Part 3 (2/2)
”I swear by the Law that I have taken or given away nothing which was yours,” said Sparra coldly. Blade rather wished he could slip away in the darkness, because this quarrel could do him no good. But if he vanished, Chyatho would probably take his anger out on Sparra.
Chyatho wasn't too angry to notice Blade's stance. ”He's listening and understanding what we say!” he screamed. ”He was lying, and so are you, b.i.t.c.h!”
Terbo grabbed Chyatho's shoulder. ”Come on, Chyatho! It's been a long night, and you're half out of your mind-”
Chyatho let out an animal's screech, twisted out of Terbo's grasp, and hurled himself at Sparra. Before Terbo could draw his pistol, Chyatho was too close to the woman for him to fire without danger of hitting her.
With only his bare hands, Blade wasn't similarly handicapped. He caught Chyatho in a judo hold and the man shot up over Blade's shoulder with a yell of surprise and fear. Unfortunately, he twisted half out of Blade's grip in mid-flight. Blade had intended to drop him on a patch of soft earth to the left of the shaft mouth. Instead Chyatho landed head-down on a solid lump of rock. Everyone heard the sickening double crunch as his neck snapped and his skull caved in.
Terbo knelt by Chyatho for a moment, to make sure he was dead, while Sparra covered the other men with the laser. From her expression, it was obvious that any man who batted an eye was likely to get a laser beam through his guts.
Finally Terbo rose and looked hard at Blade. ”You have got your wits back, haven't you?”
There didn't seem to be any point in lying. ”Enough to remember I was a fighting man, and most of what I knew when I was.”
”Then I'm afraid I'll have to ask you to hand over your weapons.”
”Why should I trust you?” said Blade.
”No reason, except you can trust me more than some of the other men. Chyatho had a good many friends. If I take your weapons and put you under my protection, none of them will dare touch you until Monitor Bekror himself has given his judgment. Otherwise you may find yourself fair game, with a lot of hunters around. How many eyes and ears do you have?”
”Do what he says, Voros,” said Sparra. ”He's rough-spoken but I've never known him to break an oath, even to an enemy.” she added in a tight whisper that only Blade heard, ”I've caused Chyatho's death tonight. I don't want to see you die, too.”
”All right,” said Blade. He reversed the rifle and handed it b.u.t.t first to Terbo. Something flying droned overhead, and green laser light flared off to the left, followed by machine-gun fire. Then darkness and silence returned.
Chapter 7.
Blade spent the rest of the night in an informal sort of protective custody. Sparra took command of Terbo's squad and led it off into the darkness while Terbo himself mounted guard over both Blade and the body-strewn rubble.
That worried Blade. If he was in danger of death from Chyatho's friends, what about Sparra? He probably couldn't do anything to help her tonight, but it was always better to know for sure things like this.
”You and she did get together, didn't you?” was Terbo's reply. ”And don't lie.”
”We did,” said Blade.
”I thought so, That phrase of Sparra's-'nothing which is yours'-I've heard it before. So has Chyatho. This must have been one too many times.”
”Whose side are you on?”
”The side of not getting any more good fighters or live loins killed tonight,” said Terbo. ”That's why I'm protecting you. It's also why I will hunt down any man who touches Sparra for this night's work if the Monitor doesn't do it first.”
”Are you--claiming Sparra-now that Chyatho is dead?” As long as he was pretending to recover his wits, he could ask what would otherwise have been stupid questions.
”I am not,” said Terbo. ”You see, I am dead-Joined. I can be a Protector to the children other men father, but never put one into a woman myself. Sparra has borne Chyatho a son, and is young enough to bear more to another man with live loins. It would go hard with both of us if I claimed her. Oh, I have bedded her at times when both of us were in need. But I would not claim her. I advise you not to, either, at least until you have all your wits back. She will say ten words to your one, otherwise.”
Blade laughed. ”So I suspected.”
After that they talked freely. Terbo had been a soldier for more than twenty of his forty years. In fact, he'd fled as a boy from a village overrun by the Doimari advancing to the great battle where the Sky Master Blade defeated them. With both parents dead he was adopted by a Kaldakan family, then went into the army as soon as he was old enough for them to take him. Since then, he'd fought in most of Kaldak's major battles and a good many of the minor ones, in several different units of Kaldak's army.
