Exiled: Clan of the Claw, Book One (7 page)

“The Mrem are coming,” he said. “Those stinking, hairy beasts think they can go where they will and do as they please. Are they right? Shall we let them?”

“No, Lord Sassin!” the Liskash answered in what might as well have been a single voice. However much they feared him, they hated the Mrem more. Any Liskash noble could always rely on that.

Sassin knew the upstart mammals loathed his kind every bit as much. He knew, but he didn’t care. All you could do with creatures like that was enslave or kill them.

“Will they drive off our herds?” he asked. “Will they trample our egg-laying grounds with their stinking, sweating feet?” Dry-skinned himself, he could imagine little more disgusting than perspiration…and his imagination traveled widely in the realm of disgust.

His fellow Liskash felt as he did. “No, Lord Sassin!” they shouted once more. The fighters who carried javelins brandished them. They were ready to war against the Mrem, sure enough. He could see it. He could hear it. He could smell it with his tongue. And he could feel it in his mind.

“Forward!” he told them.

“Forward!” they echoed, brandishing their weapons once more. He basked in their approval, the way an axehead might spread its broad, bare wings and bask in the early-morning sun.

And forward they went. The Liskash had better discipline than the Mrem. With their mental powers, captains and commanders were better equipped to enforce it than the hairy creatures’ talonmasters. Logic, then, said the Liskash should usually have got the better of the fighting. So it seemed to Sassin; so, indeed, it seemed to every Liskash noble whose views he knew.

Somehow, logic and the Mrem had but a glancing acquaintance with each other. It wasn’t as if the Liskash
couldn’t
prevail against the two-legged vermin. They did win their share of victories. But their share always seemed smaller than it should have been, and no noble had ever figured out why.

Lose confidence and you weaken your magic,
Sassin reminded himself again. This would be the worst time to do that. He cast his thoughts ahead, toward the enemy. Now they would all be in one place, all bunched together. Now he and his fighters could rid the world—or, at any rate, the world south of the New Water, which was world enough—of them once and for all.

And then there would be peace: peace in which the Liskash nobles could lay and hatch their plots against one another, as they were meant to do.

Sassin could hardly wait.

* * *

Now that the Clan of the Claw had entered lands the Liskash called their own, Enni Chennitats and her fellow priestesses Danced every morning at sunrise, before the Mrem began to travel. They Danced to thank Aedonniss for bringing the light for yet another day, to thank Assirra for letting mercy come into the world, and, more practically, to spy out traps and dangers that might lie ahead.

It was a tricky business. Just as the Liskash’s cheating hides helped conceal them out on the plain, so their cheating hearts often masked their sorcery. Knowing what was nothing and what was a deceptive
nothing
often took both native skill and long practice.

Often, but not always. On the third morning of the Dance, the priestesses had hardly begun to move before they swung in unison toward the southwest. Demm Etter spoke the name they all sensed: “The Scaly Ones!”

“They are on the move,” another priestess agreed.

“Straight towards us,” yet another said. No one tried to contradict her.

“I had better take the news to Rantan Taggah,” Enni Chennitats said.

“Yes, why don’t you do that?” Demm Etter sounded—amused? Enni Chennitats thought so. Her ears tingled and twitched. Was it so obvious she liked the talonmaster? To ask the question was the same as to answer it: evidently it was.

Rantan Taggah was talking with Grumm when Enni Chennitats found him. That made sense: the escaped slave was likely to know this territory better than any free Mrem did. But how far could the Clan of the Claw count on what he said he knew? The Dancers couldn’t sorcerously test every word that came out of his mouth. If Sassin had set more snares inside him than just the one, he might do a lot of harm.

Without preamble, Enni Chennitats pointed in the direction to which she and the other Dancers had been drawn. “The Liskash are coming. I don’t think they’re very far away,” she said.

When Grumm saw where she was pointing, he shuddered as if in the grip of some strong fever. “Sassin’s castle lies over there,” he said in his ruined voice.

“Sassin lies whether he’s in his castle or outside of it,” Rantan Taggah said, and laughed more than the joke deserved. Of their own accord, the claws on his hands came out. A moment later, they slid back into their sheaths once more. He went on, “But if he’s coming out, he’ll be easier to kill. Easier to get at a turtle after it takes off its shell.”

“Turtles don’t take them off,” Enni Chennitats said.

