Exiled: Clan of the Claw, Book One Read online

  He hissed again, this time with purpose. “Lorssett!” The summons was mental, not oral.

  His steward appeared behind him on the battlement almost at once. Lorssett was a larger, physically stronger Liskash than Sassin. He had bigger jaws, sharper teeth, and longer claws. He was, in his own way, clever—he would have been useless to Sassin if he were not. But his powers of mind were minimal. He would never be anything more than a steward; rising to godhood simply was not in him. Understanding as much (which was part of his cleverness), he made a good steward indeed.

  The Mrem had rituals wherein inferiors showed their superiors deference. The Liskash neither had nor needed them. Sassin and Lorssett both knew what their status was. Sassin knew Lorssett knew; he could read it in the steward’s mind. Had Lorssett been able to conceal from his god what he knew and what he felt, he would have been a different male, and an altogether more dangerous one.

  “What do you require of me?” Lorssett inquired.

  “Fetch me the Mrem called Grumm,” Sassin told him. “I have a new use for the creature.”

  “Just as you say, so shall it be,” Lorssett replied.

  “Well, of course,” Sassin said complacently. When he said something, it was supposed to happen the way he said it. What privilege of godhood could be more enjoyable?

  * * *

  Enni Chennitats was irked with her fellow priestesses, irked with the Dancing because it hadn’t gone well, irked with the Quaxo Hills for not being tall enough to hold out what was now the New Water—irked with the world, in other words.

  She tried not to let it show. It wasn’t the attitude a priestess of the Mrem should have had. She breathed deeply, trying to calm herself and purify her spirit of the nasty thoughts that stained it. She prayed to Assirra, begging Aedonniss’ wife to persuade the sky god himself to bring her peace.

  Nothing seemed to help. Too many things had happened to the Clan of the Claw and around it for anyone to go on with an easy spirit: so it seemed to Enni Chennitats, at any rate. Some males and females had no trouble, though. They were so constituted that they could not feel the lash on someone else’s skin if it happened not to fall on theirs. Even some savants and priestesses were made that way. It disappointed Enni Chennitats, and infuriated her, too.

  She walked away from the Dancing that had produced no meld of minds. One of the other priestesses called after her. With a deliberate effort of will, she kept her ears from turning in the direction of the sound. If she pretended she hadn’t heard, she wouldn’t have to answer.

  “Where are you going in such a hurry, Enni Chennitats?” Rantan Taggah asked.

  She couldn’t ignore the talonmaster the way she had the priestess. If she’d gone on for another couple of steps, she would have run into him. But she didn’t want to unburden herself to him, either. “I don’t know,” she answered. “Anywhere. Nowhere.”

  His whiskers twitched. He was too polite to come right out and say he didn’t believe her, but he obviously didn’t. Since she hadn’t been telling more than a quarter of the truth, she couldn’t very well blame him. He pointed back toward the Dancing ground. “Things didn’t go well?”

  “No,” she said before she could help herself. Then her eyes narrowed in annoyance—whether at herself or at him she wasn’t sure. The Clan of the Claw needed a clever talonmaster. The New Water and all the trouble it had stirred up meant the clan needed a talonmaster of that stripe more than ever before. But did Rantan Taggah have to go and show off his cleverness?

  “Why?” he asked bluntly. “Has Assirra turned her countenance away from us? Will she not speak to Aedonniss on our behalf?”

  Enni Chennitats’s claws shot out. Her finger twisted in a gesture that averted evil. A moment later, Rantan Taggah made the same gesture. But he still stood in front of the priestess, waiting for her reply. “Say not so!” she told him. “No, we have no sign of that. But magic is an uncertain business—for us, anyhow.”

  He showed his teeth. “Would you rather be a Liskash?”

  She made the apotropaic gesture again, more vigorously this time. “You know better than that,” she said, and waited till he dipped his proud head to show he did. Then she went on, “They must be demons. Otherwise, how could one of them hold as much magic as a whole troupe of Dancers?”

  Rantan Taggah shrugged. “I don’t know anything about that. I don’t much care, either. All I know is, if you shove a spear into one of them, he’ll die. That’s the only thing I need to know.”

