Terrible Swift Sword Read Online Free PDF Page A

been lulled by the chant, which now had changed to a cold voice of warning.
    "They have given us the freedom to be such, and now they have the power to take it away.
    "The cattle have changed. They have learned not only to think like us, but beyond us. They will destroy us and this world shall be theirs, if we do not change as well. We must end, at least for the moment, what we are, if we wish to save ourselves. Though you see it without honor, it is the cattle of the north who are the true enemies, what we do between each other is for now without meaning. If we do not settle this issue, in the end it will destroy us, and they, the lowly cattle, will inherit the world."
    There was a low murmuring from the dozens of Qarths sitting beneath the feet of their leaders. Some had grasped the hidden meaning of his words, but only a few; the rest gazed at him in confusion or disdain.
    "For a moment, I found I could listen," Tayang growled. "Now your words are like the buzzing of flies on offal."
    Tamuka waited for the angry retorts to die away.
    "My lord Jubadi is even now building weapons of war. Or should I say, we have cattle who are building them for us."
    "Like your last folly, which they destroyed!" Tayang laughed.
    "I was there and you were not, Tayang Qar Qarth," Tamuka retorted. "I saw what you have only heard. I know what you have not even yet to dream in your darkest nightmares.
    "I saw cattle who fought with a discipline that rivals our own. I saw cattle who charged in to battle, shouting their hatred of us, willing to die, dreaming but to take but one of us with them.
    "I remember a time when one of us alone could have ridden into a city of ten thousand of them and they would have submitted, baring their throats. Now I tell you that in the north they wait with their cannons, guns, ships, swords, their bare hands. If we kill ten of them to our one, still we will lose in the end. Because if their infection of hatred spreads east, south even unto the realm of the Bantag, you too will see the fields littered with the corpses of your warriors. For the seed of the cattle is strong, and they spread about our world by the millions.
    "You say there is no honor to fight them. Listen well to my words, Tayang, all of you. Honor or not, you will be just as dead from their bullets, and they will laugh as they shovel you into the ground."
    He lowered his voice.
    "They will laugh as they shovel our entire race into its final grave."
    Tayang shifted uncomfortably, taken aback and yet unable to respond, for he could see the look in the eyes of his Qarths, his clan leaders, who sat in silence, their attention fixed on Tamuka.
    "Fighting these new cattle is like wrestling with the Ugrasla, the great serpents of your own forests. You grasp them, you think you have held them down, and then they slip through your hands and coil about you.
    "We built the weapons of the cattle, or should I say that we had cattle build them for us, and it took us a year. The Yankees then built weapons as good in one tenth that time, and weapons that were even better.
    "We build a weapon that can shoot flame and lead, killing a man at fifty paces, like the one you saw before this meeting. They then build one that can kill at two hundred, simply by changing the shape of the bullet and cutting grooves inside the barrel.
    "We must learn to build these things on our own, with our own hands."
    "You call for those with the ka to labor?" Tayang snarled. "Perhaps this thing inside you called the tu would be a spirit more willing to do such demeaning labor, but not a warrior."
    And those in the yurt, all except Muzta, nodded in agreement with Tayang's words.
    "We must free ourselves of cattle if we wish to remain free at all," Tamuka replied defiantly.
    "To be slaves digging in the mountains for the black iron, to pour out our sweat by the forges, that is not freedom, that is the life of cattle," Jubadi said quietly, though obviously disturbed by Tamuka's words.
    Tamuka