“Well, if they did,” Rantan Taggah said indulgently.

“What are you going to do about it?” Enni Chennitats demanded when he didn’t seem inclined to say anything more.

“Fight them—what else?” the talonmaster answered. “They aren’t on their way over to play catch-the-string with us. Or if they are, I’ll be surprised.”

“Are we ready?” Enni Chennitats asked.

“We’d better be. One way or the other, we’ll find out pretty soon, won’t we?” Rantan Taggah sounded infuriatingly cheerful. Enni Chennitats realized he
wanted
a fight with the Liskash. If anything would get the whole clan behind him, a battle against the ancient enemy ought to do it. After a moment, he added, “Are the priestesses ready to Dance away whatever magic Sassin hurls at us?”

“I hope so.” Enni Chennitats spread her hands, palms up. “You never know beforehand. What we can do, we will.”

“Well, you’d better go back and do it, then.” Rantan Taggah pointed in the same direction. The sky was lighter and brighter than it had been even a little while before. Enni Chennitats could see the smudge of dust low on the horizon there. “You’re right—we don’t have long to wait.”

She dipped her head and hurried away. She hadn’t gone far before bugles blared behind her. Warriors yowled and grabbed for their weapons and armor. Not all the krelprep were harnessed to the clan’s chariots. Males rushed to tend to that. Females not burdened with kits went off to tend to the herds. It wasn’t their proper trade, but they could do it for a little while. The more males they freed for fighting, the better.

“Another battle,” Demm Etter said when Enni Chennitats came back to the rest of the priestesses. It wasn’t another question.

“Another battle,” Enni Chennitats agreed. “The talonmaster wants us to stifle the Liskash sorcery—but you’ll already know that.”

“I’ve had news that surprised me less,” the senior priestess replied, which left Enni Chennitats nothing to say. Demm Etter gestured to her. “Go on—take your place in the Dance. If you think we face less danger than the males, you’re liable to be badly mistaken.”

“I serve the clan,” Enni Chennitats said. Whatever happened to her would happen to the other priestesses as well. Remembering that made the fight ahead seem a little less lonely. She wondered whether warriors felt the same way. They fought side by side, but one could be horribly maimed while the male next to him stayed safe.

Then Demm Etter raised her hand. They began to Dance, and Enni Chennitats’s worries fell away in the task at hand.

* * *

“Something tricky,” Grumm said. “Sassin will try something tricky. He won’t come straight at us. He
can’t
come straight at us. It’s not in him. He has to twist things, the way a snake has to coil to move.”

“Yes, yes.” Rantan Taggah heard the escaped slave with only half an ear. He was concentrating on his own dispositions, not Sassin’s. He dipped his head, satisfied he had things the way he wanted. Most important, he’d posted Zhanns Bostofa and the plump male’s retainers as far out of the way as he could. He didn’t want them holding any vital position against the Liskash.

He might have been doing Zhanns Bostofa an injustice. He knew that. But he couldn’t get Enni Chennitats’s image out of his mind. If there was a dark god, a god responsible for the Liskash, and if that god tried to reach out and get his foul fingers on a Mrem…Yes, the result would be much too much like Zhanns Bostofa, wouldn’t it?

If Zhanns Bostofa was looking at this same question, wouldn’t he think the imaginary dark god’s meddling would produce a Mrem too much like Rantan Taggah? The talonmaster bared his fangs. If Zhanns Bostofa thought anything like that, he proved himself no proper Mrem.

Didn’t he?

“What is it?” Grumm asked.

Rantan Taggah made his lips come down over his teeth once more. “Nothing,” he said, lying without hesitation. He set a hand on Grumm’s shoulder. “Aedonniss give you strength, friend. Your hour of revenge is here.”

“Revenge.” The other male tasted the word. “Well, Talonmaster, it would be better than nothing, but not enough. Nothing is enough. Nothing will give me back my other name.”

“I’m sorry,” Rantan Taggah said, which was true, and which did neither him nor Grumm the least bit of good. Weighted down with weapons, the scales of his bronze armor clattering on their leather backing, he hurried to his chariot.

His driver bounded with excitement. “We’ll kill them all!” Munkus Drap exclaimed. “We’ll kill them, and we’ll tan their hides, and we’ll dig up their eggs and have ourselves the biggest fry the world has ever seen!” Not a whisker’s width of doubt clouded his eager mind.

