Dogged, unthinking, Cerdic hewed at the shield. The weakened segment fell away, held only by the hide lacing. Then that unraveled and burst. Withucar circled sideways. Quickly he dropped to one knee, reaching for the sword that lay behind him, covering his forward knee with what remained of the shield.
Cerdic brought one terrible blow down from on high. It hacked through the finger’s length of partly splintered wood that still protected Withucar’s shield-arm, and it smashed his elbow to bone fragments in a tube of broken meat. Withucar screamed. Somehow he regained his feet, and the sword was in his right hand again.
The shield fell from his useless arm. It thudded on the earth.
Withucar never thought of crying for quarter. Snarling, he flung himself upon Cerdic, careless now of death so long as he took the other with him. Their swords jonted together for the last time. Cerdic seized Withucar about the waist and toppled the Saxon over his hip. Withucar let fall his sword, flinging out his sound arm to save the shattered one from impact. With a grunt of agony, he sprawled helpless.
Cerdic had ample time and space to swing his weapon. He did so decisively; one blow slew.
To stop was to almost collapse, so fierce had been the contest. Shuddering, sucking air through his raw throat, Cerdic leaned on his sword while his gesiths bellowed their jubilation and rattled spearheads on shields. Ulfcetel rushed down from the ramparts at the head of twenty warriors. Cerdic straightened and waved them back with his encarnadined sword. Glaring, he spoke to the dead man’s followers.
“You,” he said, gasping. “I gave you gifts… fed you… and you gave me your oaths. Well, I gave mine that you should be free to go where you wish. So you may. Take your ships. Go.” His powerful voice steadied; he brought his panting under control. “I give you leave, but know this. The day I see any of you again will be an ill one for you. Even if it never comes, I do not think your luck will be good hereafter. What chieftain would trust you?”
“Lord, take us back!” one man cried. “Give us the hardest tasks, the brunt of all danger, until you deem us worth trusting again!”
Cerdic said wearily, “Get out.”
Lacking a leader, bereft of hostages, and twofold outnumbered, they had to obey. They formed a body and marched through Wiht-gara-byrig’s gate. Cerdic entered his hall, bloody and sweaty but triumphant. His arm was around Giralda’s lithe waist.
Then and ever after, she let him suppose the savage bruises on her arms where Tosti had squeezed them black and blue were relics of Withucar’s treatment. She had no wish to provoke trouble between her husband and Tosti after all else that had happened that day. Besides, as she soon saw, her bruises were nothing to Cerdic’s.
Editor's Introduction to:
PRETTY BABY
by Ray Peekner
When a stupid man does something he knows is wrong, he always claims that it is his duty.
—George Bernard Shaw
This has been the era of social engineering; a time of high purposes, when the very nature of man will be transformed; a time to create a beautiful world, in which there will be no poor, no ignorant, none in want; there will be no suffering. A world of beauty is struggling to be born. Naturally there will be birth pains, dislocations, even horror; but we have only to sweep away the old to bring forth the new.
Thus inspired, both foolish and learned have acted like beasts in the name of humanity. Soviet troops in the Ukraine took the food from the homes of starving peasants. The Nazi regime ordered euthanasia for the aged, incurably ill, and the insane. Yellow rain falls in Laos and Afghanistan. Prisoners in Iran are used as human mine detectors.
The democracies have not been blameless. Dresden was fire-bombed. Mushroom clouds bloomed above Hiroshima and Nagasaki. “Operation Keelhaul” returned hundreds of thousands of Russian expatriates to the Soviet Union where they were either murdered or worked to death in labor camps. There were other incidents, in Korea and later in Viet Nam, to suggest that civilization is a thinner veneer than we like to suppose. For all that, Lieutenant Calley was charged and tried; individual soldiers may have committed atrocities, but indiscriminate murder of the helpless has never been a policy of the US or Britain.
