War World III: Sauron Dominion

by Jerry Pournelle

  “Who is she?” he asked.

  Shulamit made the haBandari gesture of bafflement, a shrug with palms turned up. “I should know? Speaks a little Russki.”

  The girl stared at the Sauron, mouth dropping open a little as she recognized him for what he was. There were few indeed on Haven who had not heard the tales, at least, and none who could mistake the flame-encircled Lidless Eye he wore on the pocket of his field jacket. Then her expression firmed; she reversed the knife with a quick motion and drove it toward her own heart. The Soldier hardly seemed to move; he blurred, and the would-be suicide found her bound hands held. She wrenched at them, with as much effect as if they had been set in concrete, and kicked at the Assault Group Leader’s legs with similar results.

  “Bind her,” Gorthaur said. “It would be a pity to waste a healthy breeder with good reflexes, now that we have transport.”

  Shulamit drew her Sauron revolver as she stepped up to the struggling pair--no, she’s the only one struggling--and checked that the cylinder had turned to a fresh cartridge. A deep breath, for calmness; a long, slow exhale, and she worked her fingers on the pistol s grip. A little too big for her hands.

  “You will not need that,” Gorthaur said, frowning.

  “Nu?” Shulamit replied. And wheeled, pointing the weapon at the man’s head. He froze for a crucial instant, torn between releasing the woman’s hands and countering the sudden threat: then the muzzle of the pistol was seated firmly in his ear. She grinned mirthlessly. The best reflexes in the world were valueless when the mind hesitated, and she was not so slow, either.

  “P’rknz of the Oak, and people say we haBandari are arrogant!” Shulamit said in wonder. “No, don’t try it, Gorthaur. Jarring my wrists would set it off before you could move the muzzle.” Probably true. “Just hold still for a second.”

  She pressed harder; the ear twitched, disturbingly mobile; the tales said there was something beastlike about Saurons, and the haBandari was coming to believe it. Her left hand snaked around to take the knife-hilt from the stranger girl, then sawed open the twist of rawhide that bound her. Rawhide, she thought with disgust. And buried in the swollen flesh; hadn’t it occurred to the raiders that the girl’s hands would mortify, or freeze as soon as night came? The stranger stepped back, pulling the cord free with only a grimace and a grunt at what must be the brutal shock of pain, rubbing at her wrists and flexing the stiff fingers. A moment, and she was pulling up her clothes and staring from the haBandari to the Sauron and back.

  Shulamit extended the knife on her palm, hilt first. “Chaver,” she said; friend, in her own language. She repeated it in Americ and Russki: “Migo. T’varsh.”

  The blade was snatched out of her hand, and the girl wheeled to face the Sauron. She knew how to hold a knife, too; hilt down, point up.

  Much good it would do us, Shulamit thought, as she stepped back. The Sauron turned to face her with the smooth economy of a cliff lion, face blank except for the flare of nostrils. His eyes glinted for a moment in the red light of the fire, catching the color of the flames like a cat’s.

  “Once and for all, Gorthaur,” Shulamit said softly. “Don’t push. You can kill me; you can’t threaten me, or order me. Understand?” He stared at her for three long seconds, nodded slightly, and turned on his heel.

  “Had enough of exotic foreign places?” Karl asked teasingly as they dismounted and handed their reins to the grooms.

  “For a while,” Erika said with relief, looking around. The haBandari quarter covered several hectares, the largest settlement of the People outside the Pale.

  Home, she thought. In two senses of the word; this was an enclave of the Pale by treaty, under haBandari law. And where she would make their home, while Karl oversaw the House of the Tree’s caravans to the north. To be sure, she would have her tasks as well; accounting, women’s work among haBandari.

  There was a broad, cleared strip within the wall about the compound, paved with slabs of sandstone. Much of it was covered with orderly piles of goods. Pyramids of threshed barley and ryticale and oats, stacks of rough cloth or baled wool or hides, the sort of bulk produce the Pale imported, safe enough outside in the dry season. Among them were caravan wagons, huge vehicles of laminated bloodwood and steel, with man-high wheels covered in tyres of woven drillbit gut; she recognized some of them, had ridden by their sides the long weeks up from Kidmi Fort on the northern border of the Pale. One corner of the outerwall held a brick reservoir and the high frame of a creaking windmill that ran the pumps to fill it, another homely sight she had not seen among the outlanders.

