Togo leaned back and a soft chuckle greeted Abe’s words. A gentle hand clapped him on the shoulder.
“For a Westerner, you did good out there, sir, real good.”
Abe shook his head, suddenly embarrassed. “Sorry I froze on you.”
“What?”
“With the Bantag, back at the wagon.”
“Your first kill with a knife, wasn’t it?”
Abe slowly nodded.
“You’ll get used to it.”
“I hope not,” he whispered, remembering the bubbling gasp, what the Bantag was saying. He had heard it before in Jurak’s camp, the ritual prayer to the Ancestors, calling upon them to witness.
The companion of the wounded soldier came over, knelt down, and started to speak in Gaelic.
Abe shook his head.
“English. Speak English, trooper.”
“Oh. Me baby brother, sir. Thank you, sir.” The man fell silent, embarrassed, then withdrew.
Togo leaned closer to Abe. “You did the right thing, Keane. The men here will follow you to hell after this.” Abe laughed softly. “Sergeant, we’ve been trapped here now for nearly four days. I thought we were in hell.”
“It’s only started.”
“Lieutenant Keane, is the lieutenant all right?”
Keane looked up. It was Sergeant Major Mutaka.
He slipped down behind the rock wall just as a rifle shot zipped in, kicking up a shower of splinters. One of the men cursed and peeked up over the side.
“Damn, there’s a whole parcel of them out there.”
The sergeant major sat down with Abe. “You hurt, sir?”
“No, I’m fine, just winded.”
Before he could say more, Togo quickly related what had happened.
“I figure we got around half a quart of water per man, not much, but it will keep us going another day. The lieutenant and I got lucky. We found four or five hundred rounds of carbine ammunition as well.”
Abe, remembering the haversack slung around his neck, reached down and opened it up. A sickening stench wafted up, and he quickly closed it.
“If we do this again tomorrow night,” the sergeant major announced, “sir, you stay behind. I know why you volunteered to lead the first one, but you’ve proven your point with the men. So do us all a favor and let one of the other lieutenants go.”
Abe would not admit it, but he was more than glad to nod in agreement.
“And, sir. The major started coming around while you were gone. Started saying he was in command again.”
“Oh, damn. What did you do, Sergeant? For God’s sake I hope you didn’t hit him again.”
Mutaka chuckled softly. “No, sir. It’s twice now I’ve whacked him. Any more, and I think it’d kill him.”
He paused, and Abe wondered if the sergeant was quietly waiting for some sign to simply go and finish the job. “Sergeant, don’t even think about it.”
“What, sir?”
“We both know, so let’s drop it.”
“Anyhow, one of the boys finally admitted he had a quart of vodka still stashed away in his saddlebag. How he’d hung on to it without drinking it is beyond me. The captain drank it all and passed out, so we don’t have to deal with it for a while yet.”
“Thank God.”
Two men had rigged up a stretcher from a blanket and two Bantag rifles. They started back up the steep slope carrying the wounded soldier, his brother walking beside him.
“There, I see another one,” a watching soldier whispered, pointing over the rock wall. He started to raise his carbine.
Abe crawled up beside him and peered over. He could see several of them, crouching low, weaving their way across the flat open plain. On impulse he touched the trooper beside him on the shoulder and shook his head.
He looked back at the stretcher team heading up the slope, keeping low, quickly moving from the cover of one boulder to another. He was suddenly aware that it was getting lighter. On the other side of the butte the first dim glow of dawn must already be visible.
He knelt and cupped his hands.
“No shooting!” he cried, struggling to remember the Bantag words. “Your wounded and dead we honor. Take them back to their yurts.”
The men around him shifted uncomfortably. Togo cursed softly under his breath.
One of the Bantags slowly stood up, then held his rifle over his head with both hands, the sign that he would not shoot. Others stood up, and Abe was surprised to see not two or three but a dozen or more, one of them less than fifty yards away. He wondered if the closest had seen the stretcher party going up the slope and had been waiting for a kill.
Wounded and dead out on the ground in front of the butte were picked up and carried off.
The lone warrior, rifle over his head, remained still until the last of the bodies had been retrieved. Finally he lowered his gun and turned away, walking upright.
“Not even a thank-you, damn them,” Mutaka hissed.
“I didn’t expect one,” Abe replied softly.
He started up the slope, Togo falling in by his side.
“This isn’t no gentleman’s war, sir,” Togo whispered.
“I know that, Sergeant.”
“But, sir, maybe you were right,” Togo finally conceded.
Abe thought of the warrior he had cut apart with the knife and then what was left of the two troopers in the wrecked wagon. What the hell is right out here? he wondered. Was this what my father saw? Is this what he felt?
They gained the crest of the butte, the horizon before him shifting from deep indigo to a pale glowing red. The troopers who had gone on the expedition spread out, passing out canteens. Desperate men eagerly took the precious loads, gulping down a drink, but Abe could see that in almost every case a man would drink but briefly, then pause and pass it on to a comrade waiting beside him.
He could see the men who had been with him returning to their friends, squatting down, whispering, and gradually heads would lift, turn and gaze in his direction. Under a roughly made shelter, rigged from blankets and ground clothes, was the hospital. The surgeon was a lone surviving medical orderly who had worked without rest for three days on the forty odd men who had been wounded and dragged to the top of the butte. The orderly was already at work, the men who had gathered around to watch were turning as well, looking at Abe.
The look, he realized, they are giving me “the look.” He had seen it wherever his father went, the gaze, the flicker of a smile, the slight straightening of the shoulders. Always he had associated it with his father, and for a second he wondered if somehow his father had come into their midst and was standing behind him.
But then he knew that it was him they were looking at. These were now his men.
Embarrassed, he lowered his head, slumped down behind a boulder, and within minutes was asleep, untroubled by the nightmare he had just survived.
And when he awoke an hour later with dawn, he found that someone had put a blanket over his shoulders and left a cup of water by his side.
Dawn was obscured by banks of clouds marching along the eastern horizon, their interiors glowing with flashes of lightning.
It had been a hard night of flying. The summer heat was at its height, the ocean below heavy with warmth that, during the night, would continue to evaporate, the warm air rising, changing it to clouds and then towering thunder-heads. To drift into one was almost certain death. The wind shears were capable of ripping the wings off a steamer in a single, cruel slash. It was the perfect brew for the beginning of the cyclone season.
Richard had weaved and darted around the storms, going down so low at times that salt spray coated his windscreen, then rising up again through canyons of open air. The stars twinkling overhead guided him as they had guided all navigators who sailed or flew at night.
In the dawning light he looked out across the massive wings of his four-engine aerosteamer, one of the new Ilya Murometz models, capable of ranging outward a thousand miles. He had run with all four engines through most of the night, wanting to get as far out to sea as possible, pushing the range. His fuel was nearly half gone. For the journey back he’d cut two of the engines off, add buoyancy by releasing additional hydrogen into the aft gasbag, which was tucked into the huge, hundred foot tail boom, then lift to the thin air of fourteen thousand feet.