Dagor son of Juchi watched Carcharoth fiddle with the nozzle of a device that looked more arcane than anything the shamans sang of. Carcharoth had to know he was there, but took no notice of him. Cyborgs, Dagor had discovered, were masters at ignoring anything not directly relevant to them.
Sick of being ignored, Dagor asked, "What is that thing?" He was picking up Americ pretty fast, but still spoke the Turkic steppe dialect most of the time.
"Flame thrower," Carcharoth answered in Americ without looking up.
"What?" Dagor fell into the Saurons' (Soldiers', he corrected himself) usual tongue. He wasn't sure he'd understood correctly. "It—throws fire?"
"Yes." Now Carcharoth did look up. He enjoyed talking about weapons. "Nozzle. Hose of drillbit gut. Two tanks in backpack: one compressed air to push out the flame, the other ghee and muskylope lard to make the flame. A little battery pack fires blank cartridges at the end of the nozzle to ignite the liquid."
"Really?" Dagor wasn't sure whether to believe Carcharoth or not. He'd already seen so much at the Citadel that would be flatly incredible anywhere else on Haven—miracles like electricity and refrigeration, even greater miracles like the machine shop that turned out brass cartridges for the soldiers' assault rifles. But would even the tribal bards, notorious for tales of things that never were, have had the gall to sing of a weapon that shot fire?
Carcharoth was not a bard. He was the single most dangerous man Dagor had ever seen, and therefore one whose opinion carried a great deal of weight. He was altogether serious as he answered, "Yes, boy, really. Effective range is out to about thirty meters. The tanks carry enough propellant and fuel for about a dozen ignitions."
"Thirty meters?" Dagor scratched his head. "What good is a weapon like that? A bow can strike at five times that—a rifle ten times as far."
"True enough," the Battlemaster admitted. "A rifle is a general-purpose weapon. A flame thrower has a few special functions. If an enemy is concealed inside a house and you don't care to go in after him, you can burn it down and either take him with it or pot him when he has to flee. If he's down a hole or in a tunnel, you can likewise smoke him out or make him run. And a flame thrower is a terror weapon—watching one man burn will do more to enemy morale than having a hundred men shot. Cooking to death hurts, and looks as if it hurts. Exploiting this can be useful."
He spoke as a teacher would to a student who might show promise. No one had ever taken that tone with Dagor before. Dagor had been a little boy when his father/brother and mother discovered the tragic web that trapped them—and escaped that web only through grisly mutilation and death. He still had nightmares of the blood streaming down Juchi's face after he'd torn out his own eyes.
And ever since that dreadful day, Dagor had been an outcast, despised for the blood he bore and mistrusted by all he met. As if he could help that, or as if the sins of his parents were his fault! But the tribesmen did not see it so; to them, sin passed down from father to son like endurance in horses. And when father was also brother . . .
He'd left the Tallinn Valley young. It hadn't helped. His name and reputation ran ahead of him like fire before the wind. He'd learned smithing, become better than average with his Sauron speed and strength and dexterity, and normally a smith could support himself come good times or bad. But he'd been hungry when he tried to join the seven in their jihad against the Citadel.
And they'd sent him away. Even his kin wanted none of him—his kin on the steppe, that is. Here at the Citadel, things seemed different. They had every reason to hate him here, being as he was the son of a man who'd worked great harm on them. But they saw him only in terms of how he could be useful to them. Inbreeding was a standard technique of the Breedmasters. Other than being intrigued at his genetic background, they didn't care about the incest that had spawned him. He'd never before known an attitude like that. He reveled in it.
As a smith, he had a feel for the way arms should look. The flame thrower didn't come up to his standards. "It's very ugly," he said, pointing.
"So what?" Carcharoth answered. "It does what it's supposed to do, and does it well. Making it pretty too would just be wasted effort."
Dagor had never known an attitude like that, either. He said, "But would not the soldiers fight better if they admired and cherished the arms they bore?" He had to fall back into Turkic to ask the question in the way he wanted.
"They admire their weapons because those weapons are what keeps them alive," Carcharoth said. "You've picked up a lot of damnfool notions out on the steppe, do you know that? The only reason to fight a war is to win it. They don't give points for style."
