Sigrid rode openly over the crest of the hill, and stopped just below it. Long kilometers lay behind her, long days of Haven, and a longer, bleaker night, when she had made choices, Cyborg-choices, choices that would be interpreted as betrayal. Even if she returned with the mare that foaled on the high steppe, and with an account of a tribe that escaped every record, and every tale but one that came to Nûrnen or the Citadel. That there was such a tribe, she was certain. She had seen its outriders. The mare she rode was one of its own. It was not the one she came for. That one would not be wandering near a cliff lion's kill, with bit and saddle still on her and the foamed sweat of terror dried on her neck.
The lion was dead, as dead as the woman it had killed. Its hide was Sigrid's cloak, its hollowed head her helmet. She would tan it properly when she came to the tribe. She did not entertain the possibility that they would reject her. She was what they dreamed of: Soldier, and woman, and rebel.
The challenge came, it seemed, out of the rocks under her horse's feet. The mare shied. Sigrid turned the shy into a sidle, mare's head turned aside, shoulder pointed toward the voice.
"Who walks on Katlin's land?"
"One who would see the heart of it," Sigrid answered, raising her voice above the wind, but not too far. She saw the glow of body warmth behind the tallest of a tumble of stones, heard the rustle and creak of leather, scented the sharpness of smoke and sweat and unwashed skin.
"That mare is one of ours," the sentry said.
"So was her rider," said Sigrid. "She is dead. I avenged her death."
Sigrid heard the hiss of breath sucked in. "Vilny? Vilny's dead?" The voice stopped, then began again, louder than before, and harsh. "Who are you? Where do you come from?"
"I am one who would ride with Katlin's daughters, if Katlin's eldest daughter will have me."
The sentry came from behind the stones, a tall woman, spare and weathered, with graying hair in a braid over her shoulder. She wore a short sword and a knife, and carried a loaded crossbow, which she leveled on Sigrid's heart. Her eyes were hard: narrow Mongol eyes in a high-cheeked face, but her hair was fair brown among the silver. Sigrid met her stare calmly, sitting astride the now quiet mare.
She took her time in examining Sigrid. Sigrid waited with a hunter's patience. Yes, this one had Soldier genes, but much diluted: most of her breeding would be nomad, and whatever oddity had begun this oddest of tribes. Americ, she deduced, and Northeuropean—Terran in any case. The tales she had pried out of nomads and travellers on her journey north had made her sure of one thing: this was an old tribe, though no Soldier had ever admitted to hearing of it.
Soldiers had not known to ask, nor maybe would they have cared if they had known. Katlinsfolk kept to themselves. They did not wage wars of conquest. They did not allow themselves to be conquered; but since they were few and remote and offered no threat, they would have been suffered until it became expedient to bring them under Sauron dominion.
Now they had something of value—vast value if true. A mutation. A Terran animal that could breed and bear young on the high steppes of Haven.
The Breedmaster's heir of the Citadel could have asked for no greater gift, and no better proving. Had she been a Soldier, she could have returned with the cliff lion's hide and been reckoned man enough. But she was Cyborg, and she was, on this journey, a renegade. She would come back with everything that she had gone for, or she would not come back at all.
At last the sentry spoke. "You are a Sauron." She sounded surprised. But not, Sigrid noticed, afraid.
Sigrid nodded once.
The woman lowered the crossbow a fraction. "I will take Vilny's horse. You will walk to the next cairn. The one there will take you where you wish to go."
"How will she know," asked Sigrid, "that I have your leave?"
"She will know." The woman held out her hands.
Sigrid set the reins in them. The mare went quietly enough. Sigrid turned her back on the sentry and walked where she was directed. She heard the woman draw breath as if to speak, heard the creak and jingle as she shrugged. There was no soft, deadly snap of the crossbow's trigger, though Sigrid was braced for it, to leap and roll and vanish into a fold of the earth. Clear that crossbow has not shot—too fast anyway.
The guard at the next cairn was younger, little more than a child. She did not speak to Sigrid, only took her in with wide fascinated eyes and spun, flicking her hand in a command: Follow. Sigrid followed.
Every step she took, she took under surveillance. There were crossbows trained on her, and as she drew closer to the clan fire, pistols, even an assault rifle. A Soldier had died for that one, she was sure. The woman who carried it stood out in the open, and the light of Byers' Star turned her hair as bright as brass. Sigrid acknowledged her with a lift of the chin.
The Soldier's daughter was the last line of defense. The rise on which she stood dropped away to a relative level and an encampment like any other on the steppe: a huddle of yurts round a central, slightly higher structure, a scattering of goats and sheep and horses amid the shaggy bulk of muskylopes, grazing under the watchful eyes of herders mounted and afoot. Dogs ran at heel or stirrup or moved among the animals, nipping a straggler here, facing down a runaway there. The animals came in both sexes. The herders were all women; likewise the dwellers in the camp and the children underfoot. There were no bearded faces.
No men; no boys, unless there were a few among the fur-wrapped, big-eyed youngest.
Sigrid's guide led her to the central and highest dome of felt upon its wagon. In front of it, instead of the horsetail standard which would have marked a nomad's clan, stood a spear, and on the spear a skull. Years and weather had polished it until it gleamed. The wind whistled through its empty eye sockets.
"An enemy?" Sigrid inquired of her guide.
The girl shook her head. "Clan-founder," she said. "Margit."
As if the name had been a signal, the flap of the yurt swung open. A woman stepped out. She was old, and she walked stiffly, but it was clear that she had been a fighter in her day. Another came behind her, and that one was young, and startling to look at. All the faces that Sigrid had seen had been like those of the first, outermost sentry: nomad crossed on Americ and Northeuropean stock, with a suggestion of Frystaat or Edenite or Bandari, and of course the rare, unmistakable Soldier. This was a type rarer still—Sigrid would have said impossible, unless the woman had been bred with care from a near-pure line. Similar stock had gone into a number of the Soldier bloodlines, but never so close to its original.
This was Maasai. The name was preserved in the Citadel's database, with the rest of the legends and the lost races. Native Terran warrior stock, badly depleted around the time of the CoDominion's founding, but restored and recreated in the first experiments in what would become the Soldiers. Here was a living relic of the old line.
A woman as tall as Sigrid and even leaner, even in leather and furs. A face molded out of bronze, with high wide cheekbones, wide-flaring nostrils, full-lipped mouth. Tight-kinked hair wound in plaits, pulled back together and knotted in a broad leather band. Body that moved as a predator moves, with smooth unconscious power.
Sigrid's vitals twisted with pure lust. Not for the woman—that was not one of Sigrid's aberrations—but for what she was; for the genes she carried, and would pass to her children.
It required discipline to turn from her, to hear what the elder of the women was saying. "I am Margit," she said in the language of the Citadel, or one very like it; changed, but not so much as to be incomprehensible. "I welcome you to the clan of Margit of the Katlinsfolk."
"Sigrid," said Sigrid. "Of the Citadel."
No one seemed astonished or even afraid. The eyes on her were curious, no more; and if wary, only as wary as anyone needed to be in front of a stranger. Margit—it seemed to be her title as well as her name—inclined her head and beckoned. "Come to my hearth," she said.
