They didn’t realize it, but they were following a classic pattern of human history which Tilghman apparently had deduced and which the new analysts now saw as well. It would not be the first time that people embraced a shallow and repugnant, even insane, system, turning a blind eye to all its faults and excesses and seeing only the stability, the power, and the glory of being part of an empire.
The mother in some northern Anchor, watching her children starve, does not think of the morality of a cultural system. Find the New Eden missionaries; get out, get down to the land of peace and plenty. . . .
The man who backed the losing side in the civil war knows that they will come for him and his family. Get out—get out or else. But where? What do high-sounding ideals mean when it’s life or death? New Eden can’t be as bad as all that, anyway. . . .
We die willingly for the greater glory of the Emperor! Banzai!
“Concentration camps? What concentration camps?”
“We had to destroy the village in order to save it.”
“I will take the explosives into the heart of their camp. I shall die a martyr’s death and God will be so pleased He will elevate me to the Paradise of the Martyrs. . . .”
Adam Tilghman may have been fragmentary and arbitrary in his knowledge of human history, but he got the mechanics right.
Almost four hundred kilometers of border had illustrated what the lieutenant had meant. The land was good, fertile soil and showed signs of cultivation and had buildings that seemed recently abandoned, but few had stuck it out. Now, however, they were far in from the border area crossing the top of the triangular northern tip of New Eden, a hundred kilometers or more south of the border, and things had seemed normal. The land was still less populated than most of New Eden, but that was due to the weather patterns which kept this small area very dry and made water difficult to come by.
Both riders halted as if one. “Smoke up there,” Ryan noted.
“Think it’s trouble this far in?”
“Can’t tell, but my instinct says we better assume it is.”
Both had 9mm pistols and Ryan also had a shotgun, but both ignored these and went into packs, bringing out pieces of metal and professionally clicking each part into place. Each took out long magazines of ammunition and put them in every pocket they had, then one in each of the new weapons.
The land swept up from where they were. It was more a rise than a hill, but it was sufficiently high to block their view. They approached it, then dismounted and went down on their stomachs, crawling to the top on their bellies.
They looked down on what had been a small ranch. The house and barn were now in flames, and several human figures were going from place to place, checking on things.
“The raiders?” Rondell asked the older man.
“Looks like some of ’em. I don’t make it as more than a dozen, though. Probably a rear guard.” Both clicked their sights to maximum telescope range and looked again at the sight.
The range was still too great to make out individual features, but there were clearly some dead bodies scattered around. The raiders themselves seemed a ragtag bunch, dressed in mismatched and outsized clothes that looked like somebody’s refuse, but commanding nasty-looking weapons that seemed to be related to the two now pointed at them.
“Look at the horses over there. See anything odd?” Ryan asked the other.
Rondell looked. “Can’t tell much from this distance, but they sure don’t look like work horses or breed horses, either.”
“Right. They’re also out of the corral but are the most passive bunch I’ve ever seen with all that going on.”
“Think they’re the raiders’ horses?”
“I do. But that’s clearly a horse farm down there—I can make out the picture on the sign, and you can see the layout yourself. So where’s the farm’s horses and the other raiders?”
“Whoops! Looks like they’re getting ready to pull out down there. I hope they don’t decide to come this way.”
“Ten to one they’ll screw the road and take off overland to the northeast. Shortest route to the border and away from the roads and the army. How many horses you make down there?”
“Huh? Looks like sixty or more. Why?”
“They came in overland and probably pushed hell out of those horses. Bet they did a hundred kilometers without real rest just to get here by midday. They had it well thought out.”
“A hundred is pushing it to the limit,” Rondell noted. “You—oh, I get it. They knew this place was here and that it had a large number of fresh and broken horses. They came in, pushed everything to the limit, and when they got here the horses were spent. So they left a sufficient number of them here to move the horses out while they continued to ride off on the new fresh mounts. It explains some of it, but they’re gonna be pretty damned exhausted after that ride and a fight.”
“Uh huh, but they’ve had most of the day, and night will fall in an hour or so. They can afford a cold camp and some rest now. See, when the army gets here, or a posse is formed, they’re gonna take off after this bunch here— northeast. Easy tracks off the road, at least for a while. In the meantime, the main bunch will be ahead of us, mostly on the road until they want to camp, then probably making a dozen cold camps just out of sight of the road for the night.”
“But the only thing up ahead is the Logh District—the old Anchor. The Sea starts in another twenty or thirty kilometers and runs right up to it.”
“Then that’s what this is all about,” the old man sighed. “A dozen or more raids up and down five hundred kilometers of Flux border, so you got two army divisions spread thin as blazes. No railroads up here yet, so it’d take ’em days to form into any sort of military unit and get here.”
“But you’re saying that they’re going after Logh Center! That’s crazy! There’s half a million people living there!”
“At least. But those half million don’t know what this group’s about, and we don’t know how many more are set up to draw off the division guarding the old Anchor border. Damn! I just wish I knew what they were really after!”
Rondell sighed. “The only way to find out now is to nab one of them down there alive and make him talk.”
