Carcharoth felt harassed. Harassment was the price a Battlemaster paid for his job, or so the saying went, but at the moment Carcharoth's account was overdrawn. It wasn't enough that all the dirty, greasy nomads on Haven were bearing down on the Citadel, armed with whatever they could lay their hands on.
No, that wasn't enough.
It wasn't enough that the Bandari were behind the Volkenvanderung which meant the steppe cattle would be able to get their hands on more and better weapons than they could have otherwise.
No, that wasn't enough.
It wasn't even enough that Breedmaster Titus' Cyborg daughter might have gone feral and joined the stinking nomads. Sigrid—Carcharoth was alone, so he granted himself the luxury of a scowl. Her genes were too good to cull, too near the edge of stability to be safe. After this mess was over, Carcharoth would have to think long and hard on what to do about her.
But no, even the problem of Sigrid wasn't enough to fill his plate of troubles.
Sitting on that plate, gently steaming like a proper entree—or a pile of shit—was fresh news of rebellion in the west end of the Shangri-La Valley. Swarming nomads on the plains were one thing. Revolt inside the valley was something else again. Literally and figuratively, that hit the Soldiers where they lived. The TAC had predicted scattered rebellion there—in two to five T-years, no sooner.
The Threat Analysis Computer hadn't given a single solitary hint of anything wrong till the heliograph brought word to the Citadel that the garrison at Hell's A'-Comin' was under attack. Since then it had been soaking up the—very scarce—data and saying very little. It wasn't any scattered rebellion, either; big chunks of the New Soviet Men and the Sons of Liberty, the two largest vassal nations in the western valley, had risen, with more joining them all the time. A hundred and fifty thousand fighting men—cattle, but trained and armed. Garrisons had been overrun, river traffic on the Xanadu cut back to nothing.
So Carcharoth felt harassed. When the ceiling speaker said, "Battlemaster Carcharoth to tribute reception area, Battlemaster Carcharoth to tribute reception area. Urgent," he had to suppress a most unCyborglike reaction to tell it where to go.
He hurried to the tribute reception area, taking a few seconds along the way to imagine the new asshole he'd ream for the Soldier who'd unnecessarily called him away from serious business. When he found Sharku there, he had to let the fantasy die: the Chief Assault Leader was as capable a field-grade officer as the Citadel had. With him were his comrades in the tribute party, the usual tribute maidens doing their usual gaping at being inside a structure more solid than a yurt, and a man he did not know but tentatively identified as a Soldier out of uniform.
The Soldiers did not usually go in for spit and polish among themselves. Sharku nodded to Carcharoth and said, "I know you have problems of your own, Battlemaster, but—"
"Son, you don't begin to," Carcharoth interrupted. "This had better be interesting, because I'm busy enough to wish I were triplets."
"I'll keep it short for now, then," Sharku said. "You can have me amplify later, at your leisure."
"Leisure?" Carcharoth said. "Leisure is for when you're dead, if the worms give you any. What's up?"
"Big nomad movement—"
"I already know about that," the Battlemaster said. "It showed up on the TAC. Details will be helpful, but not vital. Anything else?" Fully prepared for the answer to be no, he began to turn away. So much to do, so little time to do it in . . . .
But Sharku answered, "Yes, Battlemaster." Carcharoth had to turn back. Nodding to the male stranger, Sharku said, "Battlemaster, this is Dagor, Juchi's son. He seeks to join forces with the Citadel, and offers intelligence data as his price of entry."
It was a truism that Cyborgs could not be taken by surprise. Like any truism, it had its holes: Carcharoth's immediate predecessor as Battlemaster, for instance, had no doubt been surprised by the knife that cut his throat. But Cyborgs made a point of never showing surprise. "Is he?" Carcharoth said mildly. He addressed Dagor: "Are you?" Seeing incomprehension in the other's eyes and body language, he switched to Turkic and asked, "What languages have you?"
"This one we speak now, Russki, Bandarit, a little of the Mongols' speech, a few words of Eden Valley Americ," Dagor answered promptly and apparently willingly. "I cannot follow your dialect of Americ. I am sorry."
"No matter." Carcharoth studied the stranger with lively curiosity. Though no Breedmaster, he carried in his head enough data to make what he thought of as a battlefield evaluation of a man's genetic potential: rough, but serviceable until somebody flanged up something better.
Without warning, he dropped a hand to his knife. The speed with which Dagor reached for his own weapon put him somewhere near the middle of the first quartile for Soldier's reflexes. The speed with which he disengaged when he saw Carcharoth hadn't drawn said he wasn't stupid.
"Well!" Carcharoth said. His own Turkic was better than fluent; whatever he did, he did well. "I'm sure we'll have a great many questions to ask of you, Dagor son of Juchi." The Breedmaster who exposed your father was not a fool. He was an imbecile.
