"Not long now," Mumak said. "Three hundred kilometers. If the bridges are still up we'll have the Citadel in sight by tomorrow night, Deathmaster."
Deathmaster. Sharku nodded agreement. Not a rank given by the Council, or anyone else in the Citadel, but by his own Soldiers. His original two, Regiment Leader Laduf's command from Castell City, another force from Firebase Three, and every man Firebase Two could spare from the defense of Falkenberg. It would leave little enough in the Valley, but that hardly mattered with the Citadel in danger—and now that the New Soviet Men understood what the Bandari were up to, there would be new alliances there.
Effectively four Regiments. Easily a Deathmaster's command . . .
"Signals stopped days ago," Mumak said thoughtfully. "Last message said there was an attack on Nûrnen and recalled Deathmaster Ghâsh. Lady Althene! Nomads at the gates of Nûrnen!"
Sharku nodded again. It was unthinkable enough that the heliograph had been interrupted. That could mean anything. A relay station taken with its crew besieged inside. Or—or the Citadel, with all its strength down here in the Valley might already have fallen, the armory sacked, women and children dead, Chichek and Gimilzor dead in their blood with a hundred enemies dead around them. At least that many—
Or the nomads could have broken against Nûrnen, with no danger to the Citadel at all. The TAC might have been right, and Carcharoth had cut off the signals himself, luring him on—in which case he'd have a cold welcome.
Odd. His future depended on disaster to his home and all he loved.
It hadn't been an easy passage. The journey back through the Valley had been even more hard fought than the drive down to Firebase Six.
Hard fought, but not as costly. On the way down, Ghâsh had allowed the officers to lead from the front, and far too many were killed because they hadn't realized how good the barbarian rifles were. Not just rifles. Discipline. Tactics. They'd taught a costly lesson.
Mumak held up a hand. "Gunfire, Deathmaster. Heavy guns, not all ours."
Soldiers in the forward ranks slowed to a walk and displayed the clenched-fist signal for their comrades to do likewise. A messenger ran up to them. "Nomads, Deathmaster. Assault Leader Vizgor estimates at least a thousand."
"Which nomads?"
"Not known to us, Deathmaster. Their banners show horsetails with yellow streamers."
"Yellow Chin," Sharku said. "From the far northern steppes. Their domain ends a thousand kilometers north of the Citadel."
Mumak looked puzzled, then nodded in comprehension. "The TAC never hinted of an alliance that large."
"No. Messenger, tell Assault Leader Vizgor to take command of the advanced party and sweep them out of our way. The rest of the force will continue the march."
"Sir." The messenger ran back to the front.
"Nomads west of the Citadel," Mumak said. "You've been right all along. This is a lot more than the usual migrations. Sure you don't want me to deal with this?"
"No. Let Vizgor show what he's learned of the new tactics."
"Your new tactics, Deathmaster."
"My new tactics, then. Another change long due. We've lost too many officers looking for glory, Mumak. Glory! As if there were glory in risking Sauron lives to barbarians!"
"The Race needs glory, Deathmaster."
"Not against barbarians." He looked up at the baleful glare of the Cat's Eye. "Out there is glory. Not here on this stinking prison world!"
Vizgor's messenger trotted up to Sharku. "All is ready, Deathmaster. Final orders?"
"One. We want none to escape to take word back. Assault Leader Vizgor may take increased risks to accomplish this."
"As you say, Deathmaster." The messenger ran back, his easy lope carrying him faster than a trotting horse.
Up ahead the lead battalions had separated, while the first group of the main party had dug in to form an anvil. The nomads had seen no more than a hundred Soldiers, and couldn't know what they faced.
Vizgor listened to orders, then waved two groups of Soldiers to envelop the barbarians. In the valley below the nomad leaders had seen the unmounted Saurons on the hill above, but there was no panic.
"They have horses," Mumak snorted. "They think to outrun us. Deathmaster, these are clearly from very far away indeed."
