By Tooth and Claw Read online

  “You hold back hundreds of thirsty animals,” the Mrem suggested. “I can’t. Maybe you have some magic that will control them, eh?” He spat. “You might as well ask me to bring you a star in my hand while you’re at it.”

  Krar frowned but had to admit to himself that the herder was right. Maybe bringing the herds was a mistake, even if it saved so much time from hunting. It seemed that every decision led to another problem. Sometimes it was overwhelming, not the glory and pleasure he’d thought being first would bring. A slave simply had to obey . . .

  “Can you at least keep them from drinking till they’re sick?” he asked.

  “Don’t tell me my business, Krar. You take care of yourself, we’ll see to our herds.”

  Without another word, Krar stepped up behind the herder and grabbed him by the scruff of his neck, giving him a sharp shake, then shoved him down.

  “The herds belong to all of us now,” he said. “Don’t get the idea that they belong only to the herders.”

  The herder glared up at him, then leapt to his feet, teeth bared and fur bristling around his head and shoulders.

  “Who says they don’t belong to us? We guide them, we take care of them, they wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for us! The Liskash masters took the growth of our work, but—”

  “I say. And for now my word is law. When we have time we’ll decide who will lead us, but until we have that luxury, I am in charge here. Unless you would like to fight me for that honor?”

  Krar narrowed his eyes and locked them with the other Mrem’s; his hand drifted towards his knife and the tip of his tail twitched ever so slightly. The herder scowled, then lowered his head and shook it until his ears rattled, glancing aside and down and blinking as if the confrontation suddenly bored him. Krar suppressed a savage impulse to make the other male roll on his back and expose his belly.

  “Now . . . can you keep them from drinking until they founder?” he demanded, danger in his voice.

  “Yes, great god, we can do that.” The herder spat to the side. “We just can’t stop them from getting to the water in the first place.”

  “Thank you,” Krar said, “that’s all I wanted to know.”

  As he pushed his way through the jostling animals he glanced at Mrownes who raised his brows at him. Krar frowned but shrugged.

  “I don’t want the herders getting the idea that the herds belong only to them. It’s important that they and everybody else knows we’re in this together.”

  “I can’t argue with that,” Mrownes said. “Just don’t come down too heavy or you’ll have a rebellion on your hands. As you said, we’re all in this together.”

  They’d come to the first wagon and Krar ordered the driver to put the wagons in a wide circle, then take the krelprep to the water hole.

  “Having the wagons in a circle may keep the herds from wandering through our camp,” he explained to the driver.

  As they walked on to give orders to the other wagon drivers Mrownes grinned at him.

  “What?” Krar snapped.

  “Now you’re getting it,” his friend said slapping his shoulder. “I’ll go tell the others. Here comes Tral looking like he wants to talk to you.”

  Krar gave Mrownes a brief smile of thanks, then turned to the healer.

  “How’s your patient?”

  “I have many, but I assume you mean the stranger.”

  The free Mrem prisoner had sparked the slave revolt. Just the knowledge that there were Mrem who were free of Liskash domination had set his people wild.

  “He’s unconscious, but given the shaking the wagon’s been giving him that’s a mercy.”

  Tral looked at the rocky cliff face beyond the water hole. “If it’s possible I’d like to take him up there, away from the smoke of our campfires and the noise. It’s not far and a litter would be easier on him than the wagon. And the flies . . . I couldn’t tell you why, but I think they’re bad for the sick.”

  Krar looked at the cliff thoughtfully; he respected the healer’s judgment.

  “I’ll send someone to see if it’s possible,” he said. “I wanted to post someone up there as a lookout anyway.”

  He looked at the healer. “How is he? Do you think he’ll live?”

  He held his breath as Tral thought it over. If the stranger died it might mean the end for all of them.

  “I don’t know, because I don’t know him,” the healer replied. “He’s been badly used and he has a fever. A lot depends on his will to live. I’m guessing he has that from the way I saw him fight the Liskash. That and whether the fever breaks soon. Wesha—”

  Krar frowned; that was a female name, and the Liskash had kept the sexes apart among their Mrem slaves except at breeding time.

