Brigade Leader Azog typed in his first question:
THREATS TO ANGBAND BASE—RANK ORDER.
The TAC performed its electronic equivalent of thought, then replied, THREATS TO ANGBAND BASE:
1. THE CITADEL
2. STEPPE NOMADS, CLAN OF DEDE KORKUT
3. THE BANDARI
OTHERS TOO LOW A PROBABILITY TO BE EVALUATED.
The Brigade Leader scowled. He understood why the rankings had changed, but could not remember a time when nomads represented a greater danger to the Base than the Bandari. How had they taken out Dagor? That was a good man gone, even if a rival; had Azog known the Senior Assault Group Leader would perish without accomplishing anything at all, he might not have sent him out alone.
Azog put his second question to the TAC: THREATS TO CO, ANGBAND BASE, RANK ORDER.
This time the machine's reply was prompt: THREATS TO CO, ANGBAND BASE:
1. BREEDMASTER GRIMA
OTHERS TOO LOW A PROBABILITY TO BE EVALUATED.
The Brigade Leader stared. Only one threat? The others that dogged his tracks had not disappeared. That meant one of two things: either the TAC had malfunctioned at last, or Grima's threat was so overwhelming that it made all others pale beside it.
Azog could not afford, did not intend, to take a chance. Just as his finger stabbed for the button to summon the Breedmaster, the intercom buzzed. "Who is it?" the Brigade Leader snarled.
"Breedmaster Grima, Brigade Leader," came the reply. Azog's grin was all teeth, like that of a cliff lion about to spring. "Come in, Breedmaster. I was thinking of you." He made sure his sidearm was loose in his holster. "Well, Grima," he said as the other Soldier sat across the desk from him, "what can I do for you?"
Grima steepled his fingers. "I came"—he glanced at his wrist chrono—"to say good-bye, Brigade Leader."
"Odd," Azog said, "for I was just about to summon you to give you the same message."
The Breedmaster nodded, unsurprised. "I thought that might be so. Were you less suspicious, you might have been allowed to last another couple of cycles. As is—" He spread his hands in regret.
Azog laughed, or tried to. For some reason, his throat did not work as it should. Full of sudden alarm, he reached for his pistol. At least he thought he reached for it, but his hand did not move. And when he tried to suck in a deep, furious breath, he found his lungs frozen as well.
The Breedmaster checked his chrono again. "Distillate of oxbane has an extremely precise latent period before it manifests itself," he remarked, as if expounding on the poison to one of his assistants. "As I said, I do apologize for having to up the dose to a lethal level so soon, but you left me little choice."
Azog could not even blink now. He felt his heart stutter, beat, stutter again, stop. He watched the office go dark, first the corners where spiderwebs linked beam and stone, then the desk under the fluorescents. He knew the lights were not failing. Not this time. Not, for him, ever again.
"At them!" Bugles blared, some of brass, more carved from horns of herdbeasts. Horses, muskylopes, and men rushed forward. "Dede Korkut!" the men screamed.
Another line, about as ragtag as the attackers, stood in defense on a low ridge. "Suleiman!" they screamed back.
"Suleiman the sheep stealer! Suleiman the sheep bugger!" Dede Korkut's warriors yelled. The men armed with muskets and bows began to shoot; those who carried pistols or scimitars or lances waited for the fight to come to close quarters.
Suleiman's warriors returned fire. Here and there a man or a beast fell, to lie still or, more often, writhing and shrieking. Had they had more firearms or more discipline, they could have chewed the attackers to bloody rags. As it was, Dede Korkut's clansmen took casualties, but came on. At their fore ran Juchi, afoot. Not breathing hard, he stayed even with the mounted men to either side of him. Arrows and bullets sang by. The leading warriors on horses and muskylopes began pulling up at last, waiting for their comrades to reach them and add to their firepower.
Juchi ran on. Suleiman's men shouted and turned more of their weapons on him. But he was no easy target, not running as he did, fast as a horse but with a man's agility. Most arrows or bullets flew behind him; his speed made the nomads mistake their aim.
Then, suddenly, he was into the line of defenders. Suleiman's men stopped shooting at him, for fear of hitting their comrades instead. They converged with knives, swords, clubbed muskets, ready to make an end of this lone madman in their midst. They moved on him in no special order—what need for that, against one?
They quickly learned. A gray-faced warrior reeled away, clutching the spouting stump of his wrist after Juchi's blade stole hand from arm. Another was down and motionless, half his face sheared away. An instant later another fell, his cheekbone crushed by a left-handed buffet after he thought to rush in on Juchi's unweaponed side.
Worse was that none of their blades would bite on him. Faster than thought, he slipped away again and again, to stun, to maim, to kill. "Demon!" one of Suleiman's men shrieked as he flopped, hamstrung, somewhere near the middle of Juchi's path of slaughter.
Juchi took no notice. This, to him, was easy as weapons drill; easier, for his own clansmen had learned to respect, if not always to believe, his speed, and so fought him almost always on the defensive. Suleiman's warriors paid dearly for thinking him no different from one of themselves.
They paid, in fact, with the battle, though Juchi realized that only when he found no more targets to strike. Then Dede Korkut's men were all around him, pounding his back, lifting him off his feet so he could see the last of Suleiman's folk fleeing for their lives.
"We rolled 'em up!" someone bawled in his ear. "Cut 'em in half and rolled 'em up! You threw fifty meters' worth of 'em into confusion, and we poured through and smashed 'em. They won't come sniffing after our sheep again for the next ten Haven years."
Juchi found himself standing before Dede Korkut. The clan chief's hair, he noticed with surprise, was almost entirely white—how had it escaped him till now that Dede Korkut was an old man? To a youth, ever growing and changing, he had seemed eternal as the steppe.
"Bravely, splendidly done!" Dede Korkut told him. As Juchi bowed to acknowledge the praise, the chief raised his voice: "Hail Juchi, new warleader of the clan!"
The clansmen shouted approval. "Juchi!"
"Juchi warleader!"
"Hail Juchi!"
"Hurrah!" They crowded round the new hero to clasp his hand, pound him on the back, and, finally, raise him to their shoulders.
Such praise from his own people—from men, most of them far older than he—did what the exertion of combat had quite failed to do. Juchi's heart pounded till he thought he would burst with pride.
Another wave of pain washed over Badri. It would have doubled her up on herself had she not been held immobile by the obstetrical table's stirrups. Blood flowed from between her legs, blood and all but formless clumps of tissue.
"Pity," Grima murmured. "It would have been a Soldier." He reached inside Badri with his curette, scraping away the remains of what might have become a life. When at last he was satisfied, he packed her womb with gauze, saying, "I'll monitor your blood pressure round the clock for the next cycle, but I think the risk of hemorrhage is small. Very clean, as miscarriages go."
Badri heard his words as if from very far away. She was tired, so tired—worse, she thought, than after any of her births, even the lost twins so long ago. She was even too tired to resent Grima's brisk, competent care. But then, she thought, he would have done the same for any of Angband Base's domestic animals.
No sooner had that thought entered her mind than his words confirmed it: "You'll be ready for breeding again as soon as your courses resume."
"As you say," she whispered. She did not argue with him, not any more. But she knew that if she conceived again, she would also miscarry once more. She still had a supply of the herb one of the other women had brought her from Tallinn Town. Grima would get no sons on her.