"They'll learn," Sharku said.
Vizgor looked back to the commander, got no word, and turned to his junior leaders. "No burning. No fires," he said. "No warning to any ahead of us." It was clear that the nomads still didn't know what they faced. Herds of lowing cows, baahing sheep and insatiable goats grazed delightedly on what would have been somebody's next crop of rye. Men in fur hats on horses and muskylopes kept the herds heading roughly northwest. Behind the animals came the clan's yurts, with children playing on the wooden platforms that supported the domes of felt and with bored-looking old men or women driving teams of draught-muskies down the path of devastation the herds had created.
Between and behind the yurts shambled Caucasoid-looking people on rawhide leashes: farmer-folk the plainsmen had already scooped up in their rampage through the Valley. They'd end up slaves or concubines or tortured to death for the hell of it.
All eyes swung toward Vizgor. He raised his arm, then dropped it. The lead elements swept forward, as the encircling forces took positions on either side of the enemy.
It was not a battle. It was not even a massacre. It was an extermination. The outriders went down at once, most of them without ever knowing how they'd died. The rattle of gunfire hardly even disturbed the plainsmen's herds; the animals must have heard enough shooting lately to grow used to it.
Vizgor briefly examined the accouterments of a nomad who'd fallen off his muskylope after taking a three-shot burst across the chest. His longarm was a muzzle-loading flintlock, a smoothbore that fired round balls. He couldn't have hit a house at a hundred meters with it, or hurt the house if he did. He had a pistol in his belt and one more in each boot. They were similarly ineffectual.
Gatling fodder, Vizgor thought. The Pale must have used up these savages by the thousands in forcing their way past the Citadel. But when they had tens of thousands to spend, who cared?
Then he was running again, toward the cluster of yurts. He was inside assault-rifle range when the nomads got the idea that something was wrong. That was much too late. A few shots went off; he heard the dull bangs, saw the clouds of black-powder smoke rise. After the serious fight the western rebels had put up, it wasn't even a skirmish.
The only survivors of the raid were those of the nomads' captives who hadn't accidentally stopped a bullet. They greeted the Soldiers like heroes, shouting "Rescuers!" in Americ and Russki and three or four other languages. A very pretty blonde spread herself on the ground in front of Mumak, offering the only thanks she could give.
Mumak turned aside. "Isn't that the way it goes?" he said to Sharku. "They loathed us till they found out what we were holding back. All of a sudden, we don't look so bad any more."
"What else is new?" Sharku answered, the same bitterness in his voice, his mind too glossing over the fact that it had been Saurons long ago who had smashed Haven and its people into this low-tech hell—and kept it there for their own inscrutable purposes.
Along with the plainsmen, their herds went down in great numbers. The Soldiers gorged on raw meat, and cut off more slabs to carry with them. It was a welcome relief from the pemmican that fueled their hard-burning metabolisms on most long journeys.
Less than two hours after the attack on the nomads began, the last Soldiers were loping toward the Citadel again. Sharku wondered what would happen to the cattle and sheep they'd left behind. He supposed the local farmers would keep some, slaughter the rest—keeping meat was rarely a problem on Haven, you just dug down a few feet and it got cold. The farmers would live fat for a while—unless more bands from the steppe rolled over them. He could see pillars of smoke to north and south, clans lucky enough to be out of the way of the returning Soldiers. There were more and bigger fires to the east.
Twenty klicks closer to the Citadel, the Regiments encountered another nomad clan eager to seize part of this rich land for its own. This time, the Deathmaster barely bothered with spoken orders. The outflanking parries moved as if directed by thought alone. The slaughter that followed was just as complete as the first one.
Here, though, the Soldiers took a casualty: a trooper got a smoothbore ball through the muscle of his upper arm. He seemed more embarrassed than pained; his section-mates ribbed him unmercifully.
