The Heretic (General)

6

Abel and Rostov moved toward the boy at the same instant, but Abel got there first. Abel realized that this wasn’t because he was faster. No, the Blaskoye had moved to snatch not the boy, but the wooden platter which had moments before held a stack of meat.

A shield for arrows, thought Abel. He adapts quickly.

For a moment their eyes met, Abel’s and Rostov’s, and, though the other said nothing, Abel was as sure of the other’s thought as he was of the voices of Center and Raj. He was sure, because he had experienced exactly the same thought, and with it, a moment of complete understanding.

One day, I will kill you.

Then the Blaskoye snatched the wooden platter away, and Abel pulled the child toward himself.

He had brought twenty Scouts with him on the trail of Gaspar and, donning the Blaskoye garments they’d come prepared with, had entered the oasis encampment and managed to follow the Remlap chief though the settlement undetected. It had not been difficult to blend in, since Awul-alwaha had become a stew of heretofore opposed Redlander tribes. The tents were as varied as the dress. Even if the others had been declared Blaskoye or this new species of tribe, the Redlander, they had not gotten new clothing or new tent-cloth. So they had answered the summons of their new masters bringing what they possessed.

Trailing Gaspar had been difficult, but not the hardest tracking job he or the Scouts had undertaken by far. Like many Redlanders Abel encountered, Gaspar was not as good at fooling Scouts and covering his tracks as he believed himself to be. The desert took marks well, and, once written in scuffed ground or oddly broken twig, those telltales tended to last a long time. The Scouts had often used Redlander arrogance in this regard against them. Many others who had thought the soft Farmer Scouts incapable of tracking them had met their fates in surprised astonishment and disbelief. Abel’s greatest challenge had been finding a place to hold the donts, since he could not take them into the oasis proper. But Awul-alwaha had solved the problem for him, in a manner of speaking, for there were corrals already built ringing the encampment. These had probably been built by incoming warrior bands as temporary structures for donts and daks while they established more permanent quarters. Most were occupied, but some were vacant. Abel had left his Scouts’ donts in one of these. He tried to select the one closest in as possible. He’d left behind a guard of two to watch over them, and to keep them dressed and ready. He and the rest of the Scouts followed Gaspar into the encampment. Gaspar was feeling his way, moving slowly, and Abel and his men had not had any trouble catching up with him and shadowing him once again.

Then, when he’d seen the chief slash his way into the smaller tent attached to the enormous central tent, he’d known this was the final destination.

Abel’s two squads had scaled the sides of the structure from the outside, then infiltrated through the vents in the tent-cloth where roof met rounded tent walls. These vents had a curtain of fabric draping before them to discourage flitters and insectoids from getting in, and the flaps had concealed the Scouts stationed in the vent openings.

If they’d been noticed climbing the outside of the tent, no one had raised an alarm. Perhaps they were taken to be workers, repairing wind or sun damage. Perhaps this had been aided by the fact that each Scout had stopped and examined the ropes and stakes holding the tent erect just before they began their accent. Several of them were observed to have bent down to test the knots for weakness, one even producing a knife with which to probe the fibers of the rope here and there, no doubt for safety’s sake.

It helped that on the ascent, their muskets weren’t showing, although bows and arrows were. Abel had ordered them to cover the rifles strapped across their backs beneath their Blaskoye robes, and to arm themselves with bows and arrows when in position. He wanted repetitive firepower. Attempting to reload a musket muzzle while balancing on a bit of fabric was a task beyond even most Scouts.

Meanwhile Abel and Kruso had entered through the front door. When the doorguard questioned them, Kruso had put on his best South Redland’s accent and claimed they were Flanagans, the sea-coast scavengers feared by all in the Delta provinces, come in answer to the Blaskoye call to arms. Since no one had ever seen a Flanagan, they were shown through.

The real lapse in security is the obvious Blaskoye belief that no one from the Valley could survive a trip to Awul-alwaha, said Raj, much less that some Valleyman could walk right into town and request an audience with the great sheik himself. This will probably be the last time they ever make that mistake, however.

