I couldn't feature the Hand going to the trouble of burying the dead. Anyway, where were all the rocks? Rock Island was made out of rocks. There were coarse sand and pebbles, and then there were boulders the size of cars and columns the size of space cruisers. Where were the in betweeners?
I could almost see it playing like a vid. The slaves up here, few rifles, little ammunition, Comini's army on the valley floor below. The slaves gathered the rocks at the tops of the cliffs overlooking the paths to the top of the island, and threw them down upon the soldiers. Six thousand slaves, another three thousand dead soldiers. What had they done with the dead?
Something itched at my spare lobe. I had to get back to the RC wagon, find some Hand jobs that'd been in the battle to put down the slave revolt, and get some answers. Before I left I ripped the sheets off three of the dead Hand jobs and covered the friend of St. Rock. I took the banner and her medal with me.
It seemed like such a long time ago that I had told myself that no Higher Power had ever said "Gather ye killers and assholes unto me." There was St. Rock. Patron saint of jerkoffs. Okay, Rock, I thought as a weird little plan began unfolding in my head. Let's see what you can do.
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Making Our Bones
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The courier from Stays arrived soon after daybreak. Nance's messenger arrived around an hour later. With both of them it was a good news, bad news thing. The good news was that everything was going according to plan. Lee's warlords were done past and the chop squats had come over to the Razai at a cost of around four hundred Razai and eleven hundred chops smoked, most of the dead having been in the north column against chops personally commanded by Iron Lee.
No one had a body list. So many fights, so many dead, no one keeping an account. More anonymous dead the future would owe but not remember, always supposing there was a future.
Some names came down, though. Power Tool, one of the popcorn posse, had gotten his in the north moments after he put the top chop himself, Iron Lee, on the dark and chilly. General Rhome Nazzar, the Razai's first point guard commander, as well as the author of the No Prisoners Law, caught a thrown cutter in his back near the end of the fight. The blade had been dipped in concentrated "apple juice" and he had died of suffocation. The thrower had been burgered. Number two RC Amos George, my man Fodder, had been diced in a firefight trying to pull some wounded shark to safety. When I told Lauris all she said in response was, "Now he doesn't hurt anymore."
The rest of the good news was that the combined columns were streaking toward the gulf and Carlo's valley army was headed our way, according to plan. The bad news was that it was almost eighty thousand rifles strong, with twenty thousand Hellborn soldiers among them. If nothing went wrong we'd have to hold the Hand for at least two or three days. If everything went wrong, it could be forever.
That was okay. I could prepare for a fight. I'd been doing that my whole life. But it was too bad Lomon Paxati had taken his we-don't-want-to-fight bunch out of the Razai, because I could've run for club president. Me and St. Rock had seen all of the shot dead we ever wanted to see.
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By early afternoon I stood on the valley floor road looking west at the columns of Rock Island in the distance. It was a place I'd been before, a feeling repeated, a moment relived. The image was of the castle from my nightmare. Up there behind the rock walls was the home of my worst enemy. One thing different from my dream, though. In my dream I thought my enemy was another person or maybe one of my old ghosts. As I stood there on the road looking at the castle in the light of day, I knew the enemy was me. Up there soon, Prophet would get his payback.
I lowered my gaze slightly and watched the empty critter-drawn wagons heading back to the island for another load as they passed loaded wagons headed my way. I lowered my gaze more and checked out the neat rows lining the sides of the road. On the left side the bodies of those who had died in the takeover attempt were laid out end-for-end, their heads pointed west toward the island. Lining the right side of the road, their empty eye sockets facing east, was a neat row of grinning skulls, salvaged from the body dumps at the base of the Rock Island cliffs. The dead from the takeover attempt, the defeated slaves and the soldiers who had died killing them all contributed their bones to a battle I hoped no one would ever have to fight.
