Carnifex

by Tom Kratman

  Fen shook his head emphatically. Khalid paid no attention. Instead, he put away the photo and wallet and drew from his pockets a clear plastic bag, a nail and a press release concerning Fen's pro-gay activity. Khalid had scrawled a message in Arabic on the press release. He'd use his pistol to nail the press release to Fen's forehead after the fat fuck was dead.

  With the camera, Khalid took a photo of his victim, bound and gagged. He then put the camera aside and pulled a couple of inches of the duct tape roll free.

  "This is really going to suck," he said to Fen, happily. "It's going to suck for you, I mean. I, on the other hand, am going to really enjoy it. Take a deep breath, why don't you? No sense in making this too quick."

  After placing the clear bag over Fen's head, which elicited a garbled set of pleas for pity and mercy, Khalid took the free two inches of tape and began to wind the sticky stuff around Fen's neck, sealing the bag. The rolls of fat about Fen's neck made it a tougher job than Khalid had anticipated, causing him to have to make three extra winds to ensure a good seal. Fortunately, he'd brought more than enough tape.

  Khalid stepped back and picked up the camera. Already Fen had the bag billowing, as he tried to suck in oxygen to feed his almost incredible bulk. In a short time the actor-producer's head was whiplashing back and forth and side to side as he exhausted all the oxygen trapped in the bag and went into a full panic.

  While snapping a picture of Fen's purpling face, Khalid was struck by a smell even worse than Fen's normal, unsavory aroma.

  "Oh, you shit yourself, didn't you?" Khalid sneered. "What a pig! Aren't you embarrassed?"

  In answer, Fen's head only whipped the more frantically as it fruitlessly sought escape from the bag which had cut off its air.

  10/7/468 AC, Runnistan, Pashtia

  Nobody in the village fired his rifle into the air. Instead, the men, Samsonov rifles and clones held easily in their hands, clustered around Cano and Rachman, forming a circle. The women of the place stood behind their men, but that appeared more a defensive arrangement than a mark of low status. Oddly, the women were not veiled.

  Among the villagers, Rachman and his men were well known. All eyes were on the stranger, Cano. From the encircling crowd one old man emerged and walked toward the group.

  "Father," Rachman said to the old man, "we have returned in glory, all but for Filot who fell in battle and was buried on the field. I have brought with us our hectontar, that our people might rejoice to see the leader of their sons and to see that that leader is worthy. Father, David is one of us."

  Cano followed the conversation, more or less. The word hectontar was new to him, but he assumed it was local dialect and thought no more of it. He was, in any event, much more interested in the fact that the villagers were not using their rifles as noisemakers; in that, and in the unveiled women he saw behind the men. He saw a pair of bright green eyes atop a swaying, willowy shape, but lost them in the crowd.

  "Since my son says you are worthy," said Rachman's father, offering his hand in greeting, "I welcome you to our village. Come; the day is warm. Let us sit and talk in the cool of my courtyard."

  While the rest of the group split up to follow their own families home, Rachman and Cano followed Rachman's father, Cano's eyes still searching for that willowy shape.

  * * *

  The courtyard was walled. Even so, the house was built on the side of a steep hill. From the courtyard's fountain, Cano could see out over wall to where a group of the village's young men were busily fighting over the corpse of a sheep, from horseback.

  The game looked interesting, and even fun, though Cano had no idea of the rules. Based on the number of boys he saw being carried off the field, dripping blood, he wasn't entirely sure there were any rules.

  Rachman's father saw Cano's interest and said, "It's for you, you know."

  "Well, it is entertaining," Cano replied.

  "No, not that," Rachman said. "The young men are trying to impress you with their skill and courage." Seeing Cano really didn't understand, Rachman huffed and added, "So you'll hire them on to join the scouts. We haven't had a good war that we had a chance of winning in . . . well, in a very long time."

  "Ohhh." Cano shrugged. "I'm not sure how to even go about that. I don't know if the Legion is interested in expanding the Scouts, though they might be. No, they should be. I'll ask—"

  He stopped suddenly as a willowy young woman, technically more of a girl, really, stooped gracefully to set a tray of assorted finger food—fruit, olives, Terra Novan olives with their wrinkled and gray skin, flat yellow chorley bread, honey, some other green and red sauces in bowls—between the three of them. She was unveiled and when she turned her head to smile and Cano saw her green eyes . . .

