“And these also,” said the attendant. Before Guo realized what was happening, the attendant reached up and grasped Guo’s great cowl with her palps. Across the bridges of flesh thus made, the six males scampered. By the time Guo was able to gather her thoughts—and register a protest—the childcluster was perched atop her own mantle.
“Be silent!” said the attendant sharply. “The Great Mother bade me tell you this: I bequeath to you the future of the tribe, daughter. Guard it better than I have done. Be ruthless toward all folly.”
The attendant turned suddenly, back toward the plain beyond the cycads, and made to leave.
“Stop!” hooted Kopporu. “The Utuku are already entering the swamp—you can hear them! You cannot do anything now but join us.”
The attendant looked back. Suddenly, to Guo’s astonishment, blue rage and yellow contempt flooded the attendant’s mantle.
She spoke, her voice filled with hate.
“The Great Mother saw, and made her decision. But I do not forgive you.”
A moment later she was gone, brandishing her flail as she re-entered the cycads.
“Why did she—” began Guo, but Kopporu interrupted her.
“Later, Guo! We have no time now!”
As if to punctuate the battle leader’s point, Guo heard the sudden—very brief—sounds of combat in the cycads beyond the clearing. The attendant had encountered the advancing Utuku, and sold her life.
Kopporu was right. Hastily, Guo retreated to her place of ambush. By the time she got there, there was not a trace of Kiktu left in the clearing.
As soon as she had retrieved her own mace, she ordered the males atop her mantle to climb down and hide in the swamp.
Their reply, transmitted by the eumale, was short and to the point: no.
“I have no time for foolishness!” whispered Guo.
“It is our duty,” replied the eumale. “Besides, with two maces you will be shieldless. We will protect you from the Utuku pipers.”
Again, astonishment. It was Kiktu custom for a mother’s consorts to serve as her personal squad of pipers. But it was an entirely ceremonial custom. Mothers did not fight in battles, and, in any event, the weak siphons of males could not expel darts with any force and distance.
She was about to enforce her command physically (or try—the agile males could have easily evaded her clumsy grabs) when the Utuku vanguard began entering the clearing. All thought fled in a rush of rage. Her every attention was focused on her tympani, waiting for the signal to spring the ambush.
The fabled Utuku discipline, she saw, had already become eroded by their short contact with the swamp. The Utuku warriors lurched into the clearing in ragged files, swearing, covered with mud and slime up to their underbellies. Their heavy armor had, indeed, been a liability in the swamp. And Guo saw that many had lost their shields. (Kiktu warriors, like those of most tribes, did not use shields; preferring, instead, the greater finesse of the fork.)
The clearing was soon packed with Utuku. Battle leaders were attempting to bring order and discipline back to what was now not much more than a mob—with only limited success.
And then, before the Utuku leaders could overcome the chaos and confusion, Kopporu issued the first of her battle hoots. The Utuku were suddenly attacked—from the other side of the clearing, the side nearest the plain.
It was a suicide mission, Guo realized. Only a handful of Kiktu were conducting the attack—more could not have waited in ambush while the Utuku passed by them.
They would not survive long, and Guo paid silent homage to their honor. But they had succeeded in carrying out Kopporu’s stratagem. The Utuku warriors, hearing the sound of unexpected combat to their rear, had all spun around and were now facing south, away from the mass of the Kiktu forces who were still lurking in ambush.
The Utuku battle leaders realized almost at once that they had been duped. But it was too late—too late by far. Guo almost whistled with glee, watching one of the Utuku drummers pound on a mud-splattered drum. The soggy signal could not even be heard above the hoots of the confused Utuku warriors.