By Tooth and Claw Page 30

  “Stay away from his breath,” Petru warned Sherril. “I will put together a measure of the potion to aid you, Drillmaster.” He glanced back toward their captors. “If I can do it without drawing their attention to what I am doing.”

  Reluctantly, Petru moved away from them and went to oversee Bireena. The former slave looked up at him with a triumphant gleam in her big gold eyes. Beside her, three sacks had been padded thickly with marsh grasses. The white curve of an egg the size of Petru’s fist peeked out from among the greenery.

  “What an excellent addition to the larder,” Petru said. “You must have been a marvelous gatherer as a child.”

  “I worked hard,” she said, lowering her eyes. “I have always worked hard.”

  “I know, dear lady.” He patted her on the shoulder.

  More than any of the others, she was unbothered by the presence of armed Liskash. Petru shivered. How horrible to live that way, never being certain of your safety or your future.

  “Could you gather a handful of triangle reeds, some swamp garlic and goldthread? Not very much, just a little,” he said in a light tone, keeping his voice very low. “Don’t put them with the other food. Set them aside on a branch in that tree.” He pointed toward a thorny, overgrown black trunk whose roots humped over the watery expanse. Bireena glanced up at him in surprise. The two guards nearest him trudged closer. “You’re doing very well. Keep going!”

  “Yes, Petru,” she said. With a puzzled shake of her head, she moved away into the undergrowth.

  As the morning progressed, Scaro became weaker and weaker. He sat breathing hard in between tasks. The guards that oversaw him and Sherril kept pulling him to his feet and throwing him down beside other plants to pick racano or other vegetation, making the birds the others were hunting rise up in alarmed flocks. Taadar and the other warriors helped him, but it was clear the drillmaster’s fever was progressing rapidly. The congestion from his nose had moved into his chest. Besides the explosive sneezes, he had acquired a raspy cough. He needed rest, food and a cure.

  The means for the last named was at hand. Petru saw that Bireena had followed his instructions. The green parcel he had requested gleamed wetly on the ancient mremgrove. How he could get to it and process it into a potion without being noticed was a puzzle he had not yet solved. Still, he had the benefit of unrestrained mobility. The guards had accepted his peripatetic behavior as normal.

  “Will he live?” Sherril asked, when Petru came by to inspect his progress. In spite of the councilor’s dilatory methods, he had accumulated four bags of fruit.

  “I don’t know,” Petru said, glancing at the ailing Scaro. The drillmaster held himself against a tree trunk while he stripped clusters of sweet white drupes from its branches. “If we were back home, I would put him to bed for a quarter moon at least.”

  “He can’t let himself be seen as too weak to work,” Sherril said. “They’ll just kill him. They are so hungry they will certainly eat his body. Do your best to avoid direct contact, valet, and keep the Dancer away from him. We must not fall ill!”

  “I know!” Petru hissed. “I am the one who told you that!”

  Squawking arose beyond a clump of trees, followed by a triumphant howl. Imrun appeared from the undergrowth. He was covered with mud and broken twigs, but he held a pair of flapping geese by their feet.

  “Look at these, Drillmaster!” he cried, holding them for Scaro to inspect. The birds fought hysterically to free themselves. One of them tried to peck at Imrun’s eyes. He swung the bird out at arm’s length. “I trapped them in a snare made of lianas. You ought to eat their livers. Give you strength.”

  “Good work, Imrun,” Scaro said. “Those’ll be good eating for all of us.”

  To their surprise, the guards came running toward them. They pushed Scaro aside, seized one of the geese from Imrun and tore the screaming bird to pieces. Without waiting for the body to stop twitching, they stuffed gobbets of meat into their mouths. Blood ran down their unlovely faces onto their even uglier tunics. The rest of the guards ran to seize their share. Petru brushed feathers from his coat and watched them in astonishment.

  “The Liskash are starving, in the midst of plenty,” he said. “Why do they not see all the food to be had?”

  Sherril smiled slyly. “These are town-dwellers, valet, the most protected occupants of what must have been a large city. I suspect that their farmers and flocks, and even fishing vessels were swept away in the sudden floods. Even their army is accustomed to having food brought to them instead of foraging. In spite of General Unwal’s brave words, I think we see them at the edge of despair. We have not been on the roads for long, but we have always been hunters.”