"Shall I take him to the Interrogation Room?" asked one of the officers with Sharku: Snaga. Carcharoth had the name after a millisecond's flip through the database between his ears. The fellow quivered with barely concealed eagerness; the Battlemaster wondered how Dagor had managed to yank his chain so hard.
"No, not unless we have to. Let's try to keep him in one piece a little longer, shall we?" Carcharoth replied in Americ. Snaga wilted, both at the answer and at his tone. Too bad for you, Snaga, the Battlemaster thought. He dropped back into Turkic: "Why do you wish to join the Soldiers, Dagor? This is—shall we say?—an uncommon desire among the folk of the steppes."
"Few on the steppes have my breeding," Dagor returned, to which Carcharoth had to nod. The young Sauron (Carcharoth thought of him so, for, whatever his breeding, he was no trained Soldier and might never be one) went on, "Besides, I would avenge myself against those on the steppes who would not accept me as one of theirs. I have spoken of this somewhat to Sharku here." He fixed Carcharoth with a measuring stare. "My hope was that those who dwelt here might be less inclined to shy at shadows."
Untrained or not, Carcharoth thought, the fellow acted like a Soldier. He turned to Sharku, staying in Turkic so that Dagor could understand: "Assign him a billet among the un-partnered Soldiers during the debriefing process. Let them know there is to be no hazing of any sort. If he is damaged, those responsible will suffer tenfold. If no individual can be proved responsible, all in the barracks will suffer tenfold. Make that clear, Chief Assault Leader—very clear."
"Aye, Battlemaster," Sharku said. He hesitated, then added, "Forgive me, Battlemaster, but interrogating him strikes me as urgent."
"Under normal circumstances, I would agree with you," Carcharoth said. "Circumstances, however, are anything but normal." In a few clipped words, he explained about the rising in the west end of the valley, and about the TAC's blindness to it. A very rare occurrence, although not completely unknown.
Sharku's brows came together as he thought hard. "Battlemaster, the timing of these two events strikes me as something other than coincidental. Some other factor has intervened to increase the severity of the unrest and escalate it to open revolt earlier than predicted."
"A certain amount of paranoia is an asset to an intelligence officer, but only a certain amount," Carcharoth said, shaking his head. "Were there a route from the plains—or would it be the Pale?—into the valley, I might take your hypothesis more seriously. Were there such a route, however, we would have seen painful evidence of it long before this—and it would have become known to the Threat Analysis Computer. The TAC has been exhaustively briefed concerning the uprising, and finds no such connection."
"Where the Pale is concerned, I take nothing on trust," Sharku said stubbornly.
"I take the facts of this world on trust," Carcharoth said in a voice that should have brooked no argument. "Among those facts, let me note a couple: first, that the Citadel is unquestionably proof against any assault the nomads of the steppe can muster, and second, that control of the Shangri-La Valley is not only what gives us control over the bulk of Haven but also what allows us to survive as a tech civilization. Without the foodstuffs we realize from the valley, we would have to do our own farming, and low-tech farming is so labor intensive that it would leave us no time for anything else."
Sharku glared. Carcharoth could not blame him; being lectured as if he were in an officer training seminar had to sting. But the Chief Assault Leader had spirit. He shot back, "Maybe the TAC didn't foresee this rising because it knows less about how Haven is made than the Bandari do."
"No." Carcharoth dismissed that idea out of hand, and when a Cyborg dismissed an idea, it was gone for good. "If we start distrusting the Threat Analysis Computer, what shall we trust? Without it, we might well have failed to survive here."
The Chief Assault Leader snapped to attention. Among the Soldiers, that was almost a slap in the face. The Battlemaster adjusted his blood chemistry and the circulation in his brain away from anger. Like a military machine, Sharku droned, "Request permission to instruct the TAC to hypothesize overland connection between the Pale and the valley, and to analyze the rebellion taking this hypothesis into account."
"Permission denied." Carcharoth went icily formal him, exchanging insult for polite insult. "It is the Battlemaster's judgment that the uprising of the agricultural populace within the Shangri-La Valley is of higher priority than any movement of steppe peoples, and that the resources of the Citadel must be committed to suppressing this uprising and preventing its spread. The Battlemaster shall present this recommendation for action by the First Council. The Chief Assault Leader of course retains the privilege of offering to the Council his alternative strategic plan."
Sharku held his brace as if carved from stone. Snaga smirked; even an ordinary Soldier might have missed it, but Carcharoth didn't. Dagor just stood wide-eyed and watched the argument, understanding that it was one but not what it was about. The tribute maidens also stared, but Carcharoth hardly bothered to notice them.
He did notice the other two Soldiers—Mumak and Ufthak, their names were, he recalled from his data store—exchanging glances. He didn't care for that; if they doubted his judgment, he had to wonder whether he'd been hasty. He reviewed the argument in his own mind. No, it was incontrovertible. Let Sharku imagine all the mountain routes he wanted—if they really existed, the TAC would have known about them long ago. Impossible to hide the subtle evidence that such communication existed, and the TAC could deduce a whole map from a single irrelevant fact. Since the TAC didn't know about it, the valley revolt and the plains uprising were unconnected. Between them, as he'd said, the valley came first.