  “If he doesn’t spell you into spearing a clansmate instead, thinking it’s him,” Enni Chennitats said.

  “Yes. If.” Rantan Taggah scowled. “Well, we’ll have to figure out how to keep that from happening, because we’ll be traveling through Liskash country—through a lot of it, I’m afraid.”

  “We are going to travel, then?” The priestess had known it was likely. Hearing it would actually happen still felt like a punch in the belly, though. “We had a good life here.”

  “We had one, yes,” Rantan Taggah agreed. “No more, not with the New Water at our backs. We’re cut off from all the other Mrem in the world. The only reason the Scaly Ones didn’t jump on our backs before this is that they’re hatched cowards.”

  It was more complicated than that. Enni Chennitats knew as much, and the talonmaster surely did as well. The Liskash rarely hurried in anything they did. She wondered if their being kin to lizards and snakes and other crawling things accounted for that. Lizards and snakes had no will to overcome their natural deliberation. The Liskash did—if Liskash nobles were anything, they were creatures of overwhelming will—but usually stayed slow all the same.

  “Some of our clansfolk won’t want to travel into the unknown,” Enni Chennitats said. Liskash nobles weren’t the only ones who kept on doing what they’d always done whenever they got the chance. The Mrem also like to curl up and go to sleep in their old, familiar haunts.

  “Well,” the talonmaster said, “we’ll have a clan meeting tomorrow to hash things out. The way I see it, if we don’t move when we want to, we’ll move when the Liskash force us out of here—if we can move then. Better to go on our own terms. That’s how it looks to me, anyhow.”

  “What if the clan sees things differently?” Enni Chennitats asked.

  He shrugged once more. “Then they’ll have a new talonmaster tomorrow night, that’s all. I won’t be sorry, or not very. If there’s anything more wearing than doing things for males and females who don’t want them done, curse me if I know what it is.”

  “But you’ve done a good job,” she said. “I can’t think of any other male who’d be better. I can’t think of anyone else the whole clan would follow, either.”

  “To tell you the truth, neither can I.” Rantan Taggah was not a modest male even by the modest standards of the Mrem. He turned to go, then checked himself. “Oh, and a male just came in from the southwest. A runaway Liskash slave, he says. He’ll know more about what’s going on with their nobles than we do now.”

  “He says,” the priestess echoed. “How far can you trust him?”

  “About as far as I can fling a mammoth,” Rantan Taggah answered cheerfully. “But we’ll want to hear him out any which way. And we’ll want your priestesses somewhere not far off—someplace where you can Dance. If he is under a spell, maybe you can draw him out of it.”

  “Maybe.” Enni Chennitats knew she sounded troubled. If the Dancing today went so poorly with nothing at stake, how could she count on it to beat down whatever magic the Liskash had loaded onto this poor “escaped” Mrem? She couldn’t, and neither could Rantan Taggah. Still, it was what they had. Without it, the Liskash would have devoured the Mrem centuries before. With it…

  They may devour us yet, she thought miserably. Part of her knew that was a reaction to the failed Dance. The rest knew as much, too, but was not reassured by the knowledge. If the Dances failed, the Scaly Ones triumphed. They might triumph all the same. She had reasons for her misery, sure enough.
/>   * * *

  As Rantan Taggah had looked out over the New Water, so he stared out at the sea of Mrem faces at the clan meeting. The males of the war band looked back, some at him, some at the scepter he held. It was the length and thickness of a good mace. Instead of being topped by a head of flanged, sharpened bronze, though, it was surmounted by a Liskash noble’s skull. Those large eye sockets, the domed braincase so much like a Mrem’s, the projecting snout with the sharp teeth all just alike…

  Only the male who held the scepter could address the meeting. So said ancient clan custom. Most Mrem wandering clans and city-states had similar rules. Rantan Taggah’s hand tightened on the scepter; the reddish wood was worn smooth by many generations of palm pads.

