"I don't know!" the Sere commander snarled. "Figure it out!" He glared at the distant Shin fortress and waved both false-hands in a gesture of furious anger. "We have forces on the wall. All they have to do is take Nujam and we can move in there. That's all they have to do!"
"Tallow!" the Gastan ordered, never looking away from the slit. "Look behind you! The river rises!" he bellowed as the boiling fat was poured onto the Krath troops swarming atop the battlements outside the bastion. "Go cool off there!"
"They are," Pahner panted over the rising chorus of screams that greeted the splashing fat. The Marine had just returned to the slit beside the Shin king after dealing with another threat. A Krath assault group had forced the bastion's lower doors, and it had been hot work stopping them and then throwing up a barricade. The long climb back to the top hadn't done anything for his breathing, but he could clearly see the enemy army starting to stream from the walls. It was unraveling from the rear, where the remaining forces could see the river rising to overwhelm all their worldly goods. But those on the walls could see it as well, and they were scrambling down faster than they had come up. Already the water was halfway into the tent city; by the time those on the walls reached it, the entire area would be underwater.
"All we do now is wait for them to come to the inevitable conclusion," Pahner continued. "And conserve our own people in the meantime."
"That's it." Roger dialed back the magnification of his helmet. "There are no Krath on the walls. It's all over but the negotiating."
"That should be complicated enough to go on with." Despreaux shook her head. "That army is going to come apart when it realizes its predicament."
"I'm sure the captain can handle it," Roger replied, and turned as Cord and Pedi climbed up into the small, wooden bastion, followed by the two freed serfs.
"You sat this one out," Cord observed with a grunt. "Good."
"Are you up to this, Cord?" Roger asked. The shaman still had a pronounced limp and hunched to one side when he moved, and Roger didn't much care for the sound of his breathing.
"The healer Dobrescu tells me I need to start to move around," Cord replied. "I am moving around. The ladder, I admit, was unpleasant."
"Old fool," Pedi muttered under her breath.
"And you're looking better, as well, Pedi," Roger noted. The Shin female's step had a spring that he hadn't seen in quite some time.
"Thank you, Your Highness," Pedi replied. "It's amazing what a little sleep and some wasen can do for a female's outlook."
Despreaux snorted and shook her head.
"I could never get into the whole cosmetics thing. I'm totally challenged that way."
"It's like any other weapon or armor," Pedi said with a gesture of humor. "You must practice, practice, practice."
"Oh, like sex," Despreaux observed brightly, then grinned at Roger's stifled gasp.
"That is... different with us," Pedi said somewhat primly. "We do not engage in it as... entertainment."
"Too bad." Despreaux grinned again. "You don't know what you're missing."
"Well, isn't it a nice day out?" Roger waved to the north, where a darker patch of clouds indicated approaching rain. "Volcanoes smoking, smell of sulfur on the wind, Krath army surrendering..."
"They've surrendered?" Pedi demanded excitedly.
"We haven't received a message yet," Roger admitted. "But they're off the walls. The war appears to be over."
"I look forward to slaughtering them for a change," the Shin female said darkly.
"Ah, we were intending to offer them terms," Roger pointed out. "I think it would be... difficult to kill them all. And we can probably get more for them if they're alive."
"You humans are so silly that way." Pedi's gesture bordered on contempt. "I say chop off all their heads and float the bodies down the river. They'll get the message that way."
"Well, there are alternatives," Roger said. "We could simply blind and castrate them all and then have them walk back. All except one in twenty or so that we can leave with one eye to lead the rest. Or we could fire them out of cannon; you could load them all the way to the hips in the bombards. Or we could lay planks over them, then put tables and chairs on top of the planks, sit down, and eat our dinner while they were all crushed to death. Or, best of all, we could go retake the spaceport, come back with assault shuttles, and drop jellied fuel weapons on them. They want fire, we'll give them fire."
"Roger," Despreaux said.
"Those would do," Pedi agreed. "But I can tell you're joking."
"The point is that humans quit doing that sort of thing because we're too damned good at it," Roger said. "We can do it efficiently or baroquely, using a million different methods, culled from our entire history. I doubt that Mardukans can exceed our inventiveness, although they might equal it. But taking that route never gets you anywhere; you get trapped in an eternal round of massacres and counter massacres. It's only after you break the cycle and create strong groups—nations—that enforce the laws and demand some sort of international standard of acceptable behavior, that things start to improve."
"Fine, but we're here. And it's now," the Shin protested. "And when you humans leave, the Krath will still be there. And their soldiers will still be there, and the Scourge will still be there."
"All part of the negotiations," Roger replied. "They've lost their field army. If they don't get it back, they're dead meat for the other satraps. We'll strip them of their treasure, make them pay tribute, and have them sign binding treaties against slave-raiding. We won't take the tribute to 'punish' them, but to weaken them so that they're not death threats to you. The conditions might hold, and they might not. But humans who are friendly to the Shin will also be in control of the spaceport, Pedi. If the Krath get out of hand, we can send an assault shuttle. And we will."
"What about the Scourge?" Slee asked.
"What about them?" It was the first time Roger had heard one of the released serfs ask a question, so it caught him a bit off guard.
"I don't care about the Sere, My Lord," the serf replied. "But it's the Scourge that has burned our homes and taken our children. Do they go free?"
"I doubt we'll be able to specifically target them," Roger said, after a moment. "But they'll be out of a job."
"Which means they'll go back to being bandits," Pedi said. "So be it. The Shin are better bandits than the Scourge any day."
"Not exactly something that I'd aspire to," Roger sighed. "But if that's what floats your boat."
"Your Light!" the sole Shin guard called. "There's a message from the north tower. A group has been spotted on the edge of the Fire Lands!"
"How large?" Pedi asked. She moved to the bastion's parapet and craned her neck, trying to get a glimpse beyond the northern defenses of the town.
"I don't know," the guard replied. "The message was simply 'a group.' " He pointed to the northern bastion, where a red flag with a complex design had been raised.
"Time to switch positions, people," Roger said. He turned and headed for the ladder. "I don't like this timing."
"Shit." Roger dialed back the magnification on his helmet. "Unless I'm much mistaken, that's a Scourge raiding party. How the hell did they get around our backside that way?"
"We knew that the Scourge had found a way through the Fire Lands," Pedi told him almost absently, straining her own eyes as she stared out over the wall. "We should have remembered that. I should have remembered, since it was how I came to be in their hands before the Lemmar captured me. But all of their captives were hooded on the way through the lava fields, so I was unable to tell Father where their route lies." She snorted bitterly. "It would seem they have chosen to use it again."