Dandelion War Jaye Michael & Levanah Greene Chapter Seven Envelopment

 

 

To know your enemy, you must become your enemy.

 — Sun Tzu, The Art of War (c. 512 BCE)

 

Beryl was singing softly a cappella,

Carry me back to old Virginny.
There’s where the cotton and corn and taters grow.
There’s where the birds warble sweet in the spring-time….

She had a surprisingly sweet voice, and was able to hit her notes perfectly, even when being carried along on horseback at a gentle trot, but still….

“Oh, for crying out loud, Beryl! You’ve never been to Virginia before.”

“So? Here we are south of the Mason-Dixon Line, embarking on a glorious military expedition to put down a rebellion, so what better tribute to the long heritage of a grateful nation?”

“Well,” I said sourly, “in the first place, you might try a song that wasn’t popular with the slavers and didn’t glorify the institution of slavery.”

“Really?” she said?

“Really,” I answered. “Listen carefully to the lyrics sometime. You’d be better off with The Battle Cry of Freedom, which was popular with the Union side, which was basically ours, back in the ancient days.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever heard it. How’s it go?”

I sang the first verse,

Yes, we’ll rally round the flag, boys,
We’ll rally once again,
Shouting the battle cry of Freedom,
We will rally from the hillside,
We’ll gather from the plain,
Shouting the battle cry of Freedom.

“Say, that’s not bad,” she said, “and how very appropriate.”

“It is. The chorus is rather nice as well,

The Union forever,
Hurrah! boys, hurrah!
Down with the traitors,
Up with the stars;
While we rally round the flag, boys,
Rally once again,
Shouting the battle cry of Freedom.

I didn’t do too badly either.

“It does seem more rousing,” she said, “and we’re certainly tracking traitors. Okay, you’ve convinced me. Now who has the harmonica?”

I laughed. “Dang! I must have packed it with the piano!”

Beryl grinned at me and said, “I know, you left them both in your other purse.”

“Well, I must have, along with a comfortable bed, hot and cold running water, and an indoor toilet.”

“Harry’s Word, Sapphire, I do wish you’d remember that purse just once. You seem to keep all the good stuff in it.”

“Yeah, well, it clashed with my outfit. I do like to look put together, even on campaign.”

“True,” she said with just a trace of sarcasm, “When you’re riding off into mortal danger, it helps if you have the consolation of knowing that you’ll make a beautiful corpse.”

“Not exactly,” I said archly. “The Book says that looking your best is the foundation of confidence for a woman, and that both physical and inward beauty are positive forces for change in the world. People listen to beautiful people, and both of us were just made to be listened to.”

She rolled her eyes, obviously unconvinced. “So you’re saying that feminism is dead, long live sexism?”

I glowered at her, in a nice way, of course. “Of course not! In the first place, ‘sexism’ is somewhat beside the point when we’re all converging on a single sex, if that’s what you want to call it….” I trailed off, caught up in a… notion. “Maybe a blended sex would be a better way to describe it, since we have no idea, really, if these forms are stable. What happens, for example, if one of us gets pregnant? For that matter, what happens during menopause, if any? In normal women’s lives, these things imply both physical and physiological changes, but do our remaining male parts somehow smooth those over?”

“They haven’t done squat for menstruation,” Beryl said, “I can tell you that. If anything, it’s got to be worse, because I never once heard my sister complain that her balls hurt when she was ‘hormonal.’”

“Well, there’s that,” I conceded.

“Tell you what, I’ll knock you up, then you knock me up, and we can compare notes.”

I was shocked, but then embarrassed. “What?!” I exclaimed eloquently, blushing.

“Well, you brought it, up,” she said. “There’s an old saying, ‘If you can’t stand the heat, keep well away from the fire,’ and it certainly applies here. You’re all about sex appeal, and nothing about sex, all about the tease, and nothing about delivery.”

That shut me up, shut me up good and proper. I urged my mount forward, away from my accuser, feeling trapped for some reason, although this journey south had been my idea.

 

 

The next few days were difficult, because Beryl deliberately stayed away from me, which is difficult to do in a group of only a few dozen women, so of course everyone noticed and avoided saying anything, fearful of being asked to choose sides, I suppose. I know I would have been, so I guess I couldn’t blame them, but I tracked her down anyway.

“Major-Jeneral Farquhar, I’d like a word in private,” I said and turned my mount toward the nearest hills, which rolled down the long length of the river valley we were following south. From time to time, we’d seen evidence of the Reivers, in two cases a small huddle of slaughtered women’s bodies which made me wish for the power to resurrect the men we’d executed so I could kill them again, but with more attention to detail.

She followed, and we rode along in silence for ten to twenty minutes before she said, “What do you want, Sapphire?”

I reined in my mount and wheeled to face her, so she stayed her own mount, still facing me. “I want our friendship back,” I said, “to start, and I want your love as well, but if you’ll stop to think a bit you’ll see — I think — that we can’t actually do that right here and right now.”