And yet—the man she hated, the man she slept with, was no one's fool. One miscarriage might befall anyone. Two, especially from a woman who had always birthed well before, would surely raise his ever-ready suspicions. That made aborting again much more than a physical risk.
He'd been talking, she wasn't sure for how long. Finally some of his words penetrated her exhaustion: "—have to meet with the Weaponsmaster again, over the threat of this cursed nomad tribe. The TAC makes it out as more dangerous to us than even the Citadel, which strikes me as insane—but then, the TAC often says things like that, and turns out to be right in the end. It must have to do with the way it swallows data like a land gator scavenging . . . . You rest now. I'll be back presently."
"As you say," Badri repeated. Grima tramped away. For a moment, she was simply glad he had gone. Then she started to think again. Like the Breedmaster-turned-Brigade Leader, she had no idea how a steppe tribe could threaten the might of Angband Base. Unlike him, she had oracular faith in the Threat Analysis Computer. The machine's job was to know everything. If it said Dede Korkut's plainsmen were dangerous, then dangerous they were. How much more dangerous would they be, she wondered suddenly, if they had an ally inside the Base? When at last she fell asleep, she was smiling.
"Fine work," the Sauron's woman said.
She was tall, as tall as Chaya, with a beauty the Bandari woman could not match, and she had ordered her escort of Sauron Soldiers out of the swordsmith's shop with peremptory authority. They had gone willingly enough; edged weapons were not much used by the Soldiers. Rifles, or hand to hand, were their style.
"That is mine," Chaya said. She had become no mean smith herself, in the T-year or so since her marriage to Heber. "I—"
There was a cry from one of the other women, a young girl hugely pregnant with what was surely her first child. She tottered, reaching out blindly toward a rack of knives. Chaya moved before she could think, catching the limp weight with one hand and the toppling rack with the other; the edged metal rattled, but she had stopped the motion before the weapons could fall free.
The tall woman was beside her almost as swiftly, and they lowered the girl to the floor. "Ah, Dokuz," she murmured. "Unlucky the name, unlucky the day." She turned her head as the Soldiers burst through the doorway, looking ready to guard, kill and interrogate all in one.
"Dokuz is ill," she said. "Fetch a stretcher, and one of you alert the Breedmaster." Her nostrils flared at that, and Chaya's hearing—if nobody else's—could detect the cold hatred in the last word.
The Soldiers looked at each other, and obeyed.
"You are brave, to run toward falling knives," the woman said to Chaya. "Your name?"
"Brave?" Chaya said. "No, I merely do what must be done." She paused. "I am Chaya bat Dvora, wife to Heber the swordsmith."
The Sauron's woman nodded, respect in her eyes. Chaya judged she had been human once—had lived in a human community, she corrected herself—for she had not quite the chiseled look of a full-blood, and those came rarely into Tallinn Town.
"And your name?" she went on, suddenly wanting to speak more with this woman who bore herself with such pride.
"Badri," she said. Chaya's eyes widened slightly. The Brigade Leader's principal woman—and his bitter enemy, if rumor did not lie. Soldiers came into Tallinn town, often enough; to trade, to drink and to whore in the taverns. Put enough clownfruit brandy into him, and even a Soldier would babble.
Badri cast a glance over her shoulder. The Soldiers had returned, with two conscripted Tallinn Town civilians and an arrangement of poles and blankets. They bore the half-conscious Dokuz away.
"I hope her delivery is easy," Chaya said.
"I, too," Badri said, her voice carefully neutral.
What keeps her? Chaya thought. There were horses outside; what prevented her from commandeering one and riding far and fast? The position she held, consort to the Sauron leader? Somehow Chaya doubted that.
Badri followed her glance. "No, we are trusted"—the word brought a bitter twist to her lips—"to shop in town. For those who were born here, our kin are hostage; for the others, how could they find the yurts of their clans? And they would only seize more women, if we fled." She gave Chaya a long, considering look. "I had heard that Heber went to the Pale for a wife. You help him, you say?"
For answer, Chaya held out her hands. The callus was hard and even on her fingers and palms. She did not speak; the Saurons permitted links between the Pale and Tallinn Town, but they did not love them.
"Good," Badri said. "He needs a strong wife." She leaned forward. "We can all use strong friends," she said after a moment. "We should speak—the three of us."
Chaya felt a jolt of fear. Has Heber been talking? she asked herself. Here in Tallinn, the ancient hate between Sauron and haBandari ran hotter even than it did in the Pale, and seeing their rule made her understand how Heber felt. But it also made her understand their strength and cunning . . . now, with Tallinn at peace, the Saurons of Angband seemingly content, and her mother Judge in the Pale, was no time to emulate the Zealots of ancient Jerusalem.
But if, if only—she used every enhancement of her senses to judge Badri's voice, tone, the set of her eyes. "Perhaps we should," she said, in as casual a tone as she could muster. "I'll mention it to Heber."
Even wearing the smoked glass, Chaya squinted in the firelight as she added measured amounts of charcoal. The small steel crucible must be watched, she knew, with especial care. In it, Heber sought to recreate the wootz that, thousands of years ago, the ancestors of people like Badri and the chieftain Dede Korkut had wrought into swords and used to conquer half a world.
Filtered by the glass, the light in the forge was blood red. The metal would be even bloodier, the cherry red that meant that the wootz was ready to pour. The hot acrid smell of molten metal and burning charcoal filled her nostrils.
It would be forged, folded, heated and quenched, over and over. In the old days, it would have been quenched in the body of a slave. Heber, God protect them all for fools, meant to quench these blades and hundreds like them in the bodies of their masters, the Saurons of Angband Base.
She half-wished she had never mentioned Badri's name.
Footsteps sounded outside. Chaya's keen hearing told her that they approached the forge. She whirled, one hand reaching for the knife hidden in a storage bin. A pistol would have been more sure, but who had ever heard of a swordsmith relying on firearms? Besides, a bullet astray near a crucible . . . Chaya didn't want to think of that either.
"Ho, the forge!" It was Heber's voice. The doors were doubled: one let him into the building; the second protected the forge against gusts of wind or squalls that the outer door might admit.
Even through the filtered glass, Chaya found pleasure in watching him. Heber was not especially tall, either for the Bandari or the townsfolk, but he seemed bigger, perhaps because his trade had added muscle to his shoulders. He needed that strength to hammer out the blades; but it was good, very good for other things as well. As always, she smiled at the man, and then smiled more secretly to herself.
He shook his head slightly at her, not needing Sauron sight to know what she was thinking.
"How did your trip go?" she said.
His smile grew broader. "The khan was pleased," he said.
Love and fear fought in her as she saw the laughter dancing in his eyes. "Tell me," she said.
The swordsmith who based himself at Tallinn Town put aside his scimitars and daggers in their velvet trays. "Thank you for your kindly guesting of me, excellent khan," he said, bowing as he sat cross-legged in Dede Korkut's yurt.
The nomad chief bowed in return. "You are always welcome here—the quality of your edges guarantees it." The prominent clansmen with him, many of whom had just bought new blades from the smith, nodded their agreement.
The swordsmith bowed again. "I thank you once more, excellent khan." He hesitated, went on. "Excellent khan, could I but have your ear alone for a brief spell of time, I could perhaps set a weapon in your hands sharper than any scimitar."
Dede Korkut's eyebrows rose. "What would you tell me that my nobles may not hear?" he demanded. The swordsmith sat quietly and did not reply. Dede Korkut frowned, rubbed the few thin white hairs on his chin that he was pleased to call a beard. At last he said, "Very well." He gestured for the rest of the plainsmen to leave the yurt. They filed out, more or less resentfully. "Juchi, you stay," Dede Korkut commanded.
