No more was necessary to another Soldier of Boyle’s rank. “The Yesugei clans have grown uncomfortably strong in the last generation,” he said. “Driving the Bergenov Cossaki against their subject tribes would weaken them considerably.”
“Chain reaction, to the south,” Urthak said, and Boyle’s smile matched his. The steppes were prone to billiard-ball migrations; one horde displaced another, that one fell on its neighbors, and in the end war could sweep across half a continent. The great northern steppe across Haven’s main landmass was shaped like a giant L laid on its side with the short arm pointing south. Quilland Base was at the joining, and down at the end of the short arm were the haBandari of the Pale; they had been a problem since the Soldiers first came to Haven, three centuries before. Sweeping a nomad migration onto their frontiers would weaken them severely.
“I will be field commander?” Boyle asked, with a trace of shark-eagerness in his voice. He had campaigned against the haBandari in the past.
“I would not think of anyone else,” Urthak said sincerely. What was that Terran legend? he mused. Uriah the Hittite? A Deathmaster commanded from the front, a risky position. “We can make use of the new personnel from the Citadel, give them the blooding they need.” He unfolded a map. “Here are the preliminary dispositions. . . .”
Six Terran months later
Byers’ Sun and Cat’s Eye were both up, throwing light blue and red and banded orange down the huge jagged shapes of the valley, confusing the eye with overlapping shadow. The air was thin and almost hot, here on the slopes of the northern Afritsberg; Assault Leader Gorthaur blinked eyes dry with lack of sleep and scanned down the rocky length that led out onto the steppe. The mountains behind him were high enough that their snowpeaks were as much carbon dioxide as water. It would be very cold here after First Cycle sundown; too high for the air to hold heat, even in late summer. Cold, and no fuel even if they dared a fire. . . .
Dared. We, Saurons, do not dare to light a fire, because of cattle.
It had been three centuries since the Saurons came to Haven. A backwater planet, the only remarkable thing about it the fact that it was the moon of a brown-dwarf gas giant. A CoDominium deportation colony for Earth’s criminals and troublesome ethnic minorities in the 21st century, and rarely visited later, even in the heyday of the Empire of Man. Abandoned long before the final battles of the Secession Wars. Perfect for the last shipload of Sauron Soldiers, fleeing the destruction of Homeworld; a place to regroup while the Empire’s remnants ripped their own flesh like a brain-shot landgator. A place to remake the Sauron dream, a master-race of genetically superior warriors.
Assault Leader Gorthaur felt his teeth grind together a little. What would First Rank Diettinger think of us now? Memory had almost deified the man--the Soldier--who had led the Saurons to their new home, but Gorthaur doubted he had intended them to spend centuries skirmishing with cattle. The crippled Dol Guldur had destroyed all high-energy technology on Haven, what little there had been of it, all according to Diettinger’s calculations. The loss of the ship had been quite unplanned. . . . The Saurons still had superior technology: bolt-action rifles and Gatling guns. Around the Citadel, at the entry to the Sauron-dominated Shangri-La Valley, it was easy to believe the rebirth of the Race was proceeding smoothly. Here in the far west . ..
We are not engineers, Gorthaur admitted to himself. But we have the superior genes.
He forced his attention back to the matter at hand; fifty hours without sleep was making his mind ramble. Meanwhile, the warm rock made it difficult to see body-heat against the background, and the cattle might be trying to set position for an ambush.
Assault Leader,” one of the five Soldiers left of his group whispered behind him. “Do you think we have lost them?’
“Silence. Keep your eyes on the heights, Baugril, these cattle climb too well for my taste.
The Soldier turned obediently and looked back at the rocky heights that overlapped the little depression in which they had paused. Gorthaur could feel a slowness in the movement, an insolence. These Quilland Base Soldiers disliked him, he knew. Disliked him because he was from the draft of reinforcements from the Citadel, the base of Sauron power thousands of kilometers to the east, sent to bolster Quilland Base.
And to get rid of us, he admitted; the breeding program was going all too well, at home. Dislike he could have handled; it was like the odd accent and eccentric customs these western Soldiers had developed, a minor annoyance. It was the lack of respect that he could not tolerate. They thought him a . . . tenderfoot, that was the phrase. Unfamiliar with local conditions.