Here, too, one of the plainsmen on a fast horse tried to escape the maelstrom and bring warning to his fellow nomads. Laughing, a Soldier ran after him. He paced the rider for a few hundred meters, taunting him for not going faster. His jeers made the plainsman knock an arrow and shoot from sheer frustration; he might have hit, too, had the Soldier not dodged aside and caught the arrow out of the air with a boyish whoop. The nomad managed to fire a pistol while the Soldier closed with him. He missed, of course, and the Soldier dragged him off his horse and killed him.
"Come on, Snaga," Sharku said, pulling the Chief Assault Leader off a writhing plainswoman. "We have serious work ahead of us."
"Oh, very well," Snaga said testily. He broke her neck with a quick twist, yanked up his trousers and buttoned his fly, going from rapist to soldier in the space of about fifteen seconds.
Sharku wanted to say something sharp to him, but all that came out was, "Just make sure you don't do that with any women from the Valley. Having our own cattle on our side may give us an edge."
Again, the nomads' captives had rapturously welcomed the Soldiers as liberators. Even if it was just a case of the devils they knew versus the ones they didn't, Sharku wanted to wring every gram of use he could from it—and it was logical, too. The Soldiers wanted to keep their cattle fat and healthy; the nomads regarded them as so much wild game to slaughter.
The steppe barbarians, no matter how numerous, could be handled. They had no capacity for forethought, planning, coordination. The Bandari puppet-masters behind them . . .
Truenight continued long past the time when dawn would have woken any Terrans who had survived their own world's wasting. Warriors stood, squatted, or sat where they could in the mayor's study, which would probably never be the same, even if they could get the stinks of sweat out of the rugs or oil the scratched paneling smooth once more. No servants were admitted: the youngest of the warriors were proud to fetch food or light or other men, whom they regarded jealously as if their mere presence might snatch honor from their grasp.
Nazrullah, khan of the men who still called themselves mujahedin as well as Pathan, stood with his back to Strong Sven. No one wanted to look at him. "Yurek," he mused. "Son of Abdullah. Back . . ." His eyes closed and his lips moved. "Our qadi, our judge, could reckon the years better, but it is said that Yurek learned many secrets when he sat at the feet of Dihtahn Shah."
Hammer's bleared gaze locked on Chaya's, compelling her attention. Is it true? He knew the tribes' speech as well as she. It was confirmation he wanted of her.
She gave it in a word. "Diettinger." Commander of the Dol Guldur, founder of Sauron-on-Haven.
"Sweet Jesus," the General said. "The little bastard isn't lying. I shall find a way. Or make one." His eyes kindled. "We shall smite them hip and thigh, as David smote the Philistines."
Jesus never said that.
There was a way. A way through the mountains and into the beating heart of the Citadel, to cut into it and still it, please God, forever.
And if they struck fast enough, not even Cyborgs could withstand them.
"Question, sir!" Barak almost snapped into a brace that would have done his blood kin in the Citadel credit.
"You've got Nazrullah's word . . . no, khan, I'm not tired of living and I'm not a fool. I believe you. But you're not talking foothills here. You're talking the Atlas range, the very Wall of Allah. There's no air up there, or not much. How do you know he's not telling us about a way that'll get us all killed?"
"It hasn't killed the mujahedin," Kemal interrupted. "They're used to it," Barak replied. "That's why we've brought the Tibetans in. Now I can probably breathe it, too. Sannie, too. No, don't give me that, Kemal. I've seen Sannie climb where strong men would black out. But that doesn't leave very many of us for heavy climbing or fighting . . ."
"Well, dog?" Kemal snapped at Strong Sven. "A man is talking to you. Look up when a man speaks!" He obeyed, glowering. Better watch that one. "Have you been there?"
"Not I, great lord, but my grandpa . . ."
Kemal spat on the floor.
