by David Drake
You are very beautiful, Blaskoye woman.
He saw the recognition, the understanding, as she started back.
“You—you speak with an accent,” she said. “You are not a clansman.”
“I am a lieutenant of the Scouts.”
“Ah, of course. A sworn enemy.” He thought he heard the contempt that had vanished seep back into her reply, but this time it sounded as if it were directed at herself. “I should have known. I should have.”
“Yes. An enemy.”
“I had thought you might be…someone else.”
“Who?” he asked. “A Redlander? Is that what you thought? Is that what you are?”
“Not anymore,” she said. She dropped the veil beside her washbasin on the table. “Have you killed many Redlanders?”
“No,” he said. “A few.”
Only one woman. She looked like her. The same eyes, at least. He tried to push the thought from his mind, but could not.
“Have you fucked many Scouts?” he asked her.
This caught her off guard, and she laughed.
Her lips, he thought. They don’t tell you about the lips, full like that, behind the veil. Before he could stop himself, before he even knew what he was doing, he reached up and touched her lips, ran a finger across the softness, pulled his hand slowly away.
“You will be the first,” she said.
And she was the first, his first. He didn’t tell her. Perhaps she knew. It wasn’t pretty. Her bed creaked, and several times she had him slow, stop the noise. If they were discovered, she whispered, he would be dragged away, she would be beaten. So finally they pulled what covers she had off the bed and he took her on the floor, which squeaked less.
And somewhere below them, he knew the River ran, the carnadons gathered. He pushed the face of the Blaskoye woman he’d killed from him mind, willed himself to replace it with her face, her form.
And almost could do it.
Almost, but not quite. For when he came, it was both the lamplit form of the woman and the feel of his hand on the trigger of the Blaskoye musket as he shot the other, shot the Redlander woman, that filled his mind like an explosion of desire, rage, and grief.
There was one solace. This one, this Blaskoye clanswoman or whatever she was, was not dead. She was still very much alive.
“You are young,” she whispered. “You can do it again. Quickly now, do it again.”
Could he?
Yes. Oh yes, he could.
So he did. And this time, it was only her and the River.
* * *
She led him back to the pallet and slipped away before he could speak to her again. He hadn’t even gotten her name. He lay still, unable to sleep, unwilling to converse with Center and Raj. For their part, they respected his obvious wish for quiet and remained silent.
Then Golitsin stumbled into the room—which slept five, although only four pallets were occupied—and collapsed beside Abel. He was making an odd sound, somewhere between a whistle and a moan, and at first Abel thought he was crying. But then he slapped the pallet and let out a guffaw, and Abel knew it was laughter.
“What?” he said groggily.
“Three,” Golitsin said.
“Women? Times?” Abel sat up. “What?”
“Yes, each,” he said. “Then all at once.”
Abel shook his head. Had he heard that right?
“And years,” Golitsin said. “One for every year I didn’t. That I haven’t.”
“So the last time was—”
“Here,” said Golitsin.
Abel nodded, turned over. “I guess that’s all right, then,” he said.
“By the Bite and the Bolt.”
“Whatever you say.”
“By the Law and the Land.”
“Okay, Golitsin.” Abel’s stomach suddenly spasmed. The nausea rose again momentarily, and with it a thought. Abel fought down the one, but not the other. “Golitsin, did you—is this the only reason you came? Just this tonight? You knew the state of things in Cascade, didn’t you, the reasons the shipment never came?”
“Not the extent.”
“But you knew?”
Golitsin sighed. “Yes, but you’re wrong,” he said. “I may be a bad priest, but I’m not that kind of bad priest. Zilkovsky trusts me, or he wouldn’t have sent me. I know him enough to know that, and so should you by now. That’s why he got your father to send you along, I expect. He trusts you, too. And he knew what I’d do here, and maybe overlooking where I happened to spend the night while here is payment for my being such a good priest for the past three years. That other kind of good priest, I mean. Anyway, we’ll get to the bottom of the problem with the shipments.”
“All right,” Abel said. “Goodnight, then.”
