The Heretic

I have tasted both grains, and I salute you for your bravery in consuming them day after day.”

“One,” Abel said. “The dak. You can ride with someone else, I suppose.”

The other looked extremely displeased that the bargaining was going in the opposite direction than what he had hoped. “But this is unjust.”

“Would you like to go for none?”

“I protest most stringently. You’re using strong-arm tactics on me! Most uncivilized.”

“Not ten minutes ago you were worried about whether or not I was going to eat you,” Abel observed. “Perhaps that is still an option.”

“Two then,” said Gaspar. “The dak now, too.”

“No,” Abel said.

“All right,” said Gaspar. “Dont now, dak later.”

“No,” Abel said. “All on delivery. I am beginning not to trust my donts. They might up and walk away with you before we’ve completed our business. Perhaps I’ll fetter them properly until we arrive. Get me to the First Oasis and you walk away with both head.”

Gaspar flinched, rubbed his eyes.

Buying some cogitating time, Abel thought.

Wouldn’t you?

Why would I need to? I have you to do my thinking for me.

Not amusing even in jest, lad.

Abel smiled. It wasn’t easy to get Raj’s goat, but he thought he’d just done so.

“You find this humorous?” said Gaspar. “An old man’s dilemma? For how can I trust you?”

Abel shrugged. “You could remain useful. Even after we arrive. That way, I would wish to pay you with the dak in order to make use of your services again.”

“And how might myself or my people be of use a second time? What do you hope to accomplish out here, so far from home, Landsman?”

“I don’t know yet,” Abel replied. At least not the particulars, Abel thought. “What say we ruminate on that very thought along the way? Perhaps one so wise as you can answer it for me.”

Another smile from the Remlap chief. “Agreed.” He spat into the sand, dipped his hand into the spittle and fine reddish-brown dirt, then reached out to shake Abel’s. “Dont now, dak later.” Abel did the same, and they shook dusty hands.

“Now you can just let me go back to the tribe and-”

“Oh, no,” Abel said, standing up, towering over the Remlap chief in the process. “I insist you remain as our guest.” He reached down to help the other man up, and, after a moment’s hesitation, the Remlap chief accepted his assistance. “Besides, I can’t send you back to your people so skinny. We need to fatten you up, if only for our own honor. I know you won’t deny us this. And, you’ll pardon my forwardness, great chief, but from the looks of you that might take a while. A long while.”

Gaspar shook his head, smiled sadly. “Then I will have to impose a bit longer on your hospitality.” He looked around avidly, as if the food would appear instantly.

This man really is hungry, Abel thought. Or else a greedy son of a bitch.

Malnutrition is evident, Center replied. And his people are starving.

The fact that he tried to bargain with you at all is a sign of how tough the old bird is, Raj added.

“If I may be so bold,” said the chief, interrupting Abel’s flow of thoughts. “Since I am now determined to stay to assuage your discomfiture, how long until the noonday meal? I would very much like to start seeing to the maintenance of your honor sooner rather than later.”

“First, the name,” Abel said.

“The name?”

“The Blaskoye,” Abel said. “He with the silver knife. The one who stole your children and raped your women. Then we’ll have a bite to eat. And I promise that bite won’t be you.”

This brought forth the first genuine smile he’d seen from Gaspar.

“Like you, we call him Silver Knife,” said the chief. “But he has a given name. They call him Rostov. Dmitri Rostov.”

Two rises of the three-day moon, Levot, passed-nine days-as they rode through the Voidlands and into the Highsticks. Gaspar of the Remlaps was a plumper man.

He ought to be, thought Abel. He’s been chewing on something constantly, walking, standing, sitting, except when he’s asleep, and sometimes I swear he manages to chew on something even then.

The Highsticks was the name of the elevated plains on the extreme east of the Redlands. Beyond the Highsticks, all vegetation gradually gave out. Volcanism increased, and the soil became toxic for most forms of life. Beyond that lay the Tables, an unbroken coating of basalt that stretched, according to Center, for thousands of leagues, and was a half-league thick in all places.

There is no way for the Redlanders to cross that area, said Center. The water table has been made completely inaccessible by a magma eruption that occurred three million years ago. There has been no rain there in over one hundred Duisberg years. There are therefore no tanajas or natural cisterns. And the basalt gives way on the east not to another desert and riverine system, but to the Eastern Sea. Thus there is not the slightest possibility for Redland eastward migration. The only population spigot for the Redlanders is the Valley. It has ever been thus, and this is exactly what Zentrum counts on in his Stasis regulation equations.

And the pot is set to boil right about now, Raj said. Over the brim, and down the Valley.

The Highsticks were not the Sulfur Plains or the Tables, however. They were a tough country, but quite habitable for a desert people.

Abel and his company had travelled two hundred leagues. They had completed a half circle of the Redlands, southwest to northeast, always keeping contact with tribes, interior and outlying.

Taking Raj’s advice, Abel arranged the regiment in a left echelon of squads. They were attempting to encircle the enemy’s presumably teardrop-shaped disposition stretching from the west, and the edge of the Valley, to a terminus in the east at Awul-alwaha. The Scouts approached from the southwest. The goal was to keep contact with concentrated forces as well as to survey the tribes who were not participating in what was looking to be a great gathering of the desert nomads. The purpose of this gathering was all too evident: war on the Valley.

The lead squad sought contact, mostly visual, but not unwilling to give and take fire when they met an armed Blaskoye group. It was for these times that the echelon arrangement came into play, for-as Raj had predicted-the Redlanders, however many there were in an area, would invariably rush all their forces toward the first sound of trouble. This not only pulled them out of areas that squads to the left of the lead squad could then reconnoiter, it also left them entirely open to an unexpected flank attack in wave after wave as the deployed squads caught up with the lead and joined the fighting from an easterly direction. Sometimes the Scout reinforcements arrived directly in the Blaskoye’s rear and set the Redlander donts scurrying in all directions, scattering the terrified Redlanders like a puff of wind on an open hand full of grain.

Occasionally, the point squad passed too far to the east of the enemy and another squad would make contact. In these instances, signal mirror contact and flag wigwag became paramount. Long experience had made moving yet maintaining sightline contact second nature, and a forward unit would circle back in a variety of spirals, depending on terrain, if signaling were lost for longer than a few minutes.

The engagements took their toll, but produced what were, to Abel, surprisingly few casualties on either side. He had had visions of having to lead a line of wounded, gangrenous men across the barren landscape, and being constantly hampered by his train of wounded. So far, he’d only lost five men from his original ninety, and one of those was a fall from a cliff while dismounted and taking a piss. The body of that one, a Scout named Largo, they’d had to leave where it lay, or risk more casualties retrieving it. The others they’d managed to bury. Their places of rest were duly marked on the map Weldletter was constructing. Their graves were then trampled to