By Tooth and Claw Read online

  But the errors and biases of the priestesses of the Old Faith were pallid compared to the ravings of the Kororo.

  No deities at all, just abstractions given names? Mere facets of a greater and mysterious so-called “godhead”?

  Preposterous.

  The Kororo didn’t even have proper priestesses and shamans—or even priests. Their religious leaders were called “tekkutu.” So far as Zilikazi had been able to determine, the term meant “adepts of tekku.” Apparently, this so-called “tekku” referred to some sort of mental power over animals.

  That such a power might exist was plausible enough. As children, members of the nobility often played with manipulating the minds of animals. But the intrinsic limits of that activity soon made it pall. Most animals simply didn’t have enough brains to make controlling them useful. If you tried to force one to open a gate by lifting the latch with a foreleg—assuming the beast was big enough to manage the task at all—it would fumble it, at best. More often than not, the beast’s mind would simply shut down under the pressure.

  Unless they were predators, especially large ones. Those would resist fiercely and usually successfully. Some would even attack the noble who tried to force his will upon them.

  And this fragile mental activity was the source of a Kororo tekkutu’s power?

  Preposterous.

  The Kororo fortifications might be a bit of a problem. They were reputed to be quite strong, in a primitive sort of way. The terrain would certainly be a nuisance. But the end result was not in doubt. Zilikazi estimated it would take him no more than a month to crush the mystics.

  Njekwa

  The slaughter of the Mrem too badly injured to move on their own or with minor assistance took place at noon. By then, the able-bodied Mrem had already been sent about their slave chores and duties, so there were few around to put up any resistance, and all of those were also injured.

  The task was done quickly, efficiently, and with a minimum of fuss, the way Zilikazi’s well-trained soldiers went about such things. There weren’t really that many badly injured Mrem left by then, anyway. Days had passed since the battle where they received their wounds, and the majority of the wounded had either started to recover or had already died.

  Njekwa and the other priestesses and shamans made it a point not to be present at the killing. They raised no public objection, of course. To have done so would have brought the noble lord’s wrath down upon them. But the savagery of the deed fit poorly with the precepts of the Old Faith, and none of its practitioners wanted to be in the vicinity when it happened.

  The issue wasn’t so much one of mercy. Liskash understood the concept, although it figured less prominently in their moral codes than it did (at some times and in some circumstances) for the Mrem. But the Old Faith did place a great premium on khaazik, the general principle that harm should be kept to the minimum necessary. Killing those who had no chance of survival was acceptable; indeed, in some situations, a positive good. On the other hand, killing creatures, especially sentient ones, for no greater purpose than to avoid minor inconvenience went against khaazik.

  Duzhikaa, it was called, which translated roughly as trespass-upon-observance. As misbehavior went, it was not as severe as outright criminality, but it was still frowned upon. Severely so, if the misdeed came to the attention of Morushken, goddess of thrift.

  But it was in the very nature of Morushken to appreciate all manner of thrift—such as the thriftiness of a high priestess who sheltered her adherents from avoidable punishment. Njekwa was quite sure the goddess would look away, so long as she and the other priestesses and the shamans stayed out of sight and sound of the killing.

  * * *

  Unfortunately, as it turned out, some of her adherents were unclear on the nature of thrift. Youngsters were particularly prone to that error—and especially the one who came before her with two Mrem kits hidden in her basket. This was not the first time Zuluku had been a problem.

  “There is no need to kill them,” Zuluku insisted. “It was their dam who was badly hurt, not they.”

  Njekwa looked down at the tiny creatures in the basket. “They are still suckling age, and will be for some time. I think.” She wasn’t sure how long, because she didn’t know that much about the barbarian mammals.

  But it didn’t matter. A few days would be too long. Newborns of any advanced species required constant feeding.

  “They’re mammals, Zuluku. Without their dam and her milk, they’ll die soon anyway.”

