"What? What do you mean?"
"You can't do it alone. You try and do it all by yourself and you'll fall apart. You'll crack, stare at walls that aren't even there, or start chopping up people in the shadows. If you don't want to go crazy, you have to spread the job around."
"Like what?"
"Like how I relied on you to settle things when Jobo Ramis and Kid Scorpion began waving blades at each other. I didn't look over your shoulder or tell you how to do it. I relied on you to take care of it."
I shook my head. "You mean trust? I got to trust them?"
"That's right. If you can't trust them, get someone you can trust." She squeezed my fingers.
"I don't get it, then, Nance. If Stays is running the cops, Bloody Sarah the army, the Trolls are fixing guns, and Mercy Jane is fixing you, what's my job? What am I supposed to be doing out there?"
"Be there. Your most important job is to be there. Be calm, and be strong. Your second most important job is appoint good people and get rid of the assholes. Another thing."
I rubbed my eyes and tried to ease the tension in my neck. "What's that?"
"Remember that first morning? Remember that fight with Kegel's scavengers? We didn't have any weapons at all, and the scavenger patrol had five hundred rifles."
I nodded. "Yeah. I remember. I remember we left six hundred friends and enemies on the desert for the sand bats."
"Just so you understand, Bando. Just so you understand." Her voice had faded to a whisper.
"Just so I understand what?"
Her eyes opened to dark slits. "People are going to die. If the Razai is going to live, people are going to die."
"And I'm the one who has to tell them to kill and die?"
"You got it." She released my hand and pointed at the door. "Get going. We'll catch up when we can."
I wanted to ask her about Lomon Paxati, the former president of Kvasir. Wouldn't he make a great administrator? In fact, wouldn't he make a great replacement for Bando Nicos? The answers were there, if I wanted to look at them. One of the sharks I was going to have to learn to trust was Bando Nicos. Maybe someday Lomon Paxati would make a great administrator, but right then he didn't seem to know squat about being a shark, much less a shark in the Razai. But maybe he could learn. Maybe I could haul him around until he could learn. As I stood in the doorway I glanced at Wolf Toffel, the Bordentown Ghoul.
"Wolf," I said to him, "I was out of line. What's past is past, and that applies to everyone." As I pulled out my ice pick and handed it to him, I saw Alna approaching the sled with a double armload of bandages and stuff. Her breath rose in clouds above her head.
For a second I wanted to pull her out of the nursing business and keep her with me to prop up my liquid ego. But she had a job and was needed. Besides, the sooner she and the docs made Nance better, the sooner Bando Nicos was off and away enjoying the carefree life of a Razai Cop. Besides, I felt safer with her in the back with Mercy Jane, away from the fighting.
"Bando," she called when she spotted me. I stepped down from the sled and gave her a peck on the cheek.
"You think that's a kiss, chili pepper?" she asked as she laughed. "C'mon, down an' brown. Shake off those ice cubes, stir up that brown sugar, and give me a plant."
I gave her one and just about squished the supplies she was carrying. Still holding her, I whispered, "How's that?"
"The nights get awful long without you, Bando." Her warm lips on my ear were stirring up the brown sugar plenty, and I held her out at arm's length.
"I got to get up to the point. There's a lead storm coming this way. Take care of Nance." I took off my right glove and placed my hand on her cheek. "Stay safe."
She turned her head, kissed my palm, and looked up at me. I wanted to dive into her huge brown eyes and lose myself forever. "Bando, do you love me?"
It was right of her to ask. I mean, love was a hard thing for me to understand; a harder thing to feel. I nodded, and she said "Say it."
I glared around at the President, Marantha, Stays, Slicker, Show Biz, and Deadeye until they moved away. I looked down at Alna. She was still holding all that stuff, so I took it from her and handed it to Mercy Jane. When I returned to Alna, I took her by the waist and kissed her. For a moment she was limp, then she came alive and wrapped her arms around my neck. I touched my lips to her ear as I whispered, "Yes. Yes, I love you. You are the only thing in the world that I do love. Be here when I get back."