  Captain Horisi waded toward them, drawing his knife from his sheath. He stabbed the second bird in Imrun’s paw and wrenched its suddenly limp body away from the surprised Mrem. He rushed away, the guards who had failed to take a piece of the first bird striding after him and yelling for a share like hungry kittens.

  “All doubt is gone,” Sherril said. “Now, how can we turn this to our advantage?”

  The greenfaced Liskash came toward them. His gray tongue darted out of his mouth and licked all the blood off his face up past his flattened snout. Petru grimaced.

  “You don’t normally eat raw meat, do you, Captain?” he asked.

  “Hungry,” the guard said curtly. “Long time without meat. Herds gone. Officers takes our catch. Like you saws.”

  Sherril, just behind the green Liskash’s shoulder, nodded, his eyes watchful.

  “The drillmaster can teach you to hunt birds like the ones Imrun caught,” he said. “Scaro has been vital to the survival of our small band. You want to learn from him.”

  The guard snorted. “No. You catches. I eats.”

  “As you say, Captain,” Petru said, resigned.

  * * *

  As high noon approached, the Mrem collected all the bounty that they had gathered and loaded it onto the back of one of the beasts of burden. Encouraged by Petru to make themselves more useful as tame predators than prey, the soldiers had outdone themselves. Twenty huge marsh birds were strung over a pair of sagging poles carried between Taadar and Golcha. Nolda and Bireena bore baskets of fragile raw eggs layered among spongy leaves, not letting any of the males touch them. Petru flatly refused to carry any of the several bags of racano and other fruit, leaving Sherril, Scaro and Imrun to shoulder the rest. None of the Liskash noticed that Imrun took the bulk of Scaro’s burden. The drillmaster staggered to carry a nearly weightless sack stuffed with leaves. Once the beast was fully laden, the soldiers tied the Mrems’ hands behind their backs and strung them together with another of the crude, scratchy ropes.

  It was a long hike over damp, marshy ground uphill toward the makeshift camp. Like his fellow Mrem, Petru had sampled a number of the fresh fruits and drupes during the harvesting, so his belly wasn’t twisting with hunger. He grew very thirsty, though. He wished he could drink some of the dinos’ beer instead of the swamp water, but none of them responded to his hints to share.

  Poor Scaro had had to break out of the line more than once to go behind a tree. By the smell, he was purging hard. He must have felt like an empty shell. It could be only his strength of will that kept him upright and on the march, though he drooped farther and farther as they went. Bireena and Taadar walked almost pressed up against Scaro’s sides to keep him from stumbling. Petru kept the packet of healing herbs hidden in his thick fur. When chance permitted it, he would dispense the first dose to the drillmaster. Scaro was in terrible condition. He wouldn’t live more than a day or two without it.

  * * *

  Only fierce orders and blows from spear hafts kept the rest of the Liskash from leaping upon the finds when they arrived back at the makeshift camp. The beast of burden, usually a placid creature, danced and trumpeted to avoid the onrush.

  “Well?” General Unwal demanded, from his chair in the middle of the clearing. “What have you found?”

 
Petru picked the most tender bird and the ripest of the racano. He put them into Sherril’s arms and shoved the councilor toward the general. Sherril aimed a sullen look at him, but went to lay the bounty at the general’s feet. Unwal’s flat eyes gleamed.

  “Cause these to be prepared!” he shouted. “Make the rest a feast for all! Well? What is the delay?”

  The female dinos near the tents murmured to one another. Captain Horisi cleared his throat nervously and signed to some of the lower-ranking soldiers. One shuffled forward, tilting its head in an abject manner.

  “We aren’t sure of prepares feast worthy of you, General,” he said. “Best cooks goes with Lord Oscwal.”

  “Only cooks,” said a blue-faced soldier. “And all our Mrem are gone.”

  “Oh, nonsense,” Petru said. He strode forward and picked likely candidates from the straggled line. “You, you, and you, come with me. The two of you make a fire at least a Mrem-length across. You! Get me some green stakes to use as skewers. Taadar and Imrun, come here now! Show these scaly fools how to gut birds.”