  “The female’s healer, she is helping me and she’s highly skilled, so he’s getting the best care we can give him. That’s all I can tell you.”

  The younger Mrem put a grateful hand on the healer’s shoulder in an amicable grooming gesture.

  “That’s all we can ask for.” Turning he called out:

  “Fetys!”

  A young Mrem came running, lithe and quick. Krar pointed at the height.

  “See if you can get to the top of that and check along our back trail. While you’re there see if there’s an easy way up. The healer wants to bring a patient up there.”

  Fetys nodded and moved off, threading carefully through the herd of massive stocky hamsticorns, then wary and alert among the horns of the bundors.

  Then Krar noticed the others watching him. “Make camp!” he called. “We’ll stay here a day and night! Dry wood only for fires, we don’t want smoke.”

  Being leader mostly seemed to mean work and worry. The problem was . . .

  If anyone else was doing it, I’d worry even more.

  The thought that he was the most cunning and fierce and able had made him proud. Now it . . .

  Makes me worry.

  * * *

  They’d killed a bundor and parceled the meat out to various groups. The herders and the females and the laboring males all kept to themselves as they had on Ashala’s holding. Clinging to habit in a hostile wilderness made them feel a little less lost. They’d hated their life at the Liskash fortress, but it was all they’d known.

  A group of the younger males had found something they’d known but never tasted, a jar of forbidden wine in one of the wagons. Krar heard their high-pitched chirrs of excitement, and the hissing and spitting as it was handed around, or grabbed. He yawned and stretched and headed their way.

  I should have smashed it, he thought. But the healers wanted it!

  “What’ve you got there?” a burly young Mrem demanded of a group of females when the last drop was licked out of the tall jug. “Give me some, I’m hungry!”

  He staggered over to the pot warming on some rocks by the fire and grabbed it, swiping up the contents with his hand and stuffing it in his mouth.

  “Here now!” one of the females said. “What do you think you’re doing?” She stepped towards him and he pushed her down.

  “I’m free now,” he snarled. “That means I can eat as much as I want.”

  He leered at the female staring at him wide eyed from the ground. “And I can have any female I want, when I want, not when some master says I can.” He tossed the pot aside and lunged for her.

  Krar halted his own dash. The pot the young male had just tossed aside crashed into his head and he dropped to the ground, his head covered in sticky lumps of meat and thick gravy.

  “Rav, I know you,” Mahssa, the leader of the females said coldly, flexing her fingers as she stood watching him. She was a gaunt grizzled female, with part of her left ear missing.

  She dropped the fragment of pottery in her hand, her ears flat with anger. He looked up at her with his mouth open, then struggled to his feet staring and weaving where he stood. Krar smothered a snicker at way he tried to straighten up, looking like a sulky kit that had just had its nose whapped.

  “Y
ou were a good kit when you were with us. It saddens me to see that you’ve become a bully,” Mahssa continued implacably. “Your mother would be ashamed to see you like this.”

  “Where is she?” Rav demanded his eyes filling with tears; he’d completely forgotten that he could see his mother now.

  Mahssa compressed her lips and looked down, blinking slowly in compassion.

  “She died of a fever last winter,” she told him. “I’m sorry you had to find out this way. I remember her tears as they took you away, Rav. She never got over missing you.”

  “She’s dead?” Rav asked, sounding lost.

  “Yes. I’m sorry.”

  “It was the cursed Liskash,” the young Mrem snarled, suddenly bristling.

  Now he’s really dangerous, Krar thought. His tail’s puffed out like a soapweed plant after the rains.

  “They kept her half starved, no wonder she died of a lil thing like a fever. I’m not gonna starve, I’m gonna take what I need and nobody’s gonna stop me!”

  Krar grabbed him by the shoulder, spun him around and slapped. He kept the tips of his fingers rolled back, but the open palm into the angle of the jaw was enough to lift the young Mrem off his feet. He fell in a heap, blinking and panting, then turned himself to rest on his elbows and shake his head, making a mrew-mrew-mrew weeping sound.

