“All this was found in Red Tram CT038,” said Kalward.
He was standing down on the tracks with the tram commanders and drivers while two carbineers held a driver against the edge of the platform. The prisoner had the patch CT038 sewn onto the left breast of his coat.
“You were given orders back at Sage to take nothing with you that was not already on your tram. We are fighting for our lives! We cannot afford to be weighed down with loot of any sort.”
“But Sair Kalward, after all we were allowed to do at the Fontwater estate I—or like we thought we could—”
“Enough!” shouted Kalward.
He raised his hand high, snapped his fingers, and pointed to Warran Glasken, who was on the platform. The officer marched forward, drawing his reaction pistol as he advanced, then fired a short burst down into the crown of the driver’s head. The carbineers let the body flop to the rails.
“Some trams have been searched, but the rest of you have ten minutes to clean your trams out and add your loot to that pile. In view of our success and your good fighting so far, henceforth each carbineer will be allowed such gleanings that can be carried in a single hand. Officers and drivers can take the equivalent of what will fit in a single coat pocket. Take no more, or death. Take no women, or death. Take no drink, or death. Do what you will on the wardens’ estates, as long as you obey your commanders and don’t load down the trams. Now go!”
Rollins stood clear on the platform while a frantic rummaging and jingling took place on the trams. There were screams, pleas—and three shots. The bodies of another three abducted women were added to the pile, along with five times more plunder from the other trams. In the distance Rollins saw the figures of other women dashing over the tracks for the nearest streets of Middle Junction. Some commanders had apparently been overtaken by conscience, releasing their wretched captives rather than taking Kalward’s solution.
The dead were later carried into the canteen of the central depot and carbines were placed in their hands. The building was then set afire and allowed to burn to ashes. Rollins was assigned with a dozen other trusted drivers to load the looted treasure into galley carts, which were then left standing alongside the platform, covered with canvas and under guard.
“You’ve not taken anything,” Kalward observed as Rollins was about to return to his tram.
“Nobody told me to,” he replied in a strong but deferential voice.
Kalward lifted a cover and gestured to the pile beneath. Rollins carefully picked out a selection of gold coins out and dropped them into his pocket. He stopped when it was heavy, but not crammed.
“That’s all?” asked Kalward. “No jewelry to please a special lady back home?”
“Can’t say I want anyone being so special that they learn too much about me.”
“How many did you kill before you joined the trams?”
Rollins hesitated, but decided that evasion would neither harm nor help here.
“One man,” he said truthfully. “Over a woman.”
“I thought so. You take no loot that can be traced, you avoid the town whores when we pull into stations, and you don’t drink. That’s steady and clever. I like that in a driver. I’m going to have field glasses and a gun assigned to you.”
“Thank you, sair.”
Later that day Rollins saw his first war duel out to the east of Middle Junction. An armed sailwing with Yarronese markings fought a short engagement with a more powerful Bartolican sailwing before setting its engine afire. The Bartolican aircraft crashed into the irrigated fields, but did not explode. The vanquished sailwing had Bartolican markings, Rollins thought as he lowered his field glasses. It was not black or unmarked, but Bartolican. That meant the nobility of Bartolica were now supporting this frighteningly unchivalric war.
20 August 3960
Laurelene Hannan was trapped in Median when the Bartolican forces laid siege. She had been traveling with diplomatic papers, and was therefore identified and taken into custody very early in the war. At first she was merely held in protective custody; then, as reports of the Bartolican atrocities and carbineer attacks came flooding in, she was questioned, threatened, and increasingly deprived of sleep. Was she a spy? What was her mission? Where were the Bartolicans going to strike next? Who had really killed the Yarronese wardens at Forian?
None of the questions meant anything to Laurelene. What did alarm her was the endless parade of haggard eyewitnesses that were brought to tell their stories of murder, rape, abduction, and looting by the Bartolican carbineers. While her Yarronese captors were angry, they had not as yet sunk to the level that her own side was being accused of. She wondered how long that might take.
Municipal Prefect Staimar was not a trained interrogator, and as such was all the more dangerous. His son had just been confirmed dead in the fighting to the west, and his wife had last been seen in an area that was now under occupation. At first Laurelene had defied him as she had defied all those who had gone before. With Staimar, this was a mistake. He brought in a half-dozen women who had recently been widowed in the fighting, and they had stripped Laurelene naked, even down to her rings and combs. Cold, bare, embarrassingly overweight, and lacking any symbol of her status, she would have gladly told them what she knew, yet she knew nothing. She was given a bathrobe and clogs and handed back to the guards.
“Whatever your cause might be, Semme Hannan, it had better be worthwhile for what is about to happen,” Staimar said pointedly as she was led out.
“I have no secrets, I’m just a loyal Bartolican subject, Sair Prefect,” she pleaded.
“Well in that case you will be pleased to know that this city has no more than days or even hours left before your carbineers break through our barricades and trenches. When that happens, we know what to expect after what has happened further east. Until then, my word still has the weight of authority and my decision is that you be turned over to the bereaved ladies that you have just met. No more, no less. Semme Laurelene Hannan, you will learn what it is to be the plaything of people who are not bound by the rules of chivalric law or the veneer of civilization, rules that your people have so readily flung aside.”