“Why the Hell not?” she said, really pissed off. “We’re both adults.”

“We’re also officers in an army of our own invention, and you’re familiar enough with the regulations of the real Horticultural Services to know that any outward show of intimacy would be ‘prejudicial to good order and discipline,’ so we’re trapped in our legend, until we can rest from this campaign.” I cursed violently, “Harry’s Bouncing Blue Balls, Beryl! I’m supposed to be married, so an ‘affair’ between us would be a court-martial offence!” I was shouting by now, furious with myself as well as her, since I was trapped in a net I’d woven for both of us. Suddenly, I stopped and hung my head in shame over my stupid outburst. “I apologize, Beryl. My own lies have turned around and bit me on the ass, and now I’ve offended you, for which I’m desperately sorry.”

She glared at me for an entire second before she smirked and said, “Funny you should mention ‘blue balls,’ Sapphire, since I’m not at all sure the condition applies to either of us these days, and since your ‘husband’ has all the reality of the Easter Bunny, I can’t quite work myself up to worrying about him catching us at anything untoward. Mind you, from a lay viewpoint — the marriage laws not falling within my former military speciality — I strongly suspect that your ‘marriage-of-convenience’ could be easily annulled on grounds on non-consummation, without even touching upon the complete and utter non-existence of the lucky bridegroom.” Then she pondered the situation for a few seconds. “There may be a problem, however, with serving the poor fellow with notice of your divorce or annulment proceedings, since he seems to have skipped off without leaving a forwarding address, the unfeeling cad.”

“Yeah, he has been a bit of a disappointment in the sack, now that I think of it, which has nothing to do with balls of any kind, blue, green, or otherwise,” I said as my pretty mare moved restlessly beneath me. “I wasn’t actually thinking of that, in any case. It was just something forceful to say, although I’m sorry it wasn’t very ladylike.”

Beryl laughed out loud, but it didn’t bother me, because that was my old Beryl. “Sweetie, you’re the most naturally ‘ladylike’ former guy I know. It’s okay to get ticked off from time to time.”

“Yeah, well, I’m feeling a bit of rage coming on right this minute. Three of Swords; just over that ridge.” I indicated the direction with a quick shift of my eyes. Beryl was familiar enough with the deck by now that I sometimes used it as a sort of shorthand when I felt any disturbance in our vicinity. She, on the other hand, usually said what she felt straightforwardly. Different approaches to the same increased awareness, I suspect, but had no theories that could explain it. Since coming south, though, we’d both been more sensitive, without any external cause that I could think of. Oddly enough, though, the other infected women in our group weren’t similarly affected by external events. It was either a mystery or we two were ‘special’ in some way.

“You’re right,” she said, immediately wary, but just as careful not to show any outward sign as I had been.

“We’re a bit exposed, I think, one disadvantage of running off in a snit on one’s own, for which I apologize.”

“Never mind, dear, all is forgiven. There’s nothing like contact with the enemy to make one’s priorities instantly obvious.” She smiled at me, which made me feel much better, despite the physical danger I sensed coming towards us.

“Do you want to take them? I think it’s just three or four of them, but I could of course be wrong.”

She rolled her eyes. “You? Wrong? Bite your tongue,” she said. “I can feel them too just now. They’re calculating exactly how fine it would be to teach us exactly how to show a proper respect toward our ‘betters,’ preferably on our backs, although one of our admirers would like to fuck us in the ass, which goes to prove that he’s not naturally gallant.” Beryl could be startlingly precise in her intuitions, a feat that I myself could never manage.

I reasoned it through. “A scouting party, I think, low on the totem pole, so anxious to have a little bit of ‘fun’ before the bosses take their turn.”

Beryl smiled a particularly sinister smile. “I’d love to give them a turn or two, Sapphire dear, so do please remind me to bring along a proper spit.”

“I think we’re well-prepared with skewers of one sort or another,” I said, “so why don’t we mosey on in that direction pretending to be easy targets?” I had a rifle with me, concealed by a spare saddle blanket, and a crossbow with two dozen quarrels, one of which was ready to launch, so didn’t feel particularly vulnerable. Despite our recent acquisition of firearms, I still preferred the crossbows, because they didn’t advertise their deployment to everyone within a mile or so. Just in case, I gave Gumball a little mental whistle, cautioning him to keep himself out of sight and underground. It never hurts to have a well-hidden reserve force ready to hand, as a part of the overall strategic battle plan, since the appearance of weakness where there is strength can serve to draw out a poorly-prepared force. The best form of defense is attack, as von Clausewitz once famously observed.

 

 

Of course, as von Clausewitz also observed, “War is such a dangerous business that mistakes that come from kindness are the very worst.” My own mistake was not killing our gruesome trio instantly. Instead, I’d thought to interrogate them and so distracted myself long enough for their main body to surround us. So here we were, hiding in a pile of rocks with a gang of hostile idiots shooting at us. Oddly enough, though, I felt fairly cheerful, and our rocks held many clumps of white and purple sweet alyssum which filled the air around us with a marvelous perfume, like warm sweet honey mixed with amber. Other than the random gunshots, it was a lovely day. “When you speak of this in future years, dear Beryl, and you will, please remember to be kind,” I said.

