Exiled: Clan of the Claw, Book One (11 page)

One of the lesser Liskash had the presence of mind to throw something at him. He never found out what it was; he only knew it missed. Sassin half-turned toward him. Even across lines of race and hatred, Rantan Taggah read the Liskash noble’s horrified astonishment.

The talonmaster felt a tug at his own spirit: magic, hurled his way. But, like the javelin or dagger or whatever it was, the magic missed. Or maybe it hit, but too late. For Rantan Taggah smashed into Sassin, knocked him to the ground, and tore at his belly with hind claws and at his throat with fangs and front talons.

Sassin had claws of his own, and tried to fight back. But one Mrem was commonly worth more than one Liskash in a claw-to-claw fight, and Rantan Taggah was a trained and practiced warrior while Sassin was not. The Liskash noble also tried throwing more magic at his unexpected assailant. Some other Scaly One might possibly have been able to form and hurl a spell in time to keep from getting his throat torn out. Again, Sassin was not. Rantan Taggah felt the charm try to bite him. Then Sassin lost consciousness and died, and the threat died with him.

Rantan Taggah sprang to his feet, ready to help Ramm Passk’t against the Liskash noble’s henchmales. But Ramm Passk’t needed help from no one. He’d already slaughtered two of them, and the rest were running every which way, as fast as they could go. They might not have been eager to stand and die for Sassin even if he still lived. With him down, all they cared about was getting away.

And, with his will no longer driving them, the ordinary Liskash javelineers and archers and slingers up ahead were suddenly much less eager to mix it up with the Mrem. Clouds of dust hid most of what was going on up there from Rantan Taggah’s eyes, but his ears were quick to catch the changed note from the fighting. The talonmaster hadn’t been sure that would happen, but he’d hoped.

Ramm Passk’t lifted his arm and licked at a bite one of the Liskash had given him. Then he said, “I don’t think we ought to stick around here—know what I mean? The Scaly Ones’ll be heading back from the fight up there pretty cursed quick, and they won’t be glad to see us.”

That would do for an understatement till a bigger one—say, one about the size of a frillhorn—came along. “Right,” Rantan Taggah said, not about to admit out loud that the formidable warrior could also be dangerous with words.

They trotted away. As they had before, they could circle around the Liskash army’s flank.
Please, Assirra,
Rantan Taggah thought. The prayer couldn’t hurt. He’d made this attack not expecting to come back from it. He hadn’t resigned himself to death, but he’d come close. Now that he’d succeeded against the odds, all at once he overwhelmingly wanted to go on living.

Enni Chennitats’s voice exulting in his mind gave him part of the reason why: “He’s dead! He’s dead! Grumm felt him die!”

“Now that you mention it, so did I,” Rantan Taggah answered. Nobody was going to be dryer than he was, not today.

* * *

Enni Chennitats eyed Grumm with a priestess’s curiosity. She sometimes thought that wasn’t so far removed from the curiosity of a kit poking a bug with a stick to see what it would do. Sometimes nothing happened. Sometimes you learned something interesting. Every once in a while, you picked the wrong bug and got stung—which was interesting, too, but not in a way any kit enjoyed.

She’d thought that, since Sassin held Grumm’s surname, it would be released when the Liskash noble perished. That would make Grumm his old self again…wouldn’t it?

Evidently not. The escaped slave had let out a fierce, triumphant yowl when Sassin died, almost as if he’d killed the Scaly One himself. But then he shrank in on himself again. He wasn’t quite so distressed as he had been before, but he wasn’t anything like a normal male Mrem, either.

She almost asked him why he wasn’t. Unlike a poked bug, he could answer. But, no matter how curious she was, she didn’t want to be cruel. She might not worry about a bug’s suffering, or a Liskash’s, but she did when it came to one of her own kind.

And so, instead, she told Demm Etter what she thought. The senior priestess inclined her head. “The name may not lie under Sassin’s tongue any more, but it is not in Grumm’s heart, either, where it belongs.”

“Where is it? Can we get it back?” Enni Chennitats asked.

“I cannot say,” Demm Etter answered. “Now and then, time shows us what we did not know before. It may here. Or”—she lowered her voice so Grumm couldn’t hear—“it may not. I think he has gained something by Sassin’s death. Now his surname is free to wander, free to find him again if it will, not trapped the way it was before. And I know—I am as certain as I have ever been about anything—how much the Clan of the Claw has gained from Sassin’s fall.”

