by G. Howell Text ©2005 G. Howell; illustration ©2006 Cubist

An earlier edition of this story can be read at the author’s website

   It would be close. The deadline was finally catching up with us.
   Huh… ‘deadline’, perhaps not the greatest choice of words. Death was something I, for one, was trying not to think about. Now refugees trudged along Main Street; whole villages and bedraggled individuals carrying what they could. They begged for food, but how could we feed them all? We could only stand and watch the exhausted stream passing through the town. Some stayed; those incapable of going any further and those sick of running. The others just kept their eyes on the road and continued onwards. Some had fled from as far as the Savannah district, over four hundred klicks away. It was like watching a procession of the damned.
   That strike by the Gulf outriders was a mixed blessing. It gave us warning that they were close, and that Weather Rock was a target, but we’d lost buildings, resources, and all too many people.
   Yet the Gulf Forces had come off even worse. The town had been littered with their corpses. Seventy-three bodies, the majority of them scattered along the length of the bridge. We had a few prisoners, but they weren’t very helpful and the Fres’s interrogators hadn’t had a lot of practice. All we could get out of them was their equivalent of name, rank and serial number.
   Oh yeah. And most of them boasted about the Gulf army marching on Weather Rock: Tens of thousands of troops, break us like a bone, stand over our corpse, etc. Fres’s lost her temper after the fifth. Her claws ripped out the throat of the next one who tried that.
   The midday sun raised shimmering heat waves from the packed dust. The ramparts still swarmed with activity as carpenters and stonemasons labored at reinforcing Weather Rock’s flimsy fortifications. I stepped aside to let a couple of guards pass, struggling with barrels of quarrels, followed in turn by more Sathe carrying awkward bundles of crossbows.
   I ducked into the south gate’s barbican. Inside the tower, the sounds of pounding hammers and Sathe shouting echoed up and down the circular stairwell. A female dashed down the narrow steps at a suicidal pace, sidestepping me in a gray swirl of fur and patches of green fabric, her foot-claws clattering on raw stone.
   The rooms in the gatehouse towers and the single gallery that ran above the gates—housing the winch for the portcullis—were filled almost to overflowing with casks and crates of water, food, quarrels, pitch, rocks, arbalest bolts, and oil. Several Sathe were arguing over a barrel, one of them brandishing a scrap of foolscap beneath the others’ noses. Leaving them to sort it out for themselves, I clambered up the wooden ladder to the fortified roof.
   Already three arbalests had been put together. They squatted on the ramparts like crossbows titans might use, their sweeping horns covering all the landscape in the arc visible through the crenelle. Another was being built; a trio of carpenters cursed as they battled to string the massive fiber-and-gut bow. Overhead, heavy frameworks roofed with sandbags and half-rounds of timber shielded the ramparts from the heat of the sun—and any heavy objects that might decide to drop in.
   Beyond the town walls, the road ran nearly straight to the forest, a couple of kilometers off. On either side of the road the fields were deceptively peaceful. Stalks of grain sprouted in the fields; a few small farm buildings stood a good distance from the town’s curtain wall. Those were the fields over which the Gulf forces would have to march to reach the town, and we’d made sure it wouldn’t be easy for them.
   A few Claymores would’ve been useful. So would a few M1 tanks or Apaches. We made do with what was available.
   To the south of the town, we’d sown the fields with booby traps and obstacles of all types. Caltrops, sharpened spikes, punji stakes and pits, ‘Venus flytraps’, abatis ditches, everything we could think of that would slow an attack. Closer in, the obstacles were even denser, and anyone trying to clear them would come under rifle and MG fire. The road itself wasn’t booby trapped, but the punji-filled trenches running along either side gradually closed in. It was a neat trick of perspective that concealed the constriction: a row of ten Sathe abreast could enter the gauntlet, but there would only be room for seven at the end. Guaranteed to screw up a concerted charge any day.
   I pulled my dogeared notebook from a cargo pocket, flipped it open and ran a finger down the list. There were still a few items to be checked off.
   “Sir?” A lieutenant of the Weather Rock guard stepped up and raised his muzzle in a salute. “The western wall reports that all is ready, but the eastern side is having trouble with the catapults. One of them tipped over: they are still trying to right it.”
   “Shift some of the engineers from the western side to give them a hand. And what about the river gates and clearing that wreckage away from the walls?”
   “The chains and nets are in place,” he reported. “Nothing is going to be coming down the river. The rubble around the south bank, that is going to take a while to clear away.”
   “Okay. How long until the rest of the supplies are stored?”
   “I would guess at the end of this day, sir. But the crops were not ready. There will not be enough to withstand a long siege. Perhaps two months at the most.”
   Should be ample… “What about the corner towers?”
   “Ah, those bags of sand are in place, as are the overhead shields. Extra strong as you ordered.”
   I nodded and dismissed him.
   Things were moving smoothly. I guess I’m a pessimist, but I always felt it was going too well; any moment Murphy’d rear his head and it’d hit the fan. Of course we had our share of drawbacks, but thankfully nothing terminally major.
   The Gulf army had to be close by now. The refugees, and the few scouts we had risked sending out, carried news of razed homesteads and villages in the wake of the army that advanced on us. Reports on their muster fluctuated between four thousand and eight thousand warriors. However, all agreed that they were headed in this direction.
   Already there’d been encounters between Gulf outriders and the skirmishers we’d posted in the wilderness to the south of Weather Rock to ensure that Gulf spies didn’t get close enough to take notes on the town’s defenses. There were only two small groups of town guards—no more than ten—but the two Greens per platoon made sure they could hold their own in a fight against a force four times their size.
   Bipedal cats clothed in fur, leather, and metal and armed with scimitars, accompanied by other felids in camouflaged battle dress slung with webbing, ammo pouches and carrying assault rifles… That’s a sight you’ve got to see to believe.
   Hell, I’ve seen it, and I still find it difficult to swallow!
   “How are things going here?” Lady Fres’s stepped up beside me and looked out over her lands; standing straight, her hands linked behind her back.
   “So far everything is on time, High One,” I replied, pushing my hands into my pockets and following her gaze. There were still laborers out there, struggling to maneuver an abatis into position. “Your people are hard workers.”
   “It is their home they are working to save,” Fres’s pointed out, wandering over to an arbalest and laying a hand on a curved tine. “You are placing great stock on missile weapons. Why did you have so many more crossbows built? Nearly a hundred more.”
   I nodded. “I want to keep the Gulf Realm at arm’s length. They outnumber us in trained troops. You know a lot of farmers and peasants can’t use a sword, but most of them are familiar with crossbows. A few hundred more archers in the right place at the right time will make a vast difference.”
   “I see you have made some changes.”
   “Uh-huh.” I called a sentry over and took his weapon to show Fres’s. “This one’s twice as powerful as the old design.”
   The Clan Lord hefted the weapon. “Heavier also.” She tried to cock it and was barely able to pull the string halfway back.
   “Here, it’s easier with this,” I grinned, tapping the lever built into the forestock of the bow. She fiddled with it briefly, then easily cocked the weapon, slotted a dart into place and took aim at a stanchion. There was a sound like a sharp hand clap and red fletchings were sprouting from the post. That was all you could see of the bolt, it was buried over halfway into the wood.
   “Saaa!” The Clan Lord hissed and bared her teeth in a toothy grin as she tossed the weapon back to the guard. “Alright. So we have better claws. How long do you think these will hold them back?”
   I shrugged. “Until the sun went out, if we had enough ammunition. With what we actually have… I can’t really say. We know they’ve got five or six thousand warriors, well armed and trained, along with archers and engineers with siege engines and equipment. We don’t know how well supplied they are, or what kind of reinforcements and equipment they have.”
   “Agreed. What would be your best guess?”
   “Maybe… two weeks? Don’t quote me on that.”
   She snickered; a throaty hiss. “Well, we shall make them pay for every handspan.”
   I nodded.
   There was a shout of triumph as the carpenters struggling with the recalcitrant arbalest finally managed to string the bow.
   Suddenly it all seemed remote, as though I were watching the whole thing on a movie screen. The mottled gridwork of shadows cast by the frame above my head, the gape-toothed grin of the battlements, the faint heat shimmer of earth baking beneath the sun, the thunderheads on the horizon.
   I could die here…
   Away in the distance birds burst into the air from the sanctuary of the shady treetops. It was almost a full second before I heard what had startled them:
   A gunshot.
   Then a long volley of gunfire. A brief lull, then the distant pops of automatic weapons on full auto, slowly dying out to sporadic shots and rolling snap/rattle noises.
   Soon, Sathe were on the edge of the woods; tiny dots bolting towards the safety of the town walls. I watched as they covered the distance at top speed, long legs blurring, mouths gaping—over a kilometer in about a minute and a half.

   Chirthi popped out of the trapdoor to the parapet of the gatehouse like a piece of bread from a toaster. Tongue lolling, he hitched the webbing of the rifle’s carry-strap with a clawed thumb and pattered over.
   The M-16 reeked of hot propellant.
   “They are here,” he announced, unnecessarily.
   “Lose anyone?”
   “We didn’t.” He grinned and slapped the receiver of his weapon; claws clattered against metal.
   Sathe citizens and warriors of Weather Rock converged on the town walls as the news spread. The white noise of their massed voices got louder, then abruptly there was silence, like the flipping of a switch on a radio.
   The scouts came first. Cautious, nervous, they darted like wasps on the fringes of the tree line as they scoured the area for further ambushes.
   Then came the rest.
   Streams of Sathe soldiery—on foot, riding llamas, wagons, and carts—were leaving the confines of the road through the forest, spreading out across the fields, their numbers growing steadily until they stretched along the front of the forest. And still they came.
   The afternoon stretched on and the sun traipsed lazily along on its arc across the slate-blue sky. As the shadows grew, long red and violet streaks dashed the clouds. The tiny sparks of campfires started to spring up in the Gulf encampment.
   I hugged my jacket around me and shuddered in a breeze that came entirely from my mind. Shadows stretched and merged, gradually climbing up the trunks of the trees until only the crowns were illuminated in the twilight, then even that was gone as the sun finally sank below the horizon and there were only the fires of the Gulf Realm.

