He looked closely at the wounded Bantag and realized that it was barely more than a cub, about the same height as the Zulu standing over him. He was on his side, gutshot. Looking up at Ketswana.
The Chin fell back. Ketswana started to turn away, and the wounded Bantag said something. Ketswana hesitated, then unslung his canteen, pulled the cork, knelt, and offered the Bantag a drink.
Jurak was watching as well.
“In spite of what my race did, still one of yours will offer a drink to a dying child.”
Hans said nothing for a moment. He was ready to shoot back with a sarcasm, an enraged comment about how many human children had died in agony, watching parents murdered before they themselves were slaughtered. He sensed, as well, that Jurak had an inner revulsion for what this world was. And the thought formed as he continued to watch Ketswana, holding the canteen to the cub’s lips.
“Jurak.”
He was looking straight into his opponent’s eyes.
“Yes, Hans.”
“Your tribal camping areas. Your old ones, your children, your women. Do you know where they are camped now?”
Jurak seemed to stiffen slightly, the first true gesture Hans felt he could read accurately.
“Yes.”
“Many are south of here, toward the Shin-Tu Mountains.”
There was a moment’s pause.
“Yes, some are there. Others to the north and east.”
“But many are there. A hundred thousand yurts, two hundred thousand perhaps.”
“I cannot count them all.”
Hans smiled. Jurak could try to bluff, but somehow he wasn’t.
“My forces here are between them and you. Troops moving along this rail line are between them and you. For that matter, I have a score of airships that could be over them within the hour.”
“What are you saying?”
Hans made it a point of dropping eye contact for a moment. He slowly stood up. Jurak remained seated, but now it was he looking down on Jurak rather than the other way around.
“I am ordering that all of them are to be put to death.”
Jurak said nothing, gaze becoming icy.
“The umens you see that I do not can come up if you want. But in two days’ time I will have a ring closed in around a hundred thousand yurts. The flyers will be over them ceaselessly from dawn to dusk. Arrows fired by women and old ones will fall back to the ground. Bullets and firebombs slashing down from the skies will slaughter by the tens of thousands.
“And once armed Chin are amongst them, once I tell the Chin that this is their destiny, that the gods seek revenge, the slaughter will continue until even the ground can no longer drink all the blood, and the rivers will turn red.
“You might bring up two umens, a dozen umens, but they will find themselves to be childless, fatherless, for their seed will be extinguished from this world forever.
“This is the war your race started and I shall now finish.”
As he spoke he was aware that Ketswana had come back and was standing by his side.
“When do we begin?” Ketswana asked, his voice a guttural challenge.
Jurak looked at the two of them and wearily shook his head.
“Am I to believe you, a warrior I had come to respect, would do this thing?”
“You did it to us first.”
Jurak visibly flinched and lowered his head.
He was again silent, and then ever so slowly he grabbed hold of the wheel of the caisson he had been sitting against and pulled himself up, flinching as he gingerly tried to put weight on his broken ankle.
“It is over,” he finally whispered. “I would like to believe that you do not wish this murder to continue. I am asking you to spare them.”
Hans said nothing, keeping his features hard.
“Your terms?”
This was a leap ahead for Hans which momentarily caught him off guard. Two hours earlier he was hoping Ketswana had saved one final round to prevent the agony of capture, now he was negotiating the end of a war. He wished Andrew was here; his friend would be far better at this than he.
“Immediate cease-fire on all fronts. Immediate withdrawal from the territory of Roum, Nippon, and the Chin.”
“To go where?”
“East if you want, south. I’ve been told that there’s a thousand leagues east of here with barely a human on it. That is range enough for your people to live upon.”
“You’d suffer us to live?”
“It’s either that or kill all of you.” He held back for a second then let it spill out. “And if I did that, if we did that, in the end we would become you.”
Jurak stood with lowered head and finally nodded.
“I offer no apologies for what this world became.”
“Then change it, damn it. Change it.”
“And what is to prevent war from starting again?”
“I don’t know,” Hans said, his voice weary. “I promise you this, though, if you go beyond that thousand leagues of open prairie, if word should ever come back of but one more person dying, of being slaughtered for food, or put into bondage, then I, or Andrew, or those who come after us will hunt your people without mercy.”
“You will have the factories, the flyers, the machines. We will not,” Jurak replied. “I know what the result of that would be.”
“Fine. I will keep the Chin back from your encampments. I will order the release of ten thousand yurts immediately to start moving east. Once I have word that the last of your troops are out of Roum territory, twenty thousand more. Once out of the realm of Nippon and the Chin, fifty thousand more, and a year from today the remainder. Any violation of what we agree upon here and all of them will die without mercy.”
“Would you really do that?” Jurak asked.
Hans stared straight at him.
He knew there was no sense in bluffing, but he could not betray his own doubts either.
“I don’t think either one of us wants to find out what we are capable of doing.”
Jurak nodded.
“Perhaps someday we can talk more, Hans Schuder. You might not believe this, but I sense your Andrew and I are more alike than each of us realizes, the same as Andrew has you, there is an elder for me.”
Hans did not know what to say.
In a way it had all been so simple, and yet all the years of agony and suffering to reach this moment, and all the millions of dead.
Strange, he suddenly thought of Andrew, and knew that what had happened here Andrew would have agreed to.
“I will signal that the attack is off at Capua.”
Hans looked at him quizzically.
“There were rumors that your government had collapsed, that Andrew was going into exile. We were to start the attack this evening, just before sundown.”
Hans tried to quickly digest all that he had just learned. Andrew in exile? Suppose the government had already thrown in the towel. Then what? If this fighting was to end, he had better move quickly. He had already decided to let Jurak go, but he had to get him back to where he could telegraph out orders of a cease-fire before the government back home surrendered first. If they did that, some other Bantag leader might be tempted to press the attack anyhow.
“Ketswana, bring up a couple of mounts.”
The two stood in silence, waiting as Ketswana left them to find horses.
“Twenty years from now I wonder,” Jurak said.
“Wonder what?”
Jurak fell silent again as Ketswana came up, leading two horses, one of them sightly wounded and limping.
Hans motioned for Jurak to take the better horse. He hobbled over. Grimacing, he grabbed hold of the pommel, swung his injured leg up and over, then slipped his good foot into the stirrup.
Hans, still feeling light-headed, though the pain had subsided somewhat, struggled to mount and was embarrassed when Ketswana and several others came to his side to help.
“Hans, where the hell are you going?” Ketswana asked.
Hans looked down at his old comrade.
“lust for a little ride, that’s all.”