The Far Side

by Wylie, Gina Marie

  “Bat!” Captain Seros said as bows were lifted at Ezra. It was obvious, though, that Ezra hadn’t made any friends. Seros went to the door that led outside and called out. A man with a bloody nose, holding one arm cradled in the other replied.

  “Collum got away,” Ezra said, almost crowing.

  Seros turned to Ezra and snapped something at him. Ezra laughed and said something back, and jerked his chin at the wall. For the first time Kris looked at it. Good grief! Yeah, fifty bullets! Jesus God! The wall had been bricks, just one course, maybe six inches thick. Now there was a hole large enough to crawl through into the room beyond.

  “He told me to shut up,” Ezra told Kris and Andie. “I told him ‘make me!’”

  “Don’t you go getting yourself killed!” Kris exclaimed, terrified.

  “These guys? These guys have no balls, no guts, and while they were thinking about starting a revolt, they haven’t been able to work up the courage to actually do it. Mardan was the one who was pushing it, and about now he’s not going to be pulling his pud for the rest of his life. And, by the way -- the rule in all the fighting orders is that if you can’t fight, you retire. No pension, don’t let the door hit you in the ass on your way out.”

  Seros snapped at Ezra again, and Ezra smiled at him. “He says if I don’t stop talking, he’ll have a temper tantrum -- or words to that effect.”

  “Ezra, stop jerking their chains! We need you!”

  “Was that a pun, Kris?” he asked, laughing. “With bastards like this, if you cave, if you show weakness, they push you around. Think of it in terms of schoolyard bullies. Stand up to them and they will walk warily around you -- don’t and they walk all over you.”

  “Be careful, damn it!”

  “Sure, mommy dearest.” He turned to Seros and said a string of words. Kris’ head ached, but she could follow some of it. He was telling Seros that they were travelers from very far away, and that they weren’t from the east or anywhere around and that while Kris and Andie weren’t nobles from Arvala or the Fingers, they were back home and he’d better watch his step or there would be... something. Kris wasn’t sure what it was. She hoped it wasn’t a threat.

  Men were seeing to those who Collum and Ezra had knocked down. Some of them, Kris saw, had broken bones. Mardan was, even so, the one hurt the most. Seros watched what passed for medics working on Mardan and spoke angrily to Ezra.

  Ezra translated and talked. “He asked me for my weapon. I gave it to him. I could have done that,” he’d indicated the wall to him. “Why should I warn him which end is sharp? Would you warn someone who took your sword by the blade that it was sharp?”

  “They say his hands are ruined!”

  “He wanted my weapon. I gave it to him. What more can you ask of me? That I teach him how to use it?” Ezra laughed.

  “He asks if you and Andie are noblewomen. I’ve told him that three times -- you are the equivalent of noble where we’re from, but none of us lay claim to the local version of nobles. I left the impression that I considered them something we’d wipe off our shoes after walking through a pasture.”

  He watched them lead Mardan away. “Think of what would have happened if Churchill would have broken Hitler’s leg, by accident of course, before Munich.”

  “Well, tell him I still have to pee,” Andie insisted.

  Ezra told Seros that and Seros agreed, but added that a guard would go with her. “Tell the fucker to send two, or maybe four or eight if they think I’m dangerous.”

  Ezra grinned and Kris could see the anger on Seros face.

  Kris didn’t let anything show on her face. The fact was, these people were dumb as stumps. Melek was smart and so was Collum. Rari wasn’t half bad either, but on average, the rest of them couldn’t fight their way out of a wet paper bag.

  * * *

  Melek listened to Ezra bait Seros, surprised at the man’s temerity. He knew Ezra was as brave as a man could be, but this -- this was baiting Seros in his own keep! General Flaner had fainted when Ezra fired his weapon, and he’d been taken away without regaining consciousness. Mardan was crippled, and that was going to be a real problem for the plotters, for the fighting order rules were strict -- if you couldn’t fight, you were out of the order.

