Kissur and the pilot stepped out of the hatch again. The pilot was smiling. It was clear that in his opinion he got away cheaply and found himself such a protector that all Weian police would not be able to lay a finger on him. Kissur stuck the money in his pants pocket and, having bent his leg, placed it right in front of the pilot on a boarding ramp's aluminum stair.
The latter started looking around confusedly.
"Stupid," old Lakhor hissed, "Kiss the foot, the Lord's foot."
The Earthman shrugged his shoulders and bended down to the dusty boot. At this moment, Kissur kneed the pilot under his chin. The pilot squealed. His body flew upwards and Kissur's joined hands crushed his neck — his backbone crunched.
Out of the corner of his eye, Bemish barely managed to see how Aldon plucked Ashidan and threw him into the bushes. Kissur went flat behind a steel landing support, whipped his gun out and started firing at the confused people, Aldon and Khanadar joined the fray.
Three Earthmen with guns went supine, the fourth one, unnoticed by Kissur, leaped out of the altar house. Bemish jumped at him and kicked his gun away; both of them went to the ground. The gunman seized Bemish's throat and started choking him. Bemish rolled on his back and quite nimbly kicked the attacker in the place where legs grow from. The latter said "ouch" loudly and let Bemish go but he immediately recovered and butted him in the stomach and then punched him with the right hand. Bemish intercepted this punch, seized the gunman's sleeve with his left hand and, with fingers spread apart, hit him in the eyes. One eye burst and oozed down his cheek.
"Aaahhh!" the gunman screamed. In a tight embrace, they rolled down to the abyss over boulders and hummocks.
Bemish banged a rock with his back badly and he fainted for a moment. The gunman whipped an arrow out of the quiver, hanging behind Bemish's back. The arrow was sharp and firm, with white icy feathers. A hexagonal titanium tip gleaned in the moonlight above Bemish. "That's it," Bemish thought.
The smuggler dropped the arrow, however, and then he sighed and fell on Bemish's chest. Bemish shook himself up and climbed from under his enemy's body. A long knife was stuck in the guy's back and Khanadar the Dried Date stood over the knife.
Date extended his hand and helped Bemish get up. They climbed the loose rocks uphill to the lighted altar house and space boat.
Everything had already been done there. Bemish counted the corpses — sixteen people, five wore body suits or jeans and the others were locals. The gunpowder smell of shots mixed with the smell of fresh hemp and blood. Ashidan sat on a rock holding his head in his hands.
Following Kissur's orders they gathered the corpses and the sacks next to the altar house walls, poured gas over them and lit them on fire.
"I feel bad about the grave," Khanadar said.
"It's desecrated now, what can we do?" Kissur responded. Still, he untied the bear cub off the saddle and threw it in the fire.
Afterwards, Kissur tore off the emergency control seals, turned the safety block off and started clicking the switches till the main screen swelled red and screamed in an ugly voice.
"Mount," Kissur yelled, running out of the space boat. Khanadar had already leaped across the broken fence and he was prancing on his horse next to the forest.
"Should I repeat it for you?" Kissur screamed at Ashidan, "It will blow up in a moment."
Ashidan raced following the others.
It blew up in such a way that the moon almost dropped off the sky and fire imps leaped out of the mountains and danced over the altar house left behind; when people in the village found the remnants, they said, with astonishment, that old Aldis had dragged stupid travelers from the sky to him and nothing good, of course, had come out of it.
With his head low, Ashidan rode between Aldon and Khanadar and Khanadar held his horse's reins.
Bemish rode behind everybody. He didn't feel all that good. A dull pain walked up and down where his spine had banged against the rock and his side was skinned in places. Kissur suddenly slowed his horse a bit and waited for his friend.
Kissur jabbed Bemish with his elbow and said, with a laugh,
"So, Earthman, admit that your feet got cold? Admit that you decided I would ask you to land this boat next time in Assalah spaceport?"
"You should have called police in."
"I," Kissur said, "am the master over this land's taxes and courts. What would have happened if I had called police? Firstly, I wouldn't have found this boat, because our justice is worse than a whore and they would be warned away. When the justice sells out, a man should take it in its own hands. Or do you think that I acted wrongly?"
"Yes," Bemish answered, "I don't think that you acted right. It was not justice you cared about but rather shame besmirching your clan's honor. If you had executed people accordingly to their guilt, Ashidan would have been executed first since he knows perfectly well that selling drugs is a crime, unlike a stupid old serf who did what his master told him to and anyway he had no clue that it's illegal to eat this weed, since all the shamans in this village have been eating it for the last thousand years and so what? You would have given him couple lashes and sent him away."
They rode down a broad dark path between the abyss and the cliff and the sky on the other side of the cliff was red and crackled.
"Ashidan," Kissur quietly called out, "do you hear what Terence is saying? He is saying that your guilt is larger than that of people who are dead already and it's not fair."
Even in the light brought by the moon and by the faraway fire one could see the youth's shoulders shaking.
"Get off the horse, Ashidan," Kissur ordered. Ashidan dismounted. Kissur also jumped down and pulled the sword with the intertwined snakes handle out of the sheath fastened to the saddle.
"Get on your knees," Kissur ordered.
Ashidan wordlessly kneeled next to the abyss. The wind started playing with his golden hair and it glistened in the moonlight. Ashidan lowered his head and pulled his hair off the base of the neck with his own hand.
"It would have been better," Kissur spoke, "if you had died of his sword eight years ago and not now," and he raised the sword over the brother's bowed head.
Bemish jumped off his horse and seized Kissur's hand.
"Isn't enough for today, Kissur? You are drunk with blood."
"You said it yourself," Kissur objected, "that I acted unfairly. I don't want people to say that about me."
"Damn it," Bemish said, "you did everything correct. Let the lad be."
"Get in the saddle, Ashidan," Kissur spoke quietly.
In a week, Bemish returned to the capital. He was buried up to his neck in work, he had to attend a benefit dinner, a risk strategy and investment conference, a Fall Leaves celebration in the palace, and a negotiation round with the management of a Chakhar company that Bemish had plans for.
Ronald Trevis was also at the conference, he gained some weight since they had met last time and, as Bemish learned, he had exchanged his third wife for a fourth one. Shavash invited both friends to join his retinue and visit Chakhar and after the vice minister had introduced the two Earthmen to the company director, the negotiations were concluded surprisingly quickly.
In the evening, Bemish and Trevis suddenly found themselves at a villa with Shavash while the rest of his retinue hung out at another hotel. The guests were served an incomparable dinner but, when the girls that had circling around the guests left and a waiter from the security department brought a counter surveillance device with the desert, Bemish realized that the serious conversation was just starting.
"I would like," Shavash said, leaning back in his armchair and putting an empty bowl for the glazed fruits aside, "to discuss with you our state debt. We are stuck all the way to our ears. The interest payments alone are bigger that one third of our GDP."