I begin to regard the death and mangling of a couple of thousand men as a small affair, a kind of morning dash—and it may be well that we become so hardened.
—William Tecumseh Sherman
The blast of the horn shattered Jason's light sleep.
He hadn't wanted to sleep, but there wasn't anything else to do until some opportunity to do something constructive presented itself.
Hervian's squad was billeted with the rest of the company in one of the larger Mel feasting lodges; even so, it was cramped. The arch-framed building was really meant to serve as a place for an extended family of perhaps fifty to cook, eat, and drink in close quarters; there was barely enough room for the hundred-plus sleeping places. If a quarter of the company wasn't always on duty, it would have been like being back on shipboard, but at least they hadn't gone to some sort of hot-bed system here.
It also stank. Of shit, piss, sweat, and fear.
His campaign of terror was having an effect; the mercenaries huddled together like a bunch of sheep on a cold night.
The horn sounded again, as Jason sat upright with a start, the almost motionless snoring bodies around him transforming into a flurry of motion.
"The horn! They got him—"
"Just give me my gun. It may be a false alarm—"
"—or it could be some trick by that murdering pig."
"Don't start counting your bonus money until—"
"Get yer foot off my scabbard, you pocked bastard, or I'll feed you your balls—"
A lantern flared, bright, at the entrance to the lodge.
The loud basso voice of Ahod Channar, the company's commander, boomed through the noise. "Silence, everyone," the slaver shouted, punctuating his words with a thump of his staff against the entrance arch. "We have all heard the horn. It may mean that we are finished here, or it may mean that things are just starting. I want everyone up and awake. I want the weapons loaded, and all outside right now; we'll wait for information and orders before doing anything else."
Pelius, who had apparently slept fully dressed, hefted his rifle and leaned over toward Jason, who was busy strapping on his swordbelt. "Which means that we're as disorganized as usual," he whispered. "I bet we don't get fed until morning."
Pelius had the usual mercenary's primary and continuing concern: his stomach. The tall, lanky man always seemed to feel he was at least two meals behind.
To give credit to Channar, Jason had noticed his preoccupation with getting his men fed at frequent intervals. Jason suspected that Ahrmin didn't care any more for the bellies of his hired mercenaries than for their necks; quite probably all there was of the cripple's plan was to let Karl hack the hired hands to bits until Ahrmin's hunters got lucky and brought their man down.
"I bet we don't get fed until morning," Pelius repeated. "What do you think?"
"I don't know," Jason said, cursing himself as his voice trembled, then realizing that a demonstration of fear wasn't going to blow his cover; he was supposed to be scared.
"How about ammo and food?" a voice cried out. "I've only got the one flask—"
"Silence, I said!" Ahod Channar considered it for a moment. "Kakkum—take your squad, go to the armory, and retrieve an additional basic load for each man. As for food . . . Hervian, since your squad has been so damn talkative, you can help the cook build up the fire and bring food to the company."
* * *
Parts of the forest had been canopied over too thoroughly for even Walter Slovotsky's extraordinary—for a human—night vision to cope with, but Ahira's darksight was able to pierce the gloom, leading him down paths that Slovotsky could barely feel.
Even under these limited circumstances, for Ahira to be better than he was like somebody else fitting better into his clothes, or exciting Kirah more in bed than he could.
Walter Slovotsky was amused at how much he found that he really didn't like the feeling. On a night skulk, he was supposed to be unequaled, much less unsurpassed. He shook his head. Oh, what fools these mortals be, he thought, including me. He could almost have laughed; Walter was always his own best audience.
As the trees thinned, the path lightened ahead of them, black touched with gray.
Indicating with a touch that Ahira should lag behind, Slovotsky took the lead. Now, this was definitely his kind of thing. It wouldn't be possible to move through the underbrush without making a sound, but the paths were a different matter. The slavers would post a guard on all even theoretically possible approaches to the camp, even a too-dark path.
