Barak grinned at the physician: lean, weathered, cynical. The winds of this journey had scoured him of the last of the grief for his wife, died of a too-late pregnancy last winter while he was riding circuit among the flocks. The scars of that sorrow remained in the deep wrinkles that webbed his blue eyes; but he was healed.
A Haller, not-so-old Oom Karl, for all his complaints; but for all the clan loyalties that set the old Edenites against the first Bandari, a good friend. Twisting the tail of the Saurons, however and wherever you could, was a fine thing. After all, hadn’t they cast his mother out to die? But she hadn’t; instead, his grandmother Dvora had rescued her, like Moses from the bulrushes (he thought of them as a sort of steppe grass), and raised her until today she was as strong a defender as the Pale of the Bandari boasted. Or almost. If it weren’t for her Sauron blood, she’d have been a shoo-in to be elected kapetein when the old man stepped down.
If not her, maybe her son, if Barak could ever bring himself to settle down. His mother had simply shrugged off his wanderlust and ignored out of existence the whispers that the Judge went easy on her youngest child, the only one to follow full time the craft of arms. It was undeniable: every time someone mentioned that maybe young Barak would make a fine next kapetein she frowned. Well, she wouldn’t be the last woman to spoil her youngest child, born after his father’s death in the sack of the Sauron base outside Tallinn town.
There would be many such whispers during Ruth’s Day, regardless of the spirit of reconciliation the summer holiday was supposed to bring. Barak had heard them so often that they weren’t even marginally interesting.
The kapetein was old, and the Pale crisscrossed with factions, any one of which held three different opinions at once.
“Heir apparent.” Sure, he knew he was a candidate.
So was the caravan master, Sheva bat Barak, and a damned sight more solid than he. To his way of thinking of it, he was a very dark muskylope indeed. After all, Heber, his father, might have been descended from Piet fan Reenan, but his family had moved from the Pale to Tallinn three generations ago. If the job came to him, he’d take it. But personally, he was grateful to his mother for trying to quash it.
That damnable rumor was a bigger burden than the arms all Bandari adults bore. It was no big deal to be a warrior; all Bandari could fight at need, and need usually struck. But to be kapetein meant you bore the burden of every life in the Pale.
He was almost sure he didn’t want it. He was very sure that some of the clans--the stubborn Hallers, the tricksy Gimbutas--would rather have almost anyone but the son of Chaya the Judge. It would go as it would go, not, perhaps, as he wished it.
But Barak would have a long, long time to settle, to raise strong sons and daughters for the clans and guard the Pale; surely he was allowed one last, carefree ride or so as the leader of caravan guards? And it had been a prosperous trip, too. Now he had enough to pay off his bow, maybe start saving toward marriage.
Not my tail, Oom Karl. I was told to guard this caravan and get it home in time for Ruth’s Day, and I’m damned well going to do it. Whose idea was it to separate Nurnen from its money at that trade fair, anyway?”
Sheva bat Barak the caravan master, an older woman, grinned and shook her head at him. The feathers on her braid danced. “It isn’t as if we actually rode into Nurnen’s gates. We were a day’s ride away, at any time.”
“That’s hairsplitting, and you know it.”
The caravan master shrugged. “It’s a fine point. What do you want? Sauron silver spends just as well as any other. And I like separating those bastards from their money.”
“Then it’s your tail he’s going to get,” Barak grinned. “You interested?” He dodged the capable fist she swung at him.
“After this trip, I can buy anything I want,” Sheva said. “Including bratty nephews, or almost nephews. Next time, remind me to pack along more spices. They take up less space and they’re more cost-effective than jewelry. Easier to transport than glass.”
And this close to Nurnen, better trading goods than drugs or arms. The Saurons would probably pay in gold, looted from the blood of their “cattle,” for the fine Bandari wootz, crude or worked into weapons; and they’d pay in platinum for herbs and other pharmaceuticals as their own stores failed: but not even the greediest of the Bandari would sell those things to their ancient enemies. Even the physician had ridden, as now, with his own bodyguard, and his supplies were among the best-hidden of the caravan’s goods.