It was Heber's turn to frown. "I would sooner speak to but one pair of ears."
"He is the clan's warleader, and my heir," Dede Korkut said flatly.
The swordsmith still did not yield. "He is young."
"As the ancient shaikh Ishaq Asinaf once observed, it is a fault of which everyone is guilty at one time or another," Dede Korkut said. "He does not speak out of turn. If you doubt it, then leave, and take your precious business with you."
For a moment, Juchi thought the swordsmith would do exactly that.
In the end, though, Heber fixed Dede Korkut's warleader with a hard stare, warning, "Lives ride on this, my own not least."
"I hear," Juchi said. "I understand." He visibly composed himself to listen, resolving to show no reaction to whatever wild scheme the smith was about to unfold.
That resolve was at once tested to the utmost, for the fellow asked Dede Korkut, "How would your clan like to seize Tallinn Valley?"
Behind his impassive mask, Juchi had all he could do to keep from shouting. Every band on the plains dreamed of taking a valley for its very own, to make sure all its women's births would be safe. Like the rest of the steppe-rovers, Dede Korkut's clan paid tribute for the privilege of sending its pregnant women to a land of decent air pressure: either to the Saurons for Tallinn Valley or to the Bandari for Eden Valley to the southeast of it. There were others, but they were hostile, or too far away. The Shangri-La was best of all, but the Sauron Citadel squatted at the entrance—which was a full T-year's travel, in any case.
By the spark that leaped in Dede Korkut's eye, Juchi was sure the clan chief was dreaming along with him. Dede Korkut's response, though, was dry: "I presume you have this arranged with the Saurons."
"No," the swordsmith said, and Juchi got ready to throw him bodily out of the yurt. Then the man from Tallinn Town went on, "But with one of their women, aye."
"What good will that do?" Dede Korkut said. "Their women are not the folk we have to fight."
"Hold a moment, mighty khan," Juchi said, his mind leaping forward with the agility of youth. "Saurons, from all I've heard, are great fighters, true enough. But there are not many of them, and much of their strength, especially the strength of their fortress, lies in the excellence of its magic."
"Technology," Heber corrected him.
"Whatever it may be," Juchi said impatiently. "If the woman corrupts it so they do not realize we are upon them until the moment, we may accomplish much. If." He let the word hang in the air, stared a challenge at the smith.
The man studied him in return, then slowly nodded. "Your chief was right, young warleader, in bidding you stay. You see through to the essence of the scheme. At an hour you choose, the Sauron fort's systems can be made to fail. And when they do, if you strike quick and hard enough—"
"You speak always of our striking," Dede Korkut said. "How will the folk of Tallinn Town respond when battle is joined? If they are with us, they will aid us greatly. If they stand with the Saurons, the attack is not worth making."
"Tallinn Town has no love for Angband Base," Heber said after some small pause for thought. "The taxes the Saurons extort far outweigh the protection they give—not to mention the women taken against their will. For now, the town knows nothing of what I discuss with you. Were it otherwise, you may be sure this secret would not stay secret long. But most folk in the town, most in Tallinn Valley, will be for you, come the day."
Dede Korkut rocked back and forth. "Aiii, Shaitan could put no greater temptation before me than you dangle now. Victory would make the clan great. But if we fail—" He shuddered. "If we fail, the clan dies."
"How say you, then?" The swordsmith kept his voice steady, even sat relaxed, but Juchi smelled his sharp sweat. "I can offer information, the crippling of Angband's defenses . . . and perhaps weapons more potent than these swords. My wife's mother," he went on with delicate emphasis, "is Judge of the Pale."
The clan chief did not directly answer, turning rather to the warleader he had chosen. "Can this thing be done?"
Juchi had been turning that very question over in his mind. "Perhaps it can," he said. "Perhaps it can."
The swordsmith let out the breath he had been holding. "I shall pass this word back to the one who gave me the message. We go forward, then." He rose, bowed—now to Juchi as well as to Dede Korkut—and left the chief's yurt.
The two nomads were briefly silent. Dede Korkut leaned backward against his pillows, slightly blue around the lips; Juchi put a hand on his shoulder.
"It is nothing," the khan said. "Old age is a disease from which none recover . . . but I hope I will live to see the sons of Iblis in Angband overthrown."
Juchi nodded. "We will have to examine this further before we do in fact go forward. It could be a trick of the Saurons, to lure us to destruction."
"That thought I had also," Dede Korkut said. "This Heber bar Non may live in Tallinn Town, but he is of the Bandari. They have their own purposes . . . and any two of them could cheat Shaitan at dice."
"True. But they have dealt fairly with us—hard bargainers, but just. More, their hate for the Saurons is old and black."
"And if the swordsmith speaks truly . . . oh, if he does!" Dede Korkut clapped Juchi on the shoulder. "If he does, you will lead our warriors."
"Good," Juchi said. "I begin to have some ideas that may help us, come the day. We will be fighting Angband Base as much as the Saurons inside, I think. And the Base cannot run away . . . ." All at once, he began to laugh.
"Where is the joke?" Dede Korkut asked.
Juchi told him. After a moment's startlement, the clan chief laughed too.
"Wife," Heber said, and the formality of his voice warned her that he was not alone, "prepare food for our guests. I go to welcome them."
Wife.
Chaya stiffened. As often as she and her husband had had to play the game, she never liked being relegated to the position of tribal servant. But there were, God knew, worse roles in life; and she had met women who played them. Deliberately, she waited until Heber had ushered in his guests, then made much of dropping her head and scurrying modestly into the kitchens. But she had seen what she wished to see: one of Heber's guests was Dede Korkut the chieftain—that silver hair was unmistakable despite the hat he had jerked down over as much of it as he could. The other was a younger man, taller than Heber.
The chieftain's son? Chaya hadn't known that Dede Korkut had one. His heir, she concluded as she poured batter on heated metal to make flatbread and scooped stew into bowls. He did not look like a nomad, apart from his dress; too tall, and brown-haired, with a rather beaky, sculpted face.
When the trays were loaded, she called her servant to bring them to the principal guesting room, then dismissed the girl to her home. The guesting room was located, somewhat unconventionally, in the living quarters, and Heber had had her furnish it with rugs and cushions and leather hangings, so it resembled the yurt of a prosperous tribesman. Here, he showed his most favored customers his most expensive swords—there was little market for weapons in Tallinn Valley itself, where the Sauron "peace" hung heavy. And here they met to discuss what Chaya simultaneously feared and longed for: the downfall of Angband Base.
Chaya glanced at her husband: stay or leave?
"Khan," Heber spoke before the older man could protest, "you brought your heir Juchi into our . . . discussions. My wife, Chaya, must stay."
"A woman?" asked the younger tribesman.
"I greet the guest," Chaya said, low-voiced and polite, in Turkic. The khan chuckled at her words, which were a pun, as she very well knew.
"Khatun Chaya is Bandari, the daughter of the Judge of Eden Valley."
"The lady may be a princess among her kind," said Juchi, "but she is no warrior."
"With respect," Heber said, "it is a woman among the Saurons who can unlock the secrets of their minefields to us. A woman," he went on, "who as women will, meets her friend—her friend Chaya—to gossip of women's doings, such as no Soldier will take notice of."