  The young female looked away, her expression seeming a bit . . .

  Furtive?

  The dam is still alive also—and this young idiot is hiding her!

  Njekwa started to say something. She wasn’t sure what, except that it would be harshly condemnatory. But then Zuluku looked back at her with a new expression. A very stubborn one.

  Njekwa hesitated. She had to be careful here, she realized. Young adherents tended to get impatient with the necessary caution their situation required. Some of them—not many, no, but the number might grow—were becoming contentious.

  Two had gone so far as to seek refuge with the Kororo in the mountains. Njekwa was afraid others would follow, now that Zilikazi was marching on the Krek. You’d think any Liskash with half a brain would realize that fleeing to the Kororo right when Zilikazi planned to destroy them was sheer folly.

  But youth was prone to folly. She had been herself—just a bit—at Zuluku’s age.

  Best to deflect the matter, she decided. She could shield herself easily enough, and if a young adherent to the Old Faith fell foul of their noble lord, so be it.

  “I saw nothing. I know nothing,” she said, turning away. A moment later, she heard Zuluku’s departing footsteps.

  She began composing herself, reaching out for serenity to Yasinta, goddess of the evening. With time and application, Njekwa could forget everything she’d just seen and heard. Well enough to sink below Zilikazi’s notice, at least.

  Nurat Merav

  She woke to pain. Terrible pain, on her left side below the ribs; aching pain most everywhere else.

  But fear rode over the pain. Where were her kits? They were much too young to survive on their own.

  Her memory was blurred. Despite the age of her kits, Nurat had left them to join the other Dancers once it became clear that the Liskash threatened to overwhelm the warriors because of their noble’s mind power. She remembered bits and pieces of the battle that followed, then . . .

  She’d been injured, obviously, but she didn’t remember how or when. Her last memories were of stumbling—often crawling—back to the place in the camp where she’d left Naftal and Abi.

  The great relief when she’d found them, still quite unharmed even if they were squalling because she’d abandoned them while nursing.

  Then . . .

  Nothing.

  She pressed down on the injury and was surprised to encounter bandages. Thick ones, even if they were crusted with blood—but the blood seemed to have dried. And the bandages were well placed and tightened by a cinch around her waist.

  Who had put them there? She certainly hadn’t. The best she’d managed was a crude poultice that she had to keep in place with one of her own hands.

  She looked around. She seemed to be in some kind of tent. But it was of no design she recognized. The frame was a circular lattice over which were stretched hide walls. All of it was covered with a dome made of thinner wood strips that supported some sort of felt. There seemed to be a thick lacquer spread over all the roof’s surface.

  She tried to picture what the structure would look like from the outside, and almost instantly realized that she was looking at a Liskash yurt. She hadn’t recognized it for what it was immediately because the interior had none of the decorations that would adorn the exterior. If “adorn” could be used to describe garish colors that usually clashed with each other.

  She was a captive, then. And soon would become a slave, once the noble who lorded it over th
ese Liskash turned his attention to her.

  A Liskash female came through an opening in the yurt that she hadn’t spotted. The opening wasn’t a door, just a place where two hides overlapped. She thought the female was quite young.

  The hide flaps moved again, and another female came into the yurt. Then, still another.

  Three of them, and all young. They were staring down at her intently. What did they want?

  She tried to remember the few words of Liskash she knew. Or rather, the few words of the tongue spoken by the Liskash who’d lived in the lowlands near when her tribe had once lived. She had no idea if these Liskash spoke the same language. Mrem dialects—at least, on this side of the newly formed great sea—were all related, many of them quite closely. But the Liskash had lived here for . . . ages. No one knew how long. She’d heard that their languages could be completely different from each other.

  Before she could utter more than a couple of halting syllables, however, the second Liskash to enter the yurt spoke to her. In a Mrem dialect that was not her own but was still mostly comprehensible.