"Brother." Nazrullah spoke up. "Have you ever heard of a thing called 'overpressure'? Our mullahs tell us that the warm air rising from the floor of the Shangri-La Valley meets the cold air moving down the mountains and in from the seas, breeding fast winds. Our village lies on a plateau where these winds are trapped . . . ." He was barrel-chested, vigorous, despite the exposure to nearly lethal altitudes. His eyes squinted from exposure to the light, but he had none of the skin cancers that constant life in thin air could create. What he said could be true.
"Now and only now you tell us what you have known for hundreds of years. The air is only slightly thinner than in the Valley?" Chaya spoke up. "You do not need the Valley if your women are to bear live sons? And yet, you served the Citadel. Why?"
Her eyes met Nazrullah's. They kindled into rage at the slur, then cooled. A crafty one. Good that the others know this. "Were you not Judge and ghazi and were we not all oath-kin, it would be death to say that. It is true that years ago, we served the Saurons. Khan Yurek guested there and was treated with honor. But it was an honor tainted with blood and fear. The accursed Saurons . . ." he spat " . . . threatened us with their weapons. But you Bandari have those weapons too."
He cast an awed glance at Sapper, who appeared to be asleep.
So our only traitor is the one who ran from Nûrnen? Not so, Chaya thought. There was this Temujin, whom Shulamit had in charge and who had fled the Citadel—or, more likely, been allowed to leave. He had brought word that the blonde horsetrader with her face like a blade and her arrogance, akin to Chaya's own, at the oath-taking was not only from the Citadel, but a Cyborg, pregnant, God help them all, with a child likely to be of Piet fan Reenan's blood. And then there was the man of her own blood, Dagor, her brother and nephew, wherever he was.
"Long ago," Nazrullah went on, "we decided that less closeness to the Saurons meant more honor—even if they killed us for it. So we walled up the old ways, and they did not pursue us."
The Bandari General nodded. "I see. But you remember them, too? Thought so. Sapper?"
The engineer snapped to full awareness, shown, in this case, by opening both eyes. He was like her, Chaya thought. He only seemed to be sleeping. "Pick me out three of your toughest who have done any climbing.
"Then I want all of you to meet with Nazrullah. Take this"—Hammer-of-God gestured at Strong Sven—"prize pup of ours with you. Better collar him, I'd say, so he doesn't run or squeal. If I find he's been talking to anyone not in this room, so help me . . . . Right. Find out everything you can about the rock and what the Saurons might have used to seal it."
"Ferrocrete and . . . they might have had supplies left from the Wasting . . ."
Hammer-of-God shuddered. He had heard the old tales of the Holocaust. A fire brighter than a thousand suns . . . . "What else may they have?" Hammer-of-God asked. "Hellfire?"
"Whatever they have, they didn't use it to save Nûrnen," Sapper said.
Hammer grunted, slightly relieved. Indeed, if the Saurons had ancient weapons, they would have used them on the quarter-million enemies camped around Nûrnen. "You'll need to build some charges. And your boys will only have the one chance . . . ."
Nazrullah bowed to the General and the Seven.
"C'mon, Marija, boys," Sapper said. They followed him—Ladslas, Algirdas, Kosti—as children would follow a conjuror. Ladslas and Algirdas grabbed Sven and ushered him roughly out with them.
Then, as Chaya had known it must, bloody hell erupted in the filthy study.
"You send boys and a woman on a mission like this?" Gasim of the Golden Tamerlanes said.
"I shall send"—Hammer-of-God leaned fists on the table—"those men and women judged best suited for the job. I shall send those whom I see fit."
Kemal opened his mouth to protest. Quiet, fool, Chaya breathed at him.
Shouts of how dangerous, and therefore how honorable this trip up the mountains was, boasts of personal prowess, and offers to take on the Citadel singlehandedly—Chaya wished she could shut her ears.
"And I shall refuse those whom I judge more valuable elsewhere. The Judge . . ." He shook his head. "She is our head and our heart. Aisha and Karl of the Seven shall not go; she bears a child, and we need them here."