   It was the kind of morning when even the sun seemed to have trouble rising.
   A light mist covered the ground with gray tendrils of damp moisture. The air was perfectly still and chill. Dew-drops condensed on gray stone, making the walls greasy to the touch. I pulled my cowl a bit closer and watched through the approaching rider through the small cloud my breath made.
   Leaving his llama huffing to itself he approached the town on foot. His red and black armor was clean and polished, not a buckle out of place. His rank-insignia—three small chevrons embossed on a pauldron—gleamed silver in the crisp morning light. No scabbard hung from his belt; he appeared to be unarmed.
   He didn’t look worried as he stopped, easily within earshot of the gatehouse.
   “I want to speak to your commander!” he yelled.
   Fres’s had already been summoned. She looked at the small group of Greens standing around with weapons at the ready and stepped forward to the crenellation, drawing herself up to address the Gulf Messenger: “I am the Clan Lord of Weather Rock. You and your forces are in breach of all treaties between our Realms and I warn you, the consequences will be dire.”
   “For whom?” The other’s ears dipped in amusement. “Hystf Fres’s… Yes, we know you. My lords also know that your town has no chance against us. You are not fighters.” He spread his arms in a gesture of supplication. “In their magnanimous generosity, my lords offer you sanctuary if you surrender to us. This is sworn upon the honor of the S’erst Clan.”
   “I would speak with your commander,” Fres’s replied. “If he is so sincere in his offer, why does he not come himself?”
   “The Mharah has no wish for words with you, Fres’s,” the messenger bared his teeth in a savage grin. “You may have until noon to decide what your choice will be. Please choose carefully; there are five thousand warriors who eagerly await your decision.”
   He snorted, turned his back, then raked his feet to scuff dirt in our direction before going back to his mount and riding off toward the dark ranks of enemy troops massed along the tree line.
   Fres’s sagged against the rampart, looking haggard and worried. Unfortunately the furball on the llama was right: She was no fighter. The daughter of a merchant mariner—now deceased—she’d made a successful career of trading, and returned to her home to succeed the previous Clan Lord.
   But this was never in the job description.
   With the fate of the whole town resting upon her decision, she was scared and confused. Fres’s turned to us with the muscles on the side of her muzzle twitching in a nervous tic. “He swears upon his Clan name,” she said. “If we surrender they must keep their word.”
   “It stinks,” I said. Surrendering to The Gulf Realm was not an attractive option, especially for me. Besides, I wouldn’t trust him any further than a Bosnian cease fire. “It’s not Hraasa’s style to offer terms.”
   “Huh! You are right,” Fres’s agreed. “But I think that he does not know about those weapons that you have. After that skirmish in the woods their commander knows we have some new weapon, but he is probably still certain that he can take Weather Rock. Probably expects us to be cowering in fear of sharing the same fate that the border towns faced, willing to surrender to him. Also he wishes to save himself the slight inconvenience that attacking us will bring. As well, there is little point in gaining a Realm if it is peopled with corpses and its buildings are gutted ruins.”
   I nodded. “I think he’d be more worried that if we did stand against him, we’d have time enough to fire the bridge and make sure it burns completely.”
   “But our forces need that bridge as much as they,” Chirthi mused.
   We had no idea of how far behind us reinforcements were, but any Eastern army that was following us would need that bridge to cross the river and mount their own offensive. If this arm of the Gulf forces took the town, they could delay the Eastern forces long enough for the other prongs of their army, moving northwards further inland, to swing in from behind.
   All they had to do was take the town.
   “I think they’ll find Weather Rock a tough nut to crack,” I grinned. “High One, we have decent defenses, and we have these.” I slapped my palm against the receiver of my assault rifle. “Twelve of these can fire three hundred and sixty bullets at eight hundred a minute, and every one of those is deadly. The larger weapons… they can turn any attack into vulture-food. That should make them think twice.”
   Chirthi backed me up: “It is true. At a distance one Sathe armed with one of these is more than a match for a hundred with swords. We wiped out an entire advance force of their elite scouts before they knew what was happening.”
   Fres’s looked across at the bustle of the enemy encampment and grinned a Sathe grin, nervously running her tongue over her teeth. “You believe that we have a chance?”
   “Twenty to one?” I returned her grin. “Yeah!”
   True to his word, the Gulf officer returned—punctually—at noon. The sun was beating down on the battlements, the contingent of Eastern Sathe waiting shaded by the shields placed to protect archers from ballistic weapons.
   The intermediary squinted into the dazzling sunlight as he reined his mount up on the road below the gatehouse, not even bothering to dismount.
   “You have had time enough to make your decision,” the officer called up to us. “What will it be?”
   Fres’s scratched her jaw, then set her ears back and snarled, “You can tell your superior we reject your offer!”
   The Gulf warrior leaned forward in his saddle and squinted up at us, twitching his ears. “Prize fools, ah? Your last chance. No? Ah, well, not to worry. It should not take us more than a day to walk over this hovel and urinate on your clan ground.”
   “You talk too much!” Fres’s growled.
   “You think that you…” the Sathe started to say and Fres’s gave me a pointed glance and tipped her head toward the messenger.
   I grinned, raised the M-16 and squeezed off three shots. Three spurts of dust kicked up in front of the llama and the animal reared as the rounds impacted, one ricocheting away with a ululating whine. The officer was thrown, landing heavily on his back. The llama bolted back down the road, away from the town.
   Fres’s spat at the groaning figure sprawled below. “You little piece of offal! Nothing here would abase itself enough to bow to festering cesspits like you. You can crawl back your superior and tell him that we will meet you in combat—if you are capable of it!”
   With that done she opened her mouth in a hostile hiss, then spun and stalked off.
   Soldiers lined the walls, laughing as they watched the Gulf warrior stagger to his feet. His armor was covered with ocher dust. Blood stained his muzzle; he’d probably bitten his tongue. He stared up at me.
   I tipped my helmet back and grinned.
   It certainly had an effect on the Sathe. He stood, staring, his ears down and mouth moving vaguely with words I couldn’t hear, then he retreated, stumbling backwards before turning and limping wildly back toward the Gulf camp, casting panicked looks over his shoulder as though he thought I was going to go after him.
   The laughter of the Eastern troops on the walls of Weather Rock hissed after him like a mocking ocean.
   Your move, Hraasa.

   The warning gongs sounded from the gatehouse, booming across the town. Sathe cubs and elders looked up at the sound, but stayed put, diligently spreading layers of linseed oil on the seams of the mass of cloth spread before them while I grabbed my equipment and double timed it to the southern gate.
   Sathe at the base of the walls were already in action: loading catapults with the medieval equivalent of a beehive round, carting bushels of crossbow quarrels to the troops upon the battlements, boiling water.
   Other Sathe, who only a couple of weeks ago had been merchants, shopkeepers, farmers, craftsmen, also hurried to their positions on the walls, all of them grasping their bows.
   We had numbers, but not training. How would our green troops hold up?
   God help us!
   The Gulf host was readying itself. Lines of their troops shifted and writhed as they formed into groups of fifty Sathe, six of them altogether. I frowned: Three hundred in all, only about a hundred more attackers than there were experienced defenders. That certainly wasn’t large enough a number to ensure they took the walls. Why didn’t they pile in en masse?
   What was Hraasa playing at?
   “Testing us.” R’R’Rhasct came up beside me to answer that question. “You have been a thorn in their feet for some time, and now they find you, they are not sure what you can do.”
   “If they keep coming as they are, I’ll put more than thorns in them,” I muttered. I was still sore at the Sathe bitch, tense every time she was around. She must’ve known that, but she still talked to me, trying to be friendly. For some reason that in itself annoyed me.
   I sighed and slapped a magazine into the well of the M16. “Everyone ready? Alright! We let the crossbows handle this lot. Have the archers fire in volleys. The Greens hold their fire unless they get within a hundred spans.”
   R’R’Rhasct grabbed her rifle and sprinted over to the group of Sathe who functioned as our communications center, taking courier reports from the east and west ends of the walls. She spoke with one of them and came back. “Everything and everyone is ready.”
   “All right. Now the next move is up to them.”
   I propped the M16 on a sandbag in the embrasure in front of me and squinted through the scope.
   Officers were strutting around before their troops, waving swords and yowling, psyching them up.
   R’R’Rhasct snorted something.
   “What was that?” I asked.
   “Conscripts,” she repeated. “In the front ranks. There are a few elite there in the back, but the rest are rabble.”
   Cannon fodder. Almost made me feel sorry for them. Almost.
   Now the Gulf scouts were advancing, slowly, then the lines began to break up as they began to rush the western end of the wall.
   That charged faltered badly as they crossed the fields. That’ll teach them not to scout the terrain properly… What looked like sprouting crops at a distance were, in fact, slivers of wood stuck in the ground. Those, and the six-spined metal caltrops buried in the soft sod, played hell on shoeless Sathe. Those foot-pads might have been as tough as leather, but they couldn’t stand up to sharpened iron spikes.
   The charge faltered amongst curses and cries of pain. Their screaming officers got them going again, much more slowly.
   I ducked as a crossbow quarrel clattered against stone near my head. Okay, that’s far enough!
   A shout sounded out along the parapet. Peaked ears appeared along the wall, weapons raised to crenelles. The snap of almost two hundred crossbows firing in a ragged volley was a sound like sharp applause. A cloud of quarrels rose, then fell again, following shallow arcs into the thick of the Gulf forces.
   The Gulf archers had been firing at extreme range, their shots striking our positions with little accuracy. Our archers were a rag-tag bunch of farmers and traders fighting for their homes. They might not have had training, but most of them were quite at home with a crossbow. When hunting was a way of providing food, straight shooting often decided whether they ate or not. Along with that they had superior weapons, a height advantage, and a fortified position to ready their aim.
   Screams sounded; we’d hit maybe fifty Gulf soldiers. The next volley, scant seconds later, claimed even more victims as the archers got their range.
   This one got the Sathe officer. He jerked rigid, then doubled over clutching frantically at a spot just above his hip. Another bolt hit his leg, knocking it from under him, leaving him writhing in an incredibly energetic manner for a dying man… Sathe… whatever.
   The Gulf assault wavered visibly. Despite the elite troops at their backs, the forward ranks began to falter. Their archers had been cut down in those volleys.
   Another swarm of arrows hissed out from the walls. And another.
   Now, with little more than a quarter their original numbers left, the attack crumbled. The ranks shattered, collapsing like a house of cards. Forward ranks pushed back, darting past the elite guards at their backs as they fled for their own lines.
   The elite guards broke also, snarling—toward us. All twenty-seven of them, trying to push their way through a hedge of sharpened stakes…
   …to be cut down by a fusillade of quarrels that left them scattered where they fell, looking like so many multicolored pincushions. A few of them lived for over half an hour.
   It wasn’t what you’d call a decisive victory, but it did wonders for morale. Any rumors that might have been circulating about the Gulf Realm being an unstoppable juggernaut, had just been stabbed in the back. There were more than a hundred and fifty of them dead and wounded, scattered out there like so many cast-off dolls.
   “What the hell was that!?” I muttered in English, shaking my head.
   “What?” R’R’Rhasct was standing right behind me.
   “That fiasco,” I jerked my thumb over my shoulder. “Whoever their commander is, he just threw away over a hundred of his troops, for no real purpose. He knew that there were not enough to successfully charge the walls. A fucking rout!”
   “As I said, just testing our defenses. Besides, now they are a hundred less.”
   “Yeah. Fantastic,” I scowled.

