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

leatherwing fly where it will,” the priestess said, more unhappily still. “I see the problem, but not how to solve it.”
    That made Tessell Yatt shrug. “Sounds like a lot of life, doesn’t it? Well, sooner or later the Scaly Ones’ll try and hit us. Then we’ll give ’em what for. Maybe they know where we’re at, but that doesn’t mean they can do anything about it, right?” He bared his teeth. Whatever lay ahead, he was ready for it—or he thought he was, which amounted to the same thing now.
    Sometimes not dwelling on what lay ahead was wiser. Sometimes. Enni Chennitats tried to make herself believe this was one of those times. “Right,” she said, as firmly as she could.
    * * *
    The axehead perched on the battlement to Sassin’s keep. Its kind nested on cliffsides, so the Liskash noble’s artificial cliff must have seemed a fine landing place to it.
    Sassin held a dead smerp by the tail. He swung the ugly, hairy little body back and forth, back and forth. The axehead swayed with the motion, its enormous eyes avidly following the moving hunk of meat. Sassin might not care for the way smerps tasted. Axeheads weren’t so choosy.
    Had it been in Sassin to like any other living things, axeheads would have stood high on the list. They were clever enough to be useful, but not nearly clever enough to be rivals. As far as he was concerned, that made them perfect extensions of his own volition. No, it wasn’t liking, but it was as close as he came.
    He tossed the smerp into the air. The axehead’s long, toothy jaws opened and closed. For a moment, half a digit’s worth of bare pink tail dangled after they snapped shut. Then the leather-winged flyer swallowed, and the dangling tail disappeared, too. It cocked its head and eyed him, hoping for more.
    Instead, he caught its gaze with his own. The axehead twisted on the battlement, trying to break free of his will, but found itself unable. The foolish Mrem said snakes could mentally master their prey and make it stand still to be devoured. For almost all serpents, they were mistaken. But Sassin had that power—that and more.
    He reached inside the axehead’s mind. What it had seen was as clear to him as if he’d seen it himself. What it had felt was every bit as clear, but he ignored that. The sensation of flying might have fascinated a hairy Mrem. It left Sassin utterly indifferent. He wanted to know what he wanted to know, and everything else could go hang.
    As if from high overhead, he looked down on the outsized smerps—so he thought of them. Oh, Mrem were more clever than smerps, but that only made them more annoying and more dangerous. Sure enough, they were moving west, into his lands. They would pay for that. He would make sure they paid. Yes, indeed!
    He studied the formation their leader had chosen. His tongue flicked out, tasting the air as he considered. Reluctantly, he decided that the miserable Mrem had some notion of what he was about. The vermin wouldn’t be easy to attack—unless they could be provoked into making a mistake.
    And that probably would not prove so very hard. Mrem weren’t calculators like Liskash nobles. They acted on impulse, like the animals they basically were. Getting them to move the way he wanted them to move shouldn’t be much harder than tricking a hatchling still wet from the juices of its egg.
    Somber satisfaction seeped through Sassin. He mentally pulled away from the axehead, leaving it alone again inside its long, narrow skull. It glared at him, as if it could presume to believe he’d had no business violating its privacy so. More often than not, he would have punished it even for such tiny presumption. A god, after all, was not inclined to brook opposition from anyone.
    But Sassin found himself in a mood as generous as he was likely to know. So what if the leather-winged flyer resented his mental invasion? It had served him as he needed to be served. That was the only thing that really mattered.
    He tossed the