The Far Side

by Wylie, Gina Marie

  “We’d leave no tracks,” Melek mused.

  “Enemy would think to follow easy,” Ezra told the two. “Go other way, stay in shallow water, make sure no deep spots. If come to deep spot, leave water, go east.”

  Ezra turned to Kris, “And downstream, shallow or not, there would be the usual outlet. If it’s more than chest deep, we’d be sunk. Literally.”

  He shared that with Melek, who grimaced, and then Collum grimaced as well. They did continue north, and reached the lake. Near the shore the water wasn’t a big deal, just a foot or so deep. There were a few places almost knee deep, but not many and not for long.

  The lake turned out to be long and skinny, but not too wide. Ezra had them leave roughly one hundred and eighty degrees around the lake from where they went in and afterwards they continued east, steadily gaining altitude. The area north of the lake was muddy and treacherous, and Ezra wanted to get further away from the lake and Melek agreed.

  They went diagonally up a ridge and reached the top and went over into the next valley. A while later Collum was back just as it was starting to get light. “There is a fire now, back at the south side of the lake, near where we went into the water.”

  Ezra looked at Kris and Andie. “How are you two holding up?”

  “Fine enough,” Kris said.

  “Ready to go,” Andie said with a grin.

  Ezra looked at them for a long moment and then spoke softly. “You two are troopers, okay? The one thing you don’t want to do is push yourself so hard you reach the wall -- where you can’t go on. Do that and we have to stop there, wherever there is, take it or leave it.

  “If you start to fade, you have to speak up, okay? Not just when you can’t take another step, but when you still have enough oomph for one last push.”

  He smiled at Kris. “To be honest, one of the reasons I went by myself back there in Indian country was because I could trust myself to stop in plenty of time and take precautions. There were a couple of guys I could almost trust, but I never could bring myself to do it.”

  A short while later Melek roused everyone, and they start plodding along, going up steadily, but not steeply. This ridge wasn’t as high than the one before and they were on the top of a longer, north and south running ridge. They went a mile and Collum called a stop, with everyone sinking wearily to the ground.

  “Two hour break,” Melek announced. “Eat one meal, then sleep. We’ll wake you in time to start again!”

  Kris leaned close to Andie. “How are you doing, Andie? I mean really?”

  “Tired, scared. It’s one thing, I’ve learned, to read about a desperate race for survival in a book -- and a much different thing to do it in real life. Fuck! This is hard!”

  “It is. How are your feet?”

  “I spent two days making sure everything was ready. They’re fine. Yours?”

  “Yeah, my feet are doing a lot better than my thighs. Going up this ridge with this pack is killing them.”

  Andie looked around the camp. “These are Meals Ready to Eat. They’re messy to eat when you’re walking, and the taste isn’t nearly as good, but you can do it. So, I’m going to nap instead of eat, and get some extra Z’s.”

  Kris was more fastidious and quickly chewed some tacos and an enchilada, then saved a napkin by wiping her fingers on her jeans.

  By midmorning they were moving again, going steadily north. Ezra spent some time walking with Melek and talking with him, then dropped back to Kris and Andie.

  “Last night, Melek was explaining, or at least trying to explain, how their military is organized. Think of the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines, okay?”

  “Okay, so?”

  “So, individual soldiers are assigned as needed into units like this one, not necessarily with regard to their occupational specialty. Melek, for instance, is someone pledged to free slaves. Rari, the young man talking to Chaba is pledged to fight dralka. But there are times that they have to put their specialties on hold, to do work for the common good -- thus they’re here for this. Others among Melek’s soldiers have other groups they belong to.

  “To show their affinity, they have a tattoo on the back of their hands. A tattoo for a common soldier goes on their left, their ‘second hand’ they call it. If he makes senior NCO, he gets a second tattoo on the right hand. Officers get one only on the right wrist.”

  Ezra looked even more serious than usual. “I didn’t ask what they would do to someone who faked a tattoo, but these guys are big on personal honor, so I’m pretty sure it’s not something you want to do.