Her breath warmed my ear as she whispered back at me, "Remember the stars, Bando? Remember the Eyes of the Spider?"
"Yeah?"
"Remember when you look at the Eyes of the Spider, I can see them too. That way we won't lose each other."
I don't know. Maybe I was getting used to the smell of the unwashed. I buried my face in her neck and held on for all I was worth. She smelled wonderful and I knew every second without her would be a hole in my life. When I released her she ran into the sled without looking back. Marantha and Slicker went over to the Left Guard to question Ow Dao. The rest of us loaded up on supplies, aimed our critters east, and made for the point.
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Respect, Justice, and All That Stuff
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After the first dark shape on the sand, we knew that the night of the thirteenth was going to be one of the worst. Frozen stripped bodies were laid out next to the trail, sometimes alone, sometimes in little groups of three or four. Instead of just leaving them like they fell, the bodies had been arranged flat on their backs, hands crossed over their breasts, faces covered with a piece of desert sheet. I remember thinking that the Razai was becoming civilized.
By the time we reached the point I had counted over three hundred men, women, and children who'd fallen from the cold and the march. Of course that was only one end of one column. If the rest of the groups were doing as well, that would mean maybe another seven hundred or so dead from exposure or exhaustion. An even thousand for the night's work so far.
The corpse of a little girl of eleven or twelve stuck in my head as a permanent resident, one of the first ghosts to move in my head that I hadn't killed myself. She'd been stripped like the others, but in her left hand was a dirty faded rag doll. For some reason no one'd been able to bring themselves to take it from her. As we left her behind I filled myself with hate and toasted on it until we reached Nazzar's troops.
The unarmed and walking members of the point gave Stays directions to where the actual point guard was playing host to a special unit that'd been put together by Bloody Sarah. Once we were there, however, there was no one we could find. Between Rhome Nazzar's armed point and the remaining point troops from Mihviht, there had to have been close to fifteen hundred sharks, but we couldn't see any of them.
I pulled up my critter, looked at the dunes, studied the shadows, and strained my ears. Leaning over, I poked Stays in his shoulder. "Are you sure this is the way?"
"I'm sure, I think.
"What the hell do you mean, you're sure you think?"
I heard the movement of cloth behind me and I turned to see a red light staring at me out of the darkness. In an instant I grabbed for a rifle that was no longer on my shoulder, and reached for an ice pick that was miles south with the Bordentown Ghoul.
"Hold it, Chief," said Stays. "It's Show Biz."
I took a deep breath, vowed to get myself another rifle, and let out my air. "Flash, if you ever want to see another sunrise, you better not turn that camera on again until you get rid of that red light! You understand me?"
I looked around and searched the shadows. Careful or paranoid? The question of the moment. Bad vibrations were crawling all over me. "Anybody got a fire cube?"
Stays struck one and tossed it as far forward as he could. The grit lit and there weren't even any tracks. Stays turned his critter around and pulled it up next to me. "I don't get it. Where are they? Where are their tracks?"
"What ab
out it, Watson? Is this the way or not?"
"Maybe I heard the directions wrong."
There was a slight buzzing sound and I turned to see Jontine looking through her little camera at the pitch black beyond the edges of the light. "Knock off the noise, too," I hissed. "Besides, you can't see anything out there anyway."
Jontine did not bring down her camera but continued sighting through it. "It has an light amplification lens in it. I can see like it's purple daylight."
"Keep looking."
We all looked for a long time, finding nothing until on the dark air came the soft "call-all-all-alllll" of a Suryian night dove. I smiled.
Too quickly for Jontine's special viewer, the dunes surrounding us erupted with motion and light. A hundred fire cubes were struck and flung toward us. In seconds we were surrounded by ignited fire cubes and were staring down the barrels of six hundred rifles. I nodded and thought to myself that Sarah and the Colonel must have hit it off pretty good. I realized that there was just a little bit more to the exercise than what I saw. I couldn't help but believe that it had been staged, at least a little bit, to stiffen the spine of Bando Nicos.