  They passed the inner wall of the compound, one barely head-high.

  “It’s like an Eden Valley town,” Erika exclaimed, as they walked down the cobbled streets.

  “A little,” Karl said. “You’ll learn the differences.” The laneways were not crowded, but he had to stop often to return greetings. The news of their arrival washed out like a bow-wave before them, gathering well-wishers. “More like a herder’s camp, in some ways. Less than a thousand of us all told, so we stick together.”

  ‘Well, it smells better than Ashkabad,” she replied, watching with pride as he answered the greetings. She could see that Karl’s family was more than well-to-do; it was popular, and you could not buy liking among haBandari. My family, now.

  They had passed through the area of warehouses, into streets of houses and shops and workshops. Erika could see what her husband meant; many of the people she saw were gayam, laborers or customers come to buy. But the smells were homelike, spices and cloth, horses and soap, and there were familiar sights in plenty; the bright geometric patterns on the whitewashed walls, a street-cleaner sweeping rubbish into a handcart, a water-seller with his cups and leather sack, a school where boys and girls sat cross-legged over slateboards. A goldsmith in her leather apron arguing with a client, the whicker of pedal-driven looms, loud arm-waving bargaining over a pile of ten-thousand-knot carpets like scattered jewels with their patterns of flowers and warriors, sages and stars and hunting scenes. She found her eyes drawn to the colors of the rugs, to piles of bright spices in a confectioner’s shop, to the pots of herbs and flowers that hung below most windows; it was natural, after so long on the steppe. The high plains of Haven were dull-green in the spring, reddish brown most of the year, white-flecked gray in winter. Your eyes starved for something besides the eternal sameness of it, and now she could sympathize with the color-hunger of the haBandari herders who flocked into the valley towns for the festivals.

  There was a crowd of a hundred or more around them when they spilled out into the courtyard before Karl’s father’s house; that was a substantial stone building, two stories under a slate roof with windows of real Eisenstaad glass. Questions flew thick and fast, especially about the wedding; someone had produced a fiddle, and someone else a flute, with the sound of a snaka drum bringing up the rear. Hands thrust a cup of hot honey-wine into her hands, and a garland of sweet-smelling dried flowers over her head. They passed a synagogue, with the rabbi standing on the steps smiling, prayer shawl over his shoulders; a Christian church of the sort haBandari used, low and plain but the windows gorgeous with stained glass; a shrine to the ancestors with statues of Piet and Ruth beside the door--the Three Faiths, together as always. Voices rang in her ears:

  “Mastov, Karl!”

  “Hey, man, good to see you again, kerel!”

  Erika found herself laughing with them; laughing as the circles formed and began dancing around them, counter-rotating. Karl groaned theatrically and tried to push his way through.

  “Have heart, chaveri, we’re just in from a---”

  “Half-day’s ride, you need to dance out the kinks!” Somebody reached up and drew Karl’s saber from over his shoulder, tossed it to his wife. She caught the heavy weapon easily and drew her own lighter blade, poised with the swords crossed above her head. He gave a grinning shrug of resignation and raised his own hands, snapping his fingers in rhythm to the “la-la-la-yey-ha-hey�
�� chant-song. Erika spun, swinging the swords in figure-eights; Karl danced with her, bending and weaving and swaying. It was one of those dances that started slowly, to show your control. Then it went fast, for speed: fun, and a test, to show these hardbitten frontier-folk that the young scholar from Illona’sstaad was no sheltered flower. She finished with a blurring propellor-whirl and tossed the sabers into the air.

  “My turn,” Karl whispered with a wicked smile. They were back to back for a second, turning to follow the circle of leaping, singing figures about them. They faced each other, Erika pulling out the long white handkerchief she would wave as she danced around the edged steel.

  Then the music died away. Erika looked up; it was Oom--no, she corrected herself, Father-in-law-- Yigal, and Karl’s mother Hagar bat Katherine. And two gayam. Who must be important guests; an older woman in robes of Citadel-made silk, embroidered with dragons and lightning bolts, and a man in lamelar armor of steel splint mail and a high spired helmet. The woman was unveiled, and she was of the same race as the man, flat-faced and high-cheeked, eyes narrow slits; as hard-eyed as the warrior.

