Man-Kzin Wars V by Larry Niven (people reading books txt) 📕

weight of meaning seemed to drop on that last phrase; Spots was watching him intently, not staring at the outbackers the way Bigs did. Jonah had a sudden leaden conviction that more rested on his decision than he could estimate.

"Look . . ." he began. Then an idea struck. "Tyra, these people, they're trustworthy?" An emphatic nod. "You and Hans are the ones with the medical training. You two go to the village; Spots and Bigs and I will take our . . . load on ahead. You can catch up—the outbackers will lend you a horse, surely, Hans."

Bigs's head jerked around to look at him, and his muzzle moved in the half-arcs of emphatic agreement. Spots brushed back his whiskers, as if confirming something to himself.

"That would be according to your oath," he said softly. "I apologize." Jonah was a little surprised; 'sorry' was something kzinti were reluctant to say, especially to other species.

The outbackers followed the exchange with wary eyes. Hans turned to them and spoke, then smiled at Jonah:

"As it turns out, young feller, they don't want our kzin anywhere near their place anyway. Just me and Fra Nordbo here are fine. We'll start right away, if that's all right with you. Sooner begun, sooner done."

Tyra rose. "Will you be all right?" she asked softly.

"We'll manage," Jonah replied.

* * *

"I do not have to account to you," Bigs said loftily.

"Stop using that tense!" Spots snapped in a hissing whisper, glancing ahead to where Jonah walked beside the lead mule. "Who contacted the Fanged God and promoted you to royalty, Big-son of Chotrz-Shaa?"

"I am self-promoted," Bigs replied softly, but with no particular effort to keep his voice down. "And the Fanged God fights by my side. How else would the two monkeys remove themselves? We will take the northeastern path, abandoning all but the beast necessary to carry the capsule. Alone, we will make better time. There is a kzin settlement at Arhus-on-Donau. We will seek shelter there. We will build a means to get off-planet, or buy it—these monkeys will do anything for money."

"You are self-befuddled!" Spots said. "Fool. What will Jonah-human say to this?"

"It is what Durvash says that is important," Bigs said, resting his hand on the module. "He becomes clearer all the time."

Spots recoiled. "Now you, oh patriarchal warrior, take orders like a slave from that little horror?"

Bigs bristled, suddenly swelling up and hulking over his smaller sibling in dominance-display. Spots forced himself to match it, letting his claws slide free.

"At least it is a carnivore, you . . . you submitter-to-omnivores," Bigs grated. "Your breath stinks of grass!"

Spots's mouth gaped at the horrendous insult. All their lives they had sparred and tussled for dominance, insulting each other in the friendly fashion of non-serious rivals. That was a blood libel.

"Is your oath nothing to you?" he grated.

"Oh, I will allow the monkey to fight me . . . barehanded," Bigs said, with a sly, horrible amusement in the twitch of his ears and brows. "That fulfills the oath." He paused for effect. "What of your blood-obligation to the Patriarchy and the Heroic Race, Spots-Son of Chotrz-Shaa?"

Abruptly, Spots collapsed into a fur-flattened, droop-eared, limp-tailed puddle of misery. "I know," he muttered. "I am ripped in half! If you have forgotten your honor in madness, I have not. We are the last of the line of Chotrz-Shaa. Two lives and the life of our House we owe these monkeys. Your life to Jonah-human. Mine to a female! Yet we owe blood and honor to the Patriarch."

Bigs smirked, and Spots flared into a gape-jawed scream of rage: "Stop whacking at my tail, fatherless sthondat-sucker!"

He could see Jonah turning, alarmed at the sound, and he forced calm on himself with an effort greater than he had thought was in him.

"No killing by stealth," he finished, dropping into the Menacing Tense, "Or you die."

Bigs smirked again, and continued in the infuriating inflections of a Patriarch: "You will conspire with a monkey against your own sibling?"

"No. But I will not allow you to kill him."

A sneer, just showing the ends of the dagger incisor-fangs. "He is helpless as a kit at night."

"I will be watching."

"How long can you go without sleep, brother? I will feast on his liver yet." Bigs stalked off after the train of mules. As he came level with the last his hand rested on its pannier, and Spots could hear the edge of a whisper.

My tail is cold, he thought in panic. What can I do? What can I do?

* * *

Three nights later Spots watched desperately as Jonah prepared for sleep, tilting his broad-brimmed hat forward over his eyes; it was a bright night, alive with the shooting stars so common on Wunderland and with Beta Centauri overhead near the moon. The human gave him a puzzled look as he settled in, and then his breathing grew slow and steady, his heartbeat sounded like an ancient Conundrum Priest drum to Spots's straining ears. A heavy drum, regular, soothing. Heavy as his eyelids, so soothing as they dropped across dry and aching eyes, so pleasant. Making the ground soft like piled cushions, like piled cushions in the palazzo when he was young, and his father was crooning:

"Brave little orange kzin

Brave little spotted kzin,

Turn to the din

And if it makes you smile,

Leap

But if it is nothing at all

Really nothing at all

You may turn-in;

And droop your eyes while

You sleep."

Spots sighed and turned, drifting, content. Then shot half-erect, trembling, his fur laid tension-flat on the bones of face and body, tail out and rigid.

Bigs was halfway from his lair of blankets to Jonah, moving with ghost-lightness. Moonlight and Betalight glinted on the heavy blade of the wtsai in his hand. He caught his brother's eye and shrugged with fur and tail, grinned insolence, flared his nostrils.

I scent that which you do not. Slowly, insultingly, he sauntered back to his blankets, laid himself down. Then he yawned, a