Kchula looked back to Zraa-Churrt. Let him argue that. “Will that suffice, honored brother?”
He expected agreement, but instead Zraa-Churrt turned to Kzin-Conserver. “Conserver, I request a ruling.”
Kchula whirled to face this new interruption as Kzin-Conserver replied. “On what point?”
“My brothers and I are here to defend the Patriarchy. In the circumstances we are also witnesses here to skalazaal. Does our obligation to protect Kzinhome require that we abandon our positions at the Patriarch's command, and so abandon our obligation to bear witness?”
“Hrrr.” Rrit-Conserver turned a paw over, considering carefully. “Yes, with exceptions.”
“And these exceptions are?”
“It is the role of the Patriarch to ensure that skalazaal is declared and open, and to ensure that the traditions are followed.” Kzin-Conserver spoke carefully. I am treading a narrow path of honor here. I must be impartial regardless of my personal preferences. “In this case it is the Patriarch himself who is challenged, and further he is challenged by his brother, whose claim supersedes his own despite the accession of the High Priests. The Patriarch cannot be considered to be able to give fair judgment in this case. Responsibility as witness then falls on the Great Pride Circle.”
On the other side of the table Mtell-Mtell twitched his whiskers from side to side. “Who we Pride-Patriarchs represent here.”
“Yes.” Conserver made the gesture-of-peer-acknowledgment. “The claims of fealty and responsibility are now of equal weight. Compromise is demanded.”
“Another judgment, Conserver?” asked Zraa-Churrt.
“Of course.”
“Is a defense mounted close in-system compromise enough?”
Kzin-Conserver turned a paw over. “It is.”
Kchula controlled the urge to scream and leap in frustration. “But…”
Kzin-Conserver held up a paw. “I have ruled, Kchula-Tzaatz.”
Kchula lapsed into silence, fuming. But I have lost little here, in failing to get the Great Pride fleets out of sight of the ground battle. Ftzaal would be unlikely to use a free hand even if I won it for him, nor will it change the outcome. It is the kz'eerkti who are the danger. He looked to the ceiling and contemplated the heavy chandeliers as though they held some clue as to how the battleground far above was developing. A close-in defense backed by the orbital fortresses made sense, but it ran the risk of allowing the enemy to launch their fighters and bombers into Kzinhome's atmosphere. Once they were in and low they would be almost impossible to intercept, and the Citadel of the Patriarch was a primary target, although he might survive the attack in the well protected Command Lair. His lips twitched away from his fangs. I should have scourged their world the moment I had the power to command it. Now he could only wait to see if the monkeys would raze Kzinhome first.
I have known the glory of the universe, and all its horrors.
The universe was black and empty and expanding and at the edge of it there was an awareness. Without body or senses Pouncer reached for it, stretching himself and found himself looking back at a body collapsed on the floor of the pitching tsvasztet, a kzintosh, powerfully muscled but limp and motionless. He is dying. Unimaginable grief swept over him, the pang of loss, and then the tuskvor balked and he turned back to the tiller bar, steering the beast with savage intent, flooded now with the desire to revenge a lost mate, and he realized that the body was his own and the awareness he had found was C'mell's, and she had thought that she'd lost him. He tried to speak to her and could not, but she felt him respond to his own awareness, first with surprise, then with relief and understanding, and he knew her in a way that he had not before, even in the close intimacy of mating, and he could have stayed there with her forever but he could not. The universe was expanding and there were other awarenesses, Battle Captain, Night-Prowler, the strangely different mind of Tskombe-kz'eerkti and the Trina manrette, the faint, unforthcoming glow of their tuskvor, other kzinti, other creatures, jamming into his mind in a growing torrent of hope and fear, desire and rage, hunger and thirst and satiation. He tried to shut them out but found he could not, the torrent expanded beyond his ability to control, and he felt his own awareness eroding, torn away in the onrushing flow like a sapling in a storm.
He had a purpose, to direct the battle. How to find a stranger you've never met in a crowd? This is the burden Patriarch's Telepath bore. Time seemed to have no meaning as he jumped from awareness to awareness. Familiar emotion keyed recognition, here a commander, here a Pride-Patriarch, here a telepath, and he had half the battle won. He gave images to the telepath, a map of the battle unfolding as he saw it and then he moved on, secure in the knowledge that the information would be given to the telepath's commander. A harder task now, finding the minds of his enemies, waiting farther out in ambush. He found them too, surrounded by the small, vicious points of consciousness that could only be rapsari. Again he leapt from mind to mind, slower this time, taking the time to search out plans and tactics. He saw the battlefield through eight-to-the-fourth pairs of enemy eyes, saw how they had shaped it, prepared positions and traps for his force, and again he reached for the czrav telepath and gave him a revision of his initial plan, launching spoiling attacks to protect his own flank as he ordered his vast, living armada around in a sweeping turn to take the enemy where they were weakest. His force responded, and as the situation changed he sent more orders to respond ahead of the enemy. How much time has this taken? He had no way of knowing until he thought to tap the time sense of one of his Pride-Patriarchs, and realized that it was taking a long time indeed, and they were closing hard on the Citadel gates. The Tzaatz were in confusion, trying to move forces already being overrun by tuskvor. He sensed their fear, and the exultation of the czrav who sliced out their lives. He sensed their pain and confusion as death overtook them, and sorrow at their loss swept over him. This is the strength and weakness of the Telepath's Gift, the needle balance between the power to kill with ease and the cost of the pain of death. In knowing his enemy as he was, he was becoming them, and that intimacy made the immediacy of their death a terrible thing. Am I this strong? It was within his power to call off the attack. Not every necessary thing is easy. He steeled himself and went on, resolving to end it as soon as possible.
His advance guard were engaging more Tzaatz now, pinning their units in place, denying them the ability to respond to his main assault as it swept closer to the citadel. It was going well, so far, and he again revised his instructions to his commanders. But we have yet to meet the heavy rapsari. The raiders and harriers the Tzaatz outposts used were easy game for tuskvor-mounted Heroes, but the true test would come before the citadel gate, where the beasts clustered close and heavy siege weapons waited. He stretched his mind there, to gauge the defenses and the readiness of the defenders, and there he found not a mind but a place where a mind should be, a black hole in the universe.