  “You will not take from the females and the kits while I’m alive to stop you,” Krar snarled, baring his fangs. “The food was shared equally and it was more than you would have had from Ashala’s hand. But you, like a sneaking coward, had to have more! The wine was being saved for the sick who couldn’t eat, and now it’s gone. Thief! We ought to cast you out to find your own way, to eat all you can of what you can catch. You make me sick, you worthless coughed-up clump of hair!”

  Mahssa put her hand on the leader’s arm. “Have mercy,” she said. “He’s just found out his mother is dead. I remember him as a youngster, he was good then. I think the problem here is the wine and now that’s gone the problem won’t come again. His punishment will be tomorrow when he’s very sick from what he’s drunk.”

  Krar was silent a moment as he thought. “I hear you Mahssa,” he said at last. “But I will think of something to add to nature’s punishment for this fool.”

  He glanced at the old female. “You are too kind to him.” He pointed. “He’s broken your good pot with his useless head.”

  She blinked. “Yes, well, it’s his fault anyway and it can’t be replaced.” Her lips thinned. “We could use help in carrying the younger kits. They crawl around and drop off if they’re put on the wagons. May we make him our beast of burden?”

  With a smile, Krar nodded. “An excellent idea. Rav! Until I say otherwise you are at the service of the females. Whatever they ask of you, you will do. Do you understand?”

  Rav struggled to his feet, shaking his head and pawing at it as if wondering where the stew had come from.

  “No, no, no.” When he was standing as upright as he could manage, he carefully said, “You can’t do that. Nobody made you leader.”

  Krar strode up to him and Rav moved back quickly. But Krar crowded close and spoke into his face, eyes locked and head half-turned to give the full view of his fangs in a lunge-to-the-throat posture:

  “I lead us, and you are in no condition to dispute that. When you are, if you want to challenge me to be first among Mrem, come find me. In the meantime, you’ll do as I say!”

  The last was a shout, high and shrill and tearing with a hiss in it. He let his claws out, holding them up to show that his slap could have ripped out the other male’s jugular; his whiskers were back and his ears were flat.

  Rav’s mouth worked and he pointed aggressively at Krar’s chest but didn’t quite touch him.

  “I won’t forget this,” he said breathing hard with anger and wine making his breath musky. “You wait, you’ll see. You can’t treat me like this.”

  Krar was satisfied to note that as angry as Rav was, as drunk as he was, his claws were still retracted. Disgusted, he gave him a slight shove and the younger Mrem stumbled back, barely keeping himself from falling.

  “Go back to your friends tonight. Then tomorrow bring yourself and your gear and do whatever Mahssa tells you to do.” He took a step forward. “Don’t make me come looking for you,” he warned.

  They glared at one another for a moment, then Rav glanced at Mahssa and with a grimace, stumbled away, tail down.

  “You always were bossy,” Mahssa said after he had gone.

  Krar looked at her and smiled. He shook his head briskly and his ears rose.

  “I daresay you were, too, when you were a kit.”

  She laughed. “I was. I am. But now it’s what I’m supposed to do.” She sighed. “Your status will have to be confirmed and soon, you know, and not just by who’s quickest and has the sharpest claws. You can’t just keep giving orders. Not until at least the elders say you can.”

  “I know,” he agreed. “But I’d like to see us a bit farther from the great go—from Ashala’s holding before we take the time.”

  “We need at least a day here to rest,” Mahssa said, squinting up at the dust-hazed sun sinking in a great red ball behind the hill. “Maybe we elders can snatch some time to find an agreement on this.” She nodded. “I’ll see what I can do.”

  “And do you want me to be our leader?” he asked.

  She looked at him with her eyes narrowed. “I think I do,” she said slowly. “Besides, I can’t think of anyone more suitable. And if there are wild Mrem out there we’re going to need someone to speak for all of us. Unless you can suggest someone other than yourself?”

