The Far Side

by Wylie, Gina Marie

  “You are a simple, credulous sergeant, Sergeant. You can’t honestly accept that the twin arrivals are a coincidence can you?”

  “My King, our new friends have killed many of our enemies. They have taught us about weapons that will make us a match for the Tengri. If it wasn’t for them -- things would be bleak.”

  “And you believed them?” the King persisted.

  Kris was boiling, but as long as Melek was being civil, she would be too.

  “Of course. The weapons they showed us work well enough. I am sorry about Kerl’s father and brothers who died here, but you can’t let petty animosities whispered in your ear sway your decisions. The short one, Andie, has shown our sea captains how to sail against the wind. Against the wind, my King! If they were with our enemies, they would never have done that! They wouldn’t have taught us how to make crossbows, to make the thunder weapons...

  “My King, they have taught us a great many things. They are as loyal as I am. As loyal as anyone here in this square.”

  “I am amused, Sergeant, that you seek to diminish a loyal retainer’s family and their deaths under -- very odd circumstances.”

  Kris put it together. Melek was back to being a sergeant, and Collum was being ignored. It was back to their first hours in Arvala, when they’d been imprisoned.

  Then Andie spoke and Kris wanted to die. “Melek, you ask that dumb shit King of yours how many men he brought with him and how well he thinks they’ll stand up against the Tengri.”

  Kris was pretty sure that the honorific Melek used when addressing the King didn’t change, no matter what Andie called him.

  “He has three thousand, Andie. He says they can defeat any number of Tengri, and he’s not concerned about wild stories about strange weapons that shoot smoke.”

  “Tell him I wish him the best of luck, but if he has any balls at all, he’ll gather up this useless mob of pukes and continue on south to prove his brag.”

  Andie was speaking badly broken Arvalan, but there was no doubt that the gist got through to the King. He drew back his lips to say something, but Collum interrupted.

  Collum roared in an exceedingly loud voice. “Men of the King! A woman, a woman has demeaned your honor and fighting spirit! She says you are not men! She says you don’t dare go south to fight the Tengri, but you will hang back and let the men of Arvala fight them once more. She says that you have not the courage to heed your oaths to our ancestors! That you are like this sniveling scum standing next to your King, comfortable with chains around your necks, just so long as you can avoid the same fate!”

  There was a roar of anger and frustration, drowning out anything the King might have wanted to say. Two men, both older with very fancy robes, strode forward. “We are ready, my King! Order us south to destroy our ancient enemies! We will show Arvalans the honor, valor, and prowess of the men of the west!” the older of the pair said loudly, his hand on his sword hilt.

  It was, Kris realized, obvious that Collum had wanted to preempt what would happen next.

  The man next to the King turned to his sovereign and said, “My I have your leave, my King, to kill these traitors?”

  “You have it!”

  Kris was startled when the man’s hand dropped to his waist and he pulled dagger from a scabbard. What was she supposed to do? Stand there and let the bastard kill her, Andie, Melek, and Collum?

  The pistol was in her hand as if it magically appeared. She extended it arm’s length just as the man took another step towards her, bringing his forehead just two feet from the muzzle of the 9mm. The pistol barked once.

  At two feet, what a 9mm bullet does to a head is extraordinarily unpleasant. Worse, since the man had stepped forward, the King came in for his share of bits and pieces of bone and brain.

  “You are cowards, you are all cowards!” Collum yelled. “Chain Breakers! I am Collum, Sachem of the Chain Breakers! Do not aid oath breakers! You were challenged to go south and fight! But you are cowards as well as oath breakers! You wish to war on women! What kind of soldiers are you?”

  “Kill these men!” the King demanded.

  One of the men who’d stepped forward, and who had received his share of gore, spoke mildly, as if making sure of his orders. “The women too, my King?”

  “Of course the women too! One of them killed Kerl! Right at my side! She killed him!”

  The man drew his sword, and Kris started to lift the pistol again, but Collum caught her hand and pushed it back down to her side.