“Honey,” she said, “if we survive, I plan to spend every spare moment kicking your ass, so I won’t have time to carp about minor details.”

“Oh, goodie,” I said smiling. “That’s one load off my mind at least; luckily, my ass is very well-padded.” I took a quick reflective glance out from our position to where the new Reivers were lurking, what looked like thirty or more, and all taking potshots at us from time to time, mostly to harrass us, one supposes, since they had little chance of hitting anything, to judge by how badly their shots were aimed, if one could even dignify them with the word. Of course their first few were rather more accurate, but a few well-placed headshots had discouraged them from taking better care, and I had a mirror or two available as primitive periscopes so we could easily keep track of them without exposing ourselves to hostile fire. I’d actually seen one aiming for my mirror, but had quickly disabused him of the notion rather permanaently. This had the unfortunate side effect of making them all duck for cover as soon as the first hint of it appeared, which made my covert reconnaissance somewhat less effective. To my mild embarrassment, I hadn’t brought them along for that purpose at all, but I do like to ensure that my hair is nicely arranged.

“How’re Gumball and the boys getting along?” Beryl asked offhandedly.

“Having a little trouble sneaking up,” I said, “because quite a bit of the soil around here is thin stuff over shattered bedrock, so they’re worming their way in by degrees. On a brighter note, the hostiles behind us are lurking behind logs over a nice thick loam soil beneath which two of our rotund friends lie hidden, so they’re toast any time we want them to be.”

“Oh, that is cheery news,” she said.

“And with all the racket they’re making, I suspect that Opal and the rest of our friends will be by to check on us soon.”

“Harry’s Brass Ass!” she swore. “You know that means we’ll have to get ourselves out of this on our own before they arrive, don’t you? I’d never live it down if ‘the Cannibal’ had to be rescued by a bunch of raw recruits, will I? Fuck’em all to Harry’s Green Hell! We’re going to have to kill’em all now.”

I sighed. “I suppose you’re right,” I admitted, thinking. “Let’s start off with a bit of razzle-dazzle and then a hook right to catch them from the side.”

“Sounds good to me,” she said and got all set to move.

‘Gumball!’ I suggested, ‘Would you please arrange to have your friends eat the men behind us and toss a few trees around?’ I liked to be as polite as possible under fire; it was part of my mystique. I immediately heard a lot of noise behind us, the eerie groan of deep roots being torn asunder and then the sudden wind of tall pines toppling, their branches sending out a rush of air in all directions as the rugged trunks that had lifted them toward the light now carried them quickly down into the darkness of the forest floor. “Now!” I said unnecessarily as the two of us ran back to engage the besiegers to our rear, quickly slaughtering them in their confusion and fear before they’d fully grasped that the banshees were in their very midst with long and bloody knives. Pausing only to gather up their weapons, we ran to the right, still cloaked by the remaining forest shade and the cloud of dust that had been blown into the air by the falling trees, until we saw the heads of their comrades, still looking toward the forest and the commotion there, all unaware that they were missing all the fun. Sadly, they’d never have any more fun at all as we both fired our bolts into the back of two separate heads, then took care of another four with well-thrown knives. They died without a sound and we rushed uphill, toward their horses, which we’d heard but hadn’t seen behind a thicket of shrubby trees up the slope to the side of the rocks where the main body of the Reivers still lay hidden, evidently excited by the noise, since they were firing toward our former position, which made a perfect cover for us as we burst in upon two sentries, who’d been stationed to keep care of the horses. They weren’t doing a very good job of it, and soon they weren’t capable of doing anything, as both had broken necks.

At this point, we paused to take a quick look at their luggage, which happened to include half a dozen HE missiles and launchers. With a smirk, Beryl appropriated two sets of them as I picked up both the rifles the sentries didn’t need any more. She clucked her tongue, almost exactly like a horse champing — which I thought was awfully clever of her — and I shot one of our besiegers through the back of his head just as she fired one of the HE missiles toward the main body of them, quickly firing the other toward another clump of them behind another pile of rocks.

After having been extremely annoyed by them for several hours, the twin explosions were very satisfying, and the fact that the remaining Reivers succumbed to an anxious urge to exit the vicinity of the scattered clumps and rivers of burning thermite was even better, since we both used the opportunity to pick them off one by one with their own rifles as they tried to scurry away.

That left one group that we knew of, behind the rocks flanking us upriver, and they had evidently come to some sort of decision, since the first we actually saw of them was a rag that could have been white — at one time — frantically waving above their clump of rocks as one of them called out, “We surrender! We surrender! Don’t kill us! Don’t kill us, please!”

