"And you, my lord," Wad Mohammad answered.
"Our enemies?" Shabeli asked.
Wad Mohammad gestured beyond the rise before them. "They have not exposed themselves or returned fire since our last assault."
"They cannot escape?"
"We have them surrounded on all sides. They do not dare expose themselves. I have many snipers firing into their position, and for one of them to stand is for that man to die. They cannot possibly escape."
Shabeli grunted. "You have attacked?"
"Twice. One time a hundred men on foot, to test the Confederation Marines. That was from the west. The off-worlders used their hell-weapons to kill all of them. The second time was horsemen from the east. The assault was broken with heavy casualties."
"At what price to the off-worlders?"
Wad Mohammad's jaws locked. This was a question he didn't want to consider. "None. All of them survived."
"All eight of them," Shabeli said scornfully. This weak-kneed fool would have to be eliminated, he thought. One last, determined rush this morning would have overrun the Confederation Marines. Now the Badawi were crouching here—beyond the rise like old women—and hidden in other places around the off-world Marines. Well, the balance of power had just changed.
Shabeli gave a curt command to the captain of the small company he had led here. The sixty men dismounted. They all carried plasma weapons and knew how to use them. "Deploy your men behind the crest of this ridge. Let no one fire or expose himself until I personally give the order."
"What do you propose, my lord?" Wad Mohammad asked.
Shabeli smiled. "I propose a small demonstration. Those off-worlders down there must almost be out of firepower. When they see what I have brought, they will surrender. Or they will die. Either way, it is of no consequence. We have dealt the Confederation a powerful blow. I'll have their Marines alive, or I'll have their bodies dead."
A plasma bolt lanced out from the rise and seared its way into the rock just short of the man-barricade, where it exploded in a brilliant flash, spattering molten globules of magma into the corpses. The stench of burned flesh washed over the Marines.
"That got my attention," Claypoole said as he casually shook a small chunk of charred flesh off the stock of his blaster.
"The balance of power has just shifted," Bass commented quietly. This changed everything. He was not surprised at what followed.
"Confederation Marines!" a booming voice echoed over the waste. "Listen to me. I am Shabeli the Magnificent, leader of all the Siad. I am here with overpowering force. Surrender! Surrender and I will spare your lives." Shabeli stood on top of the rise, clearly visible to the Marines. In his right hand was a portable voice projector.
"Surrender, hell," Schultz muttered.
"Belay the chatter," Bass commanded. "That's Shabeli himself. He's got a very high opinion of himself." Old Mas Fardeed had schooled Bass well in the ways of the Siad, and Bass had filed the information away for possible future use. Bass had long thought that it was very good to know as much about your enemy as possible, even his curse words. Bass smiled. There might yet be a chance.
Quickly, Bass stripped off his body armor and utility shirt.
"What are you doing?" Doyle exclaimed.
"Going for a little walk," Bass answered. Chest bare, he looked at his men. "If this doesn't work, you're in charge, Dornhofer. You know what to do."
Dornhofer nodded wordlessly.
"Don't surrender if you don't want to wind up like McNeal. If they take you alive, these bastards'll use you as hostages and then torture you to death. Take as many of them with you as you can. Save a bolt for yourself. Do not wait until they get in among you.
"Do not, I say again, do not attempt to support me out there, no matter what happens." He looked each man in the eyes until each indicated he would obey.
Without a further word, Staff Sergeant Charlie Bass stood erect on the lip of the basin and waved his arms at Shabeli the Magnificent.
"Come forward!" Shabeli commanded. Bass wended his way cautiously among the corpses, walked the still-steaming area his men had slagged, and headed toward Shabeli. It was a long walk.
Shabeli watched the lone figure approaching. A negotiator. He smiled. This would be easy.
When Bass at last reached a spot about thirty meters from the top of the rise, within good speaking distance, Shabeli ordered him to stop.
"I demand the immediate surrender of you and your men," Shabeli shouted.
"That's interesting," Bass replied. "I came to accept yours." He kept his face expressionless, despite the way his heart thudded in his chest.
Shabeli blinked in disbelief. Then he realized his men could see how calmly the off-worlder stood and knew he had to make the man quail or risk losing respect. "All who Shabeli the Magnificent does not kill surrender to him," he roared. "All whose surrender Shabeli the Magnificent does not accept, he kills!"