  Off to one side stood males who had joined with the Clan of the Claw but had not joined it. They were refugees from the clans and small towns that had lived down in the Hollow Lands. No more, no more. Some of them had fought alongside the Clan of the Claw’s warriors and shown their own courage. Others would, when and if they got the chance. Rantan Taggah thought they would strengthen the clan if they became part of it. Another thing to decide on one of these days…

  He lifted the scepter high. The males of the clan had been talking among themselves, arguing unofficially about what they would soon be arguing about officially. They fell silent when the scepter rose: it marked the shift between the one kind of argument and the other.

  “Do you hear me, males?” Rantan Taggah shouted. “Do you accept me as talonmaster of the Clan of the Claw?”

  If anyone said no to the second question, the argument about what the clan should do next would be preceded by an argument about under whose leadership the clan should do it. That would not be an argument with words. Rantan Taggah had thrust a spear into the ground behind him. An axe lay beside it. He wore a bronze sword and a broad-bladed gutting dagger on his leather belt. He’d taken special care sharpening his claws. He didn’t particularly expect a challenge, but he believed in being ready even for things he didn’t particularly expect. That was one reason he made a better talonmaster than most.

  No one called him out. A few males answered, “We hear you!” Most stood silent, waiting for what would come.

  Rantan Taggah raised the scepter again. Eyes and ears not already pointed toward him swung his way. “Warriors!” he said. “Most of you were kits like me when the Old Water finally poured over the Quaxo Hills and started flooding the Hollow Lands. Some of the folk who listen here today fled before the great wave whelmed them. Honor to the memories of the males and females who could not get away.”

  “Honor,” the assembled males echoed.

  The talonmaster pointed north. “Now the New Water separates us from our fellow Mrem. The Clan of the Claw was always boldest. We were the ones who came out of the Hollow Lands and drove the Liskash before us, even though these warm southern lands suit the Scaly Ones well. We won broad plains for grazing. We won great glory, too.”

  He lifted the scepter higher yet. The hollow eye sockets of the Liskash skull that crowned it stared blindly out at the Mrem. The warriors growled approval.

  “And we won our own salvation,” Rantan Taggah went on. “Had we stayed down in the Hollow Lands, we likely would have been swept away like so many others. But we were bold. We pushed on. And so we lived.”

  He took a deep breath. Now was the time to get down to business. “I know the Clan of the Claw will never be less than bold. Boldness, though, offers us two trails now. We can stay here where we are, cut off from all cousins and kin, and fight the Liskash who surround us on every side but the north for as long as we can. This we have done, and bravely, since the New Water thundered past us.”

  “That’s right!” a male called. “And we can go right on doing it, too!”

  “I hold the scepter, Zhanns Bostofa,” Rantan Taggah said sharply. “Your turn will come, but it is not here yet.”

  Zhanns Bostofa glowered but held his peace. No one in the clan denied that he was sly. His bright eyes, his sleek black-and-white coat, and the midsection that was thicker than it might have been all showed he’d done well for himself. That fleshy midsection also said he lacked a certain something as a warrior. Most of the time, he didn’t need to fight to get his way. Most of the time, the clan could go on doing what it had always done. Most of the time, but not always.

  Seeing he wouldn’t be interrupted again for the time being, Rantan Taggah went on, “In the end, I think, staying where we are is a losing play. The Liskash nobles hate us as much as we hate them—they hate us even more than they hate one another, which is saying a great deal. They will hurl monsters at us until we are all dead or enslaved—if we let them.

  “If we let them,” he repeated. “If we set out to the west, along the shore of the New Water, sooner or later we will come to where it stops. We can go north again then, and join with our own kind once more. The Liskash will not look for this, for they would never think to do it themselves. Like their cousins the serpents, they stay in small spaces and travel little. We will always meet new nobles on our trek—they will not be able to join together against us. It will not be easy, but it can be done. A moving target is harder to hit. I say we should move, as soon as ever we may. Now I have spoken. Who will be next?” He lowered the scepter, showing he had indeed finished.

  The prominent males gathered near the front of the assembly all clamored to take hold of it. Rantan Taggah ostentatiously ignored Zhanns Bostofa. It wasn’t so much that he disliked the black-and-white male (though he did)—rather that Zhanns Bostofa had talked out of turn while the talonmaster held the upraised scepter. Instead, Rantan Taggah passed the emblem of authority to a blocky warrior named Ramm Passk’t, a tough, one-eared fellow whose herds grazed lands the Liskash claimed as their own.