“Too late for most of you,” I called out. “What makes you special?”

“We’ve got gold! Lots of it!”

“But if we kill you, we’ll have all that with no effort at all,” I said reasonably, my voice raised just enough to carry. “Not that we care all that much for gold, although it does make charming jewelry. It’s a pain in the ass dragging too much of it around, though. What else have you got to offer?”

There was a distinct pause before the same guy answered. “I know where all the other Reiver camps are within two or three hundred miles.” They’d evidently heard of who we were and what we were up to. ‘Alas, there’s no honor amongst thieves,’ I thought. “So?” I said. “We’ll run into them soon enough, and then they’ll be dead too. We don’t take slaves, and have little use for prisoners. You’ll have to do a lot better than that.”

“I know most of the passwords,” the same fellow said. “I can get you inside their defenses, and possibly save the lives of their slaves. I know that you’re rescuing slaves, so that’s got to be worth something to you.”

He sounded smug, which irritated me. “Don’t get too cocky, asshole,” I said. “Our reputation precedes us, as you yourself demonstrate, and almost anyone we catch will be eager to make the same offer without any of the trouble of hauling you around. If you’d really been paying attention, you would have released your prisoners voluntarily and either hightailed it out of the region in hopes of escaping our justice or thrown yourselves on our mercy, what little of it there is for slavers. You’ve rather squandered that opportunity by doing your best to kill us, and your recent change of heart does you little credit, since the only immediate alternative is death, and may still be, which sharply limits my conviction of your sincerity. Our main party is coming up behind you, and some of them are former slaves. I’m beginning to believe that it might have a salutary effect on morale if we simply gave you to them to do with as they will, in which case your heartfelt pleas might tend more toward an easy death than mere continued life.” ‘Holy Harry! When did I turn into such a cold-hearted bitch?’ I thought, and then remembered, ‘Oh, that’s right. When I’d first seen the terrible scars the Reivers had left on Chalcedony’s abused body; when I’d eventually heard how they killed her husband and infant son right before her eyes, laughing all the while.’ “Throw out your weapons,” I finally said. “I’ll decide what to do with you directly.”

They tossed their rifles over the the tops of the rocks behind which they were still cowering, so I said, “Now stand up and show yourselves, with the understanding that if we discover that any one of you remains in hiding, we’ll kill the lot of you immediately for violating the decidedly one-sided terms of your unconditional surrender.” I heard Beryl start to giggle, only half-muffled. ‘Okay, so I was doing a little theatrical performance. Results in battle quite often depended upon showmanship as much as force-of-arms. Of course, Beryl’s audible glee enhanced her own reputation as a cold-blooded killer as well, so it was all to the good.’

And it turned out to have been well-played, in fact, because the talkative one shouted out to some hidden comrade in a different set of rocks as he himself stood up with his hands well in the air and no weapons on his person that I could see. “Virgil, get your sorry ass out here with the rest of us!”

Pretty damned quick I had a ragged lot of half a dozen men in front of me, hands in the air, and I walked over toward them with my machete in hand whilst Beryl covered me from the rocks. One of the men had a whip coiled on his belt. I suppose that he was Virgil, since he was the one who’d been hiding apart from the rest, but the sight of that whip was good enough for me. I flicked out my blade and had his head off his body in the time between two heartbeats. “Just so you know,” I said dispassionately to the rest of them as the corpse fell to the ground in two parts, “beating or maltreating prisoners is a court-martial offense, and your pal here was just found guilty and adjudicated on the strength of the bloodstains on that whip of his. Any of the rest of you carry whips? If so, please step forward and take your turn.” I said this with scornful menace, but in truth I was getting sick and tired of killing people. Unfortunately, murder seemed to be my stock-in-trade, and I had a necessary rôle to play.

No one really moved or said a word, although the talky guy kept moving his eyes to look first at the body, then the head, which had rolled off a few feet to the side, with a sort of horrid fascination. ‘Good,’ I thought. ‘Keep’em on their toes.’

“Gumball!” I yelled, purely for their benefit. “Breakfast!”

Gumball rolled up from behind them, so I said, “You men might want to step out of the way quite smartly, unless you want to be fertilizer as well.” The look on their faces as Gumball trundled by was quite gratifying; how pride goeth before a fall. One lost control of his bowels, which was distasteful, but we can’t all be true warriors. I suppose that’s why these crêtins relied on treachery and reserved their proudest efforts for abusing and/or slaughtering innocent women and children. On general principle, I pierced one of them through the eye with a foxy dagger. He hadn’t looked quite frightened enough, and his eyes had been darting around as if looking for a chance to escape, not to mention the fact that he’d been the one who’d speculated about how nice it would be to fuck us up the ass and I’d felt the taint of his former thoughts even in the midst of his fear. “He had a shifty-eyed look,” I explained, “and didn’t look at all contrite.” The rest immediately did their best to look very humble indeed.