They’re letting me walk in with my rifle, Abel thought. This Rostov is either incredibly brave or incredibly stupid.

It is a calculated gambit to shore up allegiance with so many recently conquered tribes, said Center. As we have witnessed, Rostov literally unmans those who resist. So he allows those who remain the illusion of self-determination, at least about their persons.

So they had infiltrated.

When he’d seen he had a clear shot, he’d considered shooting Rostov first, but he was not close enough to identify the girl for certain. He calculated that as soon as Rostov fell, pandemonium was likely to break loose. He needed that extra moment to be sure he had the right slave girl in sight. His girl.

So he’d gone for the nearby men-at-arms. Besides, they held rifles, and Rostov had only a pistol stuck into his belt—beside that gleaming silver knife.

One day, perhaps soon, I will regret not immediately killing Rostov, Abel thought, even as he pulled the trigger and the first guard fell.

Patterns indicate a martial buildup due to internal population pressures and intertribal rivalries resulting from uneven black-market trading between Cascade and Progar, Center said. Zentrum’s plans will take into account the loss of one leader, however valuable.

Center thinks you shoot down one Rostov, another will pop up in short order due to the powder-keg situation, Raj said. He may be correct on that score, but I, too, wish you could have taken the shot. Hang the girl.

No.

All right, Raj replied. You’ve got the girl caught up in a fate she never asked for now. The least you can do is take her and run!

The girl was nine, tall for her age. She was mostly skin and bones, however, as Abel discovered when he lifted her up and threw her across his shoulder. At first she resisted, until he said to her in Landish, “Stop now. You are Loreilei?”

A whispered “Yes.”

“I am taking you back to your family.” Instantly, she went still and grabbed tightly to his robes. Her breathing increased to rapid gasps, but she made no other sound.

Abel glanced back at Rostov. He was holding the plate by one side and over his head to fend off arrows. Two had already lodged in the wood’s exterior. With his other hand, he was aiming his pistol straight at Abel.

He’s got me dead to rights.

Then a musket butt crashed across the side of Rostov’s head, taking him and the platter like a club. The pistol cracked, smoked, and fired, but the shot was spent into the floor. Rostov stumbled, then raised the plate to ward off another blow.

It was Kruso, using his fired musket as a bludgeon.

“Leave off,” shouted Abel. “Take the boy and go!”

Kruso instantly obeyed, pulling up the boy like a sack of meal and holding him under one arm. They sprinted toward the entrance.

The doorguard, so easy to pass on the way in with a bit of subterfuge, were in no mood to let them out again. But five arrows found the two men and both were screaming and cursing as Abel and Kruso barreled between them. The entrance to the sheik’s tent lay not ten paces before them now. Abel risked a glance back.

Rostov was right behind them, his gleaming chrome knife in his hand. Trailing the sheik was Gaspar. The chief had found the strength to lift himself up and follow after, as if pulled by a magnetism he could not resist.

And behind Rostov were the Blaskoye, kinsmen by the look of their raiment. They had, it seemed, suddenly realized that their leader was under attack and were swarming to the offensive behind him.

“Now!” Abel shouted into the upper reaches of the tent in Landish. “Away!”

The Scouts disappeared from the vent holes and, Abel knew, had grabbed portions of tent fabric and were sliding down the side. There they would finish the work they’d begun before they ascended. Each went to the nearest anchoring stake to find the partially sawn rope that held tension on the enormous structure and complete the task of severing that rope entirely.

Even as Abel turned back to spring for the entrance and daylight, he saw the sides of the structure begin to sag. And when he burst through to outside, it was falling all around him, falling down upon the contingent of Blaskoye who were on the heels of Rostov.

He was in the dust of the pathway in front of the tent.

“Dashian!”

The scream came from behind him, and he spun around as Rostov burst from the tent. He quickly put the girl down, shoved her behind him, and turned to face the Blaskoye.

But Rostov stopped in his tracks, as if he’d run into an invisible wall.

What the hell?

Risk a quick look behind you, lad, said Raj, laughter in his voice.

Abel did so. His twenty Scouts were lined up with drawn muskets, each muzzle aimed at the heart of the Blaskoye.