  God in Heaven; she's beautiful, Cano thought. Those eyes . . . that face . . . that shape . . .

  Rachman smiled, though his father laughed aloud.

  "This is my sister, Alena," Rachman explained. "She's fifteen."

  Cano immediately looked crestfallen, which raised a laugh from both of the others. "Fifteen," Rachman said, "is not a problem."

  Did Cano understand from that what he thought he did? He knew they'd never offer the girl—no, the woman; he'd seen that in her eyes and her smile—for anything dishonorable. It would be as a wife or nothing. But fifteen? He looked again.

  The next time I see a fifteen-year-old that looks like that—even back home where the girls grow up fast—will be the first.

  Cano shot an inquiring look at Rachman, then at the father. Yes, they do mean it.

  He thought that, and then immediately looked even more crestfallen than he had before. "But I'm not a Moslem," Cano said. "And I can't give up the faith of my fathers."

  All three of the Pashtun, father, son and sister, broke out in gales of laughter. Rachman eventually ended up on one side on the ground, shaking with mirth. The sister, Alena, sank to her knees and held her sides. Cano looked on, cluelessly. (But doesn't Alena have a wonderful laugh?)

  Rachman's father recovered first. He picked up a wedge of chorley bread, dipped it into a bowl holding some sauce made from holy shit peppers, and said, just before popping the wedge into his mouth, "Son, take your war chief to see the hieros, why don't you?"

  10/7/468 AC BdL Qamra, Hajipur, Sind

  Though the sun had not yet set, Hecate shone indistinctly on the eastern horizon.

  To the west, the fronts of the Hindu and Buddhist temples lining the waterfront were in shadow.

  "They've got a god or goddess for everything, I think," Marta said to Jaquelina, the two sitting side by side on the forward deck, arms around each others' waists. Marta was relaxed enough but Jaquie seemed to her lover to be very stiff.

  "Are you feeling all right, love," Marta asked.

  Jaquie said nothing, but shook her head and leaned into Marta, tucking one shoulder under the larger woman's arm.

  "Tell me," Marta commanded.

  "It's nothing."

  "Tell me."

  Jaquie nestled closer in and admitted, "Honestly, I'm scared."

  "Oh."

  There wasn't a lot more to say. The carrier was still under repair. The other escorts were needed to secure it in a place that was something less than secure. Even so, the contract with the zaibatsu required, at a minimum, that the classis maintain a presence in the Nicobar Straits. All that was available, or would be available before BdL Tadeo Kurita unloaded Dos Lindas' elevator, was Qamra.

  Fosa had given the word the previous day. "Take Qamra out to the Straits and see if you can't take out one or two of the smaller pirate boats. We'll be along as soon as we've fitted the elevator. We'll all be along."

  "We're going to be alone out there," Jaquelina continued, with a small shiver. "For a week or two. Maybe more. No back up. No help. Nobody scouting for us. No retreat if we get in trouble. Even the men are worried."

  Marta leaned over to kiss the top of her lover's head, then reached out a hand to stroke hair and cheek. "You have too
much imagination," she said. "We'll be fine. I won't let anything happen to you."

  Jaquie backed off and looked intently into Marta's face. "I'm not worried about me, you idiot. I'm worried about you."

  10/7/468 AC, Runnistan, Pashtia

  The hieros was carved into the mountain, about a half mile from Rachman's family's home. The trail seemed well-worn, to Cano, as if the people of the village followed it regularly to the rectangularly carved opening in the mountainside. He mentioned this to Rachman.

  "We come here often, yes," the Pashtun said. "To commune with God . . . to dedicate the young men to His service . . . sometimes just to be away from people to think."

  By the time they reached the carved opening, the sun was down. Rachman took a match from one of the two guards standing by the entrance. With it, he lit a small, oil-burning lamp. It cast a flickering light over what looked to Cano to be brick-sized, carved stones, framing a tunnel perhaps thirty inches wide. With the flame from the lamp Rachman lit a torch lying nearby.