   It was late that day, the sun burning into a hazy, red, orb on the horizon. That first Gulf attack—little more than a cautionary probe—had been beaten off. Our casualties? A minor scratch.
   Now they were preparing again. Would they fight all night? With their night-vision it was a possibility. Shit! Our twelve Sathe qualified to use firearms couldn’t stay on duty twenty-four hours a day.
   Their troops were forming up again, along a much larger front this time. Those units of fifty they’d used last time were being formed again, only many more this time. I counted twenty units. Several of them composed of archers; more, of Gulf Regulars.
   A thousand warriors—maybe one-fifth their number. They weren’t screwing around.
   Our crossbows had superior range, but they obviously believed they’d be able to storm our positions. If crossbows were all we had, there was no doubt they’d break through. As it was… things would be tough.
   I was nervous, sick to my stomach as I checked the M60 for the third time in an hour. I removed the barrel and switched it for one I’d taken off the last time I cleaned it.
   “Sir?”
   A Green. Fasir. A lanky, barely post-pubescent cub. But he was a soldier, had been since he was twelve, and he was also turning out to be a damn fine shot. He ducked in under the heavy overhead of sandbags. “The other positions are ready. No problems.” He was referring to the other M60 in its sandbagged embrasure on the western tower.
   “Good,” I nodded as I snapped the breech down on a round. “Make yourself comfortable. Now we wait.”
   Fasir settled himself down to my left, in a position to link and feed the fifty round belts into the GPMG. As my second, it was his job to make sure the links went in without a hitch. He crouched beside the gun, staring out along the barrel at the Gulf forces.
   Drums boomed in the distance, the distorted echoes rolling across the fields towards us. Already carrion birds had found the dead: the dusk swarmed with black feathered bodies squabbling and fighting as they pecked and tore at fur and flesh.
   “Sir?” Fasir asked without taking his eyes off the Gulf forces. “You ever afraid?”
   I flashed a tight grin. “Hell, yes! Be a damn fool not to be.”

   The tide of the Gulf swept forward, the troops breaking into a long-legged, loping stride that devoured the distance between us. Swords were out of their sheaths, hundreds of them glittering in the setting sun as soldiers sprinted toward us. The traps took their toll, leaving screaming soldiers impaled on punji stakes in pits and ditches, but nobody had ever expected them to stop everything.
   I drew a bead on a company of archers, took a breath, and fired. The muzzle report was like a palpable force in the shelter. Sathe tumbled like tenpins as their legs were shattered, ripped apart. So sudden they just lay there, unable to understand what’d happened.
   I raised my sights a couple of notches.
   The stopping power of a 7.62mm round is awesomely lethal. The Sathe archers might just as well have not bothered with their armor. Machine gun fire from the other M-60 in the west tower ripped into their flank, decimating them. A higher-pitched clattering started as the Greens opened up with the M-16s, and entire ranks of Sathe went down.
   Beside me Fasir was coughing on the propellant fumes as he worked at linking the belts together and feeding them hand over hand into the pig. I slapped the stock of the weapon to bring it to bear on another target: elite guards. This lot were closer. I could see the effect the impacting rounds had.
   An officer turned from seeing his troops being cut down by something they couldn’t fight, turned and looked straight at my position as I fired. Through the haze and shock waves around the muzzle I saw flowers bloom on his chest and red spatter the dust behind him. Small, harmless looking red patches. He was kicked back several feet and bounced in the dust before lying still.
   The gun ran dry. Fasir set up another case while I changed the barrel, already shimmering from the heat. Spent brass casings rolled around underfoot as I swung the weapon to find another target.
   The Gulf forces were in complete disarray. Some tried to push their way back through their lines while others were still trying to advance. I aimed at the largest clump of troops; Finder on the other gun had the same idea.
   Two M60s caught the same area in a crossfire. The effect was devastating. Rows of Sathe toppled like grass in a strong wind, but these ranks of flesh and blood stayed down. Sathe screamed and howled, trying to run, some hugging the ground which was turning into a reddish, viscous mud. Had the legendary Charge of the Light Brigade been anything like this?
   Pity the poor sods.
   Through half a case of ammo I kept firing.
   When—finally—the firing sputtered to a halt, the silence was deafening. An acrid cloud of propellant hung about the gun, the stench of hot steel and brass stinging at my eyes. The Gulf attack was in full retreat, the field littered with their dead.
   We’d hammered them badly, but how much ammunition had it cost us? A more than considerable amount of the limited 7.62mm stuff, and a fair bit of the 5.56mm ammo for the M-16s.
   At least it’d gone down the way I wanted it: We drew them into a serious assault, then hit them back hard. That’d slow them down a lot, buy some time for our reinforcements to arrive.
   Fasir was also watching the fleeing Gulf soldiery. His eyes were red-rimmed and watery, his nose running. The gun fumes in the confined space really didn’t agree with him. He sneezed.
   Along the battlements a mass howl rose after the retreating red and black uniforms. Weather Rock Sathe were dancing on the ramparts, yowling obscenities at the Gulfs’ backs. They were alive while the ones who’d tried to kill them were dead. Can you blame their exuberance?
   “You alright, kid?” I asked Fasir.
   He rubbed his eyes, spat in distaste and flicked his ears. “I will live. Will it all be this easy?”
   “We can only hope.”
   “They cannot take losses like that for long.”
   “Yeah. Unfortunately we can’t hold off attacks like that for too long. How much ammo did we use?”
   He did a quick check. “Almost two cases.”
   I whistled. “A lot of lead.”
   “They will have trouble swimming.”
   I laughed at that. It broke the tension.
   “Good work,” I grinned, then slapped him on the shoulder and clambered out of that goddamned little nest of sandbags and half-rounds. The other Sathe on the tower were distinctly more disposed to approach Fasir with their congratulations rather than me.
   Didn’t bother me too much. You get used to it. I was content to lean against the wall and stare at the Gulf positions, wondering what they’d get up to.
   “K’hy… Sir?”
   “Hey, Chirthi. How did it go along there?”
   “Incredible. Oh… we had one casualty. She took an arrow through the eye. Had her head in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
   “One…” I shook my head. “Could’ve been a lot worse. What about ammunition?”
   “The small guns used maybe seven percent. The big one… about thirty at a rough guess.”
   “Ahhh… shit! Maybe they won’t be stupid enough to try another couple of attacks like that one.”
   “If they do, they will be climbing over their own bodies.”
   “But how many can they afford to lose?” I asked myself and went back to the wall, leaning against a merlon and staring at the enemy encampment. There was a small bunch of Sathe on llama-back out in front of their lines. I caught a flash, light glinting off glass… a telescope? Sathe had them—in fact Rehr had one in his study—but the clarity of the lenses left a lot to be desired. Whoever it was, they were watching us.
   I lifted my M-16 to the parapet and squinted through the scope. So you’re the opposition.
   The central Sathe was holding something with a golden, metallic sheen to it. An expansive red cloak surrounded the body, but I got a glimpse of white fur on the head. The others in the group were military types; red and black armor with matching cloaks.
   Lowering the rifle I squinted across at the enemy lines. At that distance they were indistinct, like dolls, but their uniforms stood out like sore thumbs. A real snappily dressed bunch. Officers.
   Okay. What’s the range, two hundred yards? A little over, probably… I raised the rifle again, propping it on a sandbag and fiddling with the sights. About right. I snugged the rifle into my shoulder, relaxing…
   Squeeze.
   I hardly noticed the retort. Through the scope a second passed, then one of the llamas went down, taking its rider with it. Hastily the others reined around and put some more distance between us.
   “Shit!”
   The fallen officer struggled out from under his beast and raced after the others, leaving his mount on the road. I fired two more rounds without much effect. They were still over there, carrying on a very animated conversation. The central figure raised his spyglass, staring straight at me.
   I gave a tight, humorless grin and waved back.

   There was no moon that night. Heavy banks of clouds covered the sky, only a pale glow seeping through. In the gloom I couldn’t see two yards.
   Lights glowed in the town behind us, friendly warm-orange windows and doors. Promises of warmth. On the walls? Nothing. Even a torch would screw up a Sathe’s night vision, making them sitting duck to any enemy snipers who might try to sneak in. Still, on a night like that, even they couldn’t see much.
   “There you are.” A shadowy figure approached me.
   “Chirthi?” I squinted into the gloom.
   “Yes. So, what do you see out there tonight?” He laughed.
   “Very funny, I don’t think.”
   He hissed. “I thought you had good eyes. Hitting a llama from this distance, that was impressive shooting. Tell me: Was there a reason for that particular one? Ah, advisor to their commander, a?”
   I smiled. “Well, it’ll make them keep their heads down.” But it wouldn’t stop them. Even now they were probably trying to sneak troops across the river upstream, downstream, anywhere they could. Cut us off eventually.
   “Sir?” Chirthi broke into my thoughts, sounding uncomfortable. “Do you mind if I ask… Is it true that you were a… a quartermaster?”
   I nodded: “Yes, among other things.”
   He used a single finger to scratch beneath his cuirass and grinned in the moonlight. “Somehow you do not seem like just a box pusher. I mean, that thing you are putting together in town, how did you learn to build something like that? You did other work?”
   “I repaired machinery. I think you’d call that an engineer.” That didn’t translate perfectly into Sathe.
   “You built siege engines?”
   “No, not those. There were other machines… We use them instead of wagons. Also things like…” I trailed off helplessly. “I think your speech doesn’t have the words for them.”
   “Well, then where did you learn your strategy?”
   “History is a good teacher,” I replied, touching the cold stone of a merlon. Off in the distance a wolf howled; another, even more distant, answered. “I’ve been trained… and my kind has had a long time to learn about things like this.”
   His green eyes blinked at me. “You have not actually been in a situation like this before?”
   “No.”
   “You have been in any kind of battle?”
   “Only war games.”
   “Games?” He sounded incredulous. “You have not actually fought?”
   I shrugged. “Our last war… well, I never saw action. My unit wasn’t assigned. The games were just larger versions of the exercises I had you do, more soldiers, weapons… all that. Our way of life is… different from yours, so we had to be taught things you would take for granted.”
   “Oh? Such as?”
   “Hunting. Killing and preparing food.”
   He looked like I’d offered to shave him. “But that… who does not know how to do that!?”
   Nobody—here. But there were enough people back home who’d never had to kill anything in their lives. With all their food provided by others, their idea of roughing it was to park a Winnebago in a campsite and worry that they won’t be able to use their satellite dish when the extension cord doesn’t reach the outlet.
   I shrugged. “Like I said, life is… was different.”
   “You miss it?”
   “What, with all this to keep me busy?” I waved a hand at the town and battlefield somewhere out there in the dark. “Yes.”
   Chirthi’s ears flickered then settled down, slanting backward slightly: Caution. “You often go off to be alone, sir.” His tongue flicked around his thin lips and he scratched his muzzle with a clawtip. “You are uncomfortable around us?”
   “It’s not that simple.” I turned and leaned my forehead against the cool stones of the wall. “It isn’t you personally, it’s just that sometimes… I don’t know how to say it… I need time to sort things out with myself.” I paused, then added, “Sathe are strange.”
   He hissed. “You find us strange?”
   I shrugged. “You’ve lived here all your life. I am always finding out new things about you. Some of the things I learn are… disturbing, such as childbirth.”
   “Ahh,” his head rocked back a touch, a stiffening of his posture, then: “It is not proper to talk about that.” I saw him glance toward me, “Your kind do not… that does not happen to you, does it.”
   “No.”
   Again: “Ahh.”
   There was another silence. There was a thin mist forming in the darkness, moisture falling from the clouds. Droplets were beading on his pelt, glittering in the tufted fur of his ears like minute pearls, scattering when his ears twitched. “Did you hear that?”
   Nothing but a few voices back in the town, rattle of a wagon as supplies were moved from damaged warehouses.
   “Rot it! I heard something. Voices, out there.”
   “You see anything?”
   “Uh… No. Plagues! I heard it!”
   I hadn’t heard anything, but I wasn’t about to question a Sathe’s hearing; as good as their night vision. I couldn’t compete, but I could compensate. I snapped open a cargo pouch and produced the flare pistol. Don’t leave home without it. The orange plastic gun kicked in my hands and a trail of smoke snaked up into the darkness above the fields.
   Even through the mists, the flash of light was dazzling. A red sun hung in the sky, spitting sparks and smoke while casting blood-red light on the ground below. The four Gulf troopers out in the fields were thrown into sharp relief, freezing motionless in surprise and fear. The three wounded soldiers they were trying to drag back to their own lines must have been lying there all day. They were covered in muck; dried mud and blood. The conscious ones stared back at me along the barrel of the rifle, another closed his eyes and kicked feebly with his legs, whimpering something.
   I took my finger off the trigger. They were unarmed, unarmored, and in no condition to fight anyway.
   The flare drew attention from both camps, guards shouting and running to see what the commotion was. Eastern sentries leaned over the battlements, waiting for me to blow the Gulf Sathe to hell and back. I didn’t. Instead, I lowered my gun and shouted out, “You! Get your wounded and get out of here! Go on, move!”
   The flare sputtered and died and the darkness rolled back in.
   “Are they going?”
   Chirthi squinted into the darkness. “I think so… yes. Why did you do that?” he hissed.
   I slipped the safety on again. “They were unarmed. It couldn’t hurt to let them reclaim their wounded.”
   “But that is crazy! We are trying to kill them and you help them!?”
   I sighed and leaned against the wall, damp stone soaked my jacket. “Also, if we let them take their wounded back, they have to look after them, do they not?”
   He turned and flicked his ears in an amused smile. “So they have still more useless mouths to feed. More of a strain on their resources and supplies.”
   I looked at him and twisted my mouth. I had a sudden craving for a cigarette. “Yeah. That, too.”

