“
F
air. A huge metal thing came and went and
came again. I found four warriors, in strange costume and barbaric speech like yours, with strange weapons. They are making a camp there, and spoke with surprise of seeing animals to hunt." She spoke slowly, pausing often. He asked her to describe the males. She had no trouble with that, having lain in her natural camouflage in the jungle's verge within thirty paces of the ship until dark. Must've taken her hours to get here in the dark over rough country, he thought. This is one tough bimbo.
He waited, his hackles rising, until she finished.
“
Y
ou're sure the leader had that band across his face?" She was. She'd heard him addressed as
“
G
r
r
af
Commander." One with a light-banded belly was called
“
A
pprentice Something." And the other two tallied, as well. I can't believe it," he said to the darkness.
“
T
he same foursome that left me here! If they're all down here, they're deadly serious. Damn their good luck.
“
“
B
etter than you think," said Puss.
“
Y
ou told me they had magic weapons. Now I believe it.
”
Kit, leaning near, whispered into Locklear's ear.
“
I
f she were injured, she would refuse to show her weakness to us.
”
He tried again.
“
P
uss, how do you know of their weapons?
”
With dry amusement and courage, the disembodied voice said,
“
T
he usual way: the huge sentry used one. Tiny sunbeams that struck as I reached thick cover. They truly can see in full darkness."
“
S
o they've seen you," he said, dismayed
.
“
F
rom their shouts, I think they were not sure what they saw. But I will kill them for this, sentry or no sentry
.
Her voice was more distant now. Locklear raised his voice slightly:
“
P
uss, can we help you?"
“
I
have been burned before," was the reply
.
Kit, moving into the darkness quietly:
“
Y
ou are certain there are only four?
”
“
P
ositive," was the faint reply, and then they heard only the night wind. Presently Kit said,
“
I
t would take both of us, and when wounded she will certainly fight to the death. But we might overpower her now, if we can find the bower.
”
“
N
o. She did more than she promised. And now she knows she can kill me by smashing the transmitter. Let's get some sleep, Kit," he said. Then, when he had nestled behind her, he added with a chuckle,
“
I
begin to see why the kzinti decided to breed females as mere pets. Sheer self-defense."
“
I
would break your tail for that, if you had one," she
replied
in mock ferocity. Then he laid his hand on her flank, heard her soft miaow, and then they slept.
Locklear had patrolled nearly as far as he dared down the ravine at midmorning, armed with his
w
'tsai
, longbow, and an arrow-filled quiver rubbing against the zzrou when he heard the first scream. He knew that Kit, with her short lance, had gone in the opposite direction on her patrol, but the repeated kzin screams sent gooseflesh up his spine. Perhaps the tabbies had surrounded Boots, or Puss. He notched an arrow, half climbing to the lip of the ravine, and peered over low brush. He stifled the exclamation in his throat
.
They'd found Puss, all right
–
or she'd found them. She stood on all-fours on a level spot below, her tail erect, its tip curled over, watching two hated familiar figures in a tableau that must have been as old as kzin history. Almost naked for this primitive duel,
ebony talons out and their musky scent heavy on the breeze, they bulked stupefyingly huge and ferocious. The massive gunner, Goon, and engineer Yellowbelly circled each other with drawn
stilettos
. What boggled Locklear was that their modern weapons lay ignored in neat groups. Were they going through some ritual?
They were like hell, he decided. From time to time, Puss would utter a single word, accompanied by a tremor and a tail-twitch; and each time, Yellowbelly and Goon would stiffen, then scream at each other in frustration
.
The word she repeated was ch'rowl. No telling how long they'd been there, but Goon's right forearm dripped blood, and Yellowbelly's thigh was a sodden red mess. Swaying drunkenly, Puss edged nearer to the weapons. As Yellowbelly screamed and leaped, Goon screamed and parried, bearing his smaller opponent to the turf, What followed then was fast enough to be virtually a blur in a roil of Kzersatz dust as two huge tigerlike bodies thrashed and rolled, knives flashing, talons ripping, fangs sinking into flesh
.
Locklear scrambled downward through the grass, his progress unheard in the earsplitting caterwauls nearby. He saw Puss reach a beam rifle, grasp it, swing it experimentally by the barrel. That's when he forgot all caution and shouted,
“
N
o, Puss! Put the stock to your shoulder and pull the trigger!
”
He might as well have told her to bazzfazz the shimstock; and in any case, poor valiant Puss collapsed while trying to figure the rifle out. He saw the long ugly trough in her side then, caked with dried blood. A wonder she was conscious, with such a wound. Then he saw something more fearful still, the quieter thrashing as Goon found the throat of Yellowbelly, whose stiletto handle protruded from Goon's upper arm.
Ducking below the brush, Locklear moved to one side, nearer to Puss, whose breathing was as labored as that of the males. Or rather, of one male, as Goon stood erect and uttered a victory roar that must have carried to Newduvai. Yellowbelly's torn throat pumped the last of his blood onto alien dust
.
“
I
claim my right," Goon screamed, and added a Word that Locklear was beginning to loathe. Only then did the huge gunner notice that Puss was in no condition to present him with what he had just killed to get. He nudged her roughly, and did not see Locklear approach with one arrow notched and another held between his teeth
.