With me I had a stack of green papers. Between the fingers of each corpse's left hand and beneath the teeth of each skull was a copy of the law. There were four of us neating up the stiffs and skulls and placing the copies. We ran out of copies before we ran out of dead.
Abe Stori, a bullet-headed yard monster who was one of Comini's few surviving lieutenants, stood up from the row of skulls, looked eastward, and said, "I don't get what kind of message we're sending, Nicos. When Carlo and his squatinos come down the road, they'll see this sicko flick, but then what? It's just a bunch of bodies and bones. What's he supposed to think?"
"I don't know," I answered as I bent back to the job. I couldn't put a copy of the law between the fingers of my next stiff's left hand. The clown's thumb was all that was left. His fingers had been neatly sheared off by an auto's guillotine return. Don't grab an auto there when you're firing. Important safety tip. I stuck the copy in his right hand.
"Then why're we doing it?"
I stood up and faced him. "Stori, can you get all the squats in this column to follow you in a fight against the Hand?"
The man looked at me for a moment, frowned, placed his hands on his hips, snorted out a laugh, shifted his weight from one leg to the other, shook his head, and folded his arms. "I don't know," he answered. "Maybe."
"When you know for sure, chup, the job's yours. Until then, shut your damned blowhole and get back on the head bones." I went back to sticking green copies of the law in between the fingers of the dead squats. One of them was Idiot Son, the mental veg that I'd called Einstein back when we were trying to get into Kegel's lair. Dead Idiot Son looked just as smart as anyone. He even had his own copy of the law. I placed it between his fingers.
What was I supposed to tell Stori? I had a dream? A vision? The Eyes of the Spider had been talking to me? Screw it. If somebody else wanted the job, it was theirs. As long as Bando Nicos was bait pezzonovante, though, he'd figure which hooks to hang from.
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Back at the island the rest of the squats were picking up throwable rocks, loading them into wagons, and hauling them up the avenues to the tops of the cliffs, just in case. The column had used up a lot of ammo settling why we were there. I figured if six thousand slaves could hold off a sixty thousand man army with nothing but rocks, we ought to be able to do as well or better with eight thousand soldiers, wounded, and real mean kids. The best shots were on the rifles and autos. I put the rest on rocks. I had an eight year old Mihvihtian boy as a shooter and an eighty year old crowbar sister from Lewisburg Max putting on her cold weather gloves to protect her hands for when she had to pick up rocks and bop tops sneaking up the avenue.
I didn't make the same mistake I made before. This time I had a chain of command picked and in place. Deadeye was my number two, which made sense if you ignored the matter of me burgering his brother. Deadeye was a pro hitter. He knew how to plan. He knew how to separate what he needed to do from what he was feeling. We sorted out the remains of Comini's old brassies and patched together a command structure. Former Lieutenant Stori now commanded a thousand soldiers and half the wagons. He had an understudy, and his understudy had an understudy all the way down to last squat.
The order was hang on. Whatever happens, whatever comes at us, whatever deals are offered, if you've got any life left in you, hang on. The alternative was the death of everything. That's if the Hand's valley army decided to fight. They did have a choice. That was the message the skulls and stiffs were ready to pass on to Carlo's squats. It's between freedom or slavery, the law or the big fist, life or death. That was my best gues
s at the message that was being sent. Who could tell what the bogus goombas would see and understand?
I had Margo run cops for the bait column and I put Grahl in as her number two. Lauris did ragtime from the RC wagon, and she, Ratt, Margo, and a few deputies finished off the last of Shava Ido's rebels. This time none of the perps strolled. They all stood trial, and it wasn't because we held any prisoners. Their old buddies commanded the only three ways down from the castle and the rebs just couldn't face them.
They had a cockroach from Oromasdes. The cockroach was called Jon Mizo and his big play was that war murder and who's-in-charge murder are different from profit murder and I-don't-like-your-face murder. Political and military acts, as he called them, should be treated differently than their criminal counterparts.
