Jerry Pournelle - War World 6 by Blood Feuds

Author:Blood Feuds
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 2011-04-04T23:20:11+00:00

If he saw her—What would he do if he saw her?

Court her? Temujin wondered. Kill her? The nomad’s laugh was bitter. The Sauron bitch would laugh till her cold pale eyes dissolved in tears of mirth if he offered bride price for her. And to whom could he offer it? The Citadel? That would but set all the filthy Saurons howling with laughter.

Kill her, then? He laughed again, no less ruefully. As well face a stobor pack, armed only with a pile of overripe tennis-ball fruit.

But he could not get her out of his mind. She’d robbed him of honor, robbed him of pride, squeezed knowledge from him like a man wringing a damp rag dry. All the tngri of sky, earth and water—and all the demons—knew he’d tried to forget her.

No use. For somehow, Sauron arrogance was in her transmuted to the sort of spirit a nomad dreams to find in the finest of horses, a spirit that would never yield to any greater force, that never acknowledged any greater force than itself. But if one bearing such a spirit could be persuaded to cooperate … oh, if …

When he thought about it rationally, he knew he was obsessed. But he had fewer than three Haven years on him—say, twenty T-years, more or less. The young yield easily to obsession, and often call it love. And so here he was, riding back to Nurnen to seek her out. Searching for her in Katlinsvale would be worse than useless; having betrayed the secret of the women’s tribe, he could await only painful death there.

She could have returned by now, with the mares he’d told her of. Nurnen was his best chance. One way or another, he would have his reckoning there.

The town loomed ahead, less than a klick off now. He could see it, hear it. The wind blew behind him, from the pass the Citadel warded down into Shangri-La Valley. Otherwise, he would have smelled Nurnen, too. Even with the wind at his back, he imagined the smell, the half-foul, half-rich reek of a city that existed to serve the Citadel.

Ahead, something was mounted on pikes jabbed into the ground to either side of the road: several somethings, as a matter of fact. Temujin reined in for a longer look. His stomach did a slow flipflop. Sick spit poured into his mouth. Once—quite a while ago, given their present wind-cured state—these had been the constituent parts of … two men, Temujin judged. The two heads were closest to the roadway.

Placards hung beneath them. In several languages—the Sauron’s own Americ, the Russki that was widely spoken through Haven’s valleys, Turkic written in Latin and Arabic letters, the sinuous Uighur script Temujin read most readily, even in the blocky, angular Bandarit alphabet—they announced the victims’ names, stations and crimes.

One placard was very much to the point. All it said was THE PEASANT YEGOR—ACCOMPLICE. Temujin snorted. Whatever the peasant Yegor had been accomplice to, it had brought him a nasty end.

Temujin’s gaze swung to the placard under the other head.

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