  “Anyway, Melek wants me to accept a tattoo like his on my right hand. Only.”

  “Promotion from the ranks?” Kris asked.

  She tried not to sound sarcastic, and Ezra didn’t take it as if she was being sarcastic or kidding.

  “It has to do with mindset. In most armies, the privates and lower ranking enlisted men, and I kid you not, have IQs about 70. Most of them get killed right out of the gate. Some of the smarter ones, the luckier ones, figure out what they need to do to increase their chances, and they get to be NCOs. The gentry, the nobility, the wealthy, the educated -- the really smart ones -- become officers.

  “The American army is fundamentally different than any other army that has ever existed. Most of our buck sergeants could be lieutenants in any other army of the world, and in fact, a lot of their leadership training is similar to what a junior officer gets.

  “In the old Soviet Army, sergeants were second year draftees sent to a special school for a few months, where they learned to yell at privates, to beat privates, and do whatever an officer ordered them to do. They had no particular leadership training. Most armies don’t even do that. They put a bunch of trainees together and either make the more politically reliable soldiers NCOs, or the dickheads that naturally rise to the top in any group.

  “So, ability-wise, education-wise, and competency-wise, I’m light years ahead of Melek and his men. We generalize about people we meet, and above all, we categorize people we meet. We put people into nice little niches, according to how we perceive them. If you meet a square someone who doesn’t fit any of your nice round bins, you cram them into the one that might possibly be the nearest fit.”

  “So, they think you’re an officer in our army?” Andie asked him. “I thought you told them you’re our bodyguard.”

  “I did. But, while they might have commoners for common guards for a noble, personal bodyguards for the senior nobility are loyal junior officers.”

  They walked in silence for a bit, and then Collum came loping up the column to catch up with Melek.

  Kris sighed. “I’m nearly dead on my feet, and he’s still trotting -- he’s had to cover the same ground we’ve covered at least twice.”

  Ezra chuckled and she looked at him. “What?”

  “What? He cheats is what.”

  “He cheats? He isn’t going back to look at them?”

  “Oh, he’s doing that, but you’re assuming he’s carrying his pack all of the time. Why bother? He stashes it someplace, runs back, see what he needs to see, then returns to his pack, grabs it up and runs ahead to catch up with us. You’ll notice most of the time when he’s carrying his pack, he just walks fast.”

  “He cheats?” Kris said weakly.

  Andie laughed. “Yeah, he’s probably only carrying his pack twice as far as we are, running about an eighth of the time, while going three times as far.”

  “That’s about it. The man’s a horse, no doubt about it,” Ezra agreed. “Get this though -- Melek says that it will be Collum that gives me that tattoo on the right hand. I don’t understand all the ins and outs of Melek’s army, but one thing I’m certain of -- armies don’t give NCOs the job of appointing new officers and they surely don’t let privates do it. Odds are Collum isn’t the private Melek used to think he was.”

  “That sounds sneaky,” Kris observed.

  “Yeah, because one of Melek’s jobs was to check the fitness of Menim. It�
�s a good thing Menim has gone, because he wasn’t going to get passing marks.”

  Collum sprinted ahead again and Andie groaned. “I keep telling myself that if someone that old can do this, so can I,” she told Kris. “But I don’t believe it. Not truly.”

  Melek dropped back. “Collum seeks a place where we can camp. The Tengri stopped at the lake and later turned back. It is possible that one or two might have continued on -- Collum isn’t sure -- but we should be okay against one or two.”

  He continued on, spreading the word. It was clear the soldiers were just as relieved as Kris and Andie. An hour later, as the light was fading, they stopped just past the crest of a ridge amid some boulders.

  Ezra dropped down beside them. “You two did good. Collum will sneak back a bit tonight and make sure that no one is coming after us. If someone is, he’ll try to catch back up to us without alerting the Tengri that they’ve been spotted.

  “This brings up a delicate subject that I was reluctant to bring up before -- but since Kris broke the ice, so to speak, it’s time for another lesson in what to do.