"But—" Dagor thought of his own father, of Hammer-of-God, or Piet whom the Bandari revered: stylish warriors every one. Could any of them have stood against a soldier in single combat? Well, Juchi had, but that was only because he was Sauron himself, not because he was stylish. The ceiling speaker said, "Battlemaster Carcharoth, report to the front gates. Battlemaster Carcharoth, report to the front gates."
"Shit," Carcharoth said mildly. He set down the flame thrower nozzle, rose fluidly from the lotus position in which he'd been sitting, trotted off toward the gates. Dagor tagged along after him. Though the Battlemaster mocked style, his daunting all-around competence was a style of its own, and one to which Dagor responded. It put him in mind of Juchi: to what boy, after all, does his father not seem omnicompetent?
Just inside the gates stood the most decrepit Sauron Dagor had ever seen. Had he been a horse, the young man from the steppes would have cut his throat as a mercy. His face was all but skeletal; every bit of flesh left on the bones was stamped with the marks of ultimate exhaustion. He'd run right through the soles of his boots. Though soldiers' blood clotted with unnatural speed, all the same his feet left bloody prints on the concrete floor.
His eyes had what the nomads called the thousand-meter stare: they peered not at his surroundings but at something far away only he could see. Then those eyes—all the more alarming for being as blue as a land gator's—registered the death's heads on Carcharoth's collar tabs. The soldier stiffened to a painful sort of attention.
"Sir," he said in a ghastly croak. "Trooper Mewlip, sir, returning to the Citadel to report the failure of the detail assigned to capture or destroy the Cyborg Sigrid."
"What are you doing here?" Carcharoth demanded. After a moment, Dagor realized he meant, Why aren't you dead?
"Sir, I am reporting as ordered," Mewlip replied. "While following the course given by the nomad Temujin to the alleged Katlinsvale, the two sections led by Assault Leader Atanamir encountered the van of an extremely large party of nomads traveling in the direction of the Citadel. We attacked said van and inflicted severe damage upon it. More nomads, however, continued to press down upon us from the west and north. Outnumbered and required to be conservative of ammunition, we yielded ground while performing reconnaissance and devising a stratagem."
The Battlemaster rolled his eyes. "Atanamir may be a promising officer, but he is very young. So tell me, what brilliant piece of military trickery did he invent?"
Dagor would have attacked any man who spoke to him so. The soldier, however, ignored the sarcasm and answered the question: "Sir, he assumed that two sections from the Citadel would be inadequate to check the oncoming nomads. Accordingly, he and his men enlisted tribes known to be loyal to our cause, expending them to delay the arrival of the nomad horde in this vicinity."
"He could have done worse," Carcharoth admitted. "Did he have any hope of actually blunting this onslaught rather than merely delaying it?"
"Sir, he did not," Mewlip answered. "Our estimates from observation and interrogations were that the horde totaled more than forty thousand effectives and is growing every cycle by several thousand more. Atanamir's expectation was of selling himself and his men as dearly as he could. It is because he expected that there would be no other survivors that I was dispatched here under orders; without them, I assure you I would have shared my comrades' fate. But Atanamir impressed on me that the Citadel must be warned."
"As you say, Trooper. I do not doubt your courage, I assure you," Carcharoth said. "But the works here are built to withstand anything the steppe tribes can throw at us. That is their function, after all. So why, aside from size, did Atanamir particularly fear this nomad grouping?"
"Sir, I am directed to report to you that after the initial encounter, in which the steppe nomads were armed with their usual worthless assortment of bows, muskets, carbines, and whatnot, we encountered men armed with Bandari rifles: both Bandari, and steppe tribesmen. Black-powder breechloaders with effective range as great as that of our own weapons and capable of fire rapid enough to prove more than a nuisance even to soldiers."
"Bandari rifles?" the Battlemaster repeated.
"In large numbers, sir," Mewlip said. "No possible doubt; I examined captured specimens. And that stinking rifled slug, sir, does a lot more damage than the usual run of musket ball."
