"I am surprised you recruited us, then."
The strange mood was broken. Jegarvindertsa laughed.
"My dear Maximus, that was precisely the reason we did recruit you. That and the fact we were desperately short of mass for our fighting units anyway. But it was the argument we-that is, this five-unit of the Jotoki, comprising the group-individual that is Jegarvindertsa-put before the poor makeshift that has replaced our trade council."
The strange mood was broken. But I left my sword sheathed. I knew now what the Ninth Legion had to do. The old man had often spoken to me when I was a child, of the ultimate duty of dying for civilization. I wished my task had been so simple and easy.
Again the picture jumped.
A strategos does not lead a Legion on foot. Nor did I now. For all that had changed, and for all the Jotoki learning machines had taught us, our legionaries still remembered something of Roman tactics: scrupulous preparation, and then a thrust in the right place-use the sword for the thrust into the belly, don't waste time slashing at the armored head and chest. We dealt with the felines in the same way. The vanguard of their ships rushed at us, and we passed between them to attack from behind.
The kzinti gravity polarizers were as good as ours, as were their beam-weapons, but when the legions had fought barbarians it had been feet and hooves against feet and hooves, and swords and spears against swords and spears. When, with their scout ships and fighters smashed, we closed on their line of capital ships, it reminded me of tales of fighting in the arena.
We had learnt not to attack the heavily armored weapons turrets, or the strengthened prows, but to burn into the sides. Damage in the vacuum of space multiplies itself. The first felines I saw then were bodies flying into space when my beams tore into the semi-globular belly of a great feline warship.
We cut their line at two points, using their own speed against them and allowing their van to fly on until it could return and join the battle. By the time they did, the line was in chaos.
Human barbarians often keep attacking though it is plain they have lost the tactical upper hand, and have no concept of a fighting, strategic withdrawal, fighting instead as a furious disorganized mass, each unable to support the other. The kzinti were much the same.
There were gaps in our ranks-there always are after a battle-when we flew back to the carrier, but there was wine and women and feasting too. The Jotoki poured freshly minted gold on us, still valuable even though they had a technology for transmuting metals. I had read Caesar's Commentaries and imagined how he would have relished being here, lecturing the Jotoki on how to improve their space tactics and quietly plotting to take them over. It was then that I began to write this commentary of my own.
And we fought. Many times, crossing distances I cannot grasp even now, to strike in unexpected new places. And we won, many times.
Not always.
We must have missed a survivor once, who told the tale.
Finally we found kzinti who were ready for us.
Then, with our fleet slashed by kzinti claws, it was ground fighting again. We of the Ninth-the Caledonian cales were mostly expended by then-and what Jotoki could be spared.
A couple of the Jotoki ships, almost empty, with only the barest shadows of Jotoki crews, escaped. We bought them that chance of escape at the cost of our own. I do not know where they went. But perhaps they led the kzinti away from Terra as they promised. Perhaps they escaped and bred their little swimmers again.
We were left behind to divert and delay the kzinti like Horatius on the ground, defending the abandoned hulks of most of the Jotoki ships. Jegarvindertsa were one of the Jotoki who remained with us. The kzinti had withdrawn at last, but we knew they would soon be back, with fresh legions of their own.
Again the picture flickered and jumped.
"We have lost everything and there is no hope. We die here on a strange, cruel world. Well, we can still die like Romans. We are not strangers to hardness. I suppose we had better kill the women and children first. We will not give them to the beasts as if they were criminals in the arena."
"It may not be necessary to die at all," said Jegarvindertsa. "We still have other weapons."
"I see none. Can we fight the felines with short swords?"
"No. With gold."
"I do not understand."
"We will hide. Human and Jotok together. There is gold on this world, and we know the kzinti like gold as do so many species."
I did not understand.
"This world has underground rivers." I did not then know how he knew that, but I accepted that he did. "Many could hide in the wilderness, where kzinti believe nothing could live, for a long time."
"The felines would hunt us out. I do not want to die like criminals I have seen, fleeing and hunted by lions in pits and cellars under the arena."
"There are caves. We Jotoki might even breed there. It is unfortunate we are unlikely to have more than a little time to deepen them further."
That gave me a thought. I have seen the mines on my Sardinian estates. "Use your gravity engines, then. With them and Jotoki weapons you can break and move great masses of rock very quickly. You can enlarge the caves, join them up, and you can dump the spoil in the sea where it will not alert the enemy."
The kzinti returned in strength. We hid and fled. The kzinti hunted and captured and killed as they might. And then they began to see this world had much rich land that supported the game and hunting they craved. Perhaps they thought us all dead.
Another gap. Then a new speaker took up the story. He looked enough like Maximus Gaius Pontus to be his son-Perpetua realized he almost certainly was his son-but, like a number she had just seen, with red in his hair, that suggested something other than Latin in his parentage.
Gold was left out for the kzinti. It came to be seen that when and where gold was left out, the kzinti would take it and not attack. That was the first real victory.
There were other things we left-platinum, precious gems, carvings… slowly, the kzinti began to take it for granted that these would be left for them in certain places. A human bringing them would be unmolested, and allowed to depart in peace. It took decades. It was the first modification of total war…
"Total peace was too much to expect," said Marcus Augustus. "We settled for the best that could be hoped for: low-intensity, contained conflict along defined borders while we bought peace elsewhere.
"But there were two things to note: We brought the kzinti gold and other tribute on our terms. We were not slaves but, tacitly at least, trading partners as well as game. And slowly, slowly, as they became used to luxury, they became dependent on us, used to the luxuries we could provide, even as they hunted us. At last, it was our artisans-brave ones, those-who offered themselves as slaves and who installed hypocausts to warm their floors in the long nights. Over the centuries, we have got as far as you have seen. A fragile, unspoken, imperfect modus vivendi far too fragile ever to put to a real test."
VIII
Marcus Augustus looked steadily at Perpetua. "And now men make allies of the kzinti?" His expression did not indicate that he considered this probable-nor particularly desirable.
It seemed like a very good time for Ginger to switch on their translator's active function. "Not all kzinti," he said, the speaker startling Marcus for a moment. "I am what the humans sometimes call a kdaptist. Kdapt-Pilot was a Hero of noble birth who had the radical inspiration that peace was better than war. He found followers after the First Defeat. Some fought on the human side in the Second War with Men, simply because Men were the only ones who were trying to establish peace."
"Indeed." The translator carried overtones well; which was not to say agreeably.