Most historians agreed that thus far it had worked out fairly well. The Bhor tended to let other beings think and do as they please, so long as they did not interfere with the operations of the Lupus Cluster, or trigger new quarrels.
Oddly, the Faith of Talamein collapsed along with its power. Despite ancient roots, it had become so repressive that the surviving believers were delighted that their noses were no longer pressed against the rough stone wheel of Talamein. It helped that the sight of the two competing pontiffs had become so ridiculous that even peasants tilling distant soil had become embarrassed.
The Jannissars themselves became crusaders without a cross, ultimate ronin. They found other, peaceful lives but remained both ashamed and proud of their heritage.
Cind had grown up in such a household. The stories of the past were told to her, privately, around the family hearth with the old weapons hanging above it, or sometimes loudly at family/clan reunions held in very secret places.
Cind had grown up as a throwback—she was one of the former Jann who had the old love of battle. Since childhood she had disdained the ordinary playthings of other young Jann. Toy weapons were her favorite. Vid-books on great battles and heroic deeds stirred her more than any fairy tales. So it was only natural that when she came of age she volunteered for the Bhor military. Her culture's old enemies—but the only game in town.
Her instinctual ability with the rifle quickly won her favor among the Bhor. Now, whenever there was conflict requiring arms, Cind was among the first to volunteer for action and also among the first to be accepted. Her youth was no handicap at all. In fact, it was most probably a plus, since the Bhor loved a fight almost more than stregg, that powerful and evil potion Sten had first become addicted to and then passed on to the Eternal Emperor. The Bhor encouraged instincts like Cind's in their own young and boasted of them in their huge feasts and drinking bouts.
As Otho drunkenly blubbered and patted his clearly embarrassed friend, Cind gazed with adoring eyes at the great Sten. This was the being whose exploits were boasted of more than any other in the Bhor drinking halls. No Bhor who had been even vaguely involved in those exploits could walk down a public byway without drawing admiring looks and comments. Over and over again the tale was told, and each time Sten and Alex shone in greater and greater glory. Especially Sten. He was younger than she imagined. She had been expecting a hoary graybeard filled with stiff dignity. She also found him most handsome.
Otho had drawn away and was conversing with Alex Kilgour. Cind saw Sten look absently around the room. She thought she had never seen a being so lonely. Her heart went out to all the imagined horrors the great Sten must conceal in his breast. She ached to coax them out, to comfort him. Sten's eyes swept over her... then... Ohmigod... He's looking back! At me! She grew uncomfortably warm, and then his eyes moved on. Oh, dear, oh, me, if only they had lingered. Would he see her worth? Understand her passion for her only true friend—the long-range rifle? Of course he would. A great warrior like Sten would immediately know her feelings about such matters. Cind determined that somehow, some way, they would meet.
She turned back to her meal, unaware of how nasty an affliction youth could be.
Alex drained the horn and let Otho refill it. The Bhor chieftain had pulled him aside and was drunkenly quizzing him. Sten's manner was greatly troubling him, Otho said. His mood was so dark, and Otho was at a loss to dispel it. He told Alex he had only gotten a thin smile when he had reminded Sten of their first meetings, back when the Bhor had been handing out Jann captives to all the ships and bloodily executing them in the ancient, joyful Bhor rite of The Blessing.
"Remember that clottin' Jann's face as we stuffed him in the lock?" Otho said. Alex remembered. "By my mother's gnarly beard, was that a funny sight. He was so scared his face was screwed up like we'd given his nose a dozen twirls.
"It was only two or three—and we'd hardly tortured him at all. Then we fired him out to ice up his guts and drank his soul to hell! Ah, those were the days."
He clapped Alex on the back with a paw like a half-ton club. Even Kilgour was ruffed a mite by that. "Aye," was all he said. But before Otho could think that he shared
Sten's glum disease, Alex remembered to roar with laughter at the thought of those gory times.
"What's wrong with our Sten?" Otho asked. "There's no fire to him. Point out the being who has wronged our brother and I vow we will slay him now!"
Alex would have been delighted if the matter were so simple and Sten's dilemma could be cured with an old-fashioned Bhor Blessing. Right now, the thought of guts in space was far more cheery than any Sten had entertained since they had fled Earth.
Kilgour had run like the gates of hell had been unlocked and all the demons in it were at his heels. This was not much of an exaggeration. If Kilgour had not acted so quickly, not only would they have been pursued, but they would have been caught. Alex threw caution and the laws of physics to the wind. He jinked and jolted and veered the little tacship about until every joint pairing gave a tortured scream of pain. He used every trick he had been taught and invented a few, besides, to elude detection. Once clear, he transmitted a fast "run like bleedin' drakh" to Mahoney, then shut down and made like a ghost.
Mahoney would have to take care of himself. Th' braw gr't clot's used't' it, Alex thought, although not unfondly. Kilgour liked Mahoney. Considered him a Gaelic kin. Alex hoped Ian made it intact. But there was little else he could do about it. If they all survived—and that was certainly an immeasurable "if"—they had a fallback, emergency rendezvous point. Not Poppajoe's. They had agreed, if the mission went awry, not to test their luck twice there. But all that would be in the very doubtful future.
Kilgour assumed the wrath of the privy council would be so great that they would go to any and all means to bring them to bay. He was correct. So—where to hide? Where could they go to ground? There were two crucial elements the hiding place would require. The first was that no one was likely to look for them there. The second—and far more important—was that if anyone did look, he and Sten would not be betrayed.
It took awhile to figure it out. Sten was no help. How could he be? The lad was definitely bad off. Alex had strapped Sten to the medtable in the tacship's tiny treatment center and punched in a trauma program. He could hear the little hisses and tricklings of the medic bots at work. The sounds were far too busy for comfort. Eventually, as he dodged in and out of warp to throw off pursuit, they calmed a bit. He looked into the small cabin and saw Sten lying on the medtable. A little less pale. But still out—puir, wee lad.
The perfect hideout finally dawned on him. It involved calling in a debt, but there were few beings who owed Sten more. He punched in a course for the Lupus Cluster—and the Bhor.
They were a bit more than halfway through the journey when Sten was finally able to get about feebly. As company, he was clottin' awful. Stone face. Absolute silence. He conversed rarely, and then it was confined to a few grunts. At first Alex thought it because he was still on the road to recovery. Then the trauma-center computer informed him that no further treatment was necessary and gave Sten a dean bill of health. At last, Kilgour had to admit that his friend had suffered a far greater wound than the physical ones that had temporarily incapacitated him.
He hadn't the faintest idea how to deal with it, or even how to bring the topic up. So he gritted his teeth and left it alone.