“You don’t need reminding,” the physician snorted. He started to ride away, but Barak held up a hand, forestalling him. He whistled once, calling up meid Sannie, who rode up, hand to knife, to escort him.
The patterns of the grass, bending before Haven’s fierce wind, were all wrong.
Actually, Barak ben Heber didn’t so much think that as observe a break in the stand of grass over to his left, so. Even as he observed, he reached for his bow. His vision, keen even though it was a full Haven night and Cat’s Eye was half-lidded, flickered, then focused on the anomaly. He sniffed once. Blood tinged the air.
“I’d better check, chaverim,” he called over a shoulder and pressed heels against his muskylope’s flanks. “Cover me. Use the rifle.”
Sheva, oldest and richest of the small kamandim, reached behind her for her rifle with its richly carved stock and priceless fittings.
No one called Barak back. There were some advantages, at least, to being a Judge’s son. And even more advantages, in some things, of being the son of a Judge whose Sauron blood was well known.
As Barak rode and neared the oddness in the grass, he slung his bow again and reached for his lance. He urged his horse closer. Nostrils wide, it nickered and sidled, but he pressed his legs against its barrel and reassured it with one hand against its neck. He sniffed the coppery tang of blood--that must have been what spooked the horse.
For a moment, he was tempted to continue on foot, but dismissed that: that heroics had no survival value on Haven had been hammered into him since he had first sparred with other boys and girls in clan Allon till back and backside ached with the knowledge. His nostrils flared again. Human blood. Human scent: not the soaps and scents of town--which wasn’t surprising--but sweat, sickness and, under them, the leather and wildness of the steppes.
But no grass had been trodden down, and--he focused attention on hearing and smell and extended his senses as far as he might--he could not detect the droppings or other spoor of a frightened horse or beast. Whatever lay before him had come here on foot and alone. It was not a tribesman.
Barak’s lips skinned back from his teeth. Alone on Haven . . . only one type of man ventured the steppes of Haven alone or on foot. Saurons.
He heard a coughing, then a bubbling sound. If the Sauron hadn’t been sick, he wouldn’t be lying in the grass, bubbling out blood through his nose and mouth. Easy enough to finish off, Barak thought. He’d do that for any wounded enemy. But finishing off Saurons was positively a mitzvah even if you had to go a thousand klicks to do it. He rode forward.
Before him, the trampled grass rustled. The rustling turned frenzied as if the Sauron sensed his danger and tried to defend himself.
Poising his lance, Barak waited for his best opportunity. Even a dying Sauron could have one last, deadly spurt of energy in him. Anyone with any brains at all would count on just that.
Overhead the wind keened. Barak ignored it. The clouds blew free of Cat’s Eye, just as the Sauron levered into a fighting crouch. An instant away from urging his horse forward into a deadly charge, Barak jerked its head to one side.
The “Sauron” wore, not the uniform of the hated enemy, but battered leathers that once, surely, had borne Bandari marks. And the face of his enemy, horrible with clotted blood around the nose and mouth, contorted with frustration at the weakness of limbs and lungs, was one he had seen long, long before.
(“Give this ring to . . . your cousin,” his mother had ordered him in her Judge voice. She had s
tripped the great ruby she always wore from her finger. Barak had been the one to take it to Aisha, daughter of Juchi, as their former ally, his eyes oozing blood and matter through bandages, stumbled out into the exile that was the best he could expect. Behind him, he could hear the Bandari whisper and the tribesfolk mutter oaths and prayers against ill-luck. Aisha had thanked him with the grace of the princess she had been until her father--and her brother, both--had found their mother Badri hanging by her own garments, unable to face the fact that her husband had also been her son. The elders had kept Barak from seeing Badri, but he had seen her daughter: hawk nose, dark hair, flashing eyes.)
Silver winged the dark hair now, and the eyes were dull with fever; but there was no mistaking, even now, the face of a kinswoman whose very existence had scandalized the Pale and all but called his mother’s judgeship into question.)
“Cousin Aisha,” Barak called. (Or was it Tante Aisha? No matter.) “And what are you doing here alone?”