Where was the guard? That was the question. And were there many backups? Karl's little war of nerves with the slavers would have them all on edge.
Walter Slovotsky crept forward, looking and listening.
A single clear note sounded through the night. There were a few seconds of silence, and then it sounded again.
Up ahead, rough voices talked in hushed tones.
"You heard the horn. It's supposed to mean that they have him. We'd better get back to camp—"
"We can stay here on guard until we're relieved, or Ahrmin will feed us our fingers. And that isn't a figure of speech. Now shut up."
Karl captured? Maybe that's what the horn was supposed to mean, and maybe it meant something entirely different. Ahira's fingers touched his wrist; Walter knelt so the dwarf could whisper to him.
Ahira's breath was warm on his ear. "I think we continue. You?"
Slovotsky didn't like any of this. But following through with their part of the plan had to make sense, and God help them all if Bren and Aeia, or Karl, Tennetty, and Ganness, weren't able to do their jobs.
"Yeah," Slovotsky whispered. He pulled a pair of garrotes from his pouch, handing one to Ahira, hefting the other himself. "We continue."
Maybe his feeding you your fingers isn't a figure of speech, but neither is "I'll choke you to death."
* * *
The camp was a maze of activity, save for Ahrmin's tent and the brothel cabin. Those two were quiet, the slaves apparently secured, only a single guard outside. And he, like everyone else, was watching the approaches to the village, not worrying about his charges.
Next to Jason, by the now-roaring cookfire, Hervian shook his head, his face sweaty in the light of the built-up cooking fire. "I don't see how we can serve stew," he said, looking at the big iron pot. "We'd have to collect all the bowls, spoon it out, then see that the bowls got back to their owners."
It was a different kind of organization than Home used, more primitive, less efficient. On a Home raiding team, there would be warriors responsible for cooking and serving food and seeing that bowls and eating utensils were gathered up and washed. Here, although there was a central cooking fire and a hired cook, serving was a bit of every-man-for-himself.
"Then it will have to be bread and ham," Doria said, her face dry, unsweaty. She gestured at the rough stone oven. "The bread's in there; you can hand it out." She looked from one to the other. "Taren, you can help me cut the ham," she said, lifting a lantern and walking into the darkness of the small hut that was the camp's larder.
"You, too, Vikat," Hervian said, loading lanky Pelius' arms with the hot, round, flat loaves of brown bread. "Help the two of them."
Vikat led the way inside.
Hanging from ropes suspended from an arching bamboo framing member were a dozen hams, as well as long brown ropes of braided strips of jerked beef.
One of the hams had been carved almost to the bone. Doria took up a butcher's knife and seemed to consider it for a moment before moving to the next one and scraping at the green mold that encased it.
"Hurry up, old woman," Vikat said. "We don't have all night—fighting could break out at any time."
Doria raised a finger to her lips as she glanced toward the doorway, and then nodded at Jason. "Then give me a hand. Now."
Now? he thought.
She nodded. "Definitely now."
But . . . he set his rifle down and approached Vikat from the rear.
Walter Slovotsky had once shown him the grip, and Valeran had vouched for its usefulness; Jason snaked his left arm around the slaver's throat and locked his right arm against the back of Vikat's neck, squeezing before Vikat could utter a sound, only relaxing his grip well after he'd slid the other to the ground, although Vikat went limp almost instantly.
Jason used a strand of rawhide to tie Vikat's thumbs tightly together behind his back while Doria gagged him.
"He could choke on that," Jason whispered.
"So?" Doria looked at him from an impassive, flat face. "When Ahrmin leaves his lodge, he's going to cross the doorway. Just hope that that's soon, before somebody notices that the boy here is missing."
"But—" But what? But Vikat, like Hervian, had treated Jason well? Did that matter? Didn't that have to matter?
He looked down at the form of the man he had spent days on patrol with, eating with, even laughing with. Vikat was sort of a friend; Jason couldn't just slaughter him like a pig.
