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

the door. Since the kzinti had requisitioned the buildings, no human female had entered the Sergeants' Mess except perhaps for dinner. The other kzinti trained their weapons on the doorway. We could wipe these out quickly enough, but there will be others. Already humans must be surrounding the monastery. And the UNSN would be arriving with heavy weapons soon. His every instinct screamed to him to order the others to cut loose with everything they had, then fall upon the monkeys beyond in one last, Heroic charge. For Sire and Grandsire there would have been no question. Which may be why they are dead, and I am alive, for the moment. I would like to see another sunrise, but they must have wished that too . . . and . . . and . . . 

"Shall I let her in?"

"Yes."

Six other humans accompanied Jocelyn as she entered. All were dressed alike and all held weapons. Knocked up as we are, we could still make short work of them, thought Raargh-Sergeant. The omnivores were slow-moving and fragile, their muscles, teeth and claws were as much jokes as their vestigial sense of smell. Such weak, spindly little creatures! What can you say for them?—apart from the fact that they are the only race that has ever met the kzin in war and beaten us.

"Take off your trophy belt," he said. Then he added: "Or cover it."

The six humans behind did not seem to know the Heroes' Tongue.

"Why?" said Jocelyn. He ignored the insolence of the question, telling himself as rage welled up that a human female was beneath being able to insult him.

"It is the custom of the Mess. This Mess is our club, our dining area. Only Sergeants—Kzin Sergeants—and Ptrr-Brunurn may wear trophy belts here. It is a tradition."

"You seek to humiliate me, to establish dominance."

She had answered in the Heroes' Tongue, or as near to it as a human voice could reach. That was almost as much a jolt as the trophy belt had been. A few days previously any human, let alone a female, so speaking to a kzin would have lost its own tongue on the spot for such impudence (the idea of one other than Ptrr-Brunurn wearing a trophy belt and standing before a kzin with it would not have existed). The Heroes' Tongue was hard for most humans to understand and far harder for them to speak even badly. Yet if her accent and inflections were weird and alien, the grammar and tense were nearly correct. So they have been studying our language. Probably for years. I suppose their computers helped them. What fools we were not to attend more to what they did! What else do they know about us? Enough to defeat us, plainly.

"I do not seek to dominate," he told her. Though if I do dominate you, so much the better. "You will show respect for our Mess. This is our place."

The humans were not presenting their arms to the firing position yet. The kzinti were standing by theirs, but Raargh-Sergeant remained sure that even more-or-less wounded as they all were, they could bring them into action faster than the human eye could follow. Then Jocelyn removed the belt and signed for a human to take it.

"There have been some changes in command structure," she said. "The individual formerly known as Captain Jorg von Thoma has been relieved of his duties and all titles of rank. The so-called Wunderland Security Police no longer exists and has been declared a collaborationist organization by the Provisional Free Wunderland Government."

"What is collaborationist?" He pronounced the word more or less understandably.

"It is a word that a lot of people will hear soon. Traitors to humanity who will be dealt with."

"Did not the UNSN kill enough humans in its raids? You are quick to kill your own kind when you can."

"Oh? Do you reproach us for that? How many Heroes die in death-duels? Did not the UNSN fleet win its first battles in Wunderland Space because your own forces were in the midst of a civil war when it arrived?"

"If this is a word-duel you have made a good stroke. Yes, we fight among ourselves. Too much, even, I will say who am old and wounded. But we are warriors. Battle is necessary to keep the warriors' claws sharp, to see that only the most Heroic survive and breed. But this . . . killing your own kind in the moment of, of . . . your victory"—that was a hard phrase to get out—"what Honor is there here? And what point in a word-duel now?"

"There is Honor," she said. He had not realized that humans attached large significance to the word before. Perhaps Honor comes more easily when you are winning, he thought. But in that case it is not Honor at all.

"They are part of the forces of the Patriarchy," he told her. "I am responsible for the forces of the Patriarchy here in the absence of superior officers. Hroarh-Captain has charged me. This human is under the Patriarch's protection, and until I am relieved of the charge, the Patriarch's Honor is on my head."

"I will speak of that in a moment. Those humans"—she pointed to the two Mess-waiters—"are to leave. No harm will come to them. They were constrained and enslaved and have committed no wilful offense."

Raargh-Sergeant nodded. She spoke to the humans in their own language. They edged towards the door, plainly readying themselves to run. Then she halted them.

"They are to take those with them." She gestured to the stuffed human trophies. "They will be disposed of with decorum." Then she pointed: "Why is that one so mounted?"

The figure she indicated stood in a translucent cube, its arms folded and eyes closed. It was a ragged, shabby thing, torn and gaping with innumerable wounds. There was a complication at what had been its waist.

"That one is disposed of with decorum already," said Raargh-Sergeant. That is"—he pronounced the human syllables with care—"Ptrr-Brunurn."

Jocelyn stepped over to the plinth and read the name.

"Peter Brennan."

"A great fighter. Once he led a feral band against