The Heretic (General)

4

They covered the two leagues to Garangipore at a fast trot, keeping the donts’ front paws on the ground. They’d pushed the animals to their limits this day, and they’d responded magnificently. But there were limits to even Scout dont endurance.

They passed outlying farmhouses, abandoned for the duration, or at least showing no signs of life, until they reached an odd structure in the midst of a flax field. There was a single road that led to it—only a wagon track, but well trampled—and no road leading farther way. The building had the curious appearance of a tavern or inn from the village transported here into the middle of the country. Smoke rose from a chimney.

Abel paused to gaze at the place for a moment, and his lieutenants rode up beside him. “What the hell is that?” he mused.

Maday let out a short, sharp laugh. “That?” he said. “Why, that is an establishment known to most of the men of Garangipore, and several of the women as well, I’ll wager. It goes by several names, but most people know it as Truman’s Farm.”

“And who is Truman?”

“I think he is the late husband of the proprietress,” Maday said. “She’s called Eloise now, but I’m not at all certain if that is the name given to her by whatever parents spawned her.”

“You’ve visited Truman’s?”

“I have a cousin in Garangipore. We were practically raised together—he’s like a brother to me—so I come out and see him pretty often. And sometimes this is where we meet,” Maday said. “It’s a bar and whorehouse, sir. Mostly it’s a place for the town dandies to come out, get some tail, roll some bones, and pretend to be hunting—because that’s what they tell their wives. It’s true enough. Eloise keeps some flitterdaks grain-fed out in that field. She has a pair of pistols she’ll loan out to the boys to go shooting. The girls she keeps grain-fed and in the backrooms there. They aren’t local girls. She goes twice a year and picks up a new load down in the Delta. That’s the best time to come, if you know about it.” Maday nodded, lost in memory. “Yes, when Mama Eloise arrives with the new girls, it’s a hell of a time out here. Of course, everything’s double-priced that night, since every rich boy in town will be out bidding for a limited supply of unbroken females, if you know what I mean.”

“Yes,” Abel said. He nodded toward the building. “Look at the donts in the corral. How many do you make out?”

“Ten, fifteen.”

“Do you think some of Garangipore’s finest are laying low out here to avoid the Militia call-up?”

Maday snorted. “Knowing them as I do, I would say most definitely.”

“Let’s pay them a visit.”

“Yes, sir!” Maday replied with a wicked smile.

There were what looked like women’s robes arrayed on some wooden rails around the courtyard entrance of the building, but Abel saw that the robes had bodies in them, the slumped forms of dead women. The robes were bloody. In the courtyard, three men sat around a table. There were several pitchers of wine, several tipped on edge and empty, on the table. The men sat in slumped and woozy positions and did not rise when Abel and the Scouts rode up. Abel dismounted, unhitched his rifle, and—with Kruso and Maday along—approached the men.

At several paces away, he could smell them, or rather the vinegar pungency of wine, and lots of it. There were two darker complexioned men who looked to be in their late teens or twenties. The other man Abel recognized.

It was Edgar Jacobson.

“Thank Zentrum it’s you, even if you are Scouts,” said Jacobson. “We thought it was them, coming back for more.”

He doesn’t recognize me, Abel thought. Not yet, at least.

Abel felt his hand move, of its own accord, down to the hilt of the obsidian dagger he wore thrust under his scabbard belt. His fingers worried at the smooth stone.

“Them?” said Abel.

“The Redlanders.” He took a long sip from his cup.

“What happened here?”

“They rode in—”

“From which direction?”

Jacobson motioned airily about his head. “Out there,” he said. “And Eloise was ready to arm up and fight, but I said, ‘Let me talk to them.’ So I went out to meet them. Probably saved my own life. The leader, this big oaf, with a beard black as the night, looks down at me from that dont of his and says something to me in that gibberish they speak. Of course I didn’t understand him and said as much. And what does he do but club me. I mean beat the hell out of me with his rifle butt, and then I fell down and they rode donts over me. Donts. I thought I was dead for sure, but I only got kicked and nipped. And I got up, and—”

“Ran?”

