Arslan had hot-footed it across to a north window to be in on the juiciest slaughter, so he missed the steady stream of automatic rifle fire that cut into the south-side raiders from across Pearl Street. They must have felt as if they were caught between the upper and the nether millstone, but it was only one gun, and I thought,
In the back of my head I heard Arslan yelling something with Hunt’s name in it, heard feet racketing down the stairs. Once they were bolted, the doors were awkward to open, but a few of the basement window bars had been planned for quick exit. I saw the flying shadows in the schoolyard—Hunt running clean and long-legged in the lead, and half a dozen more trailing behind him. Somebody on the roof fired a burst into the waiting horses at the far end of the west wing; then Hunt and the first few others got there. I couldn’t see what was happening any longer, but at any rate the men in the west wing had just lost their chance to get out. A light flared, too close to the west wall for me to make out what it was. It must have been a mistake; I could hear Arslan’s curses over the hubbub. Then a solid lump of flame pitched through the darkness and bounced its way down through the broken west-wing roof. A minute later another followed; this one caught between a jutting beam and the solid part of the roof and hung there blazing. Rifles or no rifles, Hunt’s detachment would have their hands full. Most men would sooner risk a bullet than burn.
The west wing had to go, that was inevitable; but I didn’t intend to let my whole school burn for Arslan’s Plan Two or any other reason that came to mind. If that fire got out of hand, we’d have had all our work for nothing. Luckily it was a still night. I got my men busy rounding up everything that could hold water and organized a bucket brigade from the basement cistern up to the second floor, in case we needed it. There was shooting in the west wing, and the middle part of it was well afire. What raiders were still alive and on horseback had scattered down the neighboring streets, and some of Arslan’s boys were catching riderless horses and racing after them. Behind me, the school was in an uproar. The crowd of women had broken across their painted limits, shrieking to know what was going on. The riflemen were yelling in glee. Arslan reappeared beside me, thumping his fist against my shoulder. “How do you feel, sir?” he shouted over the tumult.
“Great!” I yelled back at him, and straightened up from the window. “All over on the north side?”
He answered me with a nod, already on his way out. It was no surprise that he wanted to finish off the wounded himself. My job was with the school, putting the fire out and getting that mob of females organized to go home again.
I ran into Arslan a while later on a stair landing. “Finished?”
He turned his eyes towards me, but I could have sworn he didn’t recognize me for a second. Sixteen years had begun to tell on him, after all. “So it wasn’t perfect,” I said. He kept on looking at me “Your virus.” He was so expressionless I wondered if he’d heard my words. The noise level was still pretty high. “Some of those guys are going to get away. Quite a few years and a lot of people dead, General, to have it end up just a matter of chance.”
He took a breath like a man about to speak, and those black eyes came alive again, but he still didn’t say anything. The women’s chatter was seething all around us. Then Ward Munsey came hustling up the stairs, grasping Sanjar’s arm. “This here damn crazy kid!” He was almost yelling in his awe and delight. “He come in through that spillway hole on the cistern, and nobody knowed he was coming! Hey, General, I thought you told me nobody couldn’t get in there!” He paused to shake Sanjar’s arm. “Hey, boy, why don’t you come in the door like anybody else? Don’t you know the war’s over?”
Sanjar grinned wanly, his eyes reaching for his father. He looked as if he were walking on tiptoe, every move he made tense and poised. He was keyed up to a new pitch altogether, and it was hard to tell whether, if you touched him, he would be tough as steel wire or brittle as thin glass. Arslan limped easily down to meet him, halfway up the flight, saying something in his own language, shifting the rifle to hug the boy’s shoulders with his good hand and shepherd him up the stairs. Abruptly he turned to me. “It is not chance.” His voice was hot. “There is no chance. There is always risk, but there is never chance.” They started past me up the next flight and stopped again. This time Arslan had to turn his head over his shoulder to look at me. “We accept the risk,” he exclaimed almost indignantly. “We do not abandon ourselves to chance.”
Outside, some kind of order and progress was beginning to emerge. The fire was reduced to a few smoldering beams, checkered with bright gold embers. Bodies were dragged away from the doors; men were detailed to escort the women home by neighborhoods. The male civilian population—to call them that—were turning up in droves to claim their womenfolks or bring in a strayed raider, dead or alive, or just to exchange the news. Hunt came slowly from the direction of my house, a rifle sloped on his arm. He walked with deliberate grace, like a woman in a room full of strangers. Two or three people called to him, and he answered casually, tallying the dead raiders like a game bag. He sat down on the doorstep, barely out of the way of the open door, and looked up at me. “We used your horses,” he said. “I’ve taken care of them.”
“Thanks. They’re all right?”
“Yes. And I apologize for taking them without your permission.”
“I imagine Sanjar did that.”
“Yes.”
Somebody had planted a torch a little way out in the parking lot to search the bodies by, and the night was so still the flame hardly flickered. I sat down beside him on the step. For all the noise and movement, all the people brushing past us, we were as alone there as we would have been in a desert. “Franklin,” Hunt said. I waited. “I know you don’t appreciate people walking in and out of your house—”
“You don’t have to apologize for Sanjar,” I said. He took it the wrong way; his mouth tightened. And suddenly I was sick of all the games he played. “Does he know you killed his mother?”
His eyes widened, and winced almost shut again. After a few seconds he said patiently, “I didn’t kill his mother.”
“What I really can’t figure out is whether Arslan knows it.”
“Why…” he hesitated, then went on decisively. “If you thought I killed her, why did you turn the KCR loose on Ollie Schuster?”
“We needed a conviction. Like Arslan—except he wasn’t satisfied with just one.” I looked at him. “Tire chains,” I said. “Good God, Hunt.”
He watched me evenly, but there was a tired horror in his eyes. “Don’t worry,” I told him. “After tonight, we won’t have any trouble working with Arslan. I’m not going to rock the boat.” We’d have trouble, all right—Arslan was born to create trouble—but nothing we couldn’t live with. The KCR had found its groove.
Hunt took a little deeper breath. “What I was leading up to,” he said firmly, “was a proposal to move back into your house—if you think I’d be sufficiently useful to compensate for whatever needs compensation.” He paused again. “Incidentally, I am not a murderer, but I don’t intend to argue the question. And besides,” he added softly and quickly, “it’s true that I’ve killed people.”
“Always welcome, Hunt. I told you that a long time ago.”
“Yes,” he said. “Among other things.”
PART FOUR
Hunt Morgan
Chapter 28
Sanjar and his red horses—the chestnut roan mare and the bright bay and the sorrels sired by Arslan’s starfaced stallion—flashed down the hillside like a meteor shower. This was his sport—to drive the little herd alone, struggling to turn them at full gallop, by voice and whip and example; so that when he rode among his followers, it