That was in fact the clanfire, the fire laid in a bed of stones in front of the chieftain's yurt. The Maasai woman tended it, feeding it with cakes of dried muskylope dung, while the chieftain and her guest settled on rugs and cushions brought by young women. None was shy or meek as women would have been in a nomad camp. They made it clear that this was service freely given, and bearing honor with it.
"You have no men here," Sigrid said after a round or three of amenities. There was the inevitable kvass, and bread warm from the hearth, and roasted meat—muskylope, mutton, goat—and goat cheese. Sigrid's appetite was a matter for much amusement. "She eats like a man," someone had said, sparking Sigrid's observation.
"No," said Margit. "We have no men. Do you think that we need them?"
Mockery glinted in the old woman's eyes. Sigrid acknowledged it with the twitch of a smile. "For protection, no. For breeding, certainly. Unless you have technologies which even we of the Citadel have lost?"
Margit laughed. "We breed our daughters in the old way. The best way, most would tell you."
"Without men?"
"There are men in plenty in the world. When the season comes, when the clans gather, our allies send their young men; or the young men come themselves, out of curiosity. With them we breed our daughters."
"And sons."
"The sons go back to their fathers. Or," said Margit, "if the fathers will not have them, we give them to the earth."
"To the stobor."
"To the earth," Margit repeated. "You do the same, they tell us."
"We cull," said Sigrid. "We make no distinction of gender. Only of viability."
Margit nodded. It might have been an old woman's palsy, but her eyes were shrewd under the wrinkled lids. "Your kind have come here. They breed strong children. Too many, unfortunately, are sons."
"Three in four," Sigrid said. "Their fathers claimed them, then?"
"Their fathers died."
Sigrid sat unmoving. "So I was told. And you are free of the yoke."
"Have you come to take vengeance?"
"No," said Sigrid. "Any Soldier who died at your hands would not have been fit to carry on the Race."
"Even if he died by treachery?"
"That is a failure of intelligence."
"How cold you are," said a new voice, "and how hard."
Sigrid did not turn to face the Maasai woman. She had no need to see what her other senses so perfectly encompassed. "I am a Soldier."
"You are more than a Soldier."
Sigrid turned then. The Maasai was smiling.
"I am the Eyes of the clan," the woman said. "You are not what the Soldiers were who came to us."
"I am a woman," said Sigrid.
The Maasai laughed. "So you are! You would never have passed the first guard if you had not been. No, Soldier woman: there is more to you than you would like us to see. What goddess set the steel in your bones?"
"Genetics," said Sigrid. She was growing—not afraid. No. But wary. "You too have Soldier blood."
"Not as you know it," the Maasai said. "I am the Eyes of the clan. So was my mother before me, and her mother, and hers, down the long years of this world."
Sigrid's eyes narrowed. Data clicked together. "Parthenogenesis," she said. "We are told—I was taught—that those experiments failed."
"So you are told," said the Maasai. "I had not known there were Cyborg women."
"They are rare," Sigrid said.
"How they must have loathed to see you go!"
"If they saw me, I failed every test of my skill."
"I doubt you failed," said the Maasai. "I dreamed you, Cyborg woman. I saw a great savior, and a great danger. You will be our salvation, or our destruction."
"That," said Sigrid, "is superstitious nonsense."
"Of course," said the Maasai. "It is no less true for that."
Sigrid sat perfectly erect on the rug, propped by no cushion, as she had sat since she came to the clanfire. Her face, she knew, wore no expression at all. Her breathing was steady. Her heart beat at precisely its normal rate. Her body was hers to control, within and without.
Her mind was not so easily mastered. This high-steppe shaman with her beautiful genes, this daughter of no father, was completely alien and profoundly disturbing. The Breedmaster's heir itched to take her apart, to see what she was made of. The Soldier yearned for the same, but in another sense altogether. The Cyborg, collating data, found her impossible; but there was no denying the evidence of augmented senses when it sat within arm's reach, clearly aware of the danger and just as clearly unperturbed by it. Sigrid had come to steal a mare. She had found a treasure at least as valuable. "Are there more like you," Sigrid asked of the Maasai, "or are you alone in this generation?"
"Stay with us," said the Maasai, "and see."
They trusted her. That was the strangest of many strange things among these people: they knew what she was, and they kept no secrets. They saw no need. They had always disposed of the Soldiers who came to them. And Sigrid was a woman.
They were not innocents, or weaklings. They had preserved their tribe's integrity against every enemy who came against it, since the early days on Haven.
"Katlin was a convict," Margit said by the clanfire, two cycles after Sigrid's coming. This was a lesson they all knew, from the way they listened, youngest closest, lips moving as if to recite the words with their chieftain. "She had been a terrorist, a warrior for women, when women were like cattle, and men were their masters."
"As they are among the nomads," the girlchildren murmured together, as in a ritual.
"So she was sent away," Margit said, "in BuReloc's ship, in the belly of the hellbeast, roaring from star to star. Others died on that journey. Still more died on Haven, under the yoke. But she grew stronger. And—much stranger—she lost her hate. She learned to pity the men who held her prisoner. She swore an oath."
"A great oath," the children said.
"A very great oath," said Margit. "The greatest oath of all. To be no man's chattel. To take her fellows as she could, and go away, and raise her daughters to be free."
"And they were free," the children said.
"So they were," said Margit. "But it was a long fight, and a hard one. They were few at first, the Katlinsfolk. There were only Katlin, and Margit—"
"Margit!" the children chorused.
Margit smiled. "And Margit, and Kyoko, and Djuna, and Marisa, and Lais, and France who died birthing the first daughter of the tribe; and that was France, too, for her mother's remembrance."
"And there was the other one," the children said, "the one whose name is hidden."
"The other," said Margit, "came later, walking across the steppe, alone and unarmed and carrying her mother on her back. She had found a place, she said, to bear the child that swelled her belly. She would lead Katlin's folk to it, because her dreams had told her she must. Katlin's folk laughed," Margit said, "just as you laughed, Soldier woman, and called her dreaming nonsense. But they followed her, because others of them were bearing, and they would die if they went back to the valley they had left, but they would die if they remained on the high steppe. They followed the stranger, and her mother whose face was exactly like her own. And they found the valley she had spoken of."
"Katlinsvale," the children said.
"Katlinsvale," said Margit. "The deep place, the hidden place, the place where no man goes. There the stranger bore her daughter, and the daughter had her mother's face. There the others bore their children, and all were daughters but one, and that one was a gift to the earth."
"To the stobor," Sigrid said.
"To the earth," said Margit, as if that too were ritual. "So are we free, and our valley is free, and we take men only as we choose."
"As we choose," the children said. Grinning and tumbling over one another if they were youngest, or departing with dignity if they were old enough to be in training for war.
Impressive, judged Sigrid, watching the women at mounted exercises. They had settled on a very practical mode of fighting for their gender and their resources: mounted archery in the main, with recurved bows such as the Mongols had, and the small crossbow, and the lance, with the saber for close-in fighting. More advanced weapons were rare. Those who had them seemed to regard them more as heirlooms than as usable tools of war—sensible enough in the circumstances. Ammunition would be hard to come by, this far out on the steppe.