They are too familiar with the local conditions, he concluded grimly, focusing on the slopes below. Too respectful of these haBandari; granted that they were capable cattle, but genes were genes.
Was that movement? His ears cocked forward, enhanced senses straining. Muffled hoofbeats? Not many horses, either that or they were far away, the echoes made it difficult to say. Horses. They had lost their own, in the mad scramble up the heights three nights ago. This time his teeth ground audibly. It had been a successful patrol, until a week ago. Taking twenty Soldiers out of Quilland Base to show the flag, to collect tribute, to break opposition. Thirty fertile breeders collected, over a hundred nomad cattle dead in clashes, and only two Soldiers lost . . . then the haBandari had struck in overwhelming force. “Anything?” he asked.
“No, Assault Group Leader,” Baugril said, lowering his rifle and rising slightly as he completed his scan of the rear slope. “Not even a haBandari could--”
Crack. A puff of white smoke from the cliff above, from between a notch of rocks. The Soldier pitched backward as the heavy soft-lead slug tore off the top of his head. The retaliation was blinding-swift even by Sauron standards, and a dark-clothed figure toppled forward, somersaulting through the air as the stone around the notch disintegrated under the firepower of five magazine rifles.
“Cease-fire!”
The enemy weapon bounced down to lie smashed at his feet. A flintlock. He picked it up. Beautifully made, although handcrafted rather than lathed. A breechloader, with an ingenious lever mechanism and a brass ring to seal against the combustion gasses. Not as good as the brass-cartridge magazine weapons the Citadel made . . . but much better than anything else the cattle of Haven could produce. The Citadel must receive better reports on these haBandari, he mused.
Hoofbeats below jerked his attention back to the present. “Their timing’s a little off,” he said. “Orkhun, Shoe, you take them out. Don’t kill the horses unless you have to. Everyone else reload, fix bayonets, to the front; they may try and storm.”I hope so, he thought. The little rocky bowl was an excellent defensive position.
There were two riders coming up the valley on big shaggy horses, and he grudgingly acknowledged their skill to gallop over ground like this; the horses were shod, too, from the sound. “Fire at 800 meters,” he said; that was standard procedure.
“Damn,” Orkhun muttered a moment later.
The two riders had vanished into dead ground nine hundred meters out, a gully, and the Soldier’s shot had been a moment too late. The hoofbeats continued. Gorthaur squinted to read the terrain; it was not easy, with the conflicting shadows.
“They’ll have to come into the clear after that sandstone boulder,” he said.
Shog made a sound that might almost have been a snort. “I know . . . Assault Group Leader,” he said. The rifles leveled, and the other Soldiers remained alert for haBandari using the diversion to advance on foot. The hoofbeats came louder, and--
“Damn you, why didn’t you fire?”
“Sir, you said not to shoot the horses, and they went past the gap hanging off the opposite sides of their mounts!”
Gorthaur bit back a retort; the war manuals said an officer should never argue with his men. He was uneasily conscious of the fact that they averaged a decade older than him, and collectively had nearly a T-century of field experience. He glanced aside at Baugril’s body
, with the brains leaking out of the huge exit hole at the back of his head. His first independent command could scarcely be called a success, either.
“They’ll have to come up over that ridge, there.” It was a hundred meters ahead, sheltered, but the rocks were only knee high, not enough to give cover even for a prone man. “You can snoot the horses, this time.” They were edible, at least.
“Now!”
Two shots rang out, and the horses fell as if pole-axed. Riderless, and the two haBandari were down behind thousand-pound meat barricades. At least they couldn’t fire without exposing themselves--
A flat bass snap from behind one of the dead horses, and a flash of hands; something flew glittering into the air, hung, twisted, and plunged down to take Thokuz in the calf. A blue-fletched arrow.
That’s a hundred meters! a voice in the back of Gorthaur’s mind screamed. Aloud: “Supressive fire, all of you.” The five rifles began banging, steady, aimed fire at any hint of movement, or trying for a ricochet off the nearby rocks. A pebble landed by Gorthaur’s foot, as he worked the bolt of his rifle. He turned just in time to see the nine haBandari warriors, as they leaped from above. Seeming to hang suspended, shields and gleaming swords and dark mottled leather clothes.