"I would like to go." Aisha's eyes flashed.
On anyone else, Hammer-of-God's glance at Karl would have looked like a plea.
"I want you here," Karl said.
Not good enough.
"We need you here." Valiantly, he tried again. "Only you can reclaim your father's bones. And his honor."
Oh, well done!
Aisha bowed her head. "As you wish," she said.
The General went on hastily. "Kemal and Ihsan will remain. Tameetha bat Irene will remain. Marija will remain. I will not sacrifice all my best commanders."
So Barak and Sannie went. Chaya saw them join hands, their eyes glowing.
"And," the big Edenite went on, "I shall lead. Barak will be my second in command. Nazrullah will come . . . if he wishes."
Another eruption of shouts. The Afghan khan's eyes glowed. "Command me, Aga Shah." Hands flicked in tribal diplomacy, which the General returned.
"Let Barak lead," Karl Haller said flatly. He gestured at Hammer-of-God's leg. "You're as drunk on glory as the hashishayun get on smoke. You've soldiered your whole life . . . . This is a job for young men."
"I tell you, I'll make it. And if my body doesn't, my spirit will. I will be there to see the Citadel fall, by the strength of God and the spirits of Ruth and Piet and all the prkn'az."
"We have all taken that oath!" Gasim shouted.
"This will be a new oath," the big General said. "A special one. Who swears this oath? Any fighter who can. This oath, though; only the bravest, the strongest, the craftiest, and the luckiest will be privileged to swear it. It will be secret for now, but I swear by Judge Chaya's honor that the names of all who take it will last until the Cat's Eye shuts for the last time!"
Weary, Chaya shut her eyes. A lifetime ago, she had thrived on such conferences, reveled in her ability to plan and to master and manipulate the people she ruled. Now, though, Hammer seemed as fey as Piet himself, when he sought not death but undying glory by fighting a Cyborg.
He was old for a soldier. And tired. She could sense his exhaustion, twin to her own, despite her Sauron blood. Karl Haller was right; he should no more make that climb than she herself. He'd sprung this on them without letting them have a chance to shout him down, damn the man.
But she knew what he would say. She could almost hear him say that it was rotten doctrine to send a commanding officer off on a raid. But who else could goad the tribes, yet keep them from killing each other? Only the man they hated, feared, and respected above all others. He'd argue that he wasn't the commander of the horde, that the Seven commanded. "I am a hammer in your hand," he had said once. He'd scare hell out of the Seven and his own staff by saying that, sooner or later, they'd have to learn to do without him. And he'd point out that he, of all people, would be able to know what in the Citadel could be used and what must be destroyed.
He'd have a host of reasons about as large as the army that shouted his name as often as it did the names of the Seven, and they'd all back him in his stubbornness. His bliddyful stubbornness that, dammitall, made a kind of sense.
And too, what a chance for Barak to learn his skills!
She shuddered at that thought. Then words and memories thrust the truth beyond those pretexts into her thoughts. She tried to brush them away, but they stormed her consciousness. She resisted. Then others, known lifelong and much loved, sought utterance and she yielded.
"Piet fan Reenan"—she began the traditional words, recited at the Spring Festival—"was the wisest man I ever knew, and the saddest. In his last illness, he told me that the final irony of his life was that he, a historian—for that was how he thought of himself, not as a soldier or ruler—had outlived history. I asked him if our story would not be preserved for the generations yet to come: surely our wars and our wanderings, griefs and loves, the peace we made and the people we brought to being, all this would live? Yes, he said; but not as history, because history was the product of civilization. When the Saurons came, Haven stepped out of history, into the time of legends. It was as myths, archetypes, legends that we would be remembered, not as human beings. Our children and children's children would live once more through the endless turnings of the great cycle of myths."
