And then Hamilcar was through the enemy ambush and wheeling his pony around. At a certain point in the wheel he yanked the reins, just hard enough to stop the beast completely. He looked for his previous target and found him, cowering against the boulder. Snapping the rifle to a shoulder firing position, Hamilcar took aim and shot the bandit down without a second thought. He felt nothing except satisfaction.
That's one less rifle aimed at my people.
He scanned around quickly. Another of the ambushers, this one with a rocket grenade launcher, stood up from his cover. Trusting his equine to hold still, Hamilcar, both hands on the rifle, fired again to engage the RGL gunner. He didn't miss . . . rather, of the seven or eight bullets he sent toward his target, at least one didn't miss. The target spun to the ground, screaming and spraying blood from a ruptured gut.
Further down the slope he could see the guards coming on in two groups. First, and closest, just behind him in fact, were those who'd been close enough to hear his command and follow in a group. Further away, still spread in a long, wide and shallow wedge, were those who had heard Alena order them to his support and defense.
Hamilcar didn't spare either a second thought. Quite ignoring the chance that both of those groups were firing, more or less wildly, and so could hit him by mistake, the boy spurred his pony forward once again, this time paralleling the ambush line.
He trusted his pony enough by now to release the reins, counting on his legs alone to control it. With both arms free, he twisted in his saddle to bring his rifle to bear. Still on high rate automatic, he had, at most, another eight or nine bursts before he would have to change magazines.
The pony, a little winded now, moved less quickly than it had when galloping up the slope. This actually provided a somewhat more stable firing platform for the rider, enough so that Hamilcar hit his next target, and the one after, on the first burst he donated to each.
And then his guards were among the ambushers, shooting, hacking and stabbing. Some of the latter began to run, to no avail.
"Kill 'em all!" Hamilcar shouted over the din.
* * *
The roughly half of the guard maniple that remained pulled perimeter guard around the women, the children, and the dead and wounded. A cold wind whistled among the boulders, blowing the smoke from the fires generally northward. Other pyres arose in the distance, anywhere from two miles to half a dozen away.
Those were from Hamilcar and the other half of the guard company.
"He doesn't have a radio with him," Alena fretted. "What if he gets in trouble?"
Cano laughed and shook his head. "Fine witch you are, wife," the tribune said. "You know as well as I do that the only ones in trouble are the people who attacked us."
"But it's been three days!"
"You in a hurry to get somewhere?" Cano asked.
"No . . . but three days!"
The tribune's hand swept the skyline. "Relax, see that smoke, a new pyre every few hours? The boy's communicating. To us and everyone else who might attack us."
"But three days?"
* * *
It wasn't until the fifth day that Hamilcar returned, with the eighty-seven survivors of his guard and their dead slung across horseback. They didn't return alone.
"What are we supposed to do with over a thousand prisoners?" Alena asked, making an estimate of the numbers the Avatar of God was bringing in. "Our little valleys can't use the extra slave labor; they're just not that fertile."
Cano put his binoculars to his eyes and looked more closely than his wife could have. "Don't worry," he said, "they won't eat much. And it's closer to fifteen hundred. All women and children."
"You mean he killed all the men?"
"Anybody who could sprout a beard would be my guess. I don't see a man among them who isn't one of ours."
Alena decided to take it philosophically. "He took them; he must support them. And women are flexible, while children can be brought up properly. It will be well."
Cano shook his head. "Of course, it will be well," he said, sardonically. "He's your avatar; he can do no wrong in your eyes."
Alena caught her husband's doubting tone. "Heathen barbarian," she sniffed. "Iskandr is the Avatar of God."
And he has already shown four of the seven signs by which his people would know him.
* * *
There was a low fire burning in the hollow in which they sat, wrapped in their blankets. The moon, Bellona, was high in the sky, while Hecate was a mere hint of light, off to the east. Hamilcar was, for the nonce, a little boy again. "I didn't know what else to do with them," he said, apologetically. "We'd killed the men. Should I have left them to starve, or as the prey for any other bandits in the area?"
Cano put a hand on the boy's shoulder. "No, no, Ham. You did the right thing. Or as right a thing as circumstances allowed.
"On the other hand, have you considered what you're going to do with them? They're all yours now."
Hamilcar shrugged. "I hadn't given it a lot of thought. I mean, I'm only ten. But . . . maybe . . ."
"Yes?"
"Well, a lot of the women and girls are pretty. Couldn't some of the guards use wives . . . or second wives?"
"That's one set of possibilities. But what about the kids?"
"I'm not sure," the boy admitted. "Dad sent me with several mule loads of gold and silver. Already coined, even. Can I maybe pay some of Alena's people to raise the kids in fosterage. The languages seem pretty close."
Cano thought silently for several minutes. "You want some advice, Ham, since you're going to be living among the tribe for a while?"
"Please."
"Adopt the lot of them. Then, when you marry a woman or girl off, since she's yours you can be sure she'll be well treated. Same for any little ones you put in fosterage. As for the rest . . ."
"Yes."
"I'm afraid you're stuck with them. By the way, how did you know which villages to hit?"
Hamilcar sighed. "It wasn't very brave, I suppose, but the ones who fought back hard we broke off from. I figured if they still had weapons and men they probably hadn't had much part in attacking us. The ones where there were no weapons and men, because they had attacked us, we destroyed and looted. It's why I had to bring the prisoners in. They had nothing left but their eyes to weep with."
"Good boy," Cano said, once again reaching out to squeeze the kid's shoulder.
Runnistan, Pashtia, Terra Nova
"I had no idea . . ." Hamilcar's words drifted off in surprise amounting to shock amidst the tremendous amount of fortification in front of them. Sure, he'd seen Cano's and Alena's photo album of the valleys of her people, but those had been pristine. Now?
Bunkers, wire, marked off minefields, machine guns, even a few light armored vehicles sealed the people of the tribe off from any outside contact they didn't want. And it looked as if poisonous Progressivines had been cultivated in places to supplement the barbed wire. Or perhaps the wire was just used where the 'vines couldn't be grown thick.
"Your dad sort of adopted them," Cano explained. "Them and, to a lesser extent, the other tribes that formed the Pashtun Scouts during the war here. Add in what they earned and how bloody cheap weapons are . . . and that he passed over to them whatever was too expensive to move once the war was over—mostly over, that is—and the legion pulled out.
"But . . . yeah . . . I didn't expect quite this."
The long column, now much longer by virtue of the prisoners Hamilcar had taken and the animals he had seized, wound through an S-curve in the wire and mines. Heavy, well-built bunkers housing machine guns and light cannon dominated the road. The guns therein didn't traverse to track the column. They couldn't; the men who manned them were atop the bunkers' roofs crying—