objectives in the military sense.”
“What you mean,” said Remy, “is that the notion of this war to reclaim Azreon is just an idea—a myth that will allow them to embark on some crazy stint of killing for the sake of killing.”
“That’s correct,” said the veir clansman. “This isn’t a war in our sense of the word; it’s a response to the fact that the er’kresha see their present situation as one of utter hopelessness. There’s nothing they can do about it in practical terms, so they’re forced to seek a transcendental solution—they’re looking to their gods and their ancestors for salvation, and Belle Yella is the intermediary.”
“And this is the way they have reacted in the distant past to things like famines and great plagues?”
“It seems so,” confirmed Yerema. “It’s a type of social response to desperate circumstances which is seen in many cultures on many worlds. There are examples in the past history of my species, and probably of yours.”
“But why now?” asked Remy. “There’s been no famine—no worse than usual, anyhow. There’s been no plague.”
Yerema smiled faintly. “In a way,” he said, “what has happened is worse than that. Famines and plagues relent. But the er’kresha are gradually losing their entire way of life. For hundreds of years—probably thousands—they have lived as nomadic herdsmen and bandits. The lands where they graze their animals are the lands which were too poor for the sioconi to bother stealing. The living which they scrape from their agricultural projects, such as they are, is poor. They have always been dependent upon the sioconi for grain. They have taken grain from villages which they threatened. They have looted it from granaries. Sometimes they have bought it—but always with goods and money they have stolen from the sioconi, particularly from the caravans that use the roads between Ziarat and the coast to the south and west. The er’kresha have always lived as predators upon the sioconi, and the sioconi—despite their walled cities and their armies—were always unable to stop them.
“All that changed a generation ago. The Calvars came to Azreon from Omer, bringing with them a whole new technology. They rearmed the siocon armies and built new vehicles for the caravans. Then, when the war came to Haidra, fighting men came here. Men like you and me, Remy, who formed a new army of veich and sioconi and even humans—professional soldiers trained in the use of weapons which the Calvars would not make for the sioconi themselves. Calvar guns made the territories that were supposedly under Ziarat’s protection safe from er’kreshan raiders for the first time, and allowed whole kresh tribes to be all but destroyed. Our mercenaries now insure the security of all the roads that go from Ziarat to other towns. We brought animals especially bred for speed, and the er’kresha, whose mounts have been formed by natural selection rather than genetic engineering, could not compete. We are more mobile than they, and better equipped. That is why the er’kresha are under threat of cultural extinction. The only viable course open to them is to become absorbed into the growing body of siocon civilization—as the lowest of the low, third-class citizens despised by everyone. The warriors of the tribes cannot accept that. It is unthinkable.”
Remy shifted again in his seat, and looked hard at the scroll, which Yerema still held extended on the tabletop. He let the story run through his mind, illuminating the rumors that had reached his own ears, and perceiving the strange sense that it yielded up to analysis.
“All right,” he said, “suppose that it’s true? What can we do about it?”
“Perhaps nothing.” said the clansman. “But it’s possible that we can stop it—for now.
“We must track down Signor Belle Yella, kill him, and disperse the members of his cult.”
“Very well,” said Remy calmly. “How?”
CHAPTER TWO
Justina Magna stepped out of her tent and shivered in the cold night air. She was fully clothed, but the clothes she was wearing were those which she had worn through the day, with only a light jacket added as the night-dark approached. She stood quite still for a moment, steeling herself against the chill, and then walked on. Overhead, the stars shone brightly. Here in the fringes of the Syrene the air was crystal-clear.
The camp was very still. There were two sets of guards posted, one set by the escort that had been hired to protect the trade caravan in Pir, the other posted by her own party from the platoon of soldiers which accompanied it. The wagons of the caravan were set apart from the wagons which the humans had brought from Omer. Neither the veir clansman who was in charge of the caravan nor his hired mercenaries trusted the humans, and the humans trusted them even less. Nevertheless, both parties had agreed to travel together for mutual protection against the er’kresha while they moved slowly toward Ziarat. Lieutenant Verdi, the officer in charge of the platoon, had protested this decision on the grounds that riding with armed veich might prove more dangerous than any visitation from reckless bandits, but his protest had been set aside. Cesar Scapaccio, whose expedition it was, was well enough aware that the veich held the real power in Azreon, and that here the war had to be conducted in a more diplomatic manner.
Justina Magna passed the sentry who was watching the scrub land to the east. His eyes tracked her as she walked away from him, but she ignored him. Farther down the line she found Sergeant Garstone, apparently engaged in watching the sentry. She offered him a cigarette, and he declined. His pale eyes looked down at her, illuminated by the gleam of a lantern that hung from a hook on one of the struts of the wagon’s cupola.
“No sign of restless natives?” she asked, the mockery in her tone only just perceptible.
“No,” he replied shortly.
“Surely no gang of desert savages is going to attack us?” she said. “With the kind of firepower we have we could stand off a small army.”
“Maybe they don’t know that,” he pointed out.
“The worst of these long nights,” she commented, “is the cold. Even out here in the desert, by the time the night-dark comes it’s positively bitter...and then by day we fry in the sun. If Haidra rotated on its axis a little more quickly the people here wouldn’t be so damned miserable.”
Because there was no question in the speech, Garstone felt no obligation to reply.
“You’re not very talkative,” observed the woman.
“No,” agreed the sergeant.
“I couldn’t sleep. I suppose you never really acclimatize to new temporal rhythms. I’ve been here ten years, in Earthly terms. A third of my life. And still I can’t adjust to a forty-hour day and a culture which operates on the basis of taking seven hours sleep in the middle of the night and another seven in the middle of the day. I guess that once the world of your birth has imprinted its own rhythm on your chemistry nothing can change it. It seems that even people who are born on alien worlds never really fit in...maybe it’s something in our genes. What do you think?”
“I think you’re missing your soft bed,” said Garstone tersely. “Anyone can adjust to anything.”
“But you’re not asleep, are you?” she countered. “And it’s not as if it were your turn to stand watch. Or does the army always set sentries to watch its sentries?”
“I don’t need much sleep,” said the sergeant.
The woman licked her lips, tasting the metallic dust which had settled there since she removed the veil that had guarded her mouth and