Once again, it would have been tempting to drift. Chaya almost thought she could see Piet's anima wavering before her. It took on more substance as she looked. The eyes lit, and behind her she could see others. Ruth, before she aged so rapidly and died. Ilona, with that scar on her face. They were smiling at her. Not unworthy then? she asked them. Even with my Sauron blood?
You are my true daughter, Ruth's anima told her. I am proud of you.
Advise me, Chaya pleaded. I am old and sick, and they think I am mad. I wander in the dark. Tell me what to do.
She heard Piet's laugh in the no-time in which her consciousness floated, felt his lips on her forehead.
Think of a myth, Chaya.
The shadowy figured disappeared. She let her head loll forward.
"Amah? Drink this." The rim of a cup pressed against her lips. "Quiet, all of you!" (Never mind that Karl Haller shouted for quiet right by her ear.)
She lapped at the liquid in the cup. Pure water. Abruptly, she began to laugh then, just as quickly, ceased as she saw the near-panic in the mediko's eyes.
"She has thought of something, haven't you, Chaya?" Aisha knelt beside her and took her into her arms. Bless the girl, how warm she was.
"That I have," Chaya looked down into Aisha's face. God was merciful to fulfill her wishes here at . . . think of a myth, Chaya, Piet's voice interrupted her.
"Gideon," she whispered. "Gideon and the three hundred." Some of Aisha's brightness faded. Did the girl really think Chaya had wondered so far that she wouldn't recognize the people around her? Fear flicked Chaya briefly, and a memory of the horsetrainer Sigrid's pale face. A Sauron of the Citadel, are you, girl? I'd like to know what's in that brain of yours. And what I face.
"Gideon, amah? It's . . ."
Chaya chuckled. "An old story from our Books, Aisha." Tell us a story? Would that comfort them? She wondered. Go to the rock for comfort; there is none in me. Still, if it would serve . . .
"Uh, Judge? General Jackson?" Tameetha bat Irene stuck her head into the study. "Begging your pardon, I'm sure, but we've got something."
When no one snapped her head off, she entered the room. Odd, Chaya thought, after the looting of Nûrnen to see her so . . . uncomfortable. Obviously, this goes beyond the war, or she'd be turning to her officer.
"What is it, Tameetha?" Chaya asked.
"It's like this, Your Honor. We've found the body. Juchi's. Along with a sign saying that the peasant Yegor and a failed Battlemaster are up there with him. They're all in pieces."
Aisha lunged to her feet. "My father . . . did you touch him?"
"Steady there, Aisha." Karl Haller had her shoulders in his hands.
Tameetha met Aisha's eyes without flinching. "We took the sign down. It didn't seem right, keeping it up. I've got a couple troops standing guard there right now. But I thought I'd come to you first."
Aisha whirled toward her husband, who raised a hand to touch her forehead as if testing for fever. "We promised you, didn't we, Aisha?"
"I have to take him down," she said. Her breathing was fast for a human, let alone a Sauron. "I have to. I swore to give him back his honor."
She raised her hand, on which the ruby ring with which she had been married blazed. All the light in the room seemed to center on her.
Chaya saw Karl Haller grimace. Aisha was pregnant—a late pregnancy, much of it under harsh conditions. He'd have had hard things to say about any woman's exposing herself to whatever contagion there might be in those corpses—let alone his wife. What about a battlefield? Chaya thought. He'd already lost this one.
"Let me go, husband," Aisha pleaded "For the sake of my honor, which is now yours. And the honor of our son."
"If it is a son," Karl said, and grinned at the way Aisha and the khans stared, shocked that he might not automatically prefer one.
"You shall go, Aisha," he told her. "Your father shall have his honor redeemed, and you yours. But you will be guided by what I say."
Aisha stood before the stakes holding the pieces of her father's body, flanked by the Battlemaster she had killed and the peasant who died because he had encountered her thereafter. She remembered how her father had screamed when Glorund broke his arm, then his neck. She remembered how her broken ribs had felt like coals, searing against her lungs and the furious irritation she'd felt at the peasant—Yegor, his name was—for all his crisscrossing.