“You think I’m damned?”
“No.”
A pause, then Golitsin spoke again in a lower voice.
“You get yours, kid?”
“I guess.”
“Either you did or you didn’t.”
“Yes. I did. Okay?”
“How was it?”
Abel didn’t answer. Golitsin started to say something else, stopped himself. Then Abel heard him collapse on the pallet, let out a great sigh, and begin to snore.
This seemed to be what Abel’s body was waiting for. The snoring. Familiar. Like after a day on patrol. The clump of spent and tired men who had nothing in common other than the fact that they had all just risked their lives on the same enterprise, taken the same chances, reaped the same reward, which was survival to fight another day.
Abel finally fell asleep.
3
They awoke the next day and washed themselves off at a common bath near the stable. A line of other men joined them, each trying not to catch the other’s eyes. The donts seemed fine, well fed and rested. Abel never liked to leave a dont entirely in unknown hands, but it seemed Spet was none the worse for wear as a result.
Abel and Golitsin rode side by side into the bustling town morning. They stopped to buy a flatcake rolled around grilled dakmeat, and Abel followed it with a pitcher of milk, which he finished in three huge gulps. Golitsin watched in amused amazement. Abel hadn’t realized how thirsty he’d been. The dull throb of his head had obscured his thirst before, he supposed.
“So, back to the priests or to the District Military Headquarters?” he asked. “I’d say we have about equal chances of having gas blown up our asses at both places.”
“What are we going to do?” Abel said. “What if nobody will help us?”
Golitsin shook his head. “Was ever thus in the Land,” he said, echoing a Thursday school mantra. “I don’t know. Improvise, I guess.”
“All right,” Abel said. “Let’s try the DMC headquarters first, and if that doesn’t work, we go find—is there somebody like you around here?”
“Chief of Temple Smithworks, you mean?”
“Exactly.”
“There should be. It’s part of the Mandate.”
“Let’s try the military first,” Abel said. “They have guns.”
They crossed the River on a ferry, and approached the DMC HQ, which was in a desert-facing fort about league from the River bank. But even as they approached, Abel knew something was wrong.
There were Scouts here. Too many Scouts. They ringed the encampment like some gnarly outer hull of a nut.
They’re staying in shacks, he thought. Like they’ve been here a while.
A long while, by the looks of it, Raj growled. Living in filth and debauchery. These men haven’t been on patrol in weeks, maybe months.
What Raj said was true. The ground was covered with the remains of people not giving a damn. Dak orts, broken-down wagons, pieces of body armor, stray scraps of papyrus that had blown from a stinking common latrine.
And worst of all, from Abel’s perspective, a dead dont lay in the middle of the road. Not in the exact middle, true. Someone had attempted to pull it to the side just enough for a person to get past, although the very act of
pulling had produced a vile trail of rotten intestines running out from the dont and lying across the entire road like a purple-pink line that must not be crossed.
Spet, in fact, shied away and would not cross it. The dont smelled his dead kin and drew back fearfully, his eyes rolling and his shoulder crest feathers erect. It was all Abel could do to calm him, and no effort to urge the dont forward succeeded.
Abel dismounted, as did Golitsin, who was having just as much trouble with his mount.
“I guess I’ll have to lead you across, boy,” Abel whispered gently into the dont’s ear opening. “Don’t worry, I’m just as disgusted as you are, but we’ve got a job to do.”
He did not get the chance. He turned to see two Scouts stumbling up to him armed with muskets. Each wore a mud-speckled russet tunic with leg wrappings unraveling and boots covered in dust and muck. The smell of the two—part carrion wallow, part alcohol reek—reached him and Golitsin before the Scouts actually did.
“Treville man, what yer after?” one of them said. “Tha dont’s brand ye o’ercast. And priest and man ov war brungether tell it Garangipore, dinken I.”
Abel said nothing. They hadn’t addressed him by his rank or asked him a question he felt any obligation to answer.
The scouts drew closer, came to a stop directly in front of them, blocking their way as much as the dead dont.