It was a routine case for Lauris. A life is a life, she held, and the law is the law. The cockroach lost big. He was also one of the perps.
Before the RCs and deputies opened up on the perps, one of them asked if he could have a rifle so he could do the lawyer before he got done himself. They didn't let him, but after I gave the order to take the stiffs out to the road, the squats loading bodies on the wagons pointed something out to me. Most of the perps had one, at the most two or three, bullet holes. Jon Mizo, cockroach of Oromasdes, had been burgered. Forty, fifty bullet holes; who could count?
When all the bodies and skulls were out on the road, and the tops of the cliffs piled with rocks, the CSAs in the column had a meeting. There were almost four hundred who attended. Most of them just needed to rub elbows with people who needed people. Big fight coming up. Got to get heads screwed on straight. Got to find that damned elusive center. I'd already found a calm place. I knew what I was going to do. I knew that Prophet would, at last, get his. I knew that the law would live, whatever happened to me. That's where my center was.
When the meeting broke up and we went to our positions to wait for Carlo, we weren't pepped up and snorting for a fight. We were ready, though. Ready to do what needed to be done for as long as it took to do it.
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In the dead calm of the late afternoon, a few sat around a fire waiting for some tea. We were high in the rocks overlooking the eastern approach to the island, checking for signs of an approaching army. Margo sat next to me, her hand on my arm. It felt wrong but I let it stay.
Lauris was quiet, as was Grahl. They'd made a lot of dead meat. It was working on them. Some of us pick up ghosts; some don't. Ratt was still the Burger Maker. Killing perps didn't seem to bother him at all. He, Stori, and a half dozen others were blowing wind at this and that. I was quiet, not paying attention, when something was said that perked up my ears. "This thing everyone has against lawyers," said a woman I didn't know, "It's something unhealthy. It's evil and it's unfair."
That last comment drew a round of chuckles. The speaker bristled. She didn't say, but everyone could tell she used to dance with the roaches. "Don't you see it's sick to discriminate against someone simply because that person dedicates him or herself to the law?"
"Never seen a lawyer who was dedicated to the law," said Lieutenant Stori. He was chewing on a tiny twig and staring toward the east. "Saw a bunch who said they were. Saw a few who thought they were. But they were all dedicated to different things. I seen 'em dedicated to votes, money, sharp threads, cars, houses, fame, and pushing people around. Did I already say money?"
"You said money," Ratt confirmed.
"Most of 'em was just flat dedicated to money, as much and as fast as possible."
"Power," said a quiet female voice I didn't recognize. The accent sounded like Mihviht. She held her auto with the muzzle up in the air. "Cockroaches are dedicated to acquiring and using power. Money's a means to that end. Some who get into the clergy begin thinking that they're god. Roaches act like a law degree raises them above the rest of us, raises them above the law. It detaches the law from justice and makes laws playthings to invent, mold, and sidestep for personal power and profit."
Grahl wasn't paying much attention to the talk. He was about the closest thing to a cockroach who had been dedicated to the law that I'd ever seen, but right then he was doing something I did a lot. He was communing with his ghosts. I was betting that holding down the center spot of his spook parade was that twelve year old girl he'd had to smoke.
The woman who had asked the cockroach question looked around the circle with narrowed eyes, like she hated us all. "So you hate lawyers."
She received a round of whistles, cheers, and applause. When the noise quieted down, she continued. "There once was someone else who was just the same. Have any of you cement heads ever heard of Adolph Hitler?"
There were several affirmative grunts. Every crowbar pit in the galaxy probably had a few bent ments who had put together a small Nazi gang. They'd shave their heads, grunt a lot, look mean, act stupid, and get the shit kicked out of them on a regular basis by everyone the Nazis didn't like, which was just about everyone. Adolph Hitler was their spiritual father, although nine out of ten snotzies'd never read Mein Kampf or anything else more complicated than the operating instructions for a vid set.