Talky guy turned rather pale and lost his lunch as Gumball rolled over Virgil and the shifty-eyed guy, although it actually wasn’t at all gory, since both bodies and one head had simply disappeared when Gumball rolled on by. Gumball had thoughtfully left my dagger behind, as shiny and polished as a riverine pebble after rain. ‘Thank you, Gumball,’ I intimated. He almost purred, or at least that’s what the rustling of his leaves and vines reminded me of. ‘How on Earth did I ever get so lucky?’

 

 

The first thing I did, of course, was feed our new prisoners a bit of cheese, so I didn’t have to worry too much about them trying to escape. Whatever other horrific sins might be attributed to the Reivers, they were first and foremost the very bottom of the barrel when it came to misogynist thugs and rapists amongst whom no woman other than a self-loathing masochist with a morbid wish for degradation and death would consider finding refuge in a million years, so we made sure that they knew that they were beginning a journey from which there was no escape, other than an eventual demise, of course. That sobered them up a bit, and in their eyes was cruel punishment, whatever their opinions might be a year from now. I didn’t particularly care, and let them know that they wouldn’t get a second chance to escape in any case, if they had any belated misgivings about their bargain, because I’d set the burrowers on their trail, and intimated that they could smell out a particular person from a hundred miles away with no trouble at all, which may have been a slight exaggeration, but they, of course, had no way of knowing that.

In the end, I set the talky guy to drawing maps off by himself, with his former comrades assigned as secondary sources in two separate groups, so they each of them furnished a ‘quality control’ group for the other. The talky guy — he’d turned out to be named Beauregard, however unlikely and inappropriate the name seemed for a black-hearted villain and pirate — seemed to have the best innate sense of proportion and distance, and was turning out quite creditable maps and descriptions of the Reiver camps he was aware of. I named him ‘Becky,’ after Tom Sawyer’s inamorata, although we were a very long way from the Mississippi River. I named them all after ancient characters from the old stories, so their distinctive names reminded us of their origins, and so set them apart from the rest of us, despite their rapidly-improving looks. We even had a Mehitabel, so I told her that it means ‘God Rejoices,’ although the character I’d really had in mind was the promiscuous feline girlfriend of a cockroach. Rebbeca, of course, is another Hebrew name, and means either ‘captivating’ or ‘earth,’ depending on which portion of the human language tree it really came from originally, and may have been the name of an ancient Assyrian Goddess. Eventually, I told Becky the whole story, or several stories, actually, although this entailed a bit more story-telling than I particularly cared to do. I was feeling generous, though, because the transformed Becky was trying very hard to be as good as possible, either frightened by my carefully-cultivated legend or perhaps a natural inclination. I tried to give her the benefit of the doubt, though, because she was far more diligent than any of the rest, and seemed at times to be genuinely remorseful to have ever associated herself with the Reivers.

Eventually, their crimes might be forgotten, but not soon, perhaps not even by this generation, and the tradeoff seemed worthwhile, since someone was bound to get hurt eventually if we rode into many encampments without knowing anything about their fighting strength and defenses. We were heading into territory of which we knew almost nothing other than what was on the antique maps I’d carried with us from the library back in the City — most of it hundreds of years out of date — and what these former Reivers were telling us. Mountains hadn’t moved, or at least not much, but I knew that the coastlines had changed by quite a bit, dense forests had grown where cities and farmland once prevailed, streams and rivers had changed their courses, and most of the cities had been abandoned, as far as I knew from the few remaining records of the initial stages of the war between the Horticulturists and the rest of the natural world.

 

 

The forest was beautiful here, but strange. The area around The Castle — and the City I’d finally discovered — was mostly flat, or flattish, comprised of deposits left behind by ancient oceans, then scraped flat by glaciation. It was primarily prairie as well, grasslands with hidden copses of willows and other water-loving trees nestled into creek-beds and river valleys. Here, in the bottomlands of a river valley surrounded by worn mountains, there were huge oaks, walnuts, yellow-poplars, tulip trees, sycamores, and other hardwoods, with a scattering of pines. From my perspective, it was more than a little spooky, and it didn’t help that we were following a trail mapped out by Becky toward a putative Reiver hideaway. Becky, about twenty feet ahead of me, stopped dead and wriggled a hand held carefully behind her back. I readied my crossbow, one of three I carried, although I also had a rifle.

Suddenly, a man’s harsh voice broke the forest silence, “What the fuck are you doing out here, girlie?”

Becky started, obviously truly frightened despite her knowledge of the area and her expectation that we were about to encounter a sentry. “Oh!” she cried, and made as if to run away from the sentry, slanting back slightly to the side of our position, carefully avoiding the temptation to look at us.

‘Good girl,’ I thought, prepared for any hostile action. ‘Now let’s see what the mean guy has to say for himself.’

