Scarface did not subside until he saw Locklear, with the Kzin medkit, ministering to Boots. “A fine ally, but no expert in Kzin medicine,” he scolded, choosing different unguents.
Boots, shamed at having permitted acolytes in the cave, pointed out that the traps had been disarmed for the flow of refugees. “The priesthood will surely be back here soon,” she added.
“Not before afternoon,” Stalwart said. “They never mount ceremonies during darkness. If I am any judge, they will drown the beauteous prret at high noon.”
Locklear: “Don't they ever learn?”
Boots: “No. They are the priesthood,” she said as if explaining everything, and Stalwart agreed.
“All the same,” Scarface said, “they might do a better job this time. You,” he said to Stalwart; “could you get to the village and back here in darkness?”
“If I cannot, call me acolyte. You would learn what they intend for your mate?”
“Of course he must,” Locklear said, walking with him toward the main entrance. “But call before you enter again. We are setting deadly traps for anyone who tries to return, and you may as well spread the word.”
Stalwart moved off into darkness, sniffing the breeze, and Locklear went from place to place, switching on traps while Scarface tended Boots. This tender care from a Kzin warrior might be explained as gratitude; even with her kittens, Boots had tried to substitute herself for Kit. Still, Locklear thought, there was more to it than that. He wondered about it until he fell asleep.
Twice during the night, they were roused by tremendous thumps and, once, a brief Kzin snarl. Scarface returned each time licking blood from his arms. The second time he said to a bleary-eyed Locklear, “We can plug the entrances with corpses if these acolytes keep squashing themselves against our ceilings.” The grav polarizer traps, it seemed, made excellent sentries.
Locklear did not know when Stalwart returned but, when he awoke, the young Kzin was already speaking with Scarface. True to their rigid code, the priests fully intended to drown Kit again in a noon ceremony using heavier stones and, afterward, to lay siege to the cave.
“Let them; it will be empty,” Scarface grunted. “Locklear, you have seen me pilot my little craft. I wonder…”
“Hardest part is getting around those deserters, if any,” Locklear said. “I can cover a lot of ground when I'm fresh.”
“Good. Can you navigate to where Boots had her birthing bower before noon?”
“If I can't, call me acolyte,” Locklear said, smiling. He set off at a lope just after dawn, achingly alert. Anyone he met, now, would be a target.
After an hour, he was lost. He found his bearings from a promontory, loping longer, walking less, and was dizzy with fatigue when he climbed a low cliff to the overhang where Scarface had left his scooter. Breathing hard, he was lowering his rump to the scooter when the rifle butt whistled just over his head.
Nathan Gazho, who had located the scooter after scouring the area near the pinnacle, felt fierce glee when he saw Locklear's approach. But he had not expected Locklear to drop so suddenly. He swung again as Locklear, almost as large as his opponent, darted in under the blow. Locklear grunted with the impact against his shoulder, caught the weapon by its barrel, and used it like a pry-bar with both hands though his left arm was growing numb. The rifle spun out of reach. As they struggled away from the ten-meter precipice, Gazho cursed — the first word by either man — and snatched his utility knife from its belt clasp, reeling back, his left forearm out. His crouch, the shifting of the knife, its extraordinary honed edge: marks of a man who had fought with knives before.
Locklear reached for the Kzin sidearm but he had placed it in a lefthand pocket and now that hand was numb. Gazho darted forward in a swordsman's balestra, flicking the knife in a short arc as he passed. By that time Locklear had snatched his own w'tsai from its sheath with his right hand. Gazho saw the long blade but did not flinch, and Locklear knew he was running out of time. Standing four paces away, he pump-faked twice as if to throw the knife. Gazho's protecting forearm flashed to the vertical at the same instant when Locklear leaped forward, hurling the w'tsai as he squatted to grasp a stone of fist size.
Because Locklear was no knife-thrower, the weapon did not hit point-first; but the heavy handle caught Gazho squarely on the temple and, as he stumbled back, Locklear's stone splintered his jaw. Nathan Gazho's legs buckled and inertia carried him backward over the precipice, screaming.
Locklear heard the heavy thump as he was fumbling for his sidearm. From above, he could see the broken body twitching, and his single round from the sidearm was more kindness than revenge. Trembling, massaging his left arm, he collected his w'tsai and the beamrifle before crawling onto the scooter.
Not until he levitated the little craft and guided it ineptly down the mountainside did he notice the familiar fittings of the standard-issue rifle. It had been fully discharged during the firefight, thanks to Scarface's tactic.
Many weeks before — it seemed a geologic age by now — Locklear had found Boots's private bower by accident. The little cave was hidden behind a low waterfall near the mouth of a shallow ravine, and once he had located that ravine from the air it was only a matter of following it, keeping low enough to avoid being seen from the Kzin village. The sun was almost directly overhead as Locklear approached the rendezvous. If he'd cut it too close…
Scarface waved him down near the falls and sprang onto the scooter before it could settle. “Let me fly it,” he snarled, shoving Locklear aside in a way that suggested a Kzin on the edge of self-control. The scooter lunged forward and, as he hung on, Locklear told of Gazho's death.
“It will not matter,” Scarface replied as he piloted the scooter higher, squinting toward the village, “if my mates dies this day.” Then his predator's eyesight picked out the horrifying details, and he began to gnash his teeth in uncontrollable fury.
When they were within a kilometer of the village, Locklear could see what had pushed his friend beyond sanity. While most of the villagers stood back as if to distance themselves from this pomp and circumstance, the remaining acolytes bore a bound, struggling burden toward the lakeshore. Behind them marched the bandoliered priests, arms waving beribboned lances. They were chanting, a cacophony like metal chaff thrown into a power transformer, and Locklear shuddered.
Even at top speed, they would not arrive until that procession reached the walkway to deep water; and Kit, her limbs bound together with great stones for weights, would not be able to escape this time. “We’ll have to go in after her,” Locklear called into the wind.
“I cannot swim,” cried Scarface, his eyes slitted.
“I can,” said Locklear, taking great breaths to hoard oxygen. As he positioned himself for the leap, his friend began to fire his sidearm.
As the scooter swept lower and slower, one Kzin priest crumpled. The rest saw the scooter and exhorted the acolytes forward. The hapless Kit was flung without further ceremony into deep water but, as he was leaping feet-first off the scooter, Locklear saw that she had spotted him. As he slammed into deep water, he could hear the full-automatic thunder of Scarface's weapon.
Misjudging his leap, Locklear let inertia carry him before striking out forward and down. His left arm was only at half-strength but the weight of his weapons helped carry him to the sandy bottom. Eyes open, he struggled to the one darker mass looming ahead.
But it was only a small boulder. Feeling the prickles of oxygen starvation across his back and scalp, he swiveled, kicking hard — and felt one foot strike something like fur. He wheeled, ignoring the demands of his lungs, wresting his w'tsai out with one hand as he felt for cordage with the other. Three ferocious slices, and those cords were severed. He dropped the knife — the same weapon Kit herself had once dulled, then resharpened for him — and pushed off from the bottom in desperation. He broke the surface, gasped twice, and saw a wide-eyed priest fling a lance in his direction. By sheer dumb luck, it missed, and after a last deep inhalation Locklear kicked toward the bottom again.