He looked about him. Down the slope from him he caught sight of the Militia officer, now on his feet and swaying uncertainly, but moving back into his command nest, where the cone rifles dropped by his men stood waiting him. Evidently, he had been untouched by the flying metal of the rifle and only knocked unconscious by the explosion shock. Hal's rifle muzzle swung automatically to center on the narrow, upright back of the man, and then revulsion took hold. There was no need for any more killing. He got silently to his own feet and half-ran, half-dove down the intervening slope to catch the officer and slam him to the ground.
The other lay still beneath him. Hal rolled off and sat up. He turned the officer over on his back, and saw that he was still conscious. Hal had simply knocked the wind out of him. For a moment the other struggled to get his breath, then gradually breathing returned. Hal stared down at him, puzzled. The thin face below was familiar. For a moment more it baffled him, then memory connected. The man he was looking at had been the one who escorted him, with Jason, to the session with Ahrens. The same one who had threatened to hang Jason by the wrists for several hours if he continued to talk.
The officer stirred. He looked up at the rifle Hal held covering him, and from there to Hal's face; and his own face was transformed suddenly with a lean smile and a sudden glittering of eyes.
"Thou!" he said. "I have found thee - "
"So, thou art here!" interrupted a harsh voice, and Child-of-God walked from the trees at their left into the nest, and halted. For the first time Hal realized that the shouting and the whistling of cone rifles had diminished. Child-of-God's dark eyes focused on the weapon in Hal's hand.
"And thou, too, hast captured a cone rifle. Good!" His gaze went to the Militia officer and for a moment, as Hal watched, the two gazed at each other, different by twenty years of age, in bone and muscle and clothing, but in all other ways alike as brothers.
"Save thyself trouble," said the officer. "Thou knowest as I know, that I will tell thee nothing, whatever thou choosest to do to me."
Child-of-God breathed out through his nostrils. His cone rifle's muzzle came around so casually to center on the officer that for a moment Hal did not understand what the movement implied.
"No!" Hal knocked the cone rifle up, off target.
Child-of-God's weathered face came about to stare at him. There was little strong expression to be seen on it at most times; but now Hal thought he read incredulity there.
" 'No'?" echoed Child-of-God. "To me?"
"We don't have to kill him."
Child-of-God continued to stare. Then he took a deep breath.
"Thou art new to us," he said, almost quietly. "Such as these must all be killed, before they kill us. Also, what the apostate says is true - "
"Thou art the apostate - thou, the Abandoned of the Lord!" broke in the Militia officer, harshly. Child-of-God paid no attention. His eyes were still on Hal.
"What the apostate says is true," he repeated slowly. "It's useless to question such as he, who was once of the Elect."
"It is thou who art fallen from the Elect! I am of God and remain of God!"
Still, Child-of-God paid no attention.
"He would tell us nothing, as he says. Perhaps there is another still living, who was never of the Elect. Such we can make speak."
Child-of-God's muzzle swung back toward the officer.
"No, I tell you!" Hal this time caught hold of the rifle barrel; and Child-of-God, his face plainly registering astonishment, turned sharply to him.
"Thou wilt release my weapon now," he began slowly, "or - "
There was only the faintest sound of movement to alert them; but when they turned back the Militia Captain was dodging between the trees. All in one movement, Child-of-God dropped on one knee, swung up the cone rifle and fired. Bark flew whitely from a tree-trunk. Slowly, he lowered the weapon, staring into the pines. He turned back toward Hal.
"Thou has let one of those who has destroyed many go free," he said. "Free, if we do not gain him again, to kill more of our people."
His voice was level but his eyes burned into Hal.
"And, by hindering me, who would have sent him to God's judgment, thou hast made his freedom possible. Decision will have to be made on this."
Chapter Twenty
Moments later, Rukh and the attackers who had been coming directly up the mountainside at the Militia position emerged on the ridge. The shouting and the whistling of the cones had dwindled and now fell silent. The members of the Command gathered rifles and equipment from the fallen enemy and returned to the ridge below. There were no prisoners. Apparently neither the Militia nor the Commands took prisoners unless there was a need to question them. The officer that had escaped when Hal had distracted Child-of-God's attention was not recaptured. Possibly, thought Hal, some of the other Militia might have made good their escape. The Command had neither the time nor the energy to pursue fugitives.
Fourteen of the donkeys had been killed by the cone rifle fire or were so badly injured that they had to be destroyed. Their loads were distributed among packs on the backs of the members of the Command. When they were ready to move again, only Rukh and Child-of-God were not carrying packs.
There were some three hours of light left before sunset. Carrying their dead and wounded, they travelled only an hour and a half before making camp; but this was enough to bring them considerably down and out of the mountain pass and into a foothill valley very like that in which they had been camped when Hal and Jason had first joined them. As soon as they had set up their shelters, a burial service was held in the red light of the sunset for those who had been killed, followed by the first food of the day since they had broken camp that morning.
After the meal, Hal went to help Jason stake out and care for the donkeys that still remained to them. He was busy at this when Rukh appeared.
"I want to talk to you," she said to Hal.
She led him away from the camp, up the bank of the small stream by which they had camped, until they were out of earshot of Jason, and therefore of everyone else in camp. As he followed her, he found himself caught up again by the particular awareness she evoked in him; and her difference from everyone else he had ever known. There was a unique quality about her, and it chimed deeply off the metal of his own inner differences. It was not because he and she were alike, he thought now; because they were not. It was that the common factor of individual uniqueness drew them together - or, at least, drew him powerfully to her.
At last she stopped in a small open space by the stream bank and turned to face him. The twilight was still bright enough so that her face appeared to stand out with a strange three-dimensional solidity. It came to him that, if he only had the ability, he would like to carve her in dark metal as she stood now, facing him.
"Howard," she said, "you and this Command are going to have to come to terms."
"The Command?" he said. "Or Child-of-God?"
"James is the Command," she said, "just as much as I am and every working member of it is. The Command can't survive if those in it don't follow orders. No one gave you any order to attack the Militia position on your own, with only a needle gun that would hardly shoot."
"I know," he said, bleakly. "I learned about orders, and the need for obedience to them, so early that I can't remember not knowing it. But the same man who taught me those things also taught me that, when necessary, you do what needs to be done."
"But what made you think you'd have a chance of doing anything, armed like that, and alone?"