  “If the Tengri catch us and somehow get the drop on us, likely it will be a small party. What you need to do is get a fist-sized rock and put it in your left pants pocket. A rounded stone is best.

  “If there are a couple, and they are aiming at someone other than you two, simply pull the stone from your pocket, hiding it as best as you can. Throw the stone underhanded as hard as you can at the nearest man with a weapon.

  “Then pull your pistol and shoot the fucker dead. Shoot him a couple of times to be sure. Don’t talk, don’t say anything, don’t hesitate, don’t do anything but throw the rock left handed and then shoot the fucker. If any of the fuckers are still standing after that, shoot them a couple of times as well. No warning, no talk, no attempt to cow them into surrender, don’t shoot to wound. Kill them.”

  “The rock is a dirty trick,” Andie mused. “We’ll throw it like a girl would, not very hard and underhanded. It’ll bounce off and they’ll be laughing.”

  “Odds are,” Ezra agreed with her. “Andie, Kris -- this is our lives versus theirs. This isn’t talking about how you’re going to fuck over Kit and Art when we get back. If we miss killing one right off, real quick, some or all of us could get hurt.”

  “And we’re girlie girls,” Andie said with bitterness. “They won’t be expecting anything from us, will they?”

  “Probably not.”

  “Still, even if we shoot them quickly, they might shoot one of us.”

  “Not you two, because they won’t see you as a threat. If I’ve had a chance to do a little shooting, they’ll all be lined up on me if they’re smart.” He laughed nastily.

  “What?” Kris asked.

  “Well, there is armor and there is body armor. Kurt was sure I’d need the heavy stuff eventually, so I started off with a light vest. It’ll stop most pistol bullets -- musket balls don’t come that hard. So shoot the fuckers, even if it’s not me they’re aiming at.

  “There’s a dirty secret they never tell you about the old-style battles between armies. Maybe one of ten wounds is incapacitating and maybe one in a hundred with proper battlefield medicine are lethal. I’ve spent a lot of time going over field first aid with you.”

  That evening, the soldier Rari told them of what he’d learned from Chaba during the day. It was a hard thing, Kris found. Chaba spoke a language that Rari spoke poorly. Ezra spoke Rari’s language even less well than Rari spoke to Chaba. It was like the old game of a whispered message, passed around a room, arriving not at all like it had started out.

  Andie was taking notes, and Kris paid part attention to what Andie was writing, as well as listening to the translation.

  “She is Chaba, formerly a slave to one Harta Nomer,” Rari explained. “He was a war leader among the tribes of the Tengri and commanded the soldiers aboard their ship. Lurlu Unna was the man who commanded the sailors. They had been sent west to explore, looking for us, when they were swept up in a great storm.

  “Lurlu was killed in the storm, and his assistant took command and saved the ship from sinking many times. Chaba thinks his name was Homer Simpson or something like it.”

  Kris made a rude sound as she read Andie’s rendition of the name. Andie stuck her tongue out, and the two laughed, mystifying everyone, Kris thought, except maybe Ezra.

  “We found ourselves on a distant shore after many days of terror and hunger. We had little food and no water. Some went crazy with fear and thirst.

  “When we arrived, the beaches looked nice, but the waves made trying to land impossible. Only one of the three boats they launched from the ships, six men in each, reached shore; ten good men died, and one was badly injured. The one uninjured man was Harta, a braver man than most.

  “Harta found some fresh water and he and his men filled as many kegs as they could -- too many, as they could barely row the boat, and the waves beat it back against the shore. Harta, dove into the surf and returned safely to the ship, the others were stuck on the shore. Two others tried it and died. The others ran away.

  “The ship followed the shore south a few miles, and the shore turned west, then north again after a few miles. There, the beaches were much safer and they used the remaining two boats to ferry people ashore, while the ship’s crew worked frantically to make repairs.

  “There was little food, and one evening Chaba overheard Harta speaking to Homer saying that Harta was going to tell Chaba to go without dinner for some imagined error, then he would rape her a few times, and in the morning have her put to death, so there would be one less mouth to feed.”