A bit later, my bunch was together with Rhome Nazzar, Colonel Indimi, Bloody Sarah, and Ondo Suth. After a quick pan with her vidcam, Jontine sat back and listened as we were brought up to date. Kegel's column was only days away. By the light of the fire cubes that burned in the center of our tiny circle, Ondo used his fine black sand to sketch out a diagram.
"Right now the Razai be set up usual way, walkers guarded left, right, point 'n rear. From what Bando says, the protos comin' in from Earth, Kvasir, 'n Cumaris'll be organized same way, though I don't know where they exactly be. More protos'll be followin' them, too, I expect."
He reached down and drew a long line. Next to it he drew another. "Kegel's got maybe thirty thousand mounted rifles. He runs 'em in a double column like this. Each column'll be about eight riders across, and the columns'll be separated by no more'n a good shout."
"Ondo," said Bloody Sarah, "Do the columns ever lose sight of each other?"
"Sure. Once you're far enough into the dunes, each column has to weave its own way around 'em, and the dunes get pretty big. So the columns don't stray too far from each other, they send out runners every now 'n then."
I pointed at the diagram. "What about guards? Do they run anything on the flanks, point, and rear?"
He put in a tiny mark far ahead of the double column. "Up here they'll have a small mounted scout group at point. It's not big like ours. It's not supposed to do anythin' but hustle back and warn the columns in the event of trouble." He added two more dots, one on either side of the double column. "Same thing here and here."
"No rear guard?" asked Sarah.
Ondo shook his head. "They figure the supply train makes enough of a rear guard. They'll have a couple hundred rifles riding around the baggage sleds and maybe another couple hundred in the sleds." He thrust his lower lip out as he looked at the diagram. "Of course, Kegel thinks his ass weighs a ton. He can't believe anyone in his right mind would attack him. When he got the news about you chups thinnin' his whole patrol, he must've eaten his beard."
He drew a third long line centered on the previous two, but far behind them. "This is his supply train. Back here on sleds 'n pack critters he'll have food, water, ammo, spare weapons, tools, and shelters."
"Ondo Suth," said Lomon Paxati, "how do you know these things?"
Ondo looked up from his diagram at the President. "I used to be in Kegel's gang. I was part of the patrol the Razai thinned."
"I see." The President turned his head until he was looking at me. "How many more members of Kegel's gang are in the Razai?"
I shrugged. "Maybe two hundred. We don't exactly call roll every morning."
"I see." The President tugged at his lower lip for a moment. When he released it, he looked at the fire cube but addressed me. "Bando Nicos, what is to keep this fellow telling the truth? And if he is telling the truth, what is to keep other members of this Kegel's gang from informing on the Razai as to our size, composition, arms, disposition, and so on?"
"Maybe I can answer that," said Stays as he reached beneath his sheet and pulled out his copy of the law. "Our third law is the law of silence. If you break the law of silence, it draws the max."
"The max?"
"Death," I answered. "Anyone who joins the Razai from another gang, like Ondo or the sharks from the Hand, are free to come and go as they wish, but if they break the silence, or are captured at some time in the future fighting against the Razai, it's the max."
The President slowly shook his head as the corners of his mouth went down. "Every nation has similar laws, and every nation has its traitors. The reason I mention it is, from what I understand, we can't afford the luxury of a traitor."
"We can't hold prisoners," I said. "So what can you do?"
Ondo pushed himself to his feet and stretched his legs. "Only speakin' for myself, chup," he began, "the Razai is the only gang on the planet I know where the people are in charge." He looked at Paxati. "We vote in the Razai. We vote on our laws, we vote on who bosses us. And we got the law. If somebody thins me or tries to thin me, I know he's going to get his. In the Razai I got the right to life. I don't have that nowheres else on Tartaros. I'm not about to throw it away."
"How do the others feel?" asked the President.
"I can't speak for them," he answered as he shrugged. "There're a few who'd sell us fast enough if they thought Kegel had a chance of takin' them prisoner."