  He was afraid that as soon as Mardan came to his senses, he was going to order Ezra killed. The question was, would the men of the Dralka order obey a command from a cripple?

  When Andie asked for many guards, you couldn’t help but see the reaction from the soldiers in the room. Even the Dralka admired someone with spirit. And it was a little hard to make someone who was head and shoulders shorter than anyone in the room seem like the demon enemies of old, swinging their long battle axes. Seros had lost a lot of his honor agreeing to that and Melek was quite certain Andie was well aware of what she was doing.

  It was a terrible thing to contemplate, but he’d spent years learning the arts of fighting as they were taught in the fighting orders. The fight with Collum had shown Melek that there was something more, and Collum’s fight with Ezra had shown more. And here and now! It would be a story told around campfires for centuries! Two men, unarmed, one chained, in a roomful of their enemies laid a dozen men low, crippled at least one and allowed one to make his escape.

  That was another chink in Seros’ armor, he knew. That sort of thing wasn’t something that your men wanted to hear about. In that respect, sending two guards with Andie had been criminally stupid.

  So, when Andie came back and Kris asked for the same thing, Melek couldn’t resist. “Better send ten guards. Kris is the best fighter among them!”

  It was almost certainly a lie in most respects, but they didn’t know it. If there was anything that inspired the confidence of soldiers it was firm competence. Someone who knew what they were doing and went and did it, without a fuss. Kris was like that. From the first he had noted that around Kris, things got done, and done right the first time. And more than once he’d seen Ezra turn to her for instruction on what to do. On other occasions, she’d disagreed with something he wanted to do -- and then Ezra did it her way.

  Finally Seros started asking Melek some of the questions he should have asked before doing anything else, about what they’d seen in the south. At first Melek thought he wouldn’t say anything, but then he decided that his duty lay with the King and the Chain Breakers. The Tengri were the enemy; Seros and his kind were the distractions.

  So he answered the questions, urging in the strongest terms that more of the Tengri were still out there, and an expedition had to be mounted as soon as possible to rescue those in chains and to kill the bastards who held them. He did not speculate with Captain Seros as he might have otherwise that it was possible that Ezra’s knowledge of the art of war might be as advanced as his weapons were -- in which case the result was going to be a catastrophe if Kris’ people ever showed up.

  He hadn’t truly understood Collum’s purpose with his last instructions to Melek. “If Seros does not know who my brother is before I escape, you wait two hours and then tell him.”

  Collum hadn’t wanted questions about why Melek was to do that, as he hadn’t wanted questions about the mechanics of the escape or why he thought this morning that he might be a prisoner before nightfall. There really was too much secrecy these days between the fighting orders, although he could understand why Collum was being secretive, given what Mardan and Seros were doing.

  It was late at night when Seros finally ran out of questions. Kris and Andie were sitting on the floor, leaning against each other, sleeping. Ezra sat a few feet away from them, watching Melek and Seros, watching them like a hawk.

  “I have one question for you, Captain Seros,” Melek said when Seros turned to one of his lieutenants to give orders about the prisoners.

  “I ask the questions.”

  “Sure, of course. Do you know who escaped earlier?”

  “Collum, Sachem of the Chain Breakers. Please, you aren’t to talk.”

  “Collum is h
is name in the Chain Breakers,” Melek advised Seros. “He was born with a different name. One you’ve heard before.”

  “The Chain Breakers are old women, willing to let their fighters do things like take another tattoo -- and change their names to hide what they once were. A criminal, no doubt.”

  “His name is Pallas, the King’s younger brother. Why do you think that Mardan didn’t have him bound like the rest of us?”

  “That is impossible, I heard he was dead.”

  “When a member of the royal family joins a fighting order, they are treated as if they died, Seros.”

  That was so that a sibling of the King wouldn’t get ideas about recruiting fighters to his personal banner and supplanting an older brother.