The two nomads grinned acknowledgment of the stratagem. Which is part truth, Chaya thought. She and Badri were friends; the Brigade Leader's woman was even more lonely than she.
Dede Korkut nodded. "And if one woman can fight the Saurons, why not another?" He paused for a moment, touching a hand to his chest, and struggling for breath. At their looks of concern, he waved the hand in irritated dismissal. "It is nothing. Khatun?"
"It is not as a warrior that I can serve." Chaya decided that the time had come to speak for herself. "But as a pledge of support from the Pale. Speak the word, and the Bandari will flock to your standard."
The warleader Juchi smiled. "Perhaps . . . and perhaps they would stay flocked, once Tallinn Valley is rid of the Saurons," he said drily.
He went on directly to Chaya: "You claim, khatun, that your word will bring us aid. We do not expect the warriors of the Pale to abandon their own and march so far, but Angband may summon aid from Quilland Base; that is a long journey, and the two Bases have not been overfriendly, but it may be that all Saurons will unite against 'cattle.' " He spat the Sauron word. "To reach us, such a force must cross near the northeastern border of the Pale. Bandari fighters might guard our rear while we attack—but how shall you command them from Tallinn Town?"
From her left hand, Chaya stripped her ruby ring and let it clatter onto the low brass table. "Some among your men ride as they will. Let them ride to Eden Valley to give my mother this, and our warriors will ride out."
"More women?" Juchi seemed to scoff, but a chuckle underlay the deep, almost familiar rumble of his voice. For a warleader, he was easy to talk to, Chaya thought; their thought processes were curiously alike, even when he felt he had to jeer at her.
"My mother, the Judge Dvora, is no warleader. She decides on matters of law, and the kapetein rules the Pale. Rather will the warrior Barak bar Sandor lead the warriors of the Pale to the steppes. If by some chance Quilland Base sends to these Saurons' aid, Barak's warriors will hold them," Chaya said.
Heber smiled. "I believe you know the man Barak," he remarked. "And the Sayerets, the fighters he leads."
The khan shook his head, shuddered slightly. "Barak I know," he said. "If he sends his men, let him come himself and not let that young madman they call the Hammer-of-God command—but against the Saurons, even the Hammer would be welcome."
Twice and three times, Chaya retreated to the kitchen to fetch more food and drink. The last time she emerged, she carried a skin of mares' milk, traded for with the tribes against just such a necessity. She stood in what would have been darkness for anyone who lacked her night sight watching the faces of the other conspirators, who had fought and refought in words and maps their way across the battle plain before Angband, but who were, once again, brought up short before the fortress' mighty walls.
"We could encircle Angband with warriors for ten years and never get in!" lamented the old man Dede Korkut. Though the night was young—second-cycle had not even begun—his eyes were red, and he peered as if he had difficulty focusing.
"It is too dim for you, khan," Heber said. "Let me . . ." He threw fuel on the fire, and light flared up.
Chaya, who had chosen that moment to approach holding the skin of mares' milk, stumbled. She regained her balance quickly, managing neither to drop the skin nor to swear.
"When the fire flares up, my sight is no better than a drillbit's," she complained. "Wait—drillbits!"
Juchi and the khan laughed together; after a moment, Chaya joined in. Heber looked from one to the other.
Drillbits were known for their adamantine teeth and for their greed. Notoriously difficult to control, drillbits could literally chew through walls—assuming you could get them to start.
"I laugh that the khatun and I think so much alike," Juchi said. "I too had the notion of using drillbits against Angband's walls. But"—he shrugged—"how to do so without the Saurons' noticing? Bait, perhaps, but they would see us planting bait. Still, the idea teases at my mind."
Chaya reached into a turquoise bowl that held a garish array of tennis fruit, Finnegan's figs, and red-and-white splotched clownfruit. She caught one up, balanced it in one hand, then tossed it into the air.
"Let me speak as a woman," she said. "It has always been hard to restrain the children from insulting the Saurons. How if we do not even try?" She mimed throwing the clownfruit at her husband.
"Coat the walls with fruit pulp, and the drillbits will gnaw through them for us. They're so stupid they'll burrow a meter or more to find the rest—and Angband's are about a meter thick at the base. Built of soft tufa, too."
"And the Saurons? Would they not try to harm our sons? Would they not wonder at the waste of food?" On Haven little was wasted, even in a prosperous corner like the Tallinn Valley.
"Overripe clownfruit," Chaya said. More nods. Clownfruit were native Haven flora, although humans could eat them, until they went overripe; then they generated a toxic alkaloid that not even distilling would remove. The drillbits wouldn't mind—they liked them that way.
"The Saurons too live with women, who would not see other women's children hurt for so little." Please God, let that be so! "And the Saurons are men and warriors, who like being laughed at as little as any other men. What would they have said? That in their pride, they grudge little children a messy game?"
After a moment, all three men began to laugh uproariously. The skin of mares' milk was passed, this time to her first. She was laughing so hard that the white fluid nearly came out her nose, and she neglected to belch politely.
The men of Dede Korkut's tribe gashed their cheeks in grief. They rode about the grave-mound in a wide circle, with the blood drying on their faces, hammering the hilts of their sabers on their shields and howling like tamerlanes; behind them the women keened and wailed, a clump of dark felt against the dun-brown of the steppe. Within the great pile of rock Dede Korkut lay as his fathers before him, with his bow and sword by his side, dressed in fine cloth, a cup of gold filled with kvass to hand. Around the mound his dead horses stood erect, impaled on stakes, to accompany their master to Paradise. Cat's Eye loomed behind the grave in the west, as if weeping; all about stood the tumbled bones and stones of previous burials, for this had been the resting place of the tribe's khans and nobles for centuries.
Heber bar Non and Chaya bat Dvora stood at a little distance; they had brought gifts to the grave-feast, but this was a matter for close kin. When only the women of the khan's own family continued their keening, and the followers from other encampments had withdrawn to their yurts, they sought Juchi.
"Excellent khan," Heber said, bowing.
Chaya copied the gesture: travelling outside Tallinn, she had returned to Bandari dress. It attracted little attention, here near the borders of the Pale, but the weight of the saber on her belt felt a little strange.
"Not yet," Juchi said. His hard sculpted face was drawn with genuine grief; the cuts on his cheeks had already clotted, looking like old scars except for the line of dried blood. He stroked his beard. "Come."
They ducked into the warleader's yurt; a servant brought kvass, and Juchi sprinkled the ceremonial drops on the little stuffed idol over the entrance.
"This first pouring I give to the spirit of the yurt," he murmured. Then, turning to his guests: "Not yet am I khan of the tribe, but soon. Dede Korkut named me his successor. I must journey to all the encampments, but that is custom, no more. He had no living sons, and his nephew Tarik is not yet a man of moment."
Heber leaned forward. "And our plan, O khan?"
Juchi raised his head for a moment, as if listening to make sure they were not overheard. "Yes to that also, swordsmith. The warriors have gathered for the funeral—that will arouse no suspicion in Angband, although they would hear of an ordinary muster. We strike. If," he went on, "the boys are ready."
"They are, khan," Chaya said firmly. "It was more difficult than getting the maps of the minefields, but it is done. There is a price, though." Juchi's eyebrows rose. "Many of the mothers have daughters who were taken to the Base. If they are widowed, their children orphaned . . ."
Juchi stroked his beard again. "Hmmm. If we take the Base, there will be plunder aplenty. Let some of it go to dowries for the widows—some of the weapons, even. Will that serve?"