"Well, of course I'm not sure," Hammer-of-God said mildly, ignoring the khan's glare.
They were sitting in the commander's tent, with a big map pinned to the wall behind him—an object of awe even to the illiterate majority—and eating kefir, honey-colored sweetened milk-curd, out of bowls.
"But," he added, "I don't think Quilland Base will set out to attack us."
He turned and tapped a finger on the map. The Great Northern Steppe wrapped around the Atlas mountains, west and north and east, like a vast elongated C on its side, five thousand kilometers around. Cliff Lion Springs was at the top of the western arm, where the mountains turned south to the Pale. Nearby—fairly nearby, five hundred kilometers—was Quilland Base: westernmost Sauron outpost since the fall of Angband, and commanding a valley of some size in the outer Atlas foothills.
"Quilland Base has its own worries," he said.
"How do you know?"
"How do I know, O Ilderim Khan of the Dongala Khel?" Hammer-of-God laid a finger along his nose. "A little lizard whispered in my ear that a brigade of haBandari rode north out of the Pale not five cycles ago, and harries the western outworks of Quilland Base's lands," he said. "They have their own problems."
"By Shaitan!"
"Istagfarullah!"
Faces high-cheeked and flat, or lean and hairy under pugaree turbans, broke into grins; men whose fathers and grandfathers had been knifing and ambushing each other since time out of mind slapped backs and slurped strong green eggbush tea from the same samovar. All as if never a sheep had gone astray, a horse been lifted, or a girl been snatched from a waterhole.
Ilderim Khan was of the bearded variety, with a strong hook nose; there was gray in the beard, and a deep furrowed scar plowed across the empty eye socket above his left cheekbone. He tugged at his beard now, and blinked the single eye at the map. Then he drew the long chora tucked through the sash that held his grimy green coat closed, and used it to point.
"Those Saurons are infidel pigs with hair on their livers," he said, "but they are no fools, by Allah and the spirits! If the Bandari riders harry them here"—the point of the elongated butcher knife moved west—"what of the smaller outposts here, here, here, east along the foothills?" He flicked the weapon east. A chain of outstations reached back toward Dyer Base and then the Citadel.
"None of them is of any size," Hammer-of-God said. "Let the little dogs yap."
There was a stir of uncertainty. "Not so little that we can have their teeth in our arses as we ride east," Ilderim said stubbornly.
Silence fell, until Aisha leaned forward. Her hands were clenched white-knuckled on her knees—it was still an ordeal for her to speak in public like this—as she said: "Ilderim Khan is wise." The man stroked his beard and nodded. "As is Hammer-of-God. Though these small forts have few Sauron warriors—"
"Couple of squads each," Hammer said helpfully. Aisha nodded thanks.
"—still, they control . . . not the steppe, they are too few . . . but they control the hearts of many. Who has dared to attack them? Now and then a lone Sauron is killed, but when has one of their posts been overrun—save by Juchi? If we pass by and let them harry us, many will say we are an army that flees, not one that attacks."
This time the Seven as well as the chiefs nodded slowly. Aisha went on: "This one here, this is Shamrabad, isn't it?"
Hammer nodded. Juchi's daughter continued: "My father and I passed through there, many years ago, but I remember it well. A village of farmers brought there long ago from the Saratov Valley near the Base, with an outpost they use to collect their tribute—occupied much of the summer." Haven summers were nearly one and a half T-years long. "The first harvest is in, and the first shearing from the sheep, and the lambs, and the wild muskylope herds"—there was a vast seasonal migration from the Atlas foothills to the uninhabited swamps of the far north—"so they will be there once more."
Everyone was looking at Aisha now. She flushed darkly, but plowed on: "How many are we?"
Tameetha bat Irene leaned forward. She had been stropping a knife on a leather strap wound round the knuckles of her left hand; now she murmured in the Edenite general's ear. Hammer nodded.
"In fighting men? Five thousand sabers," he said. "Influx's been dropping off the last few days."
"But those are the best, the wildest, the strongest," said llderim Khan.
Aisha nodded. "And they must have a victory—so that all others will be inspired to join us. Hammer-of-God, let us plan together."
Chichek ran her warm, smooth hand down Sharku's chest and belly toward his groin. "What troubles you, my love?" she murmured in Turkic. They'd made love twice when at last he returned to his quarters, but he was having trouble rising for a third round. For a Soldier, that was close enough to impotence for government work.
Soldiers were disciplined. Soldiers did not question orders; they obeyed. Soldiers most assuredly did not complain. In the privacy of his own cubicle, in the privacy of his own bed, in the arms of the woman he'd longed for and loved, discipline dissolved. Sharku slammed a fist into the mattress, hard enough to make him and Chichek bounce on the springs.