And yet—could it happen here? Whatever one’s views on the rights and wrongs of abortion, twenty years ago the notion that abortion on demand might some day be legal throughout the land would have been laughed down as absurd. Now we hear of doctors who with parents’ consent have treated defective newborns with “benign neglect”—i.e., have allowed them to starve to death. Phrases like “quality of life,” and “it’s better this way,” are heard in courts of law. Perhaps infanticide on demand will never be legal here—but it is not impossible. The moral absolutes crumble before a barrage of words, and no one knows where the erosion of values will end.
Pilate asked, “Is it not better that one should die for the sake of all?” And if one—then why not two? Or four, or a thousand. Rationalizations come easy once begun. It remains only to convince those who must do the bloody work.
Good soldiers do not often make good butchers. Sometimes those in command may believe there is no choice; but they do not lightly order good troops into a human charnel house to be stripped of their human feelings, for to do so is to risk losing their effectiveness. The most hardened professional soldiers must feel loyalty to some purpose higher than themselves, be it no more than the honor of the regiment; else they will not risk their lives as good soldiers often must.
Nations that order their soldiers to dishonor themselves are then defended by dishonorable troops.
I would like to convince myself that this story could never happen. I want to comfort myself with the thought that American soldiers, professional or conscript, would never carry out these orders.
PRETTY BABY
by Ray Peekner
PCC Vet Slays Wife, Son, Self
Ferndale, Iowa—AP
—Kenneth MacCarter, 18, who served with the Population Control Corps in India, today shot his wife, Nancy, and his 10-month-old son, Kevin, six days after his return home. After slaying his family, he put the service automatic into his mouth and took his own life.
From the hillside, the village of Sanphura was now visible in the distance. The dilapidated bamboo huts with the plastic sheeting stretched upon the rooftops glistened wetly beneath the driving rain.
“Damn it all,” muttered Private George Hansen to the soldier alongside him. “With this mucking rain, we won’t be able to fire the huts. We’ll have to go in after them.”
Private Ken MacCarter at that moment wished he were back home, or at least secure in warm, dry barracks. His lean fingers hugged the M-19 in readiness. He was acutely conscious of his anxiety and he hoped Private Hansen would keep talking. Hansen, at twenty, was only two years his senior, but he was a veteran; the distance separating them seemed more like twenty years.
“Yeah,” said Private Hansen, spitting cleanly. “It’s easier when you can burn them out. But going in after them, it’s not so bad. Takes longer, that’s all. Kick the door and spray in every direction, low and steady. Drop a fire grenade and get the hell out. That’s all there’s to it.”
The squad halted. The village of Sanphura was about a hundred yards away. It appeared to be empty.
The sergeant withdrew, addressed his squad. “Move out, in pairs. I want a clean mop-up. Understand? I don’t want to find anything moving when it’s over, not even a goddamn flea wiggling on the fur of a rat. Understand? Move out!”
“Stick with me, kid,” Private Hansen said, and he started toward the village.
Private Ken MacCarter realized suddenly that in a few moments it would all start happening. Still, a vague sense of unreality crowded him.
This was not a war, and these emaciated villagers were not the enemy. The American unit was there to perform “humane actions” at the request of the Indian Government, as were the Russian, the English, the Chinese units—all of them.
Their mission was to wipe out
the excess population that was dragging India into ever greater poverty. Scientific experts had assured the greater powers that they were helping to rebalance the ecology of the planet. It was dirty work, but necessary, like thinning out the herds on the great game preserves. Sooner or later, without this cropping, thousands more would die of starvation. “This operation is a humane action,” he kept telling himself.
MacCarter became aware that he and Hansen were being followed. He turned quickly. The friendly face of a news photographer beamed a quick smile. The man was husky, a bit overweight, red-faced, about forty. He carried a network film camera.
Hanson stopped, grimaced, his already narrow eyes closing to thin slits. “Ah, it’s you, Farley,” he said to the man. “Damn it, do you have to tag along with us? MacCarter here is a new man. This is his first mission.”
“I know it,” acknowledged Farley. “I thought there might be a story in that. Don’t get uptight about it, I’ll stay out of the way.”