Chaya nodded. "As for the orphans, those whom their kin in Tallinn won't take, the People will. Bandari do not hold a child's parents against it"—most of us don't, much—"and we will be glad to take them in. Our Law commands that we do, when there is an opportunity."
The nomad chief nodded. "Good. Best they leave Tallinn Valley; a father's blood calls for blood, and I would not wish them growing up to vengeance around me. Yet slaying the helpless is an ill thing, if it can be arranged otherwise." The skin passed again. "Forgive my discourtesy, but you should leave quickly. We begin at once, and the Saurons have many spies."
"This is a filthy sport the boys of the town have," Grima snarled. "Filthy! We should shoot a few, to teach the rest a lesson."
"It does no harm," Badri said, doing her best to soothe the Brigade Leader. He gave her a curious look; usually she cared not a jot for his feelings. She went on, "And shooting children will surely forfeit whatever goodwill that has managed to grow up over the years between Angband Base and Tallinn Town."
"I have no goodwill toward these rascals." Grima rose, and seized Badri's wrist in an unbreakable grip. "Come, see for yourself the mischief they make." He gave Badri no choice, but dragged her along with him as he stamped through the outer court and ascended to the top of the wall. He scowled down at the boys outside. "Look!"
Badri looked. Boys and a few girls frisked about. One reached into the sheepskin bag he carried, and drew out an overripe clownfruit. He hurled it at a friend. The other boy ducked. The clownfruit splattered against the gray stone of Angband Base's outwall. It slowly slid to the ground, leaving behind a yellow splash of juice. The distinctive bitter-oily smell of the fruit in its overripe state rose; useless even for compost, since it would kill the introduced Terran bacteria and earthworms that tried to eat it.
As if that first throw had been a signal—an opening shot, Badri thought—all the children started flinging fruit at one another. Since they could dodge and the wall could not, it got much messier than they did. Pulp and juice brought stone to bright, even gaudy, life, as if it was the canvas of some ancient abstract expressionist.
Grima was a Soldier; he had never heard of abstract expressionism. Turning to Badri, he growled, "The little idiots have been at it since first-cycle sunrise, close to one hundred and twenty hours now. The whole wall is smeared with this filth."
"I'm sure they'll give it up soon," she answered mildly, glancing at the small but brilliant point of light that was Byers' Sun. It hung low in the west, slowly sinking toward the jagged horizon. "With both the sun and Cat's Eye gone from the sky, it will be too cold for the boys to play such games—and too dark for them to admire their handiwork."
"Admire!" Grima turned such a dusky shade of purple that Badri wondered if he was about to have a stroke: apoplexy often felled Saurons no longer young. But the Brigade Leader mastered himself, and his woman her disappointment. He ground out, "If it weren't for the waste of ammunition, I would order them shot."
That was not quite true. The Soldiers ruled by terror, but like most weapons terror was more effective as a threat than a reality. An occasional gruesome execution served well enough to keep the fear alive. Killing a valley child for a prank was likely to spark more rebellion and sabotage than it was worth. Still . . .
"They're only children," Badri said. "They're harmless." She bit down on a giggle as she imagined young Soldiers behaving so. Then the laugh choked itself off. Even young Soldiers were anything but harmless.
Grima shook his fist at the town boys. "Get out of here!" he yelled.
Soldiers' uniforms, from any distance, looked alike regardless of rank. It was easy for the children to assume the Brigade Leader was just another grouchy trooper. One of them threw a big red-and-white fruit at him. Luckily for everyone, it missed.
"I'll fine their fathers, that's what I'll do," Grima snarled. "Enough to make them hurt—you, get their names! Then they'll beat the little bad-genes brats black and blue."
Grima stormed down off the wall. He was as angry as Badri had ever seen him. Considering how the two of them got along, that was saying something. She followed, her face the expressionless mask to which she schooled herself. Behind the shield she held up against the Brigade Leader, she exulted.
Troop Leader Ufthak yawned and poured himself a cup of not-quite-coffee from the insulated flask that hung on his belt. The mild stimulant was welcome, the warmth even more so. Sentry-go was tedious duty, nowhere more so than at the northern edge of Tallinn Valley where it widened out onto the steppe, at no time more than now—second-cycle night, truenight, was extra dark and extra cold.
The sky seemed naked without either Byers' Sun or Cat's Eye to light it, Ufthak thought. Then he laughed at himself—pretty fancy language for a noncom. What would happen next? He'd probably start writing poetry.
"At which point they pension me off," he said aloud. Then he laughed harder. There was no such thing as a pensioned-off Soldier on Haven.
As if to relieve his boredom, a band of nomads came cantering by, closer to his post than they usually dared approach. Some of them drew within a couple of hundred meters, their heat-signatures clear to his eyes. Ufthak frowned and glanced over to the far side of the valley. Sure enough, plainsmen were also making a display in front of the other sentry post. Ufthak glowered. What in the name of bad genes were they up to?
The Troop Leader clicked the change lever of his assault rifle from safety to semi-automatic. If the nomads thought they could lull him out of alertness, they were welcome to try. A lot of them would end up dead before they realized they were wrong.
All of Ufthak's enhanced senses focused on the riders ahead. The tiny noises behind him were too faint even for enhanced senses, until someone jumped down into the firing pit in back of him. He started to whirl, too late. Iron-hard fingers jerked his head back. A knife's fiery kiss licked across his throat.
The last thing he felt before he went into the dark was embarrassment at letting cattle trick him so.
Juchi climbed out of the Sauron sentry post, waved his dagger and the dead sentinel's assault rifle to show he had succeeded. His keen ears caught the sound of a struggle in the pit on the opposite side of the valley. He dashed that way, only to see two nomads scrambling out, one supporting the other.
He pursed his lips, silently blew through them. Four men had gone after that other sentry. He just thanked Allah and the spirits that neither Sauron had managed to get off a shot. The fortress was a couple of kilometers back into the valley. The warriors there might not have heard, or might have assumed the sentries had things under control. But Saurons had enhanced ears and lively suspicions. The last thing Juchi wanted to do was rouse them.
As the plainsmen in the bands that had distracted the sentries realized the way south was open, one of their number galloped away from the mouth of the valley. He soon returned, leading all the fighting men of Dede Korkut's clan, with Heber bar Non and a band of grim-faced volunteers from Tallinn Valley as well. With him came the grenades, Pale-made, and extra charges of gunpowder and shot for the tribe's muskets.
"Now comes the tricky part," Juchi said softly, when everyone had settled their gear.
"Aye." One of the nomads nodded. "We'd've had a go at the Saurons in their fort long years ago, were it not for the minefields here."
"Now we know where the mines are, though, with the knowing stolen from Angband Base's own computer," Juchi said. His men murmured in awe; to them as to him, computer was but a word to conjure with, as vague and splendid as demon.
Juchi studied the map the swordsmith had brought to the clan. "Follow me," he ordered. "Single file, each man walking as best he can in the footsteps of the man ahead. Anyone who steps on a mine, I will punish without mercy." The warriors stared, then chuckled softly.
They made it through without losing a man. Juchi knew nothing but relief, not least for himself. The map was not an actual printout, but the swordsmith's reconstruction of data smuggled out of the base. Even to do so much—Juchi marveled at the courage of the woman who sent the smith what she'd picked from the mechanical brain.