Right on schedule, he burst out from a thicket conveniently placed right where his voice had come from. “Get back here, slave!” he shouted as he ran toward us after Becky, which pretty much sealed his fate. I put a bolt through his head and he dropped like a stone, looking, I hoped, as if he’d tripped over something and fallen, perhaps hitting his head. Beryl, of course, kept running, dodging off from one tree to another in order to keep as much of her covered as she could, the better to pantomime a woman fleeing for her life.

Evidently, she was doing a good job, because another sentry took off from the same thicket, only this one was carrying a rifle and shouted, “Stop! or I’ll shoot!” before he spared a glance toward his comrade. “Robert?! Are you hurt?” he said as he ran up, a touching display of concern which moved me not at all, because he joined ‘Robert’ in death a second later, still ten or twenty feet short of where he might have noticed that the back of ‘Robert’s’ head had developed an unsightly growth.

Then we waited. Becky had told us that they usually posted two sentries per location, so that they could take turns for any needed breaks or naps, so I was fairly confident that there was no one left behind, but it didn’t hurt to be a little cautious. To amuse myself, I took a quick pick from my mental deck, ‘Judgement’, and upright, an auspicious omen, considering…. I moved carefully to my left — away from where Becky lay half-hidden, and thus a distraction — and crept up on the thicket as stealthily as possible.

The stench was incredible, especially after our long journey through the fragrant woodlands. ‘Robert’ and his accomplice hadn’t had the most fastidious of personal grooming habits, and it became quickly obvious that they hadn’t even bothered to move to another thicket before attending to their bowel movements. ‘Better off dead,’ I thought, shaking my head in disgust before following Robert’s path out of their former outpost, waving my hands in the air as insurance against nervous recruits. “All clear,” I announced, then added, “You did well, Becky,” as she walked back toward the thicket, followed by another thirty members of our band of sisters.

“The next sentries are up on that ridge, or were the last time my former band of Reivers passed by on a trading expedition. Last I knew, they couldn’t even see this outpost, because their primary task was to catch any slaves who might try to escape, so their attention was directed away from the world outside. They depended on hearing the sound of a gunshot from one of their outlying sentries to give them ample warning, because they took their positions as the natural masters of all they surveyed for granted, and so couldn’t imagine anyone more dangerous and deadly than they were.”

“The more fools they are, then, ” Beryl said quietly. “Let’s just go call on them, why don’t we?”

“Let’s do!” I said brightly. “I’ve been just itching for a little diversion.”

 

 

We left the horses behind when we climbed the back of the ridge, because we were already experienced enough with them to know that horses talked to each other when they smelled — or saw, or heard — other horses, which would be an unfortunate beginning for a surprise attack. They were hobbled in a wooded clearing with two of of the new volunteers to guard them from any harm. We hadn’t seen any predators yet, but Becky had assured us that ‘panthers,’ evidently a type of very large cat, sometimes prowled these woods, but were wary of humans, because the Reivers hunted them for their skins. It was odd to think of animal predators, odd to think of large animals at all, because they’d pretty much disappeared up in our little corner of North America, other than the feral jackal-dogs which still ran free in the City, but it was comforting as well to think that the beginnings — or remnants — of a balanced environment still lingered in parts of North America. There were more pines up here, but still a scattering of the same hardwoods we’d seen at lower elevations as well, so the forest was more vertical up here in the mountains, but not completely unfamiliar.

At the crest, I halted our party whilst I and Beryl went ahead to reconnoiter. They hadn’t even cleared the vegetation from above their ‘guard post,’ so it was easy to obtain a good view of it, as well as the second ‘guard post’ on the opposite side of their valley. “What do you think, Beryl? Crossbows to take out the three below us and then a few HE missiles to discourage the other guards?”

“Sounds like a good idea to me,” she said, matching actions to her words and polishing off the three guards with three quick shots from her three bows. “I’ll arrange the rest of us and let you have the honors for the three over there.” With that, she wriggled her way back down to where our main party rested.

In the meanwhile, I studied the situation. They had a small fortification protecting the entrance to the valley, but it was only a stockade, so wasn’t set up to deter an armed assault from behind their lines. They were really beneath contempt, since their worldview seemed to encompass only themselves, potential victims, slaves in chains, and other Reivers, of whom they might be wary, but were accustomed to see as fellow ‘masters’ who shared a common commerce in human beings and habits of treachery, murder, and theft, if not friendship. The notion that there might be ‘top predators’ who might prove dangerous to them had obviously never crossed their venal minds. ‘Ah, well, to work withal,’ I thought as I heard Beryl sidle back up to my side. I had three launchers ready, so used two on the other guard post and then immediately used my rifle to take out the four guards manning the stockade, then started on any Reivers I saw walking around. Beside me, Beryl started doing the same. The HE explosions had eliminated any possible element of surprise, so there was no point in wasting time, nor any requirement for stealth, since the missile trails pointed straight back to our position, on almost unassailable high ground, and we were perfectly situated to command the entire encampment, since the stupid slavers had deliberately designed this emplacement to completely control the killing ground below, forestalling any possible rebellion by their slaves, of course, but setting themselves up as patsies at the same time. One could almost pity them.