Then Gaspar ran past Rostov and, as a man might snatch an insectoid from the air, Rostov reached out and snared the Remlap chief by the neck and yanked him back and to his side. Within a split second, he had his knife at Gaspar’s throat.

“Papa!” A small loud voice from nearby, and the slave boy was struggling in Kruso’s grasp and had broken free toward his father and the Blaskoye.

Rostov cut Gaspar’s throat with a practiced brutality and shoved the still stumbling man toward the approaching boy. Meanwhile, the Blaskoye ran for cover.

“Fire!” Abel yelled.

It was just enough distraction.

A hail of balls kicked up the dust and followed Rostov, but no one had tracked him quickly enough, and he was gone before any could reload.

Gone to get reinforcements, said Raj. Time to leave.

“Stay here,” Abel said to the girl behind him. He and Kruso darted out to the slave boy, who was standing over his father. Gaspar lay face up, his neck oozing. The boy was attempting the impossible task of staunching the femoral bleeding.

“Come tha away, youngen,” Kruso said gently. But his hand was firm as he pulled the boy back and led him toward the Scouts. Abel gazed down at the Remlap chief a moment longer. There was the trace of a smile lingering on his face. Perhaps his last sight had been the boy. Perhaps not.

Abel turned to the Scouts. “Home,” he said. He picked up the girl again. His men, now reloaded, made their way at a fast trot out of the encampment, back to the edge of the desert and to the corral where the donts awaited them.

There was no question of throwing off pursuit. This was going to be a race. He hoped his other orders had been obeyed. They would find out soon enough.

They rode west. For the first quarter-watch, he had the donts running on two legs, but the creatures could not sustain such a pace, and eventually he ordered everyone to a more endurable gallop.

He’d been right about the pursuit. Within a half watch, a glance behind revealed a cloud of dust rising on the horizon—a large one, at that. Abel estimated it would take at least a hundred riders to kick up such a fury of redness.

And so it went for two days of hard riding. They stopped only to water the donts, and then only to let them slurp at soaked sponges, nothing more. Abel slept in the saddle, and had to tie the girl to his back at points so that she could slumber and not fall off. They traveled by day and by night. There was no question of a pause, a rest. Not yet.

Then Abel saw the landmark he was looking for, a great hill of rounded stone in the distance, and headed toward it. This was where they got to find out if Weldletter’s cartography was going to prove crucial or get them all killed. He had an accurate memory of every place the Scouts had passed, thanks to Center, but the remainder of the Scouts did not. And the ones he’d left behind in pursuit of Gaspar did not have him to guide them to the rendezvous point.

All they had was Weldletter’s map.

Because, of course, the map of the Redlands they’d allowed Gaspar to take was a forgery. Accurate enough in its broad outline, but completely misleading when you got down to the details.

As to the map of the Land itself that Gaspar had stolen—that one hadn’t been a misleading copy at all. It was an out-and-out fake. He and Weldletter had spent some enjoyable moments coming up with believable troop numbers and fortification figures that he’d then had Weldletter pen to the papyrus. Would the Blaskoye detect the ploy? In some ways, it didn’t matter. Both fake maps had served their immediate and most important purpose: bait for one who was bait himself, but hadn’t known it.

Maybe somewhere inside, Gaspar did, Abel thought, and yet couldn’t help himself.

To the left up ahead, said Center. Between those red sandstone structures lies the entrance to the canyon.

Soon the donts were off sand and onto the stones of a dry wash, their horn-coated feet clattering as the Scouts passed. The walls of the canyon quickly rose on either side of them and soon became cliffs a fieldmarch high. It was past noon, and the canyon was in shadow. This was at least relief from the unremitting sun.

The going became narrower and the donts were huffing and puffing at the steep upward climb. It was almost, but not quite, beyond them—especially with their Scouts urging them on with frenetic intensity. The animals were beginning to fail, however. Abel knew they must rest soon or most of the mounts, as desert-tough as they were, would die. He was quite willing to drive them until it killed them if he had to, but to do so would leave his men stranded here, only a quarter of the way back home.