"Hitler didn't like lawyers." She shook her finger at the circle of faces. "Adolph Hitler, one of the evilest men in the history of the human race, once said 'I shall not rest until every German realizes that it is a disgrace to be a lawyer.'" She looked at Lewis Grahl, her eyes burning with righteousness. Up until then Grahl had been looking east with sad, haunted eyes. When he faced her, his lips parted in a grin and he shook his head.
"I guess everybody has a good day once in awhile." Truly Lewis Grahl had seen the light. The laughter was cut short by Stori pointing east.
"There they come."
I stood up, squinted, and strained my eyes looking at the smudge of dust in the east. Reaching into my kitbag, I pulled out Jontine's vidcam, and screwed it into my eye. I zoomed them in and it was still too far away for me to make out faces, but I could see individual riders. Thousands of them. One of them out front had on black clothes and had a head capped by a shock of platinum hair.
I lowered the vidcam as fear crawled up my gut. It was her. Anna Tane was leading the Hand's valley army. I faced the others and saw that they were looking at me, their eyes worried. "We're as ready as we can get. It'll take them at least a couple of hours to get here. We might as well have our tea. Anyone have a crumpet?"
Someone laughed. Another made a joke and more laughed. Personally I felt like I wanted to pass out. I felt a hand on my arm and looked down. Margo was still sitting, looking up at me, a can of hot tea in her left hand. I squatted down, and as I felt the muscles in my left thigh protest the movement, I made a show of drinking the Mihvihtian brew as I watched the woman who had quoted Adolph Hitler. She was looking down, her arms folded, self-pity, resentment, and seething hostility making her an island. If she lived long enough, if the Razai survived long enough, maybe she'd see what Lewis Grahl had seen. Maybe not.
When I finished my tea, I got to my feet, refilled the container, and held it out to her. She kept her arms folded. "I don't need your pity."
"That's corners with me," I answered. "What little I've got is no good."
She glared at me, took the tea, and nodded. "Thanks."
"You're welcome."
Without saying goodbye to Margo, I walked away from the fire and headed for the edge of the east cliff. In another hour the leading elements of Anna Tane's army would reach the stiffs and skulls. Then it would be decision time. Decision time for Anna Tane, her army, and for the RC who would be stuck with collecting Prophet's payback. My mind was made up on one point. I'd lay it on Ratt Katz. He was like Deadeye. He knew how to keep his emotional distance.
Old truth: all you can do is throw the dice. How they come up isn't up to you, unless the dice are rigged. I had to make certain that the dice on Prophet's payback got thrown before Nance and Stays managed to join up with us again. My fear was that if they were there for Prophet v. Nicos, the dice would be rigged, and that w
ould be the end of the law.
I thrust my hands into my pockets and looked at the green of the valley surrounded by the warm colors of the mountains. It was the twin of a feeling I once had out in the desert watching the molten gold of the sun lower itself behind the western horizon. There was intense beauty there. Different from what any of us were used to, but stunning all the same. A life could be made here, I thought. A good life could be made here if we could ever end slavery and stop the killing. I looked again at the smudge of dust in the east.
In the bottom of my right trouser pocket was the chain and St. Rock medal. I pulled it out and looked at it. The patron of losers and assholes. Old St. Rock had his work cut out for him.
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On Skull Road
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It was sunset, the dying light glutting the valley with oranges, reds, and yellows. Anna Tane's scouts had stopped on the road, and once the main body had reached the stiffs and skulls, it stopped too. They were stuck there for what seemed more than an hour when a band of seven riders came riding down the road toward us at a gallop. The rider in front was waving a white rag. I had Stori and six of his squats mount up and meet them on the road below to find out what they wanted. Anna Tane wanted to talk. As the trailing edge of the sun disappeared from the sky, I rode between the stiffs and skulls at the front of a double column of ten auto-toting squats to meet with Anna Tane.
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