  With Scaro’s warriors as assistants, Petru mustered the servants remaining in the Liskash’s aegis to clean and prepare their bounty. They had few cooking pots or utensils. Platters and cups had been hastily cut from raw wood. At least they knew how to make fire. Within a circle of stones the size of his head, they set a blaze that would cook down into useful coals by the time the sun had moved a quarter of the way toward the horizon. Beside it, he spread huge marsh leaves out to act as a makeshift table and instructed his conscript workforce on how to pluck and gut the birds.

  “You never saw service outside the walls of the city, did you?” he asked one red-scaled dino who had become a mass of feathers in his amateurish attempts to clean a carcass.

  “Only once,” the creature admitted.

  “Pathetic excuse for an army,” Petru said over his shoulder to Taadar. The soldier grinned, showing his sharp teeth.

  The bustle of activity had the entire population of Liskash rapt. Noble-born and low-class alike, they pressed closer and closer to the food preparation. One child darted forward and stole a slice of racano from the top of the battered bowl. A gray-faced soldier immediately strode up and swatted the youngster half a Mrem-length with a sweep of its hand. Petru protested, but the guard turned and glared at him, daring him to say anything about the blow or the fact that he tossed the vegetable into his own ugly mouth. He looked speculatively toward the birds beginning to turn on the spits, but Petru introduced his own bulk between him and the hearth. The dino backed away, its eyes always on the roasting geese. It went to pour beer into its personal jug from the big containers at the side of the clearing.

  “We need something to fill their bellies until the food is ready,” Petru said to Imrun. “Find a bowl or use an oiled hide. Tear up those fresh leaves and squeeze citrus over them. Mix them with the berries and sliced racano and let them eat their fill. Is there oil? No? Bireena, roast the eggs in the embers. They won’t take long.” He glanced toward General Unwal. “Don’t break any or I will have to beat you!”

  “Yes, Lord Petru,” Bireena said. The threat didn’t bother her. Petru felt terrible for making it.

  After a portion was served to the general in a cuplike leaf, the males surged forward to gorge themselves. Petru purposely kept back a third of the food for the lower-caste females and offspring. They were the enemy, but he couldn’t stand seeing helpless beings go hungry. Once the women had fed their children handfuls of salad and snatched a roasted egg or two for themselves, they retreated to the huddle of tents. They no longer looked as desperate.

  “What a horror it must be to have been born a dino,” Petru said to Sherril. “They have no respect for females or care for their offspring.”

  “Hey, Mrem!” Horisi called. “That one is not working!” He pointed at Scaro. “Is there something wrong with him?”

  The drillmaster sat slumped over a stone he used as a butcher block to gut frogs. Golcha and the others had kept him shielded as best they could from the Liskash’s attentions.

  “He isn’t working?” Petru asked, pretending astonishment. “I will discipline him, Captain. Shame, lazybones! Work harder!” He strode over and shook an admonishing finger at the drillmaster. Scaro looked up at him with glassy eyes. Petru worried that he might collapse, but the soldier lowered his ears. He picked up his knife and went back to work. He expelled rubbery discharge from his nostrils among the offal, and wiped his nose with the back of his hand.

  “There, Captain,” Petru said, dusting his hands together. “I will keep a sharp eye on him. He is just lazy. Nothing more.”

  “He shouldn’t be near the food,” Sherril murmured to Petru.

  “What harm could it do?” Petru said in an undertone. “They won’t be affected. Just don’t eat anything he touches. I will make sure there is some that is safe for us.”

  As the savory aromas rose from the firepit, the Liskash moved in closer and closer, as though they couldn’t control themselves.

  “They will push us into the flames!” Sherril said in alarm.

  Petru moved up close to the nearest dinosaurs and clicked his claws in their faces. The dinos withdrew reluctantly, but within a few heartbeats, they began to move forward again.

  “General Unwal, how can I cook you a feast with all this interference?” Petru appealed to the chief Liskash.

  “Back!” Unwal commanded, waving an imperious hand. “Assemble by me! Do you want punishment?”

