Flying the Storm

24.





The Hill Tribes

Elias was watching the man across the fire closely. He knew he had understood the proposition. These men, though they spoke a strange mix of Georgian and Armenian, still seemed to understand both well. The man grunted finally, and looked at the other two chieftains gathered around the fire. They nodded back.

“Why don’t we just kill him and take it?” demanded a voice behind the flames, one of the tribesmen. Some of the others grumbled agreement.

Maybe they hadn’t understood it after all. Elias smiled and spoke as if teaching a small child. “Because then, you will have no gold. I have little of value on my person, but the man in that convoy is worth very much. You need me, because without me, he is worthless. I will pay you a share of the bounty, and you can keep anything you find in the convoy.”

“That convoy is big,” said the first chieftain. “We do not normally raid the big ones. There is too much risk, too many guns. There will be deaths.”

Elias used his best shocked expression. “But you are the Guns of Kazreti!” He looked at the other chieftains. “The Marked Men, and the Ravagers of Kvemo Bolnisi! What is a single convoy to you? Are you afraid?”

The chieftains bristled at this. “We are not afraid,” growled one of them. “The Guns of Kazreti will take this convoy, even without these milk-drinking cowards.” He gestured at the other chieftains. There was laughter and shouting from the tribesmen in the shadows.

Elias knew he was winning. The other chieftains swiftly declared their agreement to Elias’ proposal.

Elias stood then, waving the tribesmen quiet. “Then we must leave soon, to get ahead of the convoy!”

“Just like all the other convoys, they do not travel by night - my scouts report,” said the chieftain of the Guns. “The convoy will be more vulnerable in the day. At night, they pull into a ring and put guards out. We must take them while they are on the move, strung out in a line.”

Elias nodded. He, of course, knew this. Sometimes though, it was necessary to let people reach the correct conclusion on their own. The highway through the hills was slow going, he knew. Night-time travel was dangerous and even slower, so most convoys would stop. These bandits knew the back roads in the hills and would have little trouble getting ahead of the convoy. Then it was just a matter of timing and violence.

As for Elias, he could take a back seat and spectate for the most part. Of course, he’d have to make sure that nobody killed the Scot. That might be troublesome. He would have to stress that point to the chieftains. The westerner had to be taken alive.

He left the fireside and the arguments of the tribesmen, returning to his vehicle. The flatbed’s load of chickens had been useful for buying his way into an audience with the hill tribes, but he was sure the smell was lingering in his clothes. Certainly, the previous owner’s blood would have been easier to get out of the seats.

Devrim was sitting in the passenger seat as Elias climbed in. The battered Azeri had somehow survived the ordeal at Ashtarak, when not one of the Gilgamesh’s men had, cowering in a hole by the roadside as the morning went from bad to worse. If Elias was honest, he wasn’t sure why he was keeping the man around. In his state, with cracked ribs and a severely swollen face, he wasn’t much use to anybody. It might have been a mercy if Elias had put a bullet in his skull at the old fortress, but he found he was getting used to having the wretch around. Funny, Elias didn’t normally like company.

“What did they say?” asked Devrim.

“Exactly what I wanted them to say,” replied Elias.

Devrim nodded, his fluid-impaired gaze returning to the darkness outside the truck. Then, the shouts and laughter getting louder, the first engines ignited. Headlights flicked on and shadowy figures climbed aboard their vehicles. A few shots cracked up into the night sky.

The hill tribes were moving out.