Man-Kzin Wars IX, Larry Niven [leveled readers TXT] 📗

and wondered if it was Hroarh-Captain back already. But it was Jorg, the human. He brought the car to a stop near the Mess door and scurried in, going down in a quick reflex prostration under the eyes of the kzin. A kzinrett and a male kit, a little older than the one already in his care, were squalling in the armored rear section of the car.

"Raargh-Sergeant Noble Hero, I have brought two who may be sheltered here. I think the humans will kill them otherwise. I found them wandering. You have seen that there are gangs of feral humans . . ."

There was little to be done with the terrified female until she could be settled down. The kit was evidently not hers, since she let it be taken without much protest. Raargh-Sergeant's prosthetic arm allowed him to extract the youngster without mauling, and, held in a familiar grip by the scruff of the neck, it soon quietened to a low mewling sound, arms wrapped round Raargh-Sergeant's chest.

"They came from the direction of Munchen with a wounded Hero. The Hero placed them in the car," Jorg told him, "then a troop of armed feral humans swept down upon us. He placed these in my charge and went to delay the ferals while I got the car away. I did not see what happened to him."

But you can guess, Raargh-Sergeant thought. As I can. "Why should the feral humans not follow them here?" he asked.

"I thought they would be safer here than anywhere else. The humans still fear to approach this garrison. And behold!" He pointed to the kit's markings, to the distinctive red-orange blazon showing through the juvenile rosette pattern on the chest and to the ear tattoos.

One of Chuut-Riit's! Raargh-Sergeant realized with a new shock. Not one of those who, so he had heard, had been involved in his terrible death, but one of a younger generation. Perhaps the last of the Riit blood on the planet!

And in my care! 

"Say nothing of this," he told Jorg. "Get the car indoors and under cover." It was venting a cloud of fumes from a ruptured fuel line and would go no further without repairs. The kzinrett would have to be calmed. The Trainer could do that. Perhaps when she was settled she could be placed with the sleeping suckling. If she did not kill it, her nurturing instinct might take over.

"Courage, my brave one," he told the kit. "The Patriarch is watching you. Have you yet a name?"

The kit hiccuped and whimpered. "Vaemar," it said at last, staring up at him with huge eyes.

A nursery name, given by its mother and pronounced in the Female Tongue.

"Vaemar-Riit!" he told it. He had no right to confer even partial names, let alone promote anyone to Royalty. But this reminder of its ancestry seemed to steady the kit.

"I can walk, Honored Soldier," it said, plainly unsure how to address the gaunt, scarred giant who held it.

"Thank the human who saved you," said Raargh-Sergeant. He had better start getting on good terms with the monkeys quickly. "He is called Jorg"

"Is that its name? Does the human have a name?"

"That is what he is called." Jorg looked unhappy. A human who insisted it had a name, except for the convenience of telling it apart from other humans, would have had a short life and an unpleasant one a few days before. Raargh-Sergeant realized that in their last few words, Jorg had indeed omitted to address him by his own partial Name, which a few days previously would have been an equally fatal breach of human-to-kzin etiquette.

"Thank you, Jorg, for saving me," said the kitten in its still high, warbling voice. "I shall not forget," it added with some memory of regal manner. Jorg made the prostration again.

Dust particles flashed and fell in a shower of tiny jewels. A bar of green lit a cloud of drifting smoke. A laser blast shattered one of the pinnacles on the chapel tower. The brickwork of the wall erupted as shells struck it. Raargh-Sergeant recognized the coughing of one of the super-Bofors guns that the feral humans had secretly fabricated in the hills.

A section of the wall bulged and collapsed with a roar, burying the two abandoned cars. No strakakkers yet, and possibly not even aimed at us, he thought, as chunks of rubble bounced past. "Inside! Quick!" he ordered. As he herded them under the archway and into the building, the kzinti attack car, its molecular-distortion battery's containment field apparently ruptured, went up in white light behind them, scattering stone. He thanked the Fanged God that there had been almost no charge left. The whole monastery might have been levelled otherwise.

And then he realized: Our weapons were in that! He was in command. He should have seen to it that they were returned to the Mess, in the absence of an officer. Another thought came to him, distorted by bitterness: No wonder the monkeys have won this war.

Above, a formation of human aircraft hurtled by in victory rolls. Nothing remained in the sky to challenge them.

Chapter 2

The others had their wtsais, but that was all, apart from some trophy blades on the wall. Now the naked defenselessness of the place, their lack of weapons, hit him like a physical blow.

A normal kzin would take on any number of humans in hand-to-hand fighting and tear them to pieces until his strength gave out, which would normally not be before the last tree-swinger had been dismantled, but these were wounded crocks, and the monkeys had heavy weapons. A long-silent television the humans had kept behind the bar suddenly blared into life. It could only receive human channels and he had forgotten it. Deliberately, he smashed it with a stroke of his claws. He did not want scenes of monkey triumphs to inflame and provoke what for want of better he must call his "garrison." He placed the newcomers at side windows, instructing them to keep watch. A fine addition to our strength,