“Aedonniss, yes!” Enni Chennitats exclaimed. “Did you see the Liskash run away after he died? What could be finer than that?”

“Their not attacking us to begin with,” Demm Etter said, which, once Enni Chennitats thought about it, was plainly true. Sighing, the senior priestess went on, “Too much to hope for, I suppose.”

“How many Liskash nobles’ lands will we have to pass through before we find our own kind again?” Enni Chennitats asked, disquieted.

“I don’t know. I don’t believe anyone knows, unless the Scaly Ones should,” Demm Etter said. “I do know this, though: if we win through,
when
we win through, Mremkind will sing our names and our deeds forevermore.”

Enni Chennitats wished she hadn’t put that
if
in there, even if she’d amended it right away. The consequences of failure…Well, were they any worse than the consequences of staying on the old grazing grounds? Rantan Taggah didn’t think so, and Enni Chennitats wasn’t inclined to doubt the talonmaster. On the contrary.

“Well, well,” Demm Etter said quietly. Enni Chennitats followed her gaze. Here came Zhanns Bostofa. He was limping. He had a bandage on his right leg and another on his left arm. But he carried himself with pride of a sort different from his usual arrogance.

He bowed, first to Demm Etter and then to Enni Chennitats. “My males and I, we did what was required of us,” he announced, as if he were summarizing a battle for the talonmaster. Rantan Taggah wasn’t here, though. The mental link between him and Enni Chennitats had broken when the Dance ended. She hoped he hadn’t come to grief after his great triumph.

Demm Etter received the report as gravely as he might have. “You did well,” she told Zhanns Bostofa. “You did well—this time—and you were seen to do well. If you and yours had failed, Rantan Taggah’s success would mean far less.”

Zhanns Bostofa took her qualification with more humility than he was in the habit of showing. “I thank you,” he answered. “What is best for the clan is what I want. I have said this again and again.”

“So you have,” Demm Etter said: acknowledgment rather than agreement, if Enni Chennitats was any judge. The plump male’s problem was that his view of what was best for the Clan of the Claw often revolved around what was best for him. This time, those two things truly had matched. Staying alive and keeping a swarm of Liskash from overrunning the wagons was in Zhanns Bostofa’s best interest as well as the clan’s. Too bad only a desperate emergency created the match.

“And now we can go on,” Zhanns Bostofa said grandly. “Since that is the talonmaster’s decision, I will not stand in the way.”

Until the next time you do,
Enni Chennitats thought. The black-and-white male would soon forget his humility. He would go back to being himself. And he could no more help acting obstreperous than hamsticorns could help shedding their long pelts in the springtime.

One of these days, he would go too far. Or he might actually turn out to be right, in which case it would be hard to keep him from becoming the clan’s new talonmaster. And what would become of the Mrem then? Enni Chennitats didn’t want to think about that.

And she didn’t have to, because a sentry shouted that he saw Rantan Taggah and Ramm Passk’t coming back from the south. All the Mrem started yowling joyously at the top of their lungs. Enni Chennitats didn’t hold back. Killing a Liskash noble and getting away with it was worth celebrating any day of the month.

* * *

Rantan Taggah had never dreamt he might get tired of males making much of him. He’d really never dreamt he might get tired of females making much of him. Ramm Passk’t hadn’t got tired, except perhaps in the most literal and happy way. Rantan Taggah wouldn’t have been surprised if half of next year’s kits had sandy fur and uncommonly broad shoulders.

After Sassin’s death, the Liskash in what had been his domain stayed away from the Clan of the Claw. Maybe the unexpected triumph of the Mrem intimidated them, at least for the time being. Maybe they realized the clan would soon be gone, and then they wouldn’t have to worry about their hated enemies for a long time. And maybe they were so busy plotting among themselves about what would become of Sassin’s lands that a detail like the Mrem hardly seemed important. Chances were every one of those things held some truth.

Which held the most, Rantan Taggah neither knew nor cared. He rode at the head of the Clan of the Claw, in a chariot Zhanns Bostofa gave him to replace the one he’d lost in battle. He felt uneasy accepting the other male’s gift, which was putting it mildly, but saw no graceful way to refuse. Zhanns Bostofa tried to give him a team of krelprep, too. Those he did decline. He used krelprep from his own herds, and would train them up to the standard of the the pair that had died on the battlefield.