  The two haBandari sheathed their weapons and made polite bows.

  “Prince Toktai son of Yuechi, khatun Hoelun,” Yigal began. “My son Karl you know; this is his wife, Erika bat Miriam--”

  “No,” Shulamit said.

  The girl--Borte, she said her name was--looked up. The three of them had dragged the enemy corpses away from the fire; that much fresh meat in the hungry season toward the end of summer would attract predators. Stobor for certain, possibly enough to be dangerous once they went into a feeding frenzy. Tamerlanes possibly, and a pair of the big cliff lions was nothing to trifle with, even three armed humans. A landgator would be worst of all, some of the pseudosaurians here along the foothills grew up to five meters in length, and they were damnably hard to kill. There was little smell; the temperature was falling rapidly now that Byers’ Sun was down, already near freezing.

  “No,’ Shulamit said again, as Borte looked down and continued to push the Cossaki leader’s breeches open with the butt-end of a salvaged lance.

  There was a knife in her other hand, and the same fixed stare in her eyes that she had worn since the haBandari woman faced down the Sauron. She had gone off a little into the rocks to wash, dressed warmly if more drably in clothes salvaged from the raiders packs; Shulamit had allowed it, and Gorthaur did not seem to be in a mood to argue. Dragging the bodies had made her shake with effort--not physical, just with the strain of forcing herself to touch the men who had abducted her. Now she obviously had a little posthumous revenge in mind. . . .

  Shulamit stepped close enough to grip the other’s knife wrist. “Nyet,” she repeated firmly, clamping the wrist steadily against the increasingly frantic jerks of the girl.

  “Why? Why . . . no?” Borte said at last.

  “Because ...” Shulamit struggled with the unfamiliar language; she had the sort of minimal command of Russki that you needed as part of a warband or caravan guard. How much? or Give me kvass or Where is the water? or Go away or I’ll boot your balls. She doubted that this Borte had ever killed anyone. How to translate what the drillmasters said?

  “You remember,” she said, pointing to the bodies and then tapping her head.

  You remembered fighting, stress and pain fixed it in your memory. It had been . . . what, four years ago, at Agarsfield up near Fort Kidmi, when that fan Alton mediko had pulled an arrowhead out of her thigh with the pincers, and she could still remember the stitching on his glove like it was yesterday. You had to remember the details, not seeing the ones you fought as human beings, not the look in their eyes when they knew they were going to die. People you had to kill weren’t people, they were targets, tactical problems. You could remember tactical problems without puking; targets didn’t come back in the night, when you were eating, when you were playing with kids or making love with your man.

  Targets didn’t shove their dead faces into yours with their bloody genitals hanging out their mouths.

  “You do this, remember when not want. Remember too much,” Shulamit said desperately. “Not good. Not help forget.” The wrist under her hand went limp, and Borte s face suddenly crumpled; she dropped the weapon and pressed her face into the collar of Shulamit’s sheepskin coat and clung. Shaking at first, then sobbing more and more loudly; Shulamit put an awkward arm around her shoulders, patting her back and making soothing noises.

  Hell, she thought dismally: I always hated being cried on, even by Erika or Sannie. Not that her half-sisters had cried often, though Yeweh and all the p’rknz this poor bitch had reason . . . Shulamit had been more given to red-faced tantrums and howling fits than tears--

  Borte pulled herself upright and shot a glance that was half gratitude and half suspicion in Shulamit’s direction. The haBandari handed her a kerchief, almost clean.

  “I go horses,” she said, and waved to the camp. “You sort gear, da?”

  The mounts were something of a surprise. Twenty-one, to begin with, that meant none of the raiders had been riding muskylopes; the awkward, shaggy native quadrupeds were slower but more enduring than horses and needed less feed and water than even a camel, but you could not fight effectively from their backs. From the degree of jostling and bickering the horses were doing even on a widely spaced picket line most of them were strangers to each other, looted, probably. She ran a stockbreeder’s eye over them; most were ordinary steppe ponies, stiff-maned and hammer-headed little beasts about twelve hands high. Six were of another breed, a hand or two higher and longer in the leg, not much by the standards of the Pale but better than nothing.