If all went as he hoped, he thought suddenly, he would meet her soon. Now, though, for the one role in the mission he could not play. "Boys forward," he whispered. A couple of dozen lads, all of them between nine and fifteen T-years, came up to him. "You know what to do," he told them. They nodded, slipped off toward Angband Base.
Up on the wall, Senior Trooper Gorbag came to alertness at the sound of running feet approaching. Then he heard children laugh, heard an overripe clownfruit splatter off the stone below him.
"Get out of here, you gene-poor cattle bastards!" he shouted. The children took no notice of him. He went back to walking his beat; the Brigade Leader tolerated this nonsense for the moment, even if he did not love it. The cattle in Tallinn Town would be the ones grinding their teeth when the fines were announced.
He heard a couple of other sentries shout challenges, then realize they were just spotting more miserable boys. "For a bottle of beer, I'd blow them all away," he said when he came up to the Soldier on the next stretch of wall.
The other Soldier laughed. "For half a bottle," he said.
Not all the boys were armed with fruit this time. Most carried drillbits instead, carried them most carefully by the ropes that bound the burrowers' front and hind legs together. They made sure the animals' heads could not reach anything but air, made especially sure those irresistible teeth came nowhere near their own precious flesh.
Ihsan's drillbit had a particularly evil temper. It kept twisting its meter-long ratlike body, kept trying to jerk its head around so it could bite his hand. As plainly as it could without words, it told him it was angry and hungry and wanted its freedom right now, if not sooner.
"Yes, yes," Ihsan muttered, lugging it toward the wall. He set it down in front of a fruit-besplashed place and cut its bonds with his beltknife.
The drillbit's teeth sank into the spot where it smelled fruit. Those diamond-like incisors cared nothing about stone; the best armor-piercing arrowheads were ground from drillbit teeth. As Ihsan watched, the beast started to burrow into the wall. The youth did not watch long, but turned and ran.
Gorbag yawned as he came down from his turn at sentry-go. Sleep would be welcome, sleep and then his woman. Or maybe, he thought hopefully, the other way around.
He was at the base of the wall when he heard a sound that did not belong. It reminded him—he frowned at the image his mind called up—it reminded him of a man chewing on a mouthful of ballbearings.
He scratched his head. "What the—?" To his amazement, a chunk of wall about the size of his fist suddenly crumbled to dust. The hole grew larger. A streamlined head poked through, and peered nearsightedly up at him. Gorbag's precious discipline went south. He was too horrified to shoot. He screamed instead, as if he were some rich, pampered Tallinn Town woman watching a mouse scuttle across her polished floor.
"Drillbit!" he shouted again and again. "Drillbit!" Moments later, the same cry rose from another part of the wall.
Grima cursed his enhanced hearing. He had been about to mount Badri when the shouting started. He thought about going ahead regardless—she seemed even more furious about submitting than usual, which always turned him on.
Then he realized what the troopers were yelling. He cursed again, this time out loud and foully. Wearing only an erection, he dashed for the wall.
His ardor wilted in the chill of second-cycle truenight. The rest of his body ignored the cold. The Soldiers in the courtyard had the good sense not to notice how he was dressed.
Someone had finally decided to kill one of the drillbits. Another one waddled, obscenely fat, close by the wall. The Brigade Leader's bare foot lashed out, slammed the animal into the stone. It twitched and died.
Even as it did, though, a new outcry arose twenty meters away. Another brown bullet head, ridiculous nose twitching, started to emerge from what should have been solid rock.
Grima clapped a hand to his forehead. "The whole frigging wall might be honeycombed with 'em!" he shouted—screamed might be a better word, if screams came in deep, rasping baritone.
"What do we do, sir?" a Soldier asked nervously. The Brigade Leader snatched the rifle out of the man's hands, fired at the newest drillbit. The unaimed round spanged off stone thirty centimeters from its head. The drillbit squeaked and pulled back into its hole.
Grima suppressed an impulse to yell back toward the barracks. "You—Trooper Mim—go set off the general alert." It would be undignified for the Brigade Leader to run around shouting naked people out of bed over quasi-rodents.
As soon as Grima dashed away, Badri scrambled out of bed. She grudged the time she needed to throw on a robe, but took it nonetheless. Unlike her lord and master—lips skinned back from teeth in a carnivore grin at that thought—she would draw questions, running through the corridors naked. As it happened, no one saw her before she got to Angband Base Command Central; the commander's quarters were close by, for emergencies. She barred the door behind her—Command Central, she'd learned from the TAC, was intended to be a last redoubt against enemy assault no matter what happened to the rest of the base. Hence this single door. For once Sauron military paranoia would be turned against the Soldiers, she thought.
Too bad for the Saurons. Badri began pulling switches.
"I told Mim to set off the general alert!" Grima cried once more, furious not just at the drillbits but now also at his own men. Was everyone asleep in the second-cycle darkness? Red lights should have been flashing, sirens wailing, and Soldiers piling out of the barracks, ready for anything. A minute more and he'd say to hell with dignity and begin yelling and kicking butts himself.
Only the Soldiers on the wall rushed toward the Brigade Leader's voice. Then all the lights in the courtyard went out.
Beyond the side of the wall opposite the one where the drillbits had been released, Juchi and his men stood waiting. When Angband Base plunged into blackness, the nomad warleader thumped the plainsman next to him on the shoulder. The whole band dashed forward, scaling ladders and knotted ropes at the ready.
The first inkling Grima had of something seriously wrong—as opposed to a monumental fuckup—came when Mim ran out of the main barracks, shouting, "Sir, sir, Command Central is locked from inside, and whoever's in there won't acknowledge orders!"
While the Brigade Leader was still trying to digest that, the courtyard lights came back on. They showed men on the walls, armed men not in Soldier field-gray. The nomads started shooting down at the troopers by Grima. Grenades arched down, exploding in sulfur-smelling puffs and sending potsherd shrapnel whining off the inner walls of Angband.
The Soldiers returned fire. Stunned, outnumbered, and pinned down as they were, they nonetheless tumbled invaders from their perches. But the plainsmen's bows—they even had a couple of assault rifles, Grima saw with dismay—hissed death through the Brigade Leader's companions. Muskets loaded with buckshot roared, filling the courtyard with lead and dirty smoke. The grenades flew again and again; a dud came to rest by his foot, and he recognized the make. Bandari, although the men on the walls were nomads, screaming Allahu Akbar and Turkic warcries.
One lone voice cried HaBandar! instead. His weapon had the sharper crack of a rifled musket; two paces from Grima, a Soldier jackknifed backwards. The hole in his stomach was small, but the exit-wound in his back was the size of a small dinner plate: a 12mm-rifle slug of soft lead creates massive tissue damage, much worse than a round ball of the same caliber. Grima did not need to give orders about that. Two streams of bullets from assault rifles battered the Bandari, whoever he was, down off the wall to crumpled death.
Gunfire did what the dead alarm had failed to do—it brought Soldiers bouncing out of bed, weapons at the ready. And when the first of them charged out through the doorways, the foes on the wall cut them down before even Soldier's reactions could save them.
"Dede Korkut!" the nomads yelled. "Dede Korkut!"
Grima's heart, already thuttering near panic, almost stopped altogether when he heard that cry. Here was the danger against which the TAC had warned him, the danger that had caught him all too literally naked. He had thought the danger past when the report of the old chief's death came in, a T-year before.
