Chapter Thirty-One
Caine barely noticed the surprise Newton and Bannor could not keep off their faces. He was too busy trying to do the same while suppressing yet another wave of horror.
Maybe it had been the comparative civility of the Legate, or the basic decency of the h’achgai, or maybe he’d just been too preoccupied with the rescue . . . but he hadn’t foreseen this. Despite the savagery and brutality that seemed to flow as freely and routinely as floods through the streets of Forkus, the part of his mind that should have anticipated this possibility had either been blinded by other concerns or blissfully asleep. Or, maybe, conveniently asleep: deep in a protective slumber because his conscious mind wasn’t ready to envision a moment like this one.
It wasn’t as if he hadn’t faced and made grim choices over the past five years, but those had been split-second decisions, with enemies close at hand and determined to kill the rest of his team by any means available. There had been two occasions in Indonesia when there wasn’t enough time to pull a mortally wounded insurgent to safety, and Caine had followed the terrible tradition of leaving behind a pistol with a single bullet. But he’d never had to order the cold-blooded murder of nearly a score of wounded captives. There had always been another alternative—
“Honored One?”
Bey’s voice called him back to the task at hand and the limited time they had in which to complete it. He nodded at her. “D-Do you have special traditions . . . rites, that we should—?”
She looked at him as if he might be ill. “Honored One, it is probably best if we do it.”
“We?”
“Zaatkhur and I. He is my oldest friend, reliable, and only wounded in one hand. We have special knives for such times, if we may fetch them from our kits. We shall follow your parole strictly: no attempt to escape, no treachery. I give my word as a truthteller.”
Riordan glanced at his two companions. Newton was looking away; probably his Hippocratic oath was at war with the grim necessities of the situation. Bannor simply dipped his chin: the shallowest of nods. Riordan met Bey’s searching eyes, noticed they were very light brown. “Sergeant Girten shall accompany you to ensure that . . . that you come to no harm as you undertake this task.”
Her nod became a shallow bow. Summoning the oldest of the wounded kajh, presumably Zaatkhur, she moved toward the far end of the triage line.
“Caine?” Rulaine prompted in a tone usually used when awakening children.
Riordan nodded. “Right. We still have nineteen captives who can move.” He closed his eyes, found the thread of the problem. “Too many. They’d be able to track us with their eyes closed. But if we leave them here . . . same result. No, worse: the trackers would have reports from survivors who saw our weapons, our tactics.” Bannor nodded at his conclusion. “Recommendations?”
Newton answered quickly. “Yaargraukh has kept eight warriors apart who did not give their parole as willingly as the others. They could be marched to the h’achgai hovel, which could send a runner to the Legate. He might be able to recruit these kajh, give them—”
Bannor shook his head. “Can’t, Doc. The parole can’t just be reassigned, not without the kajhs’ permission and the Legate’s assurance he would honor its transfer.”
Newton folded his arms. “Then what do we do?”
Riordan experienced a sensation he had not known in a long time: flailing after the faintest shreds of a solution. “I agree with Bannor. That won’t work, not with the kajh. But what about the female urldi? If we can leave them behind, that saves them from a march that might kill them and cuts the numbers by a third.”
Bannor nodded. “It would help. Nineteen captives would not only be hell to police, but they’d be malnourished in ten days, fifteen at the outside. But if we can reduce that number . . . Okay: what’s your idea for the trog women?”
As if I have one. “Release them. Bring them a few kilometers north with us, then tell them to head east and south: to reenter the city in Tasvar’s territory.”
Bannor crossed his arms. “Okay, sir. I see how that’s better than trying to pawn off the kajh. But what if they decide not to risk going to Tasvar but decide to sell their story to whoever takes them in. They won’t stick together because one is more likely to get a deal than three, and that would spread our story of what happened here all over Forkus. Unless predators wipe them out on the way.
“But let’s say some did get to Tasvar. Given the way he’s distanced himself from this operation, I suspect that’s the last thing he wants. Like he said, the black-market grapevine always runs in both directions, so tales told inside his fort will get out and give him more trouble than any of this—including us—was worth.”
