War World III: Sauron Dominion

by Jerry Pournelle

  But you must decide, guest of the Pale. Is it to your honor to join in avenging a man all believe to be accursed?’

  Blood rose to Kemal’s face. “The Saurons shame us,” he muttered.

  “Only if we let them. My kinswoman killed a cyborg; do you think she will let her father’s disgrace live?”

  The nomad’s eyes widened. He nodded to the Judge, then bowed to Aisha as if she were still a princess in the yurts and strode off.

  Smiling thinly, the Judge led the way into the meeting hall. Aisha stared about her, fascinated, for the hall had windows--not just skins stretched across openings cut into the walls, but windows wrought of precious, colored glass. All her life, she had heard stories of the wealth of the Bandari; she had eaten their food, worn their clothes, and profited from their medicines. But the luxury of those windows, with their stars and stags, their hammers, their swords, and all the other sigils of the Pale, startled her.

  A table had been set up and covered with an embroidered cloth. On it rested treasure that none of the Bandari would covet, fond as they were of treasure. Its value lay only in the fact that once it had belonged to Ruth bat Boaz: the innocent vanity of frayed ribbons in pale colors, perhaps given her by Piet fan Reenan; a book, encased in some shiny stuff, with letters that Aisha could not read and a picture of a frail, blonde girl in a blue robe on its cover; some simple first aid supplies; the gleaming, well-kept menace of a handgun.

  Beside the relics of the first judge lay a heavy chain from which hung a large enameled medallion--a springbok superimposed on a six-pointed white star and framed by flaming swords on a field of blue. It would go to the next kapetein, Aisha thought. Barak avoided even looking at it.

  “Ruth’s own father hung her on a cross for defying him when she was the age you were, Aisha, when you led your father into exile. Do you understand what I am saying? If she could recover from her own father’s attempt to kill her and rise to be Judge over the Pale and the mother of healthy children, you, too . . .”

  I saw you nod, tante, sister, when the djinni you call Karl Haller came to my side. What future do you plan for me? Sufferance in a clan that does not want me? “There goes our kinsman and his barbarian woman?” Watched, corrected, and not reminded of everyone’s generosity and patience not more than thrice a day? Sooner would I flee to the steppe and make my way alone back to Nurnen.

  She turned to Chaya, and the reproaches died on her trembling lips. The Judge wore Badri’s face, and Badri had always wanted the best for her daughter. That evil, not good, had come of Badri’s care was not her fault. Light glinted off the book in which another woman cursed by her blood had found delight. Ruth’s father was not her fault. Her care, perhaps, and a sorrow that would abide unto death: but she bore no blame.

  “On Ruth’s Day, we forgive,” Chaya murmured. “It is no bad thing to start by forgiving yourself.”

  Tears welled. Again, Aisha did not begrudge them. Nor was she the only one, in the crowd of clansfolk who pressed into that room and sat on the narrow benches, to weep that day. She pressed her hands over her eyes as old Barak, who still wielded the armies of the Pale, spoke of the kapetein, who had been friend and brother to him. When young Barak laid an arm over her shoulder, she did not jerk away from its comfort.

  She blinked away sorrow and glanced around. Quick reassurance twinkled at her from Karl Haller’s eyes. How different he was from his stolid kin! Sitting well behind him in the seats reserved for the women of the Eden clans was meid Sannie, who glared at Aisha as if resenting her place.

  The Bandari kept good order during the Memorial, if good order included the whispers of children, the footsteps of elders whose bladders would not let them sit still for the long speeches, the hasty, apologetic pad . . . pad . . . pad of mothers removing children who whimpered at the breast. The adults were quiet during the speeches; Aisha, schooled to the watchfulness of an untold number of camps in which she was the only guard, shivered with the tension in the air.

  A General Council had been called. Members of kamandim and Church Elders not already present were traveling from outlying areas. The election of a new kapetein was too important to be left to proxies; and this vote, Aisha knew, was trouble.

  Who will wear the chain of office? the tension seemed to demand. One by one, it focused on the leaders who sat near Aisha, at the front of the hall. You are too frail, it told some, like the dead kapetein s brother. You? Unlikely: to another. It won’t be you: to the sour-faced Haller elder who sat, master of his kin, and glared at clans he could not master. It might be you. As if aware of the scrutiny, Barak shivered.