The plainsmen were descending into the courtyard now, and more and more of them were on the walls. This had to be the whole tribe, Grima thought, appalled, and all its firepower. Somehow they'd made it through the minefield. Men from Tallinn Town as well—hundreds, there must be thousands of cattle swarming over the wall.
Connecting that improbability with the failure of the general alarm and the Assault Leader's dreadful news, the Brigade Leader groaned, "Treason!" And devastatingly effective treason, too—Grima was almost the only Soldier in the courtyard still standing. Against the guns the nomads had massed, against the surprise and disadvantageous position, genetically enhanced fighting ability did not count enough.
Bullets singing around him, Grima ran for the barracks. Somehow he tumbled through the doorway still unwounded. The Soldiers inside were not trying to come out any more. That, they'd learned, was deadly. Instead they were shooting from loophole windows and, from the screams outside, doing no little damage.
"That's the way!" the Brigade Leader shouted. "They haven't taken us yet!" With the rations stored in its underground cellars, the hall could stand a longer siege than any nomad tribe could afford to undertake. And when the nomads had to withdraw . . . Grima snarled, thinking of the revenge the Soldiers would take.
Then fire-fighting foam gushed from forgotten ceiling fixtures unused since Angband Base was built. The stuff was choking to breathe; worse, when it got in a trooper's eyes, it burned like fire and left him blind for . . . Grima did not know for how long. Long enough. As the shooting from the barracks slackened, the plainsmen, still yelling like their imaginary demons, swarmed into the hall.
What happened next was butchery. It was not all one-sided; even blind, Soldiers could dispatch whatever foes came within their reach. But few of the nomads were so unwise. They spent ammunition with such prodigality that Grima wondered whether they would have enough left to hold Angband Base if they took it.
That, however, was not his problem. Getting the traitor out of Command Central was. He could still see out of one eye, after a fashion—and, somewhere back in his quarters, he had a key to a secret entrance to the Base's ultimate strongpoint.
Badri was wrong. In military paranoia if nowhere else, the Soldiers let imagination run free. He might yet turn the battle against the invaders.
Grima ran through the corridors, dodging blinded Soldiers and shouting his name over and over so they would not shoot at what they could not see.
Women's screams mingled with warriors'. Some fought side by side with the Soldiers. Others struck at their one-time partners with anything they had. Grima saw one stab a trooper in the back with a pair of scissors. The Brigade Leader broke her neck and ran on.
Badri was not in his cubicle. He did not know whether to be glad—he might have had to kill her, too. After frantic rummaging through desk drawers, he snatched the key he needed, then ran for all he was worth toward Command Central.
Silent as a stalking cliff lion, Juchi chased the naked Sauron through the chaos of Angband Base's death throes. He could have shot him more than once, but the officer—he'd heard and seen the fellow giving orders—looked to have some definite purpose in mind. That, Juchi thought, might be worth learning.
So he waited until the Sauron bent to turn a key and swing open a tiny hidden door before he fired a burst from around a corner. He heard the meaty chunnk of bullets smacking flesh, peered cautiously to see what he had done.
The Sauron was down but not quite out; he snapped a shot that craacked past Juchi closer than he ever wanted to think about. Juchi returned fire, emptying the assault rifle's magazine. Not even Sauron flesh withstood that second burst. When Juchi looked again, he saw the naked Soldier sprawled in death.
Pausing only to stick in a fresh clip (his last, he noted, and reminded himself to make sure someone salvaged the good brass cartridges he'd used), he stepped through the door the Sauron had opened. At the end of a narrow, winding corridor was another door. He opened it.
When Badri saw a piece of the wall of her little fortress within a fortress begin to open inward, she knew she was dead. So unfair, she lamented, so unfair. But then, maybe not. She had had her vengeance on Angband Base; perhaps it was only right that the Base have vengeance on her.
She stood, straightened, awaited her fate with a strange calm. Here inside Command Central, she had no weapon. For that matter, how much good was a weapon likely to do against a battle-ready Soldier? She was sure only a Sauron could have sniffed out the hidden way, about which not even she had known. Thus she gasped when the door revealed instead a nomad warrior, shaggy in fur cap, sheepskin jacket and boots, heavy wool trousers, and a young man's brown beard sprouting from cheeks and chin.
He swung his rifle toward her, abruptly checked the motion. She realized her robe had fallen open. She made no move to pull it shut. Let the plainsman see all he wanted, if that kept her alive.
He said something in his own language. She shook her head; she had no more than a few words of the plains speech. He tried again, this time in stumbling Russki:
"Who—you?"
That she could follow; most of the folk of Tallinn Town and Valley had Russki for their native tongue. She gave her name, waved around. "This is Command Central. This is where I fight for you."
His grin was enormous, and looked even more so with his teeth so white against his unshaven face. "Badri?" he shouted. "You Badri? I Juchi, warleader Dede Korkut's clan. We have Angband Base, Badri. We win. Between you, fighters of clan, we win!" He threw his arms wide.
She sprang forward. Even the prod of the assault rifle in the small of her back as Juchi's embrace enfolded her was only a brief annoyance. He smelled of stale sweat and smokeless powder. Badri did not care, not now, not in the savage rush, stronger than vodka, of a victory she had never expected to win.
He tilted her chin up. His face felt strange against hers; she had never kissed a bearded man before. Triumph burned as hot in her as in him. The kiss went on and on. She felt her loins turn liquid. Afterwards, she was never sure which of them drew the other down to the floor.
This far from Base, not even Chaya could hear the screams and the shooting.
Waiting. That's the hardest part. She wanted to pace, to shout, even to scream frustration at the men who claimed the work of fighting and left her and their wives to wait and to fear. The women of Tallinn were quiet, schooled to waiting while their fates were decided. Even the youngest bride sat calmly, restraining a toddler while its mother nursed a baby.
They were all calm, all quiet. The screaming and lamentations would come later, if they were needed. In the half-light of the shelter Chaya could see the women's eyes. Shadowed and liquid, their glances shot to the door every time someone thought she heard a sound. Waiting made your ears play tricks on you. She exchanged glances with some of the other women. Each had been selected for strength and composure; each bore a pistol.
If their menfolk lost, they would not die unavenged. And, if all went well, the women would follow them into death, not to be slaves to Saurons. Chaya wondered how many of them could hold to that resolve.
She stretched and shifted in her place, trying not to become stiff with waiting as the night dragged on.
"Quiet!" she hissed to silence a whispered conversation. Moving with as much care as if she sought to avoid ambush, she edged toward the door.
"Footsteps," she mouthed at the older women and saw them draw their pistols from their layered clothing. Then she sagged with relief as a series of taps sounded on the door. "It's the signal!" she said, speaking aloud for the first time that night.
Tears rolled down the women's faces; and she would have wept too . . . but her tears dried so very quickly.
Juchi had sent youths to reassure the women and command them not, the youths repeated, not to venture into the Base to care for the wounded menfolk. The injured would be brought out. Repeat: they would be brought out. Chaya grinned at the very young men, who bore messily bandaged wounds and their female relatives' shrill attention with obvious forbearance and more than a little pride. This might well be their first time in authority over their mothers and aunts; it was too much to expect that they would take no satisfaction in the role of returning, victorious warriors. Hurriedly, they recounted the battle: so many Saurons slain, so many vanished.
Vanished? Some might try to cross the steppe, make for Quilland Base; and Barak's warriors would be waiting for them. Then they saw her, and their jubilation faded. "Chaya Khatun . . ." one spoke hesitantly.