   My eyes snapped open as soon as I felt the touch on my shoulder, my heart jumped into my throat, my fist stopping before I decked the Green. I’d grown touchy; in the past three days, I’d only had about six hours sleep, all told.
   “What the fuck do you want!?” I rasped. My mouth tasted like a stable floor.
   “Apologies, High One!” he blurted. “Sir, R’R’Rhasct sent for you. It is important.”
   “Uhnn,” I muttered, sat up, swearing as I struggled into my boots. “Okay, where to?”
   The guards at North gate had spotted the wagon as it approached the town not ten minutes ago. There was nobody driving it, the llamas pulling it just ambled up to the gates at their own lazy pace and began rooting up grass.
   Now it rested just inside the gate, a few guards in a wide circle around it.
   I gave it a second look. Just a wagon; wooden, with spoked metal-bound wheels, two llamas… Whatever was in the bed was lumpy, unmoving, and covered by a stained burlap tarpaulin. There was no sign of any driver or passengers.
   R’R’Rhasct intercepted me as I approached. Her ears were drooping and there was an expression on her face that I can only describe as glazed. “We are cut off,” she said. “There are Gulf forces to the north. Probably not many at this time, but enough to stop caravans going through.”
   “You’re sure?”
   She hooked my elbow and drew me to the back of the wagon. There was a fetid, heavy stench that stuck in the back of my throat. When a couple of guards pulled the tarp back a cloud of flies rose into the air. I gagged, the smell was overwhelming. It took a while before I understood what I was looking at.
   Eventually the garish lumps lying in there—mounds streaked and ribbed with red, yellow-white, and purplish-blue—focused: There an arm, a head resting on a leg. Five Sathe, four adults and a cub.
   They’d been skinned. All of them had been skinned.
   My last meal tried to climb back up.
   “Their teeth,” R’R’Rhasct said in a flat voice. “Their teeth and their claws. Gone. Trophies, decorations.”
   I gagged and turned away as my stomach leapt, clutching the side of the wagon and breathing hard to keep my guts down. R’R’Rhasct caught my arm, led me away from the grisly scene. “You alright?” she asked.
   “Y… yes,” I choked. “Gimme a minute.” I sat down heavily on a porch fronting one of the buildings lining Main Street. “Oh, shit.”
   “You were right,” she said. “They are around behind us. We are cut off. We do not know how many of them there are. We cannot afford to escort caravans out of the town…” she trailed off. Her pink tongue whipped around her thin black lips and her leathery nostrils flared
   I nodded. Unless we got reinforcements, we weren’t going anywhere.
   “Sir,” she said. “I am sorry you had to see that. I did not know you would be so badly… affected.”
   I shook my head. “No. You did right. It gives me a reason to fight them.” I looked at the sky, then dropped my head into my clenched fists. “Damnation! They were Sathe. They were people!” I hissed.
   The Sathe’s eyes went wide. “Rhasct,” I grated. “If any Sathe under my command treats a prisoner like… like that, I swear I will have his ears for a necklace! Spread it!”

   The M60 hammered and Sathe howled and tumbled to the dirt. I shifted my aim to a clump of enemy infantry and clamped the trigger back, the spent brass ringing off the stones beside me.
   They were trying again. This time at least, they had a plan: a massed, two-pronged attack at the east and west corners of the town walls where the least amount of firepower could be brought to bear. The problem with that maneuver was that they tended to bunch up, presenting choice pickings for the Greens and their automatic rifles and GPMGs.
   A crossbow quarrel thunked into a nearby sandbag. A nearby Green took aim and felled an archer who was busy recocking his bow. They had advanced beyond the punji spikes even though many of them had been left clutching their feet and limping wildly, but there were more surprises.
   Give them full marks for guts though! Or stupidity. The regulars charged forward, into the teeth of automatic fire, then they hit the covered trenches. The front lines just vanished as the ground collapsed under their feet and the close packed ranks behind them tried to stop or jump the sudden hazard. Some stopped, some teetered, then went over. The trenches were too wide to jump.
   And they were lined with three-foot long spikes. You could hear the screams from the walls. Like dropping a bag of cats into a food processor.
   “Jesus.”
   It was enough to make the Gulf charge falter. Soldiers stood on the sides of the trenches, just staring, trying to find a way across. Some were reaching down, trying to help comrades out even as quarrels and bullets rained down on them. They had guts, but whatever nerve they had deserted them when the balloon went up.
   Yes, ‘balloon’. As big as a house, it rose over the buildings of Weather Rock. A patchwork canopy climbed into the still evening air, swaying slightly in an errant breeze. It steadily lifted, higher and higher, until it was hanging a hundred meters above the town.
   For the Gulf forces it was the final straw. Many threw down their arms as they turned and fled. One by one, the defenders on the walls realized that the Gulf soldiers were running from something behind them. They turned and stared at the balloon floating above their town, not a few of them looked like they were about to go over the walls after their enemies.
   I tipped my helmet back to stare up at the balloon. “Well, I’ll be damned. It works!”

   Putting it together in time had been a real bitch. To start with, the Sathe don’t have silk, not real silk. How can they? The caterpillars that produce silk don’t exist in the States, not in this world nor mine. The closest they can come is a tight-woven, lightweight cotton that doesn’t hold air that well by itself. But lacquer it with a coat of the varnish Sathe make from pine gum, and it’ll hold air well enough to get you off the ground. What with the weight of the bag, the thing couldn’t take much in the way of a payload, but it could manage an observer and enough fuel to keep it up for a while. Provided the weather decided to cooperate, anyway. For intelligence it was invaluable, giving us a bird’s-eye view of the entire battlefield. We knew what the Gulf forces were up to almost as soon as they did. We could pinpoint troop concentrations and foresee just where they would strike next. That gave us the time to move arbalests and mangonels into position along the walls.
   It also gave us the first warning of the worst news possible.
   From the gondola of the balloon I watched in dismay as more ranks of Sathe marched from the forest road. Reinforcements; swelling the diminished ranks of the Gulf army besieging Weather Rock. Tendrils of soldiers were making their way eastwards, forming another camp downstream from us. In the town below Sathe were crowded along the ramparts, watching the enemy reinforcements in silence.
   There were a hell of a lot more than five thousand; eight, maybe nine thousand at a guesstimate. Where had they come from? I guessed that the Gulf armies were sweeping up through Eastern territory in three prongs, maybe more. We had stopped one of those prongs, and now another had joined it; whether through a request for reinforcements or a prearranged meeting, I didn’t know.
   I sighed. At least the air up here was clean. Down at ground level the miasma from the dead of war was noticeable all the time, at its worst around midday. Up here the only stink was from the coke fire burning above my head. I looked across at the Gulf encampment, a hollow feeling settling inside me. Maybe we could hold them for a bit longer, but not forever. Never forever. It was only going to be a matter of time. A gust of wind set the basket rocking gently, creaking. For a few seconds I eyed the guy rope; it’d be so easy to cut it, float away over another world…
   Yeah. Easy. Shaking my head I waved to the ground crew way below. The balloon bobbed once, then started to descend.

   Someone over there, maybe the commander of the recent reinforcements, had started to use his gray matter.
   Damnation!
   Trenches and low walls of earth braced with wooden beams zig-zagged their way across the fields to where Gulf troops labored at raising bulwarks against rifle fire. They’d learned to keep their heads down when they discovered that three hundred meters is not an M-16’s maximum effective range. Nobody bothered—or dared—to recover the bodies, they were still sprawled on the earthen breastworks that grew hourly.
   Now they stretched in a gentle crescent the width of the town, east to west.
   Again, thank god for our eye-in-the-sky. From the walls—even the three-story ramparts of the Keep—it was impossible to see what was going on behind those bulwarks. From over a hundred meters above the town it was obvious, but there wasn’t much we could do about it.

   With a crack and spray of granite chips, a rock the size of my head struck the top of the wall and pulverized a merlon. Another arced over and kicked up a dusty cloud as it impacted the packed earth of the courtyard. A soldier was being carried off, screaming and thrashing with a smashed leg.
   The battery of Gulf catapults were hidden from line of sight behind hastily constructed breastworks. I could see their spotters giving directions. There was a volley of muffled thumps and dark shapes curved towards us.
   I ducked back behind a merlon as stones clattered against the wall. There were muted impacts as more hit the sandbags over our heads.
   Chirthi looked across at me from behind his piece of cover. “So, what do we do now?”
   “I’m working on it. Can our catapults hit those things?”
   He peered around the stone. “Only with small stones. They may crack a few skulls, but nothing we could throw would have much effect on their machines.”
   “Even if we could, they would simply build new ones,” R’R’Rhasct pointed out.
   “How many have they got?”
   “Last count: Fourteen. They fire them in volleys.”
   Another projectile flew in with a whirling hiss to shatter against the wall, knocking another merlon loose. The piece of fortification tumbled out of sight.
   Shit! You ever have one of those days..?
   I tipped my helmet off and scratched my head. I needed a bath. “Okay, the Sathe using those things, those are their engineers? The ones who build their equipment?”
   “Yes.”
   “Then we will have to take the catapults and their operators out at the same time.”
   “Wonderful, “Chirthi said. “Just one question: How? You have an idea?”
   “Uh-huh.” I surveyed the town for a few seconds. “Okay, get the balloon up with a spotter crew and get the catapults ready and crewed.” Messengers scampered off into the town.
   “Alright, Chirthi,” I said, slapped my hand on his shoulder to pull him along. “I will explain on the way.”

