Carnifex

20/9/467 AC, Kibla Pass

The sun was high overhead, casting a shadowless light down onto the gruesome scene. The Cazadors had come out, dressed in the pixilated tiger stripes they shared with most of the Legion. Beside them, lined up on the road, were about one hundred tall, lean and fierce looking men mounted on hungry-looking horses. All stood well to the north of the minefield. It was long duration and was not supposed to self-detonate for another two weeks. Still, quality control at the factory being, at best, imperfect, it generally didn't pay to take chances.

'Quien esta el jefe aqui?' one of the ruffians asked.

Quiroz did a double take on seeing a mounted, bearded, dirty horseman who spoke such clear Spanish. He'd been advised over the radio of the Pashtun Scouts arrival, and so had held his fire. Still, the incongruous appearance of border bandit and good Spanish came as a shock.

He saluted the speaker and announced, 'Sir, Sergeant Quiroz reports.'

Cano returned the salute from horseback, then dismounted. 'Tribune Cano, Sergeant, Fourth Infantry Tercio seconded to the Pashtun Mounted Scouts.'

Cano took a moment to look around at the scattered bodies of men and horse. He put out his hand and said, 'Damned fine job.'

'Thank you, sir. We got maybe half of them. Maybe even two thirds. The rest got away.'

Cano heard the subtle rebuke. 'We rode as fast as we could, Sergeant. But we got the word late and intercepted two small groups of guerillas on the way.' Cano shrugged. Fortunes of war.

'What now, sir?' Quiroz asked.

'We're going to try to pursue up the mountains,' Cano answered.

'Well . . . sir . . . make sure they don't do to you what we did to them.

'How could they, Sergeant? They are not men so good as yours, nor are my men so bad as them.' Cano laughed, 'And they don't have aircraft to drop mines on our heads.'

Interlude

Turtle Bay, New York, 4 September, 2105

In over a century and a half, no one had been able to strip the UN bureaucracy of its perks. No matter how constrained the budget, and in olden days it had been sometimes very constrained indeed, free parking was their charter-given right. Remuneration at the highest level found anywhere on the planet their just due. Generous educational benefits for their children only fair. Fresh water poured by human servants an utter necessity to the forwarding of their sacred work on behalf of mankind.

One of those servants poured now for the three person hiring committee tasked with sorting out the right kind of people from the mass of aspirants.

'Goldstein won't do,' said one of the committee, Guillaume Sand, placing the file aside.

'Of course not,' agreed another, Ibrahim Lakhdar. 'Like we accept Jews anymore. They've served their purpose.'

'To be fair, Goldstein claims not to be a practicing Jew,' objected the third, Alan Menage.

'It's in the blood,' Lakhdar sneered.

Menage shrugged. No sense it getting Ibrahim all worked up over it. Besides, it isn't like I really care about the Jews.

'Here's an interesting one,' said Sand, opening a different application file and diverting the subject away from Lakhdar's distressingly open anti-Semitism. 'Louis Arbeit. Harvard. Sorbonne. Early volunteer work with International Solidarity Movement. Parents are both Colleagues of Proven Worth. Mother: Christine Arbeit, D1 with the Human Rights Commission. An up and comer, I hear. Father: Bernard Chanet, Deputy Director for International Disarmament. His grandmother recently retired from the European Parliament.'

Ibrahim took the file, impatiently, and began flipping pages. When he reached the background information page on the applicant's father, he signaled one of the water servants to bring a telephone. He spoke a number and, after a brief pause, a face appeared.

'Bernard? This is Ibrahim Lakhdar, with the hiring committee. Yes, yes . . . I am normally with Human Rights. I know your wife. I was looking over your son's application and I was wondering if you might not give a little boost to my nephew. He's a fine boy and he's interested in working disarmament . . . '

Chapter Eleven

(Light ye shall have on that lesson, but little time to learn.)

—Kipling, The Islanders.

1/1/468 AC, Kibla Pass

Carrera stood in the fierce, bitterly cold winds of the Pashtian highlands. Despite the heavy wools, silks, polypropylene, and windproof outer shell, he shivered as the wind whistled through the pass and around the rocks. The wind seemed to be saying, 'Avenge us.'

'I'm trying; God knows I'm trying,' he whispered back.

Down below, on the plains around Mazari Omar, his men were still busily rooting out the insurgency. It was probably a fruitless task. No matter what damage to the guerillas he did, the Taurans were taking back over even as he cleared areas out. They were good soldiers, many of them; he'd particularly been impressed with the Tuscan Ligurini under Generale Marciano. (Under cover of the Legion's combat operations, and in the absence of a treacherous press to report what he was doing, Marciano had pushed his own forces out to actively engage the guerillas. What would happen after the Legion del Cid left, Marciano didn't know.)

Ordinarily, using the kind of rules of engagement the Taurans had, it might take as much as fifteen years to destroy an insurgency, if, indeed, it could be destroyed at all. The Federated States' methods, having some of the stick to go along with the carrot, could do the job more quickly, if, again, it could be done at all. Carrera's methods used much less of the carrot, much more of the stick. It remained to be seen whether that would work any better. The Pashtian insurgency—ha! insurgency was practically a way of life for them!—had always been almost singularly tenacious.

It doesn't matter, he thought. I am not here, ultimately, to quell an insurgency, though I and my boys will give it our workmanlike best. Ultimately, I am here for the money that brings me closer to revenge and the revenge itself.

'It's a cold dish,' whispered the wind.

That's all right. I've never minded cold food. But . . . 

'But what?' asked the frozen breeze.

'But I miss Lourdes, and I miss the children. And I think maybe I need a break.'

That was particularly telling. Only this morning he'd chewed out his chief logistician over something that, in retrospect, was just not that important. The week prior the goddamned nightmares had come back with a vengeance. His drinking was up again; it had to be or he'd never get any sleep. Yet alcohol induced sleep was not very restful. And then he'd seen off a couple of dozen of his killed and wounded at the airport at Mazari Omar and found himself starting to cry.

Bad sign, very bad sign. But what the hell can I do?

2/1/468 AC, The Base, Kashmir Tribal Trust Territory

If ever a man looked downcast, and in need of rest, it was Noorzad. Oh, he'd made it out, along with a critical dozen of his key followers. The rest? Bombed, burnt, butchered. Even after escaping from the mines dropped by air, he'd found a new group of fast horse cavalry on his tail, relentlessly tracking him over the mountains. He'd had to sacrifice the last of his newer people to those cavalry to buy time for the rest to escape.

His one weary eye, the white patches on his skin that told of frostbite, and the general air of sheer exhaustion he exuded; all said he needed a break.

There was one good thing, one tiny bright spot, amidst the disaster.