They were good at what they did. They had discipline, unusual for nomads. They fought in units, with duty rosters, and every woman of age or in condition to fight was expected to serve; even if she was pregnant, until she went to the valley. As units they lived, ate and slept. They hunted as units, herded as units, saw to the camp in relays according to the roster.
Sigrid, as a guest, did as she pleased. If she stayed she would be expected to live as the others lived, under their laws. Laws which, she conceded, were not ill-conceived.
They maintained order without repression; they enforced discipline without compulsion.
She liked these people, this way of living. She came to that knowledge with reluctance, almost with dismay. Liking was a weakness—in a Soldier undesirable, in a Cyborg unconscionable.
"You forget," said the Maasai, "that you are human as well as Soldier."
Sigrid had grown to expect that the Maasai should read her, however well she masked herself. That the woman's ancestor had been augmented was beyond question; those augments gave her, at times, almost a Cyborg's perception.
"You never laugh," the Maasai said. "You almost never smile. Yet you have it in you to be as any woman is. What fools your Soldiers were, to train you as they did."
"I was trained as a Soldier."
"As a man," said the Maasai. "You are not a man. You are yourself."
"Cold," said Sigrid. "Hard. I was bred so."
"So you think," said the Maasai! And walked away as she was given to doing, having said all that she intended to say. Done all the damage that, for the moment, she intended to do.
The dogs that watched the herds were a breed new to Sigrid, who in her studies had learned the breeds of hawk and hound and horse as well as human. Big dogs but wiry, thick-coated for Haven's cold, blindingly fast and impressively strong and quite remarkably intelligent.
One of them had taken to accompanying her when she walked in the camp. It was a he, and it had a sister, smaller and more flighty, who would not let Sigrid touch her as the other did, but hovered at a distance, watching warily, and followed where its brother went.
The male moved as she stood in the silence of the Maasai's leaving, to thrust a cold nose into her palm. She looked down and thought of wringing its neck. It looked up, plumed tail wagging slightly. Not subservient. Not doglike in its devotion. But determined, clearly, to remind her that it had conceived a preference for her.
Its sister crouched beyond, at five meters precisely. The brother's eyes were brown. The sister's were eerily silver: blind, it seemed, but keen enough in the testing, narrowed now and fixed on Sigrid.
She laughed, startling herself. "Do I need herding, then?" she asked the bitch.
The bitch crouched lower. Leaped, circled, crouched again. Waiting. Guarding her herd of one, her odd sheep.
The mare was not kept under any particular guard. That might have been taken for foolishness, but Sigrid was inclined to call it prudence: hiding the beast in plain sight. She was nothing unusual to look at. A bay like most of the horses this clan bred, no distinctive markings, no particular turn of speed or intelligence. Her foals were slightly better—she had been bred to good stallions. None of them would have caught Sigrid's eye had they not been pointed out to her, and that before she even asked. Foolishness again. Or a deeper reading of herself and her purposes than she might have believed cattle capable of.
Paranoia was a form of wisdom. Margit had said that. She denied she had learned it from a Soldier. It was a maxim of Katlin's, handed down from the beginning.
Soldiers tended to underestimate cattle. The word itself was a trap; use of it and, worse than that, belief in it, had killed Soldiers more than once. Katlinsfolk were not only cattle but female.
But Sigrid was female, and she had been trained rigorously to know the enemy for what they were. Less than she, yes, one on one; but so were Soldiers. She did not let herself rest secure that she was among barbarians, and innocents at that, so sure of her sympathy with their gender and their cause that they could imagine no threat from her. If they trusted her, then they believed they had defenses against her.
The dogs that watched the horses watched her as she walked through the herd. The horses ignored her for the most part or raised heads from their grazing, curious but calm. The foals aped their dams or pretended massive, snorting, wheeling terror, but with ears up and tails high, no more capable of true deception than they were of standing still.
The mare's youngest foal was one of the spirited ones, bay like its dam, but with a promise of greater height and fineness. It moved well, high and light. More than steppe pony was in that bloodline. Someone, somewhere, had brought in Terran desert stock, testing it maybe, to see if it would take to the highlands, and this foal had thrown back to it. The deep girth and broad nostrils adapted well to the thin air. The high tail could be a difficulty in a climate that needed to preserve heat more than to shed it, but the coat looked more than adequate, shorter than the other foals', but thick and well insulated.
Its dam was a little slimmer in the leg than the run of the herd, a little finer in the head, but still a thickset, blocky, shaggy-coated steppe pony. She allowed Sigrid to approach her, kept on grazing calmly while Sigrid's hands ran over her. It had been impossible to pack in proper examination equipment; a whole laboratory would just have been enough, and a shuttle to carry it in, and while she was at it, a ship's sickbay full of instruments from Old Sauron. As it was, she had her hands and her senses and some little training in horse-doctoring. They told her nothing but that this was a mare of some dozen T-years, who had had several foals, who was sound and evidently sensible, and already pregnant with a new foal. Its sire prowled the herd's edge, a big clay-colored brute with a hammer head and a mean eye. No doubt they had bred him for size. He appeared to have little else to commend him.
The filly slipped in under Sigrid's arm and attacked the mare's udder. Sigrid stepped back. She did not expect that anyone who watched might be deceived, but for appearance's sake she examined another mare or two. None would have done for the Citadel. Too small for the run of Soldiers. Sturdy enough to carry weight, certainly, but the weight would not be exceptionally comfortable with its feet dragging on the ground.
Sigrid took a long circuit back to the center of the camp. She would take the mare and the two older fillies. The yearling she would leave. The suckling was a problem; she would have to consider it. Most efficient to leave the creature behind, but it looked to be the best of the mare's foals. She could carry it if need be: it was small enough.
There was the matter of the guards, of the dogs and of the distance from this camp to the Citadel, long kilometers of steppe populated by nomads for whom horse stealing was a high art and Soldier killing a feat every young hellion dreamed of. Sigrid was under no illusion that her task would be easy. Or that she would be welcomed back without penalty.
The Maasai was waiting for her by the clanfire. "You are summoned," the woman said, "to the Mother Clan." She was calm about it, as if she had expected it. The inevitable hangers-on and listeners-in were not. This, it was apparent, was a great honor.
Sigrid was as calm as the Maasai, but it was a very different calm: the stillness of the hunter. Here, maybe, was a part of the trap. To separate her from what she came for. To take her deeper into the tribe's territory; to surround her with a ring of watchful clans.
She could refuse. No rope or chain could hold her. And when the clan took its sleeptime—in truenight, this point in the cycle—she would take the horses and go.
But there was the Maasai, who was as valuable a finding as the mare. And there was her own curiosity. She wanted to see this Mother Clan. She wanted to look on this valley that was in no records of the Citadel. It was data that would be useful when the Citadel brought this tribe under its control. There were priceless genetic treasures here, in humans and in horses. She wanted them; needed them, as an unaugmented human needs the gold he hoards in his strongboxes; for the beauty as well as the utility.
If he saw her—What would he do if he saw her?
Court her? Temujin wondered. Kill her? The nomad's laugh was bitter. The Sauron bitch would laugh till her cold pale eyes dissolved in tears of mirth if he offered bride price for her. And to whom could he offer it? The Citadel? That would but set all the filthy Saurons howling with laughter.