Bass remained motionless for a moment and then drew his issue knife and raised it above his head. "I do not surrender. You must try to kill me," he roared back.
At the sight of the drawn knife, clearly a challenge to individual combat, the Siad gasped in wonder. Shabeli regarded the lone man through narrowed eyelids. What an idiot! But a brave man still. The man was not as tall as he, but he was thick through the chest, and the muscles in his arms looked powerful. White teeth glinted through the fierce smile on his sun-darkened face.
"You are women, not men!" Bass shouted. Only Shabeli could understand the English words. They were meant only for Shabeli. Bass motioned for a prone blaster man to join him where he stood.
"That's right, you mewling coward! Cut me down! Otherwise, I'm coming up there to spill your stinking guts all over the ground!"
Shabeli hesitated to give the command to open fire. "Who are you?" he demanded.
"Staff Sergeant Charles H. Bass, Confederation Marine Corps, and I have come here to cut your stinking balls off, you gut-eating, puking, dogfather. You feed off the refuse other men eject through their assholes. I will cut out your tongue and send you back to your women, so they can teach you how to cook and real men will turn you over and use you like a whore!" Bass shook the knife and roared. His shouting was so powerful the men back at the basin could make out his words.
The other Siad, although they could not follow Bass, knew he was hurling insults at their leader. Shabeli's eyes widened. It was clear this defiant man expected him to come down there and fight. More to the point, his warriors were catching on that the Marine was offering a challenge for personal combat, something no Siad warrior could reject with honor.
Shabeli smiled to himself. It had come to this? An expert in hand-to-hand combat, he knew he could take the man easily. It would be best just to have him incinerated and get on with his plans, but—Bass interrupted Shabeli's thoughts and made his mind up for him.
"Shabeli!" Bass shouted in the language of the Siad. "Shabeli the Inconsequential! You! You fuck your mother up the ass!" Bass hurled the insult old Mas Fardeed had taught him to pronounce with perfect inflection. All the Siad heard the insult and each man leaped to his feet with a roar of outrage.
In one swift motion Shabeli stripped off his robe, unbuckled his side arms, and drew his own knife. It could have been the twin of the blade Bass brandished on the slope below. Shabeli strode down the ridge and came to a stop a few feet in front of Bass. All the Siad rushed to the top of the rise and stood there, outlined against the horizon, the remaining Marines crouched below completely forgotten.
But the Marines below hadn't forgotten the Siad; they were watching with rapt attention.
"What's going on up there?" Dean gasped.
"He's challenging the big boss to a man-to-man fight," Dornhofer answered.
"Why?" Claypoole asked.
Schultz stood watching the tableau, smiling softly to himself. "He's showing us how to do it," he said quietly.
"How to do what?" Doyle asked.
"How to die."
> Shabeli and Bass squared off. Shabeli stood a head taller than Bass and, while he lacked the compact musculature of the Marine, he had the sinewy agility and strength of the practiced swordsman. Shabeli lashed his foot out with blinding speed at shoulder level. Bass took most of the force of the blow with his shoulder, but Shabeli's boot glanced painfully off the top of his head. Still perfectly balanced, Shabeli whirled around and slammed his body full into the Marine, who staggered backward with the force of the contact, raising his knife arm just in time to counter a thrust. The weapons clashed with a loud metallic ring, and as Shabeli withdrew into a defensive stance, his blade left a long gash down Bass's left arm, which instantly flowed with blood. The Siad on the ridge above let out a victorious roar.
Breathing heavily, unmindful of the painful wound Shabeli had just given him, Bass crouched, prepared for the next attack. Shabeli remained just out of range, carefully circling the Marine, looking for an opening. Bass tossed the knife into his left hand to distract his opponent and lunged. Watching the knife, Shabeli was caught momentarily off guard and Bass rammed his head into the bridge of Shabeli's nose, which cracked audibly. Blood flowed from the Siad leader's nostrils.
