Warily, two kzin approached the kill. The killer, like its prey, was a youngster, showing a mixture of kitten spots and adolescent stripes against its bright orange fur. The other was older-much older. There was gray at its muzzle, one eye and one arm were artificial, its ears were torn shreds and the fur at its neck and shoulders grew raggedly over a complex of scar tissue. The youngster kept watch as the elder kzin lowered its great head and lapped the blood, then crouched and lapped in turn.
The forest was quiet again. They ate undisturbed.
"That was a good kill, Vaemar," the elder kzin said. He gave the youngster a grooming lick. "Thank you, Raargh-Hero. But I doubt I could handle an adult yet. And it was a stupid one to lag behind the herd in this close country."
"Then you have seen the fate of the stupid. You feel nothing in the ground?"
"Feet. Distant enough."
"Gagrumpher feet?"
"Yes. I think so." The pattern of the gagrumpher's centauroid footfalls could never be mistaken for those of a quadruped, but many of Wunderland's native life-forms were centauroid.
"Are they approaching or receding?
"I think… I think they are still receding."
"Be sure, be very sure. The males could be returning quietly through the cover."
"They do not sound heavy."
"Nor would they, to your senses yet, if they put their feet down slowly. They are very different things, leaping on the back of a dreaming youngster, and looking up to see a dozen charging adult males. You do not want to be under those forelegs when they rear up. I have heard some humans made the skins of our kind into what they call rrrugz. Adult gagrumphers can do the same more quickly."
They are moving away, Raargh-Hero, I am sure of it now."
"Indeed. Do you know why they move away?"
"No."
"The males know we are here. Their usual response would be-I will not say of such clumsy and noisy herbivores to 'stalk' us-but to attempt to take us by surprise. If they are moving away, it is for a reason. Perhaps some other enemy approaches.
"Never feel shame like the foolish ones at using ziirgah. It is a gift of the Fanged God," the old kzin went on. Ziirgah was the rudimentary ability of all kzinti to detect emotions of other hunters or prey. Most used it quite unthinkingly, but because it was developed in a few into the despised talent of the telepaths, many felt unease at using it consciously. It had saved Raargh's life on more than one occasion. "Always danger, Raargh-Hero."
"Vaemar, when you look at me, see always two things: I am old, and I am alive. I notice danger. Not all who were kits with me, or recruits, or fighting soldiers, did so… Listen now!"
"There…!" The young kzin's ears and tail shot up.
"Yes, mechanism! You know the enemy now."
"We must get under cover!"
"Finish your meat. It is your kill, and we have enough time. We will take the haunches to salt before the Beam's beasts and the snufflers get them."
The sound of the vehicle grew. The kzinti slashed what remained of the gagrumpher carcass to pieces, bagging it in tough fabric. They were in deep cover, invisible, when the human car, flying low, entered the clearing.
It landed beside what was left of the gagrumpher, and the driver got out. The human examined the scattered, bloody bones, the imprints of clawed feet and of Raargh's prosthetic hand on the ground about, sniffing with a feeble, almost useless nose, then crossed the clearing toward the shade of the red Wunderland trees where the kzinti lurked. His eye lighted on some of the bagged meat. "Anyone for chess?" he called.
The young kzin leaped from the undergrowth. His hands with sheathed claws struck the human in the chest, knocking him down. Though far less than fully grown, he already overtopped and easily outweighed the man.
"Be careful, Vaemar," the elder admonished him in what, five years previously, would have been called the slaves' patois. "He has not the strength of a Hero!" He made a swipe at Vaemar with his prosthetic arm. The youngster ducked and rolled away.
"There is no offense, Raargh," the human said in the same dialect, those words in the Heroes' Tongue being couched in the Tense of Equals. He climbed to his feet and reached to scratch the top of the youngster's head. "Young will be young."
"Urrr. To live with you monkeys, young need be cautious. You have a board?"
"Yes."
"Old weakling! To let youngster leap you so!"
"Many of us are old, Companion, but some of us have a trick or two yet."
"Come to our cave." He spoke now with the grammar of the Heroes' Tongue to this human who understood it, rather than the simplified patois. "We have got it well set up now. Even a chair for any monkey brave enough to stick its nose in. Vaemar will cover your eyes while I make safe the defenses."
The human held his captured chessman up to the light. "These are nice pieces."
"Vaemar made them. He is good with a sculpting tool."
"From what you tell me he is good at many things. But he is fortunate to have you."
"So what you will tell the Arrum?"
"There is no point in lying, to them or to you. So far they have asked little of me. He has the right to live as he wishes, as do you… but I think… "
"Yesss? Go on." A hint of the Menacing Tense.
"Someday he will need more than this."
"It is good to stalk the gagrumphers and fight the tigripards, good to look out at night upon the Fanged God's stars, or sleep under them when we range far, to scent the game in the forests under the hunters' moons or lie in the deep grass glades at noontide," said Raargh. "Few high nobles live so well. And unlike high nobles we have no palace intrigues to poison our livers."
The man nodded, pinching his lower lip between thumb and index finger in a characteristic gesture of thought. "And yet… for him it cannot be like this forever. You know as well as I he is exceptional. Your kind on this planet need leaders now, and they will need them tomorrow."
"To lead them to what?"
"Hardly for me to say."
"To become imitation monkeys? Apes of apes?"
"Do you really think the seed of Heroes would accept such a destiny? I think not."
"What then? Check! Urrr."
"You know your kind have some deadly enemies among the humans on this world. Jocelyn van der Stratt is far from the only one of her party. I think, as you do, I know, that Vaemar may be a great treasure for this planet, a natural leader for the Kzin but one who can deal with humans, too. What might we not do combined? I think even Chuut-Riit may have felt that, or something like it. It will be very slow, but perhaps on Wunderland both our kinds have been given a strange chance.
"But there are many humans who do not want kzinti leaders to emerge, who do not want the Kzin to be. Vaemar has a duty, companion mine. And so, I think, do you. Perhaps, if I may speak as soldier to soldier, a harder one than any you faced in battle."
"You think the monkeys will attack us? There will be many more guts spilled then. There are many Heroes left on Ka'ashi!"
"I hope not. And I think I have grounds for hope. Each day that passes is a day in which humans and Kzin share the planet, a day for some memory of the war and the Occupation to be forgotten. But it is slow."
"It does not matter if the days here pass fast or slowly," said Raargh. "We hunt, we watch the stars. Vaemar grows. I will not be able to play chesss with him much longer-too many easy victories for him on this little board, and my authority is undermined."
"If he can beat you easily, Raargh, he must be a player indeed. But most kzinti who bother with the game become masters… Once when we talked, you too said the Kzin of Wunderland would have need of him."
"He still does not get the best out of his rooks. He does not use them to smash through the front… And I am not good enough a player to be the best teacher for him-I announce checkmate in three moves, by the way. They do not have need of him yet."
"We hold things together, I grant you, but there are a lot of hopes on that youngster."