"The Battlemaster is blinder than the accursed Juchi who set this catastrophe in train!" His voice was a shouted whisper, as if he wanted to scream his frustration to the sky but at the same time dared not speak it aloud.
"He is a Cyborg," Chichek said doubtfully. To the women of the Citadel, even more than to the ordinary Soldiers, Cyborgs were creatures of marvelous, maybe even supernatural, powers. Tribute maidens from the nomad peoples learned that awe even out on the steppes: in some Turkic dialects, the word for Cyborg was afrit—demon.
"He is an idiot," Sharku retorted. "Out on the plains, the tribes are moving, and the Bandari have a hand in it. Can it be coincidence that rebellion breaks out at the same time in the valley—and in the part of the valley nearest the Pale? But the Threat Analysis Computer says there is no connection over the mountains, so the events cannot be connected. The TAC is an idiot, too!"
"It is a computer. How can it be wrong, sun of my life?" To Chichek, the TAC was definitely supernatural, as much an oracle as the ones at which shamans or priestesses prophesied in exchange for livestock or grain or silver.
Sharku knew better. "The stinking thing is only a machine. It did not predict the rising in the valley, so there must be something it doesn't know. Maybe it is wearing out." Even saying those words sent dread running through him. The TAC had come from Old Sauron aboard the Dol Guldur. Repairing it was as far beyond the abilities of the Soldiers on Haven as rebuilding the ship that had brought them here three centuries ago. Sharku continued, "Or maybe it just has bad data. If I told you dirt made good soup and you didn't know any better, you might cook up a batch, but could you eat it afterwards?"
His woman smiled. "No. That would be something our son was more likely to try."
"So it would." Sharku smiled, too; he couldn't help himself. Gimilzor had shot up like a fireweed plant while he was gone. The boy lay asleep in the cubicle's other bedroom, having exhausted himself in hand-to-hand combat with his father. With the reaction time and strength he was already showing, he would be a Soldier to watch. Already Sharku would have bet on him in unarmed fighting against most men of the cattle tribes.
"He missed you," Chichek said. "I know it is the Soldiers' way to train the boys to be hard. It is the way of the folk I came from as well, and rightly; Haven is a hard world." She hesitated. "Promise you will say nothing to him if I tell you this."
"Wait." Just under her left breast, a little ways out from the nipple, Chichek had a spot that was exquisitely ticklish. Sharku found that spot. Chichek writhed and squealed and pulled away from him. He laughed. "There. Now you can say I tortured it out of you."
"Monstrous man," she said. In other contexts, he might have killed to avenge himself for those words. She spoke them with love. After another moment, she remembered what they'd been talking about. "He cried in his bed a few times after you set out. Never when I was there to see it, never so I heard it, but I found the pillow wet more than once when I came in to look at him after he fell asleep."
"He's a little boy," Sharku said. Let Gimilzor cry now, if he would. Soon enough, he would do what he had to, and do it dry-eyed. I do what I must, Sharku thought, no matter how moronically the Battlemaster is acting. His rage ripped free again. In the strangled shout he'd used before, he cried out, "They will not listen to me!"
"Did you not say that Carcharoth offered you the privilege of presenting your report to the Council along with his?" Chichek asked.
"He could hardly deny it to me, our usages being what they are," Sharku said. "But will the Council listen to the Cyborg Battlemaster or to a Chief Assault Leader who they think is seeing stobor under the bed? Carcharoth doesn't need the TAC to compute the answer to that one."
"What will you do, then?"
"Submit my bloody report, of course. What else can I do?" Sharku said bitterly. "And after it's rejected, I'll take my assault rifle and tramp across the Shangri-La Valley to deal with this rebellion, whoever turns out to be in back of it. Then I'll tramp back here and get to see you again for a while." He enfolded her in his arms. "That's the time that's worthwhile, flower of mine."
For all that he held her close, he still remained limp. She poked him in the ribs. "You wore yourself out on those girls fresh from the yurt," she complained, but her eyes were laughing at him.
"It's part of my duty," he answered seriously. "Except at the time, I don't particularly enjoy it."
"Ah, but what about at the time?" Chichek said. "And what about now?" Her hand closed around him, grew insistent. Under such ministration, he thought dizzily, a man of the cattle who had died the cycle before of old age would have risen. As for a Soldier—Chichek laughed again. "What about now?"
He rolled over onto her; she opened herself for him. His reply was quite without words, but satisfied them both. It also considerably relieved Sharku: a Soldier who had reason to doubt himself was hardly a Soldier. Chichek murmured something happy he didn't quite catch; she was already most of the way toward sleep.
Sharku started willing himself in that direction, too. Soldiers had a knack for it, and a corresponding knack for waking on the instant. Before he quite let go of his conscious mind, though, Sharku remembered how few on Haven, either cattle or Soldiers, died of old age.