Kill her, then? He laughed again, no less ruefully. As well face a stobor pack, armed only with a pile of overripe tennis-ball fruit.
But he could not get her out of his mind. She'd robbed him of honor, robbed him of pride, squeezed knowledge from him like a man wringing a damp rag dry. All the tngri of sky, earth and water—and all the demons—knew he'd tried to forget her.
No use. For somehow, Sauron arrogance was in her transmuted to the sort of spirit a nomad dreams to find in the finest of horses, a spirit that would never yield to any greater force, that never acknowledged any greater force than itself. But if one bearing such a spirit could be persuaded to cooperate . . . oh, if . . .
When he thought about it rationally, he knew he was obsessed. But he had fewer than three Haven years on him—say, twenty T-years, more or less. The young yield easily to obsession, and often call it love. And so here he was, riding back to Nûrnen to seek her out. Searching for her in Katlinsvale would be worse than useless; having betrayed the secret of the women's tribe, he could await only painful death there.
She could have returned by now, with the mares he'd told her of. Nûrnen was his best chance. One way or another, he would have his reckoning there.
The town loomed ahead, less than a klick off now. He could see it, hear it. The wind blew behind him, from the pass the Citadel warded down into Shangri-La Valley. Otherwise, he would have smelled Nûrnen, too. Even with the wind at his back, he imagined the smell, the half-foul, half-rich reek of a city that existed to serve the Citadel.
Ahead, something was mounted on pikes jabbed into the ground to either side of the road: several somethings, as a matter of fact. Temujin reined in for a longer look. His stomach did a slow flipflop. Sick spit poured into his mouth. Once—quite a while ago, given their present wind-cured state—these had been the constituent parts of . . . two men, Temujin judged. The two heads were closest to the roadway.
Placards hung beneath them. In several languages—the Sauron's own Americ, the Russki that was widely spoken through Haven's valleys, Turkic written in Latin and Arabic letters, the sinuous Uighur script Temujin read most readily, even in the blocky, angular Bandarit alphabet—they announced the victims' names, stations and crimes.
One placard was very much to the point. All it said was THE PEASANT YEGOR—ACCOMPLICE. Temujin snorted. Whatever the peasant Yegor had been accomplice to, it had brought him a nasty end.
Temujin's gaze swung to the placard under the other head. This one had more text. It read: JUCHI THE BANDIT, BROUGHT HERE TO JUSTICE FOR HIS VICIOUS CRIMES. THUS PERISH ALL WHO CHALLENGE THE DOMINION OF THE SOLDIERS.
Juchi . . . Temujin's lips shaped a soundless whistle. Tales of Juchi had accreted round whatever core of truth there was like layers of nacre round a sandgrain, forming at last a shimmering hotsprings oyster pearl of legend. Temujin did not know how much of the story of incest and murder and suicide and mutilation to believe; that tale had been growing since before he was born. He did know Juchi'd had something to do with the fall of the Saurons' Angband Base, northwest of the Pale and far to the south of his own people's grazing lands.
He also knew, or thought he knew, that blind accursed Juchi was accompanied in his wanderings by his daughter (or sister? or both?) Aisha. Where was Aisha's quartered body, then? Who was this poor Yegor whom the Saurons had mutilated in her place?
He read Juchi's placard again, and spat on the ground in scorn. Soldiers, indeed! They were Saurons, nothing better. They could call themselves muskylopes if they cared to; it would not change their nature by jot or tittle.
And he had gone and become besotted of one of them. He knew it was stupid; he knew it was worse than stupid. Had she somehow ensorcelled him, other than by being herself? He didn't think so, but would he know it if he were ensorcelled?
"Eternal Blue Sky," he muttered under his breath, realizing that if by some miracle—or would it be disaster?—he gained Sigrid (about as likely as the return of the lost Imperial 77th, the Land Gators, in full battle regalia), he might be wiser to speak of her and her kind as Soldiers. One day, surely, his tongue would slip, and she would tear him in half.
He'd had practice in laughing at himself, had Temujin. Every time he did it, it came easier, so that by now it was almost second nature. Laughter kept the wound in his soul from stinging as it would have otherwise. So did kvass and the tipples the farmer folk brewed from fruits and grains: beer, stout, stronger drinks like vodka and tennis-fruit brandy.
He dug heels into his pony's sides. The beast obediently stretched into a trot toward the city. He knew he should go back to the lands of his people and take up the threads of his life. He knew Sigrid was probably not in Nûrnen; it was just the next-most-likely place, after Katlinsvale—and he dared not go there. Even if the Katlinsfolk had taken Sigrid in, they'd roast him over a slow fire for blabbing. No man he'd talked to mentioned her being there, but that meant little. Yes, he should turn around, right now.
"Sigrid," Temujin whispered, and kept his face toward Nûrnen.
A tiny flicker of motion, out on the dun steppe near the horizon. Without his consciously willing it, Chief Assault Leader Sharku's eyes went into telescopic mode. The Soldier's sight leapt across kilometers. The tiny flicker resolved itself: men on horseback, advance guards for a group of yurts behind. One of the guards carried the clan's standard, a white sheepskin tied to the top of a tall pole.
Sharku held up his left hand. The Soldiers reined in. "Nomads ahead," he said. "Either they're the Ak-Koyunlu Turks, or someone's setting an ambush."
The second ranker of the four-man party, Chief Assault Leader Mumak, grunted out a minimum ration of laughter. "Be a sorry looking ambush after it closes on us." He stroked the magazine of his assault rifle as if it were a tribute maiden's bare breast.
The junior Soldier, a newly fledged Assault Leader named Ufthak, asked Sharku, "Shall we dismount?" His long, thin face betrayed hot eagerness to close with the plainsmen, regardless of whether they were in fact hostile. Very Soldierly was the motto stamped on the coins minted at the Citadel: KILL 'EM ALL AND LET GOD SORT 'EM OUT
Sharku considered, shook his head. "No, we'll stay on our horses. Horses are swank to the nomads. If those are the Ak-Koyunlu up ahead, they're friendlies—haven't missed a tribute payment in twenty T-years. And if they aren't the White Sheep Turks, we can afford to let 'em make the first move before we get off our beasts."
Prestige was important to a Tribute Party, out collecting goods and women from the Citadel's subject tribes. That was why the troop behind him consisted solely of officers—impressive for the cattle, a pain in the ass for the man sent to lead. Two types of officers got assigned this duty: promising young commanders in training to rule and administer—which implied ability to deal with the cattle in some manner other than shooting them—and those best kept out of the way. There had been a time when the Soldiers spoke little to the cattle except "obey or die." They had long since learned that it saved ammunition and effort to command cattle in their own symbolic language. The Soldiers were nothing if not efficient.
Had good horseflesh not impressed the nomads, Sharku would have preferred to approach them on foot. He could run as fast as a horse could gallop, lope as fast as a horse could trot, and hold his gait long after even a steppe pony broke down. Afoot, he was also more maneuverable than any horse could hope to be, and a much smaller target to boot.
"They'd better be who they claim they are," Mumak said. "Me, I've gone too long without any. Fighting's fine, but I'd sooner fuck."
