Pardane's servants, meanwhile, followed their lord headlong down the slope. The long legs of a Jehanan were well suited for bounding between the tufts of high grass, but one of the loaders stumbled almost immediately and when he'd picked himself up, stared in horror at the eviscerated carcass of a young molk, entrails scattered by the xixixit's cutting mandibles. The servant had only an instant to wonder why a calf had wandered this far up from the valley before the hooting bellow of his master summoned him to the chase.
Tezozуmoc, half-blinded by dirt and clouds of tu pollen, crashed through a wall of thorny brush and stumbled into a stream. An algae-slick rock immediately turned under his foot, pitching him into the water with a splash. For a moment, he lay stunned in the current, shivering as snowmelt rushed over him, and then the prince heaved himself up and crawled onto a muddy bank.
Exhausted and in shock, Tezozуmoc rolled onto his back in a drift of fallen leaves and tried to clear his eyes. The first thing he saw was the blurring, jerky flight of the xixixit as it darted through the stand of trees hanging over the stream. Bluish plates of fresh chitin gleamed under older sections of brown scale. The long, pendant legs and cutting mandibles tucked against the bipartite body gleamed jewel-green.
The prince groped for something to use as a weapon. In the incongruous silence, the sound of an aerocar turbine idling was jarringly loud. Tezozуmoc tipped his head back and caught sight of a woman – a human woman – in a silk blouse, field trousers and a sensible sun-hat.
The xixixit blurred forward, glossy black stingers flaring down for the paralyzing strike.
There was a deafening crack-crack-crack directly over the prince's head. The smell of propellant and atomized metal choked Tezozуmoc and he flinched into a tight ball, hands over his ears. Three armor-piercing rounds smashed into the thorax and head of the xixixit as it lunged across the stream. The fluoropolymer-coated bullets tore through the armored chitin and splintered into dozens of razor-sharp sub-munitions, which tore through the soft inner organ sac.
A hand seized the prince, dragging him to his feet, and Tezozуmoc opened his eyes in time to see the xixixit blow apart in a cloud of shattered chitin, lubricating fluid and gossamer wing fragments.
"Christ on the Stone," he gasped, "that was an excellent shot!"
"Thank you," a rich alto voice purred in his ear. The prince turned in time for the unexpected woman to wrap his fingers around a still-smoking Webley AfriqaExpress hunting pistol and then swoon gracefully into his arms.
"Ooof!" Tezozуmoc staggered, taken by surprise, and managed to hug the woman to his side before he dropped her. The hot barrel of the Webley burned his arm, but – juggling both unexpected objects for a moment – he managed to seize the pistol grip. He looked down at himself in dismay. He was soaked and coated with mud. "Ah…curst wilderness! Another good shirt ruined! I hate hunting -"
"Mi'lord!" Colmuir crashed out of the thicket on the far side of the stream, rifle at the ready. The master sergeant stumbled to a halt, gaping at the scene in front of him. Pardane Fes was only a step behind and the Jehanan let loose a hiss of astonishment. The crowd of servants behind him spilled out onto the bank and then everyone looked up, shielding their faces from blowing grit and dust as an Imperial aerocar settled between the trees. Dawd hung over the side, one foot on the bottom step of the boarding ladder, the Whipsaw tracking across the chuckling stream.
"You killed it?" Colmuir stared in amazement at the shattered remnants of the xixixit scattered in front of the prince and the woman. The master sergeant blinked, recognizing her. "Madame Petrel?"
Behind the Resident's wife, still in the arms of her Imperial savior, the pale faces of two young ladies peered over the side of an aerocar, then squealed in relief to see the horrendous monster stricken down. Colmuir stepped back, eyes narrowed in suspicion, and let the Jehanan hunters – nearly everyone had now arrived, drawn by the gunshots – stampede past to examine the insect carcass. Tezozуmoc was staring around him, bemused to suddenly find a striking woman in his arms and two young girls clapping in delight and thanking him for such "quick thinking."
Pardane Fes rose from the shattered xixixit, shaking his long scaled head in appreciation. "Not sporting," the Jehanan boomed, "to use such a keen blade, but a well-placed shot withal – straight between the thorax plates. Well placed, well placed."
Clinging tightly to the prince's rather narrow chest, Mrs. Petrel's brilliant blue eyes fluttered open and she looked around, apparently so overcome she'd forgotten where she was. "Oh – what was that horrific beast?" There was a hesitant pause, then, in a ghoulishly fascinated tone: "Was anyone killed?"
Eight hundred kilometers away to the south, Itzpalicue grunted and her wrinkled old face screwed up into a disapproving grimace. "Cut that last," she growled to Lachlan and his editing team, who were hunched over a double-wide set of v-displays in the operations center. "She always overdoes these things… Cull the rest, make it look presentable for a handheld cam and squirt it to the t-relay on the Tepoztecatl. They'll want to forward it on to the core worlds as quickly as possible."
Lachlan nodded, watching approvingly as the two girls from Editing winnowed out everything which would have made the prince less presentable – such as the look of stark fear on his face when the xixixit burst out of the trees – and recast the crystal-clear video from the spyeyes into a fuzzier, lower-def format. A body-filter was already processing the prince's torso, adding muscle and definition.
"We'll have a final edit in about twenty minutes," the Йirishman reported after a moment. "Anything else we need to track from these spyeyes today? I'd like to route them back to Gandaris to recharge."
Itzpalicue shook her head. The old woman leaned on her cane, keen eyes roving across the workstations crowded into the low-ceilinged room. Everyone appeared entirely focused on their work, which pleased her greatly, and a particular, familiar tension was building in the air.
"Soon," she said, clicking her teeth together in consideration. "I can feel the index peaking. We'll have our war soon…" Coming to a decision, she rapped the top of Lachlan's console with her knuckles. "I'm going out to see to my Arachosians. They are getting impatient."
Shaking his head in dismay, Corporal Clark stepped through the ruins of the kitchen and pushed the door of the ice locker closed with a dull thump. Every edible scrap of food was gone. Nearly all of the utensils, pots, pans and other cook-ware had been hauled away. Some eating tines wrapped in a damask napkin lay forgotten on the floor. The rest of the house was in a similar state.
Chasing off the last of the scavengers – once word had circulated around the neighborhood about the viscount's departure, every short-horn in the district had descended on the 'asuchau house' to get their share – had taken the whole afternoon. The genteel ambience Gemmilsky had worked so hard to establish had been destroyed, leaving only an echoing, empty house filled with scattered litter and forgotten trinkets.