Pretty soon, there was no one moving around except the bewildered about-to-be-former ‘slaves’ and a few of the Reivers who’d gone to ground behind whatever shelter they could find. One had the audacity to gather up a bunch of ‘slaves’ to act as ‘human shields’ — a separate violation of The Laws of War — but a well-placed crossbow bolt from Beryl soon discouraged that tactic. Then another held up a stick with an improvised ‘white flag,’ which of course revealed his position, so down went another. “There’ll be no consideration given,” I called down, “and no negotiations, so you might as well disabuse yourselves of the notion that we’ll talk to you, or that any of you will walk away scot-free. If you surrender unconditionally, and indicate your capitulation by immediately walking out into the open with your hands in the air and then lie face-down flat upon the ground, you’ll be taken into custody to await trial, but only if there are no more cowardly attempts to hide behind your captives. Anyone attempting to escape will be killed immediately.”

One of them walked out, almost immediately, and said loudly,before lying down, if that was ever his plan, “I’d like to speak to the man in charge.” He seemed far too arrogant — probably one of the leaders — so I killed him.

“Is there any part of ‘lying face-down’ that any of the rest of you don’t understand?” I said loudly, but calmly. “You’ll notice, I’m sure, that the man who didn’t understand my words is now lying flat, none-the-less.” I paused for effect. “ANd now, you will walk out into the open and lie down right this very minute, as I’ve already suggested, or you will die, quite possibly in terrible pain.” Actually, I thought this unlikely, since we usually managed to hit their brains, which seemed a fairly pleasant — or at least very quick — way to die, if die one must, although of course we’d had no reports from the ‘other side’ of the experience to verify the fact, but in the intimidation business it rarely hurts to point out the negative side of failure to obey a lawful order. Despite my contempt for the so-called ‘Reivers,’ I had no particular desire to be cruel.

Beside me, Beryl noticed that one of the men now straggling out had evidently forgotten to leave his weapon behind, and in fact was attempting to conceal it. Her rifle barked just once, and he was just as horizontal as the first one, albeit for a different reason. She looked at me and shrugged.

“Perhaps,” I said, “Some of you haven’t managed to figure out what ‘unconditional surrender’ means. This is not the occasion to discuss the terms of your cessation of hostilities, and you are not soldiers covered under the conventions of the laws of war. You’re criminals, and are being taken into custody by the lawful authority of the Horticulturist Services of North America, not dispatched to an interment camp until some soi-disant ‘war’ of your own imagining is over. It’s time to lay down your arms, come out into the open, and lay down with your hands outstretched, or die. I personally don’t much care either way, so it’s entirely up to you, but you will be horizontal within a very few moments, one way or the other. You have the good example of quite a few of your erstwhile comrades to lead the way, as it were, but of course they won’t be adding their voices, now forever stilled, to the conversation.”

After a few moments, the remaining Reivers began to trickle out from hiding, most of them lying down immediately, obviously nervous, but one sauntered out with a show of bravado, sneering, his thumbs hooked in his belt as if he were on parade. He had the bad luck to have a whip on his belt, so of course I shot him too. “To reiterate,” I said irritably, “when I say ‘Hands in the air’ it means exactly what it sounds like, and specifically doesn’t mean ‘exposed to the air,’ or ‘out of your pockets.’ You will either keep your hands well up above your heads or you will be assumed to harbor hostile intentions and/or a concealed weapon with very predictable consequences. When lying down, you will keep your hands outstretched above your heads until you are searched and told to stand.” I rolled my eyes over towards Beryl, ‘Morons!’ I mouthed.

She nodded. “Crêtins, rather,” she said aloud. “I’m fairly sure that it’s a genetic defect.”

“Is every man jack of you either dead or lying down in plain view?” I called out loudly once again, reasonably enough, I thought, considering my mood.

There was a fairly extended silence until one of them had the nerve to turn his head and answer, “Far as I kin tell, but I’m not sure where every livin’ soul of ’em might get to. Y’all took us by surprise.”

“Are you their leader?”

“No, Ma’am, I sure ain’t. He was one of them you done shot.”

“Fair enough,” I said. “Be so good, then, as to persuade any listeners who aren’t visible and lying down that it’s in their best interest to surrender, or we’ll set the dogs to track them, and I can guarantee that they won’t like that.” I mentally apologized to Gumball and his friends, but thought that simplicity was better than trying to persuade them of the existence of ‘monsters’ who might seem as if they were sprung from out of nightmares. Speaking of which, I said silently, ‘Gumball! Would you mind knocking down the structure at the end of the valley?’

“You might hear a loud noise in a moment or two,” I said, “but please don’t be too terribly alarmed. Our ‘dogs’ are rather more rambunctious than any dogs you’re likely to have seen before.”

It wasn’t but a few moments before Gumball and two of his pals came knocking at the gate, which instantly collapsed as they passed under and through it, leaving most of it in shreds and tatters.