Stunned, Shabeli fell to one elbow, but rolled away as Bass leaped at him. Striking awkwardly across his body with his knife arm, Shabeli buried his blade into Bass's left buttock. Bass grunted and the Siad roared again. Bass jumped to his feet just as Shabeli slammed into him. Holding his knife in his left hand, now slick with his own flowing blood, the impact of Shabeli's full weight caused him to lose his grip and the knife fell between his feet. Shabeli kicked it away with one foot. Bass managed to grab Shabeli's knife arm with his right hand, deflecting it away from his carotid artery, but still the blade sliced a long furrow down the side of his face and glanced agonizingly off his right collarbone before he stopped it. The two struggled silently for a few moments. Both men were breathing heavily now, bloody perspiration dripping off their contorted faces. Shabeli took the lobe of Bass's right ear between his teeth and bit it off, at the same time twisting his body powerfully. Bass lost his balance and they fell heavily to the ground, Shabeli on top. The Siad on the ridge roared victoriously.
"Now you die!" Shabeli rasped through clenched teeth. He bore his full weight down upon Bass's upraised arms. A horseman from infancy, like every Siad warrior, Shabeli's legs were strong and they held Bass's own hips and legs in a viselike grip, allowing Shabeli to bring the full power of his upper-body strength to bear as he drove the knife homeward inch by inch.
Abruptly, Bass wrenched his head sideways and let go of Shabeli's arms. The plunging blade buried itself into the ground beside Bass's left ear. His right hand free now, Bass snatched the K-Bar from his thigh and thrust the point up into Shabeli's belly. The blade glanced off Shabeli's pelvis just above his genitals and slid into his bladder. Shabeli screamed in agony and his legs spasmed violently, releasing Bass from their hold. Bass flipped Shabeli onto his back and, gripping the handle of the K-Bar with both hands, sliced him open all the way to the sternum. The ancient blade snapped cleanly at the hilt just as its point sliced Shabeli's throbbing heart into two equal halves.
Shabeli the Magnificent uttered one long, high-pitched scream that echoed in the clear morning air and then lay still, his innards spilling in bloody, steaming coils upon the sand. Slowly, Bass rose to his feet. The hundreds of Siad standing along the ridge above him were completely silent. He stooped and retrieved his knife from the sand. In his right hand he still held the handle of the now-forever-useless K-Bar. The blade had broken and the USMC logo was buried in Shabeli's lifeless heart.
Bass, standing erect so as to not show how near he was to exhaustion, raised his good knife to the sun and shouted up at the dark figures clustered along the ridge, "Who's next?"
The Siad did not move. They remained completely silent, with their eyes fixed on Shabeli's gutted carcass even as Bass turned and, shoulders squared, marched back to his waiting Marines.
Bleeding, bruised, exhausted, Bass managed to stay erect and not stumble until he stepped over the body barricade and back out of sight of the surrounding Siad. Still the Siad stood quietly on the ridge behind him.
"What now?" Dean asked as he and several others eased Bass down onto his back. Claypoole broke out an aid kit and began attending to his platoon sergeant's wounds.
"Now?" Bass asked. He let out a long sigh. "Now we go home."
The Siad watched, still enveloped in silence as the Marines gathered up their weapons and equipment and resumed their walk toward New Obbia. They walked erect with heads held high, almost marching, as though daring the Siad to attack again. Slung between Dean and Claypoole was the battered corpse of PFC Frederick Douglass McNeal. When they were finally out of sight behind a low ridge of hills, Wad Mohammad detached himself from the mass of warriors and walked to where Shabeli the Magnificent's ruined corpse lay. He stood regarding his leader's remains for a long moment and then kicked them—hard. He kicked the corpse again, and then again and again. Other Siad descended from the ridge and joined in. On the long ride back to their mountain fastness, the warriors carried Shabeli the Magnificent's head, genitals, and other body parts suspended on bayonets. Wad Mohammad was their leader now, and under him things would be different on Elneal.
Chapter Thirty-One
They didn't stop walking until shortly before nightfall. Bass wanted to put as much distance as possible between his men and the Siad. But something perhaps worse than running into more Siad happened. Two days later they ran out of water.
"Don't throw that away, Dean," Bass croaked when he saw Dean about to discard a water container he'd just drained during a break. He worked his jaw to force some saliva, then said to everybody, "Keep two water containers each. When you have to piss, don't water the rocks, they won't appreciate it properly. Use one of your empties. We'll stop soon and I'll teach you how to distill water from urine."