Surprise made his voice harsher than usual.
The woman tried to hurl herself forward, then coughed rackingly. She glared at him for seeing her weakness. Blood and froth trickled from her mouth, and she fell.
Easy enough, when she lay defenseless in garments so shabby that the poorest Bandari woman would have disdained them, to pity her. Easy enough. And easy enough to die of it. Barak restrained himself until she stopped moving, even when his cautious lance turned her over.
Then he swung down from his horse. Opening her jacket, he saw that she still breathed, and saw something else beside: his mother’s huge ruby, like a gout of blood, dangling from a thong against sweat-slick olive skin. With the leather strips he carried at his belt, Barak bound her hands and feet just in case. Hoisting her up onto his saddle, he rode back through the grass toward the caravan.
“Hoy, there! Oom Karl!” he called. “Got a patient for you!”
It was not Juchi who was accursed, Aisha moaned, but herself. She lay on soft blankets, but confined in a tiny yurt that reeked of herbs and sickness. Worse yet, it never ceased to sway and jolt as if some giant’s hand shook it. And worst of all, Shaitan had sent a thousand djinni to torment her. She shivered, then sweated in the next instant; and always a raspy-voiced djinni hovered over her with an arsenal of stinks, steams, needles, and foul tastes. . . . “damn fool runs with a shattered rib ... a wonder she didn’t die of a punctured lung ... or freeze . . .” The muttering trailed away into long words that Aisha was certain were incantations.
It was a ritual the djinni did, and it would call for blood. She knew it, she just knew that in a moment the djinni would stick her with yet another knife, and she had to get away.
“Barak! Come hold this madwoman!” shouted the djinni, and the armed man who had seen her in her shameful illness and watched as she fell thrust into the dark, tiny space and held her down while, sure enough, the djinni stuck her with yet another knife, needle, thorn ... it didn’t matter . . . she was slipping out into a warm tide of sleep.
Hard to believe, as she fought out of the riptide, only to sink again, that a djinni tended her with a father’s care.
Something remained to be said, though, before she could drift happily away. “Not . . . not right . . .” she muttered, “. . . shouldn’t be here . . .”
“What’s that about?” muttered the man who, shamefully, watched her once again.
“She was born in the tribes,” the djinni explained. Odd that his voice no longer rasped so harshly on her ears. The tide was warm, so pleasant. In a little while, she would forget. . . . “And she’s delirious, or close to it. So she’s returned to the customs she knew as a child. She’s unmarried and by all the customs she ever followed, it’s highly improper for either of us to be here.”
She muttered and tried to nod. “Easy there . . . easy ...” muttered the djinni. “I’m Karl. I m a doctor. Hakim.” He used a word she hadn’t heard for more than half her lifetime. He patted her hand as if she were still an innocent who had not forfeited the protection of her tribe. She wanted to cling to that hand, and her weakness shamed her.
“Barak! Company coming!” A low, urgent voice called, and a series of whistled notes followed.
“Saurons,” muttered the doctor. “Steady there, lady. Easy ... we won’t let them get you.”
She was too weak to move. They would find her, and they would take her. Take her like that thrice-accursed Glorund, who had thought to have her on the ground beside her father’s body, and whose body now mouldered in the pit that was too good for it.
“Scheiss!” Barak whirled toward the opening of the tiny yurt. “Oom Karl, get your supplies together. If they get to you ...”
“I know the drill,” the doctor nodded. “But you won’t let them reach me. Give the Saurons hell, will you?”
Barak’s teeth flashed in the lamplight. “My pleasure. And, by the way, tell her it’s all family, will you? God, can you just imagine the talk when we get her home? When we get back to the Pale, I’m going to wish that all I had to fight was Saurons!”
Aisha tossed her head, her too-sensitive hearing bringing her the few low-voiced words she needed to know that Barak and his guards were readying what might need only be a show of force--but what might have to be an all-out war. Muffled hammerings and the click of metal told her the caravan would be well defended with everything from stakes to grenades. It was odd to sense incoming battle, know herself as one of its causes, yet be protected. It was a luxury she did not think she should indulge in. She tried to lever herself up, but fell back, dizzy.