   The smoke-stained wall—all that remained of what had once been a house—shattered under the impact of a boulder. I heard the crack and turned in time to see Sathe scurrying clear as the two-story shell of a building slowly folded in on itself, in a rumble of falling masonry and a rising cloud of dust.
   Weather Rock mangonels thumped in response, sending stones sailing back at the Gulf lines on lazy, graceful arcs to land with inaudible thuds and puffs of dust against the Gulf breastworks.
   Gulf soldiers waved back at us, their jeers carrying on the wind along with the stench of rotting carrion.
   I leaned back against a merlon and squinted up at the balloon, the chaos of colors, like a patchwork beach ball against the bottomless blue of the sky. I patted the M-60’s forearm assembly then swung the weapon up to settle it on a sandbag. About forty meters out. Dial the sights. Ease breath out, hold it, relax, first pressure, adjust aim, squeeze…
   Muzzle flash burst—and the Gulf trooper flipped over backwards. Instantly the others were down in the mud, scrambling back for their lines. The one I’d just hit was still kicking, the round had been a little low.
   I ducked back behind the merlon and yelled down to the Greens in the courtyard behind the south gate, “Down, three marks.”
   Finder waved back to me. “Ready!”
   I gave the signal: “Fire one.”
   The hollow phthonk of a 81mm mortar firing echoed off the town walls like fireworks in a trash can. Seconds later a blur plunged down into the Gulf fortifications. The blast of high explosive sent a cloud of dust fountaining into the air. I saw a log flip upwards, tumbling end over end to hit the ground and cartwheel to a standstill like a caber. Maybe the throwing arm from a catapult.
   In the balloon above us a spotter sent the signal ‘on target’. A lucky first shot. The spotters changed their flags, waving out corrections to the mortars.
   There were more distant thumps and a volley of heavy boulders slammed into the walls, knocking masonry loose. I saw one knock a chunk out of the corner of the gatehouse where it rose above the walls, spraying chips of pulverized rock and clouds of mortar on the parapets below.
   The three mortars fired more volleys, one after the other, in a dozen raggedly spaced coughs. Sathe cavorted on the walls, howls and yelps of triumph rising as the rounds burst along the length of the Sathe trenches. Columns of dust and smoke rose and spread above their fortifications, drifting down like a black fog as the concussion of the blasts died beyond even the rolling thunder of echoes. Sathe emerged from the haze; just a few, dazed and wounded, hauling themselves over the breastworks to lie twitching in the mud and trampled grain.
   From the balloon I heard a cry, “In their heart!” The flags waved directions for the next volley: down fifteen marks, left two.
   A single mortar thumped. The round struck further back, amidst the tents and pavilions of the Gulf camp. Again the spotters waved corrections and again the mortar fired; five more times. The Weather Rock catapults joined in, lobbing grenades over into the Gulf positions, the sharp explosions mixing with the blasts from HE mortar shells. Even when the mortars fell silent—with only a few rounds left—the catapults continued firing. Sathe, male and female, stripped in the heat of the day, labored to haul down the ponderous oak arms. The whole assembly kicked like a mule when those arms slammed up, one after the other, three more volleys of six grenades. Then more towers of smoke were climbing toward the sky; screams wailed across the fields.
   In their heart!

   Two hours later, trails of oily smoke still rose from the Gulf siegeworks, the sounds of panicked shouting shrilling on the air. Chirthi turned his furry back on the panorama and regarded me with bright eyes. “What other tricks have you got hidden away?”
   “Not enough,” I ran my fingers through greasy hair. “I saw the Gulf messenger. What was that about?”
   “They wish to parley and Fres’s accepted the offer.”
   “Uh,” I nodded. “Good. At least we can buy time.” A thought struck me and I bit my lip. “That was her reason?” I asked. “Just buying time? She doesn’t plan to…”
   He turned and led the way toward the southern gatehouse. “I think so sir, but…” he broke off.
   “But what?” I prompted.
   “She has to consider her people. There is the chance—however remote—that perhaps she does wish to surrender, despite her oaths to the Realm.”
   “I think she’s not that type,” I replied. She had already defied the Gulf Realm, and seriously pissed them off. If she surrendered, they might just pound the Fres’s clan into the dust from sheer spite.
   “I hope you are a good judge of character, because there is now no doubt that the Gulf realm would do anything to get your knowledge.”
   “It is one thing to have the mind, but it is another to find out what is inside it,” I grinned at Chirthi with a lot more confidence than I felt.
   He didn’t look convinced. “Failing that, I think Hraasa would be satisfied to have you impaled and roasted over a spit.”
   I grimaced. “Thanks. Hey, if something does happen to me, make sure that Rehr knows about it. It’s very important. All right?”
   He bowed his head: “As you wish.”
   Fres’s was waiting at the southern gate along with several of her lieutenants. I caught the scroll she carelessly tossed me and stared at it helplessly. The Clan Lord looked surprised when I ruefully told her I could not read.
   “Their lord says that he wishes to meet on the road halfway between our camps. There are to be no more than five in our party,” she looked at me, “and it must include you and myself.”
   Going out there. Finally face to face with the bastard who’d put me through hell and back. I felt my heart lurch and glanced toward the heavy wooden gates. “You are agreeing, High One?”
   “Yes.”
   “Do you wish to surrender?”
   She hesitated before answering: “I do not know. You have seen their new forces arriving, they have siege engines and many thousands of fresh troops.” Her claws punched through the paper she was holding, “Unless you know of a way to stop them cold… No? I did not think so; and your weapons will not stop them forever. If nothing else, I may be able to give us some time.”
   “Do you really think they will offer reasonable terms?”
   “No, but I have to search every branch for a solution,” she rubbed her muzzle. “Are you willing to accompany me?”
   I nodded. “Yes.”
   “Sir!” Chirthi protested. “You cannot…”
   “Yes, I can!” I snapped, wiping my hand across my face, bringing it away covered in grime.
   “You do not trust that turd?”
   “No, I don’t. There’s something I need from the barracks…”

