The losses from the attack on the threshkreen ship had been so horrific that Slintogan, normally a leader of about four hundred, had had to bond with four times that many normals left bereft of their Gods. His brother God Kings were equally overtasked.
And the thresh must have a considerable lead by now. “A stern chase is a long chase,” as Finegarich the Reaver is reputed to have said.
The God King looked ahead and upward at the mist-shrouded mountains to the north. The road he could barely make out. Even so, he knew the road was there and had no doubt that the thresh who had butchered the People here by this body of flowing water would be fleeing up it.
A long chase and a tiring one. Worse still, a dangerous one as we will never know a moment in advance if the thresh have turned at bay and wait in ambush.
The sharp crest of the Cordillera Central loomed in the distance, bare rock surmounted by trees. Sometimes, Digna could catch sight of the walls of the crest, rising vertically over the more gentle slope below. It seemed to her that the rock walls never grew any closer.
The way up was hard, even though the winding, all-weather road was good. More that once Digna, or one of her followers, had to threaten to shoot anyone who refused to keep up. Many of them looked enviously at the horse she sometimes rode but more often led. There was no telling when she would need the horse for a burst to speed to some trouble spot. A rested horse would be capable of that burst where one wearied, even by so slight a load as carrying her ninety-pound frame, might not.
If some looked at Digna’s horse with envy it was as nothing compared to the greedy stares that followed the vehicles carrying the wounded, the lame, the infirm and the pregnant. Enough sniveling, or so thought some of the slackers, just might be enough to get a faster and easier ride to safety.
A great-grandson handed Digna a radio, announcing, “It’s Señor Herrera, Mamita.”
“Si, Tomas. Que quieres?” she answered. What do you want?
“I have a truckload of young men that we stopped,” Herrera said, from nearby Edilze’s battery position. It was on Edilze’s radio that he spoke.
“What are young men doing in a vehicle when we need them to fight? What are young men doing in a vehicle when we have babies being carried and pregnant women and the old and sick still walking?”
Unseen in the distance, Herrera looked over the dozen or so disreputable, bound prisoners standing under guard by the truck from which they had been removed at gun point. He sneered at them as he spoke.
“Dama, they stole the truck and forced out the previous occupants.”
Equally unseen by Herrera, Digna’s face turned red with rage. Cowardly bastards.
Digna’s late husband had once had a solution for criminals who trespassed on his land to commit their crimes. It was a solution much frowned on in more civilized circles but, in the outlying parts of Panama, and especially in earlier days, it had been a solution the implementation of which was unlikely to ever come to light.
“Hang them,” she said. “Hang them right beside the road.”
Herrera smiled at the twelve — no, it was thirteen — thieves as he took a coil of rope from the horn of his saddle.
He had no clue how to tie a proper hangman’s noose. No matter, a simple loop would do well enough. This he made and then tossed the coil over a convenient tree branch. A shudder ran through the truck thieves as the loop arced over the branch and came to rest a few feet off the ground.
Tomas gestured with his chin for one of the prisoners to be brought over.
Hands bound as they were, still the prisoner attempted to wrap his legs around a sapling as two of Herrera’s men grabbed him by the arms. A few kicks to his calves and thighs loosened the entwining legs. He began to beg as he was dragged toward the rope, the begging changing to an inarticulate scream as the loop was placed around his neck and half tightened.
“Did the sick and old who were designated to ride that truck plead not to be put off by you and your friends?” Tomas asked conversationally as he adjusted the loop to the neck.
“Please,” the thief begged. “Please don’t do this. I had a right to live. I have a right to live. Please…”
“Haul away,” Herrera commanded and the prisoner’s previous guards sprang to the rope and began to pull. Once the kicking feet were a meter off the ground he told them to tie the rope off, cut it and bring him the remainder… and more rope.
The gagging and kicking of the first had not stopped before the second, too, was elevated. In all it took Herrera almost an hour before all thirteen thieves were strung up and dead — or nearly so, a few pairs of feet still twitched. The bodies swayed gently in the wind, the smell of shit from loosened sphincters wafting on the breeze.
There’s a stinging advertisement for social responsibility, Herrera thought.
From her vantage point, hidden behind a large rock and some vegetation, Digna could make out the pursuing Posleen through her army issue field glasses. The aliens seemed to her to be hesitant, much more so than they had been during the assault on the bridges by Bijagual and Gualaca. Too, she noted, there seemed to be many fewer of their damned flying sleds. Lastly, from what she could tell, the aliens seemed… somehow… clumsy. Not that they were clumsy as individuals, no, but they seemed clumsy as groups, as if their leadership were being strained to the limits.
“Something has hurt them badly, after all,” she whispered to herself. “Blessings on whoever or whatever it was.”
Slower the aliens were. For all that, they were still moving quicker than her column of refugees. They had to be slowed down.
“But where?” she asked herself. Then she closed her eyes and tried to envision the whole area around the road and the pass behind her.
South of where the road wound across the mountains was a military crest, so called because it would allow long fields of grazing fire downward and long-range observation. The road itself S-turned through a pass carved out of the mountain rock through the topographical crest, the actual summit of the rise. To either side of that narrow pass rock walls rose vertically, occasional stunted trees clinging to their tiny crevasses and ledges.
The aliens aren’t built to climb those walls, Digna thought, not even with all their strength. Their sleds could get over but they’d do so without the supporting fires of the rest of their horde. That would make them easy meat for my boys.
Digna looked again at the rock walls. She found no place for a horse, even one aided by arms, to surmount the crest. But I can send people up. A tough climb, yes, but not impossible for human beings.
She mounted her horse and began forcing it through the still teeming column of refugees. It was especially difficult in the narrow pass, which was only a bit wider than the two lane highway through it. On the far — northern — side Digna found essentially what she had expected to see, a mirror image of the southern face.
The only difference is that the aliens are trying to climb while our people are trying to descend.
Digna tried to think back to what her instructors had said about the three types of crests. The military crest isn’t worth much, not with the trees in the way, she thought. The great thing about the reverse crest is that I can cover the pass and road from it, while the aliens can’t shoot our escaping people from the rear as long as we hold it. And inside that pass we can butcher them with the mortars… as long as the ammunition holds out, anyway. We can, I hope we can, buy enough time for the refugees to make it to the coast, to Chiriqui Grande where they might be able to escape by sea.