  Kris’ stomach heaved. Why had she only shot the bastard once? Ezra was right! Fill the fuckers with lead!

  “She couldn’t stop the miserable man from having his way with her, and she used her feminine wiles to stir him to great depths of passion. As soon as he was asleep, she snuck away in the night, and as soon as it was light, she ran off into the mountains, thinking to lose herself in the cliffs and ridges. Then she heard you talking to me and fell into the ravine and you killed the sorry fuck of a master of hers. She says she owes you an eternal debt of gratitude.”

  Chaba was looking at Kris with what had to be hero worship, making Kris uncomfortable. Rari said something and for a while there was palaver between Chaba, Rari, Melek and Ezra.

  “Rari says that you broke Chaba’s chains, and that, woman or not, you should be an honorary Chain Breaker. Ezra says it’s probably not a good idea. Melek is agreeing with him I think, but the old guy, Collum, is sitting there like a stone, without any expression. Kris, unless I am imagining it, the old coot has got a lot of mojo,” Andie told Kris.

  Ezra laughed. “We talked earlier about how far and how fast he was going. You noticed and the soldiers noticed.”

  One of the men said something that sounded disparaging.

  Collum spat a few dozen words, none of which Kris recognized.

  Ezra, though, sucked wind. “Collum says he is the Sachem of the Chain Breakers, and that he would make a drooling infant a Chain Breaker if the infant could break chains.”

  The same man shrugged off someone’s cautioning hand, and he spat just one word that didn’t sound friendly at all. There were gasps, but Collum just reached into his pack, pulled the crossbow out, twisted the fork to cock the crossbow, and then dropped a quarrel in, lifted it, and aimed at the speaker’s chest, barely three feet away.

  It was done smoothly and efficiently, and only after a second did Kris realized the man had to have been practicing. Then she noticed that the quarrel was “Andie’s Mark Two Quarrel.” This was thinner, and there were four fins at the rear, like fletching on an arrow. At that range it would go in the man’s chest and out his back.

  The man with the crossbow aimed at him lifted his chin, but didn’t say anything.

  Collum started speaking. This time, he motioned for Melek to translate to Ezra, Andie and Kris. “He says he is the Sachem of the Chain Breakers,�
�� Ezra said.

  “I’m using Sachem, which is a Native American word for war leader because the word they use sounds like ‘sock-em.’ Close enough for government work.

  “He says he is a Chain Breaker, as were all his ancestors back to the man who left his wife and two daughters behind, lost in the mad flight to escape. His ancestor knew that his family would become slaves, and he and all of the others vowed to return to free them, and kill the Tengri who had taken them.

  “Except, this place was further than anyone imagined and there were perils here that had to be overcome, if any of them were to survive. His family fought to make sure that no one forgot those left behind -- right up until even his family was more concerned with everyday issues here. It has been, he says, a very long time.

  “Now they’ve been reminded and now, more than ever, the Chain Breakers need the support of the other groups or guilds or societies. I’m really not sure of the word -- a lot of their words incorporate a great many things in one relatively small word.

  “Anyway, all Sachems know the value of examples and heroes and he named some from other groups. He repeats that he can make anyone a Chain Breaker and if any of the others can make a weapon like Andie has, break a chain like Kris has and kill a dralka with one shot to the chest -- why, he’ll make them a Chain Breaker too. No one else need apply.”

  “That’s a little harsh,” Andie whispered.

  “It’s called motivation,” Ezra whispered back. “It’s what Travis did at the Alamo -- not only did he shame everyone into staying, he made them all publicly commit to it. That famous line in the sand.”

  After that, the camp grew quiet, and the small fire that had been built died away to nothing quickly. The weather was mild, if a little humid in the mornings, but not too bad. Once the campfire died down, men started falling asleep, one after another.

  When the only one left awake was Melek, sporadically dozing and jerking awake near where the fire had been, Ezra told the two girls to follow him. They went a hundred yards and bedded down in a different jumble of boulders. “Just in case,” Ezra told them. “You just never know. If you hear anything strange, wake me with a foot in the ribs. Don’t make any noise!”