I am bored, Trooper Shagrat admitted to himself. The wind keened about his ears, gritty with loess dust and very little moisture picked up from the snowfields on the Atlas Mountains that reared behind him. The Lidless Eye snapped and fluttered on the flagpole, a little tattered. Early summer, such as it was up here. Shamrabad had to be about the worst hole in the entire area administered from Quilland Base, and collecting the tribute brought here the safest, most routine duty on the roster. Ugly little arsehole of a place, he thought. The fact that it was second-cycle day—Byers' Sun up, Cat's Eye full, and three of the sister moons in the sky—only made it more bleak.
Nothing behind him but the crumbling mudbrick walls of the little fort—less a military post than a seasonal tribute-collection station, with a few windowless huts, some stables, and a packed-earth courtyard. Nothing ahead of him but the town itself, if it deserved the name. The hovels looked like heaps of the dry earth itself, with stone sheep-pens and straggling kitchen-gardens behind them. A goat cropped the sparse herbs on a flat roof. A tiny onion-domed church and an equally seedy mosque dominated the hamlet; it was too small even to support a teahouse or a tavern. Women and children were busy with their chores. Most of the men were out hunting, as the wild muskylope herds came down from the heights; the outskirts of the town were thick with bone-and-twig frames where strips of the meat hung to air-cure. He could see the cloud of dust and hear the drumming hooves where one herd moved out of a long dry valley and onto the rolling steppe, kilometers away. Fields were hard to tell apart from steppe, since the first crop was cut and carted. The qanats were easier to spot, lines of dirt mounds like giant drillbit holes marking the maintenance shafts, snaking south into the mountains.
More women lay or squatted on mats in a compound near the fort: tribute maidens, waiting to be sent back to Quilland along with the sacks of threshed ryticale, sacks of cheeses, herbs and hides and bales of wool. The grain and goods were stacked near them, with the milling herds of pack animals and the empty wagons. I'm even bored with fucking, Shagrat thought, which he wouldn't have believed possible for a young Soldier in his prime. He pulled up the collar of his greatcoat and settled the assault rifle cradled in his arms. He longed to be back at Quilland Base; to have someone to talk to. Drill and field maneuvers, competitions, some hunting, going into town to a tavern or a cockfight occasionally, or a stallion duel, or even watching a buzkaski game. Anything.
How the cattle here endured whole lives spent like this was beyond him; but then, who understood cattle?
Footsteps sounded behind him. "Gorthaur," he said without turning.
"Shagrat," his relief answered. The other Soldier stopped beside him, on the top of the fort's earthwork mound. The gate was below them, poles lashed together with rawhide that years of dry cold had turned as iron-hard as the native wood.
"Hear the report?" Gorthaur said, offering a vacuum flask.
It held almost-coffee, slightly spiked, more for taste than anything else; getting a Soldier drunk required truly heroic imbibing, which was something he regretted intensely right now.
"What, Senior Trooper Azog is letting us lowly Troopers know what's in dispatches?" he said.
They both glanced back; Azog was in the largest hut with a woman, and they spoke in almost subvocal whispers. With the background of the wind, it was safe enough. Azog was old, for a Soldier—fifty T-years—and would never be promoted past the lowest noncommissioned rank. Many of the green young Troopers under him would, which made him even more of a martinet.
"Raids on the western outposts," Gorthaur said.
Shagrat perked up. "Serious?" Fighting, he thought. If he had believed in any god, he might have given a prayer of thanks.
"HaBandari," Gorthaur said. "Lots of them."
"We'll be reassigned, if they've had casualties," Shagrat said; that was half a prayer.
"We've been told to redouble alertness," Gorthaur said ironically.
Shagrat gave a snarled almost-laugh. "Here?" They were so far east that the next Soldier outpost—a month's travel farther on—reported to Isengard Base, which was under direct Citadel authority.
"Look—there's the Bandari horde now," Gorthaur said; he was what passed for a humorist, among Soldiers.
Shagrat had seen the wagons long before; he had heard the squealing of their ungreased axles for the better part of an hour. Coming in from the outlying hamlets, of course. Farms lay scattered along the foothills for kilometers here, what with the fertile wind-borne soil and the—usually—reliable water the qanats gathered from glacier-fed springs. That and the Soldier presence made settlement possible. The Soldiers usually didn't interfere much in the internal disputes of cattle, since constant culling by warfare improved the genetic quality of tribute maidens. They did forbid raiding of the occasional useful area like this. That and the odd punitive expedition against nomad bandits who couldn't resist the temptation allowed peasants to exist here.
"Wonder what they're bringing," Shagrat said idly. His eyes went into telescopic mode. Four wagons, each loaded high with—barrels.
"Liquor, by the Lidless Eye." Gorthaur echoed his thought, licking his lips.