  “What you .” Nurat wasn’t sure, but she though that last word might be a slurred version of “name.” And there had seemed to be an interrogative lilt at the end of the short sentence.

  Acting on that assumption, she said: “Nurat Merav. What is your name?”

  Liskash expressions were unfamiliar to her, but she suspected the stiff-seeming appearance of the creature’s face was the Liskash version of a frown.

  “You mean my ? That was definitely a question.

  “My is Zuluku,” the Liskash continued.

  Naftal mewled softly. Abi did the same.

  “Quiet must!” the Liskash hissed, softly but urgently, as she passed the kits to her. “Very must!”

  The three young Liskash females stared at the yurt entrance. They seemed tense and agitated.

  Nurat didn’t understand what was bothering them so much, but it was clear they felt the kits had to be kept silent. She saw no reason to argue the matter; and, besides, the kits were hungry. So she began nursing them.

  After a while, the Liskash seemed to relax. The one who called herself Zuluku turned away from the entrance and stared down at Nurat.

  “Why are you doing this?” Nurat asked.

  But no answer came. Perhaps the Liskash had not understood the question.

  Zuluku

  In fact, Zuluku had not understood the question, although she’d recognized most of the words. But even if she had, she would have found it difficult to answer.

  Perhaps even impossible. She did not clearly understand herself why she was hiding the wounded barbarian. Part of her motive was certainly her sense of khaazik. But only part of it. Khaazik was not something that normally moved people to acts of daring, after all.

  Most of all, she was driven by deep frustration. At every turn and in every way, her spiritual urges were stymied and suffocated. As a youngster, she’d once heard a Kororo missionary speak to a secret gathering of Old Faith adherents. She had understood very little of what the Kororo had said—almost nothing, being honest—but she’d never forgotten the missionary’s sense of sure purpose.

  She’d dreamed of that purpose ever since, and gathered around her other young Old Faith adherents who shared her dissatisfaction. None of them had any clearer idea than she did of what their goals should be. They simply felt, in an inchoate way, that they should have some goals that went beyond the never-ending passivity of their religious superiors.

  Njekwa seemed to have no goal beyond survival. They wanted more.

  In the end, perhaps, they sheltered the badly wounded Mrem and her kits simply because they’d finally found something they could do.

  CHAPTER 6

  Meshwe

  “Tekkutu! Tekkutu!” Little Chello came racing toward Meshwe. Chello was still limping a bit from the lingering effects of the tritti-bite, but was so excited that she ignored the pain.

  Excited by what? Meshwe wondered. He could see nothing behind her but the narrow lane winding between the town’s yurts. Although, now that he concentrated, he thought he could hear some hubbub in the distance.

  He wasn’t certain, though. At his age, his hearing was mediocre at best.

  “What is it, child?” he asked, as the little one raced up. She tried to stop too abruptly, stumbled, and would have fallen if he hadn’t caught her.

  “It’s Sebetwe and the others!” cried Chello. “They’re back. And they brought with them—oh, you won’t believe me! Come see for yourself!”

  The youngling got back on her feet and began tugging Meshwe by the wrist. “Come see! Come see!”

  * * *

  As they neared the town’s central plaza, the hubbub resolved itself into the excited speech of a large crowd. Judging from the tone, the crowd seemed agitated but not panic stricken.

  Once they got still closer, Meshwe could distinguish a single voice rising above the others. That was Sebetwe, he was sure. So the hunting party must have returned, then.

  Finally, just two rows of yurts from the plaza, Meshwe could make out the words Sebetwe was shouting.

  “Stay back, you idiots! If we lose control of them, some of you will get killed!”

  That sounded . . . dangerous. Even if the crowd’s hubbub still didn’t seem that frightened.

  “Come on, tekkutu! Come on!” Chello was so excited she finally let go of his wrist and raced ahead of him. He hurried his steps but didn’t break into an outright run. At his age, running was not the least bit enjoyable.

