green-gray claw indicated the lazily swimming death and then the inert bodies of the tif which had threatened it. It motioned as if sowing something from the bag on the stream. When Kana nodded, the bag was tossed to him and the Ventur kicked the gu into a racking gallop back into the woods.
“Is that something to knock out the tif?” Soong questioned. “Do you suppose they knew he had it when they threw him in?”
“I don’t think so, or they would have taken it from him. Maybe its effects are permanent—those floating over there haven’t come to—”
The tif which had attacked the Ventur to their own undoing still drifted belly-up, their wicked mouths open. And Kana noticed that their active fellows avoided them. The bag in his hand might grant the Horde a safe crossing.
And so it did. The gritty white powder it contained, strewn on the water upstream, kept off the tif until the Terran force was across. Whether the poison had a permanent effect the Combatants never learned, but as the rearguard trailed through the shallows tif bodies bumped the stepping stones and washed ashore on the spit.
Hansu identified the insignia of the Llor dead as that of the Household Corps. But he was more interested in the trouble between the Ventur and the guardsmen. The great deference paid the hooded ones on the march of Skura’s troops east had underlined the belief that then the Llor wanted in no way to antagonize their silent transport specialists. Yet now a Llor noble had calmly ordered one of the Venturi thrown to a horrible death. Somehow the balance of power must have shifted amazingly during the days when the Horde had been fighting across the mountains—shifted to embolden the Llor to show an arrogant contempt for those they had respected for generations. Events certainly suggested that the Llor now had backing so strong that they believed they could make themselves the undisputed rulers of all Fronn. t
“Is that something to knock out the tif?” Soong questioned. “Do you suppose they knew he had it when they threw him in?”
“I don’t think so, or they would have taken it from him. Maybe its effects are permanent—those floating over there haven’t come to—”
The tif which had attacked the Ventur to their own undoing still drifted belly-up, their wicked mouths open. And Kana noticed that their active fellows avoided them. The bag in his hand might grant the Horde a safe crossing.
And so it did. The gritty white powder it contained, strewn on the water upstream, kept off the tif until the Terran force was across. Whether the poison had a permanent effect the Combatants never learned, but as the rearguard trailed through the shallows tif bodies bumped the stepping stones and washed ashore on the spit.
Hansu identified the insignia of the Llor dead as that of the Household Corps. But he was more interested in the trouble between the Ventur and the guardsmen. The great deference paid the hooded ones on the march of Skura’s troops east had underlined the belief that then the Llor wanted in no way to antagonize their silent transport specialists. Yet now a Llor noble had calmly ordered one of the Venturi thrown to a horrible death. Somehow the balance of power must have shifted amazingly during the days when the Horde had been fighting across the mountains—shifted to embolden the Llor to show an arrogant contempt for those they had respected for generations. Events certainly suggested that the Llor now had backing so strong that they believed they could make themselves the undisputed rulers of all Fronn. t