Clarke looked ill at the thought of drinking urine. Then he looked scared as he realized he had already dropped all of his water containers. Neru nudged him and handed him one of the three he was still carrying.
Dean grunted. "I don't think I want to drink out of a bottle Claypoole pissed into." He was surprised that he was able even to make a joke under these circumstances.
"That's all right," Bass responded seriously. "If the water Claypoole makes is all that'll keep him alive, I don't think he'd want you drinking it anyway."
Dean chewed on a strip of dried skin where his lip was splitting. "We're in deep trouble, aren't we?"
Bass nodded. "But we're not dead yet, Dean. Hey!" Bass raised his voice. "Any of you guys crap out on me now and I'll drag your body back to New Obbia and give it a court-martial. Now, on your feet! Only forty kilometers straight that way and we're out of here. Another day, day and a half, and I'm going to buy you all a cold beer."
"Look!" Doyle croaked. "Scavengers! Look!" They looked where he pointed. Sure enough, it was one of the scavenger fliers, drifting lazily on a thermal high above them. "It's coming for us. It's coming for McNeal," Doyle shouted.
"Aw, belay that crap," Claypoole muttered. "McNeal's hermetically sealed, and besides, we aren't—" Doyle charged his weapon and fired a bolt into the sky.
"Jesus Muhammad," Bass sighed as he watched the scavenger disintegrate in a bright flash, "that was probably your last bolt, Doyle. Secure that weapon and get on your feet; we've got to keep moving." That Bass had not jumped Doyle more severely for his rashness was an indicator of how exhausted even the inexhaustible Charlie Bass had become.
Wearily, the men got to their feet and staggered on.
Wad Mohammad knocked gently at Moira's door. She had fled to her chambers shortly after the war party returned, with what was left of her master and lover. Wad Mohammad knocked again. "Please open the door, my lady. I only wish to speak to you." He stood patiently in the hallway and knocked a third time.
Eventually the door was opened by one of Moira's serving girls. Wa
d Mohammad gently nudged the girl aside and entered the room. Moira lay on a couch, one arm flung across her face. "You bastard!" she hissed through clenched teeth. "You damned bastard!"
"My lady." Wad Mohammad bowed respectfully.
She sat up and faced him, her eyes red and cheeks wet. Even in her present condition, it was plain to see why Shabeli had honored the woman. In a culture where the women were short and dark, Moira's tall fairness was extremely exotic to the men of the Siad. "I am without protection, but I swear, Wad Mohammad, you touch me..." Suddenly her hand filled with the bulk of an ancient pistol, one of those chambered for center-fire metal cartridges loaded into a cylinder. Carefully, she cocked its hammer, readying the pistol for firing and leveling its huge bore straight at Wad Mohammad. He eyed the pistol with interest. It was an ancient and beautiful instrument, this pistol, and he vowed that one day he would own it.
Wad Mohammad held his palms out toward her. "You have nothing to fear from me, my lady. I have come here to pay you my compliments and to ask for your help." He gestured toward a chair, and she nodded. Wad Mohammad seated himself with a sigh and stretched his legs out before him.
"I am now the chieftain of all the Siad," he announced matter-of-factly. "Shabeli received the punishment he deserved." Wad Mohammad held up his hand to silence the protest she was about to voice. "He got many of our best men killed, my lady. His plot to defy the Confederation was insanely irresponsible from the beginning. Oh, yes, old Wad Ramadan was right all along. These Marines, these devils, are not to be defeated by us. They are extremely brave and better armed than we are, even with the weapons Shabeli stockpiled. You know these people better than we. If Wad Ramadan, his own uncle and father's closest confidant, couldn't influence Shabeli, you were in no position to do so either. Besides, who would dare defy Shabeli the Magnificent?" Wad Mohammad grinned and spread out his hands.
"Well, one man did, my lady," he continued. "One of those Confederation Marines. He killed your man. Oh, you should have seen that fight! Already our poets are composing songs about it. Those off-worlders have some fine men. It is no disgrace to be defeated by such as he, my lady. We know that one's name, and generations of Siad yet unborn will thrill to the songs of how he and Shabeli the Magnificent fought to the death.
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