   R’R’Rhasct’s yowling shriek echoed off the walls behind us as our small group rode out of the gatehouse.
   “I told you she would not be happy,” Chirthi muttered.
   I glanced back over my shoulder. “That was a good reason for not letting her know.” Felt good to get back at that furball for what she’d done to me. Behind us, I could hear Sathe voices howling in argument as R’R’Rhasct tried to persuade the wardens to open the gate. They had their orders and they stayed shut.
   The smell around us became incredible as we passed through the center of the battlefield, the Sathe riding and me walking; nothing would persuade me to try and ride a llama. I’d look ridiculous. Besides, it was extremely doubtful they could carry my weight any distance. Flies buzzed around bloated corpses, what remained of the casualties from earlier battles after the scavengers had eaten their fill. Flesh had putrefied, turned to black slime. Faces from which the fur had fallen swollen and black, bone and eye sockets and rib cages squirming with maggots and decaying flesh. More recent cadavers were still recognizable as individuals, unseeing eyes—their third eyelid half drawn in death—staring at us.
   I shuddered and turned my head away, to see the same view on the other side. The Sathe were gasping through their mouths. For once, I pitied their superior sense of smell.
   As we drew further away from the town, the stench grew less. It was by pure misfortune that the town lay on the down side of the prevailing winds. In the distance ahead we could see riders setting out from the Gulf camp to our south.
   “There are more than five of them,” Chirthi observed glumly.
   “They’re holding the cards,” I said. The Sathe all looked at me. “Forget it.”
   The two parties stopped a goodly distance away from each other. Nine warriors in their black and red armor cloaks, all carrying swords and bows at the ready, spread out across the road while their leader rode forward to meet Fres’s halfway.
    Hraasa. Hraasa, the enemy I had plenty of reasons to fear and hate but had never seen. Now I was looking at him. I wasn’t that impressed.
   True, as a High Lord, an autocrat in the Sathe aristocracy, he was larger than most, but beyond that he wasn’t staggeringly exotic. A patch of silver-white fur on his muzzle made an arrow targeted on his broad nose, but otherwise his fur was an unobtrusive fawn. His armor was a matte black that seemed to soak up the sun. Hot.
   The wind whirled small clouds of dust over my boots as I stood and waited for something to happen.
   Finally Hraasa laid his ears back slightly and looked down his nose at Fres’s. “I am glad that you decided to listen to our terms, Fres’s.”
   “I had nothing better to do,” she replied just as easily, as if talking to an old acquaintance. How many noticed one corner of her thin lips curled to show a flash of white? “What is it that you want?”
   “I want to know why you continue to resist us,” he snapped, all pretense of amicability vanishing under the sodium harshness of his glare. “You know that you cannot win. We have thirteen thousand warriors and engines of war. More than enough to level your pathetic town to rubble.
   “I am not ungenerous. I am offering you the chance to survive. Any of your warriors who accept my amnesty will be gladly welcomed and well treated. Surely you do not want to be responsible for the complete demise of the Fres’s Clan.”
   “The Fres’s Clan has chosen, unanimously, to fight you,” Fres’s replied; level and cool. “You have played games with honor, you have murdered, stolen, lied, raped, and destroyed. There is no way that I would surrender our cubs to your soiled claws.”
   He bowed his head slightly. “Only an idiot would claim that war is a clean exercise,” he said. “Those traps that litter the ground outside your walls, are they honorable? I think not. We are taking back the land that is rightfully ours. I know when you stole it from us, you showed us no mercy.”
    Fres’s looked incredulous. “That was so long ago there are not even any records. Our Realms did not even know of each other’s existence! And there was no mercy needed; there was no fighting. That land was empty! You cannot claim what no one owned!” Fres’s spat.
   “Temper; outbursts like that do not become you,” the other growled. Then looked over Fres’s’ shoulder, seeing me as if for the first time. “I have heard much about this creature, Clan Lord, but it is even stranger and uglier in the flesh. You: Come here!”
   I looked at Fres’s. At her gesture, I reluctantly handed my M-16 to Chirthi, then stepped up alongside Fres’s’. All the Gulf warriors stared at me and I tried to ignore them.
   “You have caused me much pain,” the Gulf commander told me.
   “You should talk,” I replied coldly.
   His eyes widened slightly, then he flickered his ears in amusement. “Ah. You speak better than I had expected. Do you know that when I was told that a monster had saved the life of Tahr ai Shirai, I had those responsible for the failure executed? Huh…” He shook his head.
   “I can believe that,” Fres’s muttered.
   He ignored her. “Your name is K’hy? Yes? Good. You see, I endeavored to find out as much about you as I possibly could when I learned that indeed you did exist. You would be most interested to find out how that came about.” He cocked his head to one side; inviting me to ask.
   “How did you learn?” I asked through clenched teeth.
   “There was a commotion on the docks one day. A fishing boat had come in with a strange catch; a yellow boat literally made from air, and an incredible creature,” he said, then grinned at me. “Unfortunately we did not realize how ill the creature was. We took his reluctance to cooperate as belligerence; he died in our… care.”
   I felt numb, hollow. I gritted my teeth and said nothing. A man. Another human, and he had killed him. That hurt!
   “Tell me,” he continued. “Why do you fight for the Eastern Realm? I can offer you great power, wealth, whatever you wish.”
   It was my turn to laugh; grimly. “What I want, you cannot possibly offer.”
   “You wish to return home?”
   “You’ve done your homework.” First Fres’s and now him. Was there a book out about me or something?
   He tipped his head quizzically but didn’t ask, instead said, “Why do you oppose me? This war is really none of your business, you know. It is a Sathe affair, Outsider.”
   “No,” I shook my head. “You made it my business. It has been my business since I came here and witnessed murder. It’s been my business since you had me drugged and kidnapped, beaten and tortured. You wouldn’t leave me alone. I had to take sides.”
   He wrinkled his muzzle, the silver fur rippling and the thin black lips drawing back in a grin, “But if you are killed here, then what will become of your female?”
   That jolted me again. “If something happens to either of us, you will be the one to regret it.”
   He looked amused. “I doubt that you have that kind of power.”
   “You have no real idea of what powers I have,” I grinned deliberately. “I have made sure that should we fail here, the Eastern Realm will be even more powerful.”
   He smiled lazily. “If indeed you do have such powers, why do you not use them against us?”
   “Perhaps it is because I have a… conscience. Should I become responsible for the death of not just these thousands, but untold millions in the future, I would be no better than you.”
   “Ah, very noble,” he grinned. “Yet you would happily decimate our brave troops with your weapons.”
   “Not happily,” I replied. “Never happily. But I would rather kill those I consider my enemies than have my friends killed.”
   “You would consider these your friends?”
   I looked at the Eastern Sathe lined up behind me, then turned back. “Yes.”
   “What do you see in them that is lacking in us?”
   “Do you really want a list?”
   That got him. His jaw tightened and ears trembled; Looked like he wasn’t used to people talking back. “Fres’s,” he hissed to the Clan Lord. “There is another path that you may take, one that should be more appealing to you. I offer you the chance to end this war here and now.
   “Look around you, look at the death. You can also see that your town really has no chance. You are their Clan Lord. It is your duty and your honor to protect them, to let them live. You can still do this.”
   I could see the truck coming.
   Fres’s bit: “How?”
   “Simply give this… this abomination into my hands.”
   It wasn’t such a surprise but my heart lurched then began a staccato dance against my breastbone.
   The Gulf Lord continued without so much as a blink: “I swear—as I am willing to before an assembly of Clan Lords of all realms—that all our forces will return to the Borderland River and the southern provinces will be acknowledged as belonging to the Eastern Realm.
   “Think of it Hystf ai Fres’s. You could end this fighting simply by handing the outsider into our care.”
   It was bait well chosen and Fres’s nibbled like a trout after a dry-fly. It was me or her Clan. I looked at her sitting as though frozen on her tooled leather saddle. It was her decision.
   I knew, as I had never been certain about anything, what it would be like if Hraasa got me. I don’t claim to have much of a threshold for pain and Hraasa had had a human. There had been time for him to have his little games. He would know how I worked, what made me tick… what made me scream.
   And there were their drugs.
   Perhaps deep down that scared me more.
   Perhaps I could beat torture, but chemicals… I didn’t know.
   Damnation, they’re chemists before their time! Their thamil would knock me cold with just a whiff. They had other concoctions to paralyze, neuromuscular paralytics that would disconnect the brain from the muscles, opiates that would leave me babbling at clouds for hours afterwards. They had other substances—more refined and effective—that they used on each other. If they had anything like sodium pentothal…
   I couldn’t fight something that ate away from the inside, leaving me malleable like a piece of wet clay on the potter’s wheel.
   Eventually Hraasa would have what he wanted from me, then the Gulf Realm would be back, swarming over the Eastern Realm like ugly on a bulldog.
   And Hystf ai Fres’s knew this.
   And she hesitated.
   “Think,” Hraasa goaded, his voice becoming silky-smooth. “The chance to finish this dying lies in your claws; simply reach out and grasp the opportunity!”
   The Clan Lord of Weather Rock clenched her right hand, then flexed it and gazed with slitted eyes at the tiny opalescent scythes that curved from her fingertips as Hraasa’s words washed over her.
   “Why do you hesitate, Fres’s? Do you place this creature above the safety of your Clan, above the lives of your cubs? What Outsider can mean so much? You heard it say it has the ability to destroy us, yet it chooses not to. Instead it plays games with your people, watching them die to save its own miserable hide.” Hraasa smiled slowly, smugly. “I leave the decision in your hands. Decide, Fres’s.”
   She made her decision.
   “Hraasa, you can shove it.”
   Hraasa’s ears shot up. He must’ve been as surprised as I was. Where the hell had she learned that? She must have overheard something I said.
   “That means no?” Hraasa asked.
   “Exactly.”
   “Then I think this meeting is at an end,” the Gulf Commander said, nodding slightly in a token gesture of respect. Fres’s returned the hollow honor and reined her llama about. I turned to follow but was stalled by the Gulf Lord’s soft voice, for my ears only:
   “Pause, K’hy!”
   I stopped and turned to him.
   “A gift from your fellow creature.” He pulled a small bundle out of a pouch at his belt and threw it. The bundle unrolled in the air, dumping the contents on the ground.
   A severed hand lay there in the bleached dust; a human hand.
   I just stared at it, not quite believing what I was seeing.
   “I thought that you would like to know his hide is still intact… excepting that piece, of course,” Hraasa continued. “A shame the skin is so delicate though; it makes stuffing that much harder. At this time his hide is the centerpiece of attraction in the great hall, the rest of him… really, he was delicious.”
   The words took a second to sink in, then I slowly raised my head to stare at him, the shock turning to anger.
   “You… didn’t.”
   He grinned, then ran his tongue around his lips.
   “You… you Motherfucker!” The one step I took toward him was all the provocation he needed.
   One smooth move and the Gulf commander was holding a stubby .38 revolver. For a split second I was staring down a muzzle that to me seemed the size of a cannon’s bore, the savage grin of Hraasa behind it.
   Even as I tried to dodge thunder exploded in my face, burning pain and another hammer and dirt and dust was choking me while I gasped for a breath that wouldn’t come. Another hammer…

   “Get him inside! No, gently! Gently—over there! Where is that festering physician? Hurry!”
   Hands caught at me and every muscle in my chest tried to tear itself apart. I was aware of being carried, then the heat of the sun was cut off, as was the noise.
   “How is he? I had no idea that…”
   “You! Because of you this happened! Look at him! His death is something you are going to have to explain to the Shirai!”
   The voice sounded familiar, and it was annoying me.
   My face burned, my mouth was swollen, sore, and filled with a metallic taste. Every shallow breath hurt.
   “Fool! You had your orders not to let him risk himself, but what do you do? You go and…”
   There were other sounds in the distance: The muted sibilants of Sathe shouting, the bleat of llamas, the distant bustle of the town. That voice was familiar:
   “Rhasct,” I croaked. “Shut up.”
   She did—abruptly—then hands touching my cheeks. “K’hy?”
   I opened my eyes, staring straight into her astonished face. Chirthi looked just as surprised.
   “K’hy?” R’R’Rhasct wiped fingers down my chin: they came away red. “Bring water!” she snapped at a guard who disappeared out the door. I was lying on a stretcher in a small room with solid stone walls, cool air. Where am I… the gatehouse?
   I moved my arm and moaned out loud. Damnation! This must be what a punching bag feels like. My entire belly felt like a single bruise, my head throbbed in time with the lights in front of my eyes and there was an overwhelming taste of copper in my mouth.
   But I was alive!
   I felt fantastic.
   “Stay still,” R’R’Rhasct urged, pushing me back. “Do not move.”
   “Bullshit!” I mumbled again. My nose… shit, it felt like it was broken. That explained the blood. With a groan I sat up and started fumbling with my cloak. “Oh, shit! Chirthi, help me with this.”
   He started to, but R’R’Rhasct slapped a hand into his chest, stopping him, “You have done quite enough…”
   “Rhasct!” I said softly and she shut up. She watched as Chirthi helped me remove the cloak and shirt; he had to cut them away as I couldn’t lift my arms without pain. Two Sathe—one a guard and the other a physician—hovered in the doorway.
   “He knew what he was doing,” Chirthi said.
   The Kevlar and fiberglass flak vest had stopped the .38 soft-nosed rounds, spreading the shock of their impact out across my entire torso. The bullets hadn’t penetrated, but my entire chest was burned and bruised. Better than dead any day. Chirthi fumbled with the straps and fastenings and I grimaced in pain when he lifted it off over my head. Two deformed bullets fell from the tattered glass fibers to rattle on the floor.
   R’R’Rhasct’s ears went flat when she saw my torso: old scar tissue, black and blue—but unpunctured.
   Chirthi snarled at her, then threw the flak vest aside and stalked out, pushing past the physician on his way through the door. The doctor glanced after the retreating soldier, then said, “I was told there was an emergency.”
   R’R’Rhasct spat, then snapped, “Yes. Him.”
   “That!?”
   “Him,” she snarled. “Check him. See if there is much damage. And K’hy,” she leveled a finger at me, “one word of complaint, we have ten guards in here to hold you down. Understand?”
   I opened my mouth, then shut it again.
   “Good.” She slapped the physician on the shoulder. “He is all yours.”
   I don’t think the doc even really knew what he was looking at. He grimaced at the scars covering me and gingerly began his examination, hissing, exclaiming to himself, looking up at Rhasct in surprise. “Is he supposed to have twelve ribs here?”
   “Yes,” I muttered. “Shit! Ouch! Careful.”
   “Sorry,” he said, then reared back in shock.
   “Yes,” Rhasct sighed, “he talks. Keep working.”
   He did so. I forced myself to lie back and capitulate to his poking and prodding. Ribs flexed and nerves screamed their protests under his pads. A rib sprained or cracked. Nothing broken, so the physician said.
   I’d never dreamed that Hraasa might actually have a gun!
   The skin on my abdomen was starred by contusions, rapidly turning black and blue, the muscles knotting and cramping painfully. “See, Rhasct? Nothing wrong with me.” I tried to stand, gasped and went light-headed with pain, and sat back down on the edge of the bed, hugging myself. My nose started bleeding again.
   “I hear you are going to live.” Fres’s was standing in the doorway.
   “High One…” Rhasct started to speak.
   “Out,” Fres’s jerked her hand, indicating R’R’Rhasct and the doctor. They left. She closed the door behind them.
   “High One,” I tried to stand again, to bow…
   “Do not even try it,” she pushed me down again. “You look terrible… Saaa! Your nose.”
   “Nothing serious.” I dabbed at the blood on my upper lip.
   She hissed again. “Shave you! Perhaps I should have gifted you to the Gulf Realm, K’hy. That was an incredibly stupid thing to do. If Hraasa had known that you lived we would not have been able to stop him taking you. You would not have woken in Weather Rock.”
   “Yeah,” I said dryly. “That would have come as a bit of a surprise.”
   She fleered lips away from needle teeth. “It is no joking matter. I saw you when Hraasa offered those terms; you were terrified! You know as well as I what would happen if they hooked their claws in you.”
   I winced slightly. Did she have to use that metaphor? “Then why did you take so long to turn him down?” I asked.
   She looked guilty, then confessed, “It was a… tempting offer. Tell me, would it be so bad for the Gulf realm to have you?”
   I started to say something, stopped, tried to put it another way and couldn’t, remembering the pain of claws, the hissing of Sathe voices, the hand falling in the dirt and a mental picture of a human figure, motionless, gazing out across a smoke-filled room, aswarm with shadowy cat-like figures, the fireflies of torches reflected from cold glass eyes…
   “K’hy?”
   A lioness’ face was staring into mine, her breath hot and rank. My muscles were still trembling but my voice unnaturally calm, “High One. Should they take me… kill me. Please.”