  For the first time the soldiers looked fearful. They pushed the crowd back until it was behind Unwal’s chair. They crouched on the ground to wait. Still uncomfortably close to the fire, Sherril and Petru exchanged worried glances.

  “He can do magic,” Sherril said woefully. “He has not unleashed it on us yet. We must keep him sweet and avoid his wrath.”

  “I could dance for him,” Nolda said, crouched by the hearth cooking fish on hot stones. “I would also welcome the chance to pray to Assirra for further guidance.” She smiled thinly. “I’d find it satisfying to offer to the goddess right in front of our enemies. Bireena has some skill on the drum. She could accompany me.”

  “I offer myself to help,” the former slave said, without looking up from the vegetables that she was roasting.

  “No!” Petru protested. “Don’t reveal yourself, Your Sinuousness! That snake will see you as an asset. We wish to be as uninteresting as possible.”

  “You are not making yourself uninteresting,” Sherril said, opening his eyes wide in an accusatory manner. “They can’t help but notice you.”

  Petru looked down his long nose at the councilor.

  “Then you are taken in by my subterfuge as well? That if they notice me they will pay less attention to our ailing drillmaster? We don’t want to give them a single excuse to harm him.”

  He could tell by the bemused look on Sherril’s face that the councilor had not even considered such a thing.

  “Well, hurry up and finish making the meal,” Sherril said. “We want to be away from here as soon as possible. We need to retrieve those parcels of herbs before they rot.”

  “They won’t let us go,” Bireena said. “We have always been chattel to them. They have lost their servants. They will see us as replacements.”

  “Well, I am not chattel,” Nolda said. “Assirra told me to be watchful and clever, and we will win out against our foes.”

  “I wish to believe in your dream, Dancer,” the tawny Mrem said. At last, she raised her beautiful amber eyes to the others. They were filled with sorrow. But I have lived in mine too long.”

  The Dancer patted her gently on the shoulder.

  “That nightmare is broken. This, too, shall be in the past. The gods will not forsake us.”

  Bireena looked as though she wanted to believe the Dancer’s reassurance. Petru’s heart went out to her. He wanted to believe it, too.

  * * *

  At last the skin of the birds was crisp and the meat dripped w
ith savory juices. Petru cut a piece from the thigh of a plump bird and tasted it.

  “As well as can be without spices,” he said, nodding to Golcha and Imrun. “Take them off the fire.”

  Unwal must be served first. Petru laid out his feast with the same flourishes he used when serving his precious Dancers. Savory slices of breast and thigh meat he placed in the center of broad, fresh leaves and adorned them with flowers. He laid these offerings before the general.

  “About time,” Unwal declared. He grabbed meat with both hands and crammed pieces one after another into his maw. He washed it down with gulps from a beaker filled with the stinking brew the Liskash favored. Petru turned away in disgust.

  “Serve the others,” he said to the Mrem. “Make sure everyone gets a portion.”

  Once they had handed out the food, the Mrem retreated to the far side of the firepit. Two of the guards kept with them every step of the way, spears in one hand, drumstick of goose in the other.

  Except for regrettable slurping and chomping, the Liskash ate in silence. Petru made certain that the Mrem had kept back the most healthful portions of meat, though he had hacked it into shards to make it look unappetizing. He placed some of it on a leaf and offered it to Nolda first.

  “No, dear Petru,” she said with a smile. “Scaro needs this more than I do.”

  “No, Your Sinuousness,” Scaro whispered. “Don’t waste it on me. It’ll go right through me!”

  “I have something better for you, Drillmaster.” Petru passed him the heart of one of the birds, done to a savory turn. “The herbs inside this will combat your symptoms. Once we are on our way again, I can brew you the potion that will cure you.”

  Scaro devoured the morsel, making a face at the bitterness of the green leaves stuffed inside. After a few moments, he swallowed and waited, with a thoughtful frown. The others watched him anxiously. He nodded.

  “It’s staying put, at least for now.”

  “Then it’s time to appeal for our freedom,” Sherril said, casting aside the leaf he had used as a plate. He smoothed his whiskers and brushed his ruff clean. “A good meal will have put them into an amenable mood.”