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Updated: June 24, 2025
There's nothing they can use against us to break our contract. And now we're in so solid they can't cut us out with the Salariki. Groft asked the Captain to teach him that trick with the net. I didn't know the Old Man knew Lalox whip fighting it's about one of the nastiest ways to get cut to pieces in this universe " "How's trade going?" Rip's sunniness clouded. "Supplies have given out.
"Polite, aren't they?" asked Weeks mildly. "What do you expect of Eysies?" Ali wanted to know. "To them Free Traders are just rim planet trash. Let's report back where we are appreciated." They took a short cut which brought them back to the Queen and they filed up her ramp to make their report to the Captain. But they were not yet satisfied with Groft and his gorp slayers.
The finds ranged from a three foot section some four inches in diameter, to some slender twigs no larger than a writing steelo but all with high polish, the warm flame coloring. Weeks lashed them together before he joined the group where Groft was outlining the technique of gorp hunting for the benefit of the Terrans.
Hard muscles moved under his skin, pale where space tan had not burned in the years of his star voyaging. And his every movement was with the liquid grace of a man who, in his time, had been a master of the force blade. Now he gripped in his left hand the claw knife given him by Groft himself and in the other he looped the throwing rope of the net.
With deliberation the storm priest produced a knife the first straight bladed weapon Dane had seen on Sargol. He made a single thrust in the soft underpart of the gorp's throat, catching in the cup he took from Groft some of the ichor which spurted from the wound.
" and so, sky lords," Groft brought his oration to a close, "we come to ask that you send your young men to this hunting so that they may know the joy of plunging knives into the scaled death and see the horned ones die bathed in their own vile blood!" Dane needed no hint from the Queen's officers that this invitation was a sharp departure from custom.
Where the cleansing fire had run on the water there was now only the natural metallic gray of the liquid, the cover was gone. Older Salariki warriors were choosing torches from those they had brought, doing it with care. Groft approached the Terrans carrying four. "These you use now " What for? Dane wondered. The sky was still sunlit.
No Salarik appeared for trade in the morning surprising the Terrans. Instead a second delegation, this time of older men and a storm priest, visited the spacer with an invitation to attend Paft's funeral feast, a rite which would be followed by the formal elevation of Groft to his father's position, now that he had revenged that parent.
The gorp killed by Groft and the one stunned by Dane were only the van of an army and within moments the hunters on the reef were confronted by trouble armed with slashing claws and diabolic fighting ability. The battle was anything but one-sided.
But it was at the far tip of the barrier the post of greatest honor which Groft had jealously claimed as his, that the gorp struck first. At a wild shout of defiance Dane half turned to see the Salarik noble cast his net at sea level and then stab viciously with a well practiced blow. When he raised his arm for a second thrust, greenish ichor ran from the blade down his wrist. "Dane!"
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