That was good for an argument any time Soldiers gathered; about half preferred one, half the other. The arguments never settled anything, and only led to more fights. Sharku didn't feel like dealing with a fight right now—although the old argument was better than chewing over the weird and disturbing fate of Battlemaster Glorund. He held up his hand again to forestall discussion. "We'll just have to see what comes, that's all."
From a Soldier, that passed for wit. "What comes, eh?" said Snaga, a Chief Assault Leader junior to Mumak, though a couple of T-years older. Sharku was one of the ones everyone preferred to have out of the way, except when he led a small unit into combat. Envy tinged his voice as he went on: "You don't even care whether you get your dick wet or not, do you, not with Chichek waiting for you back at the Citadel."
"The day I don't care if I get my dick wet or not, Snaga, you can leave my carcass out for drillbits to chew, because I won't need it any more," Sharku retorted.
Snaga, who'd likely never be promoted again if he lived another hundred T-years, prudently shut up. Despite automatic defense of his own machismo, though, Sharku's face wrinkled into an unfamiliar smile. Chichek was indeed a woman in ten thousand.
Her name meant flower in the Turkic dialect of the steppes. Like most tribute maidens, she'd come to the Citadel nervous and afraid. She had more reason for nerves and fear than most: her father Gasim headed the Rolling Plains tribe, which made her outright hostage as well as payment for her people's birthing privileges in the Shangri-La Valley. She'd come in unassigned, and fallen to Sharku purely by lot.
And then—well, the Soldiers knew the unexpected happened sometimes. Instead of shrinking from Sharku's touch, Chichek the flower had flowered under it. Enthusiasm will flatter any man; Sharku did his best to keep on pleasing the girl (who really was flower-pretty, in the moon-faced, slant-eyed nomad way). He watched with more than a little self-satisfaction as her quickly kindled passion deepened into love.
He still wondered just when he'd begun to love her, too, as opposed to finding her a delightfully pleasant convenience. He supposed it was the day, five T-years gone now, when she'd handed him their firstborn son. Gimilzor (whom Chichek sometimes called Gulsheri, the name of Gasim's dead father) was a lad to reckon with; his proud father hoped he'd rise high, someday. Breedmaster Titus thought he might, if he lived up to his genes. Perhaps as high as Battlemaster. He wasn't a Cyborg, true, but Cyborgs were rare and getting rarer; the time was coming when a good plain Soldier might aspire to any rank he chose. The first ruler of the Citadel—the legendary Diettinger himself—had not been a Cyborg, after all. Neither had his successors, although the Battlemasters were the real rulers now. Gimilzor could rise higher than his father.
Sharku shook his big fair head, faintly puzzled. Somewhere down deep, he knew he'd have fallen in love with Chichek no matter how the child turned out. The birthstruggle was what had united them, not its outcome. A Soldier had but to recall the fate of Old Sauron the homeworld to know that not all struggles, however noble, are crowned with success.
Faint across distance and through cool, thin highland air, a valveless trumpet sounded, snapping Sharku back to the here and now. The notes were as they should have been, a call to parley. Sharku wondered whether he and his men had been seen or if the trumpeter simply began the parley call as soon as he was close to where he expected to meet the Soldiers. The latter, most likely; the Chief Assault Leader doubted anyone with unaugmented eyes could have picked out his party from background clutter at this distance.
Of course, the Bandari sold telescopes or binoculars sometimes for a fabulous price, or more often gave them as presents of vast worth to tribes they wished to influence. Sharku scowled; the White Sheep had better not been intriguing in that direction.
"Forward," he said, and urged his pony into a trot. Feeling the wind in his face as the animal carried him along, feeling its muscles surge beneath him, drew from him a scowl rather than contentment. How could the plainsmen make such a fuss over their horses? He was a better traveller than this stupid beast any day. The Soldier's Americ dialect had a curious name for a person who'd rather sit around on his backside than actually do anything. Aboard a horse, Sharku felt like a couch potato.
When Soldiers and nomads had drawn a couple of klicks closer to each other, the Turks' scouts suddenly recoiled, like stobor drawing back from a carcass when cliff lions approached. The trumpeter began to play louder and faster. Chuckling, Sharku said: "Now they know we're here."
He made sure he had a round in the chamber of his assault rifle, but kept the change lever in the safe position. As junior most Soldier, Ufthak unfurled the standard that answered to the Turks' white sheepskin. Blazing crimson on space-black, the Lidless Eye fluttered free.
The nomad scouts halted. Only the man who bore the tribal emblem rode forward, he and one other. Again Sharku's vision overleaped intervening distance. The second Turk was a middle-aged man with graying hair, wearing a jacket edged with cliff lion fur and a pair of gold bracelets on his right arm. His pony's trappings also glittered with gold.
"That's Omin Hotal all right—their chief," the Chief Assault Leader said. "I recognize him; I've taken tribute from the White Sheep Turks before. Doesn't look like they're going to get gay with us this time around, either. They're good cattle."
"Too bad," Snaga said, his voce not quite sotto enough. He was of the sooner-fight-than-fuck school.
On approaching within a hundred meters, Omin Hotal's standard bearer dipped the white sheepskin in salute to the Lidless Eye. Ufthak did not return the compliment; Soldiers never saluted cattle.
"Peace be upon you, envoys of the Citadel," Omin Hotal called. "May Allah and the spirits grant you broad flocks and many sons."
"Upon you peace as well, bold chieftain," Sharku replied. He knew his Turkic bore a whistling Americ accent, but he was fluent enough; talking with Chichek helped keep him so. He also knew both he and Omin Hotal lied when they wished aloud for peace—both preferred conquest. Ritual was ritual, though, so on with it: "May Allah and the spirits grant the generous wish to him who made it."
"I welcome you as a guest to my yurts," Omin Hotal intoned. Sharku shot him a look full of sharp suspicion. The word he'd used for guest, juchi, was also a name bitter as oxbane in Soldiers' ears. If the chief aimed at mockery, he played a dangerous game. Sharku decided to let it pass—once.
The Chief Assault Leader said: "I am honored to partake of your bread and salt." What a liar this duty makes of me, he thought. He wished he could tell the unwashed, fanatical barbarian just what he truly thought of him. Soldiers were not supposed to have such counterproductive emotions. If they did, they did not display them.
If Omin Hotal had similar thoughts about the party of Soldiers—and he likely did—he concealed them behind a smiling mask. He said, "Come. We shall eat; we shall drink; we shall talk. Afterward, as it pleases you, you may take such other pleasures as are men's."
The butter-bland mask did not slip. Sharku respected him for that, to the limited degree he respected any cattle. Of course, the chief was stuck here between drillbits before and tamerlanes behind. Nomad custom set great store on the virtue of women, but clan survival demanded that they surrender tribute maidens to the Soldiers. Though survival counted for more, yielding meant humiliation. Omin Hotal handled it better than most clan leaders.
The chief said, "Come with me, then, Chief Assault Leader Sharku of the Citadel, and your fellows with you." He wheeled his pony and rode back toward the main body of the clan. His standard bearer followed: among plainsmen, the chief was the clan, the standard only symbol.
