All the same, I didn’t want to hurt an impetuous kid just because he was short on common sense. Fast as I could, I crossed my hands over my chest in the high-court submission posture and hollered, "Naizo!"… short for Nai halabad tajjef su rellid puzo, which means I yield to your queen and her rightful hegemony over these, her duly apportioned lands. (A thousand years ago, old-time Mandasar warriors got their kicks by trying to recite the long form of the phrase before they got a pincer rammed through their guts. They did it as a test of nerve — to show how cool-headed they could be, speaking calm and slow while an opponent raced straight at them. The flowery words got collapsed to Naizo about the time firearms were invented, when it suddenly became important for surrenders to be short and snappy.)
Of course, if someone barrels down on you, either with guns or with pincers, there’s always a chance he won’t stop, even when you yell uncle. The warrior charging toward me didn’t slow a bit when I Naizo’d him — he pounded on like a thoroughbred stallion, intending to gallop down my throat at trampling speed.
I’d have been pee-in-the-pants scared if he were a real horse; horses have hammer-hard hooves, and real good instincts when it comes to kicking. Lucky for me, Mandasar warriors are built all wrong for horsy maneuvers like rearing up, and they can’t kick worth a darn unless they practice for years. Nature designed them for using their waist pincers and nose spikes; get around those, and they don’t have much left to throw at you.
I kept shouting, "Naizo!" as long as I could, in case the warrior was just putting on a show to impress the rest of his family — four other Mandasars, three workers and a gentle, had come out of the dome behind him and were watching his every move, all excited and worshipful. But when the warrior got so close I could see he really planned to run me over, I dropped the submission stance and faked a move to my left, as if I were dodging out of the way. The warrior swerved in the same direction… which showed he had zero training in actual fights. He spread his waist arms wide to prevent me from going around, and opened his claws to catch me; but I was already slipping back to the right, outside the reach of his pincers.
The warrior charged straight past me, with way too much momentum to stop. If he’d had any experience fighting humans, he would have kept going; but he dropped his lobstery tail as a brake, dragging it along the ground like Mandasars always do when they want to slow down fast. For sure, he intended to swing around and take another grab at me… but I was right behind him now and his tail was close in front of my feet.
So I ran up his tail and threw myself flat onto his back.
Mandasar warriors can jump, but not nearly as much as a bucking bronco. Like I said, they’re built wrong for horse tricks — eight legs just can’t hop as wildly as four. I held on just fine by wrapping my arm around his throat in a neck-bar… not tight enough to crush his windpipe, but every time he bounced, my arm dragged across the little sections of carapace that covered his neck. My combat instructors on Troyen said that applying pressure there made the plates of the outer shell grind into the soft flesh beneath, smushing it and pinching it. Apparently you dig into three nerves at once: major nerves that feel fierce stabbing pain but don’t suffer any real damage.
So I kept my hold jammed in strong while the rest of my body flopped about on the warrior’s back. I got bruises and bumps galore, but from the sound of it, I wasn’t suffering half as much as the kid I was squeezing. He screamed blue murder and scrabbled with his Cheejreth arms trying to pull me off, while his waist pincers clacked sharp and angry, not able to reach any part of me.
I could smell the battle musk rising thick off his skin: Battle Musk C, the one that smells like strong sweet caramel. It meant he was scared and starting to lose his head. The scent glands for Musk C only kick in when a warrior is feeling desperate — a signal telling his comrades-in-arms he needs help, even if he’s too stubborn to admit it. Lucky for me, there weren’t other warriors around… and the Mandasars back at the dome, the workers and the gentle, would never dream of joining the fight. It would be a horrible insult to this warrior’s honor, the tiniest suggestion that he’d need help from other castes in dealing with an unarmed human.
After ten seconds of trying to toss me off, the warrior settled down a bit: either trying to think of new tactics, or just not keen on scrunching up his throat anymore. While he considered his next move, I left my one arm in place around his neck, but reached out with the other hand and wrapped it around the end of his snout.
A Mandasar’s muscles for opening his mouth aren’t very strong — if you hook your thumb on his nose spike and your fingers under his jaw, you can easily hold his mouth shut. Work it right, and you can even press your palm up against his nostrils. You never get a perfect seal, but he still has serious trouble taking in air… especially when he’s panting from trying to buck you off. It’s a good way to impress a sparring partner that you’re in control, but not so life-threatening that he thinks you want to smother him dead.
Another few seconds of that and the kid under me stopped struggling. He said something out the side of his mouth, but with his jaw held shut, the words were too muffled to understand. I loosened my grip and let him try again.
"Give," he said.
"What?" I asked, letting go completely.
"Give up." He shook his head and snorted to clear his nose. "I." He shook his head again, then sneezed full force, spraying out a hurricane of spit and mucus. "Surrender, I. Yield, I. Grovel I, you stinky hume."
The warrior flapped one of his Cheejreth arms across the tip of his snout, like wiping his nose on his sleeve. "No fight wanted I but all, save you with nonwords made mock of me." He swung his head around till he could glare me full in the face with his beady black eyes. "What in hot hell means Naizo?"
10
SMELLING SOMETHING AWFUL
I slid off the warrior’s back, making sure to keep clear of his pincers. He didn’t even look in my direction — too busy cleaning his nose with his hands, fussing and blowing and sniffling.
"Naizo is a short form," I said, then waited for him to finish an especially liquidish round of snorting. "It stands for Nai halabad tajjef su rellid puzo. Have you ever heard that?"
His whiskers gave an angry flick; for a second I thought he was going to attack. I hopped back fast into a defense position, but he contented himself with a bristly glare. "Contemptible your accent. Twist the words sideways, almost to mockery… yet choose I to think it is mere hume ignorance."
"How would you say it then?"
The warrior stared at me a second more, then intoned his own version of Nai halabad tajjef su rellid puzo. He recited it in a deep reverent voice, like he might be saying a prayer… but his pronunciation was halfway between gutterspeak and baby talk. A Mandasar from Troyen would break up laughing at the very sound; either that, or slap the boy on the nose.
"Um," I said. Which obviously wasn’t the worshipful praise the warrior expected, so I added, "Interesting. Very interesting."
I shouldn’t have been surprised at the warrior’s horrible accent. The Mandasar children had come to Celestia a whole twenty years ago; back then, this warrior must have been a mere hatchling… baby talk only. On the other hand, a baby wouldn’t know big formal sentences like Nai halabad tajjef su rellid puzo. The warrior must have learned that later on — either from an older Mandasar kid, or from a human who’d picked up the words but not how to pronounce them properly.