As they were almost to the village, Hansen warned, “Sometimes one of them might have a knife or an old revolver and try to put up a fight. Don’t take any chances. Shoot them all, moving or not.”
Suddenly shots exploded. The mop-up had begun.
“Watch it,” shouted Hansen. “Now some of them are running out.”
From behind a bamboo hut an emaciated old man, his ribs visible, stumbled into the muddy street. His hands were outstretched, reaching. MacCarter realized that the man was blind. Trachoma in these rural villages affected eighty to ninety percent of the inhabitants. Then he watched the thin figure jump suddenly and collapse in the mud.
“Fire!” screamed Hansen.
More figures in the street. Another old man. A child, its belly hung and distended from starvation. A woman carrying a baby. She fell with it still in her arms. The figures toppling. MacCarter felt the vibration as the M-19 kicked in his hands, saw the shots ripping through the frenzied mass, plunking noiselessly into flesh. He saw, but he did not believe. It seemed too simple and clear-cut a proposition for the mind to logically accept.
Twenty people down, thirty. Thinning out now.
He saw a small boy down on his knees, crawling for cover. He noticed that the boy’s foot was missing and he wondered whether it had been shot away.
He hesitated.
At that moment Farley moved into view, his camera aimed at the crawling boy.
“No,” murmured MacCarter. “Don’t…”
Hansen aimed a shot at the boy’s head, and the boy fell suddenly face-down in the mud, the dark-red blood oozing from his temple and mingling with the brown water.
“Stop!” he heard himself saying. Something inside him was rebelling at the idea that Farley was recording an action that should not be recorded. And he found himself aiming at Farley’s camera, firing.
The camera flew into the mud. Farley’s hand clutched his wrist, a look of astonishment contorting his face.
“The crazy bastard shot at me,” Farley whined. Then, more precisely, “He shot the camera out of my hands.”
“I saw it,” said Hansen. “You’d better get to a medic, Farley.”
“I asked him to stop,” insisted Ken. “He was…filming that boy dying.” He knew these were not accurate statements. The boy had died instantly. And Farley had not heard his warning. What really disturbed him most, however, was his own impulsive act.
Anguished screams shot out from the flames as the small village burned. Soon after the rains, the Khari River, one of the many tributaries of the Ganges, would overflow its banks and flood the entire area.
“Okay, now watch me,” instructed Hansen calmly.
Hansen kicked a hut door, and with his M-19 cradled low in his arms, sprayed a volley of shots inside. Behind him, MacCarter looked into the shack, saw an old man slump forward, two red stains budding in his chest. An old woman lay stretched across the floor. Her throat had been cut.
“He got to her first,” explained Hansen.
As they left, Hansen chucked a fire grenade inside. They hurried away, feeling the heat of the bursting flames.
A woman ran from an adjoining shack toward the hillside, toward the rice paddies.
“Take her!” ordered Hansen.
MacCarter was conscious only of his arms lifting his weapon, firing, watching her being hit. Her body was so emaciated, the bullets went through without resistance. As she toppled back into the mud, MacCarter was unable to determine how he felt about it.
“Okay! Okay!” shouted Hansen encouragingly.
The mop-up completed, only the tagging remained to be done. As Hansen explained, it was very important to tag all your victims so that when the body-counters came in they could attribute the right count toward your K.Q. Each man was assigned a Kill Quota of 1000. After that his active-duty assignment was terminated.
Private George Hansen already had 1047 on his K.Q. count, and he needed fifty-three more. His K.Q. had been raised by 100 as a disciplinary measure. When tagging the bodies, Hansen suggested they put both of their numbers on each body. That way the body-counters would total them and split the count between them.
MacCarter found that marking the bodies was a relatively easy job if he avoided looking at the faces. But some of them couldn’t be ignored. One face, the face of a baby, was undamaged. The trouble was, the head had been severed from the body. The sight of it stirred his guts. He stopped, steadied himself by leaning on his rifle and, hunched over, let the sour vomit come out.