  Sannie watched him intently, as if trying to make out which part of him was Sauron and which, Bandari. She would be a difficult kinswoman, Aisha thought.

  It was past noon when the service ended. A cold wind drove the clouds from the pale sky. Then the sun seemed to brighten; warmth even seemed to come from the baleful Cat’s Eye, visible even now: Ruth’s Day came at the time of year when there was no darkness.

  Barak groaned and stretched. “I can’t sit for that long,” he complained. “And with all those eyes on me.”

  “They’ll be watching you at the feast, too,” Chaya warned.

  “I’ll be too hungry to mind. Let’s go!” He laughed and flung one arm about his mother, the other about Aisha, making a great show of hurrying his womenfolk along.

  For all Barak’s rushing, they were not the first to the feast. What seemed like hundreds of hungry Bandari and Edenites clustered about the trestle tables where roast lambs lay, surrounded by kebabs, stews, roasts, and more usual fare, such as cheeses, flat breads, and salads. On another table, guarded by women and under heavy assault by the children of every clan, rested sweets: baklava and other pastries, dried fruits, and decorated eggs.

  Already, a few red-faced men--Edenite farmers from the look of them--leaned against yet another table on which rested a veritable army of bottles-- vadaka, whisky, mead, ice-wine, and the treacherous liqueurs Aisha had never seen, much less sipped. Behind it stood barrels of ale.

  Kemal and his followers drank and ate and belched politely, but their eyes never ceased the watchful flick . . . flick . . . flick of a beast wondering whether to challenge the pack leader. One of the nomads began to sway back and forth where he sat. Kemal snapped out an order, and one of his fellows led him away.

  “Nipping at the whisky, I bet,” muttered Barak. “I hope he’s a quiet drunk. What about you, Aisha?”

  I don’t drink much. I don’t eat much. Usually haven’t had the chance. The feast would be ordeal, not celebration, for her. Watch the barbarian eat. See her do it all wrong.

  “You’d drink kumiss, wouldn’t you?” Barak asked her. “We must have some of it around. Mother, your usual?” He disappeared into the crowd.

  “I take it you don’t eat pork,” Chaya led Aisha toward the tables. Without seeming to guide or observe her, she helped her fill a plate with more food than she had seen at once since she was a child. Barak returned with the mare’s milk, and no one raised an eyebrow at her choice of drink. The talk and the food relaxed Aisha, and she found herself laughing, even when Oom Karl wandered by and offered, with a grin, to pay his admission to their table with a round of drinks. Not bothering to pull up a chair, he leaned an arm over hers as if he had a perfect right.

  Chaya caught her eye and winked. Kemal, passing by with Sheva bat Barak and some other merchants, nodded gravely at the way her new clan seemed to accept her. Her relief at his approval didn’t even annoy her as she thought it should. And when meid Sannie glared, she was able to smile and beckon her over. If Barak were to become kapetein, he would need a wife, and Sannie was smart and strong.

  Sannie scowled (Ya Allah! Does she think my cousin would even look at me? There’s been enough of that in this family!) and turned her back.

  Barak chuckled. “She gets like that. She’ll be back.”

  Two men wearing the sigil of Gimbutas came up, one holding an extra beer, which he han
ded Sannie.

  “She’s probably trying to make Barak jealous. Hasn’t worked yet,” Karl Hafler said. “It’s all a matter of time, time to heal. You’ll see.”

  Two of Sannie s cousins came up beside her and wrapped arms about her, shouting that another caravan had just come in, and Sannie must come see. Two caravan guards, a very young man and woman, strode toward them, arms linked. The man had a long rope of blond hair, conspicuous against his dark skin and green eyes. The woman’s blue eyes flashed, and her personality, though she was little more than a girl, lazed more fiercely than anyone’s but Judge Chaya’s. Following her, almost trotting to keep up, was a younger girl enough like her to be her sister.

  Even Aisha knew enough of the Bandari clans by now to know that the newcomers were of clans not especially friendly to Sannie’s. Still, she greeted them with a grin. When they left, she and the Gimbutas men hoisted their drinks in salute. Shortly thereafter, they followed.