Just look what it had gotten him.
Just look what it had gotten her.
Her hands went to her belly.
"Father?" she murmured. "Do you see? Do you? Your son . . . he lives . . . ." though Allah only knew where Dagor wandered when he had spurned the prosperous, peaceful life that Judge Chaya had implored him to take up. "And soon . . ." Her voice faltered like that of a very young, bewildered girl. " . . . do you see? This is my husband, a wise man. A good man. Your son consented. And soon, you will have a grandson."
Tears ran down her cheeks. She should have been shrieking. Any woman in the tribe would have, she knew.
Badri would not. There were some griefs that went beyond the proper wails of mourning.
She knew, too, that onlookers would expect her to speak, to say something to inflame their spirits. For, of the Seven, she was the Voice that had stirred the tribes to war.
There was an emptiness in her that had nothing to do with her belly or the fulfillment of her vow. Against all hope, she had accomplished what she had set out to do.
Now what?
"Aisha?" Karl's voice in her ear, calling her back to the life she had made since her father's death—and to the future she had won.
"I was thinking," she said. "Even a blind grandfather might have adjusted a grandson's hand upon his first sword. I have so much now. And he? Nothing at all. Not even a grave."
"He'll have that now. And the honor he lost . . ."
" . . . That was taken from him."
She started forward to remove the dismembered body from the stakes that held it.
"Aisha," her husband said, "you gave me your word. I owe Juchi a son's duty. Let me honor him in this."
She started to glare at him. He had tricked her, somehow, tricked her into yielding what she had sworn she would never yield, her right to bury her father with her own hands. You raised an army that took this city. Is that not enough for you that you must risk your health and that of our child?
A wife was supposed to obey her husband in all things. He had asked her compliance in very little. Here, before the soldiers and the khans, he reminded her of her word. He tricked her into consent. She had a mind . . .
And then, he smiled at her. "I'm your mediko, too, Aisha. Your father would want you to look to the health of your child."
"His grandson!"
"Whatever you say—so long as you will listen to me in this."
She glanced over at Chaya, sister and aunt. "I will help him take my brother's body down," the Judge promised. "The tie of blood shall be kept. And I tell you, as Judge, that you have done all you vowed, and more. Such a deed that your name and his will always be remembered."
Chaya's voice went strange again. She'd done that too often lately.
Aisha felt the baby stir in her womb. "As you wish," she said. Not much longer, little warrior. She knelt and spread out a carpet, intricately knotted of faded silk, on which to deposit Juchi's body before it was buried.
"What about the other two?" Tameetha asked. She sniffed, oddly fastidious for a woman whose trade was arms. "We'll bury this poor sod of a fanner. But you want that Cyborg taken down too?"
Let him go on rotting, Aisha started to say. Then she paused. Even before the blood that had run from Juchi's mouth had dried, she'd known her duty. Bury him. And, though it had galled her, she and the peasant Yegor had buried him and the Battlemaster in one grave. Ill and half-mad as she was, she had known what was right.
She still did.
"Bury the farmer," she said. "It were a kindness to give him more respect than he had in life. But the Sauron? Do we even know how they treat their dead? If I may, sister?"
"Go ahead," Chaya said.
"If this were a matter of a feud between tribes, we might return the body . . . ." Tameetha snorted.
"But with Saurons . . . put him in a coffin and bury him at my father's feet. Like his dog. Then mark the place. The time may come when the Saurons wish to know. And if not, it's good for the army to know what I learned here. Even Cyborgs can die. I have killed one . . . ."
The acrid tang of some alcohol with herbs in it masked the charnel stink of the bodies. They were swiftly removed and hidden from sight And smell. Battlemaster and peasant were hustled off to their graves.
And Aisha followed her father's corpse to the funeral she had stirred all Haven to win for him.