”Not the City Regiment, though. Never those high-nosed types. They don't take village boys,” he added. He sounded more resigned than bitter.
”The City Regiment?” Blade recalled hearing Sparra mention it, after they heard the steamboat whistle and saw the rocket.
”We call them the Sitting Regiment, out here,” said Terbo.
Most of Kaldak's fighters were local-defense troops, under local control and armed with whatever came to hand. In fact, some of the cities and districts which joined Kaldak did so on the condition that they maintain their own armed forces. Monitor Bekror's troops were one of those almost feudal private armies.
Then there were the five battalions of the City Regiment, crack troops armed with the best Oltec and Newtec. They rode in hovercraft, flew in balloons, dropped by parachute, and controlled robotic Fighting Machines. They were the strategic reserve, held back most of the time and thrown in only when a situation got beyond what the local troops could handle.
Then they fought well. Even Terbo would admit as much. They were brave and could use their weapons with devastating skill. What Terbo and men like him resented was the feeling that they were used as bait. ”We suck 'em in, anyone the High Commander wants flattened. We take all the pounding. Then the Sitters come charging out, do all the damage, and get all the glory.”
The quarrel between elite troops and the ordinary infantryman went back as far as war itself, Blade knew. He remembered how the war effort of Doimar was nearly wrecked from the start by the quarrel between the regular soldiers and the scientists who controlled the Fighting Machines. He wondered what happened in Doimar after the battle, when the Seekers withdrew the Fighting Machines and left the infantrymen to fight or die. It couldn't have done any fatal damage, or Doimar wouldn't still be a menace.
It didn't help that between battles the City Regiment was close to civilization and all its comforts. ”When they're not training, they'll be sitting on a cus.h.i.+on with a girl on their laps and good liquor in their cups. When we're not training, we're building bridges and roads, clearing rubble, harvesting crops, things like that.”
Blade nodded sympathetically. The conversation died away as they waited for dawn.
Dawn brought a squad of the City Regiment, men and women in blue uniforms, all armed with laser rifles and led by a tall woman with hard yellow eyes which didn't miss much. They took over Blade's position and chased him and Terbo out almost as if they'd been Tribesmen. Blade was happy to go. The smell of death was getting too thick, and he was hungry.
Blade learned about the battle from listening to the talk in the barracks over breakfast. The Tribesmen had surprised the estate because n.o.body was expecting them. An even bigger surprise was their Doimari weaponry, both Newtec and Oltec.
However, the City Regiment must have somehow known about the attack in advance. Their Fourth Battalion had been ready on riverboats an hour's steaming upstream. As soon as they got word of the attack, they came in. Thanks to the determined resistance by the people on the estate, the Tribesmen were still concentrated around it when the Fourth arrived. Less than half the Tribesmen got away, and those who had were being chased.
It was ”a famous victory.” Or at least it would be, when the damage was repaired, the dead were buried and forgotten, and everybody stopped worrying about the Doimari a.s.sistance to the Tribesmen. Everyone wondered if the rival city was starting the war again in earnest.
Everyone also seemed to know that Blade had his memory back, and that he'd done heroic work against the Tribesmen. Many also seemed to know about Chyatho's death. Blade got a mixture of congratulations which he accepted and black looks he did his best to ignore.
After breakfast, a messenger summoned him to the Monitor's hall. Bekror was red-eyed with fatigue and grief. He'd been up all night, in the thick of the fighting for most of it. One of his sons was dead, and one of his daughters had miscarried as a result of the attack.
However, his voice was brisk and steady as he spoke to Blade. ”You did the work of seven men last night, Voros,” he began. ”You will be rewarded for it, whatever you decide.”
”I-decide?” said Blade. He wasn't entirely pretending to be confused.
”Yes. You got your memory back last night, didn't you?”
”Some of it, sir.”
”Do you remember where you came from?”
”No. I don't think it was one of the big cities, but that's all I can even guess.”
”So I heard. If you had come from around here and had kin who could avenge you, you could stay and be well protected. The Laws know I would gladly keep you around. Or you could return home. But you have no home, and it's just not safe for you to stay here.”
”It's Chyatho's death, isn't it?”
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