“Meh tha anshur giben,” the Scout continued, “or pay hell with a shotgut bender.” The Scout raised his musket and put a hand on the trigger.
Stupid, Abel thought. One flinch, one false quiver, and you will do what your stupid mind doesn’t even know it is prepared to do, kill a man in cold blood.
But Abel did not reply. He straightened his tunic, slowly unlimbered his carbine from its saddle holster, made sure of his percussion cap, then checked for something under the saddlebag. He felt its snakelike coils. With a quick tug, he unfastened it from its tong holder, then spun and faced the Bruneberg Scouts with a furious glare.
“Ah think tha hell shalt pay woth a nine-struck back,” he said. As he spoke, he allowed the thing in his hand to uncoil. It was a nine-elb-long whip. It uncoiled, but before it could reach the ground he tugged it back hard and it swung behind him. And when the tip reached its greatest possible distance behind him and the braid stretched taut, he pulled it forward in a smooth, inexorable circle.
The pop of its acceleration reached his ears just at the sight of the tip striking. The whip laid open the back of the hands of the Scout pointing the musket, and its momentum carried the musket out of the man’s grasp. The weapon discharged, but its ball flew up and over himself and Golitsin to crash through the willows behind them.
With only instinct and long hours of practice behind him, Abel yanked the whip against its course and laid down a ripple that traveled down the length of the whip and issued forth at the end with a pop to the face of the other Scout. He also dropped his musket. The Scout reached up and grabbed his face, which was welted and not gashed open yet. Once he touched it, the welt broke open, however, and blood trickled out of the newly tenderized skin.
Both men stumbled back in agony, the first clutching his hand, the other his face.
“There’s more for you both,” Abel said, bringing the whip back to rest coiled at his feet. “Or will you take me to the DMC?”
The two began to back away. “You’ll pay for it,” the hand-slicked one said.
Abel shook his head. “Lo, idyuts! Jus fur yer et asken did Ah ye pop. Be yeh Scout nur River manglage? Up standen, thrice-be-yer-damnt! Tha russet shalt tha proud wearen, or agin to pop yer Ah wilt!”
Abel cracked the whip once more in the air for good measure. This got even the attention of the Scout who was holding his face.
“Attenthut, yer stinket modderfuckern!”
Even through the pain of the whiplashes, Abel could see the surprise of the men as it dawned on them he was speaking in the Scoutish patois. Now that he was sure they did understand this fact, he switched over the Landish.
“Stand like men!” he roared. “Report to an officer!”
And, to his own amazement—although he was careful not to betray it in the slightest—they obeyed. First a little, and then, when each saw the other was acquiescing, more quickly. Face-welt dropped his hands to his side first and looked forward, and hand-burn followed suit. The movement almost became a race between them.
“Sir!” shouted Face-welt.
Golitsin, who had been busy holding his startled dont steady, said nothing, but shot the tiniest smile toward Abel. Abel heard the air escaping over his teeth in a low whistle, more an expression of relief than admiration, Abel figured.
Spet had not moved. He may not have been the smartest of donts, but he was a Scout mount, all right, and knew how to stand his ground.
“I have come up from Treville at the special directive of the DMC himself, and I do not have time to waste seeing to your very deserved three days lashed to a wheel,” Abel said. Being strapped to a wagon wheel and fed on bread and water for a three-day period, some of it spent upside down, was the legendary punishment for letting down another Scout on patrol. Abel figured these would have at least heard of its practice. He, himself, had seen Sharplett order it against one man, Dooley, a Delta boy who had been a forced recruit but had since become a damn fine Scout. “I’m also not going to ask why you are living like Redlander sons of bitches wallowing around with full bellies after a raid for child-flesh. I haven’t got the stomach or time for it. All I require of you pieces of shit is for you to tell me this: Where can I find your DMC?”
“Sir,” said Hand-burn. “He’s a ways yonder in the fort. He’ll be counting the daks?”
“What?”
“Herd was run in yesterday, sir, for branding,” replied Face-welt. “He always counts ’em off for shares. Scouts get an eighth and Regulars the rest.”