Then he saw it. A mirror flash. Kruso immediately flashed back. An exchange of silent conversation followed.

They had made it. The rendezvous had succeeded. They rode onward. The path narrowed to the point that they must proceed single file. Sandstone scraped against his protruding legs and might have taken the skin and more had it not been for his leg wraps. Here was the reason they were part of the Scout uniform, the reason for all the snap uniform inspections he’d endured in his youth.

Steeper, and the donts were on two legs by necessity in order to climb the path. Then, to his right, he saw the side path, the trail up a rivulet that his own memory and the maps they’d made said was dont-passable. It was, nonetheless, very steep, and he bade the girl, who was only semi-conscious now, to wake up as best she could and hold on tight. To her credit, he felt her grip tighten around his waist.

And after what seemed an interminable scramble, they emerged on the rim. They were out.

There was Weldletter, and beside him were Abel’s sergeants, the leaders of the squads he’d left behind to pursue Gaspar. One of them, a crusty Ingresman named Maday, he’d left in charge; and it was Maday who reported. His accent was thick, but he did not choose to always speak in the patois as did Kruso.

“Charges are in place, sir,” Maday reported.

“Did you follow Weldletter’s instructions?”

“We did,” said Maday. “Packed every map case full of powder. Maps are going to be ruined, I’m afraid, sir.”

“Let’s get out of this first, then worry about the maps,” Abel replied.

“Aye, sir.”

Now the big question.

“And the corning? Did you do it?”

“We didn’t much like the idea, you know,” said the sergeant. “Thursday school and all that.”

“Did you do it?” Abel said.

“Corning gunpowder beyond priming grain strength is a Stasis violation,” Maday said, “but we did as you suggested and held a séance with the Lady.” Maday smiled broadly, revealing three missing teeth. His mouth looked like a portcullis. “And what do you know, we all had a vision of the Fifty Days and Fifty Nights, her suckling baby Zentrum, even though she was dead in body. And we took it as a sign that sometimes there were exceptions, you know. That she’d told us that corning gunpowder beyond priming grain is a Stasis violation only in the Land. She came to me, she did, and told me not only to go ahead, but to keep it a bit damp to make the process go easier, just like you said before. Irisobrian provides.”

“The Lady provides,” Abel answered back. “Alaha Zentrum.”

Observe:

A line of men on a rock slab. They were sitting in the sun under broad-brimmed hats and makeshift head scarves and spending a day, all of it, every sunlit hour, carefully tap, tap, tapping at gunpowder with a pestle made of minié balls pounded together. Stones were too coarse grained, and rifle metal wouldn’t do. The lead gave no spark. One problem: this required using every minié ball in the cartridge box to make a useful-sized pestle. No more bullets for the duration.

Watch upon watch of sifting the powder, winnowing it like grain through linen gauze. Tap, tap, tapping it again.

The Lady provides patience, I guess, Abel thought.

Beliefs are what men fight for, Raj said. Laugh at the beliefs, maybe, but not at the believers.

By the second day, the tapping had worn shallow tanajas into the slab upon which the Scouts worked.

Weldletter and the sergeants loaded the powder into the cases, and Weldletter had his team set them out. They’d completed the task not long before the first echoes traveling up the canyon had let them know Abel’s troop was on its way.

“Tham Redlanders up coming!” shouted one of the other sergeants, Moreau. Abel’s attention snapped back to the present.

He dismounted and strode to the rim’s edge. Sure enough, the Blaskoye had stayed on the trail, had relentlessly pursued them up the canyon, expecting, no doubt to lock them in a corner and slaughter them. Whether or not they knew of the exit path Abel and his Scouts had taken, it wasn’t going to matter soon.

“Fire in the hole,” shouted another voice from below.

“Fire in the hole,” shouted another, and another.

Then the men burst out into the open on the path, fleeing from the conflagration they’d prepared in the canyon below.

Rising behind them, up into the sky, a single trail of gunsmoke, like a line drawn straight up into the sky. A sizzling sound accompanied the sight, like wind through tiny leaves.