The Soldiers' usage was different. Ufthak rode first with the Lidless Eye, proclaiming the Citadel greater than its representatives here. Sharku followed, then Mumak and Snaga. They went past Omin Hotal's scouts without so much as a sideways glance. Sharku had already sized them up from afar. They were tough enough men, by cattle standards; Omin Hotal would gather the best of the younger warriors from all the encampments of the White Sheep Turks for his personal guard. A couple carried black-powder carbines. Like the Soldiers' horses, those were more for show than for use. Horn- and sinew-reinforced bows were the plainsmen's real weapons of choice, with shamshirs for close-in work. Leather cuirasses dipped in boiling wax reflected the light of Byers' Star with an almost metallic glitter.
The scouts came back behind the Soldiers. Sharku would not lose face by turning his head, but used every speck of enhanced hearing to listen for the click of a carbine lock, the rattle of an arrow against its mates in a quiver as it was drawn. If the cattle were foolish enough to try something, they'd regret it. Each man his own army was the Soldiers' way.
Nothing untoward befell. Omin Hotal dismounted and stood waiting for Sharku to arrive. The Chief Assault Leader reined in his mount a couple of meters in front of the plainsman. Omin Hotal stepped forward, held the head of Sharku's horse while the Soldier descended from it. The nomad bowed low. "Enter my yurt, Soldier of the Citadel; use it as you would your own."
"You do me too much honor, chief of the White Sheep Turks," Sharku said, though he would have been outraged had Omin Hotal done him any less. He could easily have sprung from the ground up to the doorway of the wheeled cart, but a two-step stool took away the need.
Given the nomads' primitive technology, the yurt was a fine piece of engineering. Its framework of woven sticks arched up into an igloo shape, almost as if its rude builders had heard of the geodesic dome. The thick layers of felted wool and muskylope fur covered the framework, one over it and the other inside. The dead air trapped between them added to the insulation.
The outer layer of felt was whitened with lime. The inner felt wall, as Sharku saw when he slipped between the cloth lips of the entrance, was covered with felt vines and trees, animals and birds. Their bright colors shouted at him. He wondered how they looked to the cattle; his eyes needed less light to respond to color than theirs. But he supposed the nomad women would not have made them if all their beauty went to waste.
Organa, Omin Hotal's principal wife, sat crosslegged to the left—the woman's side—of the doorway. She bent forward until her forehead touched the felt of the flooring. "Allah and the spirits grant you peace, Soldier," she murmured.
"And to you and yours, Organa Khatun." Sharku answered. He seated himself to the right of the yurt's entrance. So, one by one, did his three companions. Omin Hotal waited outside a few minutes, calling out instructions of one sort or another to his men. Even that pause showed deference: he allowed the Soldiers to be alone with his woman. That she was too old and dried up to be worth having mattered not at all; as with ironic wishes for peace, symbolism worked here.
The chief came in, knocked his forehead on the floor, then sat at Sharku's left hand. "Give the guests kvass, woman!" he shouted angrily. "Have the spirits stolen your manners?"
"I am sorry, my husband," Organa said—yet another ritual. The skin lay right behind her. She poured the cloudy liquid into ram's-horn cups, gave one to each Soldier and the last to Omin Hotal. Her turn would come later.
The nomad chief dipped a forefinger into the fermented mare's milk, sprinkled a couple of drops over a little stuffed felt idol hung above the entrance. He muttered in Turkic: "In Allah's name these drops I do not drink, but give them to the spirit of the yurt, that he may watch over us and keep us safe."
Sharku, as was his right, raised the first cup to his lips. He drank with loud slurping noises, as any polite nomad would have. The other Soldiers drained their cups in turn, and used the conscious control they had over their diaphragms to belch titanically. Omin Hotal beamed with pride at the compliment and drank last.
Dried muskylope dung burned on an iron pan in the center of the yurt. Its pungent smoke rose through the round opening at the center of the dome above. Today's fire was for warmth only, not for cooking as it normally would have been. Omin Hotal said, "Our tribute maidens will fetch the meal they have prepared to honor you, Soldiers of the Citadel."
The chief's timing was good. A pretty girl bowed her way into the yurt and set before the Soldiers a tray full of strips of horsemeat dried and preserved by sun and cold. Little wicker bowls round the edge of the tray held sauces for dipping, some sweet, others fiery. Under flowery perfume, Sharku smelled the girl's sharp fear. He smelled that scent every time he went out to collect tribute maidens.
The horsemeat was hard as leather. Sharku demolished strip after strip with jaws stronger than an unaugmented man's. The girl stared in amazement at how fast the Soldiers emptied the tray. The fear-stink eased; on the steppe, gluttony was something to admire. She was almost smiling as she retreated.
Organa poured more kvass, this time for herself as well as the men. It bit Sharku's tongue like vinegar, but left a pleasing aftertaste of almonds. He drank cup after cup. He metabolized ethanol too fast to get drunk on anything that wasn't distilled. Omin Hotal, as host, had to try to keep up with him. The nomad chief's face grew very red.
Another tribute maiden brought in wheaten griddlecakes with clarified butter and sweet syrup. The flour for the cakes had to have come from a lowlands valley; on the plains they were a luxury. The Soldiers wolfed them down. Omin Hotal giggled. "Would that Allah had given me your bellies," he said. Organa poured again.
After two courses, Sharku could with propriety inquire, "How has your clan fared since last we met, chief of the Ak-Koyunlu?"
"Well enough, though nothing comes easy," Omin Hotal answered: a one-sentence summary of life everywhere on Haven. Then he gave more detail. "We used tar and pitch to control an outbreak of mange among the camels; the flocks bear well, thanks to your courtesy in allowing the females to drop their young in Shangri-La Valley; we have lost not a single pregnant woman, again thanks to your courtesy."
"I am pleased for you," Sharku said, more or less sincerely: it was convenient to let docile cattle thrive. "And your dealings with your neighbors on the steppe?" He grew alert as he awaited Omin Hotal's reply—though no Waffenfarbe showed his branch of service, he was an intelligence officer by training. Collecting tribute maidens also gave the Citadel a chance to collect information about foes not yet subdued.
The chief spat in the pan that held the burning muskylope dung. Saliva hissed on the hot iron; steam rose with the smoke. "That to Arik Burka, pimp and son of ten pimps, and to all his clan. The spawn of an addled land gator egg had the gall to try moving his flocks to a stretch of plain which has belonged to the White Sheep for generations. I told him I would call on the Citadel for aid if he did not desist, and he yielded. Happy the man who boasts the Soldiers for his friends!"
"May you long be happy, great chief." Inside, Sharku smiled. Omin Hotal might reckon even unleavened wheat-cakes a treat, but he knew on which side his bread was buttered. The Chief Assault Leader slurped kvass, then asked, "Of what other doings have you heard?"
Omin Hotal looked owlishly down into his cup. "There is the matter of the Seven—" His wife Organa, who had drunk much less than he, suffered a timely coughing fit. He glanced over at her in surprise, then shut up.
He got away with it for a time, for yet another tribute maiden brought in a tureen full of one of the most prized steppe delicacies: a stew of mutton and oats, served in the boiled stomach of a sheep. The nature of the wrapper did not discommode Sharku in the slightest; to a Soldier, protein was protein.
"An excellent khaagis, great chief," Sharku said, belching appreciatively. He drank more kvass to make Omin Hotal do the same, then, voice casual, went on, "You were speaking of the Seven . . .?"
