Tonio was already climbing the ladder, testing each rung. «I’ll have to replace a few, but they’ll be all right for the time being. Come on up, Raoul. Tie the llama to that post.» His face looked down through a mass of foliage. Raoul ran nimbly up.
«Come on, mother!»
So she climbed, in fear of each rotting step, and stood in the cabin which was to be her home. The roof had fallen in and the floor was slippery with stinking, decayed fruit. It couldn’t have been more than four meters across, and much of that space was taken up with the controls for the lamp: wooden levers and a ladder leading upwards. She knew nothing of signalling. The cabin was incomprehensible, dank and frightening.
«Not bad,” said Tonio, kicking away filth and unrolling his blanket on the floor.
They ate a supper of dried fruit and it seemed to Astrud that the shadows were full of moving things. Afterwards, it took a long time for her to get to sleep although the other two were snoring lightly within a short while of lying down. She lay awake listening to the menacing sounds of the jungle night and watching the sleepy movements of a colony of spider monkeys silhouetted against the stars. When eventually she slept, she was soon awakened by a commotion on the forest floor.
Tonio, opening an eye, said, «Only a jaguar hunting. We’re safe up here.»
It didn’t reassure her at all. She dreamed of jungle cats, and in her sleeping mind they gained a new dimension of menace.
And Tonio ran with them, waving a brand from which flared the Wrath of Agni.
The battle for Rangua
Iolande’s grupo scored the first successes.
The True Humans’ makeshift militia had been strengthened by farmers and others from the foothills and delta regions, and by the time the first attacks came most of the perimeter was covered by lookout emplacements at strategic locations, backed by large reserves within the town itself.
Iolande’s grupo overran one of these emplacements. They’d approached upwind, smelled True Humans from some distance away then, with the utmost caution, crept nearer until they could hear snatches of conversation. The enemy were located in a small thicket, lying down, scanning the foothills. The sun, breaking out for a moment, glinted on something which Iolande guessed to be a hemitrex for use in signalling back. She motioned her grupo to lie still. The others were further away to her left, grupos creeping down the run-off gullies like clawed fingers reaching for the town.
Iolande glanced upwards. Although hidden from the True Humans, they were in full view of the signal tower. She could see the tiny head of a signalman, and wondered whose side he would be on. Then, parting the grasses before her, she surveyed the thicket again.
There were four of them in there; three men and a woman. They were farmers; their scent told her that. They would be accustomed to defending their crops and livestock against marauding animals. They would have weapons, and they would know how to use them. Iolande had her ironwood sword, but this weapon was more traditional than practical. When it came to fighting, she would use fingers and toes. She felt an enormous excitement, and a great pride in her grupo — the best she’d ever mothered. She glanced around at them as they crouched behind her, eyes slitted, nostrils flared, urinating quietly as they wound themselves up for the charge. Iolande chuckled, a small purr of delight. She’d taught them well. Away to the left, she heard a brief scuffle. Another grupo had attacked.
«Now,” she said.
Screeching, she bounded forward like a charging tiger, hitting the first man squarely in the chest as he rose from the ground. He went over backwards and she went with him, her fingers hooked into his shoulders, her knees bent and her toes slashing at his belly. She felt warmth as her toenails bit into flesh and the man groaned, falling back, his body slack, staring incredulously at his own intestines spilled out over the wet ground. His eyes met hers, and there was a cowlike bewilderment in them. He said quietly, «Why …?» and then he died with a small sigh.
Iolande turned in time to knock aside a quick thrust from a short dagger and, as the other woman fell forward, she slashed at her throat and saw blood spurt. «Mordecai!» she swore. «Can’t you protect my back?» One of her grupo grinned sheepishly; she’d missed her spring and the True Human woman had slipped away from her.
The other two men were already dead; one had his neck broken and the other lay face‑down in a lake of blood.
«We did it!» said Iolande. Her eyes were shining, her face pale with excitement. «This time it was for real, and we did it!»
«But.…» The felina who’d mistimed her leap looked unhappy. «Didn’t El Tigre say we shouldn’t kill unless we had to?»
«Piss on El Tigre! This is what we were created for, don’t you see? Generations of play-fighting, and now this. Next, we go into town and take them apart!»
«Iolande!» It was a gasp of horror. Iolande, without thinking, had slaked her thirst with a cupped handful of blood.
She looked at her hands in mild surprise, then said, «True Humans created us, and now they have to take the consequences. If you don’t like it, Lastima, you’re not the felina I took you for.»
“ But this.…» Lastima indicated the carnage.
«Ha!» Iolande picked up the dagger the True Humans woman had used. She turned it over in her band. It was not obsidian, as she’d first supposed. «Look at this,” she said quietly. «See? This blade has been wrought by the Wrath of Agni. Well, now. Isn’t that something? And see — the spear, this tip? And another knife here.… Lastima! You have no stomach for this fight — so here’s what you can do. Take these weapons to El Tigre, say where we found them — and then listen to his views on killing. If I know El Tigre as well as I think I do, he’s going to change his mind pretty damned quickly!»
So Lastima left. The remainder of the women advanced to the sailway track and began to move north to link up with the other grupos.
The felinas made swift gains elsewhere, too. Tamaril, another of El Tigre’s erstwhile mates, had a larger army than Iolande. Although her discipline was not so effective and she lost contact with seven grupos early on, she pressed home her raid into the eastern outskirts of Rangua, cleaning out a number of houses and advancing until stopped by solid barricades and massed defenders. A hundred felinas paused, spitting fury, as they faced over two hundred True Humans on the other side of piled furniture and vehicles, in a narrow street. Knives, swords and spears glittered in the hands of the defenders.
«Charge!» yelled a felina who had no right to give orders, and she paid the penalty as she ran forward alone. She reached the top of the barricade in one leap, then died as a spear was thrust into her belly from below.
«Wait!» shouted Tamaril. With some difficulty she achieved a withdrawal and regrouped her forces behind a projecting wall. «This isn’t our kind of fight,” she said. «Right now, the True Humans have all the advantages. But if we hold on here, and wait until dark.…»
The felinas grinned as they visualized the night fighting.
«True Humans don’t see well in the dark,” somebody said, shivering with anticipation.
A single voice was raised in opposition, like Lastima who was at that moment making her way sadly back towards the main force under El Tigre. The felina said, «I.… I think I killed a woman in one of those houses back there. I kind of lost control. El Tigre wouldn’t like it, if he found out. The Examples.…»
«Shut up,” said Tamaril.
«But if we attack in the dark.… There’s no knowing what.…»
Tamaril said, «Most of us have killed back there, you fool. That’s what war is all about. My main concern is, what’s happened to the rest of our grupos? I lost contact when we reached the first houses.» She glanced around the wall. The defenders stood grimly behind their barricades, waiting for the felinas to come to them. Behind them, stilted above the low buildings, was the signalbox. «El Tigre should have made plans for that box,” she said.