Ryan sighed. “The range on these babies is up to two thousand kilometers. My distance guide says they’re seventeen hundred and forty-two meters away.”
“That’s still stretching it. And we’ll never take ’em all out.”
“Don’t have to. Whittle them down and they’ll have to come to us. They’ve burned most of their cover down there.”
“They could just mount up and get out.”
“Naw. They want to buy as much time as possible. They’ll come for us if only to see who and what we are. That’s all open ground between us and them, though. Single shots, in alternation. Wind’s blowing our way. The sound might not carry down to them.”
The man known as Ryan carefully aimed his automatic rifle and pushed a series of small studs on the side. A little dot of light appeared in the scope and after a moment centered on the back of one of the raiders below. He pulled the trigger, having set it for a single shot at a time. There was a sharp, hollow sound as it fired, and the figure was suddenly propelled forward and lay twitching in the dirt.
Rondell fired, and a second figure was forced back against a fence rail and then collapsed like a stuffed doll.
They got four of them in under fifteen seconds, the amount of time it took for the others to see what was going on and react. The pair was able to get two more before the six remaining raiders, bewildered at where the shots were coming from, were able to identify at least the direction and take appropriate cover.
The pair’s next five shots were not merely wasted, they told the defenders the general direction of hostile fire. Random shots began digging up the dirt all along the side of the rise facing the ranch.
“I can’t make ’em out!” Rondell called, frustrated. “We got all the easy ones we’re gonna get.”
“Maybe not! Four of ’em are making their way behind the herd of horses. I think they’re gonna try and stampede them up the rise, with them following. Good! Set to automatic, and when I tell you, fire right in front of the herd—close as you can. If you get a horse it’s no problem.”
“Gotcha!”
The bearded man watched until a tiny figure, moving too stealthily to get a shot at, made its way behind the horses. That was four, the most he could hope for. “Now!” he shouted, and opened up. He couldn’t afford to wait until they started the stampede themselves.
Accuracy in automatic volley wasn’t much, nor did it have to be, but a huge number of puffs of earth came up from in front of the horses and the nearest two suddenly whinnied in pain and started to keel over. That was enough for the rest of them, exhausted as they were. The horses panicked, began to jump, then roared off as a group away from the two shooters on the rise and right into the four just behind them.
They put new clips in their rifles and studied the scene. The whole thing had been over in seconds, and they could count two horses dead, one thrashing about on its side, and four very mangled human forms behind them.
Ryan chuckled. “I haven’t pulled that one in fifty years. The old ones are the best.”
The young man whistled. “They weren’t kidding about you, were they? Now there’s just two of ’em and two of us.”
“Yeah. Now comes the hard part.”
“If I were them, I’d make a run for it away from us. They got to know they’d be out of range almost immediately and some of those horses will stop pretty quick, being so tired. I can see a few just off there.”
“That’s what they’ll do. They know we can’t cross this area, either. If I were them, I’d have one of ’em make their way back and get a couple of horses, then bring them up behind that smoldering ranch house there. Then the other could make his way back to it.
“Yeah, that’s what I’d do, but I wasn’t given Flux orders, either, and I’m no butcher. Their decoy plan’s spoiled, but they still don’t know who or how many they’re up against. They’ll want to know to warn the main band. We’ve turned the tables on them, Grandson. Now they need one of us alive, so they can determine if we have sent off for the army or have communications equipment. If we do, that main group will have their backs to the Sea and be caught in a vise.” He looked at his watch. “About an hour and a quarter until dark. They’ll wait it out, knowing we have to come and get them.”
“Do we?”
“Yeah, but not their way. Let’s get back to the horses. I figure we can cut a pretty wide arc in an hour or so.”
“You mean, come in behind them?”
“Uh huh. And with a little bait.”
* * *
Two figures waited in the silence and the dark, one behind a watering trough, the other in the bushes between the front yard and what remained of the still-smoking ranch house. They were, perhaps, six meters apart, but they commanded a view of all approaches to the building, well, and remains of the structures. Anyone coming at them would be in the open as far as one or the other was concerned and a perfect target. They, too, had night sights.
“Why the hell don’t they come?” one of them asked in an impatient whisper louder than a normal tone of voice.
“Shut up! Just means there ain’t many of ’em. Maybe only one or two. Just hush. They’ll come!”
There was a sudden noise and both turned and looked through their night scopes. It was just one of the horses—a saddled horse, at that—slowly ambling back. The scope didn’t give a hundred percent night vision, but it was hard to miss the horse, the saddle outline, and the fact that it was riderless.
Both sighed and relaxed a little. “It’s coming up on my side. I’ll get her as she passes!” the first one whispered loudly.
The other nodded and looked back out at the darkened and deathly quiet desert. Suddenly there was a noise, a thud like the falling of some heavy body, and a small, aborted cry, and the one near the house suddenly turned and pointed the rifle at where the horse now was.
“Renie! You O.K.?”
There was no answer.
The raider looked into the night scope to see if anything could be made out, but the damned horse was not just standing there, it looked tethered now.