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Chapter Seventeen

Almost home. Sharku was not a man given to flights of poetic fancy, but he thought that one of the loveliest phrases he'd ever heard. When he got back to the Citadel, he'd stand on tiptoe so he could kiss the shower head in his apartment's refresher cubicle. Only those who spent a lot of their time away from plumbing could fully appreciate it when they had it.

He'd kiss Chichek, too, most thoroughly. Toragina had entertained him well enough on the journey back from the yurts of the Ak-Koyunlu. He doubted she would end up unassigned, to do menial labor and bear children to whatever Soldiers the Breedmaster decided. She would make some Soldier a companion better than the usual run of tribute maiden. But Chichek was something special.

An uxorious Soldier! How the nomads would have laughed, had they known.

He wondered what Gimilzor had learned while he was gone. Children changed so fast. Wasn't it yesterday—day before at the earliest—when the boy had been only a wailing lump swaddled in a blanket of soft muskylope wool? Now he was reading, field-stripping a toy assault rifle, learning the tricks of unarmed combat and of controlling his own enhanced body. Whereas Sharku just went on, cycle by cycle. So far as he could tell, he hadn't changed since Gimilzor was born. But his son's growth made a lie of that.

Ahead in the distance reared the glittering peaks of the Atlas Mountains, the northern farm part of the Shangri-La Valley. The snow that topped those mountains never melted; some of it was CO2. The peaks reminded Sharku of the spine that might top a dragon's back; like a dragon's armor, they shielded the softer valley from danger all around. Already the land was falling toward the pass; invisible to the eye, but the air was a trifle thicker, the grass taller and more lush than on the high northern steppe.

His party had taken a wide detour around the northern foothills of the Atlas range to approach the Citadel. Here near the great fortress of the Soldiers, traffic on the steppe was heavy: merchants coming to trade with and cater to the richest folk on Haven, a couple of tribute parties like his own, nomads bringing their animals or their wives to give birth in the thick lowland air of the Shangri-La Valley. Soon they would meet the customs stations and the paved road.

He twisted to look behind him. Scattered here and there out on the steppe, he saw examples of all the groups that had crossed his mind. And there, less than a klick away and closing fast, he also saw a lone runner eating up the ground with the unmistakable untiring lope of a Soldier.

His vision leaped the distance to give him a better look: a young fellow, beard still patchy, dressed in the furs and leathers of the plains. Not a man he knew by sight, which puzzled him a little; he thought he at least recognized most of the Soldiers of the Citadel likely to pull steppe duty. Turning to his companions, he pointed out the approaching runner. "Any of you seen him before?"

Mumak, Ufthak and Snaga all looked back at the fellow. "No," they said in the same breath. Mumak added: "He's one of ours, though. Couldn't be anything else, not moving like that."

"Raggedy-ass excuse for a Soldier," Snaga said. "If he's what our distant Bases turn out these days, no wonder the cattle overran Angband."

Sometimes Sharku wondered if Snaga had any brains at all. As patiently as he could, he said, "It wasn't just cattle, if you'll remember. One of ours run wild led them. It's Juchi's fault. Curse him, he's got the whole steppe boiling against us even after he's dead."

"Raggedy-ass," Snaga repeated. Not for the first time, Sharku decided some selection board had been asleep at the switch when it made him an officer.

Ufthak said, "Maybe he's been doing intelligence work among the cattle. That would account for the way he looks. You travel among the barbarians on that kind of mission, you don't want to be conspicuous." Ufthak, now, knew how to use his wits, Sharku thought. He wasn't just a fighter, he was a Soldier.

Maybe the fellow trotting along through the calf-high grass heard the men of the tribute party speaking Americ. Maybe he recognized the field-gray they wore. Whatever the reason, he swerved toward them. His clothes looked ragged, but his boots were new—from the gaunt look of his face, he'd run far and fast and without time or opportunity to eat enough, wearing out footwear as he came. When he spoke, he blew all of Ufthak's fine theorizing into a cloud of muskylope flatulence. Not only did he use the Turkic dialect of the plains, he addressed the men of the Citadel as if they were others, not comrades: "You fellows, you're—Saurons?"

"We're Soldiers," Sharku answered stonily; Sauron was an other-people label for the descendants of those who had reached Haven in the Dol Guldur. The Chief Assault Leader studied the newcomer, who effortlessly kept pace with the tribute party's horses. "So are you, by your genes. Who are you, anyhow?" What are you? was the unspoken echo to the question.

The stranger's mouth twisted. Sharku noted that for a couple of reasons: first, the stranger didn't like the question, the answer to it, or both, and second, he'd never had proper Soldier schooling in controlling his musculature. Maybe Snaga had a point after all, Sharku thought reluctantly.

The stranger's breath hissed out in a sigh—not weariness, not with the way he moved, but resignation. He dipped his head in what might have been either salute or challenge. "Saurons—Soldiers, if you'd rather—know I am Dagor son of Juchi. Having heard that, do with me as you will." His head came up again. His eyes locked with Sharku's. It was challenge, then; whatever else was in this young man, he held no resignation.

Sharku needed all his discipline to keep from staring. In Turkic, so Dagor could hear and fear, Snaga said, "Kill him. If he lies, he deserves death for his presumption. And if he's telling the truth, he deserves death for who he is."

