Chapter 23
Jeffrey: “Looking into the heart of light”
He coughed as the wind shifted. “Was that really necessary?”
Brutus tossed the torch aside and gazed out over the burning field. “Sometimes you have to send a message,” he said.
Jeffrey closed his eyes, trying to escape the images of the four bodies in the burning farmhouse. “Even if there is no one left alive to hear it?”
Brutus grinned. “Oh, it'll be heard. Just not by them. The next time we come through here the locals will be more cooperative.”
The others were returning to the tethered horses. Jeffrey didn't meet their eyes. Is this the way an army operates? Are these the men I really want to lead? “We're barely over the border,” he said. “Aren't you alienating the same people who will be farming for Texas, once we capture the land?”
Brutus turned and lit a cigarette from the flames of the house. “Don't be stupid,” he said. “We'll be moving our own people in. He took a drag and pulled his gloves on before slipping his horse's reins from the hitching post. Tugging on an arrow buried in his saddlebag, he freed the shaft, inspected the point to see it had not reached the flesh of his mount, then broke it and threw the pieces into the inferno the house had become. “And I don't like being shot at by farmers.”
Jeffrey swallowed and swung back onto his own horse. Was this really just a scouting expedition? Brutus seemed to be drawing attention to himself, as if the commander was itching to start the war before the Honcho had intended. Or was he just following orders Jeffrey didn't know about?
He rode up alongside Brutus. “What is it you know that I don't? The way you're operating. You could provoke a retaliation from Rado before my father has the fuel he needs for his new army machines. Why stir up trouble this early?”
Brutus barked a laugh at that. “Hah! Rado will be afraid to move against us. What you don't seem to know is their population is lower than ours. Their Governor is reluctant to risk her men until a full-scale battle is unavoidable.”
Jeffrey scratched his chin. “How can you be so sure of that? That they have fewer people than us? You've hardly been there to count them, have you?”
Brutus took his last drag on the cigarette and flicked it into the burning field as they rode back to the main road. “No,” he said, exhaling. “But I know someone who has, more or less.” He turned to grin at the Runt. “We have an informer in her Court,” he told Jeffrey. “We know a lot more about them than they know about us.”
Jeffrey halted in amazement. A traitor? What could the Honcho offer such a person that the Governor of Rado could not match? She had gold mines!
I am here to learn, he thought. What can I learn from this? That to some people, there are things even more valuable than gold.
The question remained, though: how had his father found and recruited such a person?
He did not speak to Brutus again until they stopped for lunch.
They rode off the main highway and into a stand of trees by a small lake. Jeffrey found he wasn't very hungry, and would have been content to lunch on jerky, but the other men did not share his lack of appetite. They tied their horses to the trees and set off downhill to the lake to shoot some ducks they had spotted from the road while he kindled a fire.
While he chipped at the flint with a piece of steel, striking sparks into the tinder, he reflected on what he had witnessed so far. It was obvious that Brutus had an agenda other than simple scouting. Perhaps more than one. It might be that he was merely trying to provoke the locals into attacking them so that he would have an excuse to kill, but that seemed too simplistic. The commander was not a fool, to endanger his men simply for his own enjoyment.
Was that crack about the Governor of Rado not being willing to risk her men casually a message to him? Was Brutus saying that he had to get used to thinking of the mission as more important than his men? Or was it something else? Finally the tinder caught, and he nursed the little flames with twigs and gradually larger sticks until he had a decent fire going.
A deep humming startled him out of his reverie. He leaped to his feet and scanned the surrounding forest. He didn't see anything, but a gust of wind surprised him, because the day had been a calm one. He cupped a hand to his ear, but the humming was gone. Should he go and investigate the anomaly? It didn't sound like any animal he was familiar with. If it were some kind of predator, a fire should keep it from approaching, he reasoned, and fed more wood to the hungry flames.
Soon he had a roaring fire going, and was running out of wood. While he was debating with himself whether he should gather more, the others returned with a brace of ducks.
“Did you hear anything strange while you were hunting?” Jeffrey asked Brutus.
The older man appeared amused. “No. Did something spook you?”
“I wouldn't put it that way. But I did hear something, a deep sound. I would have thought it was an animal growl, except that it lasted so long before it stopped.”
Brutus removed his hat. His red hair glinted in the morning light as he swatted a mosquito that had landed on his forehead, near a small scar over his left eyebrow. “Well, I wouldn't worry about it,” he said, after a while. “Things are going well, all things considered. We're getting fresh air, fresh food, and pissing off the locals.”
Dead people don't get angry, he thought. But this was not his command. So he said nothing, just stared into the commander's grinning face and promised himself that he would take it up with his father when they returned to Dallas.
While the others busied themselves plucking the duck feathers to set aside for arrow fletching and preparing the birds for cooking, Jeffrey hiked through the trees toward the lake to answer a call of nature. He passed an odd little place where the grass was flattened, all lying down pointing away from a point in the center of a clearing. He'd never seen anything like it. That made two anomalies in one morning.