  He came into the plaza and stopped. Very abruptly. The sight before him was without a doubt the most bizarre thing he’d ever seen—and Meshwe had lived a long and varied life.

  In the center of the plaza were two adult and two juvenile gantrak. Judging by the size and subtleties of coloration of the adults, one was female and one was male. A family group, presumably. The trappers who’d gone out to capture (hopefully—the prospect was always chancy) a juvenile gantrak were positioned on either side of the predators, keeping a wary eye on them. The leader of the little party, Sebetwe, had a look of intense concentration on his face.

  Meshwe recognized the expression. It was that of a skilled tekkutu maintaining control over a predator.

  But controlling an adult gantrak? It was unheard of! Meshwe himself would not dare to do it, not even if he had several other tekkutu to assist him.

  Then, further back, Meshwe spotted a still more outlandish sight. There was a party of Mrem in the rear. Two handfuls, perhaps more. And in the fore were two Mrem he thought to be females. Both of them were advancing with a peculiar manner—a bizarre one, actually. They were prancing and capering about as if possessed by demons or under the influence of one of the jatta syrups.

  It took him a few moments to realize that the Mrem females were engaged in that weirdly frenzied mammalian version of dancing. And another few moments to remember that according to reports the Krek had gotten from its spies in the lowlands, Mrem dancers were able in some unknown and mysterious way to counter the mental power of the Liskash nobility.

  Was it possible that . . . ?

  Ignoring the noise and excitement around him, Meshwe squatted and began the process needed to place him in tekku. There were several stages to that process—the exact number varied depending on circumstances—and with his long experience and proficiency he was able to pass through the initial ones quickly. But then, entering the phase known as efta duur—merging with the target spirit—Meshwe encountered an obstacle.

  Not an obstacle so much as turbulence, he realized. It was as if, wading into what he’d thought was a pool, he’d encountered rapids. The clear, crisp, harsh minds of the great predators he sensed nearby were constantly being undercut—perplexed; disarranged, disoriented—by . . .

  What, exactly? He could detect Sebetwe’s presence in that turmoil. The young tekkutu seemed t
o be guiding the gantrak through their confusion, giving them desperately needed clarity and focus. It was only that controlled orientation that kept the ferocious beasts from running wild.

  But how was he doing it? No tekkutu, no matter how strong and adept, could possibly maintain that control while simultaneously undermining the normal instincts of a predator. It would be as hard as trying to run a race while juggling knives. Possible theoretically but not in practice.

  It was the Mrem, he realized. Somehow, in some way, their dancing—or rather, the mental concentration—no, it was more like force, vigor, tension—they derived from the dancing, was the main factor keeping the gantrak off balance. The mammals, with their weird prancing about, unsettled all of the predators’ normal rhythms of behavior. In desperation, the gantrak then leaned on Sebetwe’s tekku presence to provide them with a focus. Their spirits converged with his, as it were.

  He was not controlling them in the normal manner of a tekku handling a predator. With minds this great and fierce, that would be impossible. Instead, he was guiding them through the chaos, reassuring them. He was not their master so much as their mentor—it might be better to say, their spiritual counselor.

  No—ha! who could have imagined such a thing?—he was their shaman!

  Zilikazi

  The first attack from the Kororo came as Zilikazi’s army was marching up a narrow and steep col two days after they entered the mountains. He’d been expecting it and had warned his commanding officers to be prepared, but it was still an unpleasant surprise.

  The surprise—certainly the unpleasantness—came from the manner of the ambush, not the casualties it caused. Empathy was an emotion that, while not entirely absent from the caste of noble Liskash, was very limited in its range. More so for Zilikazi than most. The sight of his soldiers crushed and mangled by the rocks that had come crashing down the slopes was purely a matter for tactical calculation. Suffering casualties, including fatal and crippling ones, was a necessary feature of soldiers, no more to be rued or regretted than the rough hides of draft animals.