“Lie still!” I shouted as several made as if to gather themselves up to flee in terror, and shot a couple of rounds into the dirt near them to encourage compliance. “They won’t harm you unless I tell them to, and they can outpace a horse at full gallop, so you wouldn’t have even the whisper of a chance to escape, not to mention that we have a dozen sharpshooters available to shoot you down like dogs if you turn tail and run. You’re all of you at our mercy, not your own devices. Please don’t forget it, as faux-heroics will avail you nothing but a rather messy death.”

They quieted down, but were clearly very nervous.

“Now you,”I said to the man who’d answered me at first, “stand up with your hands in the air as much as possible; I won’t shoot you if you have to put a hand on the ground to help you stand, but keep any such movement brief and broad to allay the suspicions of your captors.”

He did, with commendable grace; the life of a horseman encourages lower-body strength.

“Now call out, as loudly as you can, to any survivors who might remain at large. Tell them to instantly come out of hiding with their hands in the air and ‘come on down,’ as the saying goes here in this Great State of Virginia.”

He was prompt, I can give him that. “Jackson? Travis? Any of you boys alive up there? If you is, you just take a look-see at what she’s fixin’ to set on your trail. You’all’d just as well come on down an’ face the music.”

“Barkley? I’m all that’s left. Jackson’s daid, ’n Thadeus too, burnt up they is like yer goddamned pinecones.”

“Can’t be hepped. You come on down heah, and keep your fool hands up. This here woman’d jest as soon shoot’ya as look at ya.”

He was right about that last remark. I’d heard enough stories of what life had been like as a slave to last me a very long lifetime, and now I was going to hear more; I wasn’t looking forward to it. “You’ll be humanely treated, I give you my word, but you will to tried and sentenced for your crimes, whatever they turn out to be, so if you have anything to say in your defense, start thinking about it now.”

“Yessum,” he mumbled.

 

 

The rest of the unit arrived through the ruins of the stockade shortly after Gumball and company rolled through, so Beryl and I began following the trail down toward the Reiver’s prison pen.

We were about half way down when there was a sudden rifle shot from behind us and time seemed to stand still as I whipped around and caught the bastard with two quick shots through the head, the last as he fell dead from the first. I wheeled back and saw that Beryl was down, and dropped to my knees beside her, my mind already calculating the nature of her injury, a shot through the left femoral artery which was pumping blood at an alarming rate. I reached into my belt pouch and pulled out a chunk of our magic ‘cheese’ and slapped most of it on the wound itself, but took a mouthful, chewed it up, and spit it into her mouth, after which I tore off most of my blouse to make a tourniquet to slow the bleeding long enough for the cheese to begin its healing work, or so I hoped, but it wasn’t working terribly well. “Harry’s Holy Hell, Beryl! If you die on me I’ll haunt you! I swear I will!”

Her eyelids fluttered open as she said, “Don’t you have that backwards, dearest? If I die, I’ll be haunting you, not the other way around.”

“Nitpicking will do you no good,” I said, tears trickling down my face. “When I aim to do a thing, I do it, as you well know, so you’d just better survive or you’ll be sorry.”

Beryl laughed, which I considered a very good sign. “It’ll take more than a cowardly shot from behind to kill me,” she boasted. “I trust that your current leisurely posture means that the dirty little coward is dead.”

“It does,” I admitted, “twice over, although I’d be sorely tempted to bring him back to life so I could kill him again, if it were possible.”

“That’s okay, as long as he’s dead. Damn!” she said, glancing down, “I quite liked that outfit on you; made you look quite fetching I thought.”

“What? this old rag?” I said modestly.

“Well, I liked it.”

“I do too, especially since most of it is busily keeping most of the blood inside your body, where it belongs.”

She laughed again, an even better sign. “Well, there is that,” she said. “Remind me to find you another cute outfit when I feel more like traipsing around through the shops. My treat.”

“Yeah, yeah, big spender,” I said.

“All the currency we really own is time, my dear, and it’s precious beyond measure.”

“You must be feeling better,” I said, “if you have enough energy for philosophy.”

“I’m always philosophical,” she said. “You should always be prepared with a few piquant bons mots in times of danger. It builds character.”

“Like weightlifting,” I said.

“Exactly! Use it or lose it,” she said, then she closed her eyes.

 

 

I carried her down the hill, weeping. When I reached the bottom, I gently laid her down and called two of our volunteers over to take care of her. Then I picked up my rifle and addressed the prisoners. “Unfortunately, after your surrender, one of your number treacherously ambushed us from behind, killing one of my officers, thus violating the terms we’d agreed upon. Sorry,” I said, raised my rifle, and then shot them all as fast as I could pull the trigger, which was very fast indeed.

 

 

Copyright © 2000, 2001, 2002 Jeffrey M. Mahr — All Rights Reserved

Copyright © 2012-2013 Levanah Greene — All Rights Reserved