  The man took a step forward and without warning ran the sword through King Zod.

  He turned to the soldiers and the stunned crowd. “I am Cressida, a general! I am no coward! I do not war on women! I do not break my oath to our ancestors! A king who commands me otherwise is no king!”

  He waved the bloody sword over his head. “I came east to war against the Tengri! I came to break chains! What say you?”

  The roars of the soldiers were joined after a few moments by the roar of the crowd, still a little stunned at the sudden deaths.

  The general tossed his sword onto Zod’s body and stepped close to the men who had been waiting for the King. “You understand, Sachem, that you either deliver a victory or I will kill you myself?” His voice was much lower, not audible for more than a few feet.

  “Oh, I’m sure I understand. Do you understand that we will need another week to prepare, including training the army with their new weapons?”

  “They will be loath to give up their bows.”

  Melek laughed. “General Cressida, once they see what these crossbows can do, they will beg you to be armed thus. Andie, please, show them.” He reached down and lifted a crossbow, the quarrel in place and cocked, and then handed it to Andie.

  Then he reached for a fruit that Kris remembered seeing on her first day in the city that looked like a pomegranate. When Melek put it on his head, she spoke up. “No! Melek! No!”

  Andie hardly paused, lifting the crossbow and firing. The quarrel took the fruit from the top of his head like the wind removing a hat. There were gasps from those assembled.

  “Melek, General, is very good with a bow,” Andie said formally. “Would you like him to try to shoot a fruit from your head with his longbow?”

  The general’s eyes were bug-eyed wide. “No.”

  Andie grinned at Kris, who was still as stunned as everyone else. “We’ve been rehearsing all week. I haven’t missed once. I was standing a lot closer to him than William Tell was to his son, let me tell you!”

  The rest of the day was spent closeted with General Cressida and two other generals, plus a half dozen senior captains, as Melek and Collum went over what they’d learned. There was no mention that Kris heard, at least not directly, about what happened to the King and his man.

  The next day they took the Golden Bough out and ran the ship through her paces, then showed the visitors the work being done on making new crossbows and new quarrels.

  * * *

  Linda Walsh heard the pop of the radio, and she promptly picked it up. It was approaching midday outside, and the sun was barely up in LA. “Linda,” she said into the radio.

  “Linda, is Kurt available?” It was Jake.

  “Just a second,” she told the man and walked back into the nursery chamber and waved the radio at Kurt.

  Kurt came up and she handed it to him. “Jake,” she said economically once again.”

  “Right. Jake?”

  “Kyle’s dead, Kurt.”

  “Shit!”

  “Yeah. It was those damned birds. About two hours ago over in his direction I heard gunfire, and I found a place to look from, and I could see about a dozen of the buggers circling like vultures. I saw a couple of them go down, and after a bit I realized that Kyle wasn’t shooting anymore.

  “I hustled over there, but there was nothing I could do to save him. They’re like piranhas, Kurt. I killed as many of them as I could, and I didn’t see any escape. I have Kyle’s dog tags, radios, some of his food and
gear, including his P90 and his mags.”

  “Damn!”

  “Yeah, let me tell you, this isn’t like anything we’ve done before. I should have seen those damn dralka too, but I’m just not in the habit of checking the sky. The fuckin’ muj’s have to check the sky -- we don’t! What a mess! And, well, now there are a half dozen of those Tengri bastards headed towards where all the racket was.

  “They haven’t seen me, but they aren’t likely to be blind. They’re going to know something was up... I didn’t police Kyle’s brass, for one thing. I buried what was left of him under some rocks and marked it, but they’ll dig him up for sure. They are going to see the black skin and freak.”

  “What do you want to do?” Kurt asked.

  “If this was the ‘Stan or Iraq, about now I’d call the Rain Man, or maybe get them myself, although that’s risky. But a half dozen...”

  “Yeah. Well, let me see if I can get Mr. Boyle and that asshole from the government. Wait a few.”

  Linda had already picked up the other radio that was tied through the Far Side door. “Linda for Mr. Boyle. We have a situation.”