"Was I?" Omin Hotal's narrow eyes widened for a split second; even sodden with drink, his body grew taut. Something here, Sharku thought, keeping his own responses under tight control. The chief might have deceived his fellow cattle; he could not hope to befool a Soldier. Well, perhaps he could hope: "I don't recall what I said."
"Liar." Snaga's voice came flat and harsh as the crack of an assault rifle. The Senior Assault Leader stood, his fur cap almost brushing the felt ceiling of the yurt. He glared down at Omin Hotal. "You boast you are the Soldiers' friend, then seek to lie to us? I ought to break your back and leave you out for the stobor, like a baby that doesn't deserve to live."
Sharku made a tiny gesture with one finger: enough. He didn't want Omin Hotal reviled past the point at which rage ousted fear. As Snaga folded back down to a crosslegged pose, Sharku said, "Do you fear we will take out our anger on you, great chief, for passing on what others do? That is not the Citadel's way: if we shoot the messenger, who then will bring us messages? Speak, and no harm will come to you. By Allah and the spirits I swear it."
"Swear also by the ship that brought your kind here, the Dol Guldur," Organa said harshly. "You are an infidel; you would take Allah's sacred name in vain for your own profit."
Since she was right, the Soldier could only sit still and endure the accusation. "If you would have it so, khatun, I will swear by the Dol Guldur," he said slowly. From his belt pouch he pulled a silver coin with the image of the ship stamped on it. "Keep this, if you would, in memory of the oath." To his mind, it was as conditional as any other, but Organa did not have to know that.
Omin Hotal looked toward his principal wife once more. Now she nodded. The chief said, "It is a bad business, Soldier of the Citadel, a feud whose roots run back many T-years."
"What feud doesn't have roots like that?" Snaga sounded openly scornful.
Again Sharku twitched a finger in warning. "Go on," he urged Omin Hotal.
"I shall." Something—maybe fear—had come close to sobering the nomad chief. Picking his words with obvious care, he said, "The matter of the Seven, Soldier of the Citadel, springs from that of Juchi the Accursed."
Sharku needed all his discipline not to come to full, visible alertness at hearing the name. So much trouble for the Citadel, for all the Soldiers, had sprung from one stupid Breedmaster's mistake in a little outlying Base. Was there now to be more? It had already bitten him in the ass in a small way, when he went looking for Juchi's sister/daughter. If he had not been a Soldier, he'd have started believing that Juchi and all his seed carried a curse directed at the Race in general. He kept his voice deliberately neutral: "The bandit Juchi, called the Accursed, is dead, Omin Hotal. I saw his quartered corpse outside Nûrnen not long before I fared forth to meet you here."
"Aye, Juchi is dead. I too have heard the tale of that corpse, and of the dishonor the lords of the Citadel inflicted upon it in hopes of terrifying those who—how shall I say?—love the Soldiers not. But dishonor, Soldier Sharku, has a way of turning to cut the hands of those who seek to wield it as weapon. For, you see, Juchi's daughter—his sister as well—Aisha still lives."
"Oh, fuck," Mumak mumbled. Sharku was inclined to agree with that assessment. He'd always had trouble believing a worthless peasant like Yegor could have killed Glorund the Battlemaster. Glorund, after all, had slain Juchi, who bore Soldier's blood in his veins.
But if Juchi was of Soldier stock, then so was Aisha, born—if legend spoke true—of him by his own mother, herself a woman with some Soldier genes. If Glorund decided legend was a lie . . . when a Cyborg eliminated data, they no longer existed for him. All at once the probable manner of the Battlemaster's passing seemed clear. His own arrogant over-confidence had killed him—not the first Soldier to die thus.
"You see the difficulty, Soldiers of the Citadel," Omin Hotal said. "In Aisha, both Soldier blood and that of the steppe cry out for vengeance against those who slew her father/brother and dishonored his corpse. Were such not a contradiction in terms, I would call her a woman ghazi. You know this word, Sharku of the Citadel?"
"I know this word, Omin Hotal," Sharku answered gravely. Literally, ghazi meant warrior of the faith, one who spread Islam by the sword. In practice it meant raider, one who spread lslam by plundering the lands and goods of his non-Muslim neighbors. The combination of fanaticism and greed was about as explosive—and as unstable—as ammonium iodide.
"There is more; there is worse." Organa's voice tolled like a funeral bell of one of the Christian churches that were common in the Shangri-La.
As he had promised, Sharku met bad news like a Soldier. "Tell me the rest."
When Omin Hotal hesitated, his wife spoke again: "Aisha preaches jihad, holy war, against the Citadel. Great is the booty she promises the people of the felt tents: all that you Soldiers have, and possession of the valley as birthing-ground for women and livestock both. Such is enough and more than enough to tempt any plainsman. She leads a band of seven mujahidin, if so I may term them when more are infidel than not."
"Infidel?" Sharku echoed, puzzled. Most of the plainsfolk on the Great Northern Steppe professed Islam of one sort or another, although minorities around the fringes were Buddhist and Christian and whatnot. The main non-Muslim group was—
"The Bandari have their hand in this jihad, Soldier of the Citadel," Organa said, fitting a new tile into the mosaic. "Aisha somehow is kin to the folk of the Pale as well as to the steppe and the Citadel."
"Oh, fuck." This time, Mumak didn't bother to whisper. Again, Sharku shared the sentiment. The Bandari were the worst foes the Citadel had. The Frystaat blood many of them carried gave them a strong genetic heritage. They'd kept or redeveloped more technology than any other group on Haven save only the Soldiers. Maybe worst of all, they were literate. Like the Soldiers, they drew their schemes from a vastly larger database than mere clan memory. Add in that, as the nomads said, any two Bandari could cheat Shaitan at dice, and they became very unpleasant customers indeed.
Sharku thought hard and fast. "Do you"—his gaze swept severely from Omin Hotal to Organa and back again—"swear by Allah and the spirits you have told me the truth here?"
The chief shook his head. "No, Soldier of the Citadel, I cannot, for how much truth lies in the stories that have come out of the west I cannot say. But by Allah and the spirits, Soldier Sharku, and by the memory of fair dealing between the Citadel and the White Sheep Turks, I have reported truly what I heard."
That would have to do, Sharku realized. He inclined his head to Omin Hotal. "We Soldiers forget neither foes nor friends. Your service shall be remembered and rewarded, chief of the White Sheep Turks." He had to work to keep his voice steady. What am I supposed to do now? yammered in him.
A fourth tribute maiden carried in a tray of sliced apples, pears and clownfruit candied in honey. Her smile came unforced as she offered it to Sharku. Here, he thought, was one determined to make the best of things when she went to the Citadel. Here also, he decided, was the one he would bed after the feast was done. He was not one of the Soldiers who was turned on by fear.
When the fruit was gone, Omin Hotal rose, a little unsteadily, from the mat. "Come, Soldiers of the Citadel. You have seen the girls who will accompany you back to the Shangri-La Valley. See now the other gifts the White Sheep Turks grant you from our abundance."
In the flowery language of politeness, gifts meant tribute; abundance was whatever we happen to have. Sharku also spoke that language: "Your generosity always astounds, Omin Hotal. Let me be amazed once more."