“And where was this herd of daks run in from?” Abel asked, already knowing he wasn’t going to like the answer.
Face-welt darted his eyes nervously at Hand-burn. Abel let the whip uncoil once again.
“From the east, sir,” Hand-burn answered quickly.
“Nothing to the east but the Escarpment,” Golitsin said. “Unless you mean farther than that.”
“Is that what you mean?” Abel said. “From beyond the Escarpment?”
Face-welt nodded. “They’re Redlands daks, sir. Least that’s where they come here from.” He fell into Scout patois. “Brands ov the Land overscattered on dem daks. For that ist them agin burned. Tha brands Cascade to maken.”
And you can bet your life that most of those original brands are from Treville ranches, Raj said, confirming what Abel already suspected.
Abel felt like cursing, but only nodded. “I see,” he said. “All right, take us to the DMC.”
The Scouts turned and began to do as he said, when Abel halted them gruffly. “Pick up those thrice-damned rifles,” he said, “and march like men.”
“Aye, sir.”
They passed the dead dont and continued up the road. The two Scouts, to Abel’s surprise, stepped lively.
They almost seem to be enjoying themselves, Abel thought.
You’ve given them back their self-respect, said Raj. They’ll never understand it, or admit it if they do, but so you have.
There was a cloud of dust ahead that resolved into an approaching man on dontback and a retinue of soldiers on foot. There were six of them. The Scouts ahead of Abel halted, stood at attention, and Abel rode past them to meet the approaching rider.
“Halt right there, stranger,” said the man. He wore the three-striped tunic of the district military commander. So this was General Pat Bundren.
“Lieutenant Abel Dashian of Treville District Command reporting, sir,” Abel said. “I have been sent on special assignment to look after the grave conditions of the district gunpowder supplies, Commander.”
“Have you now?” the man said. “And do you have your bonifides to prove it?”
&n
bsp; “I do.” Abel reached back into his saddlebag. The soldiers surround the Cascade DMC warily lifted their muskets when he did so, but their commander smiled and bade them lower the muzzles. Abel found what he was looking for, a rolled papyrus message, sealed with wax impressed with his father’s scarab seal. Its ends were tinted red, the color of a courier communique. “Introduction from DMC Dashian himself for your perusal, sir.”
He held it out. Bundren approached no closer and did not take the scroll. He nodded. “You can put that away. I recognize a Dashian when I see one. You’re the son?”
“I have that honor, sir.”
“Yes, and it is…an honor. Joab was quite the character back when we served in the Tabernacle guardians.” Bundren chuckled. “Yes, quite the character. He had me up for baiting the carnadons, once. I don’t know if he ever found out we were fighting them, too, in one of the lower pools.”
Abel said nothing. He stowed the scroll back into his saddlebag.
Bundren pointed a gloved hand at the two Scouts who remained at attention between them. “I see you’ve taken it upon yourself to discipline my Scouts? Is that right, son of Joab?”
“Not at all, sir. I only reminded them of their duties, and they jumped to. I have no complaint against them.”
“Indeed you do not,” Bundren replied. “And what is it you want from me?”
“Your aid in locating our lost gunpowder, sir,” Abel said.
Bundren nodded. “I see. You’ve misplaced it somewhere, have you?”
“It never arrived, sir,” said Abel. “It was due four months ago. We are, in fact, three shipments shy now. And we are sore beset by Redland barbarians.”
“Can’t take care of your troubles, so you bring them to me. Is that it?” Bundren shrugged, turned to his retinue. “What did I tell you about the Treville troops, men? Not seeing to their part of the wall so well, are they?”
Abel felt himself growing flush with anger.
Easy, lad, he’s baiting you, Raj said. Take a breath or three.
Abel obeyed. He sat his mount and did not reply. Neither did he move.
After a moment, when he saw he wasn’t going to get a rise out of Abel, the DMC continued, still addressing his men. “And so this one comes here to tell us how to do our duty to Zentrum and the Land. Comes calling us names, I’ll wager.”