The Man-Kzin Wars 05 by Larry Niven

Author:Larry Niven
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: kzin
ISBN: 9780671721374
Publisher: Baen
Published: 1992-10-01T03:00:00+00:00

· CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Something was biting his tail.

Spots groaned and tried to open his eyes, but they were gummed together. The biting stopped, and water fell across his face. He heard shouting. Feebly, he scrubbed at his eyes with a wrist, and blinked back to wakefulness. An advokat slinked in the middle distance, huge jaws working, matted pelt stinking of carrion.

Jonah-human was looking down at him, from a safe distance, canteen in hand. Matted blood covered one side of his face, and fresh blood glistened on clumsy bandages around his neck and one arm. They glanced aside from each other’s eyes, and the human stepped forward and sank down by the kzin’s side.

“Got to stop the bleeding,” he rasped. “Here, drink.” Spots lapped water from his cupped palm, and then seized the canteen to guzzle with his thin lips wrapped awkwardly around the spout. He coughed and felt tearing pain in his chest; water spurted out of his mouth. Looking down, he could see the bright gleam of steel among the tangled red mass of his flank.

“It is not as bad as it looks,” he wheezed, after taking a careful deep breath. “See, the steel must have turned aside and snapped on the ribs—thanks to your cutter bar, which weakened it. My lungs are not pierced, nor my intestines.” He licked at his nostrils and sniffed again. “I would smell that.”

“Could be stuff inside hanging on by a thread,” Jonah said worriedly.

“I will survive while you pursue the oath-breaker,”

Spots said grimly. Then the voice broke into a howl of woe.

“Not until we get you to help. This would happen while Hans and Tyra are away with the medkit... that’ll be the closest place. You can lean on one of the mules, I can catch them. I think.”

My sibling attacked him dishonorably, yet he will forego revenge to save my life, Spots thought. I am ashamed.

“First,” he said aloud, “you’ll have to get this out of me”

Jonah blanched as he looked down at the knifeblade. The stub of it moved with every breath.

“We really should get under way,” Tyra urged, with a sigh.

“Yep. Figure we should.”

Hans smiled beatifically, and leaned back in the hammock. His was strung between two orange trees, and a few blossoms had fallen across his grizzled face. He brushed them aside and took another sip of the drink in his hollowed-out pineapple. There was rum in it, and cherries and cream and a few other things—passionfruit, for example—and it helped to make the warmth quite tolerable. So did the tinkling stream which flowed down the narrow valley under the overhanging cliff, and the shade of the palm trees. Hans Shwartz had been a grown man when the kzinti came; he was into his second century now, and even with good medical care your bones appreciated the warmth after so much hard work. The air buzzed with bees, scented with flowers.

“Thank you, sweetling,” he said, as a girt handed him a platter of fried chicken; it had fresh bread on the side, and a little woven bowl of hot sauce for dipping.

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