The Heretic (General)

2

With a shout, the Blaskoye emerged en masse from the buildings and ran across the small fence that demarcated the village boundary. Most were on dontback. They charged into the open field, and, at shouted order, a group of perhaps fifty riders wheeled to guard their rear.

I’ve never seen Blaskoye so disciplined, Abel thought. Who are those guys?

The remainder made for the hill, seemingly zeroing in on the knoll as a rallying point.

They were in for a surprise.

“Hold,” he shouted down the line. “Hold for the girls!”

And they did hold, this time. Even Hornburg. The Militia waited, grim-faced, as the Blaskoye drew nearer and nearer.

Into musket range. Past it.

Was she going to fire? Abel whirled, trying to pick out Mahaut among the mass of women on the hillside, but could not. They all had weapons at ready, however, at least all of them who were armed with muskets.

Another second, another.

Yes, he thought. That is my range, not theirs. She does right to wait.

And then the muskets behind him crackled to life, and Abel whirled to look upon the damage. Blaskoye fell from saddles, donts screamed and whirled. The charge reached the first of the upslope. Slowed.

Some raised carbines or even bows and fired at Abel’s lines.

The arrows fell short. The minié balls did not. Several men on Abel’s line crumpled, fell. First blood. Would they break for cover or hold firm?

And could Mahaut get another round into the Redlanders? Had she drilled her women that well?

He got his answer with another crackle of fire, this time more ragged, not as loud—

—but adequate to fell several more riders.

It’s time, lad.

Yes.

He raised an arm. “Fire!” he shouted, and brought it down.

The massed line responded. Not quickly, not half as smoothly as the well-drilled women’s auxiliary, but adequately. A plume of smoke traveled down the line as the order to fire seemed to be communicated as if by word of mouth.

Sergeants shouted their order to reload, but this was hardly necessary, as the men quickly began to do so as soon as they were able.

Still the Blaskoye came on, their donts raised on their hind feet now, huffing up the hill toward the line, and now not twenty paces away.

Some spooked and raised their muskets with ramrod still in the end. Fired ball and rod both to no effect.

Some broke and ran.

Most completed the reload, brought rifles back to bear—

When a cloud of arrows rained down on the advancing Blaskoye.

The women had changed weaponry.

This was too much. The charge faltered, broke. The donts turned around in general retreat down the hillside.

But there were Blaskoye shouts of muster. They were not in retreat, but had merely pulled back to regroup, have another go.

Abel couldn’t make out what they were doing exactly, could only see a whirlwind of donts and men within a cloud of spent powder and kicked-up dust. But he could see beyond the Blaskoye, to the village itself.

And that was when he saw Joab’s Regulars burst forth from the village and attack the Blaskoye rear.

The rearguard of the Blaskoye that had been left behind fired and fought wildly, but many times their number streamed past and overran them.

The Blaskoye whirled blindly amid more dust, chuffed barley, and powder clouds.

Abel unconsciously and from long practice raised the scarf around his neck to cover his mouth and nose. He then reached backward, all without taking his eyes from what was happening below, and slid his carbine from its holster. He raised the gun into the air.

“Charge!” Abel shouted. He lowered the carbine and kicked his mount to action, downward, toward the cloud of screaming, bellowing donts and men.

Down the hillside they went, with Abel and the other dont riders far in the vanguard. In fact, too much. He slowed his mount, allowing the foot soldiers to catch up behind him—not for support, but so that they could take full advantage of any opening he made in the Blaskoye.

Then he entered the dust-and-powder cloud and into mayhem. Pieces of the enemy. An arm there, the dull glint of a musket there. The white and terrified eye of a dont, a snot-streaming muzzle.

He struggled to find a target that would hold still long enough. Then the cloud parted for a moment, and a large Blaskoye warrior was suddenly revealed. Black robes, red sash around the waist. Legs gripping the flanks of the dont tightly, expertly, for the Blaskoye, unlike the people of the Land, did not use stirrups on their saddles.

The Redlander seemed almost…vulnerable, so revealed. But then he started to raise his weapon, a wicked-looking bow, already nocked with arrow.

Abel fired the carbine.

The man flinched, caught in the chest. The bow fired—directly into the neck of his mount. Purple-brown blood erupted. The beast, enraged by the arrow, reared, spun—then charged off into the dust. Had he made a kill? There was no way to know.

He drew his blunderbuss pistol.

Whizz!

A shot streaked nearby, whistling death.

The one you hear—

But Abel couldn’t complete the thought. A scream, and behind him a Blaskoye with a raised scimitar charging toward him. It was all Abel could do to get the dragon aimed and fire. The other fell backward in the saddle as if he’d been pushed on the chest, then slid off the rear of his beast as if he’d merely fallen asleep.

Now a roar from behind, which it took Abel a moment to realize was the sound of his own charging men. They swarmed around him. After a moment, he pushed his beast forward, toward the village. Back through the front of his lines again and—

Out of the swirling dust and smoke.

The remainder of the Blaskoye were caught in the pincer of the Regulars and the Militia. They rode about in confusion, terror, rage.

And entirely in vain.

Another reload and he was ready, but then the shouting, manic voice of Joab screamed an order. The order taken up by his officers, passed along.

“Cease fire!”

Abel realized that Joab’s men had been about to shoot directly into his, Abel’s, advancing line.

“Bayonets!” he heard his father shout. “Forward!”

The Regulars, drilled daily on such orders, obeyed without hesitation, moving at an inexorable slow trot.

His own men were still running pell-mell. But it didn’t matter now. The Blaskoye were caught, surrounded. Hornburg and his dont riders struck, along with Joab’s cavalry. Then the foot soldiers closed in.

It was bloody. It was hard fought.

And within half an hour, it was over. All the Blaskoye were either dead or unhorsed and captured.