  Karl Haller groaned. “They’re back! I don’t know what’s worst. Having another Karl about who gets into fights, having him fight with Shulamit there, or having them on good terms with each other.”

  “Thing is, you just don’t like being called Little Karl,” someone threw at the healer, and he groaned theatrically. “Not when Big Karl is young enough to be your son.”

  Aisha felt the healer twitch under her hand.

  “You want Shulamit and Big Karl to stay on good terms with each other,” Barak said. “When they fight, they tend to throw things. But you can’t break a bedroll when you pound it.’

  Aisha surprised herself by flushing like a tribute maiden, then laughing. She felt engulfed by clan, by friends.

  Let it be real. Praise Allah, let it be real.

  One or two tribesmen wove by--Kemal couldn’t keep a watch on all of them, apparently. They eyed her owlishly. She started to look down, then met their eyes with what was not boldness for a woman of the Bandari. This was her clan now.

  The long, long day went on. She could not remember a happier one.

  An old man with light eyes strode toward the table.

  “Ho, aluf!” called Karl Haller. He released Aisha’s hand, almost surprised to find himself holding it.

  “What’s wrong with him?” Aisha asked. For all the kumiss she had drunk, she was instantly sober, instantly alert.

  “Dammit, I’m not on call,” muttered Haller. “All we need ...”

  The newcomer’s face was sweaty. His hands shook visibly, not with age, but with anger. Seeing him, Karl Haller rose so fast he almost overset her chair.

  “Oom Avi,” he greeted the newcomer. Whispers informed Aisha that Avi Allon was the oldest healer in the valley, so much respected that he never accompanied warriors or caravans, but worked with the women’s doctors, helping to birth the next generation. “What’s happened? Has there been an accident?”

  “There certainly has been,” said the old physician. Aisha rose and tried to give him her chair.

  “Thank you. First time in the valley? First child? I haven’t seen you before.”

  He doesn’t know me. He thinks I’m someone’s wife. I could pass for normal here. I could. I could.

  “My niece,” Chaya told him firmly. “Aisha.”

  Now was the time for him to recoil at the outcast. Instead, he shook his head, dismissing the subject. “Hold on, Karl. I said there was an accident.”

  “I’ll have to get my kit unless ...” But the elder healer’s hands were empty.

  “No one’s hurt. But some pigeater broke into the dispensary. No, no drugs or knives are missing. And you don’t know how relieved I am about that.’

  “We can station guards,” Barak suggested. “But what was taken?”

  The fire began to cool in Avi Allon’s eyes. When Barak slid a drink across the table, he picked it up in hands that no longer shook with rage.

  “Medical records. All my files have been rifled.”

  The Judge had to have been standing ten meters away in a crowd that made about as much noise as a tamerlane balked of its dinner. But she heard. Almost at once, she was at her son’s side, listening, her eyes flicking across the tables of feasters, trying to pick out who was and who was not there. Naturally, Kemal stood at her side: the watcher at the feast. It was as important for him to ferret out signs of trouble as it was for him to see a show of Bandari strength. Alliances could rise and fall for less.

  “Who would be interested in medical records?” Barak asked.

  “How should I know?” Allon snapped. “You maybe. Your mother. Your own doctor. Your records were one of the set that’s gone missing.”

  Barak looked at the old healer, puzzled. Then he threw back his head and laughed.

  “For what?” he asked. “The arm I broke when I tried to shoot Kapetein Mordecai’s rifle when I was eight? Every scratch I took in training? Obviously, someone’s pouring from a bad barrel of beer! Why don’t we get a new one and forget all this?”

  “I need those records, ben Heber!” snapped Allon. “There’s other things in them than broken arms!”

  “Scheiss!” hissed Karl Haller. “The old man just lost it.”

  Maybe it was the kumiss. Aisha blinked at him. Barak still laughed, and even Judge Chaya forced a grin, ghastly though it was.

  “Waiting to see if you die in a fit, Sauron!” shouted Hans Haller. “Maybe they didn’t throw your granma on the scrap heap for nothing!”

  “You fucking bastard!” Barak screamed, and leaped for the Edenite’s throat. Three men hurled themselves forward to stop the fight.

