Роберт Бюттнер - Orphan's Journey

Guilty because, while my emotion for Yulen was genuine, I was going to play this bond with Casus for all it was worth, like some used-Electrovan salesman.

Depressed because in the morning I was going to ask Casus to ally with the Marini and the Tassini in a war. And now I had to do it after Casus had told me, after the toast I had heard earlier in the evening, that it was the same toast that had ended every Casuni funeral for the last three hundred years.

The toast went, “May paradise spare you from allies.”

FORTY-SIX

THE NEXT MORNING, Casus and I walked out on the prairie, bent forward against the wind. Low clouds hung a dirty-gray ceiling above us, spitting pellets too hard to call snow that skittered across the frozen ground. I carried my M-40, four 40-round banana magazines, and a sack of groundfruit.

Groundfruit was the brown tuber that Bassin had lived on while he spied on the Stone trade, the one that made the hardtack cakes Yulen had shared with me. Groundfruit grew wild year round, everywhere beneath the High Plains, and Casuni women harvested it, ripened it, then pestled it into flour that made the leathery bread that served as the staple of the Casuni diet.

A groundfruit was the size of an adult human head, but more durable, so it also served as the gold standard for Casuni target practice.

I laid a row of groundfruit on a rock ledge, then we backed off two hundred yards. I tapped a magazine into the receiver, and plinked the gourds forty times without a miss, varying positions prone to kneeling to standing, without reloading. For my last five shots, I swung the optics aside, and, using just the iron sights, popped one fruit five times, so it yo-yo’d across the distant ledge like a rabbit.

I pointed to the selector switch’s full-auto position. “This makes it talk like a woman. Useful in close quarters.”

Casus stared downrange with his mouth open so wide that ice pellets ricocheted off his tongue, and asked, “May I try it?”

I reloaded while we walked up closer to the targets. I decrypted the grip safety and handed him the rifle. He plinked a few groundfruit, then thumbed the selector switch to full auto, sprayed a burst, and whooped, even though he didn’t hit much. “We must have these! What’s the price?”

“You understand that repeating rifles would have to come from the forges of the Marini.”

He winked, then held up his hand, and rubbed his thumb against his forefingers. “I know this sad song. The price will include a surcharge to cover certain — expenses — to avoid the Bitch.”

“I can not only save you the bribes to the Queen’s people, I can equip your army for no money at all. Not just with rifles. Stuff you’ve never even dreamed of. That thing that makes maps in the air? That’s just the beginning.”

Besides the crash debris that Howard insisted on dragging along with us like the world’s second-largest ball of twine, Ord and I carried radios, meds, platoon-level weapons, demolitions equipment, instruction chips for all of them, and for every military subject under our former sun.

Casus wrinkled his forehead as he tossed an M-40 round in his palm, then tapped the bullet’s Teflite jacket against his teeth. “Jason, my friend, now is the time for negotiation, not joking.”

“No joke. Just use the equipment against the black worms, and it’s yours.”

Casus paused with the cartridge between his lips like a cigarette.

I took a breath. “So long as you operate in concert with the Marini and the Tassini.”

Casus spit the cartridge, and it spun through the air and tinged off a rock. “You said no more jokes.”

I picked up the M-40 round, pocketed it, then sat on the rock, and patted the space beside me. “Hear me out.”

He frowned, but sat.

A half hour later, Casus stood, folded his arms across his wide breastplate, and shook his head. “Impossible. The Casuni will fight. But the Casuni will fight separately.”

“Then the Casuni will die separately. So will every other human in this world. The Queen understands that. That’s why she’s making a complete commitment—”

“The Bitch doesn’t know commitment!” Casus jerked his thumb over his shoulder, in the direction of the escarpment. “I lost two sons in that battle against the worms, already!”

I rocked back. An ash flake from the funeral fire tumbled past on the wind.

Two sons? Just the thought of losing Jude, who wasn’t even my blood son, paralyzed me.

I blinked, then stammered, “I didn’t know. Casus, I’m so sorry.”

I stood, and laid a hand on his quivering shoulder plate, as he wept.

He wiped his eyes, then blew his nose into his fingers and flicked the snot glob downwind. “Yes. My other sons are devastated, as well.”

My brow wrinkled. “How many sons do you have?”

Casus cocked his head, and paused. “Surviving, as of sundown yesterday, five hundred six.” He ticked a finger against two other fingers, then shook his head. “No. Five hundred eight.”

I stared at him. “All those mourners—”

“Who else did you think would attend the funeral of a miserable buzzard like Yulen but his students?”

Casus raised a finger. “In every encampment I conquer, I bed twenty women. I have each son they bear me trained as a soldier. Then, when I levy troops from that encampment, my own sons are among them.” He leaned toward me and winked. “Now, here’s the clever part. By Law, no Casuni can refuse to fight for someone who commits all his sons!”

“Oh.”

Casus picked up the M-40, worked its action, and blew into the chamber. “As one commander to another, I recommend the strategy. It’s slow, but the copulation part is excellent.”

“Casus, if the Queen has committed her only son to this alliance, that would be all her sons, true?”

“Bassin? They say he was too tough for the slavers to kill.” He lowered his voice. “Personally, I think that means he’s half Casuni. Though who would have lain with the Bitch is beyond me.”

“Anyway, if the Queen has committed Bassin—”

“Yulen was right. You are clever.” Casus wagged his finger at me, and narrowed his eyes. “But you aren’t asking me to fight for the Bitch. You’re asking me to fight for you. Therefore, Bassin is irrelevant, and I may refuse.” He straightened up, nodded, and crossed his arms.

I sighed.

Casus wasn’t opposed to a horrible and bloody war. Especially since he knew it was unavoidable, and in his nation’s best interest. He wasn’t opposed to taking orders from me, so long as he retained control of his own troops. He just needed to feel like destiny had forced him into doing what he had to do, anyway.

I’d dealt with a few advisees like Casus, guys who just wanted to act as their own barrack-room lawyers. Ord always said they had fools for clients.

If it were up to me, when this war heated up again, I would make Jude a PFC clerk, and assign him to count beans in the deepest subbasement of the Winter Palace, until the shooting stopped. But I knew it wouldn’t work out that way. I didn’t even think that Munchkin would pull strings so unfairly if she were in my shoes.

I asked Casus, “If a man only has one godson to commit, does that count?”

FORTY-SEVEN

CASUS REINED UP HIS BIG WHITE DUCKBILL with its forelegs on a natural pavement of red rock slabs crisscrossed with crevasses, swirled with rusty sand, and studded with scrub. The rocky plain stretched a mile further south, then the sand coalesced into a red dune sea that marched across the horizon.

I stopped Rosy alongside Casus, and the dozen outriders Casus had brought with us stopped, too. In two days, we had ridden three hundred miles south from Casus’s camp to reach this ragged border of the Tassin Desert, and the day had become almost warm. But as we stopped, the sun had dropped near the horizon. The High Plains’ thin air surrendered its warmth fast.