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breath by the time he neared the stream.
* * *
Tirdal wasn't sure how he had dodged the first rush but now it was a furball. Two of the predators
were down, one of them twitching, one broken, but those were lucky shots. Two more had been hit but
it wasn't stopping them; he had to hit a nerve center to kill the creatures. Neck or belly were the targets.
Neck or belly, he reminded himself as he dodged another leap. They were pack hunters, and waited for
cues from each other. They circled around at a run and dove in a tight sequence, one to distract, one
from behind, the rest from the sides. He Sensed their leaps only instants before, but it had been enough
so far. He knew their pattern, now, but could he maintain his luck and speed? His first evasion had sent
pain shrieking through his lower chestplate. The second one had almost caused him unconsciousness.
There was another danger; that of a reaction equivalent to human endorphin response. Part of his brain
was Sensing his enemy, part clamping down tightly on agony, part controlling tal and preventing the
cloying sweetness and urgency of lintatai, leaving badly eroded mental processes for wielding the punch
gun, twisting through the blades of their jaws and staying mobile.
It took three quarters of a second for the punch gun to cycle and the pauses between shots were
the most incredibly long three-quarters of a second he could imagine. He had accepted that he would
have to fill each of the beasts full of holes until he hit a nerve junction, but the question was who would
be dismembered first. He ducked a leap, rolled to the left through thick weeds, untangled from them and
the matted grass beneath, skipped back a step and fired. The gun wentpoounk , his chosen target
staggered, lintatai surged toward the center of his brain and his training locked it back down. The
contortions and battle outside were a mere shadow of the war within, of hormones versus self-control. It
was literally as hard as controlling an orgasm in progress, that threatened to spill over at the slightest
opening. Except that this orgasm would kill him.
The insects scurried back into a circle around him. He backed away through a gap, delaying the
inevitable, almost stumbling in the thick, close-spaced stalks, until the punch gun recycled. He pointed
and snap-shot just as he'd been taught on the training range, pointing for the head of the nearest beast,
hoping for a stun, blunt trauma or perhaps something better. The creature was stretched out at the run,
and the shot caught it on the short but exposed neck. It wasn't dead-on, as the head rolled between the
forelegs but remained attached by a sinewy string inside the articulated plates. Still, the insect tumbled
and began to twitch. It was a kill. A surge of tal brought bright halos to everything in Tirdal's vision, and
he took another breath, laden with the coppery stench of blood, the earthy smell of insect guts and the
ozone tang of the shots. He focused on the sensations, through them. See the calmness of the lake. The
currents run underneath. Only the ripples wash the shore . . .
Pain lanced again, this time through his right thigh. His Sense had been distracted and missed this
one. He drove the butt of the weapon down, tearing the mandibles free, fabric and flesh following them
with an animated trail of blood droplets. The blow might have damaged the creature's jaw, as it seemed
askew. A twist, point, shoot. Point-blank through the open mouth would also kill one, it seemed, and
another surge swept through him. Forcing the searing pain in his chest and leg aside, he leapt over the
horse-sized carcass, its legs thrumming the ground in death, and turned to face the remaining three as the
tortured nerves in his shoulder, chestplate and thigh caused a cramp the entire length of his right side,
from shoulder to ankle. The tiger beetles seemed to lack the rational sense to leave a losing battle. Or
maybe they were starving. Or maybe Darhel smelled like chicken. They were going to leap now, and
Tirdal dropped. It wasn't hard to let gravity do the work.
As they jumped, he fell behind the last corpse, its legs still twitching, brushing him in a macabre
caress. But he was pointing straight up as they went overhead, and his shot caught one of them at the
rear of the underside. That one split, its rear legs and joint tumbling free with a gout of entrails and yellow
goo to land in a twitching heap. Tirdal dragged his feet painfully under himself in a squat, then shoved as
hard as he could, rising up the curve of the carcass and over to the other side of the corpse, twisting as
he went. The ankle on his already injured leg responded too slowly to the landing, and he felt it crunch,
trauma inflaming the soft tissue into an instant sprain. He shot again and nothing happened. It had not
been three-quarters of a second. The remaining pair spread wide, and he fired as the weapon recharged,
getting one obliquely underneath as it left the ground. He dropped and rolled in close to the corpse
behind him and waited for recharge and another attack.
The final tiger beetle continued its leap into a run and disappeared.
Tirdal did what any human martial artist would. He went into recovery breathing, slow and
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