  Oliver Boyle wasn’t at the site -- he was at work, and it took a few minutes to patch him in. Jon Bullman was listening in though, from the site.

  Kurt explained the situation, and Jon Bullman spoke first. “Look, you guys are military and I understand that. But so far we haven’t seen anything from these Tengri that could be construed as hostile.”

  “That’s because we’ve been told that if they see a white skin, they’ll get hostile right quick,” Kurt told him. “These guys are clearly moving in to stay for the long haul. It looks like they are quarrying limestone and building a defensive position. You wouldn’t go to that much trouble for a temporary spot you were planning on abandoning -- or if you’re planning on being a good neighbor.”

  “Kurt, I never thought I’d agree with the government about any of this, but I agree with Jon,” Oliver said. “If you kill a half dozen of them, even if you succeed, they’ll be missed, and they’ll step up patrols. And if we weren’t enemies before, we’d be enemies after that.”

  “They probably will be anyway,” Kurt replied. “I would, if I ran into something I didn’t understand. You understand that Jake didn’t do anything with the dralka, either, he just left the carcasses. We’ve seen them shooting muskets, and we know they’re smooth bore, muzzle loaders. They aren’t going to be sure what killed the dralka, but it’ll be pretty obvious that it was a firearm. And locals aren’t supposed to have firearms. Did I mention that at least Jake got Kyle’s?”

  “Yes, you did. Kurt, you have to make it clear to Jake that the priority right now has to be to get a radio north as fast as possible. Kris, Andie, and Ezra will just have to be extra careful on the way back.”

  Oliver could hear Jake’s voice through the connection. “Will do, but just so you know, I’m pretty sure that this is going to bite us in the ass in some way. Honestly, I don’t know how, but there are just too many ways that things can go wrong. Okay, I’m signing off for a while, while I make some tracks out of here. They aren’t going to be able to see me, but if any of them are any good at tracking, they’ll be coming after me, so I’m going to have to go pretty good for the next few days. I’ll still check in, but it’s going to be short.”

  “Roger that, Jake, you be careful!”

  “Go with God, young man,” Jon Bullman told him.

  Kurt signed to Linda, and she cut the link back to Earth. Kurt spoke to Jake. “Jake, you are clear to take them out if they are still on your six, this time local, tomorrow. Do whatever you think best, so long as there is minimal risk to the basic mission.”

  “Do what I think best?” Jake said with a laugh. “Now that’s a winner! Okay, I’m out of here -- you guys watch yourselves, because they might get curious about whether or not they are already under observation.”

  “Roger that. Get going.”

  “Roger, Jake out.”

  Kurt looked at Linda. “You won’t rat me out, will you?”

  “No, but I wish he was just going north, not bothering with the men following him.”

  “Doggies own the night,” Kurt said cryptically.

  “Pardon?”

  “The infantry feels that it owns the battlefield at night. Those guys might have muskets, but Jake has night vision equipment. And, in case it isn’t obvious, and while I can’t be sure exactly what Jake will do, but if I were a betting man, along about sunset here tonight, Jake is going to be checking on where they are. If they are coming on his back trail, well, he’ll figure that they’ll still be there tomorrow -- and act now.”

  “Won’t it be dangerous? What if he gets killed?”

  “Well, odds are he won’t get killed. If I don’t hear from him by tomorrow morning, another pair goes north tomorrow night, with even more draconian instructions -- move at night, stay down and stay safe, get north no matter what happens around you.”

  About two hours before sunset Kurt came and sat down next to Linda. “More trouble.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I wish you could get a chance to look outside, Linda. It’s a hell of a thing to come so far and not at least be able to look on alien skies and alien oceans.”

  Linda chuckled. “I’m getting around better all the time, one or the other of you sees to it that I walk an hour in the morning and a half hour before supper, even if it’s in circles. Another week or so and I can probably get up to the watch point. Honestly, from the description of how low the tunnel is, I’m not that certain I’m in a hurry to peek outside.”