"Might be," Shagrat said. Barrels were seldom used for anything but liquids, since wood was so rare and expensive on the steppe; they had to be painstakingly fitted together from small twisted brushwood. There were full skins among the loads too, bulging whole sheepskins of something.
The wagons were pulled by stocky draft-muskylope, the type bred for plowing, lower and thicker-bodied than the rangy wild animals. The drivers were women. He focused on the first, a middle-aged one with a square face. There were two more of the same type; the last one in line was younger and pretty enough, he thought indifferently. There were twoscore girls from the farms and herding tribes hereabouts in the pen below, though. Right now those barrels and skins were what held his attention.
"We'll have to inspect it," he said hopefully.
"Those are the standing orders," Gorthaur agreed.
"Finhegan's fig brandy," the wagoner said, bowing low.
Shagrat grunted; he could smell that. Some of it must have leaked, because the reek covered everything, almost hiding the scents of humans and animals. Even the stink from the gallows alongside. Human figures hung there, a few lucky ones by their necks, others by their ankles or their arms. One was still moving. The Soldier grunted again, as the wagoner leapt down and knocked the bung out of a barrel, filled a horn with the straw-colored liquid that ran out, and took a preliminary swallow herself.
"Hand it over," he said, now that he knew it hadn't been poisoned—his nose could detect most toxins anyway—and took the horn she gave him and drained it. His pale brows rose. "Not bad, for a change," he said, holding it out for a refill.
Gorthaur snatched it out of his hand and drank. "Some comrade you are," he gasped, wiping his mouth.
"Plunder and pussy, there's no friendship where they're concerned," Shagrat said.
They took other samples at random, making the woman drink first. It was good Finnegan's fig liquor, double-distilled, over a hundred and twenty proof, and sweet with hydromel and spices.
"Take it through," Shagrat said. His Adam's apple worked as he emptied the curled muskylope horn again a final time.
The woman bowed low again in the Russki fashion, the cap in her hand brushing the packed dirt. "Pajalsta, excellence," she said humbly. "In the fort?"
"Of course in the fort, you brainless cattle bitch," he said in his whistling nasal accent, and kicked at her. She went sprawling in the roadway and hauled herself up to her knees, bowing again and again: "Izvenete, excellence; pajalsta, veno vat."
Pardon, excellence; mercy, for I am guilty. He nodded in satisfaction.
Aisha swallowed and kept the fur cap pulled down over her eyes as Tameetha picked herself up and jammed her own cap back on, looking away from the gallows. Juchi's body hangs like that. She stayed dismounted, leading the train of six draught-muskylopes that pulled the first farm wagon. All the drivers in the four-wagon train were women, to excite less suspicion—and they had to be women who could move quickly. The Bandari warrior-woman Tameetha, herself, Chaya, and Shulamit to guard the Judge. Hammer-of-God and her husband—she glowed slightly at the thought, even now—had nearly had an apoplexy at the thought, but Chaya and she had overridden them. Who had a better chance?
They walked the animals forward; one blew out its nostrils in a blubbery sigh, sweet with the scent of hay. Some of the tribute maidens in the holding pen next to the fort looked up at them curiously; others lay apathetic, and she could hear some of them weeping. Be glad, she thought fiercely. Vengeance comes.
The gate creaked open, and they pulled up in the big empty courtyard. Her ears caught a faint rhythmic creaking that ended in a grunt, and then a door opened and a Sauron came out. He was grizzled and half-bald, the lean muscularity of his breed turned ropy in middle age; he wore only loose trousers.
"What's this?" he said, sniffing. Aisha could smell him, the mingled stink of Sauron and rut.
"Liquor, Senior Trooper," the young Sauron who had kicked Tameetha said. "From—" He snapped his fingers at her.
"The farm of the boyar Petrenchsky, lord," she said, doing another sweeping one-handed bow.
"In ahead of time with his quota," the noncom said in Americ. "Wonders never cease."
"Shall we get some locals to unload?" Shagrat said.
"Why bother? This is the last. We'll just put the teams back in the traces tomorrow and leave." He switched to Russki: "Get going, cattle."
"Excellence?"
What are you doing? Aisha thought frantically. None of them had arms beyond beltknives.
"Get going!"
"Excellence, our carts . . . the boyar will beat us if we return without our teams and carts!"
The older Sauron slapped her, an open-handed blow that sent her rolling half a dozen meters. "Not worse than I will if you don't get going, cattle," he said flatly.
Tameetha was grinning savagely as they trudged out of Shamrabad. She wiped at the blood running from nose and mouth with the edge of a shawl.
" . . . because if I hadn't complained, it would look suspicious," she said to Aisha. "Besides, I was enjoying myself. I used to like doing the theatricals at the Parim festival."
"How long have we got?" Chaya asked tightly.
"A few minutes. Can't say any closer," Tameetha said.