Hansen looked up from his marking, released a knowing smile.
It had been a good day, he felt. The count might be fifty or sixty, which would be twenty-five or thirty for him. The kid had been all right too, once he’d gotten into it.
The temporary, prefabricated barracks were reasonably comfortable, with radiant heating, lights, clean chemical toilets and folding beds. This all moved in the cargo choppers when the weather was good or, as now, in the trucks. Generators supplied adequate electrical power, and the processed food was plentiful.
Private George Hansen was lying propped up on his bed watching a videocomic on a portable set. At the far end of the room a poker game was in progress. MacCarter sat idly on the bed next to Hansen’s, looking forlorn.
“Why don’t you call your wife?” suggested Hansen. “You’re married, aren’t you?”
“Yes,” said Ken, “but…” His thin, boyish face, topped with curly, reddish-brown hair, lighted with eagerness. “You mean I can call my wife from here?”
“Personnel on active duty may exercise the prerogative of making not more than two videocalls per week,” read Hansen from an operations manual. “It’s all in the book. Only who gets a chance to read that crap?” Every few days they handed you a supplement. He tossed the book to the floor, got up.
“I’ll walk over to the Com shack with you,” Hansen volunteered.
“You’re not married, are you, George?” Ken asked, as they walked. It was the first time he had called Hansen by his first name, which he pronounced a bit hesitantly.
The videophones at the Communications post were equipped to receive picture transmissions, via satellite, from the States, but at this end they were able to send only voice transmissions.
“They’re not supposed to know we’re in India,” said Hansen. “They’ll bleep you if you mention it.”
When Nancy’s soft, tired face appeared, Ken felt a deep stab of nostalgic homesickness. He wished he were able to reach out and touch her, feel the grainy texture of her dark, black hair. She wore a loose yellow housedress, open at the throat. Not picking up a picture, she was tapping the receiver with agitation. Anonymous videophone calls could really bug a person.
“It’s me, honey,” Ken repeated.
“Ken?”
“There’s no way to send the picture from here, Nancy, but I can see you. You look beautiful.”
Hansen watched with interest. “She’s not bad, your wife.”
“Thanks. Wait’ll you see my boy.”
&n
bsp; Suddenly the face of an angry, mewling infant being held by two thin, feminine hands filled the screen. His open mouth released his cries of distress at being awakened.
“Can you see him?” Nancy yelled.
“Yes, I can see him. He’s really getting big. What do you think of that, Hansen?”
Hansen nodded. “Nice baby. What can you say about a baby?”
“Who are you talking to, Ken?”
“A buddy. George Hansen. He’s from Wisconsin. Say hello, George.”
Hansen said hello, then left to allow them to relay their kisses in private.
In the Com shack lounge, Hansen found Farley helping himself to a cup of coffee from the large aluminum percolater. They nodded to each other. Ken MacCarter came in a moment later.
Farley looked directly at him, switched his coffee to his left hand, reached for a handshake to show he held no ill feeling over the morning incident. “MacCarter.”
“Yeah,” muttered Ken, clasping the hand. He noticed a bandage on Farley’s wrist. “Look, I’m sorry about…”
Farley waved aside the apology. “Forget it. Things like that happen. I understand what you’re going through, son. Even some people back home think that taking pictures of this operation, showing the blood and death, isn’t right.”
Hansen interjected, “Well, it isn’t. Why is it necessary to show these things on television?”
Farley took a sip of coffee, rinsed his teeth with it. “These films are a social document, not only for now, but for generations to be born. Sure it’s a dirty business, but don’t you see, unless people are told the cold, hard facts, see the chaos, it could happen to us. Seeing the stark effects of overpopulation, it’s a valuable lesson.” Farley tossed the paper cup into the trash container. “You boys want to see what you did today?” He looked at Ken. “The film wasn’t destroyed. In fact, it’s quite good.” He hitched up his pants. “Come along, I’ll show it to you.”
There Will Be War Volume IV Page 21