its origin wasn’t too obvious. In space you ate rodent, mostly, anyway, or decently synthesized protein. It made him slightly queasy, the thought of eating something with eyes that size and a large head.
“You’ll learn,” Hans said, running his hands expertly down the legs of one animal. “Won’t do,” he added to the owner, in outbacker dialect. “Galls. Let’s see t’other one.”
“Yep, you’ll learn,” he continued to Jonah. “Unless you want to carry three hundred kilos of gear yourself”
“I see your point,” Jonah replied.
The mule stretched out its neck at Spots and gave a deafening bray with aggressive overtones. The kzin’s fur bottled, and he hissed back at the mule, which blinked and fell silent. From the way its eyes rolled, it was keeping a wary watch on the big carnivore…
“Thiss’un‘ll do,” Hans told the owner. “And the other five.”
The grizzled farmer nodded and whistled for the town registrar, who came over with a readout pistol and scanned the barcodes laser-marked into the mules’ necks.
“Set down,” she said, tucking the instrument into a holster in her skirts. “New system, just back on line-haven’t had a computer link like this since way back in the occupation.” She gave Spots a hard glare; that was extremely bad manners by kzinti standards, but the felinoid stared over her head.
Poor bleeping pussy must have had a lot of practice at that, Jonah thought with some compassion. Stares and jostling and tobacco smoke; life was not easy for kzin under human rule. On the other hand, we don’t enslave or eat them so matters are rather more than even.
“Might as well get started,” Hans concluded, after slapping palms with the farmer. “You fellas need to learn how to do up a pack saddle. Got to be balanced, or you’ll get saddle galls and then we’ll be stuck without enough transport to carry our gear. Couldn’t have that. All right, first lesson.”
He handed one of the wood-and-leather frames to Spots, together with a blanket. “Fold the blanket, then put the saddle firmly across.”
Spots picked up the gear in his stubby-fingered four-digit hands, conscious of the village loafers and small children watching him. So conscious that he did not realize what the mule’s laid-back ears meant, and the way it turned its head to fix him with one distance-estimating eye. The kick was swift even by kzinti standards, and precisely aimed. Spots made a whistling sound as he flew back, folding around his middle. The onlookers laughed; he fought back to all fours. His back arched, fir bottled out, ears folded away in combat mode, and his tail stood out like a pink column behind him. He was beyond lashing it, in his rage, and his lower jaw sank down on his breast in the killing gape as he whooped for breath. Adrenaline surge and lack of oxygen sent gray across his eyes and narrowed his vision down to a tunnel. When a human moved at the corner of it, he whirled and began the upward gutting stroke with barred claws.
The motion froze. It was the human Jonah, and he stood calmly in the position of respectful-nonaggression, with no smell of fear His teeth were decently concealed. Slowly, slowly, willpower beat down the aching need to kill and the rage-shame of mockery. The loafers had tumbled backward at the blurring-swift kzin leap that left Spots back on his feet, though some of the children had cried out in delight as at a wonder. Spots’s pelt sank back toward normal, and he forced his ears to unfold, his tail to relax. Jonah bent and picked up the saddle and its blanket pad.
“Shall we do this together?” he said in an even voice. “I wouldn’t care to be kicked by that thing, myself- I don’t have cartilage armor across my middle the way you Heroes do.”
Stiffly, Spots’s ears waggled; the equivalent of a forced smile. “Mine is not in very good condition, at the moment. How shall we approach?”
“One on either side,” Jonah said. “We shouldn’t give him a target.”
“Hrraaaeeeeeeee!” Rigs shrieked and leapt.
The gagrumpher froze for a fatal instant, its six legs tensed and head whipping backward, then spurted
