“We should have realized then that we had to somehow change the balance between us.”
“And do what?”
“Either come to terms with them or slaughter them all.”
“Terms? How?”
“I know. I think it is impossible now. My cousins, all my people, not one in a thousand do I think contemplated who these humans truly were. They were cattle, they were food, they were slaves. None heard the beauty of their languages, their poetry, their songs.” Again his words lapsed into the ancient human tongue, speaking of the numbering of ships and the names of captains dead across three thousand years and the infinity of the universe.
“It was far more, though. We have become”-he hesitated for a moment and then spat out the word-“parasites upon the flesh and minds of the humans.”
Jurak stirred uncomfortably, started to voice an objection but Zartak waved his hand, motioning him to silence.
“Think of it. Every weapon we carry, the clothing we wear, the food we eat, all of the new tools of war, none of it has been shaped by our hands. We do nothing but exist; it is they who have fashioned the world.
“It has gone to the very soul.” Zartak sighed. “The division between us now. Imagine if the world was reversed, imagine if it was the humans who rode and who feasted upon our blood, who cracked our bones open to draw out the very marrow while we were still alive.”
Jurak shivered at the thought. Impossible. The primal dread of being consumed, eaten alive, the fear that was even more dreadful than the fear of death filled him with darkness.
“No, it could never be. Could it?” Jurak laughed coldly. “That gulf can never be crossed now,” Zartak continued. “Too much blood has been drawn for them ever to forgive us. For that matter our own people cannot imagine it any other way as well. Oh, I have whispered at times and been rebuffed when I suggested such thoughts when I was young. My cousins taunted me, accused me of an obscene love for my dead pet, so I learned to be silent. I learned to hide such thoughts and thus did I rise through command of ten, to a hundred, to a thousand, to ten thousand, to eldest of the clan of the white horse. Now as an ancient one though I find I am as free as a youth to speak again.”
“And that is why I value you,” Jurak replied. He hesitated, looking at the Great Wheel, visible outside the open flaps of the yurt, wondering which out of all the millions of stars was his home world. He felt a cold shiver, a loneliness, and infinite sadness.
“So you see no chance then of a change?” he finally whispered.
“Go outside this yurt and shout for the west wind to go away.”
Zartak sighed, then chuckled softly, the laughter sad, lonely.
“No, we are both trapped in this war. The Yankees freed these humans and with that freedom the inner dread, the paralyzing fear of being eaten alive was replaced with a blind all-consuming rage. You saw with your own eyes what they can now do, even with their bare hands if they have the chance.”
Jurak nodded, remembering the carnage of Roum, and along the Ebro, where the slaves had rebelled and escaped, literally tearing warriors limb from limb in their frenzy.
“And now what?”
Zartak looked up at him and smiled.
“I’ll be gone before it is decided. Perhaps the last of you will come early to join me above, where again there will be the Endless Ride. I fear, son, that either you must kill all of them or they will kill all of us. It is that simple.”
“Even though you loved one of them?”
Zartak flinched.
“A weakness of youth,” he fumbled.
“No. Perhaps an insight?”
Zartak sadly shook his head.
“Don’t let it weaken you. This is not a time for weakness. Do you honestly think that after all we have done to them there could ever be peace, a place in this world for us and a place for them?”
Jurak found that he was again wrestling with that thought. If this campaign was lost, as he feared more than once it would be, then what?
“You’re wondering what will happen if we lose this war,” Zartak said. “This attack at Xi’an caught you completely off guard.”
“Yes.”
“It surprised me, too. I did not understand these flying machines. I did not ever think they could be used to transport hundreds of warriors across hundreds of leagues to fall upon our center of supply. Tell me, were such things done on your world?”
Jurak sensed the slightest tone of rebuke in Zartak’s question.
“Yes! But the airships there could carry a hundred in their bellies. And there would be hundreds of such ships in the sky at once, warriors leaping from them, floating to the ground under the umbrellas made of silk.”
“Such a sight it must have been.”
Jurak nodded.
“The ships here, so primitive in comparison, I never considered that they would risk all of them. There cannot be more than three hundred of them in this attack.”
“Joined by how many tens of thousands of Chin?”
Jurak was silent. Damnation.
“If you do not suppress this rebellion within the next day, two days at most, all is lost. You will have to flee east or south, south across the seas, for they will come after you.”
“From all that I’ve heard of Keane, I wonder if he would if we did leave.”
Zartak grunted.
“I wonder about him as well. I do have the sense you know. And of Keane I sense much. But consider the rest of the world. Let word come to all the other humans of this world that we have been beaten, and they will rise up, remembering their dead across all these thousands of years. There is no compromise with that I fear.”
Jurak slowly nodded in agreement.
“I know. Perhaps we are alike in that, for I know if it was as you said, if it was they who rode and we who bowed, I would die to kill but one.”
“See what we’ve created here?” Zartak laughed sadly. “I know.”
“And now?”
“They found the weak link. They’ve used their air machines to fly several hundred soldiers to Xi’an. The city is in chaos, rebellion, the last telegram before the line was cut said hundreds are being slaughtered, including females and cubs.”
Zartak nodded.
“A brilliant move,” Jurak whispered. “Damn all. I tried to consider every potential, every move and countermove. I knew if we went to the defensive and waited, we could build our forces up, train our troops, and even outproduce the Yankees. I knew if we held most of the territory of the Roum we could perhaps even drive a political wedge between the two states of their Republic, maybe even get them to mistrust and turn on each other.”
“The humans you sent in secret to kill their president and Keane, a masterful move,” Zartak said.
Even now that might be working, Jurak thought. A few additional refugees slipped across the line, trained and conditioned, knowing that if they did not come back within three moon feasts their entire families would die in the next one.
“Yet never did I see this coming.”
“Your dream of last night,” Zartak said, “it was a portent. You have the power, you know.”
If I have the power, he wondered, then why do all the paths ahead now seem equally dark.
“You told me that you have a weapon that can burn entire cities in one blinding flash. Could you make one now? That would end this.”
Jurak was surprised at the casual mention of such a fearsome weapon.
“No, that is the work of thousands, tens of thousands,” Jurak replied, his voice distant.
To get these primitives to the point where they could make a magnetic separator, let alone a breeder reactor, maybe in a thousand years perhaps. As for the science? I can figure out how to make explosives, even a lathe to turn out guns, but that?