One more question to one more captive, and then the akks moved aside for him again.

Vastor was nearby, growling and barking and snarling the Korunnai into groups organized for the withdrawal. In his disconnected state. Mace felt no surprise to discover that he could not now understand the lor pelek. Vastor’s voice had become jungle noise, freighted with meaning but indecipherable, Inhuman, Impersonal.

Lethal.

 … not because the jungle kills you, Nick had said. Just because it is what it is.

Mace put out a hand to stop Vastor as the lor pelek swept by him. “What will you do with the captives?”

Vastor rumbled wordlessly in his throat, and now again his meaning unfurled in Mace’s mind. They come with us.

“You can take care of prisoners?”

We don’t take care of them. We give them to the jungle.

“The tan pel’trokal,” Mace murmured. “Jungle justice.” Somehow, this made perfect sense. Though he could not approve, he could not help but understand.

Vastor nodded as he turned to move on. It is our way.

“Is that different from murder?” Though Mace was looking at Vastor, he sounded like he was asking himself. “Can any of them survive? Cast out alone, without supplies, without weapons—”

The lor pelek gave Mace a predator’s grin over his shoulder, showing his needle-sharp teeth. I did, he growled, and walked away.

“And the children?”

But Mace was talking to the lor pelek’s departing back; Vastor was already snapping at three or four ragged young Korunnai. What he might be ordering them to do, Mace couldn’t say; Vastor’s meaning had departed with his attention.


- Shatterpoint, Chapter 8