Much as Sharku disliked agreeing with Snaga about anything, he thought the other Soldier was right this once; at least, he found nothing missing from Snaga's analysis. Then Dagor threw back his head and roared laughter. Yes, he had spirit, whoever he was. Sharku said, "Have a care with your mirth, stranger. Your life is in peril."

"By Allah and the spirits, why should I not laugh?" Dagor retorted. "I went to the oasis where the Seven gather their hosts against the Citadel, seeking to set my sword among theirs, and they cast me out, may they roast in Hell forever. So I decided I would have my revenge upon them—after all, Saurons, I share your blood as well as theirs. And now you'd sooner kill me than hear me out! The bards on the steppe would set song round the several sides of such stupidity."

"Hold, there," Sharku said. "You know of the Seven?"

"Know of them?" Dagor said. "Do you just hear with those augmented ears of yours, or do you listen? I know them well. With two, indeed, I could scarcely be more closely connected. Aisha, whose name even you will know, is my full sister, and Chaya, till lately Judge of the Bandari, is my father's sister—and my three-quarter sister as well."

He fairly spat out the last of that; Sharku guessed he'd had it spat in his face scores of times. The Chief Assault Leader kept his mouth shut tight. Incest was only a word, not a curse, in the Citadel, where bloodlines counted so much. And even if that hadn't been true, Sharku wasn't about to offend the most precious intelligence source he'd ever set eyes on.

Maybe he heard something behind him, maybe he just sensed it. Without turning, he snapped, "Hold, Snaga. We'll bring him with us."

"Waste of—" Snaga began.

"Waste of what?" Sharku interrupted. "Waste of a mount? He's come this far afoot. He can go on to the Citadel that way at need. Waste of food? The same applies. Waste of time? I don't think so—and in such matters my will is the controlling one."

Dagor's eyes had flicked from one of them to the other. He might not have been able to follow the Americ—that was Sharku's guess, though he wasn't sure of it—but he could read tones and maybe expressions; even Soldiers got careless sometimes. Now he said to Sharku, "If that other Sauron doesn't care for me, tell him I'll fight him. We'll see how he likes me afterwards."

When Snaga heard that, he laughed loud and long. He was not a man who often laughed; the noise burst from his throat like water forcing its way out through a clogged pipe. He actually beamed at Dagor. Speaking Turkic himself, he said, "Of course I'll fight you. Few offer me their lives as gifts, but I make a habit of taking them when offered."

"Have a care, Snaga," Mumak said. Snaga glowered, but his comrade went on, "Remember that, between them, his father and sister put paid to a Cyborg Battlemaster. He's no bad-genes cattle lad with more testosterone than he knows what to do with, for you to play with like a cliff lion and a calf."

The reminder sobered Snaga, but having gone so far he could not back down if he intended to show his face in the Citadel again. He started to dismount. "Hold!" Sharku commanded. He shifted to Turkic. "No fighting now. If Dagor wins, the Citadel will have lost a Soldier. If Snaga wins, we'll have lost an intelligence resource we can in no way make up. Let there be truce." He was confident Snaga would obey; of wild Dagor he was less certain. Now he locked eyes with the young stranger. "Or do you think you can take the four of us at once?"

By the way he shifted his weight, Dagor was ready to try: a case of testosterone poisoning after all, Sharku thought. But he mastered himself. He might be wild, but he was no fool. "Let there be truce . . . Soldier. As you say, I am coming to join you and yours. Let there be no more blood between us than that which was borne in the past."

"Aye, that is a sufficiency," Sharku said, in one of the choicer understatements of his career.

The tribute maidens chattered among themselves as the journey south resumed. Enough of the talk had been in Turkic for them to have figured out what was going on. Juchi, curse him, was a legend on the steppes, and to have his son appear out of nowhere was a marvel greater than any they'd encountered among the yurts of their clan. They'd have plenty of juicy gossip for the women in the Citadel, too.

Snaga rode close to Sharku. "Permission to speak to the Chief Assault Leader," he said in the most robotically formal voice he owned.

"Go ahead." Sharku had a pretty good idea of what was coming.

It came: "I must protest the Chief Assault Leader's equalizing the probabilities of victory for myself and that—that savage. I resent the imputation of weakness with which you have burdened me."

"Go ahead," Sharku said in a different tone. "If you really don't like it, Snaga, wait till we're back home and then try and kick my ass."

"Let it be as the Chief Assault Leader wishes," Snaga said, by which he meant he knew too bloody well he had no hope of kicking Sharku's ass.

Had Sharku not been trained from infancy to control his reactions, his grin would have been as wide and toothy as a land gator's. But he decided to let Snaga down easy, lest he find himself sipping distillate of oxbane in his tea one fine morning: little men avenged themselves over little things. "Think, Snaga," he urged. "After we bring the wild one here into the Citadel, where is he likely to go for questioning?"

Snaga thought. Like Sharku, he'd learned to mask what went on behind his eyes. Even so, his voice had lost that robotic quality as he answered, "The Red Room."

"Exactly," Sharku said. Neither of them had named or looked at Dagor. If he truly didn't understand Americ, he'd have no idea that they were talking about him. Well, that's his hard luck, Sharku thought. Nobody asked him to cast his lot with us in the first place.

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Framed