"You can object to killing slavers after you've been raped by one, little boy," Doria said, her voice, although pitched low, sharp and clear. "No. After a dozen have taken their turns on you."
He turned.
The guise of an overweight old woman was gone; Doria stood next to him in her white robes. There was a majestic quality in her bearing as she drew herself up straight; it was the carriage of someone who proudly endured pressure beyond what she had thought she could.
"Doria—"
"Come here." She knelt next to a pile of rags in the corner of the tent and produced Jason's rifle, pistol, and the leather pouch containing his powder horn and other shooting supplies. "Quickly now, load. You won't have a second chance, and you're not going to be as accurate with a slaver rifle."
Across the cooking fire from the larder, Felius, the larger of Ahrmin's blocky bodyguards, was standing in front of the large lodge, his rifle held in front of him, shadows flickering across his face in the firelight.
As he tipped a measured load down the rifle's barrel and then tamped it down, Jason realized with a shock that it had been only a few minutes since the alarm had sounded. Ahrmin was probably still gathering his wits, deciding what kind of patrol to send out to bring in the hunters' catch.
Or, probably, deciding if it was a Karl Cullinane trap.
He might well have caught the hunters, Jason realized as he wrapped a ball in a hastily cut spit patch, then rammed it home, reflexively replacing his ramrod in its slot underneath the rifle. If he did, he might well force one to give the success signal, and decoy some slavers into a trap before running and striking again later.
Please, Father, let it be so.
If not, everything rested on Jason's shoulders. Those shoulders had already proved far too weak.
Jason primed the pan, then snapped it shut and turned to load his pistols, going by touch, his eyes on the compound beyond.
Ahrmin's other bodyguard emerged from the lodge, a horn held in his hands. He blew a staccato question into the night, and was immediately answered by three pure, clear notes.
The man raised his fist and shook it over his head as he shouted in triumph, "We have him! We have him!"
Ahrmin emerged from his cabin and stepped into the firelight.
Before, Jason had been surprised at how innocuous Ahrmin had seemed: a crippled little man, huddling in his slaver's robes.
Now, he seemed to gain bulk and strength as he drew himself up straight in the firelight and turned to face the company.
Lit by the raging central campfire, his face was demonic; his single eye seemed to burn with an inner fire.
"Brothers, friends, and companions," Ahrmin called out, his voice carrying farther, more powerfully than it had any right to. "We have triumphed. That is Chuzet's horn, and the note is too clear, too calm, the signal coming too quickly for me to believe that he is acting under threat. We will send out—"
"Now!" Doria hissed. "Shoot him now!"
Only one pistol was loaded; Jason cocked it and set it on the ground, then took up his rifle, momentarily running his hand down the smooth stock. He put his thumb on the brass hammer and pulled it back, cocking the piece.
Jason brought the rifle up and caught Ahrmin in his sights.
The crippled slaver seemed to wrap himself in power as Jason stood there, a darkness creeping in from the edges of his vision as the world seemed narrowed to just Ahrmin.
Half supported by his bodyguard, Ahrmin turned the remains of the right side of his face toward Jason.
"Now, Jason," Doria hissed.
All sound was gone. All sight, except for that face. It would have to be a head shot. Jason would have to kill Ahrmin with a single shot, before anyone could get healing draughts to him.
Ahrmin was dead. The warrant was signed and sealed. All Jason had to do was pull back on the trigger.
But his index finger wouldn't move. It was the same thing that had happened in the forests outside of Wehnest: Time lost its forward motion, and froze.
Except that this time, the frozen time was wrapped only around Jason; the rest of the universe seemed to move faster, robbing him of his chance. As he crouched there, unmoving, Ahrmin finished his oration and began to move away.
I can't do it.
His finger wouldn't move. His father's life depended on killing Ahrmin now, but something had robbed Jason of his will.
Jason swallowed, hard.