  "We took these when we left Old Earth," Rachman explained, gesturing at the stones with the torch. "We had no money to pay for much extra baggage, not unless we were willing to sell off some of our patrimony, which we weren't. So say the legends, anyway. Each man and woman took one stone or one piece of something to rebuild this, here. Come, I'll show you."

  The footing was even, if not quite smooth, and Cano, guided by Rachman's torch, felt his way along easily. Seventy-five yards or so into the mountainside the narrow tunnel opened up to . . .

  At first, Rachman's torchlight reflected dimly from what Cano judged to be over one hundred dull mirrors. As the Pashtun circled around the room, lighting more lamps as he went, the things Cano took to be mirrors began to appear as round shields, plates, medallions, necklaces and . . .

  "Holy shit."

  "Very holy," Rachman agreed, "but not shit." He pointed with the torch toward a golden plate, perhaps fifteen inches across. "This is the image of our God."

  "Where have I seen that face before?" Cano wondered aloud. "It was in an old book, at the Legion's library . . . an old book from Old Earth . . . Al . . . Alex . . . "

  "Iskander," Rachman supplied. "The avatar of our God. God made flesh. It is to Him that we pray. He will come to us again, so say the prophecies." The was no waver of doubt in Rachman's voice. His god would come.

  "Ohhh." He thought for a moment about the implications. Then it hit him. "You are not Moslems?"

  "We pretend, sometimes," Rachman said. "And give little gifts to Mullah Hassim to make sure he doesn't raise a cry against us. But, no, not Moslems. Which is why—" He raised one eyebrow, waiting to see if Cano could make the connection.

  He could. "I would not have to convert to be a suitable match for your sister?"

  Rachman was smiling broadly. "Correct, Hektontar Cano."

  "She's only fifteen, and she doesn't even know me," Cano objected.

  "She is already a woman, ready to bear you fine, strong sons and daughters. And you have two weeks to get to know each other," Rachman answered.

  "I am a soldier and I might be killed at any time."

  "She is the sister, daughter, granddaughter, great-great-great-great to infinity granddaughter of soldiers. She would understand."

  "I don't even know if she likes me."

  "I told her and my father about you months ago. They both like you. You don't already have a wife, do you?"

  "No," Cano shook his head. "No wife. No girlfriend. I never had time to even look for either since I joined the Legion."

  "Well," Rachman said, "let's stop wasting time and get back to my father's home so you can get to know your future one."

  In the flaring light of the torch and the lamps, all reflected by the gold and polished stone of the hieros, which Cano now understood to mean "shrine," or perhaps "temple," Cano said, "You are the strangest matchmaker I have ever heard of."

  "No, no," Rachman disagreed. "You should see my aunt. She has a better moustache than I do . . . though I think my beard is more manly . . . a little."

  Outside, the guards began to laugh so loudly that Cano was sure it was true about the moustache and beard on Rachman's aunt.

  "Alena can read, you know," Rachman said, as they made their way back to the entrance. "Father insisted upon it. Me, personally, I think it was a mistake. She's too smart as it is—"

  "Way too smart," agreed one of the guards, just as the two emerged from the tunnel.

  "Not bad girl," said the other, "just make you feel stupid. Doesn't mean to," he shrugged.

  "Good shot, too," said the first.

  "Oh, yes, very good. Also good on horse. This important; means she can keep up with husband on campaign."

  "Very important quality in wife," the first guard agreed. That guard put a hand on Cano's shoulder. "But better you than me, Hektontar. You see, she has the sight."

  "The dowry for my sister will be immense," Rachman warned, changing the subject, and shooting a dirty look at the guards. "Immense! Not that anyone else is bidding, mind you," he admitted.

  What the hell, Cano thought, I make more in a month than these people do in a year. Hell, in three or four years. And I never spend it. It might be nice to have a wife to spend it on. To see those beautiful eyes light up . . .

  Cano gulped, nervously. "Rachman, you have to talk me through this. How do I propose?"