Gorthaur was never quite clear on what had happened next. Some things he remembered sharply. Orkhun shooting one of the enemy and swinging his rifle in a blurring-swift arc that would have broken another in half; the haBandari had leapt over it, come down and sliced halfway through the Soldier’s neck. Gorthaur’s own bayonet had punched through that one’s leather breastplate, and then he had been backpedalling, the rifle spinning in his hands as two saber-wielders came at him, sparks and clangor. Neither was anywhere near as fast or strong as he, of course . . . but for cattle they were very good indeed, and there were two of them, with longer weapons, helmets, shields, and body armor. Fifteen seconds, and his rifle butt cracked the neck of one. Sixteen, and a desperate twist avoided the lunge of the other; they were breast to breast, and Gorthaur swept him up in an arm-holding bear hug. Crack and crack, the helmeted head smashed into his face, while his arms tightened, crushing armor and ribs and spine. Then a stunning impact and he was overbalanced, fell, with the dead weight of a strong man coming down on his right forearm when it landed just wrong against unyielding granite. The wet sickening sound of bone popping.
Silence. He made the pain recede, came to his feet.
Death, the heavy salt blood and voided bowel scent of it; the tamerlanes and sobor would be sniffing and gathering already. Half a dozen minor wounds, cuts and abrasions; and the major one, his right arm useless until it healed, unlikely to heal unless set and tended. Bodies, four Saurons and . . . eleven cattle, the two behind the horses had charged into the melee.
Movement. A body moved, the form beneath rose. Amazing, he thought. One of the cattle. Gorthaur snuffled, spat blood. The broken nose had already clotted; he focused on the haBandari, the first he had seen at close quarters except to fight, as he moved forward carefully. He . . . no, she was on her feet, too.
Stocky and broad, that was his first impression. Broad shoulders, broad hips, heavy bones. Her torso was covered in armor of overlapping plates of lacquered bullhide, with armguards of the same material. A sledgehammer drawn on the armor, over a six-pointed star. Leather pants, high boots with horn splints on them, hide gauntlets; a course, blue-linen shirt under the breastplate. Her helmet had been torn away, and he saw a square, blade-nosed face, olive skinned, narrow blue eyes, a braid of black hair down her back. Blood from a graze on her cheek. A long red-wet saber in one hand, a shield in the other. White teeth showed as she bared her lips and twitched the blade back and forth, wheet, wheeet.
Ah. She was favoring one knee.
“No further, Sauron.” A heavy accent to her Americ, liquid and guttural.
“I can probably draw my pistol faster left-handed than you can attack me with that saber,” Gorthaur pointed out. Meanwhile, he made sure, looking with eyes that saw into the IR frequencies; yes, the bodies were all cooling fast. All dead.
Unexpectedly, she laughed; more of a sour chuckle, but still . . . What a woman to sire Soldier sons upon! the Assault Group Leader thought in sincere admiration. Only a dozen cattle to kill four Soldiers, and this one survived. Alone and confronted with an armed Sauron, she laughed. What genes!
“Why do you laugh?”
“To hear two corpses threaten each other,” she said. “Corpses?”
“Your arm is broken. I have a wrenched knee. We are each a thousand klicks from home, no horses, scavengers coming, and the nomads around here scratch their heads to decide if they hate Saurons more than haBandari.”
“Ah.” Not stupid, either. Gorthaur looked about at his dead men, up at the woman. Nobody has ever brought a haBandari breeder into a Base, he thought, with part of his consciousness. The rest was pure readiness.
The woman waited, almost as tiger-relaxed; then he saw her pupils dilate slightly, sign of interest or concentration in a human-norm. Saurons had that reflex under conscious control, of course. She spoke a sentence in her own language; Gorthaur shook his head impatiently, never having been commanded to learn that bastard offspring of Americ and Afrikaans, Hebrew and Bait. If he had, he might have hesitated longer.
“You owe me a blood debt, Sauron. More than you can pay with your life,” the haBandari muttered to herself. Then, in Americ: “A bargain, Sauron.”
“What do you propose?”
“A truce until we reach Ashkabad.” That was a trading town, down on the plains. Tributary to Quilland Base, but not governed by it. “There are merchants of my people there.”