   From high on the walls of the keep I watched yet another assault on Weather Rock being beaten back. Someone in the Gulf camp had a brain. They were advancing behind shields this time.
   There’d been a lull in the fighting, then the Gulf forces advanced from two sides, sheltering behind two meter high shields made from heavy half-rounds that needed several Sathe to move them. They managed to absorb the crossbow fire. The catapults could bowl them over like tenpins, but they were too slow, too unwieldy. It was the guns that stopped them. Even a round from an M-16 went straight through, and the M-60s chopped the shields to toothpicks and tore into the masses ranks behind. I guess they were screaming, but with the distance and roaring of gunfire, I couldn’t hear anything. Even so, a small group of them actually managed to make it on to the walls, where they quickly disappeared under the blades and flamethrowers of the defenders.
   Black shafts of smoke drifted up from the battlefield. Seen from my angle, the fires that caused them were hidden behind the city walls. Surviving Gulf warriors—those who were left—fled back to their respective hosts. There weren’t many of them.
   My chest ached as I limped down the narrow stairs, stepping aside to let the occasional surprised warrior past. The halls of the keep were large and airy, with polished stone floors and huge lattice windows. Tapestries, paintings, and glass sculptures decorated the hallways and chambers.
   I jumped as I almost collided with a guard coming around a corner, his arm and sky-blue armor sodden and dripping blood onto the marble flooring. He gazed at me with tired eyes and limped off down the corridor. I stared after him and felt guilty.
   The barracks were empty when I got back; the beds lying empty and shafts of sunlight streaming in through the dusty windows. A panicked mouse scuttled across the floor and vanished into a hole between two ill-fitting planks in the floor. I rubbed a clear spot in the grime coating the small window overlooking the street and watched as a precious few Sathe went about their business.
   Subdued groups of cubs wandered about; many of them had probably had their homes burnt on that night a year… No, only a couple of weeks ago. Wagons clattered by, taking weapons and supplies to the walls; bringing the wounded and the dead back across the river. Work had been started on a barricade on the bridge, but nobody held many illusions about being able to hold the Gulf Realm with that.
   Despite the drawbacks it could cause to the Eastern forces, we’d already decided to destroy the bridge rather than let it fall into enemy hands. That would only delay them for the few days it would take them to build another bridge or ford, but it was better than nothing.
   The wooden stairs creaked as six of the Greens wearily stalked into the room. They chattered quietly as they took off their jackets and bulkier pieces of equipment and left them strewn about on their pallets. Going off for food, they said. Perhaps sex as well. Alright, food I could believe, but if they had the energy to get it up after their extended shifts they had more stamina than I gave them credit for. I wished them luck and declined an invitation to tag along, warning them to have their pants on if the alarm gongs sounded. They laughed, slung their weapons over their shoulders and left, jokingly remarking that that may be the last chance they would have to enjoy themselves.
   Maybe they’re right.
   But God only knew where they got the energy.
   I stood at the dusty window, watching the traffic down on the street. God, sleep was something I needed, but there was so much to think over, so many things to do. How long would the ammo last? What if the weather didn’t hold and we couldn’t fly the balloon, where would they attack? Could we hold out? Would I die here?
   Outside, I saw R’R’Rhasct cross the street, walking slowly toward the barracks. She paused and looked back the way she had come—toward the walls—then entered the building. A few moments later she trudged up the stairs and went straight to her pallet where she dropped her rifle and rubbed her fawn mane with her hands, raking her claws through the tangles. Tired, worn, and upset.
   “Something wrong?”
   R’R’Rhasct whipped around, then relaxed. “Oh—Sir. I did not notice you.”
   “That’s a first,” I smiled.
   Still watching me, she sat down on her mattress. “Sir… K’hy, may I talk with you?”
   “Sure,” I went over to sit on the pallet opposite her. “What’s up?
   “What is..?” she began.
   “I meant, what’s happening.”
   “Oh,” she rubbed at her muzzle, then it twitched into a half-hearted snarl. “We fight against impossible odds and… My Ancestors! Why are males like that? I was wrong! I admit that freely. Why does he hold that against me!?” She suddenly turned away from me and curled up, trembling violently.
   “Hey!” I reached out and cautiously touched her bowed shoulder; surprised and puzzled. “This is Chirthi you’re talking about?”
   “Of course. Who did you think…” she broke off into an agitated chittering, her jaw jerking.
   “Hey—calm down.” I touched her mane, stroked it. “Please, Rhasct, what are you talking about?”
   Still curled in on herself she muttered, “I asked him… and he refused.”
   “What did you ask him?”
   The trembling resumed. “To be my mate of course, what else?”
   That threw me. I flinched back, then carefully asked, “Rhasct, I’m not so sure I can help you with this. Wouldn’t it be better to talk about this with another Sathe?”
   She hugged tighter in upon herself and hissed, long and slowly, like a tire being deflated. “Sir… K’hy… you are different. Male, yet not male. And you know so many things. I can trust you,” she forced a smile then and I touched her furry ears.
   “Thank you, I think.” I smiled uncertainly, pleased but also bewildered. Why did she come to me like this? I was no ancient, white-bearded philosopher; able to hand out profound advice on call, but maybe I could help…
   “K’hy, why did he say no?” she mewed piteously. “What is wrong with him?”
   “You hurt him, Rhasct.”
   “What? I never harmed him! I never would!”
   “I am afraid you did,” I glumly observed. “You did call him a fool…”
   “I was afraid for you!” R’R’Rhasct protested.
   “And angry at him,” I pointed out. She began to tuck her head under again. “Rhasct, come on!” I implored. “Please don’t do that! It’s not all that bad. Give him a bit of time, apologize, explain, talk to him for Christ’s sake! He’ll understand, just give him time.”
   “We do not have time,” she whispered.
   For that I had no reply. Again I touched the luxuriant fur of her mane; so soft. “How old are you?” I asked.
   “Fifteen years.”
   So young! God, a soldier at the age of fifteen. Perhaps be killed in battle at the age of fifteen.
   She was still trembling as I touched the bunched muscles around her shoulder blades, then her neck, started rubbing them…
   She started in surprise. “What are you doing?”
   “It’ll help you calm down,” I told her as I kept kneading her muscles. I felt her flex inquisitively under my fingertips, then, one muscle after another, the tension begin to drain away. The young female… woman… slowly straightened out, rumbling slightly, until she was sprawled out on her stomach.
   “Feeling better?”
   “That is… wonderful,” she murmured drowsily. “Can you not go lower?”
   I flushed: “That’s not for me, Rhasct.”
   She gave a small snarl of mock protest but didn’t protest again as I kept my hands up out of those dangerous areas.
   “How long have you known Chirthi?” I inquired carefully.
   Her voice was steady this time. “Ahhhh, since I enlisted,” she said. “We were in basic training together, then assigned to the same garrison-house in Mainport. That was… ah, two years now.”
   “Two years… You took your time getting serious about your relationship,” I said. “There must have been better times to ask him.”
   “Uh… Yes,” she shuddered under my hands. “We have copulated a couple of times. It was some of the best I remember. I should have asked then, but it was not serious. I always thought that there would be a better time. Now it seems, perhaps not.”
   “It’s not impossible,” I somehow managed to sound assuring. “The Gulf forces are getting nowhere fast. We just have to hold them back until reinforcements arrive.”
   “And when will that be?” she hissed. “Perhaps not until after the Gulf realm have overrun the walls.”
   It was my turn to shudder. Past run-ins with Gulf forces were still black scars across my memories.
   “Saaa!” R’R’Rhasct hissed. “Not so hard!”
   “Sorry.” I eased off.
   “Where did you learn to do this?”
   “A female of my kind, she taught me.”
   “Back at Mainport, that one?” the Sathe rumbled.
   “No, not her. Years ago. I was still going through school.”
   “She must have taught you well.”
   I chuckled. “I am almost less than an amateur. There are those who do this professionally. I would not try and compare my skills to theirs. Also your… bodies are different.”
   “And fur must be different from bare flesh,” she hissed, then turned her head and reached up to touch my hand where it was rubbing her shoulder. “Your skin is so thin. What does it feel like to have no fur? Cold?”
   “Sometimes,” I admitted. “Very cold, sometimes. But I feel more than you do; the wind, sun, rain… and I don’t have to worry about fleas so much.”
   Her ears flagged amusement before she settled down and was quiet. I let my hands move in their own patterns. Why was I doing this for her? I was supposed to be her superior, and here I was giving her a rub-down! Also there was the little matter of the fact that she’d drugged me, played nursemaid. I know it was under Tahr’s orders, but how was I supposed to get anything done if she kept deciding it was too dangerous?
   Well, despite all that, I still liked her; she and her seemingly stormy relationship with Chirthi. Give them both a little time… God and the Gulf willing. Chirthi was a little pissed with her at the moment, but they were both right for each other, they just needed to realize it.
   Or was it right to encourage this? They were part of a team, and what we didn’t need at this time was someone’s personal feelings distracting them from their duty. If one was in trouble, I didn’t want the other doing something stupid and risking more lives.
   Damnation! The Sathe army had no segregation of the sexes in its ranks. Males and females bunked in the same barracks. If a pair wanted to screw? Fine, they went for it. They didn’t worry about pregnancy; outside of their Times it was impossible for a female to get knocked up. Even during their Times, it was a mixture of hard work and luck. Because the sexes were so evenly matched physically, a single male couldn’t force a female, nor vice versa.
   However, that was just a casual hump. I didn’t know just what their pair bonding entailed. I knew it was more relaxed than marriage, but not much more than that. Was it for life? Did they divorce? How would it affect their…
   I was so wrapped up in my own thoughts I never noticed the floorboards creak behind me. A wordless snarl, claws grabbed my neck and sent me sprawling over the bed and onto the floor, rolling to scuttle away from whoever was attacking me.
   Chirthi. Furious.
   “Get away from her!” he almost howled and launched himself again as I tried to clamber to my feet. I scrambled backwards. “Chirthi! Hold it! Goddamn it! I don’t want to fight…”
   He lashed out. Claws stung on my arm as I raised it to block. “Shit! Chirthi…”
   “Chirthi… stop!” R’R’Rhasct caught his arm, drawing him up. “He was not trying to harm me,” she tried to explain. “It was not sex!”
   Chirthi stopped but still glared at me, burning with something I had never seen in a Sathe before. This was a Sathe who knew me, knew how I fought, and he was armed with claws and teeth. I was scared and he could smell it, his nostrils twitching violently as he scented the air, my sweat. “Do you want to challenge me for her?” he growled.
   “No!” I gasped, hands out before me. “Chirthi, I was not trying to do anything!”
   He snarled at me—a rumbling, bass roar that froze my muscles—then turned to R’R’Rhasct, kneeling down beside her and laying his cheek against hers. “R’R’Rhasct, what you asked me earlier… I accept.” He moved his head and gently bit her neck. R’R’Rhasct looked at me over his back, her eyes wide in surprise. Then her eyes closed and she nuzzled him in return.
   I stared at the pair for a second, then made a break for the door.

