Shadows

by William A. Webb

  Within seconds, he’d deployed men to cover the road to the north and south, and two men to watch across the sewer to the east. Cutter grabbed the lead man’s robe and pulled him to his feet, putting his lips within inches of the leader’s red-painted face. The dilation of the man’s nostrils told Cutter that his reek nauseated the militia leader. Good.

  “I don’t have time for bullshit,” he said, using the English word. His men smiled, having heard it so often they knew its meaning, even if the idea of a bull was foreign to them. “Do you want to live, or should I kill you where you stand?”

  The man, tubbier than most citizens of Imsurmik, made an attempt to resist. “Do you know who I am?” he said.

  “Yeah, another dead guy in the street, unless you do exactly what I tell you. Now answer my question.”

  “I do not want to die.”

  “Good answer. Here’s what’s going to happen.” Cutter barely had time to give instructions before the rest of the red militiamen rounded both corners at a dead run. Rifles came up on both sides, but the militia leader called for his men to stop. He was pushed forward with the barrel of Cutter’s Thompson under his chin, and he ordered his men to back off and let them pass. Cutter and his squad withdrew east, toward the main road, guns ready and pointing in all directions, but the militiamen didn’t seem eager for any more fighting. As Cutter suspected, once their leader was in custody, they had a good excuse to go home…and stay alive. None even hesitated; as one, they turned around and melted back into the ghetto.

  Experience taught Cutter to take nothing for granted in a free fire zone, so they kept their guard up until Moorefield’s men spotted them at the intersection with the main road. By then, the brutal sunshine had evaporated all the moisture from the sewage clinging to First Squad’s bodies, leaving only a cracked and flaking shell. The stench remained, however, and while handing over the militia leader, Moorefield’s men waved Cutter and his squad back.

  “There’s a well over there…sir,” one of them said, his head half-turned in disgust. Cutter insisted that his unit clean its weapons first, and then allowed the men to take turns covering each other while using buckets of water to get off as much of the now-dried muck as possible.

  Rinsing off was no substitute for immersion in the river, but they removed enough to once again be tolerable to other human beings. Cutter returned to the main road to discuss getting new robes and was mid-sentence when several of Moorefield’s men leveled their rifles at someone running toward them. The man was wearing a simple robe smeared with blood on the left leg, left shoulder, and several places along his side, but he didn’t seem badly injured. He wore no paint or face covering, and his skin was not much darker than his white hair. He was ordered to halt, and he did so, bending over, hands on knees, breathing hard.

  “I seek a Captain Cutter,” he said between gasps.

  “Who are you?” Moorefield’s guard asked. “Why should we trust you?”

  Cutter waved the trooper back, too tired to worry about any tricks. If the newcomer tried something, Moorefield’s men would cut him to ribbons. “I’m Cutter. What’s it to you?”

  The man’s eyes shifted, and for the briefest instant Cutter saw doubt there, which wasn’t surprising. A stinking, semi-naked man didn’t exactly present an image of authority. But the newcomer only hesitated for a moment.

  “Lieutenant Tanavuna needs your help. He said there may be tunnel exits to the Outer City against the plateau wall, but for you to bring reinforcements to the main tunnel.”

  “Is that where he is?”

  “No,” the newcomer said, shaking his head. “He discovered another exit, and beyond that an archive of some kind, but the J’Stull have it blocked. He said to hurry.”

  “Can you show me?”

  “I can try, but as you see, I am wounded.”

  “Sir, you can’t trust this man,” Riidono said. “He’s leading you into a trap. Look at him, he’s a nobody; I’ve known Tanavuna all of my life and he would never send such a man to find you.”

  “I have to agree,” said one of Moorefield’s men.

  “Tanavuna sent a young man with me, named Unaa. He was killed in the tunnel leading into the plateau from the Inner City.”

  “You see?” Riidono said, stepping toward the man.

