The Heretic

obliteration.

These men know cover when they see it, as do the Blaskoye, Raj told him. And since neither of you have conquest in mind, but simply driving the other off, there’s no instinct to go for the throat and destroy the other completely. The time will come when that will change.

Similarly, they killed few Blaskoye, and what wounded they found were usually well enough for interrogation and eventual release. There was no way to keep prisoners, and Abel had no desire to execute those hapless enough to get shot and caught. Besides, releasing a wounded man in a desert was not doing him any favor, however good he might be at living off the land.

Nomad encampments were a bit more tricky, and Abel avoided direct contact with these groups whenever possible, with the regiment dividing itself and quickly flowing around them. It helped that, unlike traveling bands, the families in the camps had a tendency to stay in place long enough to allow him and his men to clear out of the area. But the position of the camp was duly noted on the map and in logging scrolls. Each camp was, as Gaspar said more than once, probably in a traditional spot that would remain constant. Even though Redlanders were always on the move, they tended to congregate in favorite feeding and watering grounds for their measly (by Valley standards) dak herds.

The going was hard, but not so hard as it would have been without a destination in mind-and Abel had a destination in mind he had not shared with his father. He’d also not mentioned it to Raj and Center, but by now it was fairly obvious what his plan was.

Spiral in toward Awul-alwaha, the First Oasis.

Josiah Weldletter was not a man who was at home in the desert. First of all, he was as overplump as Gaspar had been underfed. And, in a sort of negative reflection of Gaspar, he had steadily reduced in size even while the Redlander was growing larger. Strangely enough, the two men got along well after getting over the fact that both thought the other a barbarian. For Gaspar, the map was in his head, and had always been. The very idea of a detailed map on a scroll of papyrus had never occurred to him, but the moment that he did understand the idea was a moment of revelation. He couldn’t get enough of Weldletter’s map.

The two would ride ahead, with a guard of three or four Scouts, find a knoll or rise, and together they would fill in the blank places on the developing map. Gaspar showed an uncanny ability to predict what would lie over the next rise, the depth of a declivity, and, after he understood the idea of scale, the altitude of the hill in the distance as expressed in elbs, paces, or fieldmarches. He was particularly excited when Weldletter showed him how contour lines worked. It was as if a flitter that had known it had a song within itself suddenly found the voice that had been missing all these years and burst forth with its native call.

For his part, Weldletter had never met someone who truly had a better imagination for the folds of land than he, and for him it was the first time he’d had a conversation with someone he believed to be his equal in this regard. The two became so inseparable that Abel felt the necessity of pulling Weldletter aside and reminding him that, given the chance, Gaspar might gladly cut his throat if it gained his tribe some sort of advantage in the Redlands.

“He would be sorry,” Abel said. “And I believe he might even shed real tears, if he has had enough to drink in the past day or so, but he will go ahead and slit your throat. And then, if he hasn’t eaten in a while-”

“All right, all right, Lieutenant,” Weldletter had answered, cutting Abel off. “You have a great deal of your father in you, particularly the ability to put the facts before a person in a visceral manner. I will watch myself.”

“Oh, let’s do better than that,” Abel said. “Let’s show him everything. Maps he never dreamed of, even.”

“What do you mean?”

And Abel told him.

So it was Weldletter and Gaspar and their retinue of porters, aides, and guarding outriders who first found the nishterlaub execution site.

By the time that Abel rode up, this group had descended into the small valley where the executions had taken place and had disturbed some of the remains. But when he crested the hill above, Abel got a good view of the tableau.

There were dozens of men staked out with their backs down and their faces and bellies up to the sun, naked, their arms and legs tied to hold them in that position. They were bent over what looked like metal arches. The metal itself was brown and rusted, but it was strong enough to hold them up exposed to the sun.

They have been tied to the roofs of ground cars, said Center. These groundcars were, at one time, electrostatically powered vehicles that your ancestors used pre-Collapse to journey into the planetary wastelands. There were many dwellings in what you now know as the Redlands. People use the area as a recreational getaway and journeyed from the Valley on holidays. As you see now, the ground cars have become little more than clumps of rust preserved these three thousand years only by a process of something like petrification, with the sand filling their declivities to the point that they are almost sedimentary rock now instead of metal.

How long ago was the execution? Abel thought.

Much more recent, answered Center. Within the previous three-moon, plus or minus an eight-day.

And your count?

Fifty-seven adult males. Similar garb and physique indicates that they are likely all members of the same tribe.

And they were staked out alive? To die in the sun stretched across nishterlaub in this grotesque sacrifice?

It is difficult to tell due to the state of decay of the bodies, but I would assume so. We will have to get closer for me to verify.

Of course that’s what happened, Raj put in. And you can be sure that they wounded them in some manner so that an enterprising sort would not have the wherewithal to get himself free and to free the others. Probably broke their legs. That’s what I’d do.

Would you? Have you?

No, Raj said. But I’ve seen and had to countenance worse. And now you understand what they are prepared to do to you and your kin if you do not submit, so perhaps it is a good lesson after all.

Abel rode down among the bodies. He descended a stone-strewn path that looked to be more of a game- animal route than anything humans would use, but his dont retained its sure footing. And as he went down the side of the hill, an odd sound began to assail his ears. It was as if the valley were filled with the dry sizzle of the sort of insectoid plague he’d only seen in the Valley during rice ripening days. Surely the Redlands couldn’t sustain so many bugs?

The arms and legs of the executed had not been tied to the nishterlaub groundcars with rope of any sort, but with the hacked off branches of a local pricklebush. It was a sort that grew straight up with many thorn-covered shoots about the thickness of two fingers, and sometimes ten elbs long. The thorns had not been stripped from the shoots and had been used to secure the knots in the flesh of the victims.

Most of the eyesockets were empty, having been eaten out by desert scavengers. This in itself was a clue to Center, who said: One would expect at least some closed eyes, but you’ll notice that there are not any. It seems that they all died with their eyes open.

You mean with their eyelids sliced off, Raj roughly cut in. So they were to go blind first, before the dehydration got to them.

Abel leaned over, gazed at the gaping mouth and eyeless sockets of one of the victims.

Yes, the eyelids were sliced off, said Center. But on one side only, the right. I believe I can project a likely reanimated image of the process, if it becomes necessary to-

No, thought Abel. Please don’t.

It was then that he realized what the strange scraping and crackling insectoid murmur actually was: the