“Sair Prefect, you cannot blame me—”
“Oh but I can and I do, Semme District Inspector’s Wife. A room needs to be prepared, so please be patient. I want no mess on my furniture or carpets in what little time I have left to enjoy them.”
Two armed guards flanked Laurelene as she sat waiting in the antechamber. The boom of Bartolican carriage guns and cart cannons continued outside, with four or five shells falling every minute. She knew that if she were free to move and no gates or doors were locked, she could have walked to the Bartolican lines within no more than a quarter hour. So near yet so far. The hatred in the Yarronese women’s faces kept returning to haunt her. There had been a basis there, they had not been putting on an act.
Haggard and sometimes wounded officials came and went, and there were ominous sounds of furniture being moved about in a nearby room. A lone member of the Dominion of Yarron’s Merchant Carbineers Inspectorate strode past carrying a folder sealed with an impression that made the troops at the door salute smartly and stand aside. There was something about both his face—Glasken! Glasken with shorter hair and clean-shaven.
“Sair Inspector, please, may I speak with you?” Laurelene called in Old Anglian, rising to her feet.
The guards pushed her back down into the chair, but Glasken paused and faced her.
“Yes?” he asked with a slight grin of recognition.
“A Bartolican woman,” explained one of the guards crisply. “She is due for another audience with the Prefect in a few minutes.”
“I see. Well, she does not concern me. I am here to collect the Bartolican Semme Laurelene Hannan for questioning.”
“But Sair Inspector, this is Semme Laurelene Hannan.”
“Ah—yes, how could I have missed her? There is so much of her, she would be very difficult to miss.”
“Sair Inspector, she is still in the custody of the Prefect,” the guard explained. Glasken held up his folder and displayed the seal.
“No matter, I shall have her back in time. I have an extremely comfortable office downstairs. This way, Semme.”
“You monster, I’d rather face those Yarronese women!” shouted Laurelene.
“I prefer to face women too, although approaching from behind has its own allure.”
Smirking, the guard who had backhanded Laurelene hauled her to her feet.
“Ten minutes, Sair Inspector, then hand her to the Prefect,” he warned as he pushed Laurelene forward to Glasken.
Glasken took her by the arm. “We’ll be in Room—ah, I can’t remember the number, there’s a blue star chalked on the door.”
“We’ll find it.”
Glasken snaked an arm around Laurelene’s waist and into the folds of her bathrobe. She tried to slap his face, but he caught her arm and twisted it around behind her back.
“Best approach her from behind!” laughed one of the guards as Glasken pushed her to the head of the stairs.
He ushered Laurelene down the stairs and along a side corridor, still holding her arm tightly behind her back.
“You may get your way with me, Glasken, but—” she began.
“Not unless you lose about forty pounds,” said Glasken, releasing her and unclipping his dustcape. “Put this on, then take my arm and look as if we’ve been married three decades.”
Astonished, Laurelene stopped and stared blankly back at him.
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“Well, I’ll be looking ground down, and as if I haven’t had it in years. You could try looking bored—”
She aimed another slap at his face but his hand shot up and blocked the blow again.
“Enough of that, Semme, there are no guards to impress. Now put on that cape. Do it!”
Arm in arm they walked through a side door and into a long, narrow courtyard that led to the front gate.
“We were lucky the guards did not think to speak to me in Yarronese,” he muttered as they walked. “Do you have papers, anything that identifies you as Bartolican?”
“Everything was taken from me.”
“Damn! That will make it harder for you when the Bartolican carbineers break in. First let’s get you into the streets where you can hide from the Yarronese.”
“Sair, you mean your intentions were not, ah, lewd?”
“My intentions are generally lewd, Semme, but in this case staying alive is of more concern. What does this pass say, do you read Yarronese?”
“It says Merchant Inspector Myrel Pregel and husband.”
“Good. You’re Myrel Pregel, I’m your husband. Act like a prize bitch … or maybe ‘act’ is the wrong word.”
“You—but who are these people in the papers?”
“They’re both dead, I just killed them. The woman was a man and they weren’t human, if that makes a difference. Here’s the gate, act arrogant, like an inspector.”
They were waved through with hardly a glance. The distant bombardment rumbled on as they walked away down the street, but as they turned a corner whistles shrilled out from the building they had left.
“Run, the guards have missed you!” barked Glasken. “Call’s balls, but they didn’t give me long to bundle into you.”
Glasken appeared to be familiar with the alleyways and lanes, and they were soon in a deserted area amid storehouses. The walls were high and blank, and smoke from nearby fires lay thick on the air.
“Stay low,” said Glasken. “Hide amid the rubbish. The city’s walls are a thousand years old and are crumbling fast before those carriage guns, and the barricades are not much better. When your Bartolican carbineers come through, wait until a merchant officer appears and go to him. Not a carbineer, not any carbineer. Now give back that cape.”
“But this bathrobe—”
“It becomes you. Give me the cape!”
He snatched the cape from her then made off into the thickening swirls of smoke from fires started by incendiary shells.