“There wasn’t anywhere to run, so I came back to the house here and hid in those shrubs over there.” He pointed toward the thorny plants that surrounded the courtyard. “Eloise came out at him with that silly blunderbuss of hers, and even got a shot off that winged one of the desert scum, but that only made him mad. He got off the dont, went over to her, knocked that pistol out of her hands, and put a knife to her throat. Then he pushed her inside and I didn’t see any more.”

Jacobson shuddered, then took up his cup and drained the rest of the wine. He reached for a pitcher to refill it, found the pitcher empty, reached for another. Nothing there, either.

“Thrice-damn it,” he muttered, and stared into the empty cup as if he expected it to fill up on its own accord merely because he wanted it to.

It is not a difficult reconstruction based on available evidence, said Center.

Observe:

Rostov.

Rostov followed by a retinue of Blaskoye. Rostov dragging an older woman, a woman with elaborately plaited brown hair and a liberal coating of kohl and makeup. She was lovely, still had a fine figure, and had obviously been exquisitely beautiful in her prime.

She wore a low-cut linen wrap colored a deep blue-green. The fact that her neck and cleavage showed seemed to enrage and disgust Rostov.

He burst into a room filled with at least twenty men, and about half that number of women, who were in the midst of serving or chatting up the men. Rostov’s men quickly invaded the room, flowing from behind him, and hustling everyone against an adobe side wall. Meanwhile two more disappeared down a hallway of the establishment and returned pushing more women, and several half-dressed men, into the main room, where they too were herded against the wall.

Rostov threw Eloise into the trapped crowd. He then considered them all for a moment, and began to speak. His language was incomprehensible to them, and this showed on their frightened and bewildered faces, but Abel could understand what the Blaskoye said well enough.

“You offend the gods. You are not worthy to be my enemy.” He pointed to a bead-covered window. “My enemy is out there. He will die, but he will go to the Gray Fields when he does. You—you men are fit only for the Dust, where all memory is lost, because there was nothing in your life worth remembering.”

Suddenly, one of the men, a youngster dressed in a considerably gaudy outfit consisting of three colors, red, blue, and white, of intertwined wrapping robe, not to mention sandals with straps up to his knees, which were exposed, stepped forward with a handful of clay tablets.

Barter chits, Abel thought. And a lot of them.

“We can pay,” said the young man. “We all will pay you if you’ll leave us alone. This is worth a lot. Negotiable anywhere in the Land.”

With a swift motion, Rostov knocked the chits from the man’s hands. They clattered to the floor, which was wooden plank, and not earthen, and two of them shattered.

“What?” said the youth, stunned, bending to pick them up, “Something else then? Where they are? I know.”

Rostov spoke to the youth, this time in accented, but intelligible Landish. “Yes, this,” he hissed. “Vehr are they, the vahrriors, the fighters?”

The young man was still sweeping the shattered chit pieces together, trying to pick them up. “Depends on who you mean,” he said. “Militia, Scouts, Regulars—”

Rostov stepped over the young man’s back, straddled him, then put his fingers into the man’s hair, pulled back his head. Quickly, he had the silver knife at the man’s throat.

“Scouts,” Rostov said. “Dashian.”

“I don’t know,” gasped the young man. “I only heard. Something. Rumor.”

Rostov pulled harder. “Where?”

“The levee,” said the youth. “The Canal levee.”

Rostov smiled. Then, with a practiced motion, he cut the man’s throat.

For a moment, he held the young man that way, facing the prisoners, showing the opened throat to them. It looked like an open, gurgling mouth, but lipless. Blood welled out, ran down into the festive robes. Rostov let the man drop, dead, to the floor.

“Separate the men,” he said to one of his lieutenants. “Kill them. We have no time to cut off their balls first.”

“And the whores?”