I held up my hands. "We'll have to bite that bastard when it jumps us." I looked at Sarah. "What's your plan right now?"
"I'm going to resign."
"Like hell."
A little mischief crept into her eyes. "It's true."
"I'll tell you when you can resign—"
She laughed out loud, and so did Colonel Indimi. "Bando," she said, "I can't fight and train troops too. I know all about Habran Indimi. He's an excellent officer, and he should be in command of the army. Once you okay him, he'll organize and continue to train the protos and protect the column while I run a raider force that'll attempt to stall Kegel and whittle him down. Later, when the new troops are trained, we'll all get together and do Kegel."
I listened to them talk, and there were countless details to work out, not the least of which was would the original four generals be willing to serve under the Colonel, or were we about to have a revolution? Nazzar seemed to admire Indimi, and Sarah'd sent out messengers to Rojas, Dao, and Vekk.
From Lomon Paxati we learned that the ship full of maus from Kvasir had the beginnings of a protest group forming. They held that, since all of them were innocent, they didn't want to be ruled by a bunch of convicts who deserved Tartaros.
"Rule two," I answered. "Each person is free to follow whatever leader he or she wants."
"That could cost a lot of lives," said Colonel Indimi.
"It's already cost a lot of lives," I answered. "We formed that rule on our third day on the sand to allow Nkuma and his followers to strike out for the Green Mountain Mirage. We're not in the Razai by force. We're here by choice." I looked at the President. "There's nothing to protest in the Razai. Either you vote to change what you don't like, or you get the hell out."
A frown crossed Paxati's face. "Get out?"
"Yeah. They stroll, take a walk, vaya con nada, they do the Forever Sand their own way."
The frown on the President's face deepened. "Isn't that rather extreme?"
I nodded at Ondo. "He tells 'em how to survive in the sand, if they're willing to listen."
"Still, isn't this exile in the midst of exile rather severe?"
I looked at Stays, and Stays smiled and looked at the President. "You haven't put in much time behind the crowbars, have you?" Stays asked.
"In prison, do you mean?"
"That's what I mean."
"Except for the ship that brought us here, I have never been in a prison."
<
br /> Stays crossed his legs and leaned forward, his elbows upon his knees. "The stains on Kvasir just swept you people up and dumped you in a ship bound for here?"
"In essence. There was a brief confinement by myself in my home for a period during my farce of a trial, but I don't suppose that counts."
Rhome Nazzar climbed to his feet and flexed his array of muscles as he stretched. "Man, what dimension did you warp in from?" He chuckled and pointed at the President as he squatted down. "Every pit—every prison—has its own way of doing things. They got the rules and the stains, but the sharks got their own rules, too. It's us against the stains, us against time, us against the other yard gangs, us against the system, us against everybody and everything else in the universe." Rhome folded his arms across his chest. "And either you're on the team, or you're out."
"Even if being out means death?"
"If you're out," I answered, "your death isn't my problem. It's only my problem if we're brothers."
It sounded meaner than was necessary, and I tacked on a little bit in the way of easing the chills. "Paxati, between the desert, the Hand, Kegel's gang, and the other gangs out here, the Razai is already facing more enemies than it can handle. We can't afford the time and effort to be looking over our shoulders, too."
I got to my feet and nodded at Indimi. "Okay, Colonel, you are now in command of the army. I'll lay it on you the way Nance did when she appointed Sarah. You're in charge of the army, so you are in charge of the sharks. The sharks elected Nance Damas boss, so they're in charge of her. She's in charge of you, which means until she gets better I'm in charge of you. You got any problem with that?"
"If I ever do, I'll let you know."
When I heard his answer I thought, now there is a carefully chosen bunch of words. I looked from him to Sarah and around the circle. "I think I already know the answer, but the question needs to asked: Is there any way we can avoid Kegel?"
Sarah shook her head. "He's looking for us, and he's totally mounted, so he's moving a lot faster than we are. Right now we're too big and clumsy to hide from Kegel, too slow and short on rations to outrun him, and not well enough armed or trained to outfight him."
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