It hadn't just been a long war, it had been a hard one. The small family graveyard not far from the porch held the bodies of a dozen of Belisario's sons, sons-in-law, and grandsons, fallen in action, along with some of the women and girls killed by Earth's retaliatory random terror bombing. Sometimes there was no body, or only a part of one, beneath a marker. Yet all were remembered, all missed, all grieved for.
It was possible that no one on the New World had given as much of his blood as had Belisario in the cause of freedom.
He'd never really been a 'general,' he knew, no matter what his followers had called him. Indeed, his 'army' had never numbered more than about five hundred, and usually much less. Their arms had been a motley collection of homemade and primitive supplemented with captures, here and there, from the UN Marines. Some of his men had been UN Marines who had deserted with their arms. One of his daughters-in-law-a tall, slender and beautiful Zulu girl-was one such. He thought that perhaps those desertions, and they had become increasingly common as the war dragged on, had had more to do with Earth's throwing in the towel than whatever success he and the other bands across Terra Nova had had in the field.
Idly, Belisario wondered how it might have been if he'd been a real general, not a mere horse rancher and farmer operating off instinct. Perhaps more of his sons and grandsons might have lived, he thought. Then again, they had the trained generals and they lost. So perhaps it was as well I had only instincts.
In his mind's eye, Belisario saw a montage of scenes: his horsemen slipping through the jungle flats, the burning buildings and the smoke of Earth's aircraft in the distance. In his memory he heard the high-pitched shriek of UN attack aircraft strafing his columns, the screams of the wounded and the exultant shouts of victory.
The last was best remembered, bringing to his face a smile. That face was still smiling when his wife found him, cold and stiffening, on the front porch.
Chapter Thirty-Two Whosoever saveth the life of one, it shall be as though he had saved all mankind. -The Koran, Sura V
Pumbadeta, Sumer, 34/7/462 AC
Fadeel had expected the assault by the crusader mercenaries to begin as soon as the last of the women and children had been evacuated. He'd expected wrong. Instead, the blockade continued, with the pitiful food stocks running lower and lower. His men were already on quarter rations. The civilian men of the city got nothing.
Which is a problem, as Fadeel unhesitatingly admitted to himself. They're getting no food, except for whatever they may have hoarded, but they still have guns. And the
second I try to take the guns, I'll have a full scale revolt on my hands. Besides, if the crusaders couldn't get the Sumeris to surrender their weapons, what chance have I?
Hmmm. I wonder if I can't use them to my purposes before they become dangerous to me. Hmmm.
35/7/462 AC
It was no real problem for Fadeel's twenty-seven hundred remaining committed fighters to round up several hundred boys between the ages of thirteen and sixteen. They simply tooled through the streets on their SUVs, grabbing whomever they chanced upon that was unarmed. Moreover, given that the insurgents already had perhaps twenty thousand small arms in the city, together with millions of rounds of ammunition, arming the boys, once conscripted, was even easier.
Dawud ibn Haroun, aged fourteen and scrawny even in good times, searched fruitlessly through a garbage can in an alley. An orphan about whom no one had cared since he was a baby, Dawud was perhaps better placed to survive amidst the siege-induced starvation than most of the city's people. Even so…
Even so, it's a frightful thing, indeed, when even the garbage cans are empty.
His head was stuck in a dumpster, legs and feet trailing to the ground, when Dawud heard, 'Hey, boy? You looking for something to eat?'
Overcoming his first instinct, which was to run, Dawud eased himself out of the dumpster and turned to face the voice. He saw an SUV, unevenly painted, as if with a can of spray paint, a sort of dun color, and containing three armed men. One of the men, presumably the one who had spoken, held his hand out, palm down, and jerked his fingers to the hand's heel in the Arab method of beckoning.
'Come with us,' said the one who seemed to be the leader. 'We'll feed you. Once anyway.'
Seeing little option, Dawud climbed into the SUV, which sped off. It stopped twice more, once to summon another street urchin little different from Dawud and once simply to grab and carry off an older boy who refused to enter the auto.
Briefly, Dawud wondered if the number of boys taken corresponded to the number of fighters in the car. It was not impossible. Then again, he'd been through that, too, in his short and unpleasant life. He'd survived it once; he could again.
But no, the men hadn't taken the boys for fun and games. Moreover, true to their word, they had taken them to a large warehouse on the edge of town and fed them. Perhaps the food had been less than ideal, the meat scanty and the rice undercooked, but it had still been more than Dawud had seen in one place in weeks.
Food was followed by a lecture from a mullah, the lecture mostly concerning the iniquity of the besiegers, the duty of all Moslems to fight in the jihad, and the rewards of paradise. Dawud was no dummy and absolutely didn't like the direction in which the sermon was plainly going.
He liked it even less when the fighters had begun passing out arms and ammunition, and explaining, briefly, how to load, aim-more or less-and fire the things. The insurgents had the boys practice dry firing a few times before they led them off, by various routes, with two insurgents to each group of ten boys to ensure there would be no 'desertions.'
The last thing the fighters had done was explain the boys' mission. 'Better for you to keep going in the attack,' they'd added. 'We'll support you in that. But death at the end of a rope awaits any so cowardly as to turn around from their duty.'
A sound eerie to Balboan ears poured across the desert floor. It was a muezzin calling over loudspeakers.
Jimenez looked out over the dry and barren desolation that stretched from the circumvallating berm to the edge of the city. There was one almost full moon tonight, Hecate, plus partial luminescence from another, Bellona. Thus, even without using his night vision goggles, he could see easily across the open expanse.
Oh, oh, he thought as the first armed combatants stepped out into the light and began to walk forward.
'Engage now, sir?' asked the platoon centurion lying next to Jimenez on the friendly side of the berm. He had seen them too.
'No… no, wait until they hit the leading edge of the minefield. Any we can draw out and kill are that many fewer we'll have to fight when we finally assault the town.'
The speakers on one of the near minarets crackled to life as the boys emerged from their shelters on the edge of town. A muezzin began reciting from the Koran over the speakers, his recital focused on the path of holy war.
One boy-Dawud thought it was the last one who had been taken in the vehicle that had brought him in-lay down in dirt, apparently taking cover. Dawud paused briefly, his eyes glancing over to look down at the boy. He began moving forward again almost instantly as a burst of automatic fire coming from behind impacted the slacker, causing blood to spurt from the body as it caused little geysers of dust to spurt from the ground.
From the speakers the muezzin decreed that death was to be the lot of slackers and cowards.
'This feels dirty as shit, sir,' the centurion told Jimenez as the mob flowed closer.
I'm trying to remember the last clean war there was, Jimenez thought to himself. To the centurion he said, 'Nothing for it but to get it over with then. But give them a couple more minutes. Until we can be sure none are going to be able to escape.'
Jimenez slid down the berm's embankment and gestured for his radio telephone operator to hand over the microphone. With the radio, he called the command post to ask if there were a gunship overhead. Informed that there was not but that one would be overhead within ten minutes, he cursed and began the crawl back up to the berm's edge. His RTO followed.
'Do you have a forward observer attached?' he asked the centurion.
'Yes, sir. Shall I get him?'
'Please. Immediately.'
Dawud's young heart pounded in his chest as the men following began to shout, ' Allahu akbar, CHARRRGE!' while firing their weapons from behind the boys and forward, over their heads. The shouting grew more distant the