  Seros’ throat worked and abruptly he was up, shouting orders, demanding a redoubling of the search for Collum. For Melek it was like someone had drawn him a picture. By now, Collum was certainly far away and safe among other Chain Breakers. By adding more men to the search, Seros would weaken the guards here in the council chambers.

  And tomorrow there would be a riot if the people learned that Tengri were to the south and a party hadn’t been organized to hunt them down. That would further draw down the forces in Arvala, and Seros would have to make sure a lot of Dralka went south or face unrest about that, too.

  He knew Kris had put her weapon in his pack, where someone as stupid as Seros would never find it. He wouldn’t have known where Andie had hidden hers, except that Chaba hadn’t been certain and had asked Rari if she should hide a weapon and Rari had asked Melek who assured them that it was just fine and to do whatever Andie wanted.

  Captain Dumi came in the room and looked around. He’d reported first, and Captain Seros had listened without much comment and Dumi had been excused. Melek hadn’t expected him to return, because he could easily be dooming himself.

  “Captain,” Melek said, speaking softly, trying not to interest the half-dozen guards clustered well away from Ezra.

  “Sergeant,” Captain Dumi responded. “I don’t know what I can do this time.”

  “Alone, nothing. Sir, you’ve heard the lies they are telling about what happened.”

  “I told them the truth, Melek, I swear. They are twisting everything...”

  “Yes, Captain. Captain -- my men. My men know these for the lies they are. Seros and Mardan will move to deal with them tonight. If nothing happens, tomorrow they will be dead.”

  Captain Dumi looked away. “I have trouble believing that men could be so evil!”

  “Well, they are,” Melek reminded him. “Please, Captain. Get a message to my men, as many as you can reach. Tell them their duty assignment, no matter what fighting order they are with, is complete. They are to go to the Chain Breaker house in Tirala and ask for sanctuary.”

  “I am your friend, Melek, you know that. But that’s... I don’t know if I can.”

  “Contemplate the oaths we took the day we became fighters in our respective orders! We pledged our loyalty to the King, above all others. We pledged ourselves to rescue those we left behind as soon as we could, and then we pledged ourselves to our individual orders. When we serve together, we swear oaths we will fight as brothers, leaving all disputes behind.”

  “I know. I’ve never had to pick and choose which of my oaths I was going to obey -- but that is what they have told me. The King needs to be shown the way, Dralka needs to be the sole fighting order -- the others waste time and energy on things that aren’t important to the very survival of our people.

  “Can you believe it? He told me, a Wall Guard, that guarding the walls is a waste of time! That we should go out into the jungle and kill the beasts where they live!”

  “They want Dralka ascendant, and all of us obeying their Sachem. They have forgotten our history, their place in it, and our places as well. They have forgotten those who stayed behind to allow us to escape with their sacrifice. Captain, even if I wasn’t a Chain Breaker, I could not live with myself knowing I’d turned my back on rescuing our ancestors.”

  Captain Dumi nodded. “My wife told me that the city is very unsettled. There are no preparations to send soldiers south, and people are everywhere talking. But Dralka soldiers patrol the streets, and if two people gather to talk, they beat them with the flats of their swords to break them apart. I tried to tell Seros, but he just laughed. “Two handfuls of Tengri! We can destroy them anytime we wish! Where are they going to go?”

  Captain Dumi looked at Melek. “I was tempted to retort that they could go wherever Rangar went -- but I didn’t think that wise, lest I be accused of knowing where Rangar went.”

  He met Melek’s eyes. “Aye, I’ll pass on the message. It is going to make things worse for you, you know.”

  “And knowing I did nothing to help my men, that would be better?” Melek asked.

  The captain left and Melek stared at Ezra. How could the man be so calm in spite of this? He remembered the explosion of sound that had deafened them all. He remembered the tornado of blows that Ezra had launched that Collum had taken advantage of. Had the two planned together? He didn’t see how it was possible, but the fact was that whether or not they’d planned together, they’d fought together, side by side.