“That would be good,” Rantan Taggah said. And so it would, if it happened. But how long had Mrem and Liskash hated one another? Forever, or maybe a couple of days longer. Had either ever managed to destroy the other despite that perfect hatred? Rantan Taggah knew too well what the answer was.

Let me win, Aedonniss. Let me drive them back,
he thought.
Let them not hurt my clan too badly. We have far to go, and many more fights to make. We can’t be crippled right at the start.…Please.
The sky god might hearken to him. Then again, Aedonniss might not. The god had his own purposes, and put them ahead of his creatures’.

Looking across the arid plain, Rantan Taggah watched the Liskash deploying from marching column to line of battle. The Scaly Ones all looked alike to him. That was almost as alien as their odor. People—people who really were people—had their differences. The only difference he’d ever been able to find among the Liskash was that some of them were stronger than others, and so caused more trouble.

If Sassin was like the other scaly nobles Rantan Taggah had had the displeasure of meeting, there would be no talonmasters’ duel, as there might well have been when two bands of Mrem collided. The Liskash were too cowardly to lead from the front.

He knew how the fight would go if it went the way Sassin wanted it. The Liskash would get within missile range and then pelt the Mrem with arrows and javelins and slingstones. Once they’d thrown their foes into disorder, they would swarm forward and dispose of the warriors their darts hadn’t disabled.

It could work. Plenty of Mrem forces had gone down to defeat at the Scaly Ones’ hands. But Rantan Taggah didn’t plan to play the game Sassin’s way. He’d told Enni Chennitats the Liskash hadn’t come up to play chase-the-string. He aimed to make them play regardless of whether that was what they had in mind.

“Let’s go,” he told his driver. He waved to the cars behind them. Other leaders would be signaling their groups at the same time. The chariot bounced forward, slowly at first but then faster as the krelprep leaned into their work. Rantan Taggah’s body automatically adjusted to every bump and jolt. Was this like travel on the sea? He didn’t know. Truth to tell, he didn’t really want to find out.

The Liskash went on forming their line. They didn’t advance any father, though, not with several squadrons of chariotry bearing down on them. Mrem seized the initiative whether they should have or not. The Liskash were more inclined to yield it and see what happened after that.

They were closer now, much closer. Their archers and slingers went to work to keep the chariots away from their line. They might do a little harm that way, but they wouldn’t do much. Rantan Taggah didn’t intend to slam into them head-on, anyhow. Just because they made war that way didn’t mean he had to.

He tapped Munkus Drap’s right shoulder, hard enough for the other male to feel it through his armor. The driver steered the chariot off to the right, around the Scaly Ones’ left flank. As often as not, a talonmaster worried only about what was in front of him. What would Sassin do with Mrem chariots rampaging in his rear?

What he would do was make it hard for them to get there. Not all of his fighters were on the front line. He had a good force of flank guards. A slung stone hissed malevolently past Rantan Taggah’s right ear. Another one hit a krelprep pulling a different chariot in the head. The beast crumpled, dead, perhaps, before it hit the ground. The chariot slewed sideways and almost turned turtle.

“Nothing’s going to be as easy as we wish it would be, is it?” Munkus Drap asked.

“When is it ever? Wishes are only dreams—they don’t stand up to the light of day,” Rantan Taggah said. He wished Sassin didn’t have the makings of a talonmaster who knew what he was doing. He’d known the Liskash noble was a strong sorcerer. But the two didn’t always go together. Not always, no, but they did here.

Sometimes Mrem, once they got into a position they fancied, would leap down from their cars and fight the Liskash at close quarters. Sword to sword, claw to claw, fang to fang, Rantan Taggah’s folk had the edge on the Scaly Ones. If they could manage that favorable position…

Rantan Taggah wished he hadn’t thought of Sassin’s wizardry a few moments earlier: one more wish that went a-glimmering. A blast of fear made him shake inside his shirt of bronze and leather. He almost pissed himself on the wickerwork floor, which would have been the ultimate indignity for a fastidious Mrem.

The pair of krelprep pulling his chariot felt it, too. They bugled out their alarm call. The one on the right tried to rear despite its harnessing. “No, curse you, you stupid thing!” Munkus Drap shouted. His voice shook, too. All the same, he kept the presence of mind to crack his whip above the krelprep’s back. That, the beast knew, was something to be afraid of in truth. The imaginary panic that filled its mind paled beside the genuine article.