At the lake's edge he sat on a rock and let his mind drift. The morning was still cool, and there was still hardly any wind. Among the weeds in the shallows, a spider scuttled about, walking on the surface of the still water. He wished he were the spider, with nothing to worry about except the occasional fish.
There had been no need to burn that little farm, or kill the family. It was true, of course, that they might have starved, anyway, once their crops were gone and their horses confiscated. Stolen, you mean, he thought, correcting himself. You can't confiscate the livestock of people in a different country. And what Brutus's men had done to the women before they killed the farmer and his family sickened him. And all I did was watch. His eyes burned with the memory of it. The memory of the commander's cruel sneering face and the trembling in his own arms as he stood there powerless to stop it.
He had been looking forward to ruling the Empire for the material benefits it would bring him, the wine, food, coaches and lands, and of course all the women who would be lining up for his favor, hoping to become the new Honchessa. But now he was seeing a better reason to be in charge: so that men like Brutus would not be.
Wearily, he forced himself to rise and trudge back uphill to the trees.
The ducks were roasting on sticks over the coals of the fire when he got there. Brutus was rolling a cigarette, looking as if he were the kind of guy who could kill a family before breakfast and sleep soundly at night. How can I take much more of this, without calling him out in front of his men? He was sure that the man would do his best to keep his own men alive. But maybe Brutus wanted a confrontation, wanted it all nice and legal so he could kill Jeffrey and claim the justification of self-defense. It might be difficult for the Honcho to do anything about it if his own son had started the fight that led to his unfortunate demise. He'd have his suspicions, but a legal duel in front of witnesses? He'd look weak if he did nothing and unjust if he did anything.
And with the Heir gone, who would be next in line for the throne? Might it not be his most senior Commander? Suddenly Jeffrey was recalled the words of Card
inal Esperanza: things change.
None of them noticed the stranger until he was on the edge of the clearing.
“Good morning, gentlemen. Are you enjoying Raul's ducks?”
Jeffrey jerked his head up, as startled as the rest of them. The man was not tall, and he was old, in clothes as gray as his beard. He walked with a staff that was a good two feet taller than him.
Brutus stood and flicked his cigarette into the fire. “Maybe we are,” he said.
The old man regarded him. “I wasn't aware Raul had friends over the border in Texas,” he said. He glanced at the men, sitting around the fire in their uniforms. “But I suppose one can't have too many friends these days, after what happened to the Ferreros down the road. I couldn't help noticing the smoke. Looks like their farm burned down. Would you happen to know anything about that?”
Brutus smiled. It was not a pretty sight. “I might,” he said, “but what business is it of yours?”
You're a spider on the lake, old man, thought Jeffrey. If I were you I wouldn't make waves or draw attention to yourself. The fish are watching you.
The old man didn't seem to hear the threat in Brutus's voice. “Well, now,” he said. “Gus Ferrero and his folks are citizens of Rado.” His eyes narrowed. “Or were. So am I, and I must admit I'm fast becoming a concerned citizen. If their bodies are in that fire, as I suspect, then I'm afraid you, sir, might be in serious trouble.”
Brutus laughed at that and picked up his crossbow. “You're the one in trouble, old man, if you're not gone in five seconds. Beat it while I'm still amused.”
“I'm not amused,” said the stranger.
Things began happening all at once.
The old man had been standing there with his left hand grasping his staff. He turned to his left as the bolt from Brutus's crossbow flashed past him, reached up with his right hand, and whipped the staff around in a circle to his right, felling the man nearest him who was still in the process of standing up. Then he whipped it back to the left, knocking another man off his feet, jammed one end of the staff into the fire then pulled the fire end out and behind him, aiming the other end at Brutus, who was reloading. A jet of ashes and coals erupted from the staff and flew at the commander, who cursed and stumbled back, dropping the crossbow. Then the stranger pulled the business end up toward him, whipping the back up to catch a third man across the neck.
“Get that asshole!” Brutus snarled, batting at his burning uniform.
Back the staff went into the fire as the fellow reloaded it for another blazing volley at the commander, keeping him off-balance and unable to retrieve his crossbow. Then the staff whipped around and felled two more men in sickening thuds that hurt Jeffrey to even hear. The man vaulted over the fire, using his staff for leverage and simultaneously loading it yet again with coals and ash, then swung it at Brutus again.
To his credit, Brutus managed to duck the first swing. But the staff reversed and cracked him alongside his head on the back swing, then belched fire at the man to Brutus's left, who yelped and backpedaled. Brutus fell heavily to the ground and lay there groaning while the stranger finished off two more men, leaving only himself and Jeffrey still standing.
The man jammed the base of his staff in the fire again and pointed the business end at Jeffrey. “Unless you're stupid too,” he said, “I'd advise you to get some rope from their saddlebags and tie these men up. Might be a while before the Governor's men arrive.”
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