Riordan had to nod. “Worst case? It could ignite a war with Hwe’tsara.”
A whimper brought them out of their head-bowed huddle. The trog that Bey called Zaatkhur had laid his age-seamed hand on the shoulder of his last charge. Bey, walking past him, cleaned a very small obsidian knife as she glanced toward the outfacing circle of eight bound kajh. Several stared at her, then looked away.
Bey gave them a wide berth and settled gently next to the last of the incapacitated: a young female, barely into her adult years. Newton stepped slowly in her direction.
“So,” Bannor whispered, “I don’t see how we can cut the females loose at all. If we could get a couple of days north along the river, then maybe we could. But—”
“But those are the very days that we have to leave minimal tracks and move as quickly as possible, or get hunted down in the wastes.” Riordan shook his head. “I just don’t see what else—”
This time, the sound that stopped them was not a whimper, but soft weeping. They turned to find the source.
Bey’s head had fallen until her sharp chin touched the hide armor over her clavicle.
Newton edged closer. “Did she call you ‘sister’?”
Bey sucked in a deep breath, then: “Yes. She was born just after I arrived. I . . . I protected her after her mother was killed.”
Bannor looked away. His mutter was almost inaudible: “Shit.”
Bey stood stiffly, but instead of continuing forward toward Caine, she turned and strode toward Yaargraukh and the grat’r which now followed him with the posture of a bodyguard.
Bannor frowned, moved to intercept her—
Riordan put out his hand. “No. Wait.” Yaargraukh was watching them; Caine nodded.
Bey drew near the Hkh’Rkh with a respectful nod, came closer when he gestured that she might do so. Their quiet exchange was brief—no more than five seconds—after which she turned sharply and strode back toward Caine and Bannor. As she did, Yaargraukh moved away from his post near the breach, the grat’r following him but also moving further out to his flank.
“Honored One—” Bey began.
“Call me Ca . . . Leader Caine,” Riordan said. “You have something to report?”
She took a deep breath. “I do. I have assessed the reliability of the unwounded warriors.”
“And?”
Bey glanced over her shoulder; Yaargraukh had gestured Ayana to come away from her position at the dogleg. Miles, left alone at that post, was about to call out to the Hkh’Rkh, then read the room and jerked a head at Peter, who also drifted closer to the prisoners.
“The eight bound kajh are not reliable.”
One of them must have heard a fragment of her report. “Liar!” he shouted. “Dread Lord and Victor!” he cried toward Riordan. “She lies to get your favor! She—!”
“Silence.” Yaargraukh’s booming voice was entirely too much like an x’qao’s, his hard palate rasping and grating just like theirs. The grat’r moved with him, approaching the eight bound trogs; although only armed with its claws, they were evolved for both digging and killing and were quite formidable.
Bey’s reaction was difficult to read: her eyes closed and her jaw clenched so tightly that the joints on either side protruded sharply. When she opened her eyes again, they were pained. “I do not say this gladly about my own people, even less about those alongside whom I have fought, eaten, and slept. But the terms of your parole and my oath as a truthteller give me no choice: They plot your death, Leader Caine. You, and all your companions.”
“You dead-wombed seductress!” shouted another. “It is plain now that you plotted with these murderers, hoped to be allowed to lead! You are mad with lust for power, since that is the only lust you know!”
She turned her head far enough to shout over her shoulder. “You heard the terms of Leader Caine’s parole as plainly as I did. We receive fair treatment because we each gave our word not to flee nor plot treachery. Tell me: what were you whispering as I walked past?”
“You mean as you drained the blood from your own kin?”
“I have no kin in this place, though I have loved those in it better than you ever did. But to the point: As I walked past, you were plotting how and when it would be best to attack. Or if that was even the best way to achieve your betrayal.”
Another screamed, furious. “It is not a betrayal to keep our vows to Jzhadakh! We act to keep our word to him!”
