Tooth and Claw - Doranna Durgin [67]
“Damn,” he said, hissing at the pain he’d brought himself—but still looking like he’d done exactly what he meant to do.
“Commander Riker!” Zefan snapped, his under-purr as harsh and angry as Akarr had ever heard in a Fandrean. “If you think we have the luxury of carrying one who could otherwise walk—”
And then he stopped, for by then it was evident enough that Riker wouldn’t need to be carried anywhere. “I don’t understand.”
“Neither did I, at first,” Riker said. “I thought that the sholjagg’s fur was too thick … and after that, that the Tsorans had simply missed the sculpers, in the dark. But Akarr’s people are well trained, and clear-thinking in a fight. And I nailed one of those ski ks myself. I saw it jerk when the trank hit. So if we weren’t missing the targets—”
“Then the tranks were no good,” Zefan finished. “You couldn’t have found another way to test your theory?”
Riker pulled the dart out with a grimace. “Nothing came to mind. Nothing we could be sure of. I already had that.” He nodded at the arborata.
“None of the tranks,” Akarr said slowly, “are any good.” Not just one of them, or a small percentage of them. None of them.
“You might as well take trophy,” Riker said, standing and nudging the black-scaled arborata with one foot. “You’ve earned it. You’ve probably earned it many times over—you and your men.” He was angry, as deeply angry as Akarr had ever seen him despite Akarr’s own knack for clashing fangs with him—and it took Akarr an instant to realize that this time, the anger was on his own behalf.
“Someone,” Riker said, “wanted you dead.”
Treachery? Akarr rejected the thought in an instant, too aware of what would happen to his father were such a thing to be known. Only an ineffective ReynKa allowed such treachery to develop. Only a weak ReynKa allowed it within his walls. Akarr mustered a glare. “You will say nothing of this.”
And then his mind’s eye flashed back to the night before his departure, the kaphoora fete he’d had. How pleased he’d been that Takarr, younger by several years, had not displayed any of the poor humor so common to his presence at Akarr’s daleura events. Takarr? He’d always wanted more than his life allotted, in a sullen way, even though the second son of the ReynKa lacked for nothing. Nothing but a few final points of daleura, and the chance to earn a place in history.
But the system held choice. The ReynKa would pick one of them over the other. Although the traditional choice raised the older up over the younger, Atann him self was by no means tied to tradition. If Takarr wanted to rule, he had had—and still had—many legitimate opportunities to prove his worth over Akarr.
Riker made an impatient gesture, indicating the out of-sight men who waited for them at the shuttle. “What do you mean, say nothing of it? And leave your men thinking their own tranks are of any use whatsoever?”
“Shefen and I can replenish your tranks with our own,” Zefan said. “They are interchangeable. But we must have a reason for doing so.”
“The truth would work nicely,” Riker said shortly. He gave the useless dart a look of disdain, and Zefan took it from him, tucking it away in the section of his pack meant for carrying out disposables.
“It is not the truth,” Akarr said, his fur rising. He glared up at Riker. “It is not the whole truth. Who has done this and why… these things, we don’t know. Until we do know, partial truths could hurt those who have no part in it.” His mother, if Takarr was implicated. She would take any treachery on her younger son’s part badly, and Akarr would not have her thinking it until he knew it was true.
“Fine,” Riker said, exasperated and cranky. “Zefan, tell them that you suspect the animals have adapted to the Tsoran trank chemicals, and until the Fandreans can perform tests to confirm or negate this, it’s best to use Fandrean darts. Tell them you meant