Shulamit spat aside; her mouth had filled with the spit of nausea, waiting there under the gallows. Aisha patted her on the shoulder; the young Bandari meid jerked, then threw her a glance of thanks.
"Shulamit," Tameetha added, "try to walk as if you wore skirts all the time."
Shulamit began a snarl, then looked up. "Uh-oh," she said.
They were at the edge of the little hamlet, with harvested fields to either side; children were gleaning the last grains of fallen ryticale and barley among the stubble. Ahead was the great cloud of dust from the muskylope herd . . . and now it headed straight for the little town. The children pointed in wonder, until an older boy caught the gleam of steel behind the hairy, plunging backs. Then they scattered for their houses.
"Barak's not behindhand. Come on," Shulamit said; she hiked her skirt up in both hands—showing very un-peasant-like leather trousers—and began to run for the clownfruit orchard where they had left their gear. "Unless you all want to get run down!"
"That's not brandy," Gorthaur said, hefting one of the whole-sheepskin bags; they were made by sewing the hide closed again along the slit used to skin the animal. "It's muskylope lard."
Which was liquid at all temperatures above freezing, and highly prized for lamp-oil, lubricant, cooking and a dozen other uses.
"Petrenchsky is overfilling his quota," one of the squad said.
"Petrenchsky?" Azog said. "When Haven melts, Petrenchsky will pay more than he has to—he tried to short us once while we had a son of his as hostage, and we staked the brat out for stobor."
He stopped, turning. "Listen."
They did; the drumming of muskylope hooves was much louder. Shagrat threw himself down and pressed an ear to the hard ground.
"Horses!" he shouted.
None of the Soldiers needed to be told what to do next. They were all at least halfway up the steep earth ramp to the firing parapet when the casks of gunpowder in the wagon beds went off. There was not all that much explosive, but it vaporized the oil and almost pure alcohol . . . and then that exploded. Shagrat never lost consciousness; he even kept a grip on his assault rifle as he cartwheeled down the outside slope of the fort's earthen mound. He lay stunned for an instant, watching Gorthaur sail past above, spreadeagled and screaming, with his hair and uniform on fire.
Crack. Shagrat fired and ran down the earth mound. The fort was a pillar of flame behind him. Ahead, Shamrabad had vanished in a cloud of dust and a sea of mop-haired, wild-eyed muskylopes, a thunder of hooves and bawling blubbering cries; but behind them came riders on horseback and the glint of steel. Have to find cover, he thought, and darted into a checkerwork pile of baled wool. Crack, he fired again, and a rider in a boiled-leather breastplate pitched backward over the cantle of his saddle. That brought more of them, leaping their horses over the bales and the pyramids of sacks.
"Gur! Gur!"
Their yelping war cries were like stobor, or the fabled wolves of Terra. Wide-nostriled horses and shouting nomad faces beneath fur caps or turbans or spiked helmets. Crack-crack-crack-crack, a man down with each shot, a mound of kicking screaming horses, but there were more and more of them. Forcing him back lest he be crushed under dead animals and men.
Whack. An arrow hammered into his thigh, into the bone. He wheeled and fired, and the next shaft went wild over his head. The rider fell, spilling arrows from the quiver at his belt, and bounced away with one foot through the stirrup as his horse bolted, shrilling its terror.
More shafts sprouted in the bales of wool as Shagrat ducked and popped back up; but there were formed ranks of the enemy coming at him now, and the powerful horn-backed bows shot almost as fast as a rifle. Out in front of him Senior Trooper Azog plunged into the enemy ranks, his skin blackened and smouldering; tore a nomad from the saddle, threw him under the hooves of a charging horse. Grabbed a shamshir in either hand, beheaded a horse, cut a man in half despite his steel-splint armor. He went down under a mound of enemy dead, and more clambering over him in a circle of rising and falling blades.
Whack. Another hit, in Shagrat's shoulder. Flights of arrows rising and then falling at him like edged rain. Hits, shoulder, chest, leg, pelvis. The last magazine fell from fingers slippery with blood, and they were on him. He clubbed the rifle—the hot barrel burned his fingers—broke a man's neck, caved in another's chest. Whirled, dodged, slowed down by his wounds but still faster than any cattle, who hampered each other as they reined in around him and leaned over to slash with yataghans and stab with javelin and lance.
Another man loomed in front of him and he checked for a second, for sight and scent said Soldier while the armor and weapons said enemy. Soldier-quick reflexes tore the rifle from his hands, grabbed, lifted with Soldier strength, threw him ten meters to bounce off a wall.
After that he saw little. Consciousness faded, and the last sound was a voice speaking plains Turkic:
"Shabash, Barak Bahadur!" Then: "This whore's son is alive still—with a dozen shafts in him, by Shaitan."
"Bhisti-sawad!"