  He snorted. “Honestly, Mahssa, I wish I could. It’s one thing to make another back down over a trifle and then stalk around with the fur on your back up, looking everyone in the eye. But taking care of all these people, seeing that things are shared and sentries posted and . . . it’s all more like work. Still, someone has to do it or we’re lost.”

  She patted his shoulder. “That’s what I was hoping to hear.”

  * * *

  Thak flicked his tongue out to taste the air, only the tip of his muzzle above the grass that almost matched the patterns of his scales. There was the smell of water, much stirred, and bundor and hamsticorns, as well as the stink of far too many Mrem in one place in the middle of nowhere for his liking.

  Mrem belonged in the slave pens, not wandering around loose. He knew this waterhole; it was the best for many miles, but well downhill of here—the land wasn’t as flat as it looked. From here, he was above even the level of the hill over the pool. And it would be dark fairly soon. . . .

  The translucent membranes flickered across and back over his eyes, and his narrow whiplike tail curled and uncurled. It looked like, wisely, they’d kept the bundor and hamsticorns separated; that gave him the beginnings of a plan.

  “Gisshah, Asoth, Vess, Poth come here.”

  When the other Liskash scouts joined him he gave them their orders.

  “Asoth, take over the lead herd beast of the hamsticorns and head it toward Lord Oglut’s steading. Gisshah and Poth, take over the herders, get them to guide the herd. Vess take over the lead bundor and some of the others and have them stampede the Mrem camp. When they’re really on the move they should keep going without your guidance, then you follow us.”

  The scouts nodded, hissing their pleasure at the joke they were about to play.

  “It’s good,” Poth said. “A few hundred juicy hamsticorns to sweeten the bitter news we bear. The great god will be pleased.”

  Thak looked at him. This was exactly his thought and it unnerved him to have it plucked from his head like that. He had dreaded bringing his god word that a great herd of Mrem and their animals were about to march over the Lord Oglut’s land. Perhaps the prize they brought with them would win them their lives.

  He flicked his hand at them. “Then go,” he said.

  Without further discussion they went to follow their orders.r />
  * * *

  Tral had decided to move all of his patients up to the top of the cliff. There was an easy path and it did seem the air was clearer up here; it would be pleasantly cool in the night, good for the ones with fevers, and they could drop a bucket on the end of a rope down the cliff to get water. He looked around the rocky expanse, noting with approval how the shelters broke the wind and the quiet peace of it.

  Now he was checking on his most important patient, the mysterious wild Mrem.

  “Are you awake?” he asked quietly. The Mrem was all bandages and burnt hair. His eyes were closed, but Tral sensed that he was conscious. “I have brought you some meat stew,” he said, waving the bowl teasingly under his nose.

  The stranger opened his eyes and looked at him. “I’m awake,” he growled.

  Tral filled a spoon and offered it. The wounded Mrem opened his mouth and took the food.

  “Where are we?” he asked, after his tongue had cleaned his whiskers.

  “I’ve no idea really,” Tral told him. “We’re heading east, but we’ve never been so far from where we were born. We’re on top of a cliff beside a water hole if that helps.”

  The stranger nodded silently. Then: “More, please.” And took another spoonful of the stew.

  “What’s your name?” Tral asked. “We can’t keep calling you the stranger.”

  “I’m Canar Trowr,” he said. “And I can feed myself.”

  “Not with your hands in the condition they’re in. Be patient and you’ll be feeding yourself in no time.”

  He offered another spoonful, which was accepted. “Do you know where we are?”

  “I think so. You should head north and east, it increases the chance of your joining with my people. Who are you?”

  “Tral, I’m a healer. My next question is, how do you feel?”

  “How do I look?” Canar Trowr asked.

  “Bad.”

  “And that’s how I feel. But I also feel like I’ll live. They wanted me to talk, not die right away.”

  Tral smiled. “That’s good hearing. We’re resting here for the night, maybe for tomorrow. I’m hoping for that, the rest would do you good. Would do all of us good.”