“Yes, great sheik.” But he found his arms would not move, his back would not pull him erect. Finally the two bodyguards moved to his side and pulled him back to a crouching posture.
“I know where they are,” Gaspar said. “The Farmers. Scouts. Many of them. A two-day ride from here. I came with their maps, and to tell you, show you…in hope…in fear…not for mercy, for I know you have none…but that you would find me useful. And let me have him.”
“The boy.”
“Yes.” Gaspar nodded, looked down.
“The Farmers are nearby?”
“Yes. About ten-tens strong. They are of Treville. The ones you hate.”
Rostov nodded. “I do hate those fuckers of daks. You have heard right about me in that regard. And now you have dangled your bait. Let us see if I will take it.”
“They are truly there, great sheik,” said Gaspar despondently. “I offer no trick. You can take the Farmers unaware. Wipe them from the red face of Father Desert. As you have wiped away others who oppose you.”
Rostov said nothing for a space, but considered Gaspar.
“Give me these maps,” he said. “Now.”
Gaspar stretched out the case, but couldn’t seem to loosen his grip on it, even when he was willing his fingers to do so. Rostov pulled it roughly from his hands.
Rostov opened the case and unrolled the scrolled maps, glancing at both in turn. Then he had a longer look. “Not bad,” he said. “This is…who made this?”
“A slave of Treville. He works for the commander there.”
“Dashian?”
“Yes.”
Rostov smiled, shook his head. He rolled the map carefully back into a scroll, and looked at the other.
Slowly at first, and then faster and faster, the ferocious, toothy smile spread over his face. After what seemed an eternity to Gaspar, Rostov shook his head, plainly impressed.
“This may prove…useful.”
“It shows fortifications. Troop dispositions. Even approximate numbers.”
“I will have it read.”
Gaspar had not considered that Rostov was not literate, although he kicked himself for not expecting it. He himself had only learned to read because his parents had been under the mistaken impression when he was a child that he might make a priest someday.
Rostov looked back down at him.
“Now, as to these Scouts,” he said. “Where?”
“I-am very thirsty,” Gaspar said. “And I have not eaten in two days. Since I escaped.”
“Yes, all right,” Rostov replied. Then he paused and broke into another carnadon smile. “Meat for this man, and drink,” he called out. Gaspar wasn’t sure to whom Rostov was speaking but evidently he was heard and obeyed, for he shortly called after further instructions. “And bring it not from the common kitchen, either. Let it be Rostov provender. Let my house slaves bring it.”
They waited. Rostov unrolled the map again and studied it while all around him, including Gaspar, who dared hardly breathe, kept silent. Rostov was still gazing at the map when the pitcher of wine and the platter of food arrived. Gaspar took a clay cup from the slave girl who brought it. She was rather young for such a task-not yet a maiden-but she handled the pouring well enough. Something odd about her, though. Her eyes not turned down enough, somehow. Emotion showed in them, even hurt. They were not the eyes of a slave.
Her forehead cut was fresh, still healing. It had been made higher up than normal to preserve her visage. She was rather pretty. Rostov probably had other uses in mind for the girl when she grew older.
But then the food was placed before him, and he lost all thought of the slave girl. The stack of meat was surrounded by figs, and both figs and meat had the aroma of fresh roasting. Gaspar immediately felt the saliva form in his arid mouth. Or he felt his mouth attempt to salivate, at least. His swallow remained dry. He reached toward the meat, toward a protruding bone that might serve as a handle. These were ribs of some beast, not a dak. He didn’t care. He was so hungry.
He glanced up and met the eyes of the slave boy proffering the platter.
It was Frel. It was his son.
Gaspar moved back, left the rib where it was. He looked into his boy’s eyes, and now the tears that would not come before, that could not, found a way, and flowed.
“What?” said Rostov. “I thought you were hungry, wastelander? Why do you not eat?”
Gaspar couldn’t take his eyes off Frel.
Alive, alive, he thought. I hadn’t dared to hope.
“Answer me, wastelander.”
“Frel,” he said. “Your sister lives. She remembers you. We never forget you and pray for you every lamplighting,” he said.
“Wastelander!” said Rostov, more loudly. “Answer me!”
Gaspar forced himself to tear his gaze away from the boy. “Great sheik,” he said. “I will do whatever you ask of me.”
“Was that ever a question?”
Gaspar didn’t answer. There was no way to answer that would not mean doom.
Rostov laughed lowly, and stepped beside Gaspar, stepped toward the slaves. They must have seen something forbidding in his countenance-Gaspar was too busy taking in, drinking in, Frel, to notice-for they both stepped back.
And then he let the map unroll again, the Redlands map. He held it up like a dividing curtain between Gaspar and the food, the boy, cutting off his view.
“Now,” said Rostov. “Show me. Show me where.”
Gaspar slowly raised his hand. He looked at the map. He would locate it, the hilltop within the surrounding mountains where the Scouts were camped, he would point to it. But no. He would be killing ninety men.
He stared at the map. And, after a moment, Gaspar let out a stifled whimper, like the last breath of a dak that you had to put down for its own good.
“What?”
“I-” he whimpered. I am not an evil man.
“What are you mumbling about, wastelander? Speak up!”
The bastards! Bastards to put him in such a position. They deserved what was coming.
The bastard Weldletter, making the theft so easy.
In a way it will be Weldletter’s own fault.
And the lieutenant. The Dashian spawn. Taking him hostage, leaving him no choice.
My child, my child!
He wanted to run, to grab Frel and run, but he knew the bodyguards would cut him down at the first move.
Instead, his finger moved toward the map, found the curve of the contour line he was looking for. The bastard Weldletter had shown him how these worked, what they represented.
“Here,” he heard his voice croak. “In this dry run, near a blackstone cliff.”
Over. Now there was only hope. Only-
Gaspar looked up into the shining, black eyes of Rostov, and felt that hope crinkle, like the skin of one of the Schlusels, strapped to those strange, uniformly shaped stones.
He’s not going to let Frel go.
A part of him, a small rational voice, echoed quietly within him that it had been a forlorn hope all along.
Rostov didn’t have to say anything. The same voice said it for him.
You fooled yourself, great chief. You were never going to save your son.
A shot rang out. One of the bodyguard crumpled. Another, and the second man, who had drawn a blunderbuss pistol with almost supernatural alacrity, also grabbed at his chest just under the neck as it exploded and bled. He fell also, writhing and kicking in a pool of his own blood, his limbs out of his motor control and seemingly full of crawling insects.
From the edge of the tent two men stepped forward. Both were in Blaskoye white, but they wore the garments loosely, in an unkempt fashion a Blaskoye would not have been caught dead in.
Both held composite bows notched with arrow.
And those arrows were pointing straight at Rostov.
Amazingly, Rostov only smiled the broader. The more terribly.
“You’ve killed my cousins,” he said. “This is not something we take lightly here in the Redlands.”