"Bandari rifles?" Carcharoth said yet again. The soldier gave him a puzzled look. So did Dagor. From what he'd seen, the Cyborg Battlemaster did not waste time on conversational frills and did not need information repeated. He hadn't thought Carcharoth showed so much emotion, either. But the Cyborg looked suddenly lost, as if the world were falling apart before his eyes.
"Sir, why is that a surprise?" Dagor asked. "You learned from me that the Pale is involved with this movement, if you hadn't known before."
Carcharoth didn't answer, not directly. Instead he said, "Bandari rifles?" for the third time, then added, "The very same as the ones the rebels are using in the west end of the Valley. It was a feint after all . . . yet it couldn't have been . . . yet it was. Inconsistencies . . ." His voice trailed away.
Mewlip and Dagor exchanged glances. The Battlemaster did not seem in control of the situation, not even slightly. The soldier said, "Sir, permission to report to the infirmary to get my feet seen to?"
"Granted," Carcharoth said, but absently, not in the crisp way he should have.
"Are you all right, sir?" Dagor asked as Mewlip left.
Carcharoth looked him full in the face. "No."
Chichek heard the news in the refectory. Where else? The whole Citadel gathered in its mealrooms; sometimes a Cyborg would sit down at meat beside a tribute maiden and her squalling brat. These days, with Regiments of soldiers out pacifying the west of the Shangri-La Valley, the big chamber seemed chock full of women and children; the remaining soldiers in their sober field-gray were punctuation marks scattered among the bright raiment of those with whom they lived.
Rumors had been flying for several cycles, rumors of steppe clans on the move against the Citadel. From what Sharku had told her, Chichek knew more about the truth behind those rumors than most of the soldiers' women: even among the elite who had permanent partners, few had spouses who were so well connected, or who loved them enough to care to confide in them. She prided herself on the trust Sharku showed her, and did not gossip to excess. Sharku knew how to bring out such loyalty—in her, and in the men he commanded. Few had risen so high so young . . .
Besides, as long as the reports were rumor alone, she'd done her best to ignore them. She didn't want them to be true. But now there could be no possible doubt. The clans were coming. What Mewlip said in private when he arrived was common knowledge ten hours later.
"Can they take the Citadel?" Kortla asked anxiously. She dandled a baby boy in her lap as she ate. Kortla had to move sharply; the babe's grabs showed Sauron speed.
"Don't be foolish," Chichek answered. "You know the might of this place."
"Yes, but I also know how many of our men are gone," Kortla said.
Chichek frowned; she knew it too, and knew how Sharku had railed against it. On the bench beside her, her son Gimilzor puffed out his small chest and said, "Don't be afraid, mamma. I won't let anyone hurt you."
He spoke Americ, as he usually did, but had no trouble following the steppe tongue those women of the Citadel who came from the tribes used among themselves. Valley Americ and Russki were more common, but the women tended to make their friends among those with the same background.
She smiled fondly and ruffled the boys hair. "My little cliff lion," she said. The other women at the table looked admiringly at Gimilzor—so young, and already a warrior spirit! No less than the men of the Citadel, the tribute maidens sprang from folk who admired strength and daring.
Erka said, "What does it matter whether or not the clans take the Citadel? They will come close enough to see us on the battlements. We are dead to them, you know; they cast us out when they grant us to the Saurons. Yet they will see us! How shall I not die of shame?"
"To go to the stronger is no shame." Chichek declared.
"No shame to us, perhaps, not for that." Erka said. "But shame for the clans at having to give us up. They hate having to turn some of their maidens over to the Saurons so the rest can use the Valley to safely bear their babes—even more, when they must for fear of the Saurons' power. And they will hate us, as reminding them of their shame."
"That's not all they'll hate us for," Kortla said. "What's the blackest thing you can call a woman out on the steppe? Both of you know the answer to that as well as I do: Sauron's whore."
"What's a whore, mamma?" Gimilzor asked.
"Nothing you need to worry about, little one," Chichek answered. All the same, she bit her lip. What the other women said was true. She hadn't thought about it in a long time, being happy with Sharku, but it was so. Suddenly all the loss and fear she'd felt when the tribute party seized her for the Citadel came flooding back.
Vindictiveness twisting her face, Erka said to Kortla, "Now Chichek the pampered pet sees the life the rest of us live here. She fears the men of the clans as we fear the men of the Citadel. Her love is here, ours are still out on the plains."
