Conquerors' Heritage

"You're not going to believe this," Kl

Thrr-gilag craned his neck to look at her profile. "They're what?"

"A war party. Or maybe a justice party—they use the same word for both. He says they're here to punish the mountain people for collaborating with us."

Thrr-gilag looked at the five Chig guarding them. At the semiarmor, the metal crossbows, the slender crossbow bolts.

At the long, unusually slender feathering and tips on those bolts...

"No," he murmured to Kl

Kl

"I agree," Thrr-gilag said, looking carefully around. "But they must have good reasons. Or what they consider to be good reasons."

He frowned, suddenly aware of the stinger he still held loosely in his hand. The Chig hadn't disarmed them... and only slowly did it dawn on him that they probably didn't realize the stingers were weapons. Most likely they assumed the devices were hand recorders—the size and shape were just about right for that.

Which meant the Zhirrzh had an advantage their opponents didn't know about. The question was how to use it. If he could quietly bring the stinger up to firing position, then whip it quickly around...

He looked at their guards again, the surge of excitement fading into reality. No. Not unless he wanted to wind up at the family shrine and send Kl

"I was wondering that myself," Kl

She broke off. From somewhere nearby something gave a warbling yowl, the sound echoing across the mountains. The stray whelp, almost forgotten beside its pile of boulders, howled back in reply. "Uh-oh," Kl

"More Chig. Keep quiet—this could get tricky."

Thrr-gilag had no time to wonder what she meant by that. Directly ahead, three Chig topped a small rise, a half-dozen whelps following along behind them.

"Grazing party," Kl

For a beat the newcomers paused as they caught sight of the group gathered together beside the creek. Then, hefting their own crossbows, they continued on down the hill.

They came to within three strides of the armored leader before stopping. "Sk-(cough)-ssst-tssmss-(cough)-mts-os-mss," one of the newcomers said, gesturing toward the Zhirrzh with the slender tentacles edging his mouth. "Sk-pss-mtss-hrss'mss-(cough)-kss."

The leader of the war party answered in kind. One of the other newcomers spoke and was answered. "What are they saying?" Thrr-gilag whispered.

"I'm not entirely sure," Kl

Thrr-gilag looked at the three Chig, an odd feeling of warmth rippling through him. "They're on our side?"

"Hardly," Kl

The warm feeling evaporated. "Oh."

"Don't take it personally," Kl

Typical bad losers, in other words. All the more contemptible given that they were the ones who'd started the war in the first place. "So why are they still talking?"

Kl

The conversation droned on. Thrr-gilag found himself studying the two different crossbow styles: the multishot repeaters carried by the war party, the much simpler two-shot models of the mountain Chig. If it came to a fight...

But it wouldn't. As Kl

"I know," Kl

Abruptly, she stiffened. "Of course they're stalling," she said. "They're worried about the warships."

Thrr-gilag felt his midlight pupils narrow. Of course—the Zhirrzh encirclement forces. Five warships filled with the best high-power monitoring telescopes in existence. Orbiting slowly over the Gree landscape, watching everything that happened there. "Are any of them overhead right now?"

"I don't know," Kl

"I'll bet the war party does," Thrr-gilag said, thinking furiously. That must have been what the three Chig were discussing just before the grazing party showed up: whether or not they were in view. The last thing they would want at this point would be for the orbiting warriors to see them kidnap a pair of Zhirrzh. Or, worse, to see them raise those same Zhirrzh to Eldership.

And the fact that they were still talking would imply the group was under at least one of those distant telescopes right now....

Kl

"Just thinking," Thrr-gilag muttered, glancing up at the occasional fish-scale clouds scattered across the otherwise clear sky. The Chig eye, if he remembered correctly, was supposed to be incapable of seeing the darklight laser frequencies that Zhirrzh stingers operated at. If he eased his stinger to point straight up and fired it...

"What are you thinking?" Kl

"About trying to call for help," Thrr-gilag told her. All right. The laser, he knew, would sizzle the water in the air as the beam passed through it, producing secondary radiations within the Chigin vision range as well as a certain amount of sound. But in bright sunlight, and with the wind blowing strongly off the mountains and across the stream toward them, there was a fair chance that both the light and the sound would go u

"Thrr-gilag, are you crazy?" Kl

"Quiet," he hissed back, not daring to look at the three Chig still guarding them. All right. He didn't remember very much of the flash-code he and Thrr-mezaz had memorized back when they were children, but every Zhirrzh knew the old three-two-three emergency signal. Carefully, trying not to let the movement show, he turned the stinger to point straight up between him and Kl

And with a crack of a supersonic shock wave, a Zhirrzh transport shot over the hilltops and blazed past overhead.

One of the Chig screeched, a high-pitched howl that dug like knives into Thrr-gilag's ear slits. An instant later he found himself sprawled on the ground, his legs having collapsed ignominiously beneath him. With one hand he was gripping Kl