  Three times. Melek sighed. In spite of everything, Ezra had done more to help the Chain Breakers than Melek had. It was sobering. It was, actually, terrifying.

  * * *

  Oliver and Helen Boyle stood at the front of the throng of people marching east on Interstate 10. They had formed up at La Cienega and had started east, at first on the east bound lanes only, but by the time they’d reached La Brea, both directions of the freeway were filled with marchers heading eastwards. If the news reports were true, the same thing was happening on the 101 coming from North Hollywood, plus some east-side freeways were blocked as well as the demonstrators converged on Los Angeles’ civic center.

  The news reports said that as many as two million people were marching, and that traffic in the city was at a standstill, and that similar marches were underway in other cities across the country.

  It was just a few days after the Fourth of July, and many voices had demanded that they wait a week but Oliver wasn’t going to wait a day more than he had to.

  The crowds were singing songs, most of which were folk songs or country western -- broken hearts mostly and failed love.

  Oliver wasn’t sure how Linda Walsh had managed to elude one of the largest manhunts ever conducted in the United States, but she had. She was the main organizer of this march and they wanted it -- and her -- stopped. Oliver and Helen had pushed the idea of a march, but the nuts and bolts belonged to Linda Walsh and a legion of computer geeks from Caltech and USC, from UCLA and Cal State Northridge.

  There were march marshals who made sure that agitators and trouble makers got no place; there were vendors selling thousands of bottles of water plus every kind of food that could be imagined. As Kurt Sandusky had said a bit before, as near as he could tell, every “Roach Coach” in LA county was parked along the march routes doing a land office business -- not to mention all the porta-potties in the world.

  It took three hours to reach the civic center, and the crowd there was already huge, a sea of faces as far as the eye could see in every direction and more pouring in. Oliver’s party seemed to be riding in a magic bubble -- the crowds would part in front of them and then draw back in around as they moved closer to the podium.

  Perhaps half of the LA police department and the LA Sheriff’s department had called in sick; most of the rest were lining the routes, standing silently, not trying to interfere.

  When they reached the podium, Oliver didn’t even break stride -- he stepped right up and started speaking.

  “There are those who will tell you that I’m here as just another fat cat, wanting my own interests served and the hell with the rest of you.

  “Well, the first part is true enough. You all know about my daughter, and you all know I want her back.

  “Th
e second part though -- as I told the President -- I’m not here to get what I want at the expense of anyone else. My daughter is eighteen and enthusiastic, young and filled with the spirit of adventure. Andie Schulz is that times a thousand.

  “So yes, now that we’re aware that there are risks, I understand the concerns and agree that they are serious and need to be taken into account.

  “The problem has been all along that reasoned argument -- and even principled agreement -- no longer works in this country. No, we have allowed our politics to degenerate to a level of corruption we associate with third world nations.

  “Our courts, our politicians, our police, and above all our legislatures are bought and paid for by money from every sort of interest and pressure group. Decisions in this country are no longer made in the best interests of the country or the people, but in the interests of whichever group or organization has bought and paid for enough influence to get their way.

  “I submit to you, my own personal interests aside, this isn’t a very good way to run a country.

  “I’m not going to stand here and tell you I have a solution to our problems, but I am here to tell you that we stand at a crossroads right here and right now. Either we let things continue the way they are, where none of us are safe from some capricious decision by some politician or legislator, or we put our collective heads together and see if there’s some reasonable way to get ourselves out of the hole we’ve dug for ourselves.

  “And, make no mistake about it -- this is our fault. Yes, there are those who are taking advantage of the system, and it’s a system designed and constructed by those who are intent on reducing us to third world bondage -- but we let them do it. We say that we’re voting for the lesser of two evils when there are people running for office who are unpalatable. We vote the party line, we do this, we do that -- but the fact remains, that until recently, this was a democracy where we had a free press that kept track of what was going on -- had we the least interest in seeing how the sausage was made.