  “Yeah, well, I was wondering if we made you a rope chair if you’d like to go up now? There are a couple of things I’d like to have your opinion on.”

  “My opinion?” Linda sniffed derisively. “Sure!”

  “Your opinion. I don’t figure you for a total idiot.”

  “Sure, of course. I can do anything if I put my mind to it.”

  He smiled. “It just so happens that Steve Crandall has been a fireman since he got out of the Army, and he’s just about got that chair finished. How about now?”

  “Sure, let me tell Jo,” Linda told him. She called Jo Christiansen back on the Earth side of the door and told her that she would be out of radio range, but someone else would have radio duty.

  She walked into the main chamber and stared at the forty-foot climb. She had watched the others go up and down several times, but she was still nervous about it. They didn’t do much in this chamber, afraid some stray sound might make its way outside, and there were only two of the men playing chess in the light of a Coleman lantern to one side.

  A mess of ropes dropped down from above and Steve quickly rigged her up in them, and then she was hauled upwards. Really, Linda thought, if you have to climb forty feet and couldn’t use steps, a rope chair was a perfectly adequate way to do it.

  She was helped into the narrow tunnel, and she went past the two doglegs that led to the outside with Steve Crandall right next to her, which helped. She reached the spy holes, and the man who was there nodded and squirmed around and went back as there was only room for three in the small chamber, but not for four.

  Kurt showed up a few minutes later. “Okay, first, take these,” he handed her a pair of binoculars, “and look at the camp. That’s the middle slit, about a mile and a half away.”

  She looked through the glasses, adjusting the focus. The glasses made things look much closer, but also seemed to flatten them out. She hadn’t looked through binoculars very many times and it took a bit to get used to.

  The camp was filled with people doing things, most of the tasks she couldn’t even begin to guess. She could see the wall that Kurt had talked about on the radio with Mr. Boyle, and she could see the ship offshore, anchored. There seemed to be a fair amount of activity on the ship as well.

  “They seem busy on the ship,” she said, not sure what she was supposed to be looking at.

  “Yeah, now look at the
sky,” Kurt told her.

  It wasn’t easy, but there was one place where you could look up at about a 70 degree angle. “Clouds,” she told him.

  She looked back out towards the camp and the ship beyond. There weren’t any clouds visible. “You don’t suppose there’s another storm coming? And the ship is getting ready?” Linda asked him.

  “Yeah, that’s my thinking. I think a lot of the camp activity is battening things down as well -- so this could be another big storm. If you look at the terrain, there’s not a lot of large vegetation, but there is a lot of green new stuff -- I imagine that’s from the hurricane Kris and the others reported.”

  Linda looked again and nodded. She’d seen the same thing often enough in her native Arizona. A couple of well-timed thunderstorms in the spring would cover the hills and mountains with green fuzz.

  She looked at Kurt. “Andie’s note said that this used to be a swamp, but the rains failed. I wonder if the climate’s shifting again?”

  “Climate change is a bitch,” Kurt agreed. Steve also laughed at that. “But I don’t think they’re going to be able to blame climate change here on fossil fuel consumption.”

  “Probably not,” Linda agreed. “But I grew up in Arizona, and this sort of thing was bad news. Early spring storms that saturated the ground made for a lot of weeds a few weeks later. When the summer arrived, those weeds made a lot of fuel for brush fires.”

  Kurt laughed. “Ah! I knew there was a good reason for having you along! Nasty! Very nasty!”

  With a start, Linda realized he was thinking about brush fires and their enemies. Sure, they hadn’t seen anything overtly hostile from these people, but their actions were certainly suggestive of people who weren’t very nice.

  Just how were you supposed to go about finding out what people were really like, if they would try to kill you the first chance they had if what you’d heard was right?

  “Can we do something like that? To people we don’t know for sure are hostile?”

  He nudged her shoulder with his. “Linda, there are some things we haven’t wanted to burden you with. Right out there, yesterday, they whipped a man to death, and I’m pretty damn sure that the man who was killed was wearing some sort of leather or metal collar.