are you here, Sergeant Garstone?” she asked.
“I was ordered to come.”
“That’s not what I mean.”
“I didn’t think it was.”
She looked at him speculatively. “Don’t you think you’re being unnecessarily rude?” she asked.
He shrugged.
“Are you a misogynist?” she inquired ironically.
“I’m a noncommissioned officer,” he replied, with a certain amount of sour wit. “If you want to ask questions that touch on matters of military security, you’d better ask Lieutenant Verdi.”
“He’s asleep.”
“Ask him when he wakes up.”
“He’d only say that he’s doing his duty and following orders. He’d imply, as you do, that this whole affair is a stupid waste of time and that he wishes he were back in barracks waiting for the war to recall him to its bosom. But if Command Haidra really felt like that they’d have turned down Scapaccio’s request for military escort. In fact, initially they did turn it down. What do you think made them change their minds?”
“They didn’t bother to tell me. Probably a simple matter of protocol. Scapaccio is a colonel of sorts, even if he’s an off-worlder not on active service. He probably bullied a few captains and majors at Command Base into juggling the paperwork so that he got his platoon without anyone at the top of the tree knowing or caring.”
“Maybe,” said Justina Magna, staring out into the night and taking a last draw from her cigarette. “And maybe not.”
“Why bother?” asked the sergeant. “You’re getting what you want out of the trip. You’re getting a nice long holiday in the wilderness to appreciate the desert flowers and the moonbeams. You’ve got away from the Base and its routines. You might be in on Scapaccio’s exciting archaeological discoveries—buried treasure from a million years ago. You might even get to see your loyal protectors shoot up a few of the locals. Then again, there’s the fabulous exotic city of Ziarat, straight out of some ancient mythology. Enjoy yourself.”
“You can be quite articulate when you try,” she said. “All you need is warming up a bit. And that’s a good philosophy you’re peddling. If only you could take it into your own heart. But you don’t like any of this, do you? You hate the desert, you hate Scapaccio, you despise Delizia and you don’t like having to associate with so many unpacified veich. Sometimes I suspect that you don’t even like having to associate with me.”
“Should I?”
“That depends,” she said. “I’d say you should...but I’m prejudiced.”
She turned, with the air of one who has emerged victorious from a battle of wits. She swung her hips deliberately as she walked away.
“Whore,” muttered Garston. He ran his hand up and down the barrel of his rifle, and almost began to hope that there would be an attack before it was time to move on. He was a patient man—as a soldier, he had been trained for patience—but even the most phlegmatic temperament builds up frustrations that need action to be released.
* * * *
Remy teased the focusing wheel of the binoculars with his forefinger, trying to work a sharp image out of the blur where the horizon should have been. He failed. The combination of the haze and the dust defeated him, and the only thing which testified to the continued presence of the er’kresha within his field of vision was a ruddy tower of cloud which sparkled like frosted mist: the extra dust stirred up into the hot air by the plodding hooves of the er’kreshan mounts.
“Shit!” murmured Remy.
“Well?” asked Doon, who was laid out prone alongside him.
Remy passed over the binoculars. “They’re headed straight out into the Syrene,” he said. “East-nor’east. That’s where Belle Yella is, all right. The worst possible place for him to be, from our point of view.”
Doon tried to focus the binoculars, but with no greater success than Remy.
“Why the hell are they heading into the desert?” asked Madoc, who was standing a few meters away, screened by the rock on which Remy and Doon were perched.
“According to Yerema,” said Remy dully, “there are two reasons. First, because the range of mountains in the heart of the Syrene is in some way sacred to them—nobody lives there, but the er’kresha have always regarded it as being in some way the centerpiece of their mythical empire. Secondly because it’s wild and desolate and completely private—an excellent place for working miracles.”
“I don’t see that it’s any better for miracles than anywhere else,” muttered Doon.
“According to the Calvar scholars, as told to Yerema,” said Remy, “the er’kresha have various stereotyped ideas about what constitutes a miracle. One of them is bringing rain to make the desert bloom.”
Doon lowered the binoculars and squinted out over the flat plain of gray sand and bronzed rock, patched here and there with black thorn bushes and spined grasses. “Now that would be a miracle,” he said.
“It rains there sometimes,” said Remy. “But in the mountains the dice are loaded in Belle Yella’s favor. Nobody lives there on a permanent basis, as I said, so nobody can testify to the regularity of its circumstances, but Yerema figures that it rains there every year just as it rains in the north and the south and the east. When the cloud blows in from the east at the end of summer the mountains drive it up and precipitate a downpour. That’s why the rivers flowing through the Syrene fill up with water again after the summer drought. The mountains are surrounded by hundreds of miles of desert in every direction, but they themselves have a somewhat more benevolent climate. What’s happening out there is that Belle Yella’s cultists are slowly gathering acolytes and witnesses, who are going to spend a lot of time praying bareheaded in the noonday until they’re hallucinating visions and revelations on a regular basis. Then Belle Yella will make rain and force the desert to bloom, and his followers will proclaim him the next best thing to God. Then the support will rally in no uncertain terms, and the war will be on. When people need miracles, they can find them easily enough. The Calvars reckon they know enough about er’kreshan history and oral tradition to write a script for this whole stupid crusade.”
“So what do we do?” asked Madoc.
Remy and Doon turned to look back at him, but made no move to scramble down from their coign of vantage.
“The sioconi say that the end of summer is already here. I don’t know how long it will be before Belle Yella’s miracle arrives on schedule, but we may have between twelve and twenty days. I don’t think we have any alternative but to go into the Syrene heartland after him. It isn’t going to be easy getting to him in that sort of territory, while he’s surrounded by several hundred crazy followers, but I reckon it’s a better bet than one of his assassins getting to the king in Ziarat. With luck, the er’kresha in the mountains will be preoccupied with spiritual affairs—and they certainly won’t be expecting visitors. But it’s not a job we can look forward to.”
“What about Yamba’s so-called army?” asked Doon. “They haven’t done a damn thing except police the streets of Ziarat since the king and the Calvars
