Oh, yes. . . . Gaius Vibulenus Caper knew just how the creature felt.
Quartilla stepped to the tribune’s side, and he snarled, “Back, by Pollux! Don’t be in the way now.”
There was a rasp of orders muted by the gallery’s acoustics: Clodius opening his unit into a twelve man front by bringing the half-files forward. That was an ample frontage to deal with the carnivore, and it retained some semblance of order for the moment at which the woman, Fortune granting, opened the bulkhead door which would pass no more than two men abreast.
The tribune placed every element of his surroundings in its proper niche on the gameboard of his mind — himself as well, because his body was a primary piece in the exchange that was about to begin. Then he stepped forward, into the carnivore’s range, swinging the knapsack of half-worked mead.
The beast was faster than Vibulenus dreamed. All of his planning had been based on subconscious recollections of the way the carnivores moved on the battlefield — carrying heavy, iron-clad riders and wrapped in several hundredweight of armored blanket. The creature had been bred in a place where things were heavier; and under conditions like these which men thought were normal, its speed was almost reflex quick.
Vibulenus had no time to use the knapsack for a weapon as he intended, but it saved his life anyway by providing a target for the claws which could easily have crushed into his chest from both sides or slapped his head against the sidewall while blood spouted from the stump of his neck.
The knapsack exploded in a sticky geyser — honey dissolved in water already slightly alcoholic with decay products from the bacteria which the mixture supported. It splashed the ceiling thirty feet above and bathed the jaws and shearing teeth which the beast slammed down on what it thought was a victim.
Vibulenus had intended to retreat as soon as his presence brought the carnivore out in a lunge. The knapsack, heavy with its fluid contents, would propel him backward while it sped to its target.
Now he sprawled on his face, legs tangled beneath the forepaws shredding the knapsack. The strap had fouled his wrist as the beast snatched it away; that slight contact had been sudden and forceful enough to spin the Roman and drag him toward the slayer.
Quartilla swung the pack she carried.
The side-arm motion had an authority which belied the sausage-like plumpness of the woman’s limbs; her delicacy of touch might have been expected by any of the men who had shared her couch. The knapsack struck and gushed its contents over the slotted medallion whining on the creature’s chest.
The flashing power of the mounts with which the guild provided its command group came at a price in food and the oxygen needed to convert that food into energy. The same homeworld gravity which built the creature’s muscles held an atmosphere dense enough to support their physiologies. They could no more breathe unaided the ship’s air or that of any of the worlds on which the legion fought than a human could survive in the atmosphere of Mars.
The supercharger, which rammed air into the creature’s lungs at the density which they required to function, filled with mead. It stalled out, shrieking.
Clodius Afer dropped his shield. His left hand jerked the tribune clear while his right swung the heavy practice sword fast enough that it managed to whistle on its way to the joint in the carnivore’s forelimb.
Pure honey — sap — would have been too thick to flow into the compressor with the necessary abruptness; a fluid thin enough to drink would have been spewed out the side-vents of a unit intended to operate in heavy rain without discomfort to its wearer. The half-worked mead, gummy with undissolved sugars in an alcohol mixture, smothered all chance of oxygen reaching the creature’s lungs as surely as immersion in a lake could have done.
The beast spun, slashing for the non-existent opponent who covered its nostrils. The pilus prior’s blow struck with all the veteran’s strength and the mass of his dense club behind it, but the carnivore did not notice the bone-crushing impact in the midst of greater pain. A paw flung Clodius aside with long cuts on his shoulder, because that happened to be in the path of the creature’s panicked thrashing.