“Agreed,” he said decisively. There were overtones of double meaning in her voice, but that was only to be expected. “I am Assault Leader Gorthaur, Quilland Base.
The woman’s expression turned feral. “First give me the Soldier’s Oath,” she said.
His eyes narrowed. “What do you know of the Soldier’s Oath?” he said.
“Enough. We have schools, in the Pale. Swear, or we fight now.”
If she knows that much, she probably knows the wording, he thought. He spoke, and saw her narrow-focused attention to the terms. “Now you,” he finished.
“By Yeweh and all the p’rknz, by the anima of the ancestors and the spirits of Piet and Ruth, and by the honor of Kompany Gimbutas, I swear truce until one hour after we reach the borders of the town of Ashkabad, and before this I will help and assist you in all matters of journey and fight, taking nothing of yours without consent. May I be shunned if I break this oath, I, meid Shulamit bat Miriam fan Gumbutas, ben haBandari,’’ she said. At his frown: “Meid means I’m unmarried. My name is Shulamit, my mother was Miriam, my kompany--clan--is Gumbutas; I’m a haBandari.” She wiped the saber carefully and looked around. “Let’s get to work.”
They made camp ten kilometers down the valley; Shulamit had bound her knee tightly, and kept walking until it began to swell past safety. Gorthaur admired that, and the practical way she had sorted through the gear, according to what they could expect to carry; her superstition in covering the haBandari dead with rocks he tolerated, even if it cost a little time. There was no need to take the horsemeat, she seemed repulsed by the idea as well. What does “tryf mean? he wondered, then dismissed the thought.
The fire was small and carefully banked to be invisible from a distance when sheltered by a blanket; just enough to heat water for eggbush tea. Water will be a problem, he decided. Not so much for him, he could go a week or more without, but for the woman. He called up a map with eiditic memory while the two of them coordinated the work of making camp; with three each of sound hands and legs it was more difficult than doing alone. They sat and gnawed dried meat and hardtack in silence for a long time, after the sketchy work of setting up was done. Gorthaur was at a loss for words; what did one say to a woman who was neither Base-born nor a tribute maiden? In the end, he found it was easier to suppress the pain of his splinted arm tha
n the memory of the men he had led to their deaths; tactics seemed a safe subject.
“How did you find us?” he asked.
Shulamit looked up from the pistol she had been turning in her hands; he remembered lessons in reading cattle body language, but so much of it was culture-specific, and he knew little of her tribe. Tension and controlled fear, he decided. And something . . .
“Chance,” she said. “A dozen of us had hired on as caravan guards, and the merchants didn’t need us past Ashkabad. Riding back, we heard from the hotnotts, the nomads, that you Soldati were out raiding. It was too good a chance to miss, we gathered a couple of hundred of nomad warriors and jumped you.”
Gorthaur frowned. “Why?” he said. The nomads wanted revenge, and their women back. What was the haBandari’s motivation? They lived far south. Angbad Base was there, in the Tallinn Valley just northwest of the Pale, but that had fallen a generation ago and had never been reestablished.
“You’re Soldati, Saurons,” she said with a shrug. “Don’t you know the saying, ‘haBandari will crawl a thousand clicks across burning stone to do a Sauron an injury’? That feud’s older than the hills.” She looked up at him under heavy black brows. “Then we couldn’t cut our way out through the nomads, they were between us and home and turned on us, we were too few to control them once the ambush was over. We decided we might as well get a few more Saurons before we died. You’re lucky it was a scratch party.
Just youngsters, and none of them kin or clan-brothers or sworn chavre of mine, so I’m not bloodhound to kill you in particular.
“Besides,’ she continued with a grin, “we won.”
Gorthaur shrugged in his turn; it was true. He watched as she arranged her bedroll and began stripping off the equipment. The breastplate was held by latches, he noticed. . . . Everything piled neatly, just-so. Good habits she has. His nostrils flared slightly as she removed the last of her clothing and began undoing the pressure bandage around her knee; he could smell that she was in the middle of her cycle, ovulating. Curse this arm, he thought dismally; he was in no shape to subdue her. Besides, I did promise. Now that she was naked he could see the strength in arms and thighs, too. . . .
War World III: Sauron Dominion Page 26