“Yes I know.”
“I sense uncertainty in your voice, Grand Master.” There was no reply.
SIX
“I never realized how beautiful it could be out here,” Abraham Keane said, hands clasped around a warming cup of tea to ward off the early morning chill.
Sergeant Kasumi Togo laughed, shaking his head. “You’re a romantic, Keane. You should have grown up out here as I did. The steppes can be deadly.”
Abe did not reply, looking past Togo, soaking in every detail and reveling in it.
The eastern horizon was showing the first glow of impending dawn, a band of dark purple that was expanding outward, the core of light a golden red. He turned to look to the western horizon. The twin moons, Hasadran and Baka, old Horde names that had stuck with the human race, were dipping low.
Togo was squatting by the campfire, made of dried horse and mammoth dung. Looking at him, Abe wondered if it had been the same between his father and Hans Schuder, the older sergeant taking the young officer under his wing.
Togo had been with the cavalry ever since Nippon joined the Republic after the end of the war, serving as sergeant in command of scouts attached to the 3rd cavalry. Abe had been naturally drawn to him, sensing that here was a man who could teach him the ways of the steppe and of the Bantag, and the sergeant had been more than indulgent and patient.
“So how is it with the general?” Togo asked, nodding toward Hawthorne’s tent.
“What do you mean?”
“With them bastards over there.” As he spoke he indicated the encampment of the Bantag, which filled the plains to the east.
“Nothing’s changed.”
“I heard rumor we’re to stay on for a while, keep an eye on them.”
Abe stiffened slightly, and Togo laughed.
“Don’t get upset, Lieutenant. It’s my job, in a way, to know what generals are thinking.”
“Well, you didn’t hear anything from me.”
“Relax, Lieutenant. You’re the model of a proper officer, you are.”
Abe wasn’t sure if Togo was being sarcastic or just having a little fun with him. He knew he was still too stiff and formal, typical of the academy with its spit and polish and every button buffed to a shine. Out here on the frontier it was a different world; of dirty blue and khaki, muddy water, and glaring heat.
“In the old days, they marked the time of dread,” Togo said, pointing at the twin moons. “Tomorrow they’ll be full, signaling the moon feast.”
Abe nodded. God, what a world his parents had known. He could hardly imagine the terror of it. Looking back to the east, he could see the early morning glow silhouetting the golden yurt of Jurak Qar Qarth.
It had been a subject in class more than once, the primal terror that the mere presence of a Horde rider engendered in all humans, and yet somehow he could almost feel a pity for them now in spite of all that his father, Hawthorne, and others had endured in the Great War. What was it like to lose, to see one’s greatness shattered, to live at the whim of another race? A generation ago they had bestrode the earth, riding where they pleased, living as their ancestors had for thousands of years.
In the negotiations of the last week he had sensed that and developed a begrudging respect for Jurak, wondering how his own father would react to the reality of what was happening out here.
He had seen the poverty of their camps, the thin bodies of their young, the scramble for food when the carcass of a mammoth was brought in, more than a little ripe after two days of hauling it from the place where it had been killed and butchered.
“My father, brothers, and sisters all died at their hands,” Togo announced, gaze fixed, like Abraham’s, on the yurt. Abe turned. “You never told me that.”
“No reason to talk about it.” He shrugged, taking another sip of tea.
“Do you hate them?”
Togo smiled. “Of course. Don’t you?”
“I’m not sure.”
Togo looked at him with surprise. “You, the son of Andrew Keane?”
“I don’t know at times. From all that I’ve heard, my father in battle became another person. But he always said that hatred makes you vulnerable. It clouds your judgment. It closes off being able to think as your opponent does and through that defeating him.
“I do know he hated the leader of the Merki, I think in part because of Hans Schuder. But those over there”-he pointed toward the yurts-“I can’t say.”
Abe sat down, stretching out his long legs. The ground was cool, and the wetness of the morning dew soaked through his wool trousers. The scent of sage wafted up around him, a pleasant smell, dry and pungent.
He looked around the encampment, a full regiment of cavalry, and he felt a chill of delight. He knew he was romanticizing, and yet he could not help it. The last of the fires had flickered down, wispy coils of smoke rising straight up in the still night air. Like spokes on a cartwheel, still forms lay around each of the fires, curled up asleep. At times one or two would sit up, then settle back down for a few final moments of rest.
He caught a glimpse of a sentry, riding picket, slowly circling the encampment, whispering a song, a lovely tune popular with the Celts, who so eagerly volunteered for service with the cavalry.
A few night birds sang, and the first of the morning birds were stirring as well, strange chirping and warbling calls. A shadowy ghost drifted past, an owl swooping into a stand of grass, then rising back up, carrying off its struggling prey.
“That’s the steppes,” Togo said, “beautiful but deadly. It’s where I grew up. My uncle settled a thousand or more square miles abandoned during the wars. It’s part of the land that the general was talking about with them yesterday.”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t know.”
Togo plucked up a stem of grass and slowly twirled it into a knot.
“It is always that way, Lieutenant. It is about power and survival. The world is not big enough for us all. One side or the other must give way. Their mistake was, they didn’t realize that by enslaving us, they had sown the seeds of their doom. They should have slain our ancestors on the spot the moment any of us came through the Portals. If they had, they would have owned this world forever and could live on it as they pleased.”
“But they didn’t.”
“And so now they will lose all. And frankly, I hope they all go to the devil, where they belong.”
“General Hawthorne says that we must find a way to settle this without fighting.”
“If you doubt me, go to that yurt that looks so exotic, and listen to what is being said within. Then you will no longer doubt.”
They know something is happening, Jurak Qar Qarth thought, staring into his golden chalice of kumiss, which had been stirred with fresh blood.
His gaze swept the yurt, which had been his home now for more than twenty passings of the year. Strange, it was hard to remember anything else, of a world of homes that did not move, of cities, gleaming cities, books, quiet places, sweet scents, and peace.
Like the Yankees, I am a stranger here, but unlike them, I knew of wars in which entire cities burned from the flash of a single bomb, of fleets of planes darkening the sky, of ten thousand armored landships advancing into battles that covered a front of a hundred leagues. No, they do not know war as I know, as I could dream of it here if I but had the means.
And that, he knew, was how this world had changed him. When he had come here he’d felt almost a sense of relief of having escaped alive from the War of the False Pretender, a war that was annihilating his world, turning it into radioactive ruin. At first, when his companion had seized the Qar Qarth’s throne of this primitive tribe, he had stood to one side, observing, almost detached from it all as if he were a student sent to watch.
All that had changed, however, when it was evident that the new Qar Qarth had gone mad with his power and was leading the Bantag to doom. Plus, if he had not acted decisively, these primitives would have killed him as well.