  14/8/468 AC, Nicobar Straits, BdL Al Qamra

  It was a daunting enough proposition. Alone, untended, unsupported, Chu had to take his vessel into enemy waters and simply look for trouble or, failing that, wait for trouble to find him.

  "Somehow, I don't think it'll be long," Chu said.

  "What's that, Chu?" Centurion Rodriguez asked.

  "Nothing . . . . oh, just that I don't think it will be too long before trouble finds us, even with the girls below and undercover."

  "You can count on it," Rodriguez agreed, staring into the smoke that still covered the waters of the Straits. "Sucks to be us."

  "Tonight, you figure?" Chu asked.

  "Or tomorrow, or the next night. Wish we had the rest of the classis with us."

  "Yeah," Chu sighed. "Wish in one hand . . . "

  15/8/468 AC, BdL Dos Lindas, Hajipur, Sind

  "Shit me a goddamned working elevator!" Fosa screamed at his chief engineer.

  "It's not that simple, Captain," the engineer answered, sheepishly. "Yes, we thought it would be that simple but we were wrong."

  Fosa turned around and stared out of the bridge's wide, and new, windows, looking at the menacing shadow of the Tadeo Kurita. It wasn't particularly easy to calm himself down, but he did. He turned around again and asked, "All right; what's the problem?"

  "It's the way this class, any class, really, of warships was built, way back when, Skipper. They can use the same diagrams. They can subcontract to the same subcontractors. But they're always a little different. In this particular case, we've got to modify the goddamned hangar deck and the elevator portal because it's three fucking millimeters too small. Or the elevator is three millimeters too big; take your pick."

  "How long?"

  The engineer looked at the master of the shipfitters.

  "'nother week, Skipper. Maybe five day if go well."

  "Fuck."

  16/8/468 AC, Runnistan, Pashtia

  "Why were the young men using a sheep before?" Cano asked, as Rachman fitted him with padding and a helmet in preparation for his upcoming game of buzkashi. Rachman and the other players, standing nearby holding their horses, were already suited up.

  "Oh, that was just practice. For serious games we use calf . . . soaked in cold water to toughen it up . . . and filled with sand."

  "And the purpose of this is?" Cano asked.

  "Show toughness and courage in front of soon-to-be wife," said one of the other players in Cano's team. Cano thought he was one of the two guards he'd met at the hieros, the one who'd said, "Better you than me."

  "You must pay close at
tention, David," Rachman added, "to the young men on both sides who show real fighting heart. They're playing to impress you, after all. Well . . . that and to get rid of my sister."

  Cano looked across the dusty playing field past the opposing team to where Alena sat, framed by a simple goal. She wore a long blue dress and, for the ceremony, she was veiled. Between them, in a small pit, was the corpse of the calf.

  "We only play by these rules when it's part of a wedding," Rachman explained. "Otherwise, we fight to take the calf around a pole and bring it back within a circle we draw around the pit. For wedding, though, you must present calf, whatever's left of it . . . and of you . . . to new wife as trophy."

  "How long do I have?" Cano asked.

  Rachman shrugged, "Maybe couple days."

  A couple of days? DAYS? "What if I lose?"

  "Alena says you won't."

  "And she has the sight, remember," added that same guard, pressing into Cano's hand a whip.

  "What's this for?

  "To hit people," Rachman explained, patiently. "Well, you're not the type to let someone hit you without hitting back, are you, brother-in-law to be?"

  * * *

  The morning sun was rising, the horse was limping, and had he been afoot Cano would have been staggering, when the two reached the rectangular goal beyond which sat his bride.

  The rest of his team, and even the other team, and especially the crowd, all cheered themselves hoarse as Cano undraped from across his saddle the remains of the calf. The sand was long gone, an entire leg was missing, and the thing was more than half in shreds. He tossed the calf, what there was of it, through the goal and dismounted.

  Rachman was there to catch him and keep him from falling over. He was also there to help him walk through the goals to claim his woman. This was as well since the various whips and fists and flailing hooves of rearing horses had fairly well shut Cano's eyes. He'd never have made it to the goal without Rachman to lead his horse.