Read Online Conquerors' Legacy by Timothy Zahn - Free Book Online Page A

the whisper of breezes through the trees and stickler reeds surrounding them. Somewhere in the near distance an avci-cubu was snuffling quietly to itself as it rooted around with its snout for young Parra and oldur vines. From much farther away came the variegated whistling of a colony of floravore bats, swarming in battle with one of the forest's hundreds of varieties of recoil creepers.

Lying fully alert on his mattress pad, half seeing, half imagining the protective shelter cloth draped above his head, Lord Stewart Cavanagh stared out into the blackness of the Granparra night, wondering what it was that had awakened him.

His watch, pen torch, knife, and Kolchin's backup flechette pistol were on the ground beside his head to his left. Carefully, he rolled onto his left side, wincing at the ache from a dozen sore muscles.

"Lord Cavanagh?" a quiet voice called from a few meters away.

"Yes," Cavanagh confirmed, snagging the pistol and easing onto his back again. "Sorry-did I wake you?"

"No, I've been awake for a few minutes," Mitri Kolchin said. "I think we've got an intruder."

Cavanagh shivered, the muscle movement sending another wave of aching through him. "I thought you killed everything nearby when we made camp."

"I thought so, too," Kolchin said. "Quiet, please, and let me listen."

Cavanagh grimaced, gripping the pistol tightly as he rested his hand on his chest, breathing as silently as he could. In the darkness he visualized the area around the encampment Kolchin had cleared for them the previous evening, trying to guess where the intruder could be coming from.

And then... "Kolchin?"

"Sir, you have to be quiet-"

"It's over here," Cavanagh told him. "It's moving along my left leg."

He never heard Kolchin get out of his sleeping roll, but suddenly, with a ripple of displaced air, the bodyguard was there beside him. "Hold still," Kolchin murmured. "Watch your eyes."

Abruptly, the shelter was ablaze with light from Kolchin's pen torch. Cavanagh squinted against the glare, his eyes fighting to adjust, and looked down toward the left side of his sleeping roll.

It was there, all right: a slender, segmented greenish-purple vine moving leisurely alongside his leg. Cavanagh didn't recognize the particular species, but like the rest of Granparra's recoil creepers, its tip and sides bristled with barbed thorns. Even as he watched, it moved again, poking mindlessly at the sleeping roll as it tried to get to the source of the heat it was sensing.

"Don't move," Kolchin said quietly. "I'll try to draw it away."

There was a soft hum, and the beam from the pen torch focused down until it was a small, intense spot on the bristling vine head. The creeper seemed to pause, almost as if thinking; and then, as Cavanagh held his breath, the head began to turn toward this new source of heat. "I'll give it a few more centimeters," Kolchin said. "We don't want it twitching back toward you."

Cavanagh gave a microscopic nod, afraid of startling the plant. With what seemed like agonizing slowness the creeper continued veering away from his side....

And then Kolchin's right hand slashed down, the two edges of his split-blade knife slicing vertically into either side of the creeper, pinning the vine head to the ground. The creeper twitched violently and was still writhing as Kolchin slid Cavanagh's knife from its sheath and sliced off the deadly vine head.

Cavanagh took a careful breath, the pistol sagging against his chest as his hand relaxed its rigid grip on the weapon. "It's helpless now, right?"

"Right," Kolchin confirmed. He was working his way down the creeper, methodically cutting through the vine at each of the segment lines and throwing the pieces out into the forest. "Just don't touch the vine head-those thorns are probably poisonous."

"Right," Cavanagh said, reaching gingerly past the still writhing vine head for his watch. Still two hours to dawn. "When did Piltariab say he'd be getting back from Puerto Simone