He and James Child-of-God, Rukh's second-in-command of the Resistance Group, would have seemed, to anyone who did not know them intimately, to have been cut from the same bolt of cloth. Both men were harsh and uncompromising both in attitude and appearance - except that Child-of-God was old enough to be Barbage's father. Both spoke an archaic, 'canting' version of Basic, full of "thee's" and "thou's." Both put what they thought of as their faith before all other things. But Barbage had been a fanatic.
James Child-of-God had been a true faith-holder. He had spent his life fighting against the Militia that the Others had found so useful and put to their own purposes, and he died, alone, behind a small barricade in the rain, deliberately giving his life to slow up the Militia companies that were close on the heels of what had by then become a sick and exhausted Resistance Group, driven by the relentless pursuit of a Barbage who had unlimited troops and supplies at his disposal.
To this day, Hal could not remember lightly his final moments alone with Child-of-God, before he had left the old man to his final battle in the rain with the foe he had opposed so long. Always the memory tightened Hal's throat painfully. On the other hand, the memory of Barbage that had just come to mind was of an entirely different nature, but showed the same kind of utter dedication to a purpose.
This other memory was of a somewhat earlier time when the Group was being closely pursued through a territory of dense Woods by Barbage and the Militia Companies stationed in one of the local Districts through which the Group had been fleeing, and Hal, because of his training as a boy under a Dorsai, had been the best choice to try and slip back quietly to spy on their pursuers. He had silently backtracked and come upon the pursuing companies, temporarily halted for a meeting of their officers. He had worked his way close enough to hear them, coming within earshot at a point where the superior officer of the Companies had gotten himself into a confrontation with the knife-lean, relentless-eyed Barbage, who had apparently been sent out from Militia Headquarters and made into what he was by Bleys' direct personal influence. The scene was suddenly there, now, as he thought of it, in his mind's eye...
"... yes, I say it to thee, " Amyth Barbage had been saying in his hard tenor voice to the Commandant of the Militia, who was a Captain, as Barbage was himself. Hal moved closer behind a small screen of slim variform willows. Barbage was on his feet. The other, junior, officers of the Militia had all been sitting with the Captain himself in a row on a fallen log, between the two men, with the other Captain seated at the far end of their line. "I have been given a commission by authority far above thee, and beyond that by the Great Teacher, Bleys Ahrens himself, and if I say to thee, go - thou wilt go!"
The other Captain had looked upward and across at Barbage with a tightly closed jaw. He was a man perhaps five years younger than Barbage, no more than midway into his thirties, but his face was square and heavy with oncoming middle age, and his neck was thick. "I've seen your orders," he said. His voice was not hoarse, but thick in his throat-a parade-ground voice. "They don't say anything about pursuing over district borders. " "Thou toy man!" said Barbage, and his voice was harsh with contempt. "What is it to me how such as thou read orders? I know the will of those who sent me, and I order thee, that thou pursuest how and where I tell thee to pursue!"
The other captain had risen from the log, his face gone pale with anger. The sun glinted on the forward-facing oval end of the butt of the power pistol sheltered under the snapped down weather flap of the holster at his belt. Barbage wore no pistol. "You may have orders!" he said, even more thickly. "But you don't outrank me and there's nothing that says I have to take that sort of language from you. So watch what you say or pick yourself a weapon - I don't care either way."
Barbage's thin upper lip curled slightly. "Weapon? What Baal's pride is this to think that in the Lord's word thou mightest be worthy of affront? Unlike thee, I have no such playthings as weapons. Only tools which the Lord has made amilable to my hand as I have needed them. So, thou hast called a weapon, then? No doubt that which I see on something thou didst not like y side, there. Make use of it, therefore, since the name I gave thee!"
The Captain flushed. "You're unarmed," he said shortly. "Oh, let that not stop thee," said Barbage ironically. "For the servants of the Lord, tools are ever ready to hand."
He made one long step while the other man stared at him, to end standing beside the most junior of the officers sitting on the log. He laid his hand on the snapped-down weatherflap of the young officer's power pistol and flicked the flap up with his thumbnail. His hand curled around the suddenly exposed butt of the power pistol beneath. A twist of the wrist would be all that would be needed to bring the gun out of its breakaway holster and fire it, while the other Captain would have needed to reach for and uncover his own pistol first before he could fire.
From the far end of the log the Captain stared, his heavy face suddenly even more pale and mouth open foolishly. "I meant... " The words stumbled on his tongue. "Not like this. A proper meeting, with seconds-'' "Alas, " said Barbage, "such games are unfamiliar to me. So I will kill thee now to decide whether we continue or turn back from our pursuit, since thou hast not chosen to obey my orders - unless thou shouldst kill me first to prove thy right to do its thou wishest. That is how thou wouldst do things, with thy weapons, and thy meetings and thy seconds, is it not?"
He paused, but the other did not answer. "Very well then," said Barbage. He drew the power pistol from the holster of the junior officer and leveled it at his equal in rank. "In the Lord's name-," broke out the other man hoarsely. "Have it any way you want. We'll go on then, over the border!" "I am happy to hear thee decide so, " said Barbage. He replaced the pistol in the holster from which he had withdrawn it and stepped away from the young officer who owned it. "We will continue until we make contact with the pursuit unit sent out from the next District, at which time I will join them and thou, with thy officers and men, mayest go back to thy small games in town. That should be soon. When are the troops from the next District to meet us?... "
"The fact that the goal he works for is wrong won't slow Bleys down," Hal said now to Amid. "He'll do what's necessary to accomplish what he wants, just as I will. It's not the goal, but his belief that's important, and that's as strong as if his faith was as right as anyone's ever was."
Amid nodded slowly. "I see," he said. "But the fact that he's found me here changes things for me, personally," went on Hal. "I'm afraid I'd better be getting back to Earth and the Final Encyclopedia pretty soon, now." "Not just pretty soon," said Amanda. "Immediately. Now. "