  Judge Chaya stood, as frozen as Aisha herself, watching Karl Haller. They must know what was in those records--another curse? Please Allah it would not bring ruin down upon this last of her kin: Chaya blind, Chaya cast out to wander--hardened as Aisha thought herself to be, she cringed until the screams alerted her once more.

  Aisha had heard tribesmen scream in rage. She had heard outraged Bandari before. But she had neverimagined the sheer volume of outrage and curses that she heard now.

  “I don’t give a damn, Haller,” the old healer spat. “Confidential be damned. Sealed files be damned. Those are medical records, and we need them. Make up your mind, man. Are you a doctor or a politician?”

  “I’m trying to keep the damn Pale from splintering!” the younger man shouted. “I suggest you do the same.”

  She reached for her belt-knife. They all had belt-knives, even Kemal and his men, who backed toward each other. Their eyes flicked around the infuriated Bandari. Abruptly, Aisha’s own blood cooled. Time, as she thought of it, slowed, and her thoughts clicked past like beads on an abacus, adding into a sum she didn’t like.

  Something about those looks. They meant more than concern that the brawl turn into a riot and from there, deteriorate to a feud in which not even honored guests were safe. They were more than apprehension; call it satisfaction, perhaps? Aisha didn’t like the look of them.

  A peripheral flick of her own memory, and she recalled how meid Sannie had left with cousins.

  Cousins? Gimbutas cousins--and she of an Edenite kumpany? Gimbutas were swarthy; Gimbutas were tricksy . . . like nomads. Gimbutas from an outlying territory, perhaps cousins who lived outside the Pale altogether.

  “SHUT IT DOWN!” shouted Judge Chaya with all the power in her Sauron-bred body.

  Aisha smelled blood in the air, the result of some lucky punches. It’s hot-copper scent made her adrenaline spike up, to be subsumed in that readiness that was the mark of the Sauron-born.

  Kemal and his men froze, hands falling away from their belt knives. Carefully, as if setting up an ambush, they began to back out of the crowd. Aisha followed them with her eyes, aware that the Judge was administering a tongue-lashing such as she hoped never to deserve: something about “reasonable concern for future health” turned into a blistering attack on lack of respect for Bandari customs . . . “disgrace before important guests” and “indecent breach of mourning for our kapetein.” The Sauron part o
f Aisha’s memory would ‘store’ that lecture for when she would have time to retrieve it from memory. Maybe in a hundred years.

  For now, however, she concentrated on being inconspicuous, on passing unnoticed in a storm of reproaches and accusing glares. Like Kemal, she backed away from the center of the fight. Into the shadows, where she could hide and think and plan. She had never been too good at thinking and planning for more than a day ahead. One thing, though, she knew.

  This was not a time to warn Judge Chaya that the Pale was filled with spies. Perhaps, if she could bring proof, none of those stares would touch her. She would have brought honor to the Bandari--and perhaps they could help her restore her own.

  Gradually, the shouting subsided--into sullenness on the part of some of the Edenites, mutters broken by Karl Haller’s earnest, persuasive voice; and into loud, even drunken self-blame on the part of the Bandari, who began to stage a reconciliation that would have made a wedding festival look staid by comparison.

  Her senses alert to catch the warmth of the spies that she always sensed but no one but her father (and the Judge or another Sauron) could, her nostrils flaring to catch the scent of the men she suspected, Aisha prowled. Her boots squeaked with newness, so she shed them and walked about the camp that way. She wanted silence for her thoughts and her own concealment.

  Could she be certain Kemal had set spies? How could she find out? And, even if she found out, how could she bring proof against them, exile that she was? This was a problem Judge Chaya might have been able to handle with all the resources of the Pale behind her.

  Cat’s Eye jeered down at her. You had a girl’s training and then a refugee’s. What do you think you can do?

  Not trip over the child who wandered into her path, surely.

  “Meid? Tante,” the girl corrected herself. Her eyes held an unchildlike curiosity that reminded Aisha of Karl Haller. (She wished she could bring this problem to him. That was the problem when a wild thing was tamed; it looked to the tamer for protection and aid.) “Why aren’t you at the feast?”