Another click sounded beside her. Her eyes fluttered open; the healer held an iron ball. Near him, but not too near his weapon, was the lamp.
“You . . .” she moaned.
“I won’t let them take us. Or my medicines. Now, sha, be still. Or I put you out again.”
Now Aisha could hear the regular trot . . . trot . . . trot of Saurons patrolling the steppe.
A whistle came from outside.
“Stop right there.” Barak’s voice, not the caravan master s. Knowing the Saurons’ hearing--how not? It was no keener than his own--he didn’t even bother raising his voice.
The Saurons stopped. They were not even breathing hard.
Oom Karl shrugged. “They’ve got guts even for Saurons, taking on a fully equipped caravan.”
Aisha snarled. She would have liked to wind their guts around a Finnegan’s fig tree.
“We’re looking for a woman.”
“When aren’t you?” Barak retorted. The caravan master, standing fully armed beside him, chuckled. “Sorry. We don t trade our kinswomen.”
“This one’s no kin of . . .” The Sauron broke off, clearly adding pieces of the old, damned puzzle together. “A woman, not too young, though not as old ...” He gestured dismissively at the caravan master.
Sheva glared and did not stir. Though it was no laughing matter, having Saurons in their camp, Barak fought to suppress a grin.
“Probably injured.”
“What makes you think cattle could survive alone and injured on the steppes?” he asked.
The Sauron glared. Barak let the silence draw itself out.
“This one’s got Soldier blood.”
The healer drew a careful breath. His eyes glittered warning at Aisha.
“What’s she to you, Sauron? Aside from the obvious.”
Aisha bared her teeth. Not fearing them as he probably should, Oom Karl laid his hand over her mouth. She would have wagered her hope of Paradise that the Saurons wouldn’t admit that a woman had killed their precious cyborg Battlemaster.
She could almost see the Sauron shrugging. “No matter. We came out here to remind you: stay away from Nurnen. You won’t be let in, and you could see something that might offend your delicate eyes--cattle, a failure and a motherfucker, tacked up outside our gates to stand watch against the likes of you. All they re good for. Take those poor sods as a warning, and keep away from Nurnen.” The Sauron’s Americ was flat, almost nasa
l; Aisha instantly hated him.
All that poor man’s mutters of Bog and his crisscrossing hadn’t spared him a death as painful as her father’s, then; and not even her father’s honor and her own spared him this last exposure and her family such shame. Tears ran out of the corners of her eyes, then dried. Allah Himself would mourn; she had failed in a child’s obligation to provide her father with a worthy burial.
Well, he could have more Saurons for company, she thought, all but growling. Starting with these. Drawing a deep breath, she tried to tap the reserves of wild strength she had always had.
“Lie back! I may be no match for your strength, but if I have to, I’ll knock you a good one on the back of the head; and let’s see you fight me with a concussion.” Delirious Aisha might be; she wasn’t stupid. She lay back, waiting and listening for the Sauron’s next question. The physician’s lips thinned, and he checked his weapon.
“Who do you have in there?” demanded the Sauron.
“My aunt,” Barak answered with the ease of the practiced liar who, for once, gets to make a lie out of the truth. “She just had a miscarriage. Again. So you wouldn’t be interested.”
Aisha had had no miscarriage, no child; and never would. That, too, struck her as unutterably sad.
“Old for us,” sniffed the Sauron. “Besides, she’d probably ambush us in our beds like Badri . . .” He spat out the name of Aisha’s mother and grandma.
Barak let the pause draw out long enough that even the lower-rank Saurons could realize that this was a bad idea.
Aisha’s hearing picked up a mutter, Sauron to Sauron, that even an infertile Bandari woman might be fun . . . don’t even think it, Soldier! She flicked a glance at the healer and quickly turned her attention within. The fire of broken ribs had subsided to a discomfort she could override for long enough, she thought, to dodge past the man and hurl herself at the Saurons. If worse came to worst, she would do it, too.
War World III: Sauron Dominion Page 20