  On a hunch, she went over to the baggage camels and examined the leather-and-wicker hampers. “Fodder,” she said, holding up a handful; cracked ryticaly grains mixed with pellets of dried alfalfa. Quite a bit of it, enough to keep horses going without stopping to let them graze for the hours needed on thin steppe forage. For that matter the mounts looked in pretty good condition, harder-ridden than she liked and far too roughly harnessed for a haBandari’s liking, some with saddle-galls, but well-fed.

  Gorthaur walked up, casually slapping the nose of a camel who looked at him sidelong and visibly considered spitting. Borte shied around him and took the bucket to the other end of the picket line, beginning the process of watering the horses.

  “This is unusual?” he said. Soldiers used pack and riding animals, but less than most. A Sauron could run as fast as a horse, for much longer, and on much less in the way of supplies; it simplified their logistics.

  “Quite,” she replied. “But useful.” To Borte: “Feed all horse from this. Half bucket. Understand?”

  “Da.”

  “Quite unusual,” she continued to the Sauron. “For a normal raid . . . but then, it isn’t usual for raiders to go so far from their normal stamping ground; hotnots usually steal from their neighbors. They’re better armed too . . .more what I’d expect for scouts out from a big warband. But then why are they bothering to pick up livestock?”

  Gorthaur shrugged, wordless; plainly he felt speculation was useless. The three set about making ready; in hostile country you had to be prepared to run the minute you awoke, that went without saying among Havenites. Shulamit selected the best of the horses for her own, counting on the Sauron being less familiar with the points of bloodstock, picked a saddle and tack and laid them out; she would ride with a half-dozen remounts on a leading rope, switching every couple of hours. The camels could keep pace; Bactrians were slower than horses in a gallop, but had more endurance. And the free horses could carry loads; it had grated on her to leave so much valuable gear with her dead comrades four T-days ago. Silver and jewelry went into her saddlebags, and she made a bundle of the weapons. Good steel, some of them; the leader’s muskets and pistols were crude stuff by haBandari standards, but would fetch a good price in Ashkabad. Or . . .

  She stepped over to where Borte was stoking the fire, feeding the thin flames with scraps of dried t
wig and fat from the sheep carcass beside her; it was always difficult to keep flame alive on the high steppe, the oxygen content of the air was too thin. Another thousand meters up, and even Haven-born such as they would faint and die.

  “Here,” she said, offering the weapons belt. It held the Cossaki chieftain’s two long-barreled pistols, with bullet pouch and powder horn. More practical than a knife; Shulamit flattered herself that she might be able to take a weaponless Sauron who had broken an arm, provided she had a saber and armor and plenty of warning. Borke might just get off a shot that hit, through sheer p’rknz-joke luck, if it came to it. “You know how use?”

  About what I expected, Erika thought, looking around her in-laws’ dining hall. Very much like their house in Strang, where the three-week wedding celebrations had been held. The families that controlled the House of the Tree were traditional to a fault; none of the newfangled chair-style backrests for them. They sat on cushions, around low tables, in a room floored with rugs and hung with tapestries to keep out what drafts the thick stone allowed. A yellow and scarlet chagal-tile stove sat in one corner, taking off the chill. The heads of the household and their honored guests ate here, at the table nearest the stove; their retainers and servants of the People elsewhere in the room.

  Today the food was feast-style, with luxuries like risen wheat-bred and hot Nomad’s heart juice sweetened with beet-sugar. The centerpiece was whole roast lamb on a bed of steamed groats, stuffed with eggs and sausage and seasoned with paprika and garlic; there were sliced muskylope steaks marinated in herbs and grilled with ear-mushrooms, fried liver with onions, hard-boiled eggs with dill, salads of summer greens dressed in oil, deep-fried potato slices with dried tomato paste, pickled baby onions . . . Prince Toktai belched politely as the meat courses were removed and followed by cheese, dried fruit, and the elaborate sweet pastries that the haBandari were famous for. Servants poured eggbush tea and near-coffee, set out decanters and glasses of clownfruit brandy and wadiki.