He was in considerable pain, including the monstrous headache of a telepath's probing. He knew the reason for that: as the sole survivor of his platoon there must be no possibility that he had been cowardly in battle. He had evidently passed the test. Had cowardice been found in him he would be either dead or in much worse pain: It was one of the things that destroyed even the most decorous kzin's inhibitions against torture.
"Humans too, Honored Hroarh-Officer," said Sergeant. He meant both that the humans had accounted for morlocks and that his Heroes had accounted for many humans. Hroarh-Officer surveyed the carnage with some satisfaction. He sprayed a little urine over Sergeant in a gesture of pleasure and approval. "You have some human ears to collect for your trophy belt," Hroarh-Officer said. "And there will be heads for the NCOs' Mess. You have behaved with guile, but Telepath reports that you were by no means backward in the fighting. In using humans and morlocks against each other, you displayed a knowledge of human behavior and the ability to turn it to our advantage. Chuut-Riit will be pleased. It will vindicate him on the value of Thinking Soldiers. And of humans, for that matter. Some day we may use humans to do more fighting for us… Kfrashaka-Admiral and his pride may… " He bit off his words. Even in post-battle relaxation, there was only so much fit to say before a Sergeant. "At least that will be something for Chuut-Riit to be pleased about," he went on. "There is not much else. Not many others have done well. We lost a lot to their stinking wires, and those dung-bombs and other things, screaming and charging straight into traps. Nor did the Staff expect morlocks to be so feral and numerous. Urrr, they have paid for that mistake! Morlocks got to Battalion Forward Headquarters after humans lured the guards away! Then humans used dung bombs on the lot of them. There will be many promotions. Urrr."
Despite his words, Hroarh-Officer did not seem enraged. Rather, the emotions Sergeant detected were those of a kzintosh assessing a new and by no means disagreeable situation. After any serious fight there tended to be vacancies for promotions, and this one had evidently been more serious than anticipated. Sergeant realized he himself had seen only a little of it. Hroarh-Officer appeared to have acceded to battalion command. No doubt that and the satisfaction of wading into recent slaughter contributed to his benign mood. He too had new ears on his belt. "When we return here we will be better prepared," said Hroarh-Officer.
Chuut-Riit will approve of that, thought Sergeant. He will approve of Hroarh-Officer, too. "It will take a long campaign to clear out these caves thoroughly," said Hroarh-Officer, lashing his tail. "Beyond the pictures of our radar we have found new tunnels and galleries we did not know of. The morlocks have taken a fierce and praiseworthy slashing here, but they breed fast, and we have not got all the humans by any means. It will be good training for the new Troopers, and it would be good if there were Heroes whose valor and blood-lust we could point to especially… There has been hard fighting here."
"Yes, Honored Hroarh-Officer."
"Hard fighting… Urrr… a campaign like this needs special Heroes. Exemplars… You have done well. You may dry the new ears for your belt at the battalion Kzirzarrgh," he added solemnly. Hroarh-Officer turned to the dying human. There was another important formality to be settled, which the scattered swaths of dead had raised. Hroarh-Officer asked Sergeant: "Is this monkey entitled to Fighter's Privileges?"
"Yes, Dominant One." Hroarh-Officer must have known this from Telepath's report, since the human was still uneaten and possessed its ears, but Sergeant's voluntary confirmation was necessary. Fighter's Privileges entitled a worthy enemy not only to dignified consumption or other disposal or display of his remains after death, but, in the case of a dying enemy, the granting of any reasonable last request. Hroarh-Officer bent over the human, putting this to him in his own mixture of Wunderlander vocabulary and Heroes' grammar.
Sergeant watched him, wondering vaguely what request a human in such circumstances might make that a kzin officer could satisfy. He could not move closer, being held in a medical web. A box on his chest stimulated his muscles as military circulatory fluid was pumped into him. He had been wounded before and knew better than to attempt great movement. Indeed, at that moment he could hardly turn his head. The bone-baring wounds on his neck and shoulders had been sewn up and salved and would make admirable scars.
When the human replied its voice was too weak for Sergeant to catch what it said. But Hroarh-Officer seemed to understand. His tail stiffened as if in anger for a moment, and he raised a claw as if for a slash. Then he relaxed. "Iss bekomess rreasssonibble. Urrr," he grated out, as much as he could not in the slaves' patois but the difficult human tongue. Then he waved to Medical Orderly, who had finished attending to the kzinrett and the other wounded and injured, to come forward. Perhaps the human would respond to kzin medical treatment, and if in the circumstances it lived it would be spared this time. So be it. Lying in the bracing smell of Hroarh-Officer's urine Sergeant was almost content. He would mourn his comrades later. But they had died acceptably.
Hroarh-Officer squatted beside Sergeant as the human was carried away. "It is suitable that he asked for treatment," Sergeant said. "That one should not die before his time. Not at the hands of morlocks. I will have his head for the Mess one day."
"It did not ask for treatment. That is an ordinary part of Fighter's Privileges," said Hroarh-Officer. "It asked for another thing.
"It is a little irregular and will need to come officially from me, but seeing what has transpired here I believe it will be considered fitting to grant it, Raargh-Sergeant."
Music Box
"I do not know whether you are my friend or my foe, but I should count it my honour to have you as either. Has not one of the poets said that a noble friend is the best gift and a noble enemy the next best?"
"A promise made under duress doesn't count, that's the law."
But this is East and South of Suez, where there is no law."
"Is it not joyful to have friends come from a far land?"
Chapter 1
2425 a.d.
The kzin screamed and leaped. The gagrumpher was a young one, lagging a little behind the herd, half-asleep on its feet in the warm forenoon. The kzin landed on its back, above its middle pair of legs. The centauroid reared up, shrieking. The gagrumpher herd wheeled, the males charging back.
But the gagrumphers rearing had brought its throat in range of the feline's razor fangs. The kzin swung its jaws, slashing. There was time for one crushing bite at the neck bones, and it was down, racing for the trees like an orange shadow a second before the gagrumpher bull-males arrived.
The wounded gagrumpher stood for a moment, blood jetting, then it collapsed, its oxygen-starved brain already dying, though its rear legs kicked for some time under the instinctual commands of the dorsal ganglia knot.
The males could not pursue the predator into the trees, and as they stood in a bellowing group, the snarl of another kzin tore the air on the opposite side of the clearing, between them and the rest of the herd. They could not leave the females and the other juveniles unguarded. They hastened back, and the herd moved on.
The body of the adolescent became still in its pool of blood as the dorsal ganglia died. A colony of leather-flappers that had risen shrieking into the sky returned to their trees, and the forest settled down again to its own affairs.