“Keep your hands where I can see them and come forward.”
Hepner put his hands on his head and moved forward in his customary loose, rangy amble. “I was here two weeks ago,” he said in a friendly way.
“Yet you returned?” the mercenary said, motioning him to move down the trail. “If I could get out of this miserable mosquito factory there’s no bloody way I would come back. I thought Scotland was a waste of dirt until I beheld this great sponge.”
“Some of us like it here.”
“Aye, you’ll find the daft nae matter where ye travel. Stand tall, this is as far as I go.” The mercenary was a raw-skinned man with a head of burnt orange hair and muscles that rippled under his shirt. He seemed sure of himself.
“Corporal of the Guard! Visitor at Post Three!”
Two men stepped out of the brush as if they had been waiting for their cue. “Who is this, now? Corporal Harris, Timothy me boy?”
“I’m not your bloody boy, O’Hara. This man says he was here last week, yet he came back for another visit. I’d say he was daft, wouldn’t you?”
O’Hara looked Hepner up and down. O’Hara stood a foot shorter than the sentry, yet looked far more dangerous.
“Who are you and what’s your business?”
“Name’s Hepner. Work with Kurt Bachmann up at Klahotsa. Kurt’s got an offer for your boss.”
“If it’s more than five California dollars, we’ll take it,” O’Hara said with a laugh. Harris and the large black man behind O’Hara laughed with him.
“What?” Hepner said.
“What do you expect?” Harris said. “He already told me he likes it here.”
“I got ’im, Timothy, you go back to your post.”
Harris nodded and disappeared in the brush.
“You visited us about two weeks ago, am I wrong?”
“Yes, I mean no!” Hepner didn’t like people playing with his mind.
“Yes, I was here two weeks ago. You’re probably wrong in some very fundamental ways but I haven’t the time to really help, or care.”
O’Hara grinned. “Yer not as dumb as you look, that’s good. You follow me and Private N’go will take up the rear.”
The black man smiled, revealing brilliant white teeth filed to points. Hepner shuddered despite himself. He followed O’Hara through the mercenary camp, which consisted of dozens of tents, and stopped at a tent three times the size of any other in sight.
A small man emerged. French
“I hadn’t forgotten, Captain Flars. It seems this gentleman has an offer for the major, and I hope to sweet baby Jesus that he takes it, ’cause there’s no tellin’ what a another missed payday might bring, sir.” With an exaggerated salute, the corporal turned and marched away. N’go followed him, chuckling and glancing back over his shoulder.
“I know you, yes?” Captain Flars said.
“I was here two weeks ago. I need to see the major, my boss wants to hire you fellows.”
“Excited I am to hear this. Please enter in.”
“Well, if it isn’t our old friend, Georg!” Major Riordan stood and offered his hand.
He measured a few inches shorter than Hepner, but Georg thought none the less of him for that; Napoleon had been a lot shorter than either of them.
“What brings you out here beyond the pale?” He grinned and moved his lean body about as if he were on euphorics. “Missed my brilliant conversation and insights, did you?”
“Not as much as you would imagine. I bring you an offer from Kurt Bachmann. He wants to hire you and your men.”
“For how long?” Riordan stood very still and stared at Hepner with the aspect of a very hungry lion.
“He said three months.”
“Did he send money with you, to seal the bargain?”
“Do you want his offer in rubles or dollars?”
“Dollars, preferably California or Texas dollars.”
“He offers three hundred forty-five California dollars per day, for three months.”
“Shit on my grave, why don’t you? That’s less than five dollars an hour for each of us!”
“Take it or leave it.”
“What does he want us to do?”
“Fight Indians, the Dena, I think. But he wants you and your men at Klahotsa.”
“That’s bloody days away!”
“You start getting paid today if you agree.”
“I need an advance to show the men we’re not getting rogered yet again.”
“Then you agree?”
“Yes, I bloody well agree!”
“Then sign this,” Hepner pulled a folded page from his pocket and handed it to the major, “and I’ll give you a thousand California on the spot.”
“If you have that much on you, why would I not just kill you and take the money?”
“Because you would forfeit so much more for very little effort.”
“How do we get to Klahotsa?”
“There’s a road they call the RustyCan—”
“Don’t be impertinent! You know there are Russians everywhere, you can’t just glide through them like it’s some bloody dance with an ‘excuse me’ here and an ‘excuse me’ there.”
“You’re an ally. You’re fighting the Dena just as they are. Bachmann said you’d figure out something. Are you going to sign or do I need to look for professional soldiers elsewhere?”
Riordan glared at him, then down at the contract.
“Where do I sign?”
64
“Please state your name and rank for the members of this tribunal,” the white—haired man in the gray uniform said.
“Colonel Grigoriy Grigorievich, Southern Army Commander of the Dena Republik.”
“I object.” A Cossack major general stood and stared at Grisha. “This man is in rebellion against his legitimate government and claims fealty to a political entity which does not in fact exist.”
“So noted, suh,” the old man said frostily. “But we will hear him just the same.”
“I made my objection for the record, at the wishes of my government, nothing more,” the Cossack said.
“Colonel Grigorievich,” the old man said, “I am General Carter of the Confederate States Army. The other delegates elected me president of this tribunal—” his eyes flicked over the two Russians at the other end of the table, “—but I wish to assure you the vote was not unanimous.”
Grisha surreptitiously surveyed the men behind the long table. Another man in gray sat beside General Carter. Next to them were two men in tan British uniforms flanked by another pair wearing the now familiar khaki of the Republic of California.
He decided the men in black were from Deseret and the two in pale blue from Texas. Kepis lay on the table in front of both New France officers and their deep blue, red-faced uniforms easily captured the prize for most ostentatious. However, he had noticed that New Spain’s officers wore highly polished, knee-length jackboots which