But his ear umbrellas pivoted as a twig snapped under Locklear's foot, and Goon spun furiously, the big legs flexed, and for one instant man and kzin stood twenty paces apart, unmoving. Goon leaped for the nearest weapon, the beam rifle Puss had dropped, and saw Locklear release the short arrow. It missed by a full
arm span
and now, his bloodlust rekindled and with no fear of such a marksman, Goon dropped the rifle and pulled Yellowbelly's stiletto from his own arm. He turned toward Locklear, who was unaccountably running toward him instead of fleeing as a monkey should flee a leopard, and threw his head back in a battle scream
.
Locklear's second arrow, fired from a distance of five paces, pierced the roof of Goon's mouth, its stainless steel barb severing nerve bundles at the brain stem. Goon fell like a jointed tree, knees buckling first, arms banging, and the ground's impact drove the arrow tip out the back of his head, slippery with gore. Goon's head lay two paces from Locklear's feet. He neither breathed nor twitched.
Locklear hurried to the sid
e of poor, courageous,
ill-starred Puss and saw her gazing calmly at him
.
“
O
ne for you, one for me, Puss. Only two more to
go.
I wish-I could live to celebrate that," she said, more softly than he had ever heard her speak.
“
Y
ou're too tough to let a little burn," he began
.
“
T
hey shot tiny things, too," she said, a finger migrating to a bluish perforation at the side of her ribcage.
“
C
oughing blood. Hard to breathe," she managed
.
He knew then that she was dying. A spray of slugs, roughly aimed at night from a perimeter-control smoothbore, bad done to Puss what a beam rifle could not. Her lungs filling slowly with blood, she had still managed to report her patrol and then return to guard the birthing bower. He asked through the lump in his throat,
“
I
s Boots all right?
”
“
T
hey followed my spoor. When
I
–
came out, twitching my best prret routine-they did not look into the bower."
“
S
mart, Puss.
”
She grasped his wrist, hard.
“
S
wear to protect it with your life." Now she was coughing blood, fighting to breathe.
“
D
one," he said.
“
W
here is it, Puss?
”
But her eyes were already glazing. Locklear stood up slowly and strode to the beam rifle, hefting it, thinking idly that these weapons were too heavy for him to carry in one trip. And then he saw Puss again, and quit thinking, and lifted the rifle over his head with both hands in a manscream of fury, and of vengeance unappeased.
The battle scene was in sight of the lake, fully in the open within fifty paces of the creek, and he
found it impossible to lift Puss. Locklear cut bundles of grass and spread them to hide the bodies, trembling in delayed reaction, and carried three armloads of weapons to a hiding place far up the ravine just under its lip. He left the dead kzinti without stripping them; perhaps a mistake, but he had no time now to puzzle out tightband comm sets or medkits. Later, if there was a later
...
He cursed his watery joints, knowing he could not carry a kzin beam rifle with its heavy accumulator up to the manor. He moved more cautiously now, remembering those kzin screams, wondering how far they'd carried on the breeze which was toward the lake. He read the safety legends on Goon's sidearm, found he could handle the massive piece with both hands, and stuck it and its twin from Yellowbelly's arsenal into his belt, leaving his bow and quiver with the other weapons.
He had stumbled within sight of the manor, planning how he could unmast the airboat and adjust its buoyancy so that it could be towed by a man afoot to retrieve those weapons, when a crackling hum sent a blast of hot air across his cheeks. Face down, crawling for the lip of the ravine, he heard a shout from near the manor
.
“
G
rraf-Commander, the monkey approaches!" The reply, deep-voiced and muffled, seemed to come
from inside the manor. So they'd known where the manor was. Heat or motion sensors, perhaps, during a pass in the lifeboat-not that it mattered now. A classic pincers from down and up the ravine, but one of those pincers now lay under shields of grass. They could not know that he was still tethered invisibly to that
zzrow
transmitter. But where was Kit?
Another hail from Brickshitter, whose tremors of impatience with a beam rifle had become Locklear's
ally:
“
T
he others do not answer my calls, but I shall drive the
m
onkey down to them." Well, maybe he'd intended merely to wing his quarry, or follow him.
You do that, Locklear thought to himself in cold rage as he scurried back in the ravine toward his weapons cache; you just do that, Brickshitter. He had covered two hundred meters when another crackle announced the pencil-thin beam, brighter than the sun, that struck a ridge of stone above him
.
White-hot bees stung his face, back and arms; tiny smoke trails followed fragments of superheated stone into the ravine as Locklear tumbled to the creek, splashing out again, stumbling on slick stones. He turned, intending to fire a sidearm, but saw no target and realized that firing from him would tell volumes to that big
Sonofabitch
kitty behind and above him. Well, they wouldn't have returned unless they wanted him alive, so Brickshitter was just playing with him, driving him as a man drives cattle with a prod. Beam weapons were limited in rate of fire and accumulator charge; maybe Brickshitter would empty this one with his trembling
.
Then, horrifyingly near, above the ravine lip, the familiar voice: I offer you honor, monkey.
”
What
the
hell: the navigator knew where his quarry was anyhow. Mopping a runnel of blood from his face, Locklear called upward as he continued his scramble.
“
W
hat, a prisoner exchange?" He did not want to be more explicit than that
.
“
W
e already have the beauteous
kzinrett
," was the reply that chilled Locklear to his marrows.
“
I
s that who you would have sacrificed for your worthless hide?
”