The little party of nomad warriors reined in at the entranceway to the mud-walled compound. The tribute maidens within surged back from the wall, the bolder ones who had been craning to see what went on as Shamrabad fell to the sudden, overwhelming attack. The flames in the fort had died for want of fuel.
"Bhisti-sawad!—heavenly!" the nomad subchief said again, slapping his thigh; the leather-leaf armor rattled. "We have fought, we have conquered—and here, is this not the best plunder of all, brothers? Aiee, but the Sauron dogs pick well, pimps of a line of pimps that they are. Look at that moon-faced beauty there!"
Some of the women—girls—screamed as he leered at them. He started to dismount, then checked himself and turned with a scowl. The pony turned under him, responsive to the shift in his balance.
Shulamit halted behind Tameetha, reins knotted on her horse's neck and her bow in her hands; the thumb-ring was locked around the shaft, but she kept the head pointed downward for now. The hotnots looked ugly, a full dozen of them, which made her acutely conscious that only five of the People were here with her. The chief had nail-studded hide armor and an iron helmet with leather cheek-guards, the others only sheepskin jackets and astrakhan caps. But they all carried shamshirs at their sides; most had bows, one poised a javelin ready with the thongs around his fingers. Their leader had two pistols thrust into his boot-tops as well, and a short musket across his back.
"What do you yahudi do here?" the chief growled. "We got here first. Go find your own women."
"I am a woman, or had no you notice, fool begotten of fool?" Tameetha said in her roughly accented Turkic; she and the plains chief were stirrup to stirrup. By the sudden widening of his eyes, he hadn't, even with her lack of a beard. "And these maidens are under protection of another woman—Aisha daughter of Juchi. They also women of the tribes, in case you no see good, O khan of the closed eyes."
Aisha's name daunted them a little, but the chief snapped back: "Maidens? These are Saurons' sluts—their own fathers would spit upon them now; they are fair plunder. Why should we not enjoy them?"
"Because Aisha and the Judge order it. You swore to obey them. Go."
She stabbed a finger at his face for emphasis. He slapped at it, and Tameetha grabbed his wrist. They strained together for a moment, until she jerked him out of the saddle. He went tumbling into the dirt.
"Shulamit, Uri, Mordekai!" the Bandari officer barked.
When the nomad chieftain came to his feet spitting blood and dust, he found himself looking at three bows drawn to the angle of the jaw, the pile-shaped arrowheads winking ruddy under Cat's Eye. There was a long moment of tension, and then he threw up a hand; his men let then-hands fall from hilts.
"I, Ai Bash of Aqcha, will remember this," he grated after he had remounted.
Tameetha smiled. "Don't try ravishing women until you can out-wrestle them, Ai Bash of Aqcha," she said sweetly. There was a muffled chortle from behind the chief; he turned sharply in the saddle to glare his followers into silence, then spurred off.
"Shulamit," Tameetha said. "Ride to headquarters—quickly—and tell Hammer we need some reliable troops here. Of the People, not hotnots. About a squadron, if we're going to keep the flies from the honeypot."
She turned to the gateway, taking off her helmet, and called in Turkic: "Peace, oh daughters of misfortune! You nothing more to fear have."
Shagrat woke to see a face he recognized. It was the driver of the wagonload of Finnegan's fig brandy, but now she wore armor. Armor he recognized from familiarization lectures, Pale-made gear. Bandari, he thought dazedly; his lips drew back in a snarl. Sneaky Jew bastards!
The snarl of anger turned to one of pain as he suddenly became aware of how much he hurt. Control clamped down, but raggedly. Then the rest of his surroundings began to clear; he was staked out naked and spread-eagled on the slope of the mound beside the fort. The bodies of his comrades dangled from their own gallows, in place of the cattle hanged as examples. They were all there and all dead, he realized . . . that took a moment, because many of the bodies had been hacked to pieces, and he had to count appendages to make sure. He tested the bonds that held him; no luck there, heavy hide lashings secured to thick stakes driven deep.
The Bandari woman was speaking. "Veno vat, excellence," she said mockingly, making the low bow. Then she switched to Americ, a thick guttural dialect of it that he could barely follow: "I am very guilty. But I am discourteous; the boyar Petrenchsky sends his greetings, and says his carts were well spent."
She was standing by another woman he recognized.
One of the tribute maidens. A very pretty one, except for the bruises. More of them crowded on either side.
"And my new friends here wish to speak with you as well."
The girls he had helped collect as tribute stood silently, a little circle of them, watching him with shining eyes. The one beside the Bandari held a small curved knife, and two of the others had brought a brazier, its wrought iron glowing cherry-red.
"Don't you remember me, Shagrat, of the great strong baz-baz?" the tribute maiden said kittenishly as she stepped forward. Tameetha thrust her hands through her belt, watching and moistening her lips.
"It is your darling Zulfiya!" the maiden said. She smiled. "Shall I be gentle with you, my heart?"
Shagrat began to twist frantically at the rawhide ropes that held him.