She turned on them, heat rising in her voice. “If you meant to keep those oaths of loyalty-past-death, then you could not accept Leader Caine’s parole. It required that you forsake vengeance if you accepted its guarantee of safety.” She surveyed them solemnly. “Your acceptance of the parole was not just a lie; it was an oath broken in the very act of promising to keep it.”
“Liar! No oath to humans is greater than an oath to one of our own!”
“An oath is an oath,” she retorted before pointing to a faint sideways oval tattooed on her forehead. “This is the eye that witnesses and must testify.”
“Yes! If you are asked, traitor!”
“To be silent would have made me your accomplice. I would have violated my first oath: that of a truthteller.”
“You wilds-whelped word lover! Jzhadakh should never have—!”
Riordan raised his hand abruptly. “Enough.” Projected from his diaphragm, the word was loud without becoming a shout. “Bey, tell me more about these oaths of loyalty-past-death.”
She raised an eyebrow. “They swore to kill Jzhadakh’s killers. To see his final revenge completed, though he was unable to effect it himself.”
“Savages.” Newton’s mutter was almost a snarl.
“Perhaps, but it is not uncommon on Ear—where we come from,” Peter commented.
“In many cultures,” Ayana added, katana hovering in her hand as if weightless, “it was a great honor.”
“And in the Patrijuridicate,” Yaargraukh rumbled, “it breeds fear and reluctance in those who might otherwise murder an adversary.”
One of the bound trogs who had remained silent spoke almost quietly. “But now we must foreswear our oath to Jzhadakh. Being discovered, we are unable to accomplish it. We appeal to your mercy, Leader Caine.” Several others agreed. Loud and hastily.
Riordan formed his own opinion on that request in the second it took for him to face Bey. “Can we trust them?”
Her eyes did not waver. “You can only trust that, in this moment, they fear you.”
One of the loudest of the kajh howled, “I will kill you, x’qa-meat! Our vow to Jzhadakh requires that we slay she who has betrayed it!”
Eyes still on Caine’s, she didn’t bother to turn as she rebutted, “I never swore any vow to Jzhadakh. You did. Yet not half a minute ago, you assured Leader Caine that you had completely foresworn it. Now you mean to kill me to keep faith with it. You cannot both keep and foreswear an oath.”
As the one who had suggested forsaking their vow railed at his intemperate comrade, Yaargraukh crossed to Caine and muttered, “If they are so utterly faithless here, you may well anticipate how they would repay us on a long journey into lands with which they are familiar and we are not.”
Bey nodded. “Your fellow Lord speaks wisely. In a coffle, they will work to slow us so badly that we would be caught in a day. If we leave them unbound, there are too many for us to catch or slay, and so, they would bring word to Forkus. But it would be no different even if we took them with us and made good speed.”
Riordan glanced from the increasingly quiet circle of bound kajh. “Why?”
She shrugged. “Because they will leave spoor. They are too many to watch and they will leave subtle traces cautiously. Besides, pursuers will find it more swiftly than they might in other circumstances.”
Bannor raised an eyebrow. “What do you mean?”
Bey shrugged. “Tomorrow, the purchaser’s representative will arrive here to assess the objects we meant to trade. Others who swear allegiance to the same liege will be nearby, watching to ensure that what just happened here could not surprise the actual trading party that will come a day later. Now, all will be unified to hunt you and they will find you within the day, if these eight are with us.”
“So,” Newton muttered hollowly, “if we cannot bring them and cannot release them—?”
Bey raised her hand; her interruption had the cadence of a formal recitation. “Any who attempt to slay those whose parole they have taken earn death.” She turned toward Yaargraukh. “I see the largest lord has already arrayed them to ensure control as the sentence is carried out. I respectfully request that I not be included in the rota; I am still of their band.”
Riordan nodded, numb, barely hearing the other words she spoke. My God, we have to kill them. And, no surprise: for this they do have a tradition. “Bey,” he said hoarsely, “the others that can move. Get them outfitted. Loaded. You and Duncan. Now.”