"We knew there would be dead." Her voice sounded cold and strange. "Who else?"
An odd way to phrase it. But, just from the way they looked at her, she knew. Heber was dead. Somewhere in that thrice-damned fort, her husband lay dead, hacked or torn to pieces, a bullet in his brain . . . it did not matter. The man who had loved her when all around her called her a freak lay dead.
The women raised the wail of tribal lamentation until Chaya's too-keen hearing could not bear it. She moved forward, her whole body cold, despite the press of bodies.
"I beg you," she said, still in that lifeless voice. "My work here is done for now. I must go out."
"Where, khatun?" One of the youths made as if to stand between her and the door. He might never have backed down from the Saurons, but fell back at her glance.
"The Saurons stole a life from me. They owe me a life in return."
She went out into the night. Briefly she stopped at the forge to pick up weapons, supplies and tools. She harnessed a muskylope and rode out of Tallinn Town.
When the muskylope staggered and all but pitched forward onto its knees, Chaya slid from its broad back and made camp. She kindled a tiny fire, sheltering it from the winds that tore across the steppe. She herself might have spotted it from afar, however; and that was good.
She drew her heavy sheepskin coat about her and huddled by the small flames. She did not expect it to warm her, nothing could warm her since the announcement of Heber's death. They would wonder, those townsfolk, why she did not wail with the other wives, why she would not be present to claim and wash her husband's body. She did not want to see it.
Saurons would be wandering the steppe tonight, Saurons and, very probably, her own kinsfolk from the Pale. Either way, she would claim a life to replace the life that had been reft from her . . . only she was so weary: not a weariness of the flesh, but a draining of the spirit.
Which would come first, she wondered, Saurons or Bandari? And which did she want to see?
At the outermost limits of her hearing sounded a chuckle, surprised and satisfied. Chaya's lips peeled back from her teeth. So. She tensed, listening for footsteps. Only one man, then. No, a man, a Sauron. She had to hope he would be battle-stunned enough that he would not wonder why one of the "cattle" wandered alone on the steppe during second-cycle night, but would take advantage of whatever he found: shelter, fire, food, a woman if he was still capable.
She drew out her pistol, looked at it, set it aside. That was too quick, too dignified. Moving quickly, but as quietly as she could, she drew out the tools she had taken from the forge and hid them beneath the blankets and furs of her bedroll. The footsteps grew louder, more assured. No trooper, not even one from a beaten Sauron post, could believe himself to be overmatched by cattle.
What would he say if he knew this "cattle" was a Sauron cull? Probably the same thing. Best not threaten him at all, at least at first.
When the Sauron entered the tiny circle cast by Chaya's fire, he found her sitting cross-legged, stirring a fragrant pot of stew. Again, she heard him chuckle, and turned her shudder of revulsion into what she hoped he would think was a shiver of pure terror. So easy, so very easy to reassure himself, faced only with a woman of the "cattle," wasn't it?
"Don't be timid, girl." The Sauron's voice was hoarse. He used Americ; then, at her carefully blank stare, changed to Turkic. "You're as lost as I am, aren't you? Well, don't worry. We'll join forces. I can use a woman . . . ."
She bet he could. She made herself cower back as he hunkered down by the fire, so near to her that her resolve almost failed her.
"Give me some of that," he ordered.
She filled one bowl, then another. Then she emptied the pot and, in a great frenzy of anxiousness to please, brought out a flask of almost-coffee. He drank deeply, then belched, a sound that had nothing to do with the courtesies of the tribes. She tried, nonetheless, to look pleased.
"Well-trained, are you?" he said as he wiped his greasy mouth on his sleeve. "Whose are you . . . never mind that; you're mine now. What's your name?"
Disdaining a lie, she told him. "And yours?"
"Gorbag. Trooper Gorbag, at your service. As you are at mine," he announced, and lunged at her.
She gasped and held her breath, glad that she had not eaten, lest she vomit all over the man who pushed her onto the sheepskins she had spread out. Because the wind was cold, he undid the minimum possible of his garments and hers. She clenched her fingers into the curls of the fleece on which she lay, and wished he would spend himself quickly. Her body, the body of a woman half-Sauron, adapted to survive in a world that prized fertility, moved to accommodate him. Her mind ranged far away, even as her fingers clutched the shoulders of the instrument of her vengeance.
Make hate to me, Sauron, and then I will make hate to you. If it took that Gorbag . . . Greasebag, she thought, or Scumbag would have been better names . . . forever, she would still lie beneath his thrusting, grunting hulk. But at last he climaxed, pulled free, and fell asleep, exhausted past self-protection by defeat, the cold of night on the steppe, and sex. Chaya forced herself to lie still, his head on her breasts, until the snoring started. She had not known that Saurons snored like cattle. Then she reached for what lay beneath the sheepskins: hammer and spike from Heber's forge. Reached for them, raised them—and froze.
No. Not even if I die for it. I cannot, cannot bear to kill him as he lies on top of me. I have to move.
The unnatural calm that had enthralled her since she heard of her husband's death broke as a hammer smashes brittle iron, and she recoiled, shoving Gorbag onto the sheepskins. He grunted, rolled, and woke. With an intake of breath that was almost a shriek, Chaya leapt on him, straddling him with her own Sauron strength. Gorbag's eyes glowed into awareness. He had a moment of knowledge and fear before she thrust the spike against his temple and hammered it home. He spasmed like some immensely powerful insect, kicked, voided and died.
Knife in hand, Chaya raised herself from where he'd tossed her as he died. He lay face down, and she was glad of that. A single stroke of Heber's keen steel severed head from neck; Saurons, she saw, bled like cattle and died just as easily. She pulled her clothing about herself, grimacing at the moisture on her thighs. That too was part of her vengeance. She had always known when she was ripe to conceive, and she had had hopes that, after the battle to destroy Angband, she and Heber . . .
Don't think of that, she told herself. The dry heaves and the cramps snatched her up, anyway. At last she was empty; at least, most of her. She was sure she had conceived of this . . . Already, I forget his name . . . She would take his son, as she had taken his life; and she would bring the boy up as her own husband's son.
She harnessed the muskylope, kicked earth over the dying fire, muffled the Sauron's head in the defiled sheepskin, and tied it to the saddle. She left the tent and the headless corpse behind her as she rode toward Eden Valley.
"Hold! We have you in our sights!"
The sky was paling; the sun would rise at her back, giving her a brief advantage. Then she recognized the voice.
"Avi?" she called, shocked at how plaintive her voice sounded. Mutters from the force ahead of her told her she had guessed right. "It's Chaya bat Dvora, who married Heber . . ." Her voice was breaking.
A horse—a big one—walked forward. Barak bar Sandor always chose the biggest horses. A big man, for all that he was little more than a boy in years. "Chaya? What are you doing alone out here?"
"I wasn't," she said. "The battle; it's over and we won. I was coming to tell you . . . ."
"And Heber . . ."
"Gone. But there is this."
She untied and held up the Sauron's clotted head.
"The Lord gives, and the Lord takes; blessed be the name of the Lord." An Edenite accent, a tall gangling youth with mad pale eyes. Hammer-of-God Jackson. Chaya looked into the fixed, exalted stare and nodded. I'm mad too, for this night, she thought.
She heard murmurs of pity and sympathy, and Barak rode closer. She forced herself not to recoil when he enveloped her in what he meant to be a comforting hug.
And then, never mind that her tears dried too fast, she wept until she was sick.