He checked the territory ahead with the same care he would have used to check under flat rocks for scorpions and centipedes before laying his blanket on the ground. The Scaly Ones had a sting worse than any from some crawling thing with too many legs.

The clan was nearing what Rantan Taggah thought to be the western edge of what had been Sassin’s land when Enni Chennitats walked up to him as the Mrem were setting up camp for the night. “Will all the other Liskash nobles fight us the way Sassin did?” she asked.

“By Aedonniss, I hope not!” Rantan Taggah burst out. “I hope they’ll leave us alone. If I’m by myself, without a bow or a sling, I’ll leave a somo alone unless it decides not to leave me alone. I hope the way we served Sassin will make the rest of the Scaly Ones think three times.”

“What if it doesn’t?” Enni Chennitats persisted.

“Then we keep fighting them and keep beating them till they get the idea,” the talonmaster said. “Or they beat us. In that case, you can stand beside Zhanns Bostofa and say, ‘I told you so.’ ”

“I don’t want to stand beside him. Just being near him makes my fur want to twitch,” Enni Chennitats said. She set a hand on his arm. “I’d rather stand beside you.”

Far and away the biggest reason Rantan Taggah hadn’t cut a swath like Ramm Passk’t’s through the clan’s females was that he’d hoped to hear something like that from her—or to work up the nerve to say something like that to her. He hadn’t. Sometimes—often—it was easier to risk his life than rejection from someone he cared about.

“Well,” he said, and then “Well” again. He tried once more: “Where do we go from here?” That was better, but not, he feared, very much.

“West, of course,” Enni Chennitats answered, which startled a laugh out of him. It wasn’t that she was wrong—she was right. “But wherever we go from now on, we go together.”

“Yes,” Rantan Taggah said, and he’d never felt so clever in all his life.

A Little Power

S.M. STIRLING

And so Rantan Taggah spoke and the way was open. But he walked in blood and wept. “Why,” he demanded, “have you abandoned us in this forsaken land?” But there was no answer and the call to arms came again. There was no rest for three days and three nights.

Then when the demons had been cast asunder, the Dancer Enni Chennitats told Rantan Taggah to sleep and he did. In his dream Assirra appeared. She stood tall with golden fur and eyes that glowed with the green of Spring. Around her the earth sang and stirred, bringing forth an unending vista of great fields of grass and grain in which countless herds grazed.

“Lead our people home,” She commanded. “Go West and take them to the promised lands. Lead them and they will be free.”

And Rantan Taggah knew that there was not greater need than to be free. So he sharpened his claws and regained his faith. On the next day he told the clan of his vision and Enni Chennitats Danced it until all understood and agreed.

And so the people began to be free.

—
The Book of Mrem
, verse forty-two

PROLOGUE

T
he plains baked under the sun, and the long yellow grass hissed like the ghosts of angry warriors as the herds grazed under watchful eyes or paused beneath gnarled, thorny trees. The hills stood blue with forest in the distance, and tendrils of their green followed the watercourses; in season the wings of the birds filled the sky. From time-weathered citadels of stone the magician lords of the Liskash folk waged their wars with swords and spells and poison and knives in the dark, rising and falling in a cycle that changed little but the names.

So it was; so it had always been.

But the wild Mrem were coming, and nothing would be the same. Nothing, ever again.

* * *

The great hall of the goddess Ashala had walls of sandstone colored like pale gold, with specks of mica that glittered in the hot sunlight of these lands; it rose to the height of three tall Liskash standing on one another’s shoulders. The timbers that bore the roof were of a hard dark wood that had been hauled laboriously from the far mountains and each one was richly carved in images that told of her power and the legends of her ancestors. The air smelled of fear and ancient death.

The wall behind the throne was stuccoed and inlaid with colored tiles in a design of the rayed sun in splendor, Ashala’s personal symbol. Before the tall-backed throne of wrought night-black wood and beaten gold the stones of the floor had been blackened by fire.

That was where the goddess staged her executions. She could burn anything to ash with her mind and frequently did so, especially those who had displeased her. Sometimes it was a limb or an eye, sometimes the whole of them, depending on the depth of her displeasure.