“Cut them,” he said. He pointed to Eloise, who shied away, in terror tried to claw at the wall to get away. One of Rostov’s men grabbed her and pulled her to him and held her there. Rostov reached out and held her chin, taking in her face. He raised the knife. “Make it quick. Cut them here—”

He pulled a wicked slice across her face from left temple to lower right jaw, passing over the brow ridge between the eyes.

“—and here.” Another cut, this one across Eloise’s forehead.

The slave cut, Abel thought.

Blood welled, drizzled into her eyes. Eloise tried to raise a hand to wipe it, but was held fast. It flowed into her mouth through her twice-split lip and produced a distinctive gurgle when she screamed. Rostov backhanded her, hard, and she collapsed, unconscious. “If they resist, kill them.”

The Redlanders went about their task, leaving the men alive so that they could watch what was being done to the women. Three of the twenty or so whores resisted and were stabbed to death. Rostov ordered their bodies taken outside and lashed to the railings.

“I wish the Red God in particular to see what we have done in his name,” he said. “He has no eyes inside these Farmer caves.”

Then, with all the women’s faces cut, and the women herded into a backroom, Rostov nodded. “We cannot waste powder and ball on this lot,” he said. “Bayonet them.”

His men, ten strong in the room now, moved in on one Garangipore man at a time, culling their victims out like daks, for the slaughter. With fifteen Landsmen there, it might have been possible to act as a group and swarm their captors.

No one tried it.

It’s as if they’re waiting their turn, Abel thought.

You will see the highest and lowest of men in war, Raj said. But these are in a state of shock, completely disoriented. Perhaps they are not to be blamed for being such grazers.

I blame them, Abel thought savagely.

Raj laughed in his low growl. Oh, so do I, lad. At least a little.

And then he was back in the courtyard, staring down at a drunken Edgar Jacobson.

“These others,” he said. “Who are you?”

“These are the Cremoy boys,” Jacobson said. “Twins, you know. They like to share. Everything, if you know what I mean.” He cupped a hand around his mouth as if he were spilling a secret. “At the same time.”

“Why are you alive?” Abel said to them.

“We had to get out of Garangipore. They were coming!” one of them replied drunkenly. “A few of us First Family boys, the ones who had donts ready and could ride, well, we left as fast as we could. Got out of there. Let me tell you, it was just in time, too. We saw half the place burning behind us. You tell him, Edgar.”

Edgar shook his head. “I think he means more recently, Tab.”

“Oh,” replied the Cremoy who’d been speaking. “Recently. Like just now?”

Abel nodded.

“Well, we were out hunting,” the man continued. “Had that other pistol of Eloise’s. We saw them ride in. Hid out in the flax.”

“And the women?”

“Oh, they’re in there,” Jacobson said, gesturing over his shoulder toward the entrance door. “We left them locked up, where they were put, you know. Safe. Left them there for their own safety.” He smiled and winked, or at least attempted a wink. It looked more like he was attempting to work a bit of dust out of one eye. “And ours.”

“More like to give you time to loot the place and drink the wine,” Maday exclaimed. He lowered his rifle, spit out a stream of nesh juice from the wad he’d been chewing. He pointed the rifle at Jacobson. “Give me the pleasure to put this one out of my misery, Captain Dashian,” he said.

That would be convenient, Abel thought.

Jacobson looked up. “Oh, it’s you, Dashian. I didn’t recognize you. You’re as dark as a Delta man.”

“Gunpowder residue,” Abel replied. He turned to Kruso. “What do you think?”

“Eastways by northern run tha,” Kruso said. “Nah good.”

“They’ll hit the Canal levee and find it easy going from there,” Abel said. “We’ll have to catch them.”

A look of incredulity came over Jacobson’s face. “Dashian, we require an escort back to safety,” he said. He forced himself to sit up straighter. “You will see to a First Family before you go chasing Redlanders.”

“You’re entirely correct,” Abel said. “But we are woefully underequipped to protect you and might prove a danger instead, drawing fire your way. Your escort will be along shortly.”