There was a rustling at the door, and Hervian stepped inside. "What's going—" He caught himself as he spotted Vikat's bound form, motionless in the corner.
Hervian reached for his sword, all the while shouting, "Traitors! Assassins in the larder!"
No. Not this time. I won't fail.
"Not this time."
Jason Cullinane gritted his jaw tightly, and he bent time to his will. As though he had seconds, minutes, hours, in which to shoot, Jason carefully, slowly, gently squeezed the trigger, keeping Ahrmin in his sights.
The hammer fell, snapping sparks into the night. There was a bang that he felt more than heard, and a cloud of acrid smoke.
Ahrmin's head exploded. Brains splattered onto his bodyguard's chest, white curds among the red.
It felt like he was moving in slow motion as Jason Cullinane dropped his rifle and tried to roll away from Hervian's lunge, sure that he wouldn't make it.
* * *
When the second note sounded, Walter Slovotsky and Ahira were standing over the bodies of the guards, trying to decide what to do. Walter couldn't see the camp, and trying to creep closer was not only not part of the plan, it was almost certain suicide.
Only one thing made any kind of sense: start the attack, then get the hell back to the beach and see if they could be of some sort of use.
Slovotsky laid their dozen bombs on the ground in front of him. The brightness that showed where the camp was was just too far away for him to reach.
"I don't have that good a pitching arm."
The dwarf smiled, his white teeth shining in the darkness. "You light 'em, I'll throw them."
Slovotsky struck the tip of one of the igniters, and as it sputtered into flame, laid the stick firmly in the dwarf's palm.
Ahira threw it sputtering off into the night.
The night exploded into fire and screams.
"Next."
* * *
Jason rolled to one side, the tip of Hervian's sword taking him high in the left arm.
The pain was dazzling, but his right hand seemed to have a mind of its own; it clawed at the pistol on the ground, bringing it up, the thumb pulling the hammer back, the finger curling around the trigger, jerking, as the world outside the hut exploded into a horrid din and orange fire.
He never knew where the shot went, except that it must have gone wide, but the edge of the muzzle blast must have caught Hervian in the eyes; the slaver screamed, dropped his sword, and clapped his hands to his face.
Jason dropped his pistol, and scooping up Hervian's sword, clumsily set the point against the slaver's chest and rammed it hilt-deep before pushing the dying slaver to one side.
Another explosion sounded outside the hut, this one turning the cooking fire into a shower of sparks, fire, and stone, some of which pierced the flimsy sides of the hut.
A stone tinged off Doria's robes, knocking her down; what felt like a horse's kick caught Jason in the side. Two ribs broke with an awful snap. He tried to get to his feet, but pieces of bone in his chest moved as if of their own volition, in sharp, horrid counterpoint to the torment of the gash in his left arm.
Grabbing his good arm, Doria helped him to his feet and pulled him from the hut.
Another explosion rocked the camp. Some men tried to hide from the bombs, while others fired their guns off into the night, trying to shoot whoever was attacking them.
"We've got to get down to the beach," Doria said. "Now."
Leaning on Doria, Jason Cullinane limped off into the night.
* * *
When the first explosion roared, somewhere far off in the night, Karl Cullinane moved. Like a soccer player picking up a ball after practice, Karl used his toes to scoop the bomb at his feet into the air, then caught it, rolling away, striking the igniter on his belt as he did, then throwing the bomb, immediately realizing that his adrenaline rush had betrayed him; he'd thrown it too far.
He rolled to his feet and reached for his bowie.
The first crossbow bolt caught him in the right shoulder, sending his knife falling from nerveless fingers; the second slammed into his right thigh, knocking his leg out from underneath him, slamming him to the sand.
Karl Cullinane tried to breathe, but couldn't. He couldn't even force his feet under him.
I will not die on my knees.
As the slavers went for cover, the bomb went off behind them—too far behind them—shattering the night into fire, barely knocking them off their feet.
From the corner of his eye, Karl could see that Ganness, too, was down, must have been stunned.