“Glasken, wait!”
“Stay here. Hide.”
Laurelene followed him at a distance. There were few women or children about, and most of the people she saw were Yarronese carbineers and civilians with guns. Most of the incoming artillery was pounding one section of the ancient walls, but the incendiaries were fired at random to cause chaos. Enemy gunwings cruised lazily in the thermals high overhead. Glasken was running much faster than Laurelene could, and she soon lost him. She saw a hostelry and stumbled over the cobblestones for the front door, her lungs burning with smoke and exertion, and every breath a wheeze. She entered and found the reception chamber empty.
Outside there was a massive explosion, much larger than the thump of artillery. They must have hit a munitions store, Laurelene thought at first, but then she heard cries from people running past outside that the walls were down. Enemy carbineers poured into the city. The fighting was not intense, the defenders had been beaten long before the section of wall collapsed. Laurelene listened and watched. There were screams and sporadic shots, and a growing pall of smoke. Bartolican carbineers ran past the hostelry and a burning firebrand was tossed through the window, shattering the glass to land smoking against someone’s abandoned baggage. Another followed, and then the carbineers ran on.
Have to move outside, hide somewhere that cannot burn, Laurelene thought. Must hide until the fighting stops and there’s order again. Glasken appeared on the street, helping a limping man to run. Laurelene dashed outside and went after him, but the smoke soon shrouded him from her view. She stepped into an alley as she heard the clump of boots nearby, then made her way through the drifting smoke.
The city was burning. This was a reward for the victors, a day or so to play with live toys, and with no rule of law. Laurelene sprawled headlong over something—a live Bartolican carbineer looting a body. The man was battle-alert and quick, and his hand snaked out and seized her ankle.
“Let go, I’m Semme Laurelene Hannan, wife of—”
“Don’t foul our language with your Yarronese tongue!” he exclaimed, backhanding her across the mouth. Holding her by the hair he began punching her in the face.
The beating soon had Laurelene nearly senseless. The carbineer began to tear away her hempcloth robe and when she tried to crawl away he dragged her back and punched her face until she lay unresisting, her legs bare and apart. He’s done this before, so this is what it’s like to be violated, she thought as he settled down on top of her with a long, shuddering sigh. Anything, anything, just no more beating, she thought, her eyes closed.
Abruptly the man jerked upward, and something warm splashed onto her face. Sticky, salty. Blood! Laurelene wiped her eyes and stared into the slashed throat of the carbineer. A grizzled Yarronese was standing astride them both with a knife in one hand and the Bartolican man’s hair in the other.
He hauled the carbineer’s body off Laurelene, then held a finger to his lips.
“Sex is dangerous,” he said softly in Yarronese as he let the body fall. “It concentrates the mind, so that danger may approach unseen.”
Laurelene drew her torn bathrobe about her as she sat up and shrank back against the wall. Her rescuer had a bandaged leg and head, and as he sat down Glasken appeared. He was wearing part of a Bartolican uniform.
“This way, Jeb, I’ve found a couple of—you again!”
“You are acquainted?” asked Feydamor.
“Acquainted? She once had me shot!” Glasken exclaimed.
“She was being ravished by a Bartolican.”
“She’s a Bartolican herself, she’s the Bartolican Inspector General’s wife.”
“One of my own people just tried to rape me,” Laurelene retorted.
“Well don’t look at me, I’m just wearing their uniform!” snapped Glasken, flinging a bundle of clothing at Feydamor’s feet. “Jeb, change into this.”
“But these are of Bartolican carbineers.”
“Very sharp, one day you might be Airlord.”
“In all honor, Juan Glasken, I could never wear a Bartolican coat.”
“Honor be screwed! Just do it, you stubborn old goat. Do it for Yarron, do it for the Airlord, do it to impress this Bartolican lady, but do it!”
“What is a goat?” muttered Feydamor, sullenly looking at the coats.
“I’m talking to one. Now put them on.”
Feydamor reluctantly tried on a coat while Glasken went back into the smoke for something else.
“With women, if a man cannot get his way by charm he is less than a man,” said Feydamor as he did up the brass buttons. “That is one of Sair Glasken’s sayings. He’s quite a remarkable man.”
“Aye, never ravished a woman,” declared Glasken as he reappeared with carbines and forage packs. “Been damn near ravished by a few myself, though.”
“What are you going to do?” Laurelene asked Feydamor.
“Glasken and I are going to flee Median. You … well, you are at risk, even though you are Bartolican. You can come if you wish.”
“Why yes, yes!”
Glasken dropped the guns and packs in astonishment.
“You have to be joking!” he exclaimed, but Feydamor waved him silent.
“Screaming is required of you, Semme, and fear of being ravished. Can you provide that?”
“I’m in good practice.”
“Then come with us and do exactly what you are told.”
At sunset they approached the breach in Median’s thousand-year-old walls. The two men were dressed as fully kitted Bartolican carbineers, with the brass buttons of their coats undone and Call anchors pinned and dangling at their hips. Feydamor stopped Laurelene and took her by both arms and looked into her bruised face.
The Miocene Arrow Page 18
