"Sure, I understand," Khalid said, genially, removing a small roll of duct tape from a satchel and placing in on a table near Fen. "You're Micah Fen, star. Retribution is for little people. You only kept a bodyguard to keep away your adoring fans."
"It was easy, you know," Khalid continued, as he checked his digital camera once again. "Get on the GlobalNet, find your touring schedule, check for chartered flights, watch for the press throng, spot you, and then follow you to your hotel. You've got security at home, and you do travel with a bodyguard." Khalid's head inclined towards the cooling corpse of Fen's bodyguard, spreading crimson on the suite's thick carpet. "But outside of your cocoon, you were really very vulnerable."
"I put on a service staff uniform I took from a hotel storage closet and checked with room service to see which room had ordered the most grotesque quantity and quality of food. That had to be you. I came to this floor and bludgeoned a maid—she'll be fine; don't worry—then hid her in a closet and took her a passkey.
"With the passkey, I just entered your suite and shot the bodyguard, twice in the chest and once in the head, with a silenced .45. By the time you woke up, you pustule, your mouth was gagged and your arm twisted behind your back. I doubt you would even have woken up if I hadn't dragged you to that chair you're taped to by your arm and shaggy hair. You would like to know why, wouldn't you?"
Glaring at Fen's piggish face, Khalid removed from his pocket a wallet containing a family photo. He opened this and showed it to his victim. "This little girl was my sister, Huriyyah. You praised and encouraged the men who murdered her. That was enough. I'd have sucked Fernandez's dick for the chance to kill you, but he—fine man—gave me the chance for free."
Fen shook his head emphatically. Khalid paid no attention. Instead, he put away the photo and wallet and drew from his pockets a clear plastic bag, a nail and a press release concerning Fen's pro-gay activity. Khalid had scrawled a message in Arabic on the press release. He'd use his pistol to nail the press release to Fen's forehead after the fat fuck was dead.
With the camera, Khalid took a photo of his victim, bound and gagged. He then put the camera aside and pulled a couple of inches of the duct tape roll free.
"This is really going to suck," he said to Fen, happily. "It's going to suck for you, I mean. I, on the other hand, am going to really enjoy it. Take a deep breath, why don't you? No sense in making this too quick."
After placing the clear bag over Fen's head, which elicited a garbled set of pleas for pity and mercy, Khalid took the free two inches of tape and began to wind the sticky stuff around Fen's neck, sealing the bag. The rolls of fat about Fen's neck made it a tougher job than Khalid had anticipated, causing him to have to make three extra winds to ensure a good seal. Fortunately, he'd brought more than enough tape.
Khalid stepped back and picked up the camera. Already Fen had the bag billowing, as he tried to suck in oxygen to feed his almost incredible bulk. In a short time the actor-producer's head was whiplashing back and forth and side to side as he exhausted all the oxygen trapped in the bag and went into a full panic.
While snapping a picture of Fen's purpling face, Khalid was struck by a smell even worse than Fen's normal, unsavory aroma.
"Oh, you shit yourself, didn't you?" Khalid sneered. "What a pig! Aren't you embarrassed?"
In answer, Fen's head only whipped the more frantically as it fruitlessly sought escape from the bag which had cut off its air.
10/7/468 AC, Runnistan, Pashtia
Nobody in the village fired his rifle into the air. Instead, the men, Samsonov rifles and clones held easily in their hands, clustered around Cano and Rachman, forming a circle. The women of the place stood behind their men, but that appeared more a defensive arrangement than a mark of low status. Oddly, the women were not veiled.
Among the villagers, Rachman and his men were well known. All eyes were on the stranger, Cano. From the encircling crowd one old man emerged and walked toward the group.
"Father," Rachman said to the old man, "we have returned in glory, all but for Filot who fell in battle and was buried on the field. I have brought with us our hectontar, that our people might rejoice to see the leader of their sons and to see that that leader is worthy. Father, David is one of us."
Cano followed the conversation, more or less. The word hectontar was new to him, but he assumed it was local dialect and thought no more of it. He was, in any event, much more interested in the fact that the villagers were not using their rifles as noisemakers; in that, and in the unveiled women he saw behind the men. He saw a pair of bright green eyes atop a swaying, willowy shape, but lost them in the crowd.
"Since my son says you are worthy," said Rachman's father, offering his hand in greeting, "I welcome you to our village. Come; the day is warm. Let us sit and talk in the cool of my courtyard."
While the rest of the group split up to follow their own families home, Rachman and Cano followed Rachman's father, Cano's eyes still searching for that willowy shape.
* * *
The courtyard was walled. Even so, the house was built on the side of a steep hill. From the courtyard's fountain, Cano could see out over wall to where a group of the village's young men were busily fighting over the corpse of a sheep, from horseback.
The game looked interesting, and even fun, though Cano had no idea of the rules. Based on the number of boys he saw being carried off the field, dripping blood, he wasn't entirely sure there were any rules.
Rachman's father saw Cano's interest and said, "It's for you, you know."
"Well, it is entertaining," Cano replied.
"No, not that," Rachman said. "The young men are trying to impress you with their skill and courage." Seeing Cano really didn't understand, Rachman huffed and added, "So you'll hire them on to join the scouts. We haven't had a good war that we had a chance of winning in . . . well, in a very long time."
"Ohhh." Cano shrugged. "I'm not sure how to even go about that. I don't know if the Legion is interested in expanding the Scouts, though they might be. No, they should be. I'll ask—"
He stopped suddenly as a willowy young woman, technically more of a girl, really, stooped gracefully to set a tray of assorted finger food—fruit, olives, Terra Novan olives with their wrinkled and gray skin, flat yellow chorley bread, honey, some other green and red sauces in bowls—between the three of them. She was unveiled and when she turned her head to smile and Cano saw her green eyes . . .
God in Heaven; she's beautiful, Cano thought. Those eyes . . . that face . . . that shape . . .
Rachman smiled, though his father laughed aloud.
"This is my sister, Alena," Rachman explained. "She's fifteen."
Cano immediately looked crestfallen, which raised a laugh from both of the others. "Fifteen," Rachman said, "is not a problem."
Did Cano understand from that what he thought he did? He knew they'd never offer the girl—no, the woman; he'd seen that in her eyes and her smile—for anything dishonorable. It would be as a wife or nothing. But fifteen? He looked again.