  “It’s like Rantan Taggah says,” Ramm Passk’t declared in a raspy, carrying voice. “If we stay where we’re at, we sit still so the Liskash can aim whatever they want at us. They always have the edge that way. If we’re on the move, we surprise them instead of the other way round. And they’re slow—you all know that. They don’t like surprises, Aedonniss bedevil their scaly hides with ticks. That’s how it smells to me.” He lowered the scepter.

  More shouts from other males who wanted to sway the assembly. Reluctantly, Rantan Taggah pointed toward Zhanns Bostofa. Both sides needed to be heard. Better, he hoped, to get it over with and then turn the heavyset male’s arguments against him. Ramm Passk’t stumped over and handed Zhanns Bostofa the scepter. A greater contrast between two males would have been hard to imagine.

  “Thank you,” Zhanns Bostofa said sardonically as his clawed hand folded over the staff. He raised it high. “I have my reasons for thinking your plan is foolish, Rantan Taggah. First is a plain fact: we are still here. The New Water poured into the Hollow Lands years ago now, and we are still here. The Liskash have fought us, and we have fought them, but that is so whenever Mrem and Scaly Ones meet. I daresay we have given them as much as they want, and more besides.”

  Rantan Taggah wanted to shout to the world what an idiot Zhanns Bostofa was. But the other male had the scepter. The talonmaster had to hold his peace…for the moment.

  “Leave that out of the argument, though,” Zhanns Bostofa said with what he wanted to sound like generosity. “It could be that the Liskash will concentrate more against us as time goes by. I do not believe it, but it could be. What I want to know is, what happens to us if we pack up everything we have and start off on this smerp-brained trek Rantan Taggah is so wild for?”

  Of themselves, the talonmaster’s claws shot out. Had Zhanns Bostofa said something like that without upholding the scepter, in short order he would be lying on the ground with his throat bitten and his guts torn out. He had to know it, too. But no male could be challenged for what he said with the scepter in his hand. Most of the time, Rantan Taggah thought that was a good rule. Most of the time, but not always.

  “Rantan Taggah says we will surprise the Liskash nobles
by moving from our longtime grazing grounds. He might be right—they could be surprised to find us so foolish,” Zhanns Bostofa said. “He might be, and they could be. But he is not, and neither are they. And I can prove it. Grumm, come forward.”

  His bulk and the presence of his retainers had concealed the sorry starveling male who now stepped out from behind him. A shudder ran through the assembled warriors as they stared at the runaway slave of the Liskash. When a scaly noble took a male of the Mrem as his own, he sorcerously ate the Mrem’s surname. Even if the poor fellow somehow escaped his master, as Grumm had, he was never the same again. Part of him was gone forever.

  Making as if to give Grumm the scepter, Zhanns Bostofa asked Rantan Taggah, “May I?”

  “Yes, go ahead,” Rantan Taggah answered harshly. “If, that is, I may have leave to question him along with you.”

  The black-and-white male inclined his well-groomed head. “But of course.” He handed Grumm the scepter.

  Before raising it, Grumm stared into the eye sockets of the Liskash skull. His lips skinned back from his teeth; it was as if he confronted a live noble, not one long dead. Rantan Taggah was far from sure Grumm’s twiglike arms could lift the scepter. After that anxious moment, though, Grumm did raise the scepter high. He seemed easier once he was no longer eye-to-eye with the skull.

  “I am Grumm,” he said in a dusty, defeated voice: the kind of voice no Mrem should ever have used. “I was Sassin’s slave. I am Sassin’s slave, even here among you. Some things do not go away.”

  Sassin! Well, of course he would come from Sassin, since he’d fled out of the southwest. Sassin held the lands west of those that belonged to the Clan of the Claw: the lands through which the clan would have to pass as it began its journey, in other words. “And so?” the talonmaster asked Grumm. “What do you say about Sassin? Or what does the Scaly One say through you?” His nose twitched. He imagined he could smell the rank reptilian stink that clung to the Liskash. It was only imagination, of course. Grumm would be clean of that reek by now. But the impression did not want to go away.