"Aye, by Allah and all the spirits," Kortla answered. "I could have been happily wed—there was a boy who mooned after me, and his father was rich—but instead I was forced to submit to the embraces of a pork-eating infidel."
"And I," Erka said. "What if my lost sweetheart recognizes me? I'd throw myself off the wall, I swear I would. But Chichek waits only for her Sauron to come home."
"Don't you talk mean about my mother," Gimilzor said, understanding the tone if not content. "I'll hurt you if you do."
From a normal boy of about five T-years, the threat would have been idle. From a soldier's son of promising genetics, it was anything but. Gimilzor might have given a grown man without genetic augmentation all he could handle.
Chichek automatically restrained him, and he yielded to his mothers touch. But she was tempted to turn him loose against Kortla and Erka. Never till now had they shown her how they resented her for being happily partnered to Sharku. Did most of the tribute maidens feel as they did, hating their men and hating the Citadel? She hadn't thought so. Now, all at once, she felt adrift, as if on the Northern sea.
Suppose . . . Suppose the Citadel fell. Madness, she knew, but this seemed a meal period made for madness. What would she do, assuming she lived through the sack? Go back to her old clan? There the other two were right: the clan would not have her. What then?
She shivered, wishing Sharku and the Regiments would return. Then all her vapors would be swept away into the land of lies where they belonged.
Erka began to keen, the old mourning cry of the steppes that Chichek had not heard since she came to the Citadel. "What shall we do?" the tribute maiden cried. "What shall we do when they come against us, the ones we might have loved, the ones who cast us forth into the beds of infidels? Allah and the spirits, what shall we do?"
Ice tingled through Chichek; the small hairs on her arms and legs tried to rise, as if she were a wild beast showing its alarm. All through the refectory, tribute maidens joined the outcry their voices rising and falling in a ragged chorus of pain whose like had surely never been heard in the Citadel since the long-vanished days of its raising.
"Stop!" The harsh Americ command cut through the uproar as cleanly as a saber cleaving man's-flesh. Carcharoth the Battlemaster stood by the bench where he'd been eating. Though his field-gray uniform was designed not to draw the eye, the quivering outrage of his posture utterly nullified its camouflage. "Stop!" he said again, this time louder than before. "The Citadel endures. The Citadel shall always endure. Doubt it at your peril."
Had he stopped there, Chichek thought, he would have won the women back to obedience. They were used to obeying Saurons; they were especially used to obeying Cyborgs. Who, after all, dared to do otherwise?
But Carcharoth did not stop: "We shall annihilate the nomads utterly; we shall make it as if they had never been. We shall betray them as they have betrayed us, shall send them into the outer darkness, shall pound them into paste. They will be lost in the fiery flames forever, sent up in a pillar of smoke that may look toward the Citadel but shall always be blown away by the great and righteous wind of our wrath."
Now he's gone and done it, Chichek thought. He's laid it on too thick. Sure enough, the keening broke free again, louder and wilder and more desolate than before. The tribute maidens had but mourned themselves; now, they lamented the promised devastation of the clans from which they'd come. Chichek stared at the Battlemaster. How could he have been so stupid? The question echoed on several levels. Cyborgs usually showed about as much emotion as a land gator. What could have prompted Carcharoth to spout this ill-timed, melodramatic claptrap?
Whatever it was, it possessed him still. "Stop! Be silent!" he cried once more, but now the women would not heed him. Before he could launch another verse of his own maunderings, Titus the Breedmaster hurried up to him and whispered urgently in his ear. Carcharoth tried to shake him off, but Titus set an arm around his shoulders—as if in friendship—and steered him out of the refectory. Not just the women but also the few soldiers in the hall stared after the two Cyborgs as they departed.
Carcharoth had succeeded in one thing: he'd stopped the keening chorus after all. But the hum of gossip that rose to replace it could have been no more reassuring to the powers of the Citadel.
"What's wrong with the Battlemaster, mamma?" Gimilzor asked, and then again when she did not answer. "What's wrong with the Battlemaster?"
"I don't know," Chichek said at last. The admission frightened her.