  Cutter stopped him with an outstretched hand. “Then how did he know the lieutenant’s name, Sergeant? And he’d have to be suicidal to deliver himself to us if he planned betrayal. No, either the enemy has captured Lieutenant Tanavuna, or this man is telling the truth. My gut tells me he’s not lying.” Holding the Thompson in the crook of his right arm, he turned to face the newcomer. “But be aware, if you are lying, you’ll be dead before I am.”

  Oddly, Cutter saw fear in the man’s eyes. Based on his overall demeanor, he hadn’t expected the threat to have an impact.

  “What’s your name?” he said.

  “I am Yukannak, Captain Cutter.”

  “You are not an Ashbander,” Riidono interjected, with a tone that showed he still had doubts. In the moment, they had all forgotten Moorefield’s briefing.

  “I am not. Nor from anywhere else on R’Bak.”

  “You’re the Kulsian,” Cutter said, not bothering to hide his excitement.

  “Yes, Captain. I wish to defect.”

  * * * * *

  Chapter 18

  Tanavuna’s mind replayed the faint cry over and over again in his mind, until no doubt remained that it had been Kesteluni who’d cried for help. He’d considered responding, but that would only alert Subitorni that he was being followed. Because he had no doubt it was Subitorni who’d taken her. The question he couldn’t answer was why.

  Although the lighting was dim, once his eyes adjusted, occasional skylights in the tunnel allowed Tanavuna to move without fear of stumbling. So far, there had been no pits or traps of any sort. Given the nature of the tunnels, as underground refuges for the worst days of the Sear and unseen escape routes during crises such as this one, the lack of safeguards was no surprise.

  However, despite the need to hurry after Subitorni, an inner instinct warned him not to step blindly into a tunnel intersection. It left him conflicted when he came to each one. He would be exposed for ten feet, and even if he were not killed outright, being hit in the leg or foot would allow Subitorni to escape with Kesteluni.

  So, he stopped, closed his eyes, and listened.

  He heard no voices, but, in the otherwise absolute silence at the third intersection, there came the faint, unmistakable sounds of someone breathing. So, it was an ambush, and even if he got past without being shot, there was nothing to stop whoever was waiting around the corner to chase him from behind.

  Just then, footsteps came from the direction of the stairs. More than one man, and they were coming his way. Tanavuna turned around, knelt, and took aim. The dim blob of a figure materialized in his sights, becoming sharper as it neared.

  Scussian! With three men following behind! Yukannak had kept his word. The sergeant and his men joined him and knelt close. Remembering their training, no one spoke. Tanavuna outlined the tactical situation with hand gestures. Scussian’s men nodded their understanding. The sergeant put up two fingers and pointed at Tanavuna, asking where are the other two? He mouthed their names: Kuun and Ammaii. Tanavuna cast his eyes down, the custom in his village when referring to the dead.

  Scussian was never one to hide his feelings, and Tanavuna saw the anger that came over him. He and Kuun had been close friends; he wanted a chance for vengeance. Tanavuna backed up, slung his M14 over his shoulder, got a running start, and crossed the intersection. At the same time, Scussian ordered suppressing fire, which caught the J’Stull off guard; their shots missed Tanavuna. Shooting continued as Tanavuna ran down the tunnel.

  He still could not puzzle out the full meaning of the room with the legendary healer, the stone tablets, and all the dried and preserved healing plants. Kesteluni’s original capture made sense if she had been intended to treat
the F’ahdn. But he didn’t understand why Subitorni was making off with her now: she would only slow him down. So he had to have a reason to keep her alive…but for how long? If he was threatened, would he kill her before fleeing? There was no way to know.

  The tunnel twisted back on itself three times and branched off repeatedly. Tanavuna realized that if he stopped at every one to consider his choices, it wouldn’t matter if he chose well, Subitorni would be too far ahead to catch. He took only a few seconds to make up his mind, and he gambled on the hope that he was making for an escape tunnel that emerged beyond the city itself. As best he could tell, they had been going generally southeast, so he did the same.

  He passed more intersections and several shafts of sunlight, but while mostly level, the overall direction was down, which would be consistent with an escape route that passed well beneath the city and its upper tunnels.

