He’d left the wounded men as they were. He couldn’t do anything to help them, and they couldn’t tell the Enemy anything that wasn’t obvious: the survivors were hiking home.
The Colonel would have killed his wounded if he’d had a reason to do so, but he’d never been one of those who liked killing for its own sake. That kind wasn’t good for much. Like the looters and rapists, they were so absorbed in their desires that they didn’t pay attention to the real business—till they took a charge of buckshot in the back, or a pitchfork up the bum, or a roofing tile splashed their brains across the pavement.
The Colonel had seen all those things and more. God knew he had.
He didn’t hear any night birds, but frogs of at least a dozen varieties clunked and chirped and trilled from the bottom of the gorge. There must be open water, at least in pools.
The Colonel kept his unit just below the crest. It would have been easier to walk either on the ridge or down the center of the gorge. The first would have left them exposed to observers and very possibly silhouetted to a sniper; the latter was, like a trail in hostile jungle, an obvious killing ground.
Krishnamurtri objected to having to march on a surface so steep that frequently a man slid until he grabbed a spiky tree branch. The common soldiers didn’t seem to mind, or at any rate they didn’t bother to complain that life wasn’t fair. Maybe they thought it was.
The Colonel smiled. Maybe they were right. Maybe everybody got exactly what he deserved.
Through Krishnamurtri he’d told the troops to keep two meters’ interval. That plan had broken down immediately, as the Colonel knew it would. The stronger men bunched at the front of the line while the weaker half dozen straggled farther and farther behind. The Colonel had called a halt after the first hour—measured by the moon, not his watch—to regroup, and it was about time to call another.
The Colonel marched at the rear. The gorge itself provided the direction, so he was best located where he could keep stragglers from falling out of the column altogether. Krishnamurtri was immediately ahead of him.
“We’ll halt in three minutes,” the Colonel said. Krishnamurtri had lost his weapon in the crash. “Pass it on.”
The Colonel’s boot slipped; he dabbed a hand down and caught himself, but a thorn hidden in the gritty soil jabbed fire up his middle finger. The pain in his ribs had subsided to a background awareness, dull because of its familiarity.
A metallic whistle trilled behind them; how far behind the Colonel wasn’t sure, but it couldn’t be more than a kilometer even with the breeze carrying the sound. Not far enough.
“Cancel that order,” the Colonel said, checking his weapon again by reflex. “We’ll keep going till we get there.”
Another whistle—this one was pitched a half-tone higher than the other—called. It was from the righthand distance, either on the opposite ridge or from somewhere within the gorge itself.
The Telugu just ahead of Krishnamurtri had been using his ion gun as a crutch; he’d torn his right thigh badly during the crash, but he was managing to keep up with the column reasonably well. Now he turned, balancing on his left leg, and aimed his weapon across the valley.
“Stop—” the Colonel said, lunging forward. He fell over Krishnamurtri who was trying to dodge back.
The soldier triggered six wild shots into the night. The first two bolts hit the tops of trees on the other slope. Recoil lifted the muzzle with each shot so that the last four drew quivering tracks toward the stratosphere.
The Telugu shot with both eyes closed. He’d probably never been told to shoot any other way.
The Colonel knocked him silly with a sidewise swipe of his ion gun. The Telugu’s own weapon flew out of his hand and bounced down the slope. Plant matter as dry as the air itself caught fire at the touch of the glowing muzzle.
The ionization tracks of the six bolts trembled in the air, dissipating slowly. Each was an arrow of light pointing back toward the shooter.