"Come, then." The nomad chief left the yurt first, to show again that he trusted the Soldiers with his woman. When they followed, he led them to the place where the tribute lay piled, a couple of hundred meters off. "Behold," he said expansively. "Fleeces, beeswax, tallow, cowhides and horsehides. Herbs from which you brew your medicines—tansy, foxglove, fireweed."
Sharku checked the fleeces and hides to make sure Omin Hotal had not concealed poor ones under those that first met the eye. He opened pots of wax and tallow at random to see if they were full, and stuck his knife into a couple to search for false bottoms. He inspected the baled herbs closely, to learn whether the chief was trying to sneak weeds past him. Omin Hotal grinned like a tamerlane all the while. He gained repute among his clansfolk by being thought so sneaky.
When the examination was done, the chief said, "Tell me if you would, Soldier Sharku, what simple you brew from fireweed. No shaman with whom I have spoken knows any use for the vile, burning stuff."
"You may not believe it, Omin Hotal, but an extract of the leaves goes into a syrup that soothes sore throats," Sharku answered easily. Omin Hotal shook his head in wonder. As a matter of fact, Sharku lied. What the Citadel extracted from fireweed was nitric acid, essential to manufacturing smokeless powder.
Ufthak nodded at the string of ponies tethered beside the tribute. "I have seen worse animals than these, chief of the White Sheep."
"They are yours," Omin Hotal said with an extravagant gesture. "Let the maidens ride some, and let the others bear our gifts."
"Behold—Omin Hotal is generous," Sharku said loudly, as if for all Haven to hear.
The nomad chief swelled up with pride. He pointed to a yurt next largest after his own. "The maidens who go to join the Citadel await you there. More food and drink also await, for your further refreshment. When you come forth, everything will be in readiness for your return to the Shangri-La Valley."
"Again I thank you, Omin Hotal," Sharku said. He had to glance at Mumak to keep the Senior Assault Leader from making toward that yurt too soon. As a matter of fact, Sharku did not want to go that way at all. Could he have done so without mortally offending his host, he would have headed out into the steppe at once, to see what more he could learn of the disquieting news the chief and his woman had passed on.
But no, he decided reluctantly. A tribute party could easily attract raiders, and could not easily spare the loss of a quarter of its strength. Moreover, he wanted to sit down with the Threat Analysis Computer and feed in the new data. And Sharku wondered what the TAC already knew. Among them, those considerations outweighed his desire to fly like an ice-eagle across the plains.
On to other desires, then. After more polite talk, he let Omin Hotal lead him to the second yurt. As he went in, he saw the tribute maidens sitting crosslegged on the floor matting, just on the women's side of the shelter. Behind them, embroidered blankets partitioned off four nominally private spaces.
Sharku remained alert. He eyed each blanket closely, checking with his infrared-sensitive eyes to make sure no one—brother, outraged friend or lover—crouched in ambush behind it. He also studied the tribute maidens with care. Once, some T-years before, a beardless youth had donned his sister's clothes and knifed a Soldier to death. A lot of tricks worked once. None had any business working twice.
These were, however, the maids who had served the food in Omin Hotal's yurt; he recognized their distinctive female scents. Sharku nodded to the one who had brought in the candied fruit. Beneath swarthiness, her full cheeks colored. He heard her heart speed up. "What shall I call you, fair young one?" he asked her.
"I am Toragina, Sau—Soldier of the Citadel." She flushed deeper, and bit her lip at the slip she'd made.
The Chief Assault Leader let it pass. "My name is Sharku, as you may have heard." He reached out, closed his hand on hers, drew her to her feet with effortless strength. Though she cast down her eyes with becoming modesty, she was the one who led him to a nook.
Within were mats and furs and pillows stuffed with horsehair. She sat beside Sharku, so close that their thighs touched. He did not smile, not where it showed, but he was pleased. He'd hoped she'd be bold. Even so, he waited a little before he put a hand on her. If that boldness was just a facade, he didn't want to knock it down by leaping on her like a cliff lion. First impressions lasted, and she'd stay inside the Citadel the rest of her life.
She was a Turk, so her long tunic fastened on the left; plainsfolk of Mongol stock closed theirs on the right. She didn't flinch when he undid the topmost brooch, or the next, or the next. In fact, she turned toward him to make his work easier. Now he did smile. She shrugged out of the tunic herself, before he could take it off for her. The dim, flickering light of a butter-filled lamp showed breasts small but shapely. She lay back against the piled furs.
Taking her was duty and pleasure at the same time. Given a choice, Sharku would have spent all his seed with Chichek. Being a Soldier, he was not given a choice. Since he had to do this, he took pride in doing it as well as he could, both for its own sake and to help the Soldier to whom Toragina was eventually assigned. He soon discovered she was no maiden. He didn't care, so long as she wasn't pregnant by some nomad—and his nose would have told him if she were. That she knew something of what she was doing only added to both their pleasure. He was sure of hers—no cattle woman could pretend well enough to fool one of his kind.
Between rounds—not long, given who and what he was—he listened to the noises floating from behind the other blankets. Mumak and Ufthak seemed to be pleasing their women well enough. That was all to the good. Snaga . . . He frowned. The next time Snaga thought of anyone but himself, in bed or out of it, would be the first. One of the tribute maidens was getting an introduction to the Citadel she might better have done without. Nothing to be done about that now; if it turned out Snaga had seriously abused the girl, Sharku would do his best to get him taken off this duty henceforward.
"You have a lance of steel," Toragina exclaimed as he enfleshed himself once more. She bit his shoulder, hard enough to hurt. Trained reflex almost made him smash her into unconsciousness with the side of his head. He held himself still, just in time, then abandoned himself to what he was doing. Untrained reflexes had their place, too.
After two more joinings, he could tell she was getting sore. She tried to deny it, which flattered him. He could have gone another couple of rounds, but was happy enough. Smiling, Toragina fell asleep almost as soon as his weight left her. He covered her with furs; being unaugmented, she'd feel the chill.
He listened again. Mumak had not only gone to sleep, he was snoring. Sharku chuckled. That would be something to rag him about all the way back to the Citadel. By the squeals from another nest in the yurt, both Ufthak and his girl were still going strong. And so was Snaga, though his tribute maiden, far from sounding passionate, had started to whimper.
"Enough, all," Sharku called in Americ. "Remember, we'll be riding horses, not girls, in a few hours. Rest while you can." The last four words belonged in any warrior's maxim book.
Snaga at least knew how to obey. He quickly came one last time, then turned himself off as if he were an electrical appliance. Ufthak muttered something that sounded suspiciously like, "Yes, sir, grandfather, sir," but not loud enough to compel Sharku to notice it. He brought his tribute maiden to a final peak, gasped himself in the same instant, and also began the deep, even breathing which quickly spiraled down to sleep.
Having given the order, Sharku refused to obey it. He sat crosslegged beside Toragina, again weighing the data he'd had from Omin Hotal and Organa, wishing he could do two things at once: a startlingly un-Soldierlike feeling. One step at a time belonged in the maxim book, too. He'd already figured out the proper course. He would follow it. Why, then, was he unhappy with his choice?