He began to turn when Jacobson reached up and grabbed his left arm. His own hand tightened around the dagger hilt.

It would be so easy. And so easy to justify.

Instead he let go of the knife and deliberately raised his rifle and pointed it into Jacobson’s chin.

“Let go, citizen,” Abel said in a low, but strong, growl.

“You’ll pay for this, Dashian,” Jacobson said. “I won’t forget that you abandoned us. These men are First Family, too.”

“I don’t suppose you heard that the Militia had been called up?” Abel said. “You weren’t sitting out the action, now, were you?”

“You can’t be seriously holding that against us. If we hadn’t escaped, we’d be dead. You know that,” Jacobson said. “Do you still not realize who I am?” But Abel felt the man’s grip loosening on his sleeve.

Abel pulled his arm away and lowered his rifle.

“Your niece, Loreilei, how is she these days? Have you heard news from Lilleheim?”

Jacobson looked blank for a moment, then he smiled. “Yes, the one you claim to have saved.”

“Claim?”

“Or found wandering about in the Redlands,” he continued. “Something like that?”

“I asked how she was.”

“The child seems…the worse for wear,” he said.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Abel said. “Now quickly, do you have any weapons?”

“Guns? That would nishterlaub.”

“Do you have any guns?”

“The Cremoys still have…that pistol, I believe.” He glanced toward the others.

“And buck and ball?”

“I shot it all up hunting, but we found some inside,” said one of the brothers. “We could reload.”

“I suggest you do so,” Abel said. “There’s no telling who you might run into out here next.”

Without another word, he stalked past the three drunken men and entered the tavern. In the back was a closed wooden door. The key, of wood, had been inserted, the lock turned, and then the key broken off.

It took three of them to break down the door. When they did, the women flowed out. All were cut, some disfigured grotesquely. Others had gotten off more lightly, but all would live scarred from this day forth.

They gathered around Eloise, who walked stiffly out and looked at Abel, up at him, for she was a small woman. “You should have come sooner,” she said.

“I apologize,” Abel said. “Please try to forgive us.”

“Forgive?” said Eloise. For a moment, a look of rage passed over her ravaged features. But then she seemed to get a grip on herself, or at least her outward expression. “Yes, all right.”

“The men who left you locked in there are out on the veranda,” he said. “What do you want me to do with them?”

Eloise shook her head. Blood dripped onto her already bloody collar when she did so. She glanced over into the corner. There lay the pile of men’s bodies, thrown like so much stovewood, against the wall. A puddle of blood encircled the sight, and here and there a splayed arm or leg poked out of the mound, dripping blood into the general puddle. Eloise considered this sight for a long moment, and Abel patiently stood waiting for her answer.

“Better leave them there,” she finally said. “Looks like I need to hang on to what’s left of my paying customers.”

Outside, Jacobson stared at him as he walked past. Abel paused.

“You saw that in there?” he said.

Jacobson said nothing. He looked up balefully at Abel.

“What was I supposed to do?” he said. “They were already dead.”

“Yes,” Abel said. “The women are not dead, though, not most of them. They may want a word with you.”

Abel took his own pistol from its place tucked in his belt. “I’ll want this back,” he said. He turned it, butt first, and held it out toward Jacobson.

After a moment’s consideration, Jacobson reached up and took the pistol. He held it in his hand as if it were a poison animal, but he kept it nonetheless. “Thank you, Dashian,” he said.

“You are First Family,” Abel answered with a shrug. And you are her husband, the woman’s. Which means Mahaut’s status, her position in the Land, is attached to you, depends on you. For now. “Besides, those women in there may decide to kill you yet.”

He turned to Kruso, who was looking at him incredulously. He shrugged. “Let’s get after them.” He pulled on the reins and kicked his dont into motion. Within seconds they were galloping away across the levee. Abel couldn’t help but feel the odd certainty that the muzzle of his own pistol was pointed at his back. It was only when he knew he was out of its range that the feeling began to fade.