   The air on the keep’s battlements was clear. The night sky glittered with stars, while the fireflies that were the campfires of the Gulf camp seemed like harmless sparks on the distant horizon. The scratch on my arm had crusted over. I picked idly at the scab. I don’t know how Chirthi found me up there, but I started in fright when a hand touched my shoulder.
   “No, Sir, I will not do that again,” Chirthi said, glancing at my cocked fist. “I am sorry about what happened today.”
   “I was not trying to hurt her,” I said. “I was not trying to do anything with her…”
   “Sir,” he waved me to silence. “I know,” he said. “R’R’Rhasct explained. I am sorry… I came in and saw you and I misunderstood.”
   “Why?” I couldn’t understand this. “Do you think I would try to… steal her from you!?”
   He looked at me, then twitched his ears in rueful laughter and moved back a couple of steps until all I could see of him was his silhouette against the gray nimbus surrounding the moon. “Your wording is strange. No, I think you would not, but another Sathe male might try… I am afraid I was thinking of you as a Sathe. There was that female in the Red Sails whom you had howling the walls down,” I saw his ears flicker again, “then there was the reputation you have.”
   Reputation!?
   “You do not know!?” He laughed incredulously as I shook my head. “That way you have with females. We have kept our mouths shut, I swear it, but it was all over the Citadel how you had both the Marshal and the Shirai vying after your services. There have been suggestions going around the female quarters that you have a ‘way’ with sex. Quite a few have been curious about that.” He leaned against a merlon and grinned when he said that.
   “Oh, Christ on a crutch!” I grimaced and leaned my head against cool stones.
   “What is wrong?”
   I rubbed my hand across my face. “I never knew about that,” I told him. “That’s the last thing that I need.”
   “What is the matter with that?”
   “Just say that I don’t want females chasing after me,” I muttered. Well, not Sathe females anyway.
   “Do not want..!” Chirthi hissed incredulously, scratched industriously at his crotch. “You are beyond understanding, K’hy… but you know why I was worried about R’R’Rhasct?”
   “Yeah, I understand,” I replied. “She told me why she was sharp with you and I think that not all of the blame lies with her. I’m sorry Chirthi, I should have told her about what we were going to do, about the armor I was wearing.”
   Chirthi cocked his head to one side. “How did you know he would do that?”
   “He’s an asshole,” I explained. “I was expecting some kind of attack, but not the gun.” I had an all too vivid recollection of that pistol’s barrel.
   “I heard what he was saying about that other… H’man they found,” Chirthi said. “I am sorry.” I heard him sigh and his ears, silhouetted against the sky, flicked and dipped. Then he looked directly at me: “How many have come here from your land?”
   I shrugged. “I wish I knew.”
   

   I skidded around a corner, gasping out a curse as my shoulder slammed against a wall, staggering me.
   The news from the balloon was not good: Gulf forces were amassing for another attack against the town and although the fields were strewn with their dead like wheat after harvesting, there were still thousands of them.
   They were preparing themselves on two fronts, getting ready to assault sections of the walls weakened by previous attacks. When we put the data the Sathe aeronauts had complied onto the maps of the area, there was one fact that was instantly obvious: “I think we’re up Shit Creek!”
   It was midday when they made their move.
   There’d been reports from the North gate. The few guards who’d been posted there had seen Gulf troops out beyond the walls skulking about, watching the town.
   I’d gone to check it out.
   Now I was headed south again. As fast as my feet could move me.
   My boots beat a tattoo against the flagstones on the bridge and the sounds of battle grew louder: the clashing of steel, the sound of battle cries and death screams. Like the sound of the sea it was; a continuous roaring, a riot of white noise mixed with clashing of metal.
   I sprinted around the corner of a blackened and gutted house to find myself in the middle of the fighting around the gatehouse. A young Weather Rock soldier was being pushed back by the vicious onslaught of an obviously more experienced Gulf warrior. The black-and-red-armored warrior tried to turn as he heard something behind him and his jaws shut with a sharp clop when I hit him with an uppercut. He dropped his sword as the Eastern warrior ran him through, then left him to die noisily, scrabbling at the hole in his gut.
   My rifle was on the wall, the south wall, and there were Gulf between us. The Gulf Warrior’s sword felt insubstantial, like a toothpick. However, those toothpicks were lethal and a Sathe could wield one a hell of a lot better than I ever could. I threw the scimitar aside and cast around for something a bit more substantial. The only thing that immediately came to hand was an iron bar, about six feet long. Rusty, but it had reach and heft.
   The Gulf forces had broken through the wall to the east of the gate, and every second that went by more of them clambered to the top of the wall. Militia reinforcements and Greens with grenades and automatic weapons were rushing to defend the breach and the fighting on the ramparts and on the ground below it was a small war unto itself; bloody and fierce.
   A Gulf warrior finished off his opponent with a slash of his claws and turned to face me, his eyes burning with battle-lust. He was so far gone my appearance didn’t faze him in the slightest. His scimitar struck sparks off my bar as he slashed and lunged and I parried for my life, blocking a stroke at my neck, dodging back, then swinging the bar like a baseball bat in a move S’sahr or Remae would’ve chewed me out for.
   Hell, it worked.
   He was good, but he couldn’t block the raw power behind my blow; the bar punched right through his guard, clipping his head, stunning him. My boot came up into his stomach and he doubled over. A blow on the back of his head and he was sprawled at my feet, blood seeping into his mane.
   Almost immediately I found myself facing another Gulf soldier with blood on her sword and fur. More cautious, this one. She jabbed and I knocked the blade away. My return blow scraped her jaw, making her jump back. Blocking her again, I almost lost my fingers in the process. Again her sword came around and I kicked out at her wrist. She dodged that and fell back a step, looking surprised then wary.
   As she sized me up, a Gulf Warrior behind her brought his blade around in a shimmering backhanded arc that caught his Eastern opponent by surprise, slashing across his forearm, cutting to the bone. With one arm out, the hapless soldier was quickly disarmed, then dispatched by a chop across his neck as he turned to run.
   The Gulf warrior looked around then moved to aid the one attacking me.
   Shit! Two on one—not fair!
   Fair or not, those two didn’t look like they gave a damn. They spread out to give each other room to work and advanced slowly on me. I retreated before them, waving the bar before me, until I found I was backing into the ruins of a gutted house, rubble crunching under my boots. Maybe they’d step on a nail…
   The one on my left attacked, her scimitar a flickering blur in the midday sun. I frantically spun the bar out and the sword spanged! away in a flurry of sparks. That was when the other one moved and I was barely able to bring the metal around to block his swing. I felt the jar go up my arm when metal met metal and his sword had a notch in it when he drew it away.
   The two went back to circling me, their swords still describing slow patterns in the air before them, trying to distract me. I took another step backwards and found myself up against a crumbling wall. The two Sathe slowly spread their lips in vicious grins and their movements became more deliberate.
   I licked my own parched lips and my hands were sweaty on the bar, I could feel iron flakes sticking to my palm. Suddenly things seemed to go into slow motion; the Sathe both moved, one aiming high and the other low. The bar in my hands spun wildly and the impacts struck sparks from the iron. Several more times they attacked with blinding speed and somehow I managed to turn or dodge the worst of their blows, but when they did drop back, I was gasping for air and bleeding from a minor gash on my leg and another across my shoulder. There was no way I was going to win this.
   Frantically I looked around. I was in a cul de sac, the shell of a gutted building, with broken, sooty walls on either side hiding this particular little tussle from the Sathe on the fortifications…
   My foot stumbled against something, a length of two by four. Clutching my bar in my right hand, I scooped the wood up with my left… just as the Sathe attacked again.
   The female’s sword flashed around on my left and I threw my left hand up, feeling splinters lance at my hand as the wood was torn from my grasp. In my other hand the metal bar rang and was knocked against my neck. I gripped it tightly with both white-knuckled hands.
   The female cursed loudly, her sword stuck in the wood. In the second she spent trying to shake it loose, I spun the bar and landed a solid blow across the side of her face, another into her stomach, across the bridge of the muzzle, on the back of her head…
   There was a faint look of puzzlement on her ruined face as she fell.
   The male stepped aside as she collapsed. I shifted my grip on my weapon and parried as he feinted at me. His blade flickered around my guard like a live thing and caressed my arm. Blood welled, reluctantly at first, then flowing freely down my arm.
   I winced and he plastered his ears flat against his head and grinned.
   It was then I realized I really didn’t have a chance. Only my reach and the strength in my blows were holding him back, but I was tiring. I clipped him a couple of times, he recovered too fast. It was only a matter of time, that time coming too soon when I stepped on something that rolled treacherously under my feet, taking other pieces of rubble with it. My feet shot out from under me and my only defense flew out of my grasp and clattered loudly to the ground as I went over backwards.
   With sweat running down my face I faced the Sathe and knew that I was going to die; everything but the Sathe went out of focus. I opened my mouth…
   He gave a triumphant yowl and lunged, then his cry cut off and he sprawled across my body with a force that knocked the breath out of me, then lay in a twitching heap over my stomach. I just lay there for a second, then frantically shoved him off, scrambled away and crouched staring at the feathered shaft that protruded from the back of his neck then looked up at the Sathe who stood on a pile of rubble, still holding a spent crossbow, an M-16 slung over her shoulder, grenades at her belt.
   “My Ancestors! You just cannot stay out of trouble can you?”
   Then she rushed forward in concern as I doubled over and threw up.

   The arrangement of copper tubes and the brass kettle hanging over the fire hissed and dripped. I winced and twitched as Fen bandaged my arm. “Hold still,” he muttered as he tightened and tied it off. I flexed my hand; stiff and sore, but it still worked.
   “Will I be able to play the mandolin when this comes off?” I asked.
   “Of course,” Fen said.
   “Incredible! I could never play it before,” I said, straight-faced. He looked uncertain, then laughed. Old joke, but new here. I grinned, then flexed my hand again, “Damn!”
   R’R’Rhasct was sitting on a pallet nearby, staring at me.
   “I guess I’d better thank you,” I said to her.
   That was enough to set her off. Her ears flattened and she hissed, teeth bared. “What were you thinking!?” she exploded. “Attacking Gulf warriors without even armor or sword! Where was your own weapon?”
   “Sitting on the other side of a couple-dozen Sathe who wanted to make sushi out of me!” I retorted, taken aback at the outburst.
   “You are crazy!” Her eyes were wide.
   “You must be the hundredth person to tell me that. Perhaps there’s something in it.” Some of the things that I had done recently would get me locked up in an asylum back home. I was doing what the Sathe were doing, almost imitating them, maybe I had gone further than I had realized in trying to be accepted. Would the old Kelly Davies have rushed into a burning building? Maybe. Would he have raced headlong to almost get himself killed?
   I doubt it. But things have changed, and I’m one of them.
   “I guess I owe you one,” I said to R’R’Rhasct.
  &nbs