Bey seemed to disappear. Bannor seemed to reappear in her place. “Did she say a rota?”
Miles joined the huddle with a shrug. “I’ve seen this on Earth. Extremist militias make sure that everyone shares the guilt of execution. Although they usually call it a ‘privilege.’”
Newton spat. “It might be, in this place.”
Riordan knew what he had to do, said it aloud before he could recoil from it. “I . . . I have to set the standard. Personally.”
“Sir,” Miles said, starting forward quickly, “this is not your responsibility.”
“The hell it isn’t.”
“Sir, in combat officers give all sorts of orders that they don’t—”
“This isn’t combat, Chief. Yes, officers give combat orders they don’t take part in. Can’t be otherwise. But this is not a combat necessity. This is a crossroads. It’s where we show who we are. To ourselves and those we expect to follow us.”
He jerked his head toward the other trog captives. “Look at them. This is what they understand. Hell, it’s what they expect. So if I don’t take a hand in this, I’ve shown that our leaders don’t have to get their hands dirty. And I’m not going to set that precedent.”
He leaned back. “So I’m not going to just be part of the rota; I’m going first. I have to.”
He looked at Miles for a long second; he wasn’t sure he’d ever seen that much compassion in O’Garran’s eyes. “So I need one thing, Chief.”
“Name it, sir.”
“I’ve never . . . done anything like this. Show me how to do it quickly. Where and how to strike.
“No worries, sir. But actually”—and because Riordan was alert for manipulation, he didn’t miss O’Garran’s shift into a subtly cajoling tone—“if you’re not, er, adequately skilled, that’s another reason to let others do it. Those with some prior experience.”
“No. I have to take the lead on this. But I need you to . . . to help me. To make sure that I don’t miss.” And then throw up.
O’Garran inhaled sharply. “You sure about this, sir? Maybe if you allowed me to just start it off, I could show you—”
“Chief O’Garran, my request is now an order. Will you or will you not instruct me in effecting a sure and swift execution?”
“Sir, yes, sir!” When Caine relaxed, Miles sighed. “Okay, boss, sad to say, but you’ve come to the right guy.”
Riordan nodded tightly. “Everything I’ve ever heard is that it’s not the killing that’s hard. It’s doing it quickly enough.” Bey rejoined the group, scanning their faces.
The chief, nodding at Riordan’s concern, adopted a soothing tone. Which only made what he said more horrible: “Not to worry, sir. It’s going to be easy, with the right . . . tool.”
“Like this one?” Bey proffered a knife which, at the point, was more like a flat, double-edged ice pick. It broadened as it neared the hilt.
O’Garran stared at her then at the pithing knife. “That’s a fine . . . tool. But we have one that won’t take anywhere near as much skill.” He held up his own molecular machete. “You’ve seen how this slides through damn near everything. Materials a lot harder than flesh or bone. So you just cut right here, beneath the base of the skull. That severs the brain from the spinal cord. No pain. Instant unconsciousness.”
Riordan remembered nodding, setting the order of the rota. He remembered confirming the security protocols, ensuring that while one person carried out the execution, a second held the prisoner steady. And each of those assistants became the next executioner. And so forth until the task was complete.
Then he was standing behind the first of the bound kajh, simultaneously very focused and yet grasping after memories of other times and places: anything, not to be completely and utterly rooted in this horrific moment.
Then, sometime later, he saw O’Garran’s face, looking up from where he was holding the prisoner. “Sir?” he murmured. “Whenever you’re ready.”
Without thinking, Riordan pressed the machete down. He felt a spurt of unexpected blood as the impossibly sharp edge over-penetrated, was proud he didn’t vomit, and passed the machete to Miles. He walked stiff-legged to the entry, replaced Katie at her rear security post, fixed his eyes upon the street, and, weapon at the ready, hoped—and tried—to vomit. But couldn’t.
All he could do or see was the back of the neck he’d partially severed, the broad head hinging forward as it tipped away from him.