The sky behind Karl lit up as the charges Aeia and Bren had placed aboard the slaver ship went off.
Good kids. The rest is mine.
Ignoring the agony from the crossbow bolts in his shoulder and thigh, Karl crawled to the nearest slaver, falling over on his side as he fastened his hand on the man's throat.
His good hand. His left hand, which only had a thumb and forefinger left. His right side was useless; this would have to be enough. He squeezed, hard, harder, letting the universe narrow to his thumb, his forefinger, and the slaver's throat.
Cartilage and flesh tore wetly between his finger and thumb; the slaver died with an awful liquid gurgling.
Beyond the offshore island, yet another pair of explosions rocked the night.
The other man rose, a dagger gleaming brightly in the starlight, but fell back as a gunshot rang out, shattering his face into a bloody pulp.
Karl turned his head. Half propped up by Ganness, Tennetty was holding an open bottle of healing draughts in one hand, a smoking pistol in the other. She dropped the pistol, groaning as she fastened two trembling hands around the crossbow bolt that projected from her side.
She screamed as she jerked at the crossbow bolt in her side. The bottle fell from her fingers, spilling too much of the precious stuff into the sands before she could snatch it up.
She then took another swig of the healing draughts, then pulled again. This time, the bolt came free, its wooden shaft dark with her blood.
Tennetty crabbed herself over to Karl and forced the bottle between his lips with one hand while she fastened the other on the fletching of the bolt in his shoulder.
White-hot fire shot through him as she pulled the crossbow bolt from his flesh, and then yanked three times, three separate, awful spasms of agony, to pull the other from his thigh.
The sickly-sweet liquid dulled the pain, bringing strength back to his vague limbs, letting him breathe again, pushing away the darkness at the edges of his vision.
Tennetty smiled weakly, while Ganness vomited on the sands.
"Stop congratulating yourself," Karl said, as he lay on the sand, gasping for breath. He felt at the wound in his shoulder and at the one in his thigh. Not good. Both wounds had closed, but that was all. There just wasn't enough left of the healing draughts to bring him back to full health, to finish the healing process. His wounds were closed, but he was dead tired, barely able to move.
The hole in Tennetty's side was a bit better, maybe, but not much.
"Reload," he gasped. "Reload." Aiea and Bren would be back on the beach in a few minutes, and they'd need cover.
* * *
"Bad news, Jimmy—very bad." Slovotsky shook his head. "They've reformed and they're heading out the wrong way."
"Wrong way?" Ahira hefted his axe. "The other path? Shit."
Slovotsky nodded. Things were quickly going to hell. Karl was busy preparing an ambush on the path that led most directly down to the beach, but Ahrmin, or whoever was in charge, was leading the slavers down another path toward the beach.
It would bring them down to the beach west of where the others were.
Which wasn't all bad, in and of itself. Karl and the rest would be between the slavers and Ganness' ship. But the plan had been to blow up the slavers while they were crowded together on a trail. Karl didn't have sufficient explosives or manpower to stop more than a hundred slavers advancing in the open; the slavers would spread out and fight a rifle duel from a distance. A duel that they would win, eventually.
Ahira nodded. "Let's get back down to the beach."
As he led Slovotsky down the path, Slovotsky caught a flash of white in the night at a momentary break in the trees overhead.
A slaver limped along, supported by a woman in white robes.
Walter reached for a knife, only to let his hand drop. It wasn't a slaver.
"Jason, Doria," he breathed.
They turned about, Jason moving away from Doria to draw his sword, his eyes widening when he saw who it was.
The boy was badly hurt, Walter realized, as he took over the task of supporting him, while the dwarf and the cleric embraced silently.
There was little that could be done. The bottle of healing draughts was back at the beach with Karl; Walter had only a tiny flask of the precious stuff in his pouch.
He drew the flask, pulled the cork, and tilted it between Jason's lips. "Let's move it, people. We got troubles."