Free Exiled: Clan of the Claw, Book One by Michael Z. Williamson, John Ringo Jody Lynn Nye Harry Turtledove S.M. Stirling Page B

courage, the Liskash began to realize they were feeding themselves into a grinder. Their push forward faltered. Even missile attacks flagged. Rantan Taggah wondered why till he realized the Liskash had to be running short of javelins and arrows.
    The ferocious warrior called Ramm Passk’t leaped on a Scaly One who thought he could fight like a Mrem. The Liskash had a spear, Ramm Passk’t only the weapons Aedonniss gave him at birth. That turned out not to matter for long—only until the Scaly One hesitantly thrust the first time. Ramm Passk’t knocked the shaft aside and sprang on him. He tore out the Liskash’s throat with his fangs, then sprang to his feet with his muzzle all bloody. He roared out something in the Scaly Ones’ language.
    “What does that mean?” Munkus Drap asked.
    Rantan Taggah translated for him: “ ‘Who’s next?’ ”
    Ramm Passk’t, gore dripping from his chin, made a spectacle to give pause to the hardiest of the Scaly Ones. All at once, they stopped coming forward against the Mrem. Standing in their place, Rantan Taggah would have been none too eager himself. Ramm Passk’t made the very embodiment of ferocity.
    “Let’s draw back,” Rantan Taggah called to his surviving warriors. “If they come after us, we’ll charge them and make them stop. But I think they may let us go.”
    “Bring them on!” Ramm Passk’t shouted. He gave the Liskash his challenge once more. No one stepped out of their line to answer it.
    Step by weary, painful step, Rantan Taggah and his comrades fell back. He was amazed how far across the sky the sun had traveled. Hadn’t the battle started just a few breaths ago? His exhaustion argued against it. So did the clan’s losses. They’d be a long time replacing chariots. Too many warriors they could never replace.
    But they were intact, or near enough. They could fight again. They could go on. And maybe they would be able to serve Sassin as he’d served them, only worse.
    * * *
    Sassin was not literally a cold-blooded creature, even if the Mrem sometimes called the Liskash sons of serpents. All the same, he was, and could afford to be, a more cold-blooded talonmaster than any Mrem. His fighters were not friends and comrades; by the nature of things, they were only subjects. And, by the nature of things, expending subjects was easier than sending friends and comrades out to die on your behalf.
    All the same, the dunes and drifts of dead and dying Liskash around the chariots the hairy vermin had abandoned left him dismayed. As he could stop up his earholes and block most sound but not all of it, so his mind could deflect most but not all the agony the wounded projected.
    He glanced toward the west. Maybe it was just as well the sun was setting. Were the day longer, the monstrous Mrem might have murdered most of his males. He’d hoped to crush them absolutely, but not everything worked the way you hoped it would. Everyone, even Liskash nobles, got too many unpleasant tastes of that lesson as the years spun by.
    Lorssett came up to him. The lesser male would have done better putting on greaves; he had a wounded leg, and clutched a javelin to steady his step. “I did not think you would be rash enough to go where there was fighting,” Sassin remarked acidly.
    “I did not go to it. It came to me,” his aide answered. “I hope this heals. I would not care to limp for the rest of my days.”
    “I believe you.” Sassin could feel his pain, too, however much he wished he couldn’t.
    Lorssett pointed toward the northeast, away from the sinking sun. “Will you send our fighters after them, to finish them off once and for all while they are weak and off balance?” He swayed in spite of his makeshift staff; he was more than a little off balance himself.
    That was certainly how Sassin thought of him at this moment. “If I throw any more fighters at them now, I may have none left by this time tomorrow.”
    “You will still have some, lord,” Lorssett said.