Then, as Abel watched the gunsmoke line write itself out, it began to spiral, twist in two, then three directions, as if a giant invisible hand were losing control of a pen tip, and scrawling all over a papyrus tablet.

Suddenly, the end of the line exploded.

Analysis indicates one of the explosive canisters under-loaded, Center reported. Insufficiently placed and weighted, as well. This canister burned from its end up and made itself into the rocket we just witnessed.

A rocket? Abel thought. Like the ships that travel the stars?

Not quite.

Well, whatever it is, I like it!

Then he was back in reality. In the same instant that the rocket exploded, so did the canyon below Abel. The explosions were muted, heard from this position above the absorbing canyon walls, but from the great blanketing cloud that arose below, Abel knew they’d been powerful. Then he saw that the cloud had not been caused by exploding gunpowder at all, but by the avalanches those explosions had set off.

Weldletter had placed the explosive canisters in masterfully chosen locations. When the cloud settled, Abel saw that the pathway was sealed. What had been an escape path was now boulder-filled and impassable. It would take them at least a day, and leagues and leagues of travel, to backtrack and go around.

From below came the sound of gunfire and shouting men. The surviving Blaskoye were enraged. And completely ineffective. They could not come up. They would have to ride around.

“I veel find you, Dashiaaaaaaan,” came the loudest call. “I veel come for you. Dashiaaan! Dashiaaan!”

Abel realized Maday was telling him more, nattering on in the usual good-natured Scout’s litany of complaints. “Worked, thank the Lady. And us two days at it. I can’t say the men much liked sitting around taking mortar to the stuff. And then I had to tell them to unwrap their cartridges, too, that we needed it all, and that they’d be going home with only their bows to depend on. We’re plumb out of powder, Lieutenant.”

“Understood,” Abel said. He turned wearily back to his dont. “We also need to ride to water.”

“Weldletter says Ruddy Seep’s three leagues from here, but that’s what they’d expect.”

“Yes, you’re right.”

“A half day is that little sunken spring we passed on our way out, the one on the plain with the single tree.”

“We’ll go there.”

“Can you make it another half day?”

Abel shook his head to clear it. Good question, could he? Yes, but could the donts?

I guess we’ll find out how good Scout dont stock really is on this trip, he thought.

“We head for the single-tree spring,” he said. “Pass the word.”

He tried to climb back onto his dont, found he could not muster the strength the first time or the second.

But when he tried the third time, a hand reached down to help. The girl, Loreilei, held to the saddle with one hand, grabbed him by the sleeve with the other and pulled. Her strength was not great, but it was the little extra he needed. He slung his leg over and was on.

“Thank you,” he said to her, but she did not reply.

“Mount up!” he called out to all. “No rest for you sorry layabouts. I’ll get a day’s work out of you yet.” He nodded at his weary, but smiling, men.

His sergeants rode up beside him.

“On your command,” said Maday. “We’re ready.”

A good reconnaissance. There will be much to report to your father, said Center. I have almost reached my conclusions, as well. We have a chance now.

Good? said Raj. The boy circled the Blaskoye like J.E.B. Stuart for Lee, and you’re calling it good. I’d call it spectacular. I’m proud of the lad!

Abel grinned wearily in the saddle.

I also have reached a few conclusions, he thought.

And what are those, lad?

I know what I want now, Abel thought.

Rockets, Abel thought. I liked that. I want them. And those guns that load from behind you have been telling me about. No more of this awkward reloading when men are trying to kill us.

Yes, Center replied. With an invasion timeline now in place, variable cascade analysis indicates your conclusions are correct. It is time for tiered innovation if we are to survive beyond the next year. This must be done carefully. There will be setbacks. They will have to be dealt with appropriately, perhaps ruthlessly.

Abel was barely listening.

One more thing, he thought. There is one more thing I want. I don’t know if you would call it an innovation, but I want it nonetheless, and I’ll have it.

And what is that? Did he detect a trace of worry in Center’s normal utter neutrality of speech?

Mahaut, he said. I want her. I want the woman. If she’ll have me.

Center’s silence and Raj’s good-hearted, throaty laughter accompanied him all the way to the distant watering hole.