The Deadly Cat-Warriors Of Klem & The Appreciative Gladiators, Or Glad-Glads

12 Raby` al-awal 1328 A.H.

Portentous last journal entry, you scoundrel, Tariq! O ironic Humps...

Jiji finally returned today, with a new message carved in her side:

"SCOTS [heart symbol] KLEMIZONS"

We were chatting up the sand-sellers in the Bazaar Of Veiled Men, hoping to score a bevy of free sand-sandwiches, when we were surrounded by... The Deadly Cat-Warriors Of Klem!

Strangely, they weren't huge women in cat-masks, but actual cats, mounted one-upon-the-next, up and up into the strangest, deadliest configurations and combinations I've e'er seen in all my years of general-ing.

We were taken--all six hundred of us, to a man--down into the Gullet Of Fear, or the Klemizonian (that is the proper adjectival form of "Klem," we have learned) version of a gaol-house, which is nothing like our Enlightened Rooms For Better Thought And Increased Communication With The Friend, back in the Caliphate. No, these are not perfumed or filled with chanting old beggars or friendly spider-monkeys (or monkey-spiders), but with arbitrary spike-lined pits and asp-grottoes...

(They let me keep my journal and quill so that I could write, but now I must use poor Jiji's blood for ink. I fear, if she succumbs to septicemia, I'll be forced to employ Fariz's instead...)

On the morrow, we are to face the Appreciative Gladiators, Or Glad-Glads, in deadly combat.

So relates the one masked Klemizonian Tribune to whom we've spoken:

"The Cat-Warriors are made this way: We feed the bodies of defeated foreign manlings (like you) to the Glad-Glads, to make them strong. They defeat more foreign manlings, making themselves stronger. At some point, a Glad-Glad--who is so insanely happy to fight for his City that he never stops smiling, even in sleep--becomes too old to defeat foreign warriors. The ignobly old Glad-Glad then inserts himself into the Cat-Pit, or 'Pit-Of-Cats,' the latter way being how the unlearned men-folk say it. The cats, or Cats, properly, rip apart the Glad-Glad, gladly devouring his tiny... dink, as we say. Then the Cats lustily sleep, dreaming of Death-In-Crimson, our goddess here.

"When the Cats awaken, they are as one: One unit of Hateful Death. That is how the Cat-Warriors are made." [Long, clever pause...] "Any questions I might answer now?"

The Mullah looked like he had a question, but I tackled him, his scratchy beard clawing at my red tired eyes...

"EVIL BITCH TRIBUNE! LISTEN ME!," I said calmly, cleverly ellitizing the unnecessary preposition. "You must let us go. Our fight is not with you and your pussies, but with the Scots! who ambushed us at Sibani!"

The Tribune's mask shook for a long time with what I hoped was sympathy.

"Our... what?" She stammered. "What is your fight not with?"

The Mullah again began to speak, but good Savage Robbert put his hand into the old man's mouth, preventing information-carrying noise from disrupting my subtle diplomatic foray.

"With your... Cats, Tribune."

The Tribune's clean, bright eyes darted up and down from behind the kohl-rimmed eyes of her mask. Judging. "Okay. But let me warn you--all of you--you should not waste your words trying to argue. We do not believe in diplomacy. And besides, to whom would you diplome?" (I snickered--that's not a word.) "Tonight, the Tyrant of today is already stepping down from the Dais Of Crazy Beautiful Marble and returning to her job as a slaver of men-folk and children... The Scots? Huh. You will not find Scots unveiled in our City. Your camel is the only one of you worth anything: He has learned to endure."

We were all silent a long time, until Jiji sniffled... Some months ago, upon first arriving in this spiteful Lost Land, I had personally liberated Jiji after Gibreel came to me in a dream in the form of a little girl with no arms who said, "Slavery is wrong--even of pets. Let Jiji go." I had tried to return Jiji to the wild, but he wouldn't leave. We negotiated, via Mysterious Shamz (who knows how to sign Animal), that Jiji would work for his food, in exactly the same capacity he occupied as a slave-pet, but with his pride restored, his hump held high...

I narrowed my eyes, as the Tribune turned to leave, and tried to squint through her, meditating on the fly across the wall--the free fly, swinging itself like a little sling-stone between the bars of our cell.

The day already dawns, it seems, and we must be glad to see it.

O sun! Would that you could fight, in free Tariq's, or free Jiji's place, against these Barbarian-Women with their City of impossible, self-abnegating bureaucracy and storms of Cats...