"Searcher?" Rka't-msotsi-a's voice called faintly in her ear. "I checked ahead, and I think I may have spotted them. There's something, anyway, in that cut you mentioned down by the creek."
"Good," Klnn-dawan-a said, passing over the fact that she'd given Rka't-msotsi-a explicit instructions to stay with her. "How many were there?"
"I'm sorry," Rka't-msotsi-a said, a tinge of bitterness and self-reproach in her voice. "I couldn't tell."
"That's all right," Klnn-dawan-a hastened to assure her. Rka't-msotsi-a had been raised to Eldership only a cyclic ago, the result of a drudokyi attack elsewhere on Gree, and she was still coming to grips with these new limitations that had been imposed on her. And of course she'd been only thirty-four cyclics old when it had happened, barely five cyclics older than Klnn-dawan-a. That had to make it even more difficult. "Let's go take a look."
They headed off, Klnn-dawan-a straining to keep both her lowlight and darklight pupils as wide-open as possible and to keep watch in all directions. Rka't-msotsi-a, she knew, had been mauled badly by the drudokyi before her injuries had raised her to Eldership, and Klnn-dawan-a had no desire to suffer through something like that herself. Perhaps the whole unpleasantness surrounding that event explained some of Director Prr-eddsi's timidness, too, especially regarding Gree's animal life. He'd been right there with Rka't-msotsi-a when it had happened....
Off to their right, something moved behind a rock formation. "Searcher!" Rka't-msotsi-a snapped. "There!"
"I've got it," Klnn-dawan-a said, her stinger tracking that direction. Something alive, all right, and certainly big enough to be a Chigin whelp. Trouble was, it could be any of a number of other things, too. Including a drudokyi. "Go get a closer look. See if you can tell what it is."
"I'll try," Rka't-msotsi-a said tightly. She flicked toward the rock, vanishing as she passed through it toward the creature behind. Klnn-dawan-a waited, holding her breath....
And then Rka't-msotsi-a was back. "It's a drudokyi," she hissed.
Klnn-dawan-a's tail twitched violently. "Are you sure?"
"I'm sure," Rka't-msotsi-a said, her voice trembling. "I'm sure. It's a big one, too."
"All right, don't panic," Klnn-dawan-a said, glancing quickly around her. "At this time of latearc there's a fair chance it's already fed. Let's just ease away and head for the creek."
There was no answer. "Rka't-msotsi-a?"
But the Elder was gone. "Terrific," Klnn-dawan-a muttered, looking around again as she began carefully backing away. She could dispose of the animal over there, certainly; on full power the laser beam from her stinger would vaporize a slender line through hide and muscle and bone, the explosive expansion of the resulting gas creating a hydrostatic shock wave that would instantly incapacitate and then kill the creature. The problem was that, despite Rka't-msotsi-a's identification, Klnn-dawan-a herself wasn't totally convinced the skulking creature was indeed a drudokyi. If not—if it was instead one of the missing whelps—then killing it without provocation could easily wipe out the vanishingly small amount of goodwill the Zhirrzh study group had so painstakingly built up with the Chigin community here. Best if possible just to get out of its way.
She took another step back; and as she did so, the mass behind the rock shifted position a little. Klnn-dawan-a raised the stinger warningly....
"Left!" Rka't-msotsi-a's voice shrieked in her ear.
Klnn-dawan-a spun around. From out of nowhere a second darklight-glowing image had appeared, bearing down on her with the speed and power of a double-wide railcar.
Her thumbs jerked spasmodically against the stinger's triggers, sending a brilliant slash of laser fire cutting through the air as she tried desperately to swing the weapon around to bear on this new threat. The light blazed into her dilated lowlight and darklight pupils, stabbing agony into her eyes and head and plunging everything else around it into terrifying darkness. Desperately, she swung the stinger back and forth, not sure she was even aiming in the right direction, hearing the roar of the drudokyi over the wind, feeling the click as the stinger shifted to autokill mode, smelling the drudokyi and the exotic Gree air and her own fear—
The drudokyi slammed into her, knocking the stinger from her grip and driving her backward to the ground. She gasped in pain, the predator's weight and heat settling on top of her, crushing her against the cold rocks. Dimly, she felt herself slashing again and again into the thick hide with the edges of her tongue....
And then, quite suddenly, the weight was gone. Klnn-dawan-a opened her eyes—she hadn't realized until then that she'd closed them—to find a group of Zhirrzh crouching over her. "Are you all right?" Bkar-otpo asked anxiously, dropping to the ground beside her and taking her arm. "You're—Director Prr-eddsi, she's covered in blood!"
"It's all right," Klnn-dawan-a gasped, patting his hand reassuringly as she struggled to get air back into her body. "I'm all right. It's the drudokyi's blood, not mine."
"Are you sure?" Prr-eddsi asked from her other side.
"I'm sure," Klnn-dawan-a said. "I think it must have been dead before it even reached me."
"That may well be," Prr-eddsi rumbled. "It's still only by immensely good luck that you're not an Elder by now.
"I know," Klnn-dawan-a said, a shiver running through her as she took stock of herself. Her face and torso were sticky with warm drudokyi blood, a stickiness that was rapidly turning to ice in the cutting wind. Her head still throbbed with the aftereffects of those blinding laser flashes, her whole body ached from that fall to the ground, and her tongue tingled with fatigue and the acrid tastes of the drudokyi's hide and blood and her own poison.
But she hadn't been raised to Eldership, and her body was still whole. She had indeed had immensely good luck.
"I'm glad you agree," Prr-eddsi growled. "I trust the lesson will find a permanent home with you. You should never, ever, go out into a dangerous situation alone. If Rka't-msotsi-a hadn't alerted us when she had, that other drudokyi would most likely have gotten to you before we did."
So that was where Rka't-msotsi-a had disappeared to just before the attack. "Believe me, I won't do it again," Klnn-dawan-a said. "I was just worried about the missing whelps."
"The whelps would have stood a considerably better chance against a pair of drudokyis than you did," Prr-eddsi countered, a shade less gruffly. "Anyway, they're fine. They're down by the creek. We've alerted the Ca Chagba family—some of them have gone down to herd them back."
"Good." Klnn-dawan-a pushed herself up and onto her left side. Her tail, freed from where it had been pinned beneath her leg, decided it was going to hurt, too. "Then I presume the sampling is still on for this latearc."
"You can't be serious," Bkar-otpo objected, clutching at her arm again. "After what you've just been through—?"
"Do be quiet, Bkar-otpo," Prr-eddsi said, running a critical eye over Klnn-dawan-a. "Are you really going to feel up to that, Searcher?"
"I'm fine," Klnn-dawan-a said, getting all the way to her feet and peering up at the sky. The wind was still pretty fierce, but the edge of the storm was markedly closer than the last time she'd looked. "Besides, we're at a critical point in the ring transmutation. We can't afford to miss even a single sampling right now."
"All right," Prr-eddsi said. "If you're sure you can handle it. But you take the time first to get cleaned up. And I mean really cleaned up. You walk into a whelp enclosure smelling of drudokyi, and you won't get a chance to put this latearc's lesson into practice. Bkar-otpo, escort her back to the encampment. And then start getting the sampling equipment together."