At least so Abel thought. For suddenly, just as the last of the mopping up had seemed to be accomplished, there came a cry from the village, and the renewed bellow and scream of donts.

He tried to locate the source.

The low cry of a bone horn. Two. Three. The Blaskoye instrument of war.

They want us to look, find them, to see.

And he whirled toward the village—

And did see.

Blaskoye on dontback, perhaps thirty or so, riding out, riding directly toward them, toward the assembled forces of Treville.

And no Blaskoye with a drawn musket.

Only with a gleaming knife, each taken from some scrapyard of the Redland sandpits and worked to sharpness. Each knife held at a neck.

The neck of a child.

On they rode, closer.

Is that—? Can they really be—?

Aye, it is, Raj growled. Aye, it is.

They were using the children as shields. Carbines whirled, hard eyes aimed.

And then the guns lowered. The riders came on.

They slowed but slightly. Enough to allow the lines to part.

They parted not far from Abel, and he saw the Blaskoye riders.

These were not run-of-the-mill warriors. Anyone could see it who had eyes. First, they did not wear mere white robes, but linen tunics, red sash belts, and legwraps, all very similar to the uniform of the Scouts. They wore turbans of iron red, so there was no mistaking them for Scouts, however.

Most of all, their faces were swirled with tattoos. Angry welts that looked more burned into place with firebrands than inked with charcoal-coated thorns.

The one who rode in the lead was not the largest, but there was something about him that seemed to bristle more than the others. Perhaps it was the fact that he held an actual silver knife.

No, not silver, said Center. It is steel and chrome. The surface is an electroplated coating of chromium. Very curious.

Whatever it was made of, it gleamed against the throat of a little girl, dark-haired, who looked about terrified. A bead of blood like gemstones had formed where the knife had already sliced into skin.

“You!” shouted Abel. “You, silver knife!”

At this, the Blaskoye turned and looked about furiously.

Abel pointed the dragon pistol at him. It was reloaded. Somehow he’d done it in the turmoil. It was cocked and ready to fire.

The Blaskoye met Abel’s gaze. He did not flinch, but returned it as hard and as void of mercy as it had been delivered.

Then he smiled, and with a kick, urged his dont on. Through the lines they went and up the hill.

The women, Abel thought. They won’t see in time. Won’t know.

He turned and galloped after the Blaskoye. But it was too late.

A crackle of fire. Two, three Blaskoye fell. As did their hostages.

And then a cry of anguish, of horror, as the Blaskoye drew near and the women saw what they had done.

That was when, at an order from the one with the sliver knife, the Blaskoye drew their carbines and, keeping their children in hand, raised the guns and fired into the crowd of mothers, sisters, and wives, armed, but unable to shoot, held back by a compassion that proved their own undoing.

The Blaskoye rode through the hole they had blasted in the line of the woman auxiliaries. And then they were up the hill and away.

The Scouts are out there, Abel thought. They’ll get them.

I wouldn’t be so certain, Raj said. A gang like that will have considered that possibility. They may have an alternate route.

Indeed, said Center. The Scouts cannot be everywhere, and this one, the leader, is one who can guess where they have stationed themselves and avoid it.

He’s the leader? Silver knife?

Chrome. Yes. Psychometric observation of his subordinates’ comportment confirms to a high certainty this status.

I want to kill him.

Of course you do, lad, said Raj.

I will kill him.

To this, Raj did not answer.

Then Abel rode up the hill to the women and saw what the Blaskoye had wrought. A dozen lay wounded, dead, or dying.

Among these was Mahaut. Her right leg and a portion of her belly had been laid open by a minié ball. She was still alive, but Abel did not think she could survive such a wound. He dismounted, knelt beside her.

Was there a watersack canteen nearby? Yes. He pulled one from a dead body, brought it to Mahaut.

“I live,” she said.

“Yes,” he answered. “Drink.”

He drizzled water over her lips, and she licked them.

“The girl,” she said.

“Yes,” said Abel.

“He had her.”

“Yes,” said Abel.

He dripped another bead of water onto Mahaut’s lips, and she coughed blood. He took off his scarf and wiped the blood away from her lips so she could draw in a ragged breath. There was nothing he could do about the groin, the gut.

“My niece,” she said. “A Jacobson. But still. Mine. Loreilei.”

“Oh,” he said.

“My husband?”

“I don’t know,” Abel said.

“F*ck,” she said as a wave of pain hit her. “F*ck, f*ck.”

And then her head fell to the side and she was unconscious, bleeding her life away.

Abel set her down and remounted. The men of the Militia were beginning to catch up with him, and the surviving women were gathering around. When he had a sufficient number in earshot, he called out to them.

“We will follow,” he said. “We will find them. We will stop them. And we will not stop until we take our children back.”

It took only until sunset. The circling kill-flitters showed the way.

They lay in a pile on the side of a defile that led upward toward the Escarpment proper, and at first it had looked to Abel like a pile of dak carcasses, the sort he might see in the butcher’s yard before a feast day.

But these were not daks.

Abel wondered for a moment why here, why he—the one he now thought of as Silver Knife—had chosen this spot. The path did not seem to grow any steeper here. There was no particular landmark. It was only a gravel-filled gulley.

Then Abel turned around and looked back into the Valley.

There was a clear sight of Lilleheim below.

He must have shown them the village before he ordered them slain, Abel thought. One last glimpse of the home they would never see again.

Yes, Center said. That is how it was. He offered no further deductive reasoning beyond this pronouncement.

And they are all here? All these children of Lilleheim?

No, Center answered.

No?

The count is wrong for that. There is one missing.

Which one—

But he already knew the answer.

The Jacobson girl. Silver Knife had kept her. As a taunt.

Yes.