Gunnar nodded. “So they’re ramming around the search perimeter with whatever they’ve got on hand, trying to be in twenty places at once.”
Smith nodded. “And probably doing a fair job of it, too. But I was pretty sure they wouldn’t find us here.” They neared the mouth of the cave, faint light picking its way in through a chaotic filigree of vines, roots, and branches.
“And what’s so special about this place, that the kzinti wouldn’t be looking for us there?” Gunnar asked.
“See for yourself.” Smith pushed through the tangled growth, held an armful back so the others could exit.
Hilda squirmed out, felt a gnarled branch scrape her face, wondered why she suddenly cared how the scratch would make her look, and slowed to a stop two steps beyond the mouth of the cave. She felt, rather than heard or saw, the others drag to a halt around her.
“Oh, Christ,” Gunnar groaned.
“Gott verdammt,” profaned Mads, as Margarethe ground her molars audibly.
“Scheisse lei,” whispered Hilda. “We’re running there? To this hemisphere’s own natural cesspool?”
“It’s called the Sumpfrinne,” Smith supplied patiently.
Freay’ysh-Administrator’s mouth sagged open slightly in violent frustration, then he snapped it shut. Not that he was enamored of Chuut-Riit’s endless object lessons in patience, but rage was of little help when coping with human resistance fighters. The leaf-eaters were innate cowards but, being omnivores, had just enough opportunistic cunning and duplicity to be dangerous. As his patrols had learned on one or two occasions, when venturing into the small hamlets that were known to shelter the resistance.
Which was a misnomer, he mused, since the humans did not resist in the physical sense of the word. They struck and faded away, always fleeing, yielding before the kzinti could meet them in battle. Wherever his security patrols went, the humans were not there: having the sympathy of the region’s populace, they also enjoyed timely warnings from multiple sources. Freay’ysh-Administrator had been sure that burning a few of the more troubling hamlets to the ground, inhabitants included, would deprive the monkeys of much of their support. The tactic backfired. If anything, the support had increased.
The administrator let his jaw sag open again and did not care: the stiff wind of riding in a fast floater was invigorating when it hit his teeth, chilling them, awakening a semblance of the same, sweet ache that Heroes felt in the immediate anticipation of biting a long-elusive prey-animal. However, today’s prey-the humans who had left Shraokh-Lieutenant’s first-born cub earless upon the sward-was more than merely elusive: it was defiant, arrogant, taunting. His lips rippled as he fought to control the fury that brewed down deep in his belly every time he reflected upon the audacity of their actions, and the signal dishonor of having it happen on his own lands.
Worse yet, those lands were, more formally, Chuut-Riit’s lands: Freay’ysh-Administrator was both direct vassal of, and regional overseer for, the Patriarch’s most august offspring. Chuut-Riit did not spend an immense amount of time on his estates near Munchen, but still tarried there enough to be aware of what was transpiring even in this far-flung holding. The Dominant One’s teeth were sure to show over this incident unless Freay’ysh-Administrator found and exterminated the patch-furred vermin who had-
“Freay’ysh-Administrator, Zhveeaor-Captain urgently requests a meeting.”
“There is progress in the hunt?”
“It seems so.”
“Then do not fiddle aimlessly with the controls; fly to a suitable point of rendezvous-at once!”
The floater banked steeply and came around, the waist-gunners leaning into the turn, the pintle-mounted heavy beamers loose in their heat-gloved hands. Freay’ysh-Administrator quickly spotted what had to be Zhveeaor-Captain’s command sled. The flat, angular wedge was making the kind of low-altitude speed that only a comms-and-control chassis could sustain. Down on the ground, small orange faces looked up at its screaming approach: it was the first sign of promising urgency since the hunt had begun almost a week before.
The administrator’s and captain’s vehicles slowed as they drifted toward a bare hillock which was set at the northern end of the Eel’s Spine like the dot of an inverted exclamation point. The command sled’s top hatches popped open, two kzin officers emerged, and Freay’ysh-Administrator felt his ears go back. One of the officers he had expected: Zhveeaor-Captain. But the other was a complete and uncomfortable surprise: Shraokh-Lieutenant himself, the sire of the slain cub. But there was nothing to be done: Freay’ysh-Administrator had summoned Zhveeaor-Captain in all haste, and Shraokh-Lieutenant was one of the captain’s subordinates. The two craft settled onto the sparse grass that tufted the top of the hillock.
Shraokh-Lieutenant was out in a single leap. However, despite his bodily energy, the kzin’s mouth hung slack, his pelt was unkempt, and the air audibly rasped between his teeth: he did not radiate fury so much as a form of savage distraction. Apparently, when the human perpetrators had not been swiftly found and eviscerated, he had lost something even more irreplaceable than his oldest offspring: some essential component of Shraokh-Lieutenant’s reason had been swept away, left behind in the meadows where his first cub had been butchered.
Zhveeaor-Captain followed his subordinate at a brisk but dignified pace and touched noses briefly with the Administrator. He snarled lightly at the lieutenant, who evidently recalled that some sign of fealty and subordination was required of him. Shraokh-Lieutenant leapt up and grazed a sloppy nose across the Administrator’s own. Who resisted the urge to bat the ill-mannered offender, because remonstration would be pointless. Logically, no insult could have been intended, since no thought or attention to decorum seemed to remain in Shraokh-Lieutenant: just a restless, subcognitive monomania to tear apart the murderers of his progeny. Well, the sooner this is over-“You have news, Zhveeaor-Captain?”
“I-we-do, Freay’ysh-Administrator. We know where the humans have taken refuge.”
So suddenly? So certainly? “Their scent is fresh then, their trail clear?”
Zhveeaor-Captain glanced anxiously at his distracted subordinate. “We needed no scent or trail.”
“Truly?”
Zhveeaor-Captain licked his lips as he produced a small, leather pouch, with a flap. “The humans showed us where they are.”
Freay’ysh-Administrator’s ears flicked forward, then snapped back in rage and loathing. “They openly indicated their location? And they still live?”
“Freay’ysh-Administrator, it is not so simple as that. I will explain.”
“You had better. And quickly.”
“We were patrolling at the far northern tip of the search perimeter, coordinating the floater patterns, when two of the crews saw a bright arc against the sky.”
“A weapon discharge?”
“No, Freay’ysh-Administrator. It was a flare. Shortly after it was fired, we approached and our lead unit saw a fire burning: we could not tell if it had been ignited by the flare, or-”
“You investigated, did you not?”
“Yes.”
Freay’ysh-Administrator was tempted to cuff Zhveeaor-Captain for his failure to report quickly and clearly, but rethought that impulse. The captain was his best officer, had attracted the special notice of Chuut-Riit himself, and was the epitome of both ferocity and efficiency. Noticing the quick, measuring glances that he shot at his distracted lieutenant, Freay’ysh-Administrator realized that the captain was either fearful of, or fearful for, his subordinate. But there was no time to untangle interpersonal nuances: duty was duty and there were humans to catch and rend. “Zhveeaor-Captain, what did your investigation reveal?”