The troops sat at fires paled to near invisibility by the silvery sun. Some men cleaned their weapons. Others talked of the coming march. One or two still ate. A stack of armor flung a moment’s glare in Kire’s eyes, brighter than the flames.
In only his brown undershorts, cross-legged and hunched over a roasted rabbit haunch, the little soldier, Mrowky, glanced up to calclass="underline" “Lieutenant Kire, come eat — ”
His belly pushing down the waist of his undershorts, the hem of his singlet up, standing by the fire big Uk said: “Hey, Lieutenant — ?”
On the ground, Mrowky lifted freckled shoulders. “Sir, we saved some hare — ”
But Kire strode on to the horse enclosure, where two guards quickly uncrossed their spears — and flung up their fists. (Kire thought: How little these men know what goes on in their own camp.) He stepped between them and inside, reached to pull down a bridle, bent to heft up a saddle. He cut out his mare, threw the leather over her head, put the saddle over her back, and bent beneath her belly for the cinch. A black boot in the iron stirrup, and moments later he galloped out, calling: “I shall be back before we decamp for Çiron.”
Passing loudly, wind slapped at his face — but could not fill his cape to even the gentlest curve. Hooves hit up dirt and small stones, crackled in furze. Low foliage snapped by. The land spun back beneath.
Dim and distant, the Çironian mountains lapped the horizon. Kire turned the horse into a leafy copse. A branch raked at him from the right. Twigs with small leaves brushed his left cheek as he pulled — in passing — away. The mare stepped about; behind them brush and branches rushed back into place. At a stream, Kire jabbed his heels into the mare’s flanks, shook the reins —
— an instant later, with four near-simultaneous clops, hooves hit the rockier shore. Pebbles spattered back into the water. Kire rode forward, to mount a rise and halt there, bending to run a black glove on the flat neck. He was about to canter down among the trees, when a long and inhuman Screeeeee made the horse rear. Kire reined hard and tightened his black leggings against her flanks.
Raucous and cutting, the Screee came again. The mare danced sideways.
Dismounting, Kire dropped the reins to the ground. Snorting twice, the mare stilled.
Upper leg bending and lower leg out, Kire crabbed down the slope, coming in a sideways slide around a boulder.
The Screeeeee, startlingly closer, sliced low leaves.
Kire stepped around broken stone, stopped — and breathed in:
A man and a beast —
Yellow claws slashed at a brown shoulder. The shoulder jerked — the head ducked; black hair flung up and forward. Bodies locked. Braced on the ground, a bare foot gouged a rut through pine needles.
Canines snapped toward a wrist that snatched away to lash around behind the puma’s neck. This time, as the Screeeee whined between black gums and gray, gray teeth, something… cracked!
A broad paw clapped the man’s side — but the sound failed. The claws had retracted.
Kire let his air out as puma and man, one dead, one exhausted, toppled onto their shadows.
Before Kire got in another breath, another shadow slid across them. On the ground, the man raised himself to one arm, and shook back long hair. Kire stepped forward — to see the shadow around them get smaller and darker. He reached for the man’s shoulder. At the same time, he looked up.
The flying thing — sun behind it burned on one wing’s edge: Kire could see only its size — dropped. Kire’s gunbarrel cleared the sling. The retort ripped the air… though the shot went wild.
Above, it averted, wings glinting like chipped quartz, then flapped up to soar away.
At Kire’s feet, the naked man rocked on all fours by the beast.
“It’s gone, now,” Kire rasped. “Get up.”
The man pushed himself back on his knees, taking in great breaths through lips pulled up from large, yellow teeth. Then he stood.
He was taller than Kire by a hand. A good six years younger too, the lieutenant decided, looking at the wide, brown face, the hair sweated in black blades to a cheek and a forehead still wrinkled with gasps from the fight. The eyes were molten amber — wet and hot.
(The lieutenant’s eyes were a cool, startling green.)
Pulling up his cape and throwing it over his arm, Kire reslung his gun. “Who are you?”
“Rahm.” Still breathing hard, he reached up with wide fingers to brush dirt and puma hair from his heaving chest and rigid belly. “Rahm of Çiron.” The lips settled to a smile. “I thank thee for frightening away the Winged One with thy…” He motioned toward Kire’s black waist-cinch.
“This is my powergun.” The tall youngster’s dialect, Kire noted, was close to Myetra’s. “Rahm …” The Lieutenant snorted; it sounded like a continuation of whatever roughened his voice. “Of Çiron, ’ey?”
The Çironian’s smile opened up. “That is a… power-gun? It’s a frightening thing, the… powergun.” He moved his head: from where it clawed and clutched his shoulder, black hair slid away. “And who art thou, that hast become Rahm’s friend?”
“I am Kire.” He did not give his origin, though with Kirke on left breast, cloak, and sling, he could not imagine the need.
“Thou art a stranger in these lands,” Rahm said. “Whither dost thou travel?”
“Soon to the Çironian mountains. But for now, I am merely a wanderer, looking at the land about me, to learn what I can of it.”
“So am I — or so I have been. But now I am returning to Çiron.” Suddenly the black-haired youth bent, grabbed the puma’s yellow foreleg, and tugged. “Here.” He thrust one dark foot against pale stomach-fur to shove the beast over the pine needles. With its closed eyes, the puma’s head rolled aside, as if for the moment it wished to avoid the bright, brown gaze of its murderer. “Thou shouldst have the lion, for saving me from the Winged One. I had thought to carry it home — it’s no more than three hours’ walk. But thou hast a horse.” He nodded up the slope. “’Tis thine.”
Kire felt a smile nudge among his features. “Thank you.” A smile was not the expression he’d thought to use with this Çironian youth. So he stepped back, to lean against the boulder. “Rahm …?” Kire glanced at the sky, then back. “How is it you travel the land naked and without a weapon?”
Rahm shrugged. “The weather is warm. My arms are strong.” Here he frowned. “A weapon …?”
“You don’t know what a weapon is …”
Rahm shook his head.
“Suppose you had not been able to kill the puma with your bare hands…?”
“Eventually she would have gotten frightened and fled — once I’d hurt her enough.” The youth laughed. “Or she would have killed me. But that could not happen. I am stronger than any animal in this land — except, perhaps, the Winged Ones.”
“And what are they?”
“They live in the mountains of Çiron, at Hi-Vator. Their nests are far up the rocks, in the caves among the crags and peaks.”
“Çiron,” the Lieutenant repeated. “And Hi-Vator… But Çiron is at the mountains’ foot.”
Rahm nodded. Through the remnants of his own smile, Rahm found himself looking into a face not smiling at all.
“Do all Çironians go about so?” Kire asked. “Are you all so peaceful? Perhaps, you, boy, are just simple-minded — ”