  For a man used to the heat on R’Bak’s surface, the cool air in the tunnel allowed him to move faster and longer than he usually could. With no way to gauge distance, Tanavuna only knew he’d run a long way.

  His doubt grew as he went on with no sign of either Subitorni or Kesteluni. If he’d chosen wrong, he might never see his wife again. But, as the tunnel began to angle sharply upward, he heard the faint sound of water. The stones became slick with condensation and the air heavy with moisture. He had slowed to find niches in which to plant his foot, when a man’s voice rang from beyond the lip at the top of the ascending slope.

  “Stop that, you bitch!”

  “I’m not going with you!” a woman yelled back.

  It is Kesteluni! he realized, in the same instant that Subitorni yelped in pain. A meaty slap followed.

  Slinging his rifle, Tanavuna’s brain ceased to be guided by rational thought as he scrambled upward, tearing his fingernails as he fought for purchase on the wet rocks. Once at the top, another skylight reflected off water droplets like sunlight off the river. With his eyes adjusted to the underground darkness, a corona of red sparkles filled his vision. He turned away from the sudden brightness and the stock of his rifle hit the wall with a dull but loud thunk.

  Through his semi-blindness, Tanavuna saw, no more than forty feet down the passage, Kesteluni lying on her back and kicking at Subitorni. The lower half of his body seemed hidden, but, when he heard the noise made by the rifle, he glanced up and saw his pursuer. Kesteluni tilted her head back and for the briefest instant her eyes locked with her husband’s.

  “Tanavuna!” she cried, reaching out to him.

  Tanavuna unslung his rifle and took aim, but that gave Subitorni time to draw a pistol and fire twice. The first shot missed, but the second ripped through the outside of Tanavuna’s left arm.

  Pain shot into his shoulder and down to his hand. Blood soaked his robe. He fell backward, and the M14 skewed sideways. He dared not shoot for fear of hitting his wife. Subitorni took his time to aim his third shot, but as he squeezed the trigger, Kesteluni kicked him in the jaw. Now off balance, he toppled backward and fired; the bullet ricocheted off the tunnel ceiling.

  Tanavuna ignored the pain in his arm and, with his eyesight still impaired, pushed himself up and staggered to where his wife lay. Subitorni had vanished. Tanavuna knelt beside her body and, closing his eyes, hugged her. He whispered how much he loved her, how sorry he was that he hadn’t been home to keep her safe, and how happy he was to find her again. He wept and felt hot tears on his cheek. Rocking back and forth, he kissed her.

  But she didn’t kiss him back. His vision cleared, and he saw her unblinking gaze fixed on something beyond the sight of living men. The liquid on his cheek wasn’t his tears. It came from a bullet hole in her forehead, just below the part in her thick black hair. Subitorni’s last shot at Tanavuna had been a wild miss…but still, it had struck home.

  At the base of the slope, the faint light from the skylight shimmered on dark water. Tanavuna knew it had to be from the river, east of Imsurmik. Rage gave way to despair as some part of his grief-clouded mind realized that Subitorni had escaped…for now. Then the clouds of misery gathered into a black storm and drowned his ability to think at all.

  Hours later, Riidono found Tanavuna still holding his dead wife, emotionally spent. He was halfway back to the surface when his anger began to build again. When he finally met with Captain Cutter in the day’s fading light, he knew what he wanted to say.

  “Permission to go after the man who murdered my wife, sir.”

  “Not alone, Lieutenant.”

  “Sir, I—”

  “We’re all going.”

  * * *

  Cutter’s Cutters performed their mission so well that, with Colonel Murphy’s grudging permission, Major Moorefield issued supplies for them to go after the escaped J’Stull commander. The escape tunnel emptied into the river east of Imsurmik, and they searched fifteen miles downriver with no trace of Subitorni. The frustration that he had escaped burned not only in Tanavuna’s heart, but in his men’s as well. When the search was called off, several openly wept. When they no longer had any tears left to shed, they sat together as each man planned how they would exact their personal revenge on Subitorni, if he was alive and caught someday.

  In keeping with her beliefs, Kesteluni was buried in a fertile place near the river without a coffin. Healers from other villages came to pay their respects, putting medicinal plants on her grave so that her body might nourish them. Even Paakunami, the old woman held captive by the F’ahdn for more than thirty years, attended the ceremony. At the suggestion of Cutter’s surviving soldiers, and the families of the nine men lost in the fighting, their dead were buried nearby. With the river receding under the increasing heat, the oldest locals explained that the Sear would likely mummify the bodies until the rains returned, at which point their remains would also feed the plants. Cutter found it comforting.

  * * *

  At nightfall after Kesteluni’s burial, Cutter found Tanavuna standing on the bluff overlooking the river. Leaning forward against a waist-high boulder, the indig officer had a panoramic view of the valley below. In the middle of the river stood a line of rocks that, during rainy periods, became white-water rapids. Now only sluggish streams flowed around them.

  Tanavuna hadn’t reacted to Cutter’s approach, so the Lost Soldier stood back and didn’t say anything for a while. Tanavuna’s eyes roamed the skies in search of something he’d never find, as Cutter knew all too well. He had seen and done the same thing, for the same reasons, a long, long time ago, on a planet far, far away.

  “You won’t find it out there,” he said finally, coming to stand beside Tanavuna. There was no reason to further define “it;” they both knew what he meant. “You won’t find it anywhere, because it doesn’t exist. Every man I’ve ever known who survived combat wanted to know the reason for the death and destruction they’d lived through. On my world, we called it Survivor’s Guilt. The answer to why you and I lived—and why Kesteluni, Kuun, Ammaii, and all the rest died—is that there is no answer. At least, not one I can understand.”

  “I don’t know what to do next, Captain.”

  “Call me TD when we’re alone.”

  “What does this TD mean?”

  Cutter smiled. “Some would say it’s from a sport my people play. Or played, maybe. I can’t say if they still do or not. But that’s not actually where it comes from. My full name is Tyree Denning Cutter, so T and D are the initials of my first and middle names in my native language.”

  “Why do you need three names?”

  “I don’t know, it’s just what my people did.”

  “What should I do now, TD? Without Kesteluni, my life has no meaning.”

  “Life always has meaning, my friend. Nobody ever knows how to deal with death, particularly senseless death. But you don’t have the time to dwell on that, Tanavuna. You are hetman of Nuthhurfipiko. You must try to make your people whole again, rebuild your own life, and protect your village. But you shall not have to do it alone: you and your men are
our brothers now, and Colonel Murphy will not forget you.”

  Raking his lower teeth over his upper lip, Tanavuna blinked to stop from crying. “I know you are trying to help, but I have no life to rebuild.” Lines in the corners of his eyes deepened as his face folded into grief.

  It was the opening Cutter needed to prod the young man into joining the leadership cadre Colonel Murphy was building for the growing indig army. He only needed to speak a few well-chosen words to convince Tanavuna. The lieutenant trusted him and would likely take whatever advice he gave.

  Which is why he couldn’t do it. “Rebuilding is all there is, Tanavuna. It’s all you can do.”

  “No, friend TD, it is not. There is another way, another choice.” The lines that grief had cut into his weathered skin were suddenly stretched smooth as Tanavuna’s expression changed from sadness to something harder. Anger reddened his throat. “I can do as you have done. Did you not fight in your first war to free the…Fench?”

  “French.”

  “Yes, French. Were they your people?”

  “No. I am American.”

  “Yet you and your men fought anyway. I want to fight those who attack my people, and all the other people of R’Bak. We cannot do anything about the Searing, but you have shown us that the forces of the satrap and the J’Stull may be defeated. The F’ahdn of Imsurmik is dead, but the satrap is not, and, while he lives, my people are in danger. All the people of this world are in danger.”

  “What you’re asking will change your life, Tanavuna